I was reading the article The Disappearing Middle over at Out of Ur and it’s very fascinating, especially in its relation to ministry in church.
Chad Hall states, “In a bell curve context, church leaders could expect most members to be moderately involved in the life of the congregation while the fringes were inhabited by the highly involved at one end and the minimally involved at the other end. But in a well curve context, leaders can expect few people to be moderately involved; instead folks will be either highly involved or barely involved.”
I’m entering into my 6th year as the college director at Bel Air Presbyterian Church, which means this is my sixth group of college leaders that I have recruited and who have come in to serve the college ministry. Six years is not a lot of time, but I too have noticed this trend in the last few years. And I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I think there are several reasons when it comes to college ministry:
1) We have to take into consideration my leadership skills and that I may not always be doing a great job of recruiting leaders.
2) The college student has changed a lot, even in the last 5 years. More and more students are being involved in more and more activities, so less are wanting to devote as much time to church ministry leadership.
3) I believe that with My Space and Facebook many students involvement is limited to their online “action.” If they can stay connected via the internet there is less of a propensity to want to attend certain things and be involved personally.
These are just a few of the ideas that I am playing around with right now. I have noticed that the number of Servant Leadership Team members for our college ministry has gone done (this is the rung of leadership that involves the highest level of commitment from the student). But on the other end we are getting more and more volunteers who are willing to fulfill more niche roles in the ministry. This is a huge blessing to have all these volunteers, but I’m still on the learning curve trying to figure out how to best recruit, organize and lead them.
This next year for our ministry is definitely an experiment in leadership in many ways. I look forward to sharing more of this with you later.
If you are a college pastor, work with post college people or young adults, I would be interested in seeing how you organize your leadership.
Send me some information via my email rhett@belairpres.org or post a comment, and I would love to be posting your thoughts.
