Community College

Sharing a Vision for Campus Ministry

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 20:56:22 +0000

February 13, 2018

Gordon Govier

Sharing a Vision for Campus Ministry

Both Kyle and Danielle VanEtten entered their respective colleges with career visions that included the possibility of becoming a missionary in some far-off land. They were both invited to get involved in ��Ƶ, Kyle at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) and Danielle at Smith College. They both learned how to lead small group Bible studies and share their faith.

Kyle ended up leading the UNH chapter as a junior, when the chapter was without a staff minister for a year. By that time he already knew he wanted to apply for ��Ƶ staff. As for Danielle, “When it came time to think about what to do after college, and I realized ��Ƶ staff was an option, it seemed like a dream job.”

Kyle and Danielle met at Toah Nipi, ��Ƶ’s Retreat and Training Center in New Hampshire, at the New Staff Training day that preceded their Regional Staff Conference. Danielle was impressed by Kyle’s vision for campus ministry. Kyle remembers thinking that Danielle was tall.

They became friends and started dating about a month later, as Kyle became a campus intern at the University of Connecticut (UConn) and Danielle began planting an Athletes ��Ƶ chapter at Smith. They continued dating and got engaged as Danielle temporarily left ��Ƶ to become a Fulbright Scholar and teach English in Brazil for nine months. They got married ten days after she returned from Brazil, and settled in Connecticut.

Kyle and Danielle say a shared vision for ministry—of seeing students become lifelong disciples of Jesus—is one of the strongest bonds of their marriage, since their ��Ƶ jobs are quite different. Their experiences as ��Ƶ students were also somewhat different.

As a high school senior, Kyle was encouraged by friends to check into ��Ƶ when he got to UNH, so he made contact with a staff worker before he arrived. He was invited to Summit Week, a retreat at Toah Nipi the week before classes started. He had attended family camp at Toah Nipi as a child, so he was familiar with the venue and the events of the week held up to his expectations. “After that retreat I was pretty much sold on being a part of ��Ƶ in my time in college,” he said.

Danielle also connected with Smith Christian Fellowship (as it was called) right away but didn’t discover its affiliation with ��Ƶ until her junior year. And because she was on the crew team with a heavy schedule of practices and regattas, she missed just about every ��Ƶ conference that she might have attended.

A variety of skills are needed for campus ministry to thrive. Kyle likes to teach and disciple students; building the chapter at UConn is his main goal. He’s also nurturing a chapter replant at the University of Hartford.

Danielle likes to talk with strangers and invite them to activities. Four years ago she started planting a chapter at Eastern Connecticut State University. Now she’s leading chapter plants at Eastern plus four other area community colleges. “All of these other campuses came from open doors, her natural gifting as a planter, and God making a way for her to make connections,” Kyle said.

Danielle finds it ironic that on community college campuses, community seems to be the thing that students hunger for the most, and is so hard to find. “Students really don’t know each other,” she said. “When we go around to invite them to join us for a Bible study, a lot of times they just say yes because they are eager to get to know other students on campus.” Even though it may be comparatively easy to get students to sit down for a Bible study, coordinating meeting times with students as they balance classes, jobs, and families is challenging.

At the UConn campus, Kyle works with a chapter of about 60 students. “The thing that has made the biggest difference in my career on staff has been learning to develop student leaders and empower student leaders in their callings on campus,” he said. Val Gordon, now ��Ƶ’s Program Management/Strategic Planning Officer, coached him and helped him identify that developing a team of trained student leaders to partner with him would be his most effective ministry.

The wisdom of that decision grows more and more evident with each passing year. “It’s really cool to see the “world changers developed” part of ��Ƶ’s Vision Statement come out of that,” Kyle said. “And more than that on campus to see students owning the vision, owning the mission, and recruiting their friends.”

Last summer Kyle and Danielle bought a house in Hartford to extend their ministry by living in intentional community. Their new home opens up opportunities to minister to students after they graduate, as well as host meetings of their ministry teams, ministry partners, and church groups. As they visit in the home, current students have an opportunity to see modeled ways that they can continue to live lives of mission after they graduate. Three of the four people who live with them right now are ��Ƶ alumni or current students.

Kyle and Danielle are eager to see campus ministry grow in central and eastern Connecticut. There are 17 colleges in the area but only four staff. They are looking for partners who will share their vision of reaching all 17 campuses with the gospel message. To donate towards helping to spread the gospel to more campuses in Connecticut, follow this link.

News Keywords

God at Work at Pellissippi State

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 20:59:21 +0000

News

July 17, 2015

Rochelle Scott

God at Work at Pellissippi State

When my husband and I moved from Wisconsin to Knoxville, Tennessee a year ago; I was confident in two things:

First, that God is working everywhere, all the time, and it doesn’t matter where we are or what we’re doing; we can simply ask God where He’s working and plug into His Kingdom work.
Second, that for the past year I had been praying for the place and the students that I would get to plant a chapter with, and that He would show them to me in His timing and in His way.

My plan was to start something new, maybe plant a multiethnic chapter at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville (UTK). And yes, that’s exactly what happened. There’s now an ��Ƶ multi-ethnic chapter at UTK. But there was so much more, I can still hardly believe it.

What I didn’t expect was that God already had a plan on a different campus that was far beyond what I could have had anticipated. Or that the Governor of Tennessee, and then the President of the United States, would be making decisions that could change the way I work with college students, and potentially have wider impact on ��Ƶ’s ministry. That all happened in relation to another chapter plant, at Pellissippi State Community College, the chapter that I didn’t want to plant.

I was much more interested in focusing on one campus (UTK) than two. And planting in the unfamiliar environment of the community college was daunting to me. But my supervisor suggested that I consider Pellissippi anyway. After a prayer walk on campus, my initial conclusions were “maybe someday.”

And Then God Began to Move

First, I happened to meet a student named Rebeca in the middle of the summer who asked me to consider starting a chapter at Pellissippi, since there were no campus ministries there. Then two weeks later I met with a pastor who asked me the same thing. He told me, “If you go to Pellissippi, I can guarantee that our church will support you in as many ways as we can.”

At that point, I was overwhelmed by the idea but started to think this was just crazy enough that it might be God at work. Two weeks later I was connected with Isaac, another Pellissippi studenti who was interested in starting ��Ƶ. That was enough. I could no longer say no to what God was up to.

Rebeca, Isaac and I met together at Pellissippi and decided we would try this thing. We met with an administrator who was so ecstatic to see us on campus that she immediately emailed a professor she thought would be interested in being our advisor, pulled out ��Ƶ’s constitution from the last time we were at Pellissippi (2004), and made sure we would have a table at the club fair the very next day.

The next day at the club fair I met an old friend- an international student by the name of Hamza who I knew back in Wisconsin. He had apparently transferred to Pellissippi and I had not known until he walked right past me at the club fair! I knew better than to call that a coincidence.

The contacts that we made at the club fair meant we started with two small groups because there was so much interest. Later on in the fall semester, we planted a third arts-specific small group, and we grew to about 20 students.

Out of the connection to Hamza and a meeting with one of the faculty in the International department, we forged a plan to begin a host program for International students. On Thanksgiving over a dozen international students were hosted for dinner by ten church families.

Government Programs Have an Impact

At the same time I was getting started at Pellissippi State, in the fall of 2014, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam’s Tennessee Promise program began. The Tennessee Promise states that if a student can earn and maintain at least a 2.0 GPA and complete at least eight hours of community service every term, then the Tennessee Promise will pay for tuition and fees for those students for up two years at a community college until they either transfer to a 4-year University, graduate with an Associate’s degree, or receive a certificate.

The implication of the Tennessee Promise is to improve students’ education and, therefore, improve the economy over the long-run. They anticipate seeing the enrollment double (if not triple) at community colleges in Tennessee over the next five years.

The program has brought new students, including a lot of students who are not well prepared for college courses. One of the English professors at Pellissippi is working on creating a course that provides students with the skills and the resources necessary for them to succeed in college, and this professor has invited ��Ƶ to help in whatever ways we can. The result is that we get to be a part of seeing campuses renewed by meeting the needs of the campus.

Haslam’s initiative brought President Barack Obama to visited Pellissippi in January to announce his own higher education plan. America’s College Promise would be a national version of the Tennessee Promise. Obama’s plan has been met with varied responses, but should the plan come into effect, it could have a significant impact on the way we do ministry as ��Ƶ.

Open Doors

This spring has seen students leading small groups, planting a fourth small group, and desiring to reach new corners of campus: specifically the LGBT community and the other four Pellissippi campuses in the greater Knoxville area. We have seen our diversity grow and the heart for God’s mission increase as a chapter. We have students transferring out of Pellissippi and planning to be a part of planting new ��Ƶ chapters at two other campuses this fall: Tennessee Tech University and Middle Tennessee State University.

God has been opening doors so fast at Pellissippi that we barely have time to go through them before He opens more. It is incredible; I cannot wait to see what He does next. We anticipate seeing even more students coming in the fall semester under the Tennessee Promise, and by God’s grace and we are ready to meet them with the Gospel.

UPDATE: Tennesse Promise Response Greater Than Expected - Inside Higher Education

News Keywords

Tennessee Promise

Pellissippi State

Community College