MAKING AN IMPACT: Church

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the third week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

One of our values at Impact Campus Ministries is church.

It might seem like a silly value, but let me explain why we put it on the list.

Too many times, para-church organizations get started because of some need that the local church isn’t meeting — oftentimes because it would not be practical, wise, and good stewardship of their time and resources. There are many ministries like this and almost any missions organization you can think of will fit into this category. While some of these efforts are less para-church than others (e.g., sending missionaries to international settings is less about filling an unmet need and more about sending missionaries to do the work in other corners of the world), a bulk of these organizations will be like this. Homeless shelters, food pantries, and benevolence ministries will be like this. Pregnancy crisis centers and free medical clinics will be like this. Campus ministry organizations often make the list.

Because of this natural gap, there is often an animosity that grows, whether intentional or unintentional. Oftentimes these organizations are started because of a frustration that the local church isn’t meeting an obvious need. That chip on the shoulder is an unhealthy attitude that festers in the church world. In places like campus ministry, it can become easy to critique the local church, throw stones at their methods, and start our own thing to replace the broken piece. In return, churches become increasingly frustrated with organizations critiquing without helping, wanting to take without giving back, and always draining the resources of a church community that struggles to give generously.

And so, ICM wants to be sure we state up front that we value the local church.

We do not think we are here to critique or fix the state of the church. We are not the answer to all the world’s problems. We are simply here to help. And we want to start by coming alongside what God is already doing in His local church.

We will not try to replace the local church. We will not talk negatively about the local church. And while not all of our teams will have intentional partnerships on the level that some teams do (like our team on the Palouse), we will seek to partner with the local church whenever that partnership will be effective and efficient.

We want to do our job in a way that encourages all of our brothers and sisters to run the race well. And we want to do our job in a way that makes the church want to return the favor.

If we truly believed in the work of MILIEU (that we spoke of before) then we have to be active partners with the local church. You may remember Eric Wright sharing his stories of having students exposed to different ideas. We want to remind ourselves that if we are Impacting the U because we believe it will Impact the World, then we have to keep our students surrounded by healthy diversity and a wide demographic of people. This kind of exposure will enhance their personal development, make them better professionals, and increase their ability to lead others later in life. How could we truly pursue this and not value a connection with the local church?

And yet, it is easy to miss. And so we have to remind ourselves by putting it on our list of values.

MAKING AN IMPACT: Milieu

For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the third week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.

With today’s post, we wrap up our approach toward reaching this generation of college students, something we call Message, Mode, and Milieu (Mx3). In order to reach young adults today, we believe we have to be able to tell the whole story of God and His invitation to join. This narrative-based approach to the Text is something we call message. We also believe we have to teach this in a way that stimulates the mind, heart, and body; this approach is something we refer to as mode, and we talked about it last month and heard Zack tell a great story about his experience on the BEMA Trip.

This month, we talk about the last component, something we call MILIEU. I remember the first time Bill Westfall presented this material (and many times after that), and I laughed at his word choice and his commitment to alliteration. “Milieu” (pronounced mil-yoo) isn’t a word we typically use in everyday conversation, and I’ve only recently been able to consistently spell it correctly, so it would behoove us to make sure we examine its definition. Siri tells me that milieu means a person’s social environment.

Our social connections continue to be what has the most sustainable potential to impact us. Many sources of wisdom tell us to surround ourselves with the people we want to become. While many mothers have encouraged us to consider the practical sapience (how about that for a word you need to look up?) of, “if your friend told you to jump off of a bridge, would you do it,” we must also routinely have that conversation because of the power of the communal voices with which we surround ourselves.

Community is important. Because of this, we have to be very intentional about the relationships we build with others. ICM has defined milieu as intentional relationships with others in the story. This idea of social networking is intertwined with our idea of message. If God is telling a story and is inviting us to join it, then that means there must be others who are already in the story and others waiting to jump in. As we talked about with discipleship, there is always somebody in front of you, and always somebody behind you.

When you consider all of this, you realize how dangerous it is for a campus minister to just run with a flock of students. If it is simply one campus minister and a bunch of college-age students, the milieu is undeniably weak! In fact, depending on the personality of the campus minister, this is downright dangerous. Another campus minister was talking to me recently, following a workshop on discipleship I had done, about the danger of becoming “cult-like” in our adherence to rabbinical principles. It is incredibly important to realize the dangers of this! I went on to talk to him about how important my commitment to the local church is in the health of my ministry. I personally need to be surrounded by other pastors and leaders who will let me know if I start to get a little crazy. I need my students (and myself) to be surrounded by older folks and children, educated and uneducated, rich and poor, conservative and liberal.

Why? Because diversity is what allows us to grow and gain wisdom. It is in encountering differing worldviews and opinions that I am kept humble and forced to consider other ways of viewing things. It is through this diversity that I learn how to respect others. The Spirit moves and bears the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control as I interact with people who see things differently from me. Diversity is what protects us from the close-minded tribalism that threatens to destroy our world from all directions.

And it is this diversity that will help mold and shape young people into the leaders they are going to become. Just because we have intentional relationships with others who aren’t like us certainly doesn’t mean we agree with those people on everything — or even lots of things. It just means we respect their humanity and see our own development bound up in their own.

I need my computer science student to be rubbing shoulders with the IT Director of Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories. I need my Bernie-Sanders-supporting sophomore to listen to the reasoning behind a Donald-Trump-supporting farmer. I need a newly baptized freshman serving in the children’s ministry with toddlers who are being exposed to a Jesus she only recently met. I need older, more experienced people mentoring my students. I need my students mentoring others in the church. And we all need the mentors to be learning from those they are leading. Why? Because it is this living Eucharist table that reminds us of the world that we are called to change.

If we Impact the U within the context of milieu, we will Impact the World.