Is Your Campus Ministry a Parasite?

Well, we just finished our week-long, end-of-the-year team retreat to look back over the year, evaluate what was done, and celebrate what God did in our ministry before we head off to fundraise for next year.  It was a great time of planning as well for the year that lies ahead and between the trip to a hot springs, enjoying the local cuisine, and dreaming really big about the years to come, I had an interesting thought that is still bugging me a few days later.

One of the things that we talked about and celebrated was the partnership that our team enjoys with a local church on the Palouse.  It’s a relationship that truly benefits both parties in incredible ways and without exaggerating or ignoring the inherent flaws, I can say that the partnership embodies everything that I could imagine in a “para-church / local church” partnership.  It’s a brilliant relationship.

There are many reasons why we enjoy the successful partnership that we do as a team here.  One of those reasons is because our team leader has partnered with this budding church-plant since day one.  We didn’t have to figure out how to “enter” the relationship without being seen as a threat.  The other reason is because we work hard to help make the local church better and be a great asset to their team, rather than simply maneuver into position to take – without giving. 

The word I’ve always used for this relationship is “symbiotic”.  It immediately conjures up images from high school biology class with the birds that live atop the rhino.  They coexist within the same world, each benefiting from the other.  The birds eat the insects that they find on the rhino and the rhino enjoys the free, cleansing presence of the birds. 

However, I also remember more of the info that I received that day in biology class.  There is mutualistic symbiosis (like the one I described above; both parties benefit from each other).  Then there is commensalistic symbiosis, where the one party lives with and benefits from the presences of the other, while neither hurting nor benefiting the host (sea cucumbers are the typical example).  And, of course, there is the parasite, which harms the host by surviving at the host’s expense.

My mind drifted this last week from the local church partnership to my own team that I work with in campus ministry.  I have, one of those “type-A”, driver-like personalities that plows ahead into the “vision that God gave me for the ministry”.  I work hard to not harm my team in any way, but I became convicted that my relationship with my team is much more commensalistic than it is mutualistic.  I don’t want it to be like that. 

Now, my team leader did a great job trying to convince me that I add more to the team than I give myself credit for, which may be true, but I was still convicted that I wanted to be a more beneficial presence to those around me.

What about you?  What kind of partnerships – if any – do you have with your ministry?

One of the hard truths I’ve noticed about those who raise their own support to be in the ministry (both as a full-time staff member of a church and as a support-based missionary myself), is that many of us get into the ministry we’re in because we’re just fed up with “working in the church”.  We pronounce the church broken and march off into the sunset to restore the Kingdom of God.

God will use this willingness to prophetically pursue His Project in the world.  He will.  And it will be good.

But while that’s happening, I fear that many times we may lose a golden opportunity to help bring healing and “rightness” back to the church we left – wounded, broken, and in need of repair.  If we’re not careful, we can easily become a commensalistic partner at best – or a parasite at worst.

I’m not here to suggest that the church is the hope of the world.  It most certainly is not.  God, as seen through Jesus, always has been and always will be that great Hope.

But something tells me He’s probably not planning on working through a spiritual tapeworm.