CAMPUS MINISTRY ALIVE AND WELL ONLINE
The challenges and surprising successes of pandemic campus ministry
Chloe Starra didn’t expect to begin her third year at the University of Guelph by attending a prerecorded worship service on Facebook. Each year, the Guelph Power to Change–Students ministry hosts a worship service, known as Worship on the Green, for students during the school’s orientation week. It’s one of several events designed to connect students with the organization and is particularly important for welcoming first-year students. But the Covid-19 pandemic forced the majority of classes online – and as a result orientation week also went virtual.
“It was really sad that we couldn’t do that because it’s really awesome to be in the middle of campus worshipping,” the third-year business management student says from her parents’ home in Kitchener, Ont. “We just did worship on the green screen instead,” she says with a laugh.
The club hosted four events this orientation week, including a Netflix party to watch the movie Heaven Is for Real and an online scavenger hunt where students found items in their homes, not on campus. About 25 students attended each of those events, but it’s hard to welcome students who aren’t already interested in the ministry, says Starra, the club’s administrator.
“It feels like everything we’re doing is making just a small impact – which isn’t a bad thing.” But she wonders if the club is reaching all the students they could. “I’m just nervous.”
She’s volunteered at orientation events not connected to Power to Change, and she knows how important it is to welcome new students and introduce them to a community that can help them follow Jesus. An extrovert, the isolation of online classes can be challenging for her, and she wonders if this situation will drive students further away from God,
“The Holy Spirit is not confined by space. He can move and work on people’s hearts, even virtually.”
or cause them to ask spiritual questions for the first time.
“I’m praying for God’s power to come to Guelph. We’re praying so much for students to get connected,” she says.
The pandemic is challenging a core value of campus ministries – gathering students in the same place at the same time for evangelism and discipleship. Ministries are forced to focus more of their efforts on where students are right now – digital spaces, whether gaming platforms, Instagram or TikTok.
“We’ve definitely had to shift,” says Seth Greenham, the British Columbia and Yukon director for University Christian Ministries, a ministry of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. UCM, like Power to Change-Students, is offering online Alpha courses and running small groups virtually. The ministry has been trying to determine how to help students encounter God through virtual platforms.
“The Holy Spirit is not confined by space,” says Greenham. “He can move and work on people’s hearts, even virtually.
It’s more challenging for us, because we’re flesh and blood, to try to minister to people virtually. But the Holy Spirit is not actually confined.”
Dan Sherman, national campus strategies director for Power to Change–Students says, “The model has, for the meantime, been totally disturbed.” The organization is thinking about what happens if universities never return fully to postpandemic operations, and their previous model of in-person meetings with students is altered forever.
The model has actually been slowly changing for years. Earlier in 2020 – before the pandemic – Power to Change decided not to hold its longrunning December conference in Toronto after low attendance in 2019. “There was a trend away from Christians coming to large gatherings to hear information and to hear messages,” he says. “I think Covid will just exacerbate that.”
The organization sees itself needing to make a transition similar to the way many restaurants have reoriented themselves to provide more delivery services. “Basically, it’s like we used to be a gathering point and now we’re mostly delivery,” Sherman says. With organizations no longer able to meet on campus and invite any student they encounter, they have to equip students with tools to witness to those around them, whether that’s their classmates or the friends who live near them, but attend other schools online.
Pete Ott, national director, campus ministry for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship of Canada, says the pandemic is forcing the ministry into some much-needed innovation and experimentation. “It’s helping us accelerate the things we need to do,” he says.
Several of the organization’s long-standing ministry programs were created for previous generations of students, Ott says. Today’s students attend university in an increasingly complex world, in an environment where the Christian
“I think there’s an amazing opportunity to present Christ to people because people’s foundations have been rocked.”
moral ethic is seen as repressive, and the belief in a transcendent God with authority to tell people how to live is decried as unjust, he says.
“We were kind of like a sports team with a very limited playbook,” says Ott. Now with most on-campus, in-person events stalled, staff are finding ways to help students engage with Scripture online. InterVarsity’s trademark small group-based inductive Bible studies, often called manuscript studies, don’t translate as well to Zoom, says Ott, so staff have also been introducing more contemplative ways of reading Scripture and using different media. Some staff have created podcasts to teach students about Scripture. The ministry isn’t discarding inductive Bible study, he says. “But maybe that’s not the best way to get into Scripture as a first step.”
Online ministry has also allowed students from different regions to gather. IVCF has four campus ministry interns this year, all in Winnipeg. While their primary responsibilities are to local campuses, each has been assigned to work with a campus in Manitoba or northwestern Ontario that doesn’t have staff. Power to Change for years has had a staff team dedicated to working with campuses that don’t have full-time staff, but this year it’s been easier for students from those campuses to join national events. Parachurch and denominational ministries have also been working together to connect incoming students to Christian campus groups. In Ontario, students at public universities and colleges can find a church or campus group through the director at www. Transition101.ca. (The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, publisher of Faith Today, is a sponsor of the initiative.)
“We’re mourning the loss of physical interaction with people, but it’s actually allowed us to open doors to new ways to expanding the reach of the gospel,” says Dave NguyenStone, IVCF’s campus ministry staff director for B.C. In May the province’s annual conference to study the Gospel of Mark went online. Students from Ontario, Quebec, Austria, Sierra Leone and New Zealand participated.
This school year staff are encouraging students to take the gospel to new places. This means making sure students have the time and resources to be faithful witnesses wherever they are.
IVCF staff across B.C. are strategically limiting the number of online meetings they invite their students to, and making sure those online Bible studies and prayer times last for about an hour or less.
“We’re trying to think creatively about how we can get students off screens to engage the Bible,” Nguyen-Stone says. He’s leading students through a plan to read the entire Bible on their own, offline. “We just have to invite people to the offline world through the online world. That’s the challenge right now. How do you get people to experience Jesus off
a screen when your first encounter with them is forced through a screen these days?”
Part of the answer lies in equipping students more thoroughly to share the gospel and explain how it relates to needs on campus. In B.C., IVCF is running teaching modules for students across the province about topics like mental health, biblical understanding of sexuality and gender, cultural background and racial injustice. These programs aren’t affiliated with any specific campus, says Nguyen-Stone.
These discipleship resources enable students to go “deep in their faith, which enables our campuses on the ground to be doing more of the evangelistic work of the relationships with their non-Christian friends,” he says. The slower pace of campus ministry this year allows students to build better relationships with the people around them.
“It’s painful now, but something good is going to be birthed on the other side of it,” says Nguyen-Stone. “We’re not used to a school year not being on campus, restrictions, having less control over our ministries. But I actually think the new thing that’s going to be born is going to be a more holistic witness and a more empowered student body to follow Jesus.”
Revivals are often born of crises, says Sherman. The pandemic has a lot of opportunities for Christians to “put Christ forward as that Rock of Stability, the Creator, the one who knows us and loves us. He knows our needs before we even ask Him about it. I think there’s an amazing opportunity to present Christ to people because people’s foundations have been rocked.”
For the students at the University of Guelph, this means making sure incoming students are welcome. For the first time they’ve created welcome packages complete with ministry-branded facemasks. Starra helped put the kits together.
From her family home in Kitchener, she’s being “challenged” to love those close to her, even when the close quarters make it tedious, and trust God’s power will come to the campus she loves.
“I’m just holding on to the fact that this is a temporary, worldly thing, even though it feels like we’re stuck for a bit,” she says. “I know that God has bigger plans in His hands.”