A friend of mine asked me to rant a bit on what kind of ministries I'm interested in when it comes to working with young adults and college students. Here's what I came up with as the kind of missional system that would hold my attention and maybe that of the broader church too!

Intentional Communities: I'm more and more convinced that smaller groups of young people gathered around particular passions or experiences is the way to build up strong and diverse communities of young people overall. These intentional communities can be groups living together, groups living near one another, or groups sharing a particular mission or calendar of activities. They should be covenantal and should gather most frequently. I've found a lot of enjoyment working with young people to identify who their particular community will be and encouraging individual leaders to develop that community. I think this breaks us from the idea that religious professionals should be doing this connective work solely.

Missional Entrepreneurs: Probably in close connection with the intentional communities are the young entrepreneurs who emerge to make ministry happen. I really enjoy setting up conditions for success and then seeing what young missional entrepreneurs can accomplish. Handing out $100 bills and giving student a free 3 months to see what they can do with that cash is a fun way to do this. Plus, these make for the very inspiring stories that the broader church digs.

Creative Cohorts: One area that I'd be interested in exploring more is the idea of creative cohorts for giving some theological play-space for the artists in a community. What would a campus ministry look like if there were active groups of writers, dancers, musicians all contributing to the local liturgy and missional voice of the organization? These too are wonderful moments to highlight when the broader church asks what's going on down there on campus. I think it's important not to make these group "Christian First / Artists Second" but rather to affirm the breadth of each young artists work and engage it in Christian theological dialogue despite the JPM ("Jesus Per Minute) of any particular piece.

Centrifugal Gatherings: I think once all those things are going, then a campus community would have a truly rich culture from which to build a central gathering. But, of course, these worship services, retreats, and trips that I'd be most interested in would only be those that are centrifugal in nature - always finding new ways to upset people from their places of comfort and send them on to the next mission project, community creation, or artistic reflection. This might mean that you don't do the same gatherings any two years in a row. It's so easy to fall into the "this is our _________ tradition" isn't it? so what if the system was set up to have a truly clean slate every fall?

Carl