Reaching out to the Commuter College

It is very hard to define one strategy for building a fellowship on a commuter campus. When we think about developing fellowships on today’s commuter campus, diversity is one of the first words that comes to mind. There are urban, suburban, and rural campuses. There are two-year and four-year campuses. Some commuter campuses are mostly white, while others are mostly African-American. Some have a high number of international students, especially in the English as a Second Language program.

In addition, commuter students themselves are diverse. Most live at home and are tied into their community and/or church. Many of them work and go to school part-time or intermittently. Many come from broken homes. In general, they come from a broad range of ethnic backgrounds.

Not surprisingly, frustration is a second word that comes to mind if you are trying to build a fellowship on a commuter campus. Building such a fellowship takes hard work. There are many barriers to overcome, but there are also many assets. Commuter students may already have a support base in their community and/or their church. They may have natural friendships that have been in place since high school. They may also be older and more mature.

Regardless of differences in their environment, commuter students are basically the same as other college students. Their chapter will look much the same as one on a residential campus. The principles of building a chapter are the same, but the methods may vary. My advice is to be creative, try things out, let yourselves be free to fail and learn.

Integration of Students
How do we make contact with students on a commuter campus to inform them of the group and its activities?

The staff and student leaders need to do some good investigative work to discover the concerns of students on their campus, places where students congregate, the traffic flow on campus, and what resources are available through student activities. After analyzing the campus, you can begin to set goals and make plans.

New Student Week is a must, with lots of time and effort put into fun and attractive publicity. On some commuter campuses, this means that plans need to be made and carried out at the beginning of each term or semester. This includes displaying posters and chapter information in all the strategic locations the first day of classes.

A word about the type of publicity or poster to put up. We live in a media generation — today’s students are used to and expect quality. To draw these students to your groups, you need to put up attractive publicity.

It probably also means that your booktable needs to be up the first five to seven days of the new term or semester. Be creative with the table! Can you chalk all the classroom chalkboards? or chalk sidewalks? Use Christian rock videos to attract attention to the booktable, or give away popcorn or pop. Some groups have made t-shirts with the group’s name, or taped video interviews of students’ attitudes and ideas about Jesus’ identity.

The next step in integration is that of follow-up. Follow-up takes hard work, but it is crucial if you are going to bring contacts into the group. The phone will become an invaluable resource for follow-up. A goal of mine has been that we contact every student who signed up at the booktable for a Bible study or large group meeting to reinforce the invitation to our group. This telephone contact must be made within two days after the student signed up.

Because it may be hard for some students to walk alone into a meeting, have student leaders and staff meet invited students at a prearranged place and take them into the large group meeting. During the first few weeks of the term or semester, student leaders and staff need to make personal contact with each new student by spending time with them outside the group. This may mean meeting informally for lunch, or getting together between classes. It is extremely important that new students feel welcomed into the fellowship.

Structures
For a student walking into a new group, he or she will likely have questions in mind: Where will I fit in? Will I be accepted? Will I be able to contribute to or influence this group?

An individual must receive two answers from a group before he or she will join. First, the person needs to feel that he or she can fit relationally into the group. Community is always the primary motivation. Secondly, the person needs to know where he or she will fit in. This is tricky on a commuter campus, because students are typically balancing classes, work, and home schedules.

Small Groups — In an emerging fellowship, when the concern is to find a core of students willing to commit to developing an InterVarsity group on campus, Bible studies are a smart place to start. They enable the group to identify student leadership and build a core of committed students.

However, when working on a commuter campus, you need to decide on the role of small groups or Bible studies. Small group Bible studies depend on capable, well-trained leadership. On some campuses, it is just not possible to do the training needed to use them. As a result, the small group’s effectiveness in building fellowship and calling students to commitment is limited. You may need to reconsider the role of small groups each year based on the gifts and abilities of the student leaders.

You will also need to decide if a chapter organized around small groups will be effective. Many quickly find this structure inadequate. On a commuter campus, the group needs to form a group identity. This is usually done best by moving to a large group meeting structure as soon as possible.

Large Groups — Large group meetings may be much more important to the commuter campus strategy than to the residential campus strategy. For many students in the chapter, their entrance into InterVarsity and their only real contact with the group is participation in the weekly large group meetings.

As a result, we need to carefully plan the content of these meetings. Meetings need to be attractive in form, warm and inviting in atmosphere. They should also create a climate in which the Gospel is presented, students are challenged to grow, and we come before the Lord in worship.

A decision will need to be made about the purpose of the large group. Is it to produce growth in the lives of Christians? Or is it to be evangelistic in nature? If you try to do both through one meeting, you will lose the impact of both and leave students confused and frustrated.

At the beginning of the term/semester, the staff worker or a student leader should do two things: 1) maintain a high profile in carrying out large group meetings; and 2) be intentional in defining the purpose of the fellowship group, conveying the vision, and calling students to commitment.

When a chapter is ready to think about growing numerically, some InterVarsity groups have added a second large group meeting, rather than adding more Bible studies. This has increased the group’s membership and activities involved in outreach.

Student Leadership
Another important element of chapter growth on a commuter campus is the creation of the student leadership team. This team will work with staff in building a student group. As you build this team, make sure that you: convey InterVarsity’s vision; build relationships and trust; assure potential student leaders that staff will be with them every step of the way; define the job and related expectations; and give a call to commitment to God, the campus, and staff.

Along with calling the student leaders to commitment, the whole chapter needs to be reminded of their call and responsibility to live out their faith on the campus. Every student should know the major goals of the group, and how the leaders hope to accomplish those goals. The staff Worker and/or the student leaders then need to help the members think through their role within the group.

A second issue about working on a commuter campus is that staff and student leaders need to be intuitive and flexible. Let me explain. There is an art (intuition?) to knowing when someone is ready to take initiative and has the confidence and skill to accomplish what they set out to do. At this point, the wise staff worker/chapter leader steps back and slips into the mode of enabler. That takes flexibility in leadership style.

Another issue is that we don’t have the luxury of time, especially on the two-year campus. On a commuter campus, we work with a wide range of how long students will be on campus. It may be a term or several years. Often the students just don’t know how long it will take them to finish. As a result, we are always working in an unstable situation. It feels like we need to work in double-time. We try to disciple leaders at the same time we work with them to develop their leadership skills.

For example, it is not uncommon to meet a student the first week of classes, make a snap intuitive decision that this student is a candidate for leadership, and start the recruitment process. For instance, I met the president of our Thursday chapter at the first large group meeting this fall. I recruited him for two weeks, during which time I tried to communicate my vision for the campus and start building a relationship. The third week of classes, this freshman guy took over as the president. In fact, all student leaders of the Thursday chapter, except one, were new this fall.

When recruiting student leaders, it is important to figure out their interests and abilities, and then define their specific job description. The Exec positions on a commuter campus tend to be more functional than coordinating.

For example:

• President
• Large Group Leader
• Booktable/Evangelism
• Publicity/Fund-raising
• Follow-up
• Social Activities

In addition, it is helpful to spell out in writing: 1) your expectations of the leaders, and 2) the time commitment you are asking.

For example:
Exec Responsibilities: Total of 6-10 hours/week

• 1-2 hours: large group meeting
• 1 hour: Exec business meeting
• 1 hour: Exec Bible study
• 1/2 hour: prayer meeting (if possible)
• 1 hour: intentional evangelism
• 1 hour: optional discipling time with staff or volunteer
• 3-5 hours: fulfilling Exec position