A Time of Calling
Pastors serving Christ under communism, church planters in south America, evangelists in Asia, missionaries to the Muslim world: trace back the spiritual journey of today’s great Christian servants and you’ll find that many of them came from the campus ministry. They were involved in a campus movement just like the one you’re in (perhaps from your campus), which led them to a vocational choice of full-time ministry.
Which leads to an important question: from where will the next generation of Christian workers, pastors and missionaries come? From the college ministries around the world of Campus Crusade for Christ and other evangelical groups. From these campuses will come the generation of laborers who will see the great Commission fulfilled.
For this reason the role of Campus Staff in raising up Christian workers is arguably the most influential in all of Christian ministry. In fact many Crusade staff desiring to serve internationally have remained on U.S. campuses knowing that every year they remain they will multiply themselves many times over in laborers for the harvest. The average Campus Director could point on a map to dozens, sometimes hundreds, of locations where laborers have gone out from their ministry and are now serving.
The campus ministry also holds the keys to laborers in another way. Being a university student is simply one of the most unique situations in your lifetime. Few jobs would ever allow you to spend four months of each year doing anything you want. This result is a potential army of part-time missionaries.
There are nations of the world that are closed to Christianity and missionaries, but they are not closed to students. The fact is university students have been able, over their summers, to take the message of Christ where the gospel has never traveled before.
The campus ministry has and continues to hold the answer to Jesus’ prayer that God would “send out workers into his harvest field.” To be involved in campus ministry is more than reaching the next generation for Christ, it’s about raising up the next generation of Christian laborers who will lead the church and complete the Great Commission.