Campus Time

Credit for this post goes to Brian White, who had the quote of the week at our Missional Team Leader conference a few weeks ago.
“I know that if I’m at the office, I’m not going to run into too many students.”

Although he meant it half-joking, it’s one of the things that stuck with me. I can be guilty of hanging out at the office working or at least pretending to work on a talk for our weekly meeting, or a Bible study I’m leading, or planning for discipleship, but actually I spending time there because it’s easier. Plus, I can “take breaks” from working on a weekly meeting talk to listen to the latest news on Cam Newton or check out the possible coaching candidates for the Cowboys job (which after yesterday could be Jason Garrett’s job to lose). Then the next thing I know, I’ve been on espn.com for an hour and haven’t accomplished anything.

Appointments with students I’m discipling and new students I’m meeting fill a good portion of my schedule, but if I’m honest there is some flex time in there I don’t always use very well. Thanks to Brian’s comment, I’m actually trying to plug in a few ideas in order to make sure some of that flex time is spent on campus seeing current students and meeting new ones instead of reading a list of the Houston Astros top prospects (Jordan Lyles gets my vote, 90’s plus fastball, good movement, great change up for his strikeout pitch…sorry I just got carried away).

Here are some of the ideas I’ve either put in my schedule or I’m in the process of adding.

1) On Monday mornings at 8am, I spend about 30-45 minutes prayer walking our campus. This gets me on campus at a time I’m usually not there, draws my attention to God, and helps me to pray for what we’re dreaming about as a movement.

2) Going to campus at least once, maybe twice a week, with a set amount of time to just walk the quad and student center and have some spontaneous conversations with students. (thinking maybe an hour or two a week)

3) Take a book that I’m reading and sitting down in a high traffic area of campus to read. I did this a few weeks ago, and I saw four students I knew, had a great conversation with one, met a new student, and then introduced a guy on the fringe of our ministry to one of our leaders. That was only about 30-45 minutes out of my week, but it turned out to be productive, at least socially.

If you have a movement of 300 students, you’re schedule may be too full for this. But if you’re like me and you have a movement of less than 100 students, maybe this is helpful.