Community College Ministry is Uniquely Challenging

by Carson Conover, Campus Ministries at Longview and Blue River Community College

Global Project 2020
Community college ministry is uniquely challenging in a number of ways. But, this kind of ministry also has its benefits. For example, students don’t leave for the summer which presents an opportunity to train and equip student leaders for the fall semester. To that end, I recruited several student leaders to participate in the Global Project 2020—a virtual summer training program designed to deepen students’ understanding of evangelism, discipleship, and mission. They joined a thousand other students each week to catch the vision from gifted communicators like David Platt, J.D. Greear, and Robby Gallaty. As a participant, students also joined a small group of other students for a weekly Discipleship Group. These groups met regularly for Bible study, prayer, and equipping. The Global Project proved to be a valuable training experience—one that we intend to participate in moving forward.

Fall Semester at MCC-Blue River/Longview

Because of COVID-19, all MCC classes have been moved to an online format. That means we were unable to engage in our usual new student outreach efforts on campus. This required us to make new contacts online. We reached out to contacts from last year and conducted gift card giveaways through Instagram to gather student contact information and gauge interest in our student ministry. We collected far fewer contacts than usual, but thankfully we were still able to launch a few online Bible studies that are meeting weekly. We have two Bible studies meeting on Mondays and a study on every other weekday. Personally, I’m facilitating one of the Bible studies on Monday and I’m meeting bi-weekly with 3 other students to help them experience victory over the sin of pornographic lust. We’re reading a book together called Finally Free to implement its practical, grace-centered strategies while memorizing Scripture and helping one another practice preventative accountability.

Leader Development

I’m also meeting online with our student leaders every Thursday at 11am. We use this time for prayer, stories, equipping, and planning. Recently, we’ve been using this time to train students in Gospel Appointments—a tool that mixes the best practices of relational evangelism and initiative evangelism using a three story framework (their story, your story, and God’s story). We’ve asked students to write out their own personal testimony and we’re equipping them to share the gospel via the 3 Circles gospel presentation. Our prayerful hope is that by doing this, we’ll foster a stronger evangelistic culture among student leaders so we can reach and grow more students together.

Internship

Emma Clark is a former MCC student, and member of my local church, who is now serving as an intern with me this year. She attended the Prospective Staff Weekend last year hosted by MBCollegiate and stepped through the subsequent training process. She spent the summer support-raising and is now giving the year to full-time collegiate ministry. I have the privilege of serving as her supervisor to help coach and equip her along the way. As part of her internship, we’re participating in a 10-month equipping cohort through the Campus Multiplication Network to provide her with ongoing training. We’re doing this with 172 other collegiate ministry leaders in 11 different countries!