On Reaching and Mobilizing College Students, with Matt Schmucker and Paul Billings (Pastors Talk, Ep. 232)
How can pastors and churches reach and mobilize college students to share the gospel? On this episode of Pastors Talk, Jonathan Leeman, Mark Dever, Paul Billings, and Matt Schmucker discuss why discipling and evangelizing college students is important and fruitful. They talk about how college culture has changed over the years and what this means for your church’s approach to evangelizing students. Listen for tips on how to equip your congregation to minister to college students and how to mobilize college students to go on mission.
- Why is College Such a Fruitful Time For Discipling?
- How Has College Changed Over the Years?
- How to Equip Your Congregation to Evangelize College Students
- Mobilizing College Students to Go On Mission
Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Jonathan Leeman:
Hi, this is Jonathan Leeman.
Mark Dever:
This is Mark Dever.
Jonathan Leeman:
And welcome to this episode of 9Marks Pastors Talk. 9Marks exists to help pastors build healthy churches and learn more at 9Marks.org. I got all the way through that. Unbelievable.
Our topic today is college students and reaching them and discipling them. And we have a couple of guests, but before I introduce them.
Mark Dever:
So the question is we’re considering do we want this to be the last generation of Christians.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay. Explain. Christianity…
Mark Dever:
That’s why we’re talking about this topic.
Mark Dever:
Christianity is not something you can be born into. I mean, you can be born into a Christian family, but presumably in that family, you know, your daughters hear from you the gospel. And if the parents just decide, hey, let’s not tell them and no one else tells them, then Christianity dies with us.
Why is College Such a Fruitful Time For Discipling?
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay. But you just used my daughter as an example. I’m thinking about college students in particular. Why is that such a fruitful time for evangelism and discipling?
Mark Dever:
I think because we’re making a lot of our decisions as adults for the first time. A lot of people. I think it’s probably a smaller percentage now than 50 years ago. I don’t know. Paul, do you know about that?
Paul Billings:
Yeah, I think it’s still a big time to make decisions.
Mark Dever:
Oh, I agree with that. It’s just a percentage of the population, I think. It’s sort of away from home and in a college situation.
Paul Billings:
Yeah, probably…
Mark Dever:
Anyway, but still it’s a lot of people. A large part of the population is doing that.
Matt Schmucker:
You actually see in Judges too what happens to the people of Israel when the parents don’t pass on what God had done or don’t know God. They don’t even know what God has done for them, and they fall apart.
What Does Lay Elder Mean?
Jonathan Leeman:
Those last two voices you heard are Paul Billings and Matt Schmucker. Paul, you’re a lay elder, a non-staff elder like me, correct?
Paul Billings:
Correct.
Jonathan Leeman:
At CHBC, I think you became an elder after I left, but your full-time job is to work for…
Paul Billings:
I’m the director of Campus Outreach DC.
Jonathan Leeman:
What does that mean?
Paul Billings:
Which is a college ministry under the authority of Capitol Hill Baptist Church focused on reaching and discipling college students in DC.
Jonathan Leeman:
So you’re raising money, you’re helping college graduates to raise money to work full-time on different campuses around Washington.
Paul Billings:
Correct.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, and with different churches.
Paul Billings:
Yeah, and with different churches and Campus Outreach is a…
Jonathan Leeman:
Name the colleges.
Paul Billings:
So we’re at Georgetown, George Washington, Howard, and American University currently.
Jonathan Leeman:
And you’re working with how many different churches?
Paul Billings:
We’re working with three, let’s say four different churches in DC. And then we’re a part of a… Campus Outreach is kind of this actually global network now where there are other Campus Outreach regions apart, different parts of the country, or in different areas of the world.
Billings and Schmucker On Working With College Students
Jonathan Leeman:
What percentage of your week is spent on a college campus?
Paul Billings:
Personally, I’d say my… probably about 50-60% as the director.
Jonathan Leeman:
And that’s with the students who work with you or rather with your fellow staffers or with actual real live college students?
Paul Billings:
So a lot of that would be with students, with real students. Because I’m a pastor here and also lead the ministry of the church, I do spend some time at the church meeting with staff and church members.
How Mark Schmucker Met the Lord
Jonathan Leeman:
Matt Schmucker, you were reached as a college student.
Matt Schmucker:
Correct. Senior.
Jonathan Leeman:
You’re like exactly what Paul is spending his life to help engender.
Matt Schmucker:
But you probably don’t do open-air preaching on your college campuses.
Paul Billings:
We have done plenty of contact evangelism, but not the kind of open-air.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Matt, give us the 20-second version.
Matt Schmucker:
University of Maryland. University of Maryland College Park. I was a Roman Catholic, and I listened to… For three years I’d listened to a local pastor who was a good apologist and had a strong voice.
And every day the weather would allow him, he’d go out to the steps of the undergraduate library and even draw a crowd of 100 or 200 people. In my third year of listening to him, I think I was converted right there on the steps.
Jonathan Leeman:
And today you run a ministry for college students, kinda. A conference rather.
Matt Schmucker:
Cross conference, crosscon.com. It’s aimed at 18 to 25-year-olds.
Mark Dever:
Is it every other year’s conference?
Matt Schmucker:
It’s been every other year. We’re thinking about making it go every year. The next one is in January of ’24.
Jonathan Leeman:
Sort of like Urbana?
Mark Dever:
That’s an old… I mean, I assume a lot of people listening don’t even know Urbana.
Jonathan Leeman:
I would assume anybody over 40 would know what it is.
Matt Schmucker:
Probably.
Jonathan Leeman:
Under 40 might not.
Mark Dever:
Paul, do you know what Urbana is?
Paul Billings:
Yeah, I know what Urbana is.
Jonathan Leeman:
Did you ever go to one?
Paul Billings:
Traditionally like a missions conference. No, I never went.
Mark Dever:
You were born in what year?
Paul Billings:
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Matt Schmucker:
So, Mark, you heard about Urbana when you were in college.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I went to the one in 1979, 10 years before Paul was born.
Jonathan Leeman:
I went in 1990 or ’91.
Matt Schmucker:
Yeah, John Piper told me he kind of cut his mission’s teeth in the 1960s going to Urbana.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay.
Matt Schmucker:
It was faithful at one point. It was founded by faithful men who preached the gospel, loved the gospel, and had a heart for the nations.
Jonathan Leeman:
So you’re planning this three, four, five-day event?
Matt Schmucker:
Three-day event.
Are College Students Interested in Missions?
Jonathan Leeman:
Three-day event right now, every other year, bringing a lot of speakers, and you have thousands of college students showing up, hearing about missions, getting inspired and encouraged for missions, and you’ve been encouraged by what you’ve seen?
Matt Schmucker:
I have been. The history of it is that at T4G, the speakers would gather, and we’d talk about the state of student missions conferences and the speakers were concerned about it. And so John gathered a number of us in the fall of 2012 up in Minneapolis, Kevin DeYoung, David Platt, Mac Stiles, myself, some others, and said, let’s start a new conference.
One that’s rigorously biblical, that’s complementarian, unashamed, and reformed. Talk about going to the nations. And we started it in 2013, and we’ve had four or five conferences since then.
I’ve been at the last one we did in ’21. I was particularly impressed with the students. Now maybe I sound like an old man here, but when we would have Q&As, and we had this one lecture on LGBTQ stuff, and I thought the Q&A line, there were like 40 people on the line right away.
And I turned to my neighbor and I said, who was a friend of mine, I said, we’re gonna get it now. Here comes the snark. And it was just a lot of genuine questions, you know, people concerned about their neighbors, their roommates, their dorm mates.
There was just a sweet spirit there. People taking notes. They were listening to long talks that are heavy. I was really impressed with the students.
Mark Dever:
Paul, do you assume when students go to a missions conference and they get more informed about missions and excited and encouraged, they’re going to be more concerned about evangelism on their own campuses?
Paul Billings:
Oh, yeah, definitely. I would hope so. I’d hope, you know, we often say you want to learn, you need to be able to go across the hall to share the gospel with your dormmate before you think about going across the world to share the gospel with someone you don’t know in a culture you don’t know anything about.
Matt Schmucker:
What’s the line? An airplane doesn’t make a missionary?
Paul Billings:
Yeah, right.
How Has College Changed Over the Years?
Jonathan Leeman:
So again, the topic we’re thinking about is trying to help pastors understand what reaching and discipling college students look like, including mobilizing for missions. Matt and Mark, you were on college campuses 40 years ago. Have things changed? Have college campuses changed in your perception since then?
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Paul Billings:
How so?
Mark Dever:
They’ve gotten more secular, more opposed to Christianity.
Paul Billings:
I assume there’s probably more biblical illiteracy. Is that a safe assumption?
Mark Dever:
I would guess so.
Paul Billings:
Going down?
Jonathan Leeman:
Kind of moving from Paul speaking in the synagogue to Paul speaking in Athens. Less knowledge.
Mark Dever:
Brian McKenna was talking about Christianity being represented as being benevolent to being benign to being benighted.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
You know, popular culture has viewed Christianity in the past much more as a positive influence, and then as not a problem. And non-factor really. And now increasingly it stands in the way of trying to rethink gender the way a lot of people in our culture want to.
Are College Campuses Easier to Evangelize to Now?
Jonathan Leeman:
So, Mark, you were evangelizing on the campus of Duke 40 years ago. Easier to evangelize than now? Do you think your job was easier than Paul’s job?
Mark Dever:
I mean, Paul Billings’ fear of man is the same.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
Maybe. I’m not sure.
Jonathan Leeman:
Paul, you’ve been on campus for 10 years?
Paul Billings:
Yep. 10-11 years.
Jonathan Leeman:
Have you seen changes in that time?
Paul Billings:
Oh, yeah, definitely.
Jonathan Leeman:
Unpack them.
Paul Billings:
I think I have seen changes. And would I say it’s harder to evangelize? Probably not. Would I say fundamentally have people changed? No, I think people are still…
Mark Dever:
That’s certainly true.
Paul Billings:
The unregenerate need to hear the gospel message hasn’t changed. I do think the particular issues have changed, and I think there is less receptivity in general, I think because of a greater skepticism or negative…
Mark Dever:
I think there’s cultural permission to be negative, as you’re saying, towards Christianity.
Does Tribilization Affect Evangelism?
Paul Billings:
There are also other factors that I’ve noticed in 10 years that have impacted our work. I mean, the increase in anxiety just students, which tends to lead to less productivity and less initiative. I see more polarization tends to make students think more as affiliation as they think in terms of affiliation and not in terms of…
Evidence, you know, is this the right… is this true necessarily, but who would I be affiliated with if I believed it or followed it? So just that value seems really high.
Jonathan Leeman:
Say affiliate, maybe is the more common term, tribalization?
Paul Billings:
Sure.
Jonathan Leeman:
Like we’re all our little tribes.
Paul Billings:
Yeah, that’s right. You know, so I can think of a student I met with a year or two ago, and we have been talking about the gospel for a while, and I just said, is there anything… like if you were totally convinced this was true, would you be willing to… and he just said, no, even if I was convinced it was true.
Jonathan Leeman:
Because it’s more repugnant?
Paul Billings:
Because you’re not my people. You’re not my people. So I think there are some ways that those dynamics have made the work different. I don’t know if I’d say harder, but new challenges.
Jonathan Leeman:
The common line, sort of playing off what Mark just said, is the common line is whereas in the past apologetics was more epistemological, can you believe it’s true? Now it’s more moral, are we morally repugnant? Is that your experience, that kind of movement?
Paul Billings:
Yeah, definitely.
Mark Dever:
I would affirm that.
Jonathan Leeman:
And who my people are is wrapped around my morality.
Paul Billings:
Yes.
Jonathan Leeman:
People reinforce my sense of right and wrong and just and unjust.
Paul Billings:
Yes. And I also find that there’s, you know, cause on that lens, I often engage people over, you know, what are the foundations for their morality? If there’s no God, what’s your source of morality?
One challenge is it seems like the addiction to novelty that has overtaken a lot of our generation because of… Phones and stimulation and distraction, prone to distraction means it seems like it’s increasingly possible for people to hold contradictory beliefs at the same time. So you are morally wrong for believing this, and I don’t really know what morally wrong is or means or why, or there might not be a God that would define that.
Mark Dever:
Just less concern for logical contradiction.
Paul Billings:
Yeah, less concern for logical contradiction.
How to Equip Your Congregation to Evangelize College Students
Jonathan Leeman:
Is part of a pastor’s job equipping members of his church how to have those conversations in an astute, sophisticated way? Like I read Tim Keller, and I think to myself, man, I need to get a lot better at knowing this generation and speaking in a way that is sensitive to their concerns.
And I’m not just looking to criticize Tim here. I think there must be some legitimacy in that. But what counsel would you have for the pastor in equipping church members to speak in that particular context?
Paul Billings:
I’d be interested if you brothers would agree with me, but immediately I would say yes, that is a part of the responsibility of the pastor. Two passages would come to mind. Colossians 4, where Paul instructs the church there in Colossae to walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time.
So to learn what it looks like to walk in wisdom towards those who are on the outside who don’t believe, I think would involve learning how to speak to those who don’t believe, learning how to understand them. And then I would understand Ephesians 4 that the role of… Elders is to equip the saints for the work of ministry.
And I would think that evangelism would be a part of that. So my immediate answer is yes, that is a responsibility. But how a church goes about that and what your style is in engaging with people, I think could vary really greatly.
Matt Schmucker:
It’s a steep hill. I, if you… I don’t know what you think about Barna’s research, but in 2018, his research showed that 8 out of 10 American church attendees did not know what the Great Commission was.
Paul Billings:
8 out of 10.
Matt Schmucker:
Well, let alone owning the idea of evangelism or going to the nations, there’s just a lot of work in front of us to do.
How Can a Pastor Prepare the Congregation to Reach College Students?
Jonathan Leeman:
Mark, what responsibilities does a pastor have in equipping his congregation to speak to college students where they’re at right now?
Mark Dever:
You know, believing the gospel himself, and then trying to put it across in his teaching of God’s word regularly in a way that’s clear and compelling.
Paul Billings:
One way I’ve seen Mark do this as a pastor here is I’ve learned a lot about evangelism through listening to Mark’s sermons and addressing non-Christians and thinking about thoughtful questions that might provoke greater curiosity, or it might be connected to the passage in some way.
And I’ve noticed Mark has done that in different kinds of services, evening services, morning services, even when it’s clear to me as I look around a congregation I’ve been around for 10 years, and I recognize the people there, and it’s not obvious to me there is a skeptic in the room. But even the fact that Mark assumes there may be and addresses that person if you’re…
A skeptic, have you thought about this before? I mean, that teaches, and instructs the congregation how to do that well.
Jonathan Leeman:
But that’s not unique. I would think the effectiveness of that is not unique to college students. I would think that’s sort of an ageless practice.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. It may be most at home with college students because of what some of their classes are like and what their context is like as they’re thinking through life.
How Should Pastors Address College Students?
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. What else do you do, Mark, to speak to address college students and be mindful, not just in your pulpit ministry, but just in your ministry generally? In what way are you giving special attention to those individuals?
Mark Dever:
We have lunch every other week after the service where the preacher will go downstairs and answer questions from college students who stay for that. We have members of our church who are actively discipling college students.
And I see a lot of them are using books that we give away publicly or that we promote through our book stalls. So good literature we mean to be helpful.
Paul Billings:
We’ve had Mark and Bobby come to campus and speak at evangelistic events do open Q&As with people and invite members to bring their friends.
Mark Dever:
Tell them about the one you did recently with Bobby at Georgetown.
Paul Billings:
Yeah, so at Georgetown University, I’m an advisor for a fraternity there, like a social fraternity. It’s very odd and a long story, but it’s been a great ministry opportunity. And we took over their chapter meeting and I got to bring Bobby in to give a message on the book of Ecclesiastes.
And they did a Q&A. Just think of it like a typical frat house with 75 guys. I’m not sure any of them are self-consciously following Jesus. And here’s Bobby preaching a sermon and interacting.
Jonathan Leeman:
Good conversation?
Paul Billings:
That was amazing. It’s great. And provoked a lot of curiosity and antagonism as I assumed it would. So.
Jonathan Leeman:
Now I’m inclined to think that those college years, going back to where we began because people are making decisions for the first time, is a unique and special moment and opportunity for the gospel. Do pastors have an obligation or…?
Yeah, let me morally define that. Special opportunity to be intentional and mindful of that particular age demographic.
Matt Schmucker:
I assume you would say yes, Mark. I mean, you regularly remind the congregation about the opportunity that exists in our children in the congregation, let alone the college age.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. Yeah, college was just that time of life when you’re beginning to separate from your parents, you’re beginning to set up your own life, get married, live in your own space, and make your own decisions with your own job and your own money. Yeah.
Paul Billings:
I wouldn’t say obligation. I would say it’s a special opportunity that churches and pastors should be eager to be involved in, in some way.
A few years ago, I remember Mark had all of us, all the members stand up in the congregation and sit down based on what age they understand themselves to have been converted. And by the time we got to 25, there weren’t that many, and we’re a pretty large church, there weren’t that many people standing up.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. It’s extraordinary how many people sat down at age five, you know, at age 14. You know, at age 20, yeah.
Can We Reach College Students Without Going On Campus?
Jonathan Leeman:
Now, reaching college students is difficult though, insofar as they’re living in this little cocoon of the campus, right? And you have busy church members who are in their lives, taking care of kids, going to work. It’s not easy to travel to the college campus.
What I love about campus outreach is it’s drawing students off the campus and into churches. That seems to be one of its main goals, right? How…How can you equip church members to reach out to college students unless I have full-time dedicated workers on campus?
Mark Dever:
Well, just to be clear, my guess is most college students these days are non-residential.
Jonathan Leeman:
Even as I was asking questions…
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I’m sure that describes millions of people, but my guess is there are even more millions who work on a degree while they’re having a job. They’re doing it at night and on weekends, online or in evening classes.
Jonathan Leeman:
Are you seeing that growth, that trend growth?
Paul Billings:
Well, I think our schools are just very unique in that that’s not the case, but I would assume, I think that’s right, where Mark says it…Probably as a trend, which I’d say presents more challenges, honestly, because one of the advantages of all of them being in the same place is it’s a little bit… it’s a city within a city that someone could hypothetically learn and become an insider in, and build networks and relationships.
Mark Dever:
And pretty quickly have credibility because they’re only there four years at most.
Paul Billings:
Right. Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
But you don’t want to have to rely on full-time campus workers, right? How do you help your church members?
Mark Dever:
No, you want those full-time campus workers to be discipling other members of the church and knowing how to do this. But in the same way that when you are trying to reach a language group, you do need to know, have some people who learn those languages or that language, there’s going to be unique availability that Paul and his staff have to have to go hang out at nine o’clock at night when most of your members aren’t going to be normally able to do that.
Does FOMO Prevent Students From Coming to Church?
Matt Schmucker:
Paul, I’ve read in the Wall Street Journal recently that this age group had been governed by FOMO, fear of missing out, but now they’re saying FOBO. Do you know what that is?
Paul Billings:
Yeah. Fear of better options.
Matt Schmucker:
Yeah. Do you have a hard time getting people to come to things?
Paul Billings:
Oh, yeah.
Matt Schmucker:
Church, let alone just gatherings.
Paul Billings:
Definitely. And there are different factors for that. I mean, think about college students who have never lived without a smartphone and immediate access to that, digital world where they can form an identity, can have a community there.
And so also always exposed to all kinds of different forms of entertainment and novelty and opportunities. And so that creates, I think, a sense of… Of anxiety of always wanting to have the best experience or even just the tendency for students to stay isolated in their room, you know, to experience all that the internet has to offer.
So yeah, I mean, we’re constantly thinking through that. I’d also say that to get back to the instinct that people have to judge a meeting or a church based on vibes or based on the…
Jonathan Leeman:
I hear the word vibes in my home all the time
Paul Billings:
Yeah, based on atmosphere or feel.
Jonathan Leeman:
It’s all about vibes, I gotta tell you.
Paul Billings:
Yeah, that definitely is a contributing factor too. It’s harder for students to just see a flyer. Oh, that looks like an interesting topic, I’ll go. It matters increasingly more who’s going, is anybody that I trust going there, and would be safe in this environment. So I’m just naming what’s often a source of their decisions.
Encouraging Evangelistic Stories
Jonathan Leeman:
Are there any encouraging evangelistic stories?
Paul Billings:
Encourage evangelism stories. Yeah, I mean, I just, this weekend, we had a retreat which was really encouraging. Me and my wife are the only two people born in the 80s at the retreat, so that stood out to us.
And there’s a student there who’s an agnostic who has been coming to our meetings on campus at a university. It highlights how slow the evangelism process is. It took two or three years for him to… Willing to go to a meeting like we’ve had.
Our meetings increasingly involve a lot of discussion and dialogue and giving people time to ask questions. And he came to the retreat as an agnostic. At the beginning, I said, do you think it’s more likely or not that God exists or doesn’t?
And he says, right now, no, I think it’s more likely He doesn’t exist. And by the end of the retreat, you know, it was a simple retreat, it evangelistic. I taught on the cross, we were very focused on, we were just looking at different scenes in the Gospels.
And he, at least, saying I think I really want this to be true. I see Christians are unique and different, and he wants to read the Bible and follow up more with us. So yeah, that’s an example of, I think I could tell hundreds of stories like that. Not a quick process, no silver bullets here, but patient, loving, trusting relationships.
Jonathan Leeman:
You guys don’t work for quick decisions.
Paul Billings:
No, not at all. I think the more we work for that, the more skeptical you should be, because yeah, I just don’t think… Students generally are prepared on matters of this eternal importance to make quick decisions.
Mobilizing College Students to Go On Mission
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, I want to spend the last couple of minutes on the question. We’re kind of fast-forwarding from Should I be a Christian to Should I be a Christian who goes onto the mission field, right?
Mark, very briefly, there’s been a lot of college student mobilization for missions over the last century or so. Can you give us a quick history? Why has this been such a big thing?
Mark Dever:
Again, probably because in that time of life… People are considering what they’re going to do. So it was 200 years ago, really the Haystack prayer meeting at Williams College in Massachusetts happened in which from that a huge move of mobilization of students go out.
And in the early 19th century, you have the trickle that was going in the 18th century towards Lyle, William Carey, and there were missionaries before that. There were missionaries going out from Calvin’s Geneva to Brazil. But that becomes much more…
Prominent in the 19th century, and early 19th century. And part of that is probably because of just the possibility of travel and people becoming more knowledgeable about other parts of the world. So Christians and Western Europe, Protestants, and North America, became more aware just through world trade increasing in other places.
Jonathan Leeman:
Technology enabled that.
Mark Dever:
That’s right. And so more and more people are aware, more and more people are praying and going.
Matt Schmucker:
Well, it also seems in the seventies, you see a massive jump in workers with the identification of unreached people groups in the 1040 window.
Mark Dever:
In the 1970s, that’s right.
Jonathan Leeman:
A lot of us are college students, right?
Mark Dever:
Yes. Ralph Winter popularized that idea. And it’s just categorizing people, not merely by language or ethnicity or location, but by their specific markers and what percentage of them are Christians.
And it’s a person in that people group, so-called, are they likely to have heard the gospel? So you’re not just looking at France, you’re looking at these 743 subsets of people living in France.
Jonathan Leeman:
Is the idea here, I want to walk into a room with… Several thousand college students recognize that these people are kind of young impressionable and ready to be radical and give their life to Christ in great ways. I’m going to go stir them up with some really inspiring talks grab as many of them and send them to go as quickly as possible.
Matt Schmucker:
You’re talking about the cross-conference.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yes.
Matt Schmucker:
I would have said that in 2012. I won’t say that in 2023.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay. What do you say differently?
Start With the Gospel
Matt Schmucker:
We’ve had to slow down. We now, instead of all missions all day, we now start with the gospel. We have to ensure that they understand what the gospel is, and then we move to the local church.
Try to centralize the idea of the local church in the minds of these disciples, and then we go to missions. Because I just think we have a long history of 22-year-olds kind of getting jazzed and pumped up and pushed out.
Mark Dever:
And a lot of the most impressionable people are not going to be the first people you really want to send or the people you want to build things on. Not a lot of the people who are going to be good, sturdy folks are going to be… Taking some time to make a decision often.
Matt Schmucker:
And we want them to go out from the local church, not just go out, find an agency, and off they go. So we try to slow the whole process down. And yes, we want to motivate and we want to inform them, and then we want to push them back to their local church, submit to the elders, be discipled, get trained, and then go.
Making Sure Students Understand Why They Go Before They Go
Jonathan Leeman:
But with a vast variety of healthy and unhealthy churches out there, you can’t assume that some of these students showing up at the conference know the gospel well, understand what the church is, what? World the church would play in missions. So it makes sense you would kind of go through that tutorial before getting to, okay, now will you go?
Paul Billings:
Correct. That’s right.
Jonathan Leeman:
Do you encourage college students to do short-term trips?
Paul Billings:
I’m a little nervous about it. Sometimes they seem like they’re kind of glorified vacations.
Mark Dever:
It can be useful. Yeah. It just gives people a view of another part of the world. Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
What about a one or two-year stint? Like graduating from college, go with the IMBs. What was it? Journeyman like that sort of thing. Two years, a good thing to do?
Mark Dever:
Again, yeah, I think that’s probably that length of time you’re going to get more of an idea of what it’s like for you to be there and more of an idea of what that place is like.
Jonathan Leeman:
And pastors can be kind of peppering their congregation with these sorts of ideas.
Matt Schmucker:
I think the better taught they are theologically and the better church that they’re in, the more success they’ll have whether they go for two weeks or two years.
Jonathan Leeman:
Brothers, any final thoughts on reaching, discipling, or mobilizing college students?
Matt Schmucker:
Can I do a plug?
Jonathan Leeman:
Yea.
Schmucker On The Go Fund
Matt Schmucker:
For a friend, The Go Fund, these guys are based in California. They help remove one barrier to going onto the mission field, not a student debt. But they have started a new program that will launch at the beginning of March called the Missions Course, themissionscourse.com.
It’s just a six-session course. If you’re unfamiliar with the Great Commission and the call to go to the nations, I would encourage you to think about going and taking a look at that course.
Jonathan Leeman:
Great. Paul, final thoughts?
Teach People To Evangelize by Evangelizing With Them
Paul Billings:
I think the best way to equip people to evangelize is to evangelize with them. So I love evangelism training. I’ve benefited much from reading books on evangelism, but the most profound way I learned how to share my faith was by watching another Christian do it.
And I think that applies to pastors and ordinary Christians to seek to do that in community with other Christians. I also certainly think it applies when we talk about equipping college students in evangelism. So… There’s just a responsibility in every generation, no matter what the challenges or opportunities are.
Jonathan Leeman:
So that means doing that at events, but it also means going to the student union and grabbing a guy you’re discipling and saying, hey, let’s go talk to this…
Paul Billings:
Oh, totally. And that’s what’s… that’s the beauty of a college campus is that it’s meant to be a free marketplace of ideas. Everybody’s evangelizing in some way about some big idea. And so I think that our churches have an opportunity to step into that arena.
Matt Schmucker:
I would also just want to plug one other group, and that is the Radius…Radius Congress, Radius International. If you’re seriously thinking about missions, they’ve got a 10-month course in Tijuana that prepares you to go to unreached language groups. That’s the term they use. I highly recommend them.
Jonathan Leeman:
I spent a day and night there. Very encouraging.
Mark Dever:
The Lord is not making a mistake about when Jesus returns. His patience is meant to lead us to repentance. But how will they believe unless they hear, and how will they hear unless they’re sent?
Jonathan Leeman:
Amen. Guys, thanks for your time.
Paul Billings:
Thank you.
Matt Schmucker:
Thanks a lot.
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