An Excerpt from The Fuel and the Flame
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Thus far, this school year, you may have met two hundred new students on campus, had six team meetings, started four investigate groups, hosted two campus-wide evangelistic events, have four hundred comment cards to follow up, individually shared the gospel with seventy five students, twenty five of them have prayed to receive Christ, and you’ve got most of them in follow up groups and in one-on-one establishing appointments! That’s all well and good, but what do you do now? How do you determine where, how, and with whom you spend your precious ministry hours each week? How do you narrow the funnel down to discern which students you should select to invest more of yourself in? I thought you would never ask!
It may sound exclusive to “select” anyone, because that automatically means you didn’t select others, but what it really means is that students, ultimately, select themselves. I stay up at night dreaming of working with students who really want to get trained to be a radical disciple of Jesus Christ. In fact, I was up late just last night dreaming and plotting with one of the young men leading our ministry and brainstorming about how to create a spiritual frenzy on our campus this school year. Our prayer is that this year the central issue on our campus will be: Who is Jesus Christ and what will you do with Him?
How did I pick this twenty one year-old fraternity guy to live with me and be one of my key men? I didn’t. He picked me. I started two years ago with a broad funnel with many guys that I shared with, had in small groups, challenged, recruited, and continued raising the commitment level. One by one, most of the guys dropped out for one reason or another, but this young disciple hung tough. I picked him…because he first picked me! In the final analysis, I am mainly going to give my time and my life to those students who want my time and life the most.
To be the best steward of the gospel, we want to invest in people who will absorb the training we give them and take it as far as possible. The goal of selection is to train and invest in leaders who will be obedient to evangelize and make disciples. True laborers select themselves by consistently showing F-A-I-T-H, a five letter acronym that will help you and I know what kind of a young man or woman we should be giving the best part of our ministry day to.
A. Faithful
You’re looking for someone who will meet you at 2 P.M. in front of the student center because that’s what time the two of you agreed on; someone who will show up each time at Bible study prepared, even though they may have a big test the next day; a person who takes on the task of leaving the room you met in cleaner than they found it, after the crowd leaves, but the mess remains; a friend who you share a personal struggle with and they wouldn’t dare pass it on to someone else. This student is faithful, reliable, and dependable. They simply will do what they say they will do. This was the kind of person that Paul told Timothy to look for in 2 Timothy 2:2 when he said “entrust yourself to faithful men.”
B. Available
College students are notorious for filling up their schedules just so they can feel important and tell people that their schedules are really packed out. Jesus told some fishermen to follow Him in Matthew 4:19, and they “immediately dropped their nets and followed Him.” That’s availability! Look for students who are willing to be flexible, change their schedules, even give up things in order to meet with you or partake in a spiritual growth or ministry opportunity. They can have all the potential in the world, but if they’re not prepared to make the time to become what God wants them to become, you will be beating your head against the wall trying to track them down. Let’s face it, when someone says, “I don’t have the time,” what they’re really saying is, “I don’t want to,” because we all make time for those things we really want to. Right?
C. Initiative
It’s hard to steer a parked car and that’s exactly what some students are like. As much as you pray for them, challenge them, bring them along as you do ministry, nothing seems to work in getting them to take the initiative in their own personal life or ministry. Like David, the Old Testament teenage shepherd and giant killer, look for students who are doers, not just talkers, willing to take action and risks, focusing on accomplishing the task, rather than the possibility of failure. If you pour your life into someone who doesn’t want to take what you’ve given them and pass it on, it’s strictly addition, not multiplication you’ve engaged in. God told us to be fruitful─and multiply!
D. Teachable
Does this student want to spend time with you, even seeking you out? Is this student open to you pointing out areas of their life that need work on? Proverbs 9:8,9 says a wise person will love you for rebuking them, a fool will despise you. Care and correction are part of the discipling process, and if a student is resistant to your input into their life or character, that may be a warning flag. If you sense this person is rebellious or unapproachable, then you might consider just praying and loving them, and waiting for God to soften their hearts.
E. Heart for God and People
Navigator staff Doug Nuenke believes that “some students can be faithful, available, and teachable initiators─but all for the wrong reasons!” So, to add to those qualities he looks for students who genuinely seek God and love the lost. People are what the ministry is all about, but the old joke, “I love the ministry, it’s just people I can’t stand!” is more true than we’d like to admit. Some Christians love to strategize, organize, and lead because they’re on a power trip, trying to make themselves feel important by controlling others, rather than having an authentic compassion and burden for them. Team up with students who really love God, like and enjoy others, have a network of friends, and are willing to sometimes push other priorities aside to help someone in need.
Jesus selected disciples. It wasn’t playing favorites, it was the smartest, most strategic approach He could have taken. Luke 6:12,13 reveals He spent the whole night in prayer and then when day came, He “called His disciples to Him, and chose twelve of them, who He also named as apostles.” In similar fashion, Paul felt an incredible pressure to choose wisely and not to waste his life by pouring into people that were not going to make a difference for Christ. He challenged the young believers to “prove themselves” as lights in the world, holding fast the Word of life so that in the day of Christ “I may have cause to glory because I did not run in vain nor toil in vain” (Philippians 2:15,16). Pray diligently and be careful who you choose. Don’t select students before they’ve had enough time to prove (to God, to you, and to themselves) they are full of F-A-I-T-H.