The Next Generation: Forming College Students for Lifelong Faith

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Jim Davis
Welcome to as in Heaven season three. My name is Jim Davis. I am your host and pastor of Orlando Grace Church and I am joined by my co host and old friend Skylar flowers, who serves as the assistant pastor at Grace Bible Church and Oxford, a church that I know and love very well, where he does college and youth ministry. And on a personal note, it’s just fun to do a podcast together on college and the church with Skylar, because I’ve known Skylar since he was a freshman in college. And I was just faster and we’ve had the privilege to be able to my wife and me to see the Lord work in schuyler’s life there in seminary down here in Orlando, and beyond. And today, we have the privilege of being joined by Derek rish Maui. Derek is a campus minister with reformed University fellowship, also known as Ruf at the University of California, Irvine. He hosts his own podcast on the mere orthodoxy podcast network called mere fidelity, and is a PhD student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and he is also a fellow at the newly created Tim Keller Center for Cultural apologetics. Derek, thank you for joining us today for this episode to talk about the college years and D churching.

Derek Rishmawy
It’s a pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

Jim Davis
Well, this season, we have been talking about living in a new context in the US called the Great de churching as roughly 40 million people who used to regularly attend church do not anymore, which is changing so much about both the church and the fabric of our society. I’m particularly passionate particularly passionate about today’s episode as I spent 10 years of my life in college ministry. And it has been well documented and is supported by our research that the majority of people who do church will do so in the transition out of the home and into whatever’s next for them. So for those who enter college after they leave home, they step into a world of new ideas, new anxieties, anxieties, new pressures that can often render faith at best a luxury that they don’t have time for or at worst and outdated mode of thinking that just doesn’t work for them in the modern world. Nevertheless, studies have studies show that the majority of college students say one of their top priorities is to put together a coherent worldview in their college studies. Bethany Jenkins, I think summarizes it pretty well in her chapter about engaging college students today, in her book, reformed public theology, and she writes, two things are happening at once college students are increasingly longing to explore questions of ultimate meaning and purpose in college campuses are increasingly unwilling or unable or unsure of how to cultivate those conversations in their classrooms. But what’s so interesting to me about our data and others like Ryan burns, who’ve done great work here is that study show that the more education a Christian has, actually, the more likely they are to continue in their faith. So higher education isn’t necessarily the boogeyman that it’s made out to be. We’ve also seen that college students who are involved in both a college ministry and a church during their college years are three more to three times more likely to continue in their faith. Now, admittedly, there is some self selection bias, because those who are more likely to continue in their faith are more likely to opt into both church and campus ministry, but it is a key indicator nonetheless. Alright, so we’re gonna circle back to that data in just a little bit. But my first question is just about your story. What was it that drew you to the university campus and serving in college ministry? You know, so many people see college as a short period in your life that you do for four or five years? And then you move on? So what is it that keeps you coming back to the university campus as a place where you see God keeping you to serve?

Derek Rishmawy
Yeah, I mean, more degrees? No. I got left and I went back, I left went back. No, so it was actually very formative for me as well, in my walk with Christ. I was raised in a Christian home and, and that’s true. And I was I can’t I can’t remember a time I didn’t believe in Jesus, you know, but when I was a freshman at UC Irvine, actually, I had had been going through a dark period with God, kind of a dry period with God. And God kind of lit me up, in a sense had had a personal revival of faith in Christ. And this happened through a couple of ministries, and one was a very good local church and some powerful preaching. I started reading my Bible every day, praying every day. And I got really passionate about engaging my fellow students, I’d always had a little bit of an evangelistic bug, but that just transformed and within a few months, I was syncing I’m discerning a call to ministry because of what happened in those transformative months. And so for the rest of ecologists, you know, switch major from poli sci was going to want to be a lawyer, switched to philosophy, to prep for ministry, and then started really plugging into local church ministries. And then later, but I didn’t, I didn’t know what that was going to look like, you know, down the road. Later, when I started my Master’s Seminary years, I had, I had been working with these, this group of high school guys actually. And they, it worked in my old, my old the youth group, doing some teaching smoke completing that sort of thing. These guys had, I loved them. And they were kind of a funny, funny, quirky group, guys. But around their freshman year, they started to disperse and, and I, after a few months, I was still living at home was like, I don’t know where these guys are going or what’s going on. So I started having to go over to my parents house every Saturday morning, to eat Costco muffins, which are superior to almost all of the muffins, and drink some coffee and talk about, you know, a chapter at a Tim Keller’s reason for God, this was back in 2000, I don’t know seven or eight or whatever, I can’t remember when this was going on or make amendment earlier. And we’re just going through that and realizing the questions that these guys had. It was partially a factor of the questions that they had, as well as the stage itself, and how and how important it had been for me at that age, I started thinking as I was doing more classes and coursework and seminary that it started to plant the idea that you know, what working with college students would be kind of ideal, is because it is that age where students still ask meaningful questions. And I know your frontal lobe in your cortex is developed enough to actually like, do a lot of the high level. I mean, these kids are, I say, Kids, students, they’re adults, they’re smart, or they’re extremely intelligent, and able able to ask and answer questions in really developed ways that make me think a lot. And so it just seemed like a great place to have conversations with people before life has, in a sense, frozen you into your into the same rhythms, the same patterns, the same default answers you had, you had accepted that the cement is still wet in college, in some important ways. And I thought that’s kind of where I want to go for a while at least to have these conversations. And, and, and maybe I’m, you know, I’m maybe a little still too young to be pastoring. You know, people with kids my own age, and that sort of thing. So, so that was there was a few things driving it. But essentially my own story, what I saw a lack of opportunities for some of the students that I cared about deeply. And then and then my interest in those questions. Always just kind of gave me resonance with college ministry working with college students.

Skyler Flowers
Yeah, that’s great. I don’t think that Costco biscuits played quite as much of a role in my experience in college ministry, but not no role at all. In biscuits, I think breakfasts are still quite the place to meet with college students and to discuss these ideas. But I like the way that you kind of mentioned that one of the things that makes college ministry such a compelling place for ministry is that like you said that that Siemens is still wet. And but the problem is, is that once they leave college, like you said, there becomes weightless time, as you’re dealing with career, possibly getting into family, all of these things, it becomes way less time to, in some ways meditate on these big questions of life and, and meaning and so you can kind of get locked into whatever those ideas were, that you developed as a 21 year old or you developed, because there was some really big pressure on you to do so. And you said, Okay, well, that’s an easier mindset to kind of adopt. And I’m super thankful for the churches and ministries that our I was involved with in college because like you said, they didn’t treat. I think one of the things that drew me to Grace Bible Church, which is the church I currently work at, and it’s an Oxford, Mississippi, Jim said just Oxford earlier. And so sometimes people hear Oxford, they’re like, Wow, he’s in Oxford, England, like no, no Oxford, Mississippi. Yeah, it does sound fancier. It makes me sound a lot smarter. But the one of the things that drew me in was that they were not treating me as an unserious thinker. As an unserious disciple. They were actually actively engaging with the things that we were experiencing on campus and engaging with campus and culture. And I’m not that far out of college, but when I interact with college students today, it seems to me that they’re busier than ever. They feel an immense pressure that was present when I was in college, but it’s so much it’s never not been present, but it seems it’s tenfold even now to be involved. And not only that, but this pressure to champion every secular cause, like you can’t just be a passive you know, soldier in you have to be either a member of the resistance or We have to be a champion at the front lines that it puts in, you know, these causes that it puts in front of them. And so they’re constantly wrestling with who they want to be with their careers and their bodies and more. And so I just wanted to ask you for, from your perspective of engaging on the frontlines with students right now, you know, do a see that as being the case, you know, I’m in Mississippi, but you’re out in California as being the case, even out there. And and then also, what are some of those main felt needs and interests and ideas that you see college students really wrestling with today?

Derek Rishmawy
Yeah, so I’m with students at UC Irvine. And it’s a, you know, it’s a top whatever research university in the UC system, and it’s climbing, the rankings. These are all really intense, High Achiever students. So I’m working with a small, I’m not saying unique subset, but I’m just kind of bracketing my expertise. Or if you can call it that. This students are very driven, they’re very motivated to have very full schedules, very full lives. They’re the students who had extracurricular upon extracurricular in undergrad in order to make sure that they could get to the university, and then they keep that drive going in order to get to the internships. And so we’re going to join this association and have this club, and then have this social activity, and so on, so forth. Now, that’s not every student, there’s a lot of students who’ve got some, they’ve got some evidence schedules that are filled with I don’t know, what’s the game? World Warcraft is old. It’s the one that

Skyler Flowers
fortnight for fortnight

Derek Rishmawy
and more complicated games than that. But there’s, there’s some of that too, but there’s a lot of, yeah, there’s a lot of high achieving a lot of high pressure thinking about the next thing. And so there are students who are definitely really concerned with all the social causes, all the all that at least at the level of kind of needing to seem like they care about those things. I mean, there’s a lot of students who are just, yeah, I care, I totally can just kind of putting up a little flag of whatever in order to kind of just pay please leave me alone, let me I mean, but then there’s kids who really do care, but then I think a lot of it is really the drive to succeed, the drive to succeed is massive, the drive to and succeed by that, I mean, find financial stability and success and kind of a place to go next. I mean, the idea some of them have such a crushing weight on their souls, that if they don’t have a job right after college, like, oh, my gosh, my my hope so. Often, I have these kind of talking, talking, talking students down a bit recognizing like, Look, if you don’t get your career job, within three months, six months a year, realize that only puts you at 23 when you’re starting your career, but the pressure of recognizing that is tremendous, because our whole life. I mean, there was a stat that came out of the Pew study, parents, parents in America, I think, I think about 90 something percent of them said that it is extremely important for their, for their children, to to them for their children to get a career or a job that is financially securing their livelihood, as opposed to about 20 something percent who said it was similarly extremely important for their children to get married or have children. This is this is having a curious grade and being financially solvent and whatever the absolutely I’m not minimizing that but in terms of the relative weight that parental pressure is exerting on these students, whether that’s a verbal thing or just to an assumed value within the home and so I think Zoomers are even less, I guess, idealistic. And so there’s a lot of idealism. Every college kid is to some degree idealist but less than like the millennials who are gonna go out and join some nonprofit yada yada, like you have way more Sumur guys are like, that’s cool, but I need to generate two or three extra streams of revenue and I’m selling this thing and I got this Bitcoin oily, and stuff that never would have occurred to me, partially because I was a philosophy major, but but like even even even my business buddies, were there just steps ahead of just really making it grinding and that sort of thing. And so that the pressure to get that going, Is there even among the set of students at UCI who are also oftentimes existentially and conceptually engaged with trying to form that coherent life view. All of that’s there. So yeah,

Jim Davis
just a little bit different than my experience. Florida State also known as the Princeton of the Panhandle. Alright, I do want to like this is really helpful to understand exactly what are the intellectual, emotional and professional pressures that students are wrestling with today on college campuses? In light of that, why, and maybe other aspects? Why do you think that it is that for so many students of faith that the university seems to be a place of no return?

Derek Rishmawy
I mean, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of answers there. One is, I think, I’ve had this long standing theory that a lot of people are always worried, Hey, kids, so many students lose their faith in college. And I just think what you’ve had is a shift in social pressure, like the atmosphere has changed, the air pressures changed. You know, hey, we’ve reached you know, 20,000 feet and you’re in your ears pop. Because it’s a different kind of pressure that’s being exerted, there’s, you’re not going to go to church, because that’s one of the main social events that all your friends are at your parents are driving you there every Sunday and that sort of thing. You’re on campus, you’re, you know, nobody’s going to know if you don’t go to church for eight months, or whatever it is. So you got stuff to do, and you’re tired, and you’re exhausted, I’m asleep. I think there’s a lot of students who are not actually Christian, who go to college, and realize I’m not actually Christian. They were there. They were, you know, verbally, they’d say, Oh, yeah, that’s what I am their default. It’s not actually weren’t actually regenerate believers. And I’m not blaming them. I’m just saying that there’s a lot of that that happens. So there’s a lot of angst around like, oh, my gosh, people are falling away. I’m a Calvinist. So I don’t think a lot of that is actually apostasy from like, true regenerate faith anyways. But I just think, would recognize that the social pressure is different. The the incentives are different. And that’s fine. I’m not, you know. So I think that’s a big part. The other part is, you know, there are students who are believers, they do love Jesus in it. But again, you can see that work in their lives as well, it, the pressure shift creates a sort of disequilibrium, where you have to regain your feet again and learn to do things for yourself, find church for yourself. That I think is there and you have that you have that kind of the first couple of quarters or semesters in college, oftentimes, grades slip to, you know, like, oh, I don’t have to get up to a certain date, mom’s Mom’s not telling me to do this mom’s, I’m telling you that or whatever it is. And so you have to regain that. But when you’re in college, there is college is your job. So you have to figure out how to do that. Whereas church, you’re not getting paid. It’s not your it’s not your job in the sense and so that the same pressure to like, find your feet again, isn’t as intense. And so you have you have a bunch of people, I think, who aren’t actually Christians who just realized I’m not a Christian. And then you have students who are but who, there’s, again, there’s less social pressure to help them get on their feet again, that is driving that. And then I think that there are other pressures at work, especially with kind of student population, student age populations, have a people who aren’t going to college that probably need to be explored when it comes to economic pressures. And I think there is a there’s a meaning deficit, that that nobody’s actively, often nobody’s actively engaging those students in that way consciously. And so they’re, they’re often ignored, and left out and, and there’s no good on ramp, there’s no good ramp from student where everything’s highly programmed in a youth ministry or something to adult who is not a college student, but is now part of the so I think oftentimes, there’s there’s a drop off there, there were some students get left and not seen.

Jim Davis
Well, the first part of your answer reminds me of my college orientation. There was some it was a group and some parent asked, hey, what can we do to set our children up for success? Make sure they succeed in during these years and the guy up front said, Well, if he hadn’t done it by now, there’s not so it’s just like thinking and we’re gonna circle back to you know, what happens in the home leading, leading up to that, but it makes a lot of sense you’re not nest just because students are coming in professing to be a Christian doesn’t mean that they really are, you know, and connected to that question. It’s easy for colleges and universities to be seen as some large societal boogeyman that’s looking to consume Christians and spit out their bones. And there are lots of movies that that fuel this sort of idea, and it’s led some to even begin to argue that young Christians should To avoid secular universities altogether, but as I mentioned earlier, our research along with some other great work done by many of the people, Ryan Berger included, has shown pretty conclusively that the more education a Christian has, the more likely they are actually to continue in their faith. For me, college was a place where the police were actually found my faith. So my question is, what are the unique opportunities that college presents as it pertains to the Christian faith?

Derek Rishmawy
Yeah, that’s, that’s a great question. Because that is, I think, something I have seen. One of which is just time is, you know, universities have become, often universities have become, you know, degree, granting institutions whose main job is to allow you to enter the workforce that has, you know, requirements started require a college degree for basically any job. So there’s, there’s something where they’ve backed away from the big questions that universities used to tackle of like, what does it mean to be a fully human person and like, kind of a bit of baseline humanities degree, a humanizing degree, it’s, so there’s that. But even still, students still do have there is this baseline instinct of recognizing this is time set apart, to study to think, and they also just do have more time is as high stress is high, you know, highly programmed, as so many of them are there, there is still an awareness that a lot of this is chosen. And a lot of this is optional, and that some of it is social in a way that like, they’re not going to get this time back. And so there is a greater degree of flexibility and a greater openness to asking some of these questions, universities still do have some of that idea of like, I’m coming here to like, think about life to some degree. And if and if it if this, if it’s not on the student’s radar yet, it’s the kind of thing that you can say, like, Hey, you’re in college, this is the time to like, think about big questions is one of the things I often try to do talk to, especially young folks talking about the question, meaning if I grab coffee, the guy just kind of asked, Hey, I know what you’re doing. And you’re doing all this stuff. Right? You got to do you have any idea why you’re doing it? Right, why? And you start asking the why question. And I think, a bunch of people that their their eyes light up and you realize, oh, yeah, what, why? And that opens up doors where again, when you’re not when you’re out of that when you’re new in the kind of the normal workaday realities of life after college, why is foreclosed for the next what the next what is what matters, like what I do for this. And so there’s, not only is the cement wet, the wind isn’t blowing as hard to dry it. In that sense, there’s, there’s enough moisture in the air, so to speak, that it’s keeping it wet longer. And so those questions of meaning are an open door in ways that often they’re not when you are abstracted from or you are kind of forced into the realities of the world. Then whether or not when you’re actually in college, I think that’s one of the major the major unique opportunity you’re seeing is just socialization, or the opportunity to socialize in mass. Mass groups. There’s not a lot I mean, you see, I say there’s, there’s, you have clubs where these kids, these students learn mass dances, and they just dedicate, you know, three days a week for an hour and a half to like, learn this mass answer. They perform what and it’s great. It’s awesome. What are you ever gonna do that? Who does that anymore? But they do, right? That’s the kind of thing you can do. It’s like, oh, well, if I do that thing, I can go to this thing and talk to that one guy about Jesus or whatever. It’s thinkable. It’s thinkable in a way that it’s often not in other stages of life. So yeah, yeah, there’s just there’s an openness. Openness is the biggest thing openness, of time, openness, of schedule, openness, of, of mentality of just mental space receptivity.

Skyler Flowers
Yeah, I think you’re, you’re hitting on something that that I see here at the University of Mississippi that I think surprises people like I grew up in a small town, it was like very much viewed a man you know, if you go to the university that’s not just down the road or it’s not very small, then you are really opening yourself up to some dangers but I think the thing that surprises me more than anything a lot of times is that students are way less allergic to discussing faith to discussing Christianity to just discussing like you said that why question than people think and I think that that’s the thing people miss out on and you know, I’m there’s there’s great reasons to go to Christian universities to go to smaller universities. But one of the benefits that I’ve seen as secular universities is that there is this openness to say, I am actually coming here. And I do want to as the as the sophistic shed that we’ve mentioned in the introduction, that I’m actually open to building a coherent worldview and I, the main thing I’m looking for is not okay, I’m here to be indoctrinated in secularism, so that I can just move on with the social causes of the day. In fact, I actually feel like most students are coming saying, I just want to know that if I believe one thing that is going to lead to a coherent worldview, a coherent system, from which I’m able to interpret all of reality that it seems to fit together. And I personally believe that that is exactly what the gospel offers. And that’s why it does feel that is something that is very compelling. But that doesn’t change the fact that on these college campuses, this is, you know, the gospel and Christian movements is one current a month amongst many currents that are pulling and drawing them and drawing them into different ideas in different clubs and fighting for their times. And, you know, we mentioned, you know, when Jim was in college so long ago, and you know, even when I was in college, not as long ago, you know, there just there was more of a social aspect to being a Christian that isn’t as present anymore. Like, you know, when I was a college student, one of the places you could say, I don’t know, anyone at the University of Mississippi, I want to go meet people, you there was three different campus ministries that had large group gatherings, you can say, Okay, I’m gonna do that. And those ministries still exist. There’s just not as much of a compelling like, oh, that’s where I can go get my socialization, because there are all these other organizations. But that’s that’s time that’s ideas. That’s that’s all these other factors, like you had mentioned that are even societally, but because the mind is so malleable, even in this time, I just want to ask in your ministry, you know, what are some of the points of teaching or discipleship, that you find yourself returning to year after year, because of the way they seem to resonate with students? And I think there’s I followed your ministry, some, you know, via social media, and I think sometimes that’s even surprising, like walking through a confession of faith that people might say, instead of someone confessions of faith, but what are some of those points of discipleship that you find yourself know, year after year, I returned to this and I find it compelling for students.

Derek Rishmawy
Yeah. Just to touch on something before that. One of the things interesting about the university context and kind of a postmodern context and post Christendom context is the fact that because for so many students the church is they’ve never, they don’t have a church background. They actually don’t have it’s not Hey, secularism or Christianity, it’s almost this full blown pluralism of like, Oh, hey, you guys are one more weird group on campus that deserves to exist along with a bunch of other ones. And so you get a hearing that way? Because it’s just okay, that’s fine. So there’s a weird, it’s, it’s more hostile and less hostile in a lot of different ways. But with that, the themes that I’ve kind of come back to one of the big ones is it’s just the meaning one, meaning does your life has have a big part, I already kind of broached it with the why and the big why versus all the little whys, and which of those is sustaining, right, you’re doing things for money, you’re doing things for family, for good things, a lot, a lot of people are driven by a need to provide for their family in the future, or, or back home. And I have I have a lot of students who, from from non western backgrounds, who the things that are driving them are the values driving them are a little different. And so but the question is, okay, but what, what happens if you fail at that? Or what happens if you succeeded that really early? And then what do you can do the rest of your life? Like, what is the big the big? Why? What hope do you have? What what? What’s it all driving towards? I mean, kind of the powerful there’s, there’s kind of a powerful crossover if you if you’re, if you’re able to blend, essentially Ecclesiastes one and Westminster shorter catechism one, you know, what is the chief end of man to glorify God and enjoy him forever? And that’s a big that’s a big meaning. That’s a big why that can gather together all the other little why’s it the all the other little why’s all the other little What’s that you’re doing? In a in a coherent narrative, a coherent story? I was talking to a student the other day I was talking about this, I had the same conversation. And she pointed out yeah, without a big, it’s like, I have a bunch of little chapters, little stories, but if they’re not in one big book, then they’re not going anyway. I didn’t generate that and she cheated. And so students coming to the point of giving them a big overarching meaning in a way that draws everything together work family, like justice, all of that, because none of the other things fully can. Right all of the other things will will will will kind of leave you either empty or high and dry or burned out or potentially the house a whole house of cards falling comes falling down. So meanings what are the actually the biggest overall one that is kind of an umbrella that allows me to speak to a bunch of different things. And just you know, so Ruf, just to kind of give people a little bit like under the hood, we do come back to two or three different. Three different main themes, principles that we talked about regularly is justification, sanctification, and Scripture questions of, like, who are you? Are you who God declares you to be? How do you? How do you grow into what you’re supposed to be? How do you how do you change? How do you stop being the same person who you’ve been in? You’re kind of sick of this. There’s this great news of sanctification that Christ works. And then where do you find truth? What do you find? What do you find all the information about this? You know, how do you kind of come to understand the whole whole world? Well, scripture, and and those themes, I think, do again, connect up to that big, that big meaning theme of like, where do you find your meaning? Where you find your justification? Where do you find the drive to go for? What do you find the hope to go forward? And where do you find the truth that kind of unifies that and shows you how to put all of this stuff together your personal individual meaning and then the meaning of the whole world, and the meaning of the causes that you care about, and the meaning of honoring mother of all that scripture? Scripture and reason is because, you know, that points to Jesus, and Jesus ties it all together. So those are a few things that I keep coming back to. So So yeah,

Jim Davis
no, it’s really good. And I it’s funny, as we’re talking, I’m realizing how my stage of life has shifted, because, you know, I used to think about college ministry in terms of the college students, I was ministering to now that I have two teenagers. I’m thinking of my own kids. And we have this dis almost defeatist mentality of like, How can my kids get through college and just retain what they had in their home? And instead of thinking, like, how can they grow? You know, how can that be a great blessing to them. And one really interesting thing that I have not heard talked much about, but I have a number of friends, close friends who are seminary professors. And they may not say this a lot publicly, but there is this understanding in multiple seminaries, I’ve heard it multiple places that some of their best students and more often not the not their best students, and the students that go on to be very effective. Pastors, or whatever else they want to do with their degree are the ones who went to secular public institutions, because they have had to engage in the real world, and they’ve been challenged, and then they’ve been equipped by people like you. So it’s not just oh, how does my kid maintain their faith through college, really, the university is, is spitting out, some of the best Christian leaders and our seminaries are affirming that.

Skyler Flowers
Yeah. And I think that’s, I think that’s very true. And like I said, before, there’s so many good reasons, you know, and I think Christian colleges seek to do that effectively, as well, and the different ways to do it. And of course, when I mean to say, Thanks for the caveats era, I say that are you know, but our conversation today is really centering on why the secular university is such a big place. And I think, once you’ve raised here and talking about also about Christian, there’s so many things that we haven’t talked, this conversation has been so good, there’s so many things we haven’t talked about, that would be I think such powerful things to talk about, like suffering on the college campus and, and what that speaks about meaning and loneliness on the college campus and how that connects. And and not only that, we haven’t talked much about international students, and and the there’s just so many different avenues. Maybe there’s a whole other podcast or season that’s just focusing on these topics. But I think the way that you’re talking about it, Derek really resonates a lot with what the Keller center is trying to do and connecting these cultural apologetics and saying, The apologetics that people are looking for today are things like the problem of evil, there’s no question about it. People still wrestle with that. But there’s a reason why when Tim Keller wrote the reason for God, he also wrote making sense of God next, because he found that meaning question is so big. And there’s, this has all been so helpful, but we’re running out of time. So I briefly want to turn and just focus on the church itself. And we had mentioned at the top of the episode, you know, the statistics that are Jim and mentioned the data that the college students who are involved in both a college ministry and church being three times more likely to continue in their faith, and that’s pretty staggering. So I want to ask you, not just simply the college environment and college ministries and discipleship and also what can churches and college towns and campus ministries do to be more effective in this crucial season in students lives? And that can involve preaching with students in mind that discipleship or integration in church life, but I just want to ask you, what are some of the ways that you see churches in these places moving into these spaces in ways that are helpful and effective with the gospel?

Derek Rishmawy
You know, I think you named a bunch of them. You named a bunch of them, one of one of which is, you know, I think, actually churches have an have an eye on preaching other students who show up is big. You see them, pastors who are willing to meet with them engaged for them. families that are willing to open their homes to them. Seeing them as a resource to be invested in and shepherd oftentimes, not a lot of churches sell themselves short or they kind of think short term until like we’re going to invest in our families which you absolutely have to absolutely have to invest in the people who are going to be there long term, long term disciple long term shepherds, catechize your children all that massive and massively important is actually that one’s that one’s just forward looking to the college students. catechize catechize your babies after you Sorry, guys after you baptized? But you know how to do the blood?

Jim Davis
Now wait, I’m sorry. Do you wait until they can understand before you catechize them?

Derek Rishmawy
Does the does the Lord like wait until we fully understood before he regenerates us now?

Jim Davis
This is turning into an episode on baptism.

Derek Rishmawy
It is it is it is it’s always about immersion into the life of Christ and God. But I think partnering with trusted campus ministries like getting to know local campus, there’s a lot of great ones, if you’ve got a local Ruf support them. They’re doing good work. And they’re actually aiming they’re aiming. They’re aiming students at churches. That’s that’s part of the idea. But But fostering relationships with people who are already on campus. And if you’ve got the resources, if you are a big enough church actually doing doing specific outreach to connect to the campus, there’s a lot of good churches that I mean, UCI is a 30,000 person, institution, I can’t cover the VAT I can’t cover that no bunch of the university ministries can’t do we actually need the churches to be actively proactively engaged in that way local churches doing that. But But I do think having strong relationships and just thinking and actively praying for the universities, seeing that as a mission field in and of itself, that’s worth the time. I do think praying without necessarily knowing what your next step is. But knowing that you they are they’re there as a resource as a mission field. You mentioned earlier a mission field that actually how often gives you access to the nations because the nations are coming, coming to you a mission field where there were there are students who are hungry and lonely, sometimes physically hungry, lonely, and and in need of the very thing that the church is great at, or can be great at, which is a community based around grace, the grace of Jesus. And so those are those are some of the things that I would, I would say, is honestly just being aware, is the biggest first step and consciously wanting the Lord to open doors for you. You’d be surprised at what happens. So good.

Skyler Flowers
Yeah, that’s so good, I think. And, Jim, I’d love to hear from you from from doing college ministry to just some of the ways you’ve seen the church effectively partner with Christians. But I think one of the things that I’ve been seeing recently and is, is even the crude ministry here at the University of Mississippi, one of the things they’ve done so well, and they’ve seen a lot of students that maybe normally wouldn’t have frequented the door of a college ministry is it’s just hospitality, like just being hospitable and opening up your home and feeding people has been so huge, but also in other ministries that we’ve seen. And we have a lot of great ministries at the University of Mississippi, we’ve been blessed when the deep south that helps like, like CO and Young Life has been really, really seeing them grow. Even in our church and the Baptist union. There’s so many more, but it’s also seeing them just partnering with these ministries that just are on the front lines that go places that for instance, I just one pastor can only go so far, you know, and I can only be involved on the front line so far. And to see, you know, some of these ministries get into fraternities and sororities to go into places that most people would look at and say that’s as dark as it gets. You can’t go in there and to see them come out with disciples and seen people baptized and come to terms there the faith. So those are some of the ways that I’ve seen and I really think truly just hospitality is one that can be so seems so so good, come on hospitality, but really just brings home so so much shows them love brings them in and like I said, feeding physically really does. I mean, the Son of Man came eating and drinking, right, he came eating and drinking as a statement of method. He was sitting down and eating with people. And so that was effective, effective for me as a college student too, because I was constantly hungry. And so the Yeah, Jim, I’d love to hear if there’s any. I mean,

Jim Davis
the first thing that pops into my mind is just having a kingdom mindset and working together and not not a tribal mindset. So I’ve been on both I’ve been I was on staff with Campus Crusade for 10 years, have dear Ruf friends from Brian Sorgen fry, listen to some people that were like we just we there was a deep sense that as campus ministries, we’re on the same team. And then But then on the church side to just really, as a campus minister, early in my years I don’t know that I had the value for the church that I that got grew me into later on. And I was very blessed as a campus minister having a high value of the role of the church in the community and not as earlier on my might have thought, well, they do their thing, we do ours. And that’s not the case. And then again, later as a pastor in Oxford, Mississippi, just having so many campus ministers who are deeply committed to the local church, and so you see all kinds of collaboration and corroboration. It was just it’s just a super sweet thing. We’re we’re not in a necessarily college town now in Orlando, although we have UCF and it’s, I think it’s the largest undergrad in that in the nation now. But we do host campus outreach, summer projects, and still stay involved. And it’s just such a blessing to the church to have those ministries around us.

Derek Rishmawy
And I’ve been on both sides. I was I was the local campus, I was a local college guy at a church for four or five years before the graduate degree. And, and, you know, I’ve been on both ends, and it really does matter when, when both sides are aware when campus ministries are aware of their role as as innocence servants of the church, arms of the church, pointing to the church and the church is aware of them and just seeing them as like hate hands and feet going reaching. Not not in competition, but in close partnership, that is when it is healthiest and most long term. And at treating not just good members of our campus ministry for a few years, but good members of churches for a lifetime. And that that’s the goal. And you know, care how big my thing is for a few years if our students are actually in healthy churches on the other end of it. That’s that’s the goal. So yeah,

Jim Davis
well, I can’t think of a better place to land the plane. Derek, I really appreciate you appreciate your work you’re doing and I commend your podcast mere fidelity to everyone listening, and everyone listening. Join us next week for our next episode where we’re going to interview Ben can’t we are going to shift away from engaging upcoming generations and children’s youth and college ministries and consider what it looks like for the church to care for the whole person, specifically in the area of mental health.