Effective Fall Outreach
Adapted from Paul Worcester’s How to Have an Effective Fall Outreach with additional notes added by International Field Teams
The first few weeks of the fall semester are the most important time for you to reach students. It’s harvest time! Do you remember your first weeks as a freshman in college? The friends and choices students make in the first weeks often impact the rest of their lives. We believe that the first weeks of a student’s college experience are the most crucial time to connect students to a church and relationship with Jesus.
Doing ministry at California State University (or Chico) the last few years we discovered that the average student is looking for two things when they walk on campus: friends and fun. Most students find “friends” in Chico’s shallow party scene. With this in mind we believe God wants our ministry to reach out to these students each fall.
We don’t see this as a nice ministry opportunity, but a life or death rescue mission. Fall semester isn’t time to find a balance in your schedule. Eternity is hanging in the balance. Our bottom line… get as many interested contacts as possible. It’s all about the contacts! During our fall Outreach we search long and hard to find students who want to be involved in our ministry, we are looking for “persons of peace.” (see Luke 10)
We throw a ton of parties!
I know this doesn’t sound very spiritual, but students are looking for fun ways to meet new people. If they don’t find it from our group, they will find it somewhere else. So, we plan a fun event for almost every night of the first two weeks on campus. Last fall we pulled off 13 outreach events in the first 15 days that students moved in. Fraternities and sororities have known the power of a “Rush Week” for years. Why not redeem this practice for the kingdom?
We spend a lot of time preparing for the first month on campus.
We plan a mix of cheap-and-easy events as well as big events such as a free pizza bash or free BBQ on campus. During the first two weeks new students are constantly looking for things to do and love to be invited to something. Many start to belong before they believe. Socials don’t need to be elaborate they just need to be fun ways for students to get to know each other. When we started our ministry we did simple events like sand volleyball by the dorms, walking to a frozen yogurt shop, bowling, game nights, ultimate Frisbee, and other free or cheap events. It is essential that students hangout with each other in order to build an identity as a group. Currently we raise about $5,000 for our fall outreach expenses to pull off all of our outreach strategies and fun events. You may consider raising a little extra money to capitalize on this strategic time.
Boldly share the gospel with as many students as possible.
During fall outreach we share the gospel with everyone we possibly can using what we call “gospel appointments.” Gospel appointments have been a game changing evangelistic tool for us. The college campus is a recruitment culture, so setting up a meeting to get to know someone and tell them about your group is natural and expected. If you are not actively recruiting on campus the students will wonder if your group is even worth it.
We personally follow up with everyone who responds.
This is a ton of work, but if God blesses your efforts and students receive Christ it is essential to consider how you will plug these students into discipleship relationships and small groups.
Work hard!
Our staff works more than 70-80 hours a week the first four weeks on campus. If you think this is excessive ask any farmer about their work schedule during harvest time. Eternal destinies are at stake and “The harvest is plentiful”(Matt 9:35-38). My twin brother, David Worcester writes this encouraging us to work hard during “Harvest Time.”
“Every year countless new students flood onto college campuses. Proverbs 10:5 says,“A wise youth harvests in the summer, but one who sleeps during the harvest is a disgrace.” College ministry has very clear seasons; the beginning of each semester is harvest time. It’s not time to work on your support raising. It’s not time to catch up on your reading. Eternity is hanging in the balance. It’s not time to find a balance in your schedule. There’s a field of new students waiting to be harvested. Will you harvest them? Or will you sleep through it?”
Notes From the Field – Stephen Alexander
So how does this look on the mission field away from the American University setting? We may not have welcome week or freshman move in like many of us remember from our college days, but if you look around your campus and your city you can see other patterns and rhythms to capitalize on.
An example from an Eastern European context:
Students do come back in the fall, but there isn’t a big move in time. However, the concept of being present that first month was still there. Knowing that in that 1st month you have specific time to make an impact, we went to them. We hit up the dorm area, the area they were taking breaks between classes, and we handed out welcome packets with info about our ministry, how to get connected and snacks.
We hosted a few larger events to help get the word out about who we were and what we did. This helped put us on their radar. It was followed up with regular weekly/monthly events and relational small groups or 1-on-1 time. We noticed though that after that 1st month it was harder to get into a student’s schedule. We found the key was to go to them, find where they are in that 1st month and invest yourself there.possible, with varying school start times you could possibly even recruit help from the states or elsewhere to come help for a week or more of this time?
We also noticed that our semesters, testing schedules, and summer schedules are not like those in the states. So, we adjusted. The concept of Fall outreach can be in different seasons.
To reach many students, you also need help. Our summers have become a great time for outreach. We utilize key partnerships with churches and state conventions to bring over students who live and do life where the local students are. Looking back over the years, over 50% of those that came to faith or are in spiritual relationships with us were first met by a summer intern. This is also a great pool to recruit journeyman! In our context, testing time is in the early summer, so students are still around.
This strategy has worked well. In doing this, they know who you are as a group and when they return in the fall, they already know about you and want to connect with you.
We are playing by the same principles and ideas that Paul mentions above, but we put our cultural knowledge to best use. Examine and learn your “seasons of ministry” in your own context. Spring and summer were our time to meet as many students as possible and make connections. Fall and winter were utilized to go deeper with those connections. Some of this is based on the pattern of the school semester, and some even has to do with the local weather. No one is out when it gets dark at 4pm in the winter. But if you already have the relationships made then they will hangout and meet up with you. The timing and methods may vary from country to continent but the principles remain the same. We have to be with the students and we have to make connections that are intentionally followed up with.
Reflection Questions:
Which of these fall outreach ideas will you put into practice?
Take some time with your team to strategically plan your own fall outreach. What are “faith goals” that you could make?
What are times other than fall that may work better in your context?
Can you identify your “seasons” of ministry, and do you have a plan to make the most of each of those seasons?
This post was adapted from Paul’s free ebook “Tips for Starting A College Ministry”
