Introduction:

This book is for the multitude of student leaders, staff and volunteers involved in the collegiate ministries around the world who want to ignite their campuses for Jesus Christ... more below

Table of Contents:
Part 1: The Fuel

1. Lay Your Foundation
   • 11 Students Who Changed the World
2. Develop Your Character
   • Four Qualities Every Christian Laborer Must Possess
   • Four Pitfalls Every Christian Laborer Must Guard Against
3. Build Your Convictions
   • Seven Building Blocks for Your Life and Ministry
4. Prepare for Impact
   • Five Questions That Must be Answered
5. Plot Out Your Strategy
   • Six Steps to Get to the Heart of Your Campus

Part 2: The Flame

1. Persist in Dynamic Evangelism
   • Four Secrets for Winning Students to Christ
2. Invest Yourself in Establishing Young Believers
   • Five Prerequisites to Building Disciples
3. Persevere in Equipping the Faithful to Make Disciples
   • Six Strategies for Training Laborers
4. Mobilize Your Campus as a Sending Base by Exporting Laborers
   • Seven Principles for Launching Reproducers
5. Always Keep the World in Clear Focus
   • Five Applications to Reach the World through Student

Appendix:

1. The Three Kinds of Students on Every Campus
2. Eight Principles for Reaching the Influencers
3. The Dynamics of Starting a Weekly Large Group Meeting
4. Scripture Memory Verses on Discipleship
5. How to Lead a Small Group Bible Discussion
6. Powerful Questions to Make Students Spiritually Hungry
7. The Cure for Spiritual Amnesia
8. Essentials for Ministry: Momentum, Multiplication, Management
9. Six Steps for an Effective House Ministry
10. Five Keys to Raising Your Personal Financial Support Team
11. Helpful Campus Ministry Web Sites

Introduction:

This book is for the multitude of student leaders, staff and volunteers involved in the church and para church collegiate ministries around the world who want to ignite their campuses for Jesus Christ.

I want to be honest. This book is not for the faint of heart. We're not interested in just having a small and ineffectual ministry, content with merely finding our little niche for God. No, our heart beats to saturate the campus with the gospel of Jesus Christ and the raising up of workers who will take His name to the ends of the earth.

Our family knows full well that many collegians come from broken homes, are hurting and in need of healing. But, after having students living with us for twenty years now, we have come to a conclusion: one of the greatest things we can do for any student is to help give them an outward focus, instead of the inward one that most bring with them to college. When a student takes their eyes off themselves and their own problems, and lifts their gaze toward Jesus Christ and His purposes on earth, amazing things happen!

Many Christian bookstores are chock full of self-help books and romance novels to further our self absorption and love affair we have with ourselves and our own needs. I think you would agree that we're definitely a pampered, indulged generation where it's always about "me." In this text, we are seeking to motivate you to "forget about what lies behind and reach forward to what lies ahead, pressing on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:13, 14 NASB)

You may be a young Christian student, a brand new staff person or an adjunct volunteer who's feeling very inadequate right now. Don't despair, you've got to start someplace! Zechariah 4:10 (NASB) tells us: "Do not despise the day of small beginnings." We start out slow and spend the first half of this book talking about your personal preparation and the resources you have in Jesus Christ-showing how if your life will provide the fuel, God will produce the flame. We all have such a long way to go-including me. I even thought about including a list of all the mistakes I've made in campus ministry, but that would have taken another whole volume!

As you read and digest what is before you, there will be some things you disagree with or are uncomfortable with. As you read and wrestle through each section, pray and consider what's valuable for your life and ministry.and what's not. Also, if your ministry measures your success primarily by how many people come to your weekly large group meeting, you might be frustrated. We do have an appendix item on the what, why, and how's of large group meetings, but the heart and soul of this book deals with the Great Commission as contained in our 4 E's: Evangelism, Establishing, Equipping, and Exporting student laborers to the world.

You might be searching for some hip, new clichés or techniques to "wow" your college students. You probably won't find them here. I purposely used language that would not go out of style with this generation. We do touch on a few forms (methods) here and there, but, instead, chose to major in principles that you can apply to many settings in many cultures for many years to come. Jim Peterson with the Navigators said, "Over time, forms outlive original functions. Forms then become an end of themselves and the functions can get lost." Where there's a will, there's a way and if you desire to reach the campus in order to reach the world, you'll always be coming up with better forms to fulfill that function. More power to you!

My desire, though, is to serve all the campus ministries. I have relationships with staff in most of the major collegiate ministries around the country and have included numerous stories of how students' lives have been permanently marked by those groups. I personally have been impacted by Campus Crusade, The Navigators, Kanakuk Kamps, Campus Outreach, Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, Student Mobilization, and University Baptist Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Also, Southwestern, Dallas, and Denver Theological Seminaries, the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course, and the U.S. Center for World Missions have contributed to my life and vision. There are so many other ministries, churches, and individuals that I would like to list (and thank!) for helping to shape and form me.

You see, I've never really had an original thought in all my life! Everything I've ever thought, known, written or spoken about is because God and others have placed it into my mind. So many of the truths, principles, and even pithy sayings in this book belong to others, but I have slept since then, millions of brain cells have died, and I am a fairly disorganized person. So, all I can take credit for is that I've arranged all these unoriginal thoughts into something that hopefully makes sense. If you come across something and say, "Hey, I was the one that came up with that!" and I did not list you or your ministry as the source, please forgive me. Let me know and I will include it in the next printing.

Finally, this book is designed for you to go through with a group of staff, student leaders, or volunteers to discuss and make applications at the end of each chapter. As you begin, stop and pray-asking God to help you put your hand to the plow, and make a lifetime commitment to know Christ and to make Him known. The most strategic avenue I've found to do that? The winning, building, and sending of college students for the glory of God and the evangelization of the world. May God be with you!

Cheering for you,

Steve Shadrach
April 1, 2003