SEEING CAMPUSES WITH EYES OF LOVE

 

“Because Jesus told us to make disciples.”

“Because I want to make an impact for the Kingdom.” 

“Because we have a moral obligation to this generation.”

“Because we are facing a cultural crisis.”

 

These are often stated motivations for ministry, whether among youth leaders or anyone else. Scripture tells us to go, and we want to be obedient to the calling. These motives may also be mixed in with some unstated ones: 

• to “be somebody” in God’s Kingdom 

• to prove ourselves to others

• to think God will value us more 

• to gain respect in ministry circles 

 

We all have mixed motives for doing what we do, yet God often uses us in spite of them. But if we really want to experience His Spirit at work within us, our primary, overarching motive needs to be something else—love. It’s not duty, significance, respect, or even raw obedience. We need to be thoroughly, consistently, relentlessly moved by love.

 

Moved by Love

Without the driving force of love, we fall into the trap of seeing students as targets, prospects, numbers of rear ends in seats, or ministry projects. But when love drives us, students become real people with deep spiritual, mental, emotional, and relational needs—people who need to be loved and connected with their Father who loves them. 

 

Jesus commissioned His followers to make disciples. It’s easy to think of that mission as an effort to increase our numbers or make the world more Christian, but it goes much deeper than that. We know from our own experience that we are broken, wounded people healed by the love of Jesus. The whole point of reaching out to students is to offer them a relationship with Jesus that is filled with and saturated in His healing, restoring, overwhelming love. 

            

Notice how often the Gospels point out that Jesus was moved with compassion. He saw God’s people as sheep without a shepherd and chicks needing a mother hen (Matthew 9:36; 23:37); He had compassion on crowds hungry for healing and food (Matthew 14:14; 15:32); He opened His heart to a grieving widow and blind men pleading for sight (Matthew 20:34; Luke 7:13); and He wept over a city heading toward judgment (Luke 19:41-42). As John 3:16 so clearly affirms, Jesus and His Father were motivated by unconditional love for the people they had created.

 

We can’t have a love-driven ministry unless we have encountered the Father’s love ourselves. We need to experience it, immerse ourselves in it, be filled and overflowing with it, expressing God’s own nature to others. His love in us and through us motivates us to give our greatest effort to reach lost kids with that same love. 

 

The Desperate Need

With that as our foundation, we’ll find that the more we enter into relationships with non-Christian students, the greater our burden for them will become. More and more, we recognize how desperately they need the love of Christ.

 

Like Jessica . . . During a discussion in my living room, I asked a group of students, “If you could have one thing in life, what would it be?” Jessica spoke up first. “I would have a mom.” Then she broke down and cried. She told us that when she was 8, her mom had died, and another family had adopted her. Since then, she had lost two mothers through divorce and currently had no mom. She resisted suicidal thoughts for the sake of her dad. “All I ever wanted was a mom I could talk to and who would hold me,” she said.

 

And like Tommy . . . He grabbed me and said he wanted to talk about God. He and his siblings had been raised by his mother since he was 12. His dad had left after finding out Tommy’s little brother had Down syndrome. Tommy never talked about his dad and got into a lot of fights at school. As we talked he became angry. But after some serious and heartfelt conversation, Tommy accepted Christ that night. At the end of our conversation, he looked me in the eye and said, “This is the first time my heart has ever felt clean.” 

 

These two examples have been repeated in the lives of thousands of students who desperately needed the love of Christ and now have encountered Him. There are thousands more like them who may not show any hint of how deeply they are hurting and desperately need someone to love them and express Jesus’ love to them. When we begin to see the campus community through the eyes of love, we will be compelled to seek people out. 

 

Love is the key motivation for going to the campus and coming alongside students through all the ups and downs of their lives. A desire for impact, the willpower to obey a calling, and convictions about the shape of our society aren’t enough. Divine love is. Only when God’s love is expressed in the flesh and His message is delivered through our hearts of love will we see change in students, schools, communities, and even our entire culture.

 

Your Next Steps

We encourage you to keep a notebook or journal of ideas, action steps, and resources that will help you advance your youth ministry. You can use the following questions and suggestions for brainstorming and developing your goals and plans. 

 

• Spend time thinking about your ministry and the motivations behind it. Consider some ways you can redirect your focus to connecting students to God’s love.

 

• Meet with your leadership team and network to find ways to come alongside students on their campus as part of your ministry. How can you be present on campus and point students to Jesus?

 

• List the names of five non-Christian students with whom you have a strong relationship. Describe your relationship with each one in a sentence or two. What practical steps can you take to demonstrate God’s love for them?

 

Resources 

• 1 Corinthians 13 to read and memorize