It is 8:07 pm on Wednesday evening. As guitar, drums, and keyboard players on stage play songs of prayer, a large gathering of young adults enters into a time of worship. The tone is solemn but joyful. Below the stage is an altar where people are kneeling and praying for each other. The worship team will play until everyone has gone home, often that means hours. The leader sings, “All who are thirsty, all who are weak, come to the fountain, dip your heart in the stream of life. Come, Lord Jesus, Come!” It is the collective cry of every heart in the room. Where is this? Asbury College in 1970? Chicago in 1858? It’s the Wesley Foundation at the University of Georgia in 2009.

In a time when young adults are gaining independence, thinking about parties and dating and occasionally studying, college ministries offer a friendly place on a larger campus where students can pursue Christlikeness in the midst of community and discipleship.

Organized for growth
At the Wesley Foundations of the University of Georgia (UGA) and campuses all over the country, students are coming into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ, and strengthening their faith at a critical point in their lives that can set the tone for the rest of adulthood. Since the first Wesley Foundation began in 1913 on the University of Illinois campus, Wesley Foundations have sprung up all over the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. While they are open to young adults of all denominational backgrounds, the spirit of the ministries resonates with the Wesleyan tradition of disciplemaking, discipleship, and cell groups.

At the UGA Wesley Foundation, or “Wesley,” discipleship is paramount to growth. There are more than 350 students on the volunteer leadership team, involved in ministry activities such as leading cell groups, worship, the outreach team, prayer, men and women’s ministry, and many others. Being on the leadership team means the students will have one-on-one discipleship weekly with a Wesley staff member. Discipleship times can be spent in Bible study, sharing what God is doing in their lives, accountability time, or just praying through a tough time.

The disciplers are a group of 38 interns, most of whom are former students who were impacted by the Wesley Foundation during their college years and have a heart to see students grow in Christ and service of others. Many are exploring a ministry calling or looking to spend a year or two in apprenticeship. The interns are discipled by the 12 associate directors on staff, who, like the interns, are faith-based (they raise their financial support). There are 15 different ways that leadership students can serve through Wesley.

Trained for leadership
But if you ask staff members at Wesley, it’s not the numbers, the different programs, or the skit they are planning for the next Wednesday night service that gets them excited. What gets them excited are the students who come to Wesley (some enthusiastically and some hesitantly), who find a place to belong on a large campus, and are transformed through the work of the Holy Spirit. Clay Kirkland is the associate director of staff development for UGA Wesley and a campus missionary with The Mission Society. He says, “Our vision for the campus is to raise up a new generation of Christian leaders. So we believe that God is good enough and powerful enough to work in the lives of students He brings to Wesley – that God has some sort of leadership purpose in the Body of Christ for any student who comes through our doors, in whatever capacity he or she gets involved. And so we desire that God would really show the students who they are and what their leadership purpose is. And we focus on the passions that God has given them to train them up and encourage them in pursuing those gifts God has given them to be a leader wherever He sends them.” The staff at UGA Wesley uses every point of contact with students to communicate the gospel, whether it is at a Wednesday evening service or in a one-on-one discipleship time. Associate director Rebecca Griffith says, “At Wesley students are taught that what Jesus did and the message he preached are available for this generation.”

Poised for challenges
In the spring of 2001, then director of The Mission Society mobilization team, Lauren Helveston, connected with newly appointed UGA Wesley Foundation director Bob Beckwith (who is appointed through the North Georgia Conference of The United Methodist Church). Bob was already “vision-casting,” envisioning a new generation experiencing the Lord together in more powerful ways. He knew that real transformation takes place in the context of discipleship and small groups and that Wesley needed to raise up more staff leaders to disciple the student body. Beckwith and Helveston explored ways the two organizations could, with a Wesleyan spirit, work together. The Mission Society community already was aware of how God was working through UGA Wesley; several Wesley students had become Mission Society missionaries. Helveston saw potential for The Mission Society to form a relationship with UGA Wesley in order to facilitate a faithbased staff of disciplers and ministers. A partnership was formed and a new category of cross-cultural worker was initiated at The Mission Society.

Within a few years, staff members from Wesley Foundations at four other universities in the Southeast would become campus missionaries with The Mission Society. “Campus missionaries” are staff members of Wesley Foundations who come under the umbrella of The Mission Society, but minister to their respective campuses. Today, The Mission Society has more than 11 campus missionaries, including two from the Wesley Foundation at the University of Central Florida (UCF). Even though these young people live and minister in the United States, they attend The Mission Society’s training event in cross-cultural ministry.

So how is campus ministry cross-cultural? Consider the challenges. Campus ministers seek to build face-to-face Christian community among an internet savvy, millennial, postmodern generation saturated with materialism, consumerism, negative images from the media, and negative stereotypes of Christians and religion. In the end, questions asked by on-campus ministers begin to sound a lot like those asked by missionaries serving among an under-evangelized people group anywhere in the world.

Katie Nash, an associate director at the University of Central Florida and campus missionary with The Mission Society, has worked with college students for more than four years. She says, “The college lifestyle in general is cross-cultural. Things don't really get started till later at night and go on later. Free food is never turned down – no matter how unhealthy it might be. Students are looking for a community that won't judge them, and yet are quick to judge others. Dorm life is like no other kind of living. In all of these ways, college culture interacts with those living in the ‘real world,’ and can provide challenges for ministry on the campus.” Campus missionaries must work within this context to raise up followers of Christ to be the next generation of Christian leadership.

Positioned for ministry
One way that campus missionaries naturally resonate with The Mission Society is in their heart for the lost. For Wesley Foundation communities like the ones at UGA and UCF, an outward, missional focus is a natural outflow of the Holy Spirit working in the lives of students and staff. Not only do these campus missionaries lead mission trips all over the globe every year, they also actively reach out to the campus and surrounding communities. In cities like Athens, Georgia and Orlando, Florida, the nations have literally come to them. International student ministries and outreach to Hispanic populations help connect the students to cross-cultural ministry, with many deciding that full-time missions is the next step for them when they move on from the Wesley community. As Katie, Bob, Clay and others encourage the Wesley communities to serve God by pursuing what makes them passionate, ministries are emerging from the Wesley body.

At the heart of Wesley’s corporate prayers is a cry for revival, to see the Lord work in powerful ways and be glorified on the campus at UGA, in the city of Athens and throughout the nations. Campus ministers like the leadership at UGA and UCF Wesleys endeavor to send a clear message to the students: There is more. There is more they can know about God, more power and transformation they can experience in their lives through knowing Him, more people on campus and in their city who can come to know Him. As Clay Kirkland says, “Well beyond any program we have created, we have seen our greatest impact come through when a student who already knows the Lord reaches out and forms a relationship with another student, whether it’s in their dorm or class, or a relationship they have formed outside of campus at their job. That is where we see the real transformation take place.” In the same vein, Katie Nash remarks, “I hope that our students come out of their time at Wesley with the understanding that ministry does not just take place in the church, and that mission should be an overflow of what the Lord is doing in our own hearts; that ministry happens in classrooms, dorms, in coffee shops, and communities.”

Anna Egipto serves in The Mission Society’s mobilization department and oversees its work with campus Wesley Foundations. She graduated from the University of Georgia, where she and her husband, Lem, were active in the Wesley Foundation.

To learn more about the ministries discussed in this article, check out their websites:
University of Georgia Wesley Foundation: www.ugawesley.org
University of Central Florida Wesley Foundation: www.cflwesley.org
Tribe Issachar: www.tribeissachar.com