Comment

Comment by Scott Nelson on January 17, 2012 at 6:16am

I would like to connect with anyone in the Bryan-College Station-Texas A&M area who would be interested in starting a T4T group or reading through and studying the T4T book by Smith and Kai. TAMU is the 6th largest university in the nation. I envision the start and multiplication of simple churches that penetrate and saturate the student population and community for Christ.

Comment by Scott Nelson on December 25, 2010 at 10:48pm

The fall 2010 student enrollment at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas was 49,129. This includes an estimated 4,600 international students from 120+ nations of the world. No one that I have spoken with in our community - church staff or on-campus student ministries - can estimate the number of students who attend local evangelical churches, or, more importantly, are followers of Christ. Even though many students are believers and attend local churches, the number who do not know Christ as personal Savior or attend a local congregation is certainly overwhelming.

 

This begs the question: How are we going to reach these young people for Christ? While established churches in our community conduct wonderful ministry among students, perhaps we need to think more about taking the church to these students rather than trying to get them into our established churches and programs. Perhaps we should consider a new strategy, a new model, a new approach for doing church in order to reach, for Christ, the world's future leaders who are currently studying at Texas A&M and our nation's universities, colleges, and community colleges.

 

I would suggest that we give prayerful consideration to the start of rapidly reproducing simple churches that penetrate and saturate our student populations along different relational, or oikos, lines. These oikos lines could be common language, ethnicity, nationality, academic studies, fraternities and soroities, and student organizations. A reproducing simple church approach to reaching students can not only be effective in reaching students, it is a model for church that can be easily reproduced by students when they relocate to other universities for further study or to places of employment after they leave Texas A&M.

 

I would be interested in hearing your thoughts about such a concept. If you are involved in such a ministry, I would appreciate hearing how you are pursuing it and how you may be relating to local established churches and how they are responding to this strategy.

 

(The 2000 US Census reported over 17 million students enrolled at US universities and colleges. The 2009/2010 international student enrollment in US universities and colleges was 690,923.)