An Interview with a College Pastor

So, here at Western, I have been super blessed by the Christian community I found and became a part of my freshman year. I can honestly say, I don't think my faith would be in a good place now if I hadn't found this group. They have challenged my thinking in so many ways, asked my tough questions, kept me accountable, and loved me very well.

One of the things I admire so much about this group of people is their openness. The staff is not afraid to talk about things that many churches stay as far away from as possible, and they stick to their convictions about what the Bible says, even if it may be unpopular.

But most of all, I admire about CCF and those who run it is the genuine love and respect for students. They really do care deeply for the students of WWU.

Geoff is one of the people at CCF who has decided that he cares enough about college students here at Western to commit his life to be a full time missionary to the campus. He went to Western, was a part of CCF, and now he is on staff. He has a wife, whom he met through CCF, two little boys, and another little one on the way.

Here is my email interview with him:

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Question: So, you are campus pastor/missionary - for people who don't know, what does that mean? What do you actually do?

For me, college was a time of crazy searching - what's the point?  Who am I?  What's life all about?  Why do I value what I value, and does that make sense?  What or who should I build my life around?  And it seems like everybody's asking those questions in college.  And as I looked into a lot of different answers to these "existential" questions myself, I discovered that what Jesus said seemed to make the most sense, seemed to satisfy my own deepest questions, and that the worldview He proposed actually has the potential to change the world in a way that other messages don't.  

So I joined His movement, and now I get to hang out with other college students asking the same questions, and I try to help make Jesus a part of the conversation.  For the last 8 years, I've met with other students who are exploring life questions.  I mentor student leaders in our community who are helping their friends walk through those same issues.  For students who have decided they want to follow Jesus, I spend lots of time with them helping them grow, studying the Bible together (which is the dynamic source text for the Jesus movement), and helping students with other ways of connecting with God (like prayer, singing, starting spiritual conversations with people, etc.).  I do a fair bit of teaching in a classroom setting, which is sometimes mixed in with worship and prayer so it looks like a more traditional church service.  I also work on a team, so some of my time is spent planning and strategizing for how to do our job better, together.

Q: You're a pretty smart guy and you have a family to take care of - what made you choose this career?

That's a nice thing to say :)  Basically, I love college students.  I love the time of life that it is, I love the intellectual rigor of the college campus, I love that it's the cutting edge of where the culture for the next 20 years takes shape.  So when I was trying to figure out what Jesus wanted me to do after I finished college in 04, I took a year to explore the possibility of being a full-time campus missionary by DOING it for a year with CCF (which is the student community I was a part of, and now help lead).  And over the course of that year, Jesus made it pretty clear that this was gonna be a good vocation for me.  

As far as taking care of my family, so far I've found campus ministry to be a terrific context to raise kids in.  It keeps me on my toes and gives me a chance to stay in touch with the culture my kids are gonna be raised in.  As far as finances go, that was something that I told Jesus, "If you want me to do this, I'm gonna have to make a living somehow."  And what's amazing is that I do!  Like other missionaries, I travel around to friends and family who are excited about seeing college students explore the Jesus movement and join up with it, who believe in what I'm doing so much, that they're willing to pay me for it.  So every month, committed people send checks in to our organization with our names on them, and that's how I get a paycheck.  It's a little different from how the rest of the world makes money, but not very different from how most non-profits function, actually.  And it's a month-to-month exercise in trusting Jesus to provide for me and my family - and He has never failed to take care of us.  

Q: What is unique about the college setting as far as being a minister and reaching out to Christians and non-Christians on a college campus? (Challenges, Benefits, etc)

College is a really strategic place to help people get interested in Jesus.  I've already mentioned how curious and inquisitive college students tend to be, because we're branching out and becoming adults on our own in college, right?  But even more than that, a college campus is like a super-condensed collection of all these searchers for truth in the same place!  It's like a mist of thousands of water molecules, that condenses for four years into a single droplet, and then disperses into mist again after graduation.  If you want to get the word out about something - whether it's politics, or advertising, or spirituality, you're gonna want to go where people gather to communicate what you want to say, right?  College campuses are those places.  

Another really cool opportunity to "communicate where people gather" are the residence halls.  Almost 90% of WWU students spend at least 1 year living in the res halls, which means, if you want to influence a campus culture, focus on the dorms, because you have the chance to connect with 90% of the student population - they all pass through those buildings for at least a year.  That's why we really encourage our students to think seriously about living in the dorms.  If they think Jesus makes a positive difference in their lives, and want to see Him do the same for others, then it just makes sense that they would live in the res halls to explain what He's like to people, with how they live, as much as what they talk about.  

Another thing that's important about the Jesus movement is that it claims to be true for all humanity.  So I have true Christian friends who are Kenyan, Ugandan, South African, Canadian, Mexican, Brazilian, Chilean, French, British, Dutch, Chinese, Korean, Indian, Sri Lankan, Australian - the list goes on.  The Jesus message is cross-cultural - it's always been able to jump over cultural barriers (like when it went from being Jewish only, to welcoming non-Jewish members too, right at the very beginning of the movement) without losing its "spine", its "essence".  The fundamentals of what it means to be a Christian are true in every people group, language, and part of the world.  Which means that college campuses are also a strategic place to get the Jesus message out to hundreds of non-American cultures!  Because countries send their best and brightest students to get an American education.  So there are countries where it's illegal for me to talk about Jesus openly - and those very same countries are sending us students who are hungry for friendship and want to get to know what the American culture is like.  What an opportunity to see if they're interested in exploring Jesus too!

One of the more challenging things about being a missionary on a college campus is the growing hostility and skepticism of spiritual or religious pursuits at a university leadership level.  I really think that college and education should be a free exchange and exploration of ideas - all ideas.  But there's an increasing pressure to exclude religious curiosity from the world of academics.  Which is interesting, because the world is not getting less religious - in fact, spiritual interest is rapidly expanding, especially in the 3rd world at the moment.  So why should the university be afraid of allowing religious or spiritual exploration to happen in a class setting?  At least, if the people who would teach it wouldn't pressure people into believing one way or the other, but would invite honest exploration of the different faith claims that are out there.  So while the university and residential systems seem to get less and less comfortable with spiritual or religious pursuits, it gets harder to help students explore spirituality in a formal capacity. 

Q: In your experience working with college students, what would you say is the biggest, most prevalent struggle faced by young people (Christians or not) in this stage of life?

Wow.  That's a big question :)  I don't know if I can boil it down to a single struggle.  

I think a big one is the struggle against distraction.  I think good learning takes focus,  And deep, honest exploration about the most important things in the world take time.  You need to read good books from different perspectives, you need to have space to think, and reflect.  But I don't think our culture gives us that space - in fact, with our smart phones and social media and immediate access to entertainment, we stuff our time with distraction.  I don't think distraction is bad - I love watching a good movie.  But when that's all we do with our spare time, when we're always on our phone or checking Facebook, or when we're always gaming when we're not in class, then we're not gonna have time to explore the deep things in life, or read the books that have shaped humanity up to this point, or wrestle through really difficult issues that we face in our culture, or in our personal lives.  We're just going to default to agreeing with the opinion we just watched on The Daily Show about politics, or on Glee about what we think Christianity really is.  Or we ensure our minds are never quiet b/c our earbuds are in all the time, with a constant (and usually very cool) soundtrack drowning out our thoughtfulness about important things.  So I think we need to elbow room more space into our lives to just think, and process, and to relate with each other personally about this stuff, rather than online.  

Another big struggle, I think, is the hyper-sexualization of our identity.  People are so wonderfully complicated, but in our culture right now, the most important ingredient in "who I truly am" often tends to be "who I like to have sex with".  Which means, that to resist or restrain our sexual desires has become the same as resisting, or restrating or very selves.  But I think sexual restraint is the way to love, and that controlling and appropriately focusing our sexual desires is a much healthier way of "truly being yourself" than simply doing whatever you desire.  When people talk about "who they are" they often resort to sexual definitions, which I think is such a diminished way to define anyone.  For example, when people say, "I am gay," it makes me want to say, "I understand what you mean, but why limit the description of who you are to your sexual attractions?"  Because my gay friends are so much MORE than who they prefer to have sex with, as we all are!  We're smart, funny, sexual, moved, screwed up, lovely, clever, and complicated beings, and I think when we focus too much on the sexual part of who we are, it skews our self-understanding.  And when we pay as much attention to our sex drives as we do in our culture, it just makes sense that we would be obsessive about it, right?  So it's what we build our love stories around, it's what we joke about, it's what we hook our hopes and dreams to (that "fulfilling, passionate sexual experience"), it's what we try to satisfy in part if we can't satisfy it fully, etc.  Which is why I think we have such a casual sexual culture (hooking up for a night is no big deal), why pornography is such a normative experience for many guys, and a growing number of girls, and why there's so much confusion out there about what it means to be sexual beings.  I just think we think about it too much!  I just don't think sex is as important to living a healthy and whole human life as our culture makes it out to be.  Even in a healthy, committed, sexually active relationship like I have with my wife, sex just isn't the most important thing in our relationship.  There are much more important, deep parts of who we are that we need to focus on for a rich life together, that are far more consequential than what we like about sex.  I think people would be really enriched by lessening the importance of sex in defining who they are, in trying to find happiness, and in trying to live a healthy life.   

Anything else you want to talk about/tell me readers about faith, college life, the importance of asking questions? Go ahead!

I think I would just want to invite people to honest, ruthless explorations for truth.  There are a number of fascinating world views offered to us in our culture right now - but they can't all be true at the same time, because many directly contradict each other.  Which world view makes the most sense to you?  What do you build your own moral behavior around?  What explains human behavior most clearly to you - both the good behavior and the awful stuff we do to each other?  What do you assume is true enough about the human experience, that you think everyone would benefit from living that way?  And where do you get those ideas from?  These questions that we all really wrestle with end up being what we build our lives around, and toward.  So I would encourage everyone to examine each world view in front of them for all they're worth!  

I remember telling my friend in my own world view exploration during college, that I was afraid to ask my questions because I was afraid of where the answers might take me.  But he said, "Geoff, if something is TRUE, if something is REAL, then it will stand up to the most rigorous intellectual questions you can ask it.  If it's NOT, then don't build your life around it."  I've found that to be the case with my understanding of Christianity - it's a spiritual community that invites questions, skepticism, and curiosity, that also claims to be intellectually sound.  You don't have to turn your brain off to be a Christian - in fact, Jesus demands you turn it on!  So be eager to explore, and to think things through to their conclusions, and make sure that what you build your life around makes the most sense of the most data.  For me, Jesus of Nazareth has been a satisfying, enriching leader to follow, and I'm still just figuring out everything He's up to.