Give Gen-Z Students Some Credit
As president of a college ministry, I see young Christians on secular campuses modeling what it means to be good neighbors.
If you tried to design an ideal setting for learning how to be a good neighbor, it would look a lot like a college campus.
As the president of a campus ministry, I might be a little biased in that assessment. But imagine the reality that a brand-new college student faces when they come to campus for the first time. Thousands are already there from every walk of life: athletes, musicians, activists, artists, people of different cultures and ethnicities, introverts and extroverts, people who like to party and stay out late, people who like to stay in and get up early.
All of them chose this school, but none of them chose each other. All at once, they’re thrust into a community, stuck together in dorms and classes and social clubs.
College students have no choice but to learn to coexist. To share space and navigate conflict. To be neighbors.
First, neighborliness requires creativity of witness.
Each day, Christian students at secular universities interact with countless complicated people and circumstances in which God calls them to be Christlike, seeking not “their own good, but the good of others” (1 Cor. 10:24). And, in the power of the Spirit, I see time and again how students respond with creative acts of gospel witness—fresh outreach ideas, innovative responses to injustice, bold prayers for physical healing, exciting calls to faith, authentic acts of relational generosity, and on and on.
One example comes from the College of William & Mary. For many years, the college had a problem with excessive drinking and partying on the last day of classes. To serve their classmates, InterVarsity students set up griddles in the center of campus and made pancakes for students who wanted a free meal and a safe alternative place to hang out. Today, “Pancake House” is a bi-annual event that creatively blesses over 2,000 people every semester, easily making it the largest student event on campus.
Much of the polarization we experience in today’s culture comes down to a lack of creative witness—a dull defaulting to the same staid talking points, stale arguments, and predictable reactions. But Christian students, like those at William & Mary, are learning something different. In their dynamic and diverse campus environment, they’re learning to follow the Spirit into fresh forms of neighborliness that the rest of the American church can learn from.
About Tom Lin
Tom serves as President and CEO of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and is author of Pursuing God’s Call (2012) and Losing Face, Finding Grace (1996). Prior to Intervarsity, Tom served as country director for the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students in Mongolia and InterVarsity’s Vice President of Missions and Director of the Urbana Student Missions Conference. Tom has also served as a trustee on the boards of Wycliffe Bible Translators, Missio Nexus, and Leadership & Legacy Foundation. He currently serves on the boards of Fuller Theological Seminary, the Crowell Trust, and the Lausanne Movement.
