Well, by this time of the day, it's been a lot of listening. And it's good we have handouts, because it's going to be hard to keep it all straight. But I'm very excited to talk to you, because the topic that I have is evangelism to the university in your town. And when we think about the need for that, There are millions of students that are going through campus, that are, they've left home, they're trying to figure out a relationship with God, they're trying to figure out their direction in life. Many of them are open to the gospel. There are 3,300 colleges in America with 15 million students. And so, if you had a missionary come and say, I'm reaching a community, a city, A nation with 15 million people, that'd be worth praying about. That'd be worth getting excited about. And that's exactly what our campuses have. One study was done, found that there are 50 fundamental campus missionaries to our secular campuses. That's not a lot. That means there's a ratio of one missionary to every 300,000 students. That's a lot of work. So the answer is, yes, in part, it is to have missionaries reaching. I think that's fantastic. But the real answer is we need churches to take an active role in evangelizing secular American colleges. So instead of driving by and kind of seeing that culture, that demographic, and being, oh, that's part. Think about, these are souls. I mean, I think about our own town. We have 80,000 in Bloomington. We have 40,000 students. They're the brightest in Indiana, some from around the world. They're here to study different degrees, and it's a tremendous opportunity for us. There are several new evangelical ministries which are attempting to reach American colleges with the gospel. Many of them are disconnected from local churches. InterVarsity, Navigators, Campus Crusade for Christ, which now goes by the abbreviation CRU. That's what they're known for on campus. But I believe in the local church. And these ministries can be undergirded and supported by the local church, but ought not be disconnected from them. There are about 600,000 international students in American colleges. Many of them are from China. I think the statistic is half. So that is a significant amount. And it's very competitive in Asia academically, very competitive even down to elementary school. There are certain schools where the best and the brightest get to go to the United States and other places to study, and others get different positions. So these future government leaders and future educators, they're all in our cities. And they're going back to their own country someday. And we have an opportunity to reach them for the Lord. In America, 88 of the first 100 colleges were organized to preach the gospel. How far have we regressed when secular campuses are some of the most secular influences in American culture? When that was the reason they were established, Harvard, Yale, I mean, there were revivals that came out of some of these places. That is our heritage. And so these are some questions to consider. Why do many churches fail to reach out to college campuses? And I have an observation here with the birth of the Christian school movement in the 1960s. Many fundamental ministries have turned their attention from secular campuses to focus their attention on Christian education. I'm a product of Christian education. I've been discipled through godly faculty and I believe in that. But the byproduct of that is, if we're pulling out of the secular campuses, this is a mission field. It's a great opportunity to reach people. Are we even thinking about that now? Maybe as an opportunity to reach young people for Christ. American colleges offer a tremendous opportunity to reach students for the Lord. There is another misnomer that's out there, a myth. Many ministries have incorrectly concluded that separation of the church and state will not allow them to have a presence on American campuses. And so we have begun to get involved in that. And I can try to answer some questions for you now and afterwards. But there's such a loud left. There's such a loud secular side that we in Christianity can feel like there's no place for us and we're not allowed to have a place on a campus. That is not the case. That is a myth. We do have opportunity as ministry to be on campuses. There are limitations with what can be done, but most ministries would be surprised with the opportunities to evangelize on a college campus. I've evangelized for hours at IU. I've never once been asked to leave. I've never once been given grief by a security guard, never once asked to leave by faculty. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm just saying it's far wider of an opportunity than we realized. This Christian Law Association can be a great resource to help you know how your boundaries and your freedoms to minister on a college campus. So several ways to get involved. I don't want you to feel like a session like this, you have to eat a watermelon in one bite. That's not realistic. So I'm trying to start an easy a little bit. Number one, promote a soul winning emphasis for the college students in your community. So you might have Ivy Tech down the road. You might have some community college. You might have Purdue or something else that's within driving distance, IUPUI. But when I was a youth pastor in Martinsville, I did that prior to starting the church here in Bloomington where we've been for the last three years. I was really stirring my heart about these things. So I looked at my group. These are kids, many of them came from good homes and I wanted them to reach people with the gospel. So I said, in one month, we're going to load up our van, we're going to drive over to IU, and we're going to evangelize. We're going to talk eyeball to eyeball with 18-year-olds and 19-year-olds and 20-year-olds and give them the gospel. So for the next four Sunday school lessons, I'm going to teach you how to present the gospel to these young people. Where all of a sudden, instead of just coming in and being like, oh, I'm hardly awake, they're like, I'm going to be talking to somebody about this. And so there's this group of 30 or so. And so I told them how to present the gospel. I gave them tracts. I taught them how to engage in a conversation. And so we had a beautiful spring day come around. And we loaded into the van. We drove to IU, pulled up on the campus. And oh, it's great. Typical secular campus there. And guys had a banner they were holding with sticks in the side that says, war is terrorism. And they're shaking it. War is terrorism. War is terrorism. And the typical young people wanting to find this cause to rally behind. And our teens are all bug-eyed. They're like, man, what are we walking into here? And so we pull in, get out of the van, and I said, all right, you two go together, you two go together, you three go together. And so for the next hour and a half, we evangelized there on campus. I remember meeting a woman there who had a Roman Catholic background. I had two young people with me and was able to go through entire gospel. She was smoking, that's how I had an opportunity to talk to her. When she was done, she put it down, she listened to the entire gospel presentation, Roman Catholic. She said, I never got that. She said, I never understood it was a gift. I always thought it was something I was supposed to do. And so she bowed her head in the parking lot and prayed and trusted Christ. It was awesome, because then the young people that I had with me, they got to see that. And they came back pumped up. They're like, wow, we've got a mission field right here. And they went back to church. We do that on Wednesday afternoons. They went back to church Wednesday night. And they're able to take that enthusiasm and that excitement. And I'm just simply saying, sometimes we're just a little afraid, and we almost have to break the bubble. and just either face a rejection or two, or just get the nerves out a little bit, and just talk to people that we feel intimidated by. Talk to people, oh, I'm a microevolution major. OK, well, I want to talk to you about Jesus Christ. Well, I'm Buddhist, OK, into transcendental meditation. OK, let me talk to you about the Lord Jesus Christ. And just to engage people in the power of the gospel. Right now, our church has weekly visitation. But once a month, we take our witnesses, our soul winners, and we go on to IU campus. And so this is a way to try to put wind in the sails for a college ministry. So you might have people that are teenagers, or you might have people that are in their 40s or 50s or whatever, and they're burdened for the campus. They're not in that type of a ministry. But once a month, they can say, we're going to get involved in outreach. So that's something that you may possibly be able to do. Last month for one of those emphasis, I was just walking up and down the sidewalks engaging different people and have a little cards that we have here and just very simple and straightforward, but we had these made up. It's called Students for Christ Initiative. That's the name of an organization that we started on campus. Some questions on here. Can I know God exists? How can I have a relationship with God? What is God's character like? Does God judge me? Does he love me? Is the Bible reliable? Various leading questions like that. So just going around passing these things out. Certainly can pass those out, big help. So I started engaging in conversation with one young man and began talking with him. He was on his way to class. This was in the evening about 5.30 and I shared the gospel with him. We had about 15 minutes together. He said, I've got a test here at six o'clock, but he had a few minutes. He sat down at a park bench and we started to talk. I said, would you be willing to trust Christ right now? He said, I would. So there's college students brushing past us. Nice day. It was probably in the upper 40s. We're sitting there on the park bench. He bowed his head, and he publicly prayed and asked Christ to forgive him right there on campus. And sometimes just getting out and saying, Lord, I'm a willing servant. Please use me. You know where the people are whose hearts you're preparing. I'm a vessel. Direct me to those people. He'll do that. And so the very first point that I want to give to you is just to specifically promote a soul winning emphasis for the college students in your community. Number two, something to think about is encourage your church members to mingle with college students at a community level. It may surprise you how many people in your church already know college students that are in the vicinity. Oh yeah, my nephew, he's over there. Or yeah, my neighbor's son, he's over here. And there's connections right in the church. You don't even have to get out there and do some sort of a blitz. Those are connections that are already made in the community. So our family is involved with some music training for our own kids. So our family's on campus a lot at IU. And as we were there, my wife, came across a young woman, her name was Sue, she's from Singapore, and she was asking for directions, asked my wife, and my wife gave her directions, kind of befriended her, found out she's a Muslim, getting her doctorate in teaching and education, and so we invited her over to our house, she's texted her, she took her over to the farmers market, my wife did, just to try to Reach out at a community level. And then she starts talking about things. So then Sue starts saying, you know, she said, I do have friends that are Christians. But she has the head covering. She's Muslim. She is not open to coming to our church at this point, but she will dialogue. And these are opportunities that we're asking God to continue to give us. There are unique opportunities to help international students get settled in. Every once in a while, I'll get an email from somebody from another country. And they'll be saying, I'm coming to IU, and I'm a Christian. And I'm wondering if you might be able to help with housing. Well, we had one young lady from Mexico. Her dad's a pastor. And I didn't know this person from anybody. And I saw this name. And so I responded back and said, yes, we will pick her up from the airport. So we met her, met her father, brought him to Bloomington, helped him get settled in. She was a prospective student. Since then, she's been accepted. Kind of lost track of her, not because we haven't pursued, but she just got swallowed up in studies and she showed up on Sunday. And all of a sudden, I'm getting into the pulpit. It's like, yeah, Lloyd is here. Amen. Well, I thought that opportunity was gone long ago. And it had been maybe two months since the last time she had come, but even a year since we had met. And she's a believer, but needs to have that connection with believers. So in other words, international students need help with some very basic things. You get thrown into, let's say you went to China, or you went to Tokyo, or you went to Singapore, you'd feel out of place. You wouldn't know transportation, your language barrier. So if you put yourself in that position, people need help with housing, they need help with transportation to the airport, they need help with running the grocery store, they need a vehicle. If you take advantage of some of these opportunities, to further opportunities to minister spiritually. We've taken this one step further in our church. We have a gentleman in our church who volunteers his time on campus as speaking English as a second language. So he'll walk into a classroom, he doesn't get paid for this, but there might be eight, there might be 12 international students that want an English partner to be able to talk with. Well, he's thinking the gospel the whole time. There's been more than one opportunity that he's gone through the entire gospel with the people that are there. But beyond that, he then begins Bible studies with them outside of that and brings them to church. We've had people in our church from India, from China, from Vietnam. And these folks that come, I think of folks from Vietnam, There had never been any church of any kind. People from China, no church at all. I mean, we're not talking Baptist church. I mean, just no church, zero, no experience. And to have the opportunity to have them walk in the services and to be able to minister them is a true privilege. And how did that all begin? Very practically, just by having English discussion groups, which led to friendships, which led to opportunities to give the gospel. Yes, sir? I don't know if you're going to have time for questions. OK. When you say English discussion groups, do you have to know another language for that? No. Exactly. That is basically, it is so informal. It's a volunteer group that the university would organize. And you would just help them with pronunciation. They may have a hard time with their L's. Or they'd say, what's another word for late or something? And then you'd say, oh, that's tardy. And you're trying to help them through these things. And so it's just basically a very informal discussion. Because this is what happens. I've had friends who are teaching at IU, and they have international students. These guys are great with their language overseas, but they come here, and now you're talking at not a sixth grade level anymore. You're in a classroom, and they're talking at a collegiate level terminology. And these are really smart people, and they're just like, I don't know what he just said. I don't understand my reading, and I'm totally lost. So then they start looking for discussion groups or friends who can enhance their English because they know their whole education swings on it. That's the motivation for it, and that's the opportunity. So that's a great question. Yeah, absolutely. For eight years I had a ministry to the Chinese Ph.D. students in New York City. Really? That ministry grew to an average of 40. We would love to be able to baptize them. If they wanted to learn English, they would even read an English Bible. That is awesome. And of course, we're away from that area now. Just to see those souls that come to Christ, and they're open because They have never been taught this before. They're hungry for truth. And I guess I had them all fooled because they thought I was intelligent. But the crime of China studying in North America. But they're empty. And wow. It works. Praise the Lord. I appreciate you sharing that. That is tremendous. So we're kind of intensifying the opportunities here. So we moved to number three, and that is consider starting an on-campus ministry as a satellite ministry of your church. We are new at this. We launched in October. But praise God, we have the pieces in place where we're actually doing this now. Campus ministry is going to be a big part of our churches because of our location. So we found that we're able to start a student organization on campus with five students and one staff member. So that's what we needed. And if we don't have that, not the Lord's will for us to start yet. We are at that point where we could come up with five students in our church and a staff member. And they're part of the chartering group of this organization. We happen to have two law students in our church at that time. They were going to law school, came from very solid backgrounds. They wrote up the Constitution, so it both complied with the secular university as well as complied with our faith. and able to put some measures in there to protect us so that we can teach the Bible and such. But I mean, every kind of organization is there. I mean, Jewish, Muslim, military, every organization is on campus. So they do have to allow Bible Christianity too. And so that is absolutely an opportunity. An on-campus ministry gives us a presence on campus, but we are very committed to local church ministry. One of the hesitations is, this is not to replace church. But I would say half the students I meet have no car. And the transportation that is available on campus is for on campus. It doesn't necessarily get you seven miles to the west side. Now, it's not far if you have a car. But if you don't have a car, it's a difficulty. And so we wanted to have a place on campus where we could say, we meet over at this building. We're in this particular location. And we'd love to have you come. So we do get a free room. It's a room free of charge because it's a student-led ministry. These are beautiful buildings. It's accessible right to everybody. And you just have to sign up for it. So this is one of the advantages we've found. If you're going to have an on-campus ministry, you need to be committed to support it. You just can't throw it together. And the reason I say that is, it does take a little bit of time to be able to have that harvested. And so it definitely involves work. For us, we named our organization Students for Christ Initiative. But there certainly are other organizations that are out there. We came up with a nice card that we felt like would be attractive. This particular clock is a classic photo at IU. Everybody recognizes this clock. There's several other things that would catch a person's eye. So we put together something that would work. We facilitate communication, and those are some things that we're working toward. But this is the main thing. If God is in it, it's well worth all the effort. So God opens a door, and you know it's of God. Run through it. He's going to meet the need. Yes, sir. Totally ancillary, but why did you choose the 11 o'clock in your book? You know, the guy who did it just put it together that way. I'm not sure if there's any significance to that at all. Yeah. No, it's fine. Yeah. If you had asked me what time is on your clock, I'm not sure I would have remembered. Never looked at it. Yeah, and possibly that's what he was thinking about. So what we do is we encourage our college students from our church to go. This is a little different here, OK? We encourage our college students to go. to the on-campus ministry on that satellite on Wednesday nights. So what we're doing is on Wednesday nights, we have a prayer meeting at our church. We are praying for the on-campus satellite ministry. We do not have a Sunday service over there because we want them in a local church. It is a stepping stone. It's an opportunity for them to invite classmates, peers, roommates, whatever, to come on a Wednesday. But our church services are happening on Sunday. Of course, we've got a Wednesday as well. So what I do is we have our young people meet from six to seven, and they text, they phone call, they pass out flyers, they're involved in outreach, and then at seven o'clock to eight o'clock is the Bible study. We focus on discipleship during that time, and then we always present the gospel and the Bible lesson in the Bible study. We have a handful of people right now. We want to see that continue to grow, but praise God for the handful that he has given to us. So that's what we're doing right now. Number four. Yes, sir. Oh, sure. Number three, the satellite ministry. Have you made any particular strategic move in deciding what day of the week with regards to the school education system to make your presence on that? On Wednesday. Yes, there actually is. That's a very, very good question. So we have really thought this through a lot. Mondays, people are usually not getting out a lot as far as extra activities. Fridays, they're doing Friday planning. So really, the only days that we had to work with was Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. My preference would probably be Thursday. But we didn't want to ask too much of our college students as we're first launching it off. Like, we've got a Wednesday programming, we want you there. And also Thursday outreach and Bible study, we want you there too. So we bumped it back from what I would consider maybe possibly ideal is on Thursday to the Wednesday. And that seems to work into people's schedules. I know on the campuses I've been on, Fridays were best for students because the stress levels were the lowest. Yes. They were more willing to go out. Yes. Yes. And we haven't done it on a Friday. We've done outreach on a Friday where we've engaged with people, but we haven't actually set that up on a Friday. So yeah, I'd be interested to see how well that works. OK, so number four is set specific goals for your ministry and communicate a vision for your people to follow. The reason I say specific goals is who are you targeting? You say college students. Wow, that is broad today. The average undergrad is adolescent, 18, 19, 20, 21, something like that. That's undergrad. Then you've got grad students. Then you have married students. Then some of them have children. Then you have faculty and staff. And so the average doctoral student is going to be in his mid-30s, or she's going to be in her mid-30s with children, with a family. The average undergrad is 18 to 22. So if you think, well, I've got a college ministry ready to go, and the person walks in, they're 35, and you've got a room of 18-year-olds, they really don't feel connected. And so you've just got to think through, who do we have in our church? Who are we specifically targeting? What is going to be our niche? And of course, it's not that anyone's not welcome. It's just in church ministry, if people look around, they're the only one in their demographics that's there. They're going to have a hard time really sticking. Question number two is, who will lead this ministry? In a more established church, it really needs the attention of a campus pastor, of a staff member, a deacon, somebody who really, they're grounded. They're not going to be pulled toward some fad or charismatic teaching. They're clear. They know what they believe because you're going to need that at this level. Third question is, what's the primary goal of the fellowship? Is it evangelism? I mean, that's what's happening. Every week you're preaching the gospel. Is it discipleship? Is it fellowship? Is it a combination, one's primary, another's secondary? You just got to work through those specifics. And again, we have discipleship be our main ministry, but we do present the gospel through each Bible study lesson. I don't know if you've heard of a ministry called Cross Impact. Cross Impact is a ministry that, when I was in school, was called the Spurgeon Foundation. That was back in the 90s. And I was really interested to hear that they had a presence on secular campuses. They've since then changed names to Cross Impact. Evangelist Steve Pettit is now leading that ministry. But that's a ministry, it's a fundamental ministry that really engages American campuses with evangelism and discipleship. In fact, I've not been to one conference before, but I do think they have a conference coming up at Colonial Hills, March 25th through the 27th. We're planning on sending couples from our church to go there and to be trained, or at least to get some more information on their ministry so it can help us how to enhance our ministry. Number four, this is a question you have to answer. Do you have support from your college students? Because I just want to be frank with you. Not everybody that's in our church is a part of this campus ministry. I wish they were. But some are like, hey, I'm working on that night. Well, I'm already involved in this particular community event. Or they're just not really there spiritually. And so you've got to know if you've got a base. So we started six months before we launched of planning, and organizing, and discussing, and figuring out who was going to be a part of that. And so that was our specific goal. Number five, remember to keep a long-term vision for God to produce spiritual fruit. This is the principle here. When you're talking about a campus where you have thousands of people, you can't reach everyone. That doesn't need to discourage you. But you can reach some, and God can change your lives forever with the gospel. And so this past week, I was preaching on Sunday morning and was talking about various aspects of the gospel. And a young Chinese student who has been there for the past year in our church, he's sitting there in the front row. He's a math major. So I was preaching the message, came to the end of the invitation. I said, is there anybody that would like me to pray for you that you can know how to have a personal relationship with Christ? For the first time, he's been coming for more than a year, he raised his hand. Pray for me. I want to know how to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. So he's not saved yet, but he's coming. And he's building relationships. Men went on a camping outing. They took him along. He played American football for the first time. Boy, and he was really smart, too. He figured out, OK, you've got to set the block here, and you've got the receiver, and get your hands up, and all that. But it takes time to build all of these relationships, and it takes time to reach them. But if you have a long-term vision, God can produce the spiritual fruit. We have another fellow, Andy, who's getting his PhD in geology. And he, again, he's come for several months. He has never been to any church of any kind, nothing whatsoever. And so this is totally new to him, and yet he's open to opportunity. Think about several young men who have come from stronger Christian backgrounds, who couldn't wait to come back to Christian fellowship. They said, this is the first time in our life. Well, I can go an entire day or several days, and I never once see a Christian until I come back to church. One's like, I'm from a pastor's home. He's going to law school. Another one went to a good Christian college, and now he's getting his master's degree. And so the reason I say that is there are young people who are solid who need somebody to reach out to them because they're hungry. They need Christian fellowship. They need that support to be able to carry them through with this particular stage of life. And a campus ministry is a way that you can meet the needs of some of those folks as well as reach people for Christ. How many is it? 15 million students that are here within our own nation. So any questions? Yes, sir. It's not really a question because we have that ministry for eight years. If you're going to work with international students, some of them have very special situations, like the Chinese. Sometimes the Chinese secret police will investigate. I was studying with a couple, and they called me up and said, Pastor, no more Bible study, no more Bible study. And I learned after that, that the reason is because the secret police in China was contacting them that, unless you go into this Bible study, you need to stop. The fear runs deep. Like it does in the Muslim countries. Wow. Yes. Wow, that's good. Thank you. Yes, sir. Yes, I can provide that. I don't have it here with me. Do I have my email on here? Yes, you could do that, definitely. Is it on your handout? But you didn't get a handout? OK, yeah, so then that would be great. I think we have extra ones. We've got plenty of extras. Thank you very much.