ABILENE CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY

APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY ON THE SOUTHERN HILLS CAMPUS MINISTRY

SUBMITTED TO DR TIM SENSING

IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF BIBM 629 FIELD EDUCATION

BY KIPP SWINNEY

August 8, 2012

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REASON FOR THE APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY

I intended this Appreciative Inquiry on the Southern Hills Campus Ministry to illuminate

the value and importance of the Campus Ministry to both the congregation and the and the

students who are part of it. The Campus Ministry is in a time of transition, and there has been

concern about the viability and vitality of the Campus Ministry moving forward into the Fall of

2012. The long time Campus Minister of Southern Hills stepped down unexpectedly at the

beginning of the summer, which has thrown the immediate future of the Campus Ministry into

question. Not everyone agrees about the prognosis for the Campus Ministry, but several people

have vocally expressed concern about the Campus Ministry folding. The hope for this project

was to encourage those involved that the Campus Ministry and the church that the Campus

Ministry is valuable and worth investing

IMPORTANT RESOURCES

This Appreciative Inquiry was based on Mark L. Branson’s model, which he describes in

his book Memories, Hopes, and Conversations: Appreciative Inquire and Congregational

Change. The interviews were not as long as Branson described in his book. Many of the

interviewees did not develop their answers fully. The focus of an Appreciative Inquiry is not

problem solving. Appreciative Inquiry seeks to find the areas where a ministry is doing well.

Instead of try to cut the bad areas of a ministry, the goal is to strengthen the good. Appreciative

Inquiry’s primary task is to identify what areas of the ministry are most life giving to the

participants.

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Richard Osmer’s book, Practical Theology, was a very influential book on this project.

At the beginning of the summer internship I read Osmer’s Practical Theology. While this book

was not primarily about research into churches, it was about the role of the minister. I have had

several occasions to be in official ministerial roles, but never for a time longer than eight months.

Reading Osmer’s book was very beneficial towards the summer internship and shaping

ministerial identity moving forward. Due to the large effect this project had on my work this

summer, I felt that Osmer’s book was worth mentioning in conjunction with this project. Osmer

spent a section of his book discussing researching churches and highlighted the importance of

listening to people. Listening and attending to the situation is very important when conducting an

Appreciative Inquiry. Listening is dramatically important to discover the underlying message

that people are trying to send you. Whitehead and Whitehead also emphasized the need for

attending to a church in their book, Method in Ministry. As a minister, one must be aware of the

people in the congregation. This may seem like a huge task, but it is essential to determining the

health of a congregation or ministry context.

History of the Ministry Concern

Before the Campus Minister resigned, the Southern Hills Campus Ministry was

experiencing a time of transition. The Campus Ministry had been growing smaller over the

course of a couple of years, and many of the activities, which it did, accommodated larger

groups. Southern Hills had hosted a Wednesday night service for years that was very large and

directed at college students. More than five hundred college students used to come to that event,

called HIP (High Impact Praise). The number of people who attended that night fell dramatically,

and the leadership cancelled that event in favor of a format that was conducive to a smaller

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group. There used to be multiple options just for college students on Sunday mornings, but with

the decreasing size of the group, the leadership decided to consolidate it back down to one.

Many of the traditional events, which the Campus Ministry offered, were smaller or

different than they had in the past. Many people on the leadership team had expressed

discouragement at the smaller group, but there the team was able to reorganize the Campus

Ministry to fit the smaller group. Another level of reorganization came with the birth of the

Fusion Ministry. Fusion Ministry is a collaboration between several of the local Churches of

Christ. Many of the events, which Southern Hills had done in the past, Fusion merged with the

events of other church. Most in the Campus Ministry saw this as a very positive thing. Many

people saw the cooperation as a great for all the campus ministries involved. It did not remove all

the anxiety, but it did continue the recent trend of the rapidly changing face of the Campus

Ministry. Frances had been a key leader in organizing Fusion, so when she resigned, there was

fear that Fusion would fall apart. The ministry concern is particularly related to these anxieties

that the students are feeling in regard to the Campus Ministry. Some of the older members have

express concern that the whole ministry may disappear.

While I feel that the ministry will not disappear, I expect that there will be difficulties in

the future semester. Southern Hills is looking for a Campus Minister, but that will take time to

find the right person. One of the minister at Southern Hills has assumed the role of overseer of

the Campus Ministry, but as his other responsibilities have not reduced, his ability to lead the

Campus Ministry is very limited. Students have long been deeply involved in the leadership of

the Campus Ministry, but this coming semester the students will have to assume a larger

leadership role.

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BACKGROUND TO THE INTERNSHIP

I first came to worship at Southern Hills Church of Christ when I was a freshman. This

was an unlikely place for me to start attending church because it was very different from the

place I grew up going to church. I went the first Sunday that I was in Abilene because it was

where my brother and his fiancé attended church. It was not the church itself that kept me there,

but the Campus Ministry. The Campus Ministry was lead by Frances Green, and her husband,

Gary Green, had a very large role in the Campus Ministry. The community that was there was

rich and inviting. My connection to the church ended up not being at all about going to church

with my brother and his fiancé, but it was the Campus Ministry. The next year I became one of

the leaders of the Campus Ministry and led one of the Life Groups. At the end of my second

year, I applied to be a Campus Ministry intern for the following year. I got the job, which was a

learning experience for me. I graduated a year early and immediately started in the Graduate

School of Theology. I did not work as an intern during that year because of my commitments at

school. I did continue to sever on the leadership team and lead a Life Group. At the end of the

year, I talked to Frances about reprising my role as an intern during the summer, and I began the

internship that has served as my formal internship for the Contextual Education portion of the

Master’s of Divinity degree.

I had a good idea of what to expect from the internship because it was my second time to

serve in that role. I felt much better prepared to address the responsibilities of a Campus Ministry

intern during this summer. The event that changed the face of the internship was Frances Green’s

resignation as the Campus Minister. This did instantly cause much anxiety in me and other

members of the Campus Ministry. I was initially pessimistic about the prospects of the church

being able to replace Frances in an orderly amount of time, and the church will not be able to

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replace her prior to the start of the fall semester. I had fears that the next semester might be lost

for the Campus Ministry. The decision to do an Appreciative Inquiry grew out of the anxiety I

felt and the anxiety that others felt regarding the Campus Ministry.

Frances had planned to be absent for much of the summer, so many things in the

internship did not change and she did not officially leave the position until the end of July.

However, the main difference was that there was more planning that needed to be done before

the arrival of the fall semester. Ministers within the church met with me and the other intern to

discuss what was required for the Campus Ministry in Frances’ absences.

PRESENTATION OF THE DATA

This Appreciative Inquiry was a response to the distress over the departure of Frances

Green from the Campus Ministry. Other than her resignation, there was not an event that

necessitated this project; however, her resignation did amplify some existing anxiety in the

Campus Ministry. The people mainly involved in this Appreciative Inquiry are the students of

the Southern Hills Campus Ministry. There are more people affected by the Campus Ministry

than just the people who are in it, so there are more people indirectly affected by this study. I

would have liked to conduct this study when more of the Campus Ministry students were present

in Abilene, but because it is summer time, I was limited in the number of people who could

participate. Having done a similar exercise before, I do have a good idea of what many of the

students who are not in Abilene now would have said. With that knowledge, I think that the

results would have been very similar. Many of the same themes would emerge and conclusions

would be the same.

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The primary means of gathering data was to interview a variety of people. I told the

interviewees to answer the questions as fully as they like and to speak from their own

experiences. I was intending for people only to talk about things of which they had firsthand

knowledge. I did not record the interviews but took notes. Thus, many of the quotes are not

exact, but are reconstructions from the notes I took. I am confident that I have accurately

represented each of the students’ thoughts and feelings, which they expressed to me during the

interview. Here are the questions, which I asked the interviewees:

1) What are the greatest benefits to you from the Campus Ministry?

2) What are the best influences the Campus Ministry has had on the rest of the Church?

3) If you had one or two wishes for the Campus Ministry, what would they be?

4) Think of a story when the Campus Ministry most adequately reflected the Gospel.

5) How autonomous should the Campus Ministry be from the rest of the Church?

I sought to get a diverse view of the Campus Ministry in this project, so I interviewed a

variety of people, and some were not part of the Campus Ministry. I interviewed ten people.

Seven were college students and three were regular members of Southern Hills Church of Christ.

All of the people had some association with the Campus Ministry. Five of the interviewees were

male and five were female. Five of the students I interviewed I considered core members or

highly involved in the Campus Ministry. Two of the student interviewees were less involved. I

was not able to get a wide demographic of ages of college students. All of the students who

remained in Abilene for the summer are older students, entering either their junior or senior year

of college. Thus, there is not a very wide age distribution represented in the interviewees. In my

initial proposal, I suggested that the Campus Minister of Southern Hills would be highly

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involved in the process of this project, but she was frequently out of town and was not able to be

an integral part of the project.

What are the greatest benefits to you from the Campus Ministry?

The first question is a very basic Appreciative inquiry question. It is a more open-ended

question and it set the tone for the rest of the interview. The answers that came from non-college

students were not as strong as the answers from the students. This is a reasonable expectation as

the Campus Ministry seeks to affect primarily college students. There was a common thread that

ran through the answers to the first question from the students. Most of the students’ answers

included memories of their freshman years and getting connected at church and at ACU. A male

student said, “Through the Campus Ministry, I formed some of my closest relationships when I

was a freshman. If that had not happened, I‘m sure I would have found strong relationships other

places, but because of the Campus Ministry many of the people I connected to were people who

went to church on a regular basis.” Another male student said, “I used to have a job that kept me

from going to church on Sundays, and so I did not really have a church home for a couple years,

but after I quit that job, it was friends I had in the Campus Ministry that got me in the habit of

going to church again.” A female student said, “I never was a leader at church before coming to

college. I never thought of myself as a leader because I don’t like to speak in front of crowds, but

the Campus Ministry really provided me an opportunity to serve and work in a group of people

that I was really close to.”

The best effect that the Campus Ministry had on the students was getting them connected

to a community. Many of the answers involved the word community. The three non-students that

I interviewed had similar answers, but were understandably from a different perspective. A

Southern Hills members in his early thirties answered “The greatest benefit that I received was

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that the Campus Ministry is one of the first places that I was able to connect to the Church. I

have worked with other campus ministries before, so when I came to Abilene, it was natural to

find a campus ministry to get involved with. My wife and I got connected to one of the Life

groups and it really felt like we were making a difference from early on when we first came to

Abilene.” For this person The Campus Ministry helped him be connected to the larger church.

Although the college students were not his immediate peers, it gave him a connection to the rest

of the church. A woman non-student answered, “The greatest benefit has been for my son. I have

been blessed by the way the student have embraced him and allowed him to be part of the

group.” This woman’s son is in his late twenties, but has a significant mental and physical

disability. An elder who has worked with the Campus Ministry for several years answered this

way, “The greatest benefit to me is seeing all the future leaders come through Southern Hills.

Most of the students leave Southern Hills when they graduate and become leaders at the

congregations in the cities they live in.”

What are the best influences the Campus Ministry has had on the rest of the Church?

For the second question, the answers were somewhat streamlined. Most answers were

more about the effect that college students have on the church rather than about the campus

ministry in general. A male student gave this answer “College students really do bring a lot to the

church, I have several friends that help out with the youth group and some who sing on the praise

team. I know there’s a stigma that college students don’t give much, but we really do in other

ways [than money]. We help out with service projects and other things that the church does.” A

non-student gave this answer “I always like it when the college students come back into town

because you can feel the energy. The students really bring a lot of that energy to worship service

and you can feel that buzz.” Recently, I heard the comment made by one of the elders, not the

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one interviewed for this project nor in relation to this Appreciative Inquiry, “Where are all the

college students?” While the college student presence is not gone from Southern Hills, there

have been reduced numbers in the last couple of years, and people are beginning to notice it.

If you had one or two wishes for the Campus Ministry, what would they be?

The third question had a variety of answers to it. Many of the answers were very generic.

They were about the leaders of the Campus Ministry being able to lead the ministry well while

there was no Campus Minister. Several of the answers were about getting a good Campus

Minister in place as soon as possible. A non-college student gave this answer “Well, right now

my wish would be that Southern Hills could find a [Campus] minister that has Gospel vision and

can work with the present students and build for the future.” A few answered the question,

wanting more interaction between the rest of the congregation and the Campus Ministry. A male

student gave this answer, “I wish that some more of the adults would be at the Devos and classes.

I feel like many of them have a lot to offer in terms of knowledge. They have thought about the

questions we ask before and have thoughtful answers.” A non-student gave this answer “I wish

that the Church as a whole would buy into the Campus Ministry more because I feel that there is

a great opportunity there that we’re missing.” Whether it be for a new Campus Minister or for

more interaction with adults from the rest of the congregation, there was consensus that the

Campus Ministry needs to have leadership that does not come exclusively from the students.

Think of a story when the Campus Ministry most adequately reflected the Gospel

The stories I heard when asking about a time when the Campus Ministry most adequately

reflected the Gospel were many. There were no repeated stories. Some of the stories were about

similar events. A couple of students talked about being at the fall retreat from previous years, but

those students were talking about different years. One student told this story “I really felt like the

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unity that we had at the Fusion retreat was powerful. So often churches struggle to get students to

come to their church, but at that retreat we were all able to come together.” The other student

who talked about the fall retreat gave this answer “When I was a freshman I went to the fall

retreat, and even though it seemed like everyone knew everyone else, I felt really included. A lot

of people were there but I never felt lost in the crowd. That is probably why I am at Southern

Hills today.”

One student talked about the “Jesus Parties.” The Jesus parties are dance parties for

mentally disabled people. Many of the people who come have Down’s syndrome or another

severe impediment. Here is this student’s answer “This is not so much one story, but the Jesus

parties. I feel that those really capture the message of Jesus by including the people who society

does not care as much about. Before I went to a Jesus party, I thought that it was going to be

weird and awkward, but they really are a lot of fun... I think it’s great that the Campus Ministry

participates in those.”

A couple of student talked about WATS days. WATS stands for “We are the Sermon.” It

is a day where the worship service is shorter and teams of people go from the church and do

service projects. A male student gave this answer “Probably that first WATS day that our Life

Group did. When we went to that lady’s house and mowed her lawn and fixed her fence.”

Another student gave this answer “I think probably on WATS day when we went to the recycling

center and helped unload all the trucks from the other teams bringing stuff there. I really liked

doing it there because the people we were helping didn’t see us. I was reminded of the verse

about giving to poor and not letting your right hand know what your left is doing, and we really

got to help with all the teams in a small way, so we impacted more people, but again those

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people will never know that it was us.” The emphasis from these stories is helping other people.

This is a good example of how current students think.

A non-student offered a slightly different perspective. He told this story “Back a couple

years ago, the Life Group we hosted came and did a Camp out in our backyard, and there was

something about the community that I could see that had been built that really impacted me. I felt

that this was one of the stronger examples of Christian community that I had seen.” A prevailing

theme from this story and others is the community. The Campus Ministry has sought to be a

place where students can find a good community.

How autonomous should the Campus Ministry be from the rest of the Church?

The fifth question was in the survey because it is a common critique of the Campus

Ministry that it is to autonomous and does not follow the rest of the church. The answers that I

received varied widely. No one said that the Campus Ministry ought to be completely

autonomous from the rest of the church and no one suggested that the Campus Ministry should

be completely integrated either. Several people mentioned dissatisfaction with the way that the

Campus Ministry currently operates and this showed in the results from other questions. I

previously believed that it was mostly the fault of the Campus Ministry that it was not integrated

to a high degree, there were some people who thought it was to opposite reason and they faulted

the church with not taking a high enough interest in the Campus Ministry. A few students

thought that the current level of autonomy was appropriate. One of the female students answered

“Southern Hills is a very large place, and even the Campus Ministry has a lot of people in it. It’s

really hard to connect in a meaningful way to that many people, so I think it is in a good place

right now.” A non-college student woman said this “I think that it is moving in the right

direction. We would like for everyone to know everyone else, but that’s just not going to happen

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at Southern Hills. Every age group at Southern Hills is more familiar with its own people than

others, but we have had the opportunity to host college students and several of our friends have

as well, so I think it’s moving in the right direction.”

A non-student said “I think that the Campus Ministry needs to be more integrated than

autonomous. I believe that would give the opportunity for healthy mentoring relationships. Right

now people don’t really know what is going on with the Campus Ministry. All they know about

is the pancakes they smell on Sunday morning.” A female student said “I think it should be about

half and half. Right now it basically only does its own thing except for service on Sunday

morning.” There certainly is an opportunity for the Campus Ministry to influence and be

influenced by the rest of the church. College students from the past may have overlooked the

opportunity, but the current one is realizing the possibility.

THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION

Using James and Evelyn Whitehead’s model and viewing the Campus Ministry through

the lens of Religious tradition may give a different perspective on things. Campus Ministry is not

the newest of the specialized ministries and has existed for hundreds of years. However, reaching

back to the time of the New Testament, there are few specialized ministries. One of the few

specialized ministries in the New Testament church was the ministry to the Grecian widows in

Acts. However, there was not really a college or university system that would make the modern

campus ministry applicable. However, instruction of young men was important, and Paul sought

to mentor Timothy and Barnabas mentored Mark. This ought to be a sign that university and

college ministries should be important, and it is in many places. Christian tradition moving

forward put high priority on instruction and education of young men and women. One may look

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at the Catechumens of the ancient church for examples of this type of instruction. There are other

examples of what may be a precursor to campus ministry includes John and Charles Wesley’s

work. Campus ministry is an important part of the church’s mission.

One of the most important aspects of the Campus Ministry that the students reiterated

several times in the interviewees is the community. The Campus Ministry will likely never attain

the level of community that the Jerusalem church in Acts did, but that is a measuring rod for

other communities to follow. While the community in the Campus Ministry is frequently

healthy, the volatile nature of the Campus Ministry makes it very difficult to maintain the same

level of intimacy. There is a high percentage of new people entering and leaving the Campus

Ministry every year, and this makes it difficult to keep the community extremely strong. Even

with this difficulty, this is one of the strengths that people have identified within the Campus

Ministry. There does seem to be a call for that community to not only be college students, but to

reach into the larger Southern Hills community. I think that the Campus Ministry has moved

forward in that regard.

When evaluating the Southern Hills Campus Ministry in terms of campus ministries

across America, it is still doing quite well. There are certainly many ministries, which are larger,

including several in Abilene, but on the national scale, it is one of the larger ones in the country.

Southern Hills Campus Ministry does have the benefit of being in a town with three Christian

universities and several smaller colleges, so it has an advantage in that respect. Many campus

ministries would be very pleased to be able to do the thing that Southern Hills Campus Ministry

does and have that kind of impact. Much of that success is not due to the actions of the Campus

Ministry, but is due to the visibility that Southern Hills enjoys in Abilene. It is easier for

Southern Hills to recruit new members because of this. The wider culture opinion of Southern

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Hills and its success should not be the primary measurement of success, but if one looks at it

through this lens, the Campus Ministry is doing very well.

From the experience of Southern Hills itself, there has been a decrease in the number of

people who people who come to the Campus Ministry. Many have been discouraged because

several of the leaders have left and most recently, Frances has resigned. However, there have

been some positive result from the reduced size. Being smaller has allowed the group to be

closer together. The people in the ministry have been able to know a greater percentage of the

Campus Ministry. The reduced size has also allowed for more interaction with the larger church.

Previously, the university group was so large that it could dominate a Wednesday night worship

service or gathering, but now it can more easily participate in an event without dominating it.

The call of the Campus Ministry is not to live up to the expectation that it has set from

previous groups of college students. The call is to minister to the students that are in college

now. It is possible that the Campus Ministry will be able to do this better with a smaller group. It

is likely that the group is smaller because college students are going to other campus ministries.

If this is the case, then there is not true loss. An emphasis that Frances made at the beginning of

each year is that the Campus Ministry wants students to be involved at a church even if it is not

Southern Hills. The Campus ministry is only failing in its mission if students are leaving the

church altogether. If students, who Southern Hills had a chance to minister to, are not

participating in any church, there might be a true problem. There may be no way to know if this

is the case, and students are certainly leaving the church. However, I do not think this is the main

factor driving the reduction of the number of participants in the Southern Hills Campus Ministry.

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CONCLUSION

This study did not show anything new or earth shattering. Many of the findings were very

predictable. I had done a similar study before and found similar results. The study was more

involved and expansive this time. As indicated by Branson, often the study helps those who

participate in it as much as the researcher. I hope that the process of going through the interviews

helped the people to think more positively about the Campus Ministry. I believe that it is

important not to be caught up in nostalgia, remembering what the Campus Ministry used to be

able to do, but rather to seek to serve students as best as the Campus Ministry can. The

community factor, which has been so important to the students, will not disappear due to the

smaller group, but it may give a chance to increase that aspect of the Campus Ministry. There is

always a natural ebb and flow to life and that applies to ministry, and is especially applicable to

Campus Ministry.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Branson, Mark L. Memories, Hopes, and Congregational Change: Appreciative Inquiry and Congregational Change. Herndon: Alban Institute, 2004.

Nieman, James R. Knowing the Context, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008.

Osmer, Richard. Practical Theology, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008.

Whitehead, J. & E. Whitehead. Method in Ministry, San Francisco: Harper, 1980.