[coaching]

As stated in an another post, reaching each year’s freshman class is vitally important to the long term sustainability of your movement. If you don’t focus on them early each fall you will experience significant leadership gaps in the years ahead. Those first two weeks of the semester are critical.

So what can you do to effectively recruit incoming Christian students? Notice i emphasize Christian students. Reaching non-Christians is a completely different tack. We’ll talk more about that in a later post. As a caveat, a lot of what we share here is for a traditional four year college campus. A lot of this will apply for commuter campuses or even junior college situations but it’s important to know your audience and their habits and adjust as needed.

1. Events. Front load those two weeks of your fall semester with plenty of social events. Advertise these events with handouts at dorm move in day, in the union, etc. Conduct these events on campus. (Incidentally, helping students move into the dorms and providing refreshments can go a long way in making yourself known and visible.) Do them outside in full view. Do something like volleyball and ice cream or ultimate Frisbee and pizza or barbeque. Don’t hesitate in spending up to half of your semester’s budget on these events. Make sure your upperclassmen are there and are meeting new students. A principle to remember is that students are the best recruiter of other students. That rings true for weekend retreats, conferences and mission trips as well. Freshmen want to be friends with the “cooler” upperclassmen. It’s just a fact for this stage of life.

2. Informal parties. Build on the relationships started in the events by encouraging your upperclassmen to hold some informal parties those first few weekends and invite the freshmen. Freshmen LOVE being invited to their first college party. Capitalize on that. Remind your upperclassmen that they’ll have plenty of time to catch up with their upperclassmen friends that they haven’t seen in a couple months later. But for now, really encourage them to focus on the freshmen.

3. Weekly gathering. Your first few weekly meetings should focus on a few things. Allocate more time than you normally would for mingling. You may be noticing a theme. Relationship building is key to recruiting. Additionally, communicate clearly and often about how your new students can get involved. Sure, promote bible studies but also promote outreach opportunities and ministry teams they can join. By promoting outreach or service opportunities you will surface your more mature Christian freshmen. Lions run with lions and you want to recruit the cream of the crop and not just the nominal, cultural Christian. Finally, cast vision for your movement and what your hopes and dreams are for them, their walk with God and how God may be glorified in them this year and throughout their time in college. See post above regarding principles to follow. Do all of the above being careful to not use any “insider” language or jokes that only returning students would get. Help everyone feel included and as if they’ve already bought in as much as possible.

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