Reclaiming the Dream of University Churches

By Jeff Dodge

There once was a day when churches were drawn to the university campus and found it to be an ideal place to plant new churches. Churches worked hand-in-hand with universities to raise up the next generation of leaders. It was a healthy and mutually beneficial alliance.

Visit virtually any university campus in the U.S. and you will find a common phenomenon: a beautiful central campus surrounded by church buildings representing a host of denominations. Sometimes you will even find churches situated in the very heart of the campus! Those campuses represent a day when the university and the church worked side-by-side in a symbiotic relationship to form the next generation of local, national, and global leaders.

Today those historic church buildings are often empty or nearly so. Of the churches whose

doors have not been shuttered, many have abandoned the evangelical impulse that fueled their founding. Those church buildings stand as haunting sentinels of a bygone day.

Moreover, many universities have become suspect of (even antagonistic toward) Christfollowers, Christian beliefs formed from the Bible, and of course, churches. Churches can often return the favor by harboring suspicion and even animosity toward the university.

Because of this relatively new state of reality, few church planters make university communities their destination of choice. It's a tough, uninviting, and suspicious (and often expensive!) place to try to get new Kingdom work going. Here I am, Lord, send me… just not to those scary universities!

That’s the unvarnished truth of it. Nevertheless, we need to reclaim the compelling dream of establishing churches in university communities. Here are five reasons why:

1. University Communities Have An Unparalleled Platform To Shape Culture.

Churches stationed in university communities are proximate to some of culture’s strongest headwaters. While this places the church in a precarious position, it also affords it a unique place for gospel transformation.

Churches that emerge in the university community must be prepared to hold an unflinching grasp of its divine purpose. God has created His Church to possess, in the words of theologian Herman Bavinck, “unique spiritual power.” Christ is present in the church as the means of supernatural transformation. The church is the steward of divine truth able to “demolish arguments and every proud thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God.” And once embraced, God’s truth is capable of extending far beyond the walls of the gathered church. “Because of Christ there radiates from everyone who believes in him a renewing and sanctifying influence upon family, society, state, occupation, business, art, science, and so forth.”

2. University Students Are Activists And That Is An Energy That Christ Seeks to Channel.

Intriguingly, not since the late 1960’s have college students been more eager to engage in protests (according to a recent Higher Education Research Institute report). Now, what are students protesting? Many are ambivalent—they simply want to protest. But gospel-transformation can channel that innate impulse into divine activism: “turning the world upside down” with the message of Christ (Acts 17:6).

College students are looking for a mission. Churches focused on reaching universities can multiply their impact for the Kingdom of God by reclaiming the vision of next generation ministry. Mobilize the next generation of Kingdom-minded leaders during these four strategic years and watch how the Lord might use these graduates to reap a harvest for decades to come.

3. Our Nations Universities Are Magnets For Emerging Leaders.

As the late Tim Keller said, “If you’re on a college campus, you’re on the culture’s cutting edge. It is our best leadership development pipeline. By exposing people to the cutting edge of culture where they have to deal with the modern mindset, where they have to deal with non-Christians—that is the best way to develop pastors and lay leaders.”

Train future leaders in a university setting and you have prepared them well for wherever God may send them. In this way, the college campus becomes the training ground for a lifetime of disciple-making in any context. Whether you send graduates to the workforce or throughout the world, they’ll have the right tools in place to grow in their faith and reach their neighbors.

4. The Nations (Even Some of the Most Unreached Peoples) Are Coming To Our Universities.

According to the Institute for International Education, colleges and universities today are rebounding to pre-pandemic numbers of international students with 1.08 million on our campuses in January 2023. Many of these students are coming from nations that are difficult to reach through mission enterprises-yet, here they are coming to our university communities. Let us establish churches to welcome them and point them to Christ!

As the Nations come to universities, churches have even greater opportunities to reach the nations. Not only can churches work to reach international students while the students are in the U.S. but churches can also experience an even greater impact on the nations by sending believing international students back to the nations as disciple-makers.

5. University Communities Stand at a Crucial Spiritual Crossroad.

Think of college campuses as a cultural revolving door—perhaps even a cultural bottleneck. Millions of young adults gather for a short season of life in these concentrated population centers and then leave for destinations unknown. While in this window of time and space, students will often make some of the most consequential decisions of their lifetime—especially in the spiritual realm.

Like myself, students often hear the gospel of Jesus Christ on university campuses for the very first time. The power of that gospel transforms their lives for eternity. Let this gospel proclamation ring from churches who have intentionally set themselves at this, albeit risky, crossroad. And may future church planters head to university communities while praying with the boldness of Jim Elliot, “Father, make me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be a milepost on a single road; make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me.”

JEFF DODGE | Teaching Pastor, Veritas Church, Iowa City, Iowa; Assistant Professor of Theological Studies