Abstract

Current and prospective members of Students Serving Christ (SSC), an evangelical collegiate organization, have made their decision for the evening. The vestibule of the church is brimming with activity as organizational leaders prepare to host their first Friday night worship program of the academic year. Veteran SSC members, who have worked tirelessly all week to recruit new members and publicize this weekly event, chat as they anxiously await the many new first-year students whom they hope will attend.
Inside the air-conditioned sanctuary, students hug and share stories about their summer vacation. A swarm of about twenty first-year students, clad in casual shorts and T-shirts, finally arrive. Their presence prompts a cluster of upper-division women to abruptly end their conversation and turn their full attention toward personally welcoming these prospective organizational members. The eighty attendees’ noisy conversations eclipse the members of SSC's eight-piece band, who are tuning instruments near the small stage.
SSC leaders have delayed the start of the 7:00 P.M. formal worship service to allow the upper-division students additional time to interact with prospective mem-bers. Attendees appear to be making good use of the extra time allotted for this acquaintanceship ritual. At 7:15 P.M., the bandleader clicks on a microphone and signals the percussionist to begin tapping the beat for the first song. SSC members simultaneously begin a well-organized yet organic routine. Current members personally ask first-year students with whom they are speaking to sit next to them for tonight's event. Visitors readily accept these invitations as they file into rows of chairs and settle into an evening of celebrating the Christian life.
Although we intended to examine the governance structure of four diverse student organizations (including SSC) when we began our two-year ethnographic study, we became deeply intrigued with how Students Serving Christ created meaningful and sustained cocur-ricular student involvement. Through our prolonged engagement with SSC members, we discovered that this group's leaders not only spread the word of God but also preach unique ways to reconceptualize both the cocurriculum and the instructional methods that organizational leaders employ to engage students in cocur-ricular activities. In this essay, we discuss the revelations we received that pertain to thinking differently about teaching and learning outside of the classroom as a result of our fieldwork on SSC. We recognize that blending discussions about the cocurriculum and faith-based organizations is unusual and disorienting. Yet we hope that lessons learned from our SSC fieldwork will benefit educators who wish to promote and sponsor cocur-ricular learning opportunities that meaningfully enhance student learning and development in both secular and faith-based higher education contexts. Along with our interpretations, we provide additional narrative excerpts from SSC's Friday night program to vividly capture this organization's unique approach to student learning.
Come come come
Let us worship God with our hands held high
And our hearts bowed down
We will run run run
Through Your gates oh God
With a shout of love with a shout of love
Lord with confidence
We come before your throne of grace
Not that we deserve to come
But you have paid the way
Participants revel in this collective, melodic, and celebratory act of solidarity in the name of Jesus. As the opening hymn, Holy Moment, concludes, the bandleader passionately offers a prayer:“Thank you, Lord, for bringing us here today. Bless this time tonight and help us all to have an attitude of prayer and devotion to you.” As attendees awkwardly react to the silence following their collective “Amen,” a woman jumps up from her seat and scurries to the altar.
“Welcome to SSC! I'm Sarah, a senior, and I'm really excited about this year and about you all being here! …We're going to have a great night tonight. Let's start with some announcements.”
Holding up a copy of the SSC roster, Sarah continues:
OK, we have a list here. Look to see if you are on here, and if so, see if it's right. If you're not on the list, add your name and then you'll get our e-mails about what's going on. Bible studies are now forming, and we have them for all classes—freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Sign up at the back table. Be sure to do that! We also have The Beacon, which is a good thing…. We get together and pray to lift up the non-Christians on campus. It's at 5:30 on Tuesdays in the campus chapel; it's the cute chapel right across from the student center.
We've also got fireworks on Monday for Labor Day, and that's a great time to get to know each other. We also have camping in a few weeks…. It's an absolutely great time. We sleep in tents and have fellowship all night. We play capture the flag at midnight…. We have a service team and a Web site design team that's open to all people. Sign up at the back table.
Sarah smiles and then abruptly shifts gears.“OK, we're going to play a game!” she exclaims. This declaration elicits smiles from attendees.“OK, I need one freshman, one sophomore, one junior, and one senior!” Slowly, representatives from each of the four classes proceed to the stage and await Sarah's instructions.
“OK, this is called Flaming Flamingo! Your goal is to get as many atomic fireball candies in your mouth and stand on one foot and say ‘flaming flamingo,’” Sarah screams. Attendees noisily cheer their representatives as they predict who will triumph in this competition. “Let's give them some support!” exclaims Sarah, as she distributes candies to the four contestants. Several students sit on the edge of their seat and laugh uncontrollably as contestants fill their cheeks with the fiery treats. “You can do thirty-five!” a rowdy sophomore yells to his class representative. The three women contestants eventually drop out from the competition, and Sarah declares the bulky senior male the victor moments after he wedges a twenty-sixth fireball into his mouth.
Following three more songs of praise, Matthew, the SSC's full-time director and leader, approaches the stage. In a reserved voice, he introduces himself and recounts a short story about his recent mission trip to Thailand, when he mistakenly introduced himself as “I urinate Matthew” rather than “I am Matthew.” Smiling coyly, Matthew admits that although he does urinate, he avoids mentioning it when meeting people for the first time. As students laugh, we immediately conclude that Matthew intends for his story to subtly convey to new members that SSC is not your stereotypical (that is, serious and proper) Christian organization.
Matthew continues, “Well, my job is to hang out with college students and help them become closer to Jesus without becoming religious weirdos.” He then introduces three themes for his sermon—identity, community, and opportunity—aimed at helping students to make Jesus the center of their collegiate experience. Several veteran SSC members flip to blank pages in their notebook and wait expectantly for Matthew to speak.
I graduated from here in 2000…. When I came I was nominally a Christian…. I was a Christian when it was convenient for me. I was Lord of my life. One thing I liked about college—I could be whatever I wanted to be…. But Matthew 16:15 says, “Who do you say I am?” Who do you say Jesus is? For me, I say, “The Son of God and the Lord of my life.”
Do you know Jesus, or know about Him? I'm going to elaborate on this idea. I am a big Nolan Ryan fan—you know, the baseball player. But I don't know him. If he were to walk in, I'd be so excited. But he'd think I was a weirdo. The same is with Christ. Sometimes we know about Him but we do not really know Him.
A full life is one lived in community with other believers. We let down our masks with one another here. We are real with one another. We want to get to know you so we can minister to each other. With the SSC, community is one of our priorities. We want to get to know you. We want to walk this journey together and help you in your quest for Jesus.
Honestly, I understand most of you are looking at different [Christian] groups. Look for one where you can get involved and have people know you. Look for a place where you can develop. The group you choose will determine how much you grow over the next four years…. We hope it is here, because we want to get to know you and we want you to get to know us….
What do you want out of your college experience besides an education? God didn't bring us here solely for education. God does not call people to be engineers, teachers, and accountants. There are no biblical examples of that. He calls them to first be in a relationship with Him, and to work with Him to build the Kingdom. He does bring people to certain careers because he cares about his people. We need people to have different missions to help other people in specific places….
We don't practice guerrilla evangelism here. This means getting charged up and going and sharing with people and then feeling good about it. We don't blast people with Bible verses. God calls some people to do that, and there is nothing wrong with that. But that's not what we are about. For us here, we all learn through training how to develop the heart, skill, and mission for building the kingdom. We need to relationally connect with non-Chris-tians. That way, the kingdom will grow.
Matthew's learning-centered sermon is one of SSC's varied programs that emphasize the organization's unambiguous faith agenda—becoming disciples of Jesus by adhering to and sharing the Bible's teachings. Matthew's sermon calls students to abandon their self-centeredness and strengthen their relationship with and faith in Jesus. He encourages attendees to examine their religious identity and offers a biblical rationale for pursuing a college degree. He acknowledges the existence of multiple Christian campus organizations as well as their diverse ideologies and encourages students to select an organization that will support their personal faith development. He persuades those in his congregation to align themselves with other Christians and simultaneously learn successful strategies for sharing the Word of God with non-Christians. Through each sermon topic, Matthew encourages attendees to learn more about their faith and themselves. Matthew's goals resonate with the goals of higher education as stated in Learning Reconsidered: A Campus-wide Focus on the Student Experience, edited by Richard Keeling. This document advocates that college students gain interpersonal and intrapersonal competence—that is, knowledge of their own identity as well as the ability to appreciate diverse perspectives.
The meet-and-greet social prior to the Friday worship service symbolically celebrates SSC's commitment to fellowship and the need for attendees to think biblically about what counts as a community. In Good Practice in Student Affairs: Principles to Foster Student Learning, Jon Dalton argues, “Students’ experience with a supportive sense of community in an educational setting can contribute substantially to the development of their values. A community support system makes it easier for students to experiment and take risks” (p. 54). The supportive SSC community helps students define their ethics, values and faith, as well as cultivate the ability to support others in their quest to learn about God. SSC's supportive Christian social network goes hand in hand with learning more about and spreading the Word of God.
The Flaming Flamingo activity showcases SSC's third core value—wholesome and fun activities that are aligned with Christian values. The Friday night worship service reveals SSC's deep-seated commitment to linking fun with living and enacting Christian principles.
Thus, learning is fundamental in each activity, and SSC encourages students to live out their core values of faith, fellowship, and fun in everything they do. At first glance, the program offerings seem eclectic, connected only by a shared focus on student learning. However, organization leaders have devised a plan to integrate these activities into a seamless learning experience—which is the second unique feature of SSC's cocurriculum.
The Friday night worship service is the most inclusive and the most basic of SSC's cocurricular offerings; it requires a modest degree of involvement on the part of attendees. Attendees spend ninety minutes each week with like-minded students who enjoy singing, listening to spiritually awakening stories and sermons, praying, and engaging in social activities aligned with their values. During these entry-level programs, students learn about additional involvement opportunities, which require a greater commitment on their part and result in a more vigorous learning experience.
SSC leaders encourage Friday night worshipers to join a Bible study, which represents the organization's second level of involvement and focuses on personal spiritual edification. Peer facilitators expect students to read, study, and memorize Scripture. During weekly gatherings, students lead prayers, offer and listen to multiple interpretations of the Bible, cull lessons learned from the passages, and brainstorm ways to apply biblical lessons to their own life.
In SSC's third and fourth levels of involvement, participants add outreach to their personal spiritual development agenda. At these final two levels of involvement, the organization's emphasis shifts from improving members to improving members and others (that is, non-Christians). In SSC's third level of involvement, leaders invite members to participate in a four-week, eight-hour training program that teaches the art of evangelizing. Participants learn more about the Bible, themselves, and, most important, effective mobilization strategies to spread the Word of God.
All SSC members have the option to become a member of the Servant Leadership Team (SLT), the fourth level of SSC involvement. The SLT includes an Evangelism Team (E-Team) for sophomores, a Disciple-ship Team (D-Team) for juniors, and a Senior Team (STeam). SLT members make a serious time commitment to SSC by agreeing to pray, attend all SLT meetings, and organize and attend Friday worship meetings. They also have the option to lead Bible studies, train for or complete weekly spiritual mentoring duties, and attend SSC fellowship activities.
SSC rejects a one-size-fits-all cocurriculum for its members. Instead, the sequenced cocurriculum allows members to select a level of organizational involvement that is compatible with their passions. This cocurricu-lum contributes to student learning and sustains students’ investment and involvement in SSC. At every level of involvement, SSC members have numerous opportunities for development of personal beliefs, morals, interpersonal skills, and leadership. Whereas many student organizations struggle to sustain upper-division members’ interest in the organization, SSC creates opportunities for student learning and involvement that match each individual's level of interest and spiritual needs. One SSC student remarked, it is not “four years of the same old, same old.” An SSC intern, a recent graduate, commented, “With Matthew focusing on recruiting and really casting a vision, that has helped us with keeping people involved and helping them see that they have a vital role to play and that we really want them around. Especially with our leadership teams, that helps people feel like they're getting something from it. That it's not just an activity that they attend, but they're really growing and developing in their own lives as a result of their involvement. So that has been a major factor for why we still have so many people hanging around longer.”
The multilayered approach contributes to students’ perception that the organization is welcoming to students with different spiritual needs and interests, which sustains members’ participation.
Kiley pauses nervously and then begins her testimonial:
I was born and raised in a Christian home, and I went to church all my life…. I honestly believed in God and Jesus Christ, but I was never actively pursuing my faith. God was definitely working in my life, though. On my eleventh birthday, I was baptized and proclaimed my faith in front of the whole con-gregation. This was an unusual experience because I had never done anything like that before, and I didn't know most of the people, because it was a huge church.
From third grade through the end of the summer before my sophomore year in high school, three of my grandparents had passed away and all of my great-grandparents. That was a lot of funerals for me to have to experience at such a young age. I definitely had a lot of trust issues with God. For a long time, I was very bitter and angry and really resented the Lord for taking them from me.
And then freshman year in high school, I went to a very big public school. All my friends there knew that I was a Christian, so they tried not to cuss around me because they knew that it bothered me. However, I never had any great friendships that were centered on Christ. I made the varsity softball team, which I was excited about. However, as the season went on, more and more people tried to get me to drink and do drugs….
Growing in my faith and trusting in God is a continuingly renewing process, and I am still working on it every day. My walk with God has in a sense just begun, as He has been leading me down the path toward Him. Now this past year in SSC, it was so cool to be a part of a real community of believers…. I love these Friday nights, and then there's fun activities afterwards…. The best one I can remember was when we all played Texas Hold ‘em poker and the girls beat the boys…. I'd encourage you all to get involved with Bible studies. It will help you grow as a person and a Christian. I'll close with sharing a passage: “Seek Him and live.” I'd encourage you to do that—seek Him and live. Thank you.
In Learning Partnerships: Theory and Models of Practice to Educate for Self-Authorship, Marcia Baxter Magolda offers educators three principles that support students in learning partnerships: (1) validate students as knowers, (2) situate learning in students’ own experiences, and (3) define learning as mutually constructing meaning. Because our original study focused on power dynamics between educators and students in the context of student organizations, we were keenly attuned to the ways in which SSC adheres daily to the first two principles.
Validating students as knowers necessitates that those in power (for example, Matthew) relinquish that power by inviting the less powerful (for example, SSC members such as Sarah) to join in thinking and talking about their faith and structuring the organization's activities. Concurrently, the less powerful must realize that they, too, have valid ideas and permission to express their views. Allowing Sarah to plan and host the Friday gathering symbolically communicates that SSC validates its members as knowers.
Baxter Magolda's second principle—situate learning in students’ own experiences—necessitates that the more-powerful individuals welcome the less-powerful stakeholders’ life experiences and meaning making into the process. Often, those with minimal power or influence are not permitted to bring their experiences into the learning process because their experiences are perceived as irrelevant. However, in SSC, the weekly testimonials situate learning in the presenter's experience, which is highly relevant and educational for their peers. Most weekly testimonials, such as Kiley's, share the themes of being vulnerable, finding Jesus, and coping with the human struggles to live a Christian life. In addition, they serve as modern-day parables, reflecting the core values that the Bible espouses.
SSC deviates from Baxter Magolda's third principle—define learning as mutually constructing meaning. This principle suggests that learning will result from a dialogue whereby those in power consider all stakeholders’ voices. This third principle does not advocate, for example, the more seasoned participants abdicating their expertise or knowledge; rather, these seasoned professionals would bring their views to the dialogue but would not impose them unilaterally.
SSC's emphasis on the Bible as the authority contributes to leaders’ need to impose knowledge based on Scripture. As a result, the more powerful staff (for example, Matthew, SSC's primary biblical guide) maintain their roles as omnipotent interpreters of the Bible. While SSC shares leadership with students (for example, Sarah's role throughout the Friday worship program), dogmatic principles emerge from the way they view the Bible's teachings as truth. The SSC uses the first two Baxter Magolda learning partnership principles as guides to enact its cocurriculum, but does not embrace the third principle because of the group's Bible-based ideology. Thus, it stops short of being an ideal learning partnership in which authority is shared in the social construction of knowledge.
One man calls out in response, “We need more games … Monopoly, card games, chess…. ” Students laugh when he names chess. Apparently, chess does not fall under the category of SSC fun.“What's wrong with chess?” he asks incredulously. The noise level in the room again rises as students conclude their faith-based time together and embark on an evening of fellowship and fun. Thank God it's Friday.
SSC subscribes to many of the ideals expressed by Blimling and Whitt. The organization's learning-centered curriculum and pedagogy values student engagement, emphasizes values and ethics, has high expectations for members to deepen their faith and spread the Word of God, values ongoing intellectual inquiry, and devotes organizational resources to fulfilling the mission of the organization. One student, Dennis, commented on how SSC provided valuable learning experiences that have brought him back to the group year after year:
It's cool because [in SSC] there are two different kinds of learning. In the Servant Leadership Team, we're learning as a group…. It's cool how Matthew runs it…. When we ask a question, he says, “OK, what do you guys think?” So we'll toss ideas around…. And then there's learning one on one; it's cool because I hang out with Matthew and he sees me in different situations and can help me grow based on those. I tell him things I want to work on and he will then look for opportunities where those things come up and help coach me. It's like a coach. Like telling me, giving me ideas and tips and strategies and how I can grow in the ways I said I wanted to grow. So that's cool.
Align the organization's learning activities with its core values. Help students identify an organizational mission and what they hope to learn as members, and then focus time and effort on the activities that really matter.
Create diverse, integrated, sequenced program offerings. Each role or activity should build on the previous year so that students can anticipate something new and exciting as well as more challenging opportunities for personal growth. In SSC, students progressively gain leadership skills so that they are well prepared to move into peer mentor and teacher roles as upper-division students.
Find ways for students to apply the skills and self-knowledge they gain in the organization to serve the greater good. SSC students experienced deeper learning when given the opportunity to put their education into practice as they reached out to others. An organization's advisors and leaders can assist students in finding real-world applications for the skills they learn.
Encourage peer teaching and learning that centers on students’ experiences. Organizational advisors can encourage students to take leadership roles, use their own experiences as a knowledge base for decision making, and serve as teachers in addition to learners, which will maximize peer and individual learning.
The four lessons learned in the context of SSC echo current research, such as the work of Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, and Whitt, which states that in regard to student learning, the content matters less than the degree to which students are engaged in the learning process. Although SSC's leaders preach this cocurriculum and pedagogy from a faith perspective, the lessons are applicable to all student organizations, regardless of their cur-ricular content. Furthermore, student organizations embracing other ideologies may be able to more fully implement all three components of the Learning Partnerships Model. We urge readers to look carefully at some of the less visible student organizations on their own campus. Studying organizations like SSC can sometimes reveal lessons on student engagement that are truly worthy of praise.
