Paradigms for Religious Success on Campus Part I: Intro

As I Mentioned in a recent post, I am going to attempt to describe several approaches which I’ve notices over the years, which allow for success in an environment like a secular campus. Before beginning, I wanted provide several caveats:

• The descriptions that will follow in the next few posts are typologies. They are not descriptions of any individual, though certainly many individuals whom I’ve encountered have contributed to the idealized description. Furthermore, there is nobody who fits ‘purely’ into a single category, and the categories themselves are no more than a convenient way to conceptualize very diverse phenomena.
• These categories can be identified in many other areas of life as well, not just the college years. Nevertheless, these tendencies can be more pronounced in college.
• People can change; they can move from category to category, approach to approach. What works for someone today, might not work tomorrow, and vice versa.
• Just as individuals display tendencies toward these different paradigms, so, too, do universities. Campus communities are generally self-selecting, and people in the same campus culture will tend to respond similarly.

On to the categories themselves: I have identified five paradigms, and will describe an idealized example of each-

1. The Countercultural
2. The Lonely Man of Faith
3. The Micromanager
4. The Advertiser
5. The Responsible