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An interview with a Co-laborer serving Christ on a high school Campus
Tom Bridges has been on high school ministry staff with Student Venture since 1981. He's been around the block a few times, ministering in Phoenix, AZ and Carrollton, TX since 1993. He is serving in direct student ministry, has directed a ministry team, and is recruiting youth workers for ministry.
He has a master's degree from Dallas Theological Seminary. Tom is married to Bea Ann and has twin girls. He devotes around 20% of his time each week toward reaching Newman Smith High School in Carrollton, TX. The ministry on the Newman Smith campus has recently been led by Tom and staff woman Nikki (Rennaker) Hummel.
At Newman Smith H.S. there are about 20 student leaders involved, another 30 involved in student-led bible study groups, and another 100 students who come to a monthly club activity period sponsored by the school during school hours. They have 4 volunteer leaders who help lead studies, help plan outreaches, and host meetings/events.
What is incredible about their ministry, is that Tom only leads the campus ministry with 20% of his ministry time each week, and yet, there is so much activity and growth you see in the lives of individual students and in the spiritual movement as a whole.
In a recent interview with Tom, Student Venture asked him, “What are the things you always do (or try to do) to use your limited time to build a ministry on campus?” Here are Tom's answers:
“Things I always do” Part I
- Student Ownership. The students I am working with have to own the ministry that is happening at their campus. If your time is limited in Student Ministry, this actually plays to your advantage. We don't have the time to do it all, and the students know that. They know that if it's going to happen, they have to do it. Student ownership is a pillar of a movement; it’s the foundation I build my ministry on.
- Student Leadership. We need to be very aware of students’ schedules. It is possible for kids to be extremely busy and still play a key leadership role in God’s work on the campus.
Strategies and ministry goals must be doable for the students and their schedules. That means I have to know the big events on the school schedule, and the personal schedule of key students in our ministry- then I find creative ways to work with them.
- Simplicity. My ministry plan needs to be simple. If I want teachers, coaches, parents, or volunteers to help run the ministry on limited hours, I need to distill it down to what I really want them to do with their limited time.
- Evangelism. That's one thing I'm always thinking about, “How can I always keep bringing it up to the kids, especially with our student leaders?” I intentionally ask student leaders what opportunities the Lord has given them to share their faith, and have them share with the other leaders the stories about kids they have led to the Lord. Then, the leadership brainstorms together about new ways to reach nonbelievers, and new groups on campus to reach out to.
I always encourage them when they take the initiative to share their faith- not so much what the results were when they shared Christ, but that they took the initiative. We also try to share Christ at outreach meetings. Sometimes it's hard, I can't say we "always do it", but we do make a real effort. We want to keep the outreach meeting evangelistic, and not let it feel like it's a meeting for Christian kids only. Our leadership meetings are held separately for the Christian kids to fellowship.
There are a lot of ways to run a student-led campus ministry for Christ, but Tom has found a simple way that really works. When you consider the limited time he is able to give, it’s actually quite incredible! Next Coaching Report we will look at the rest of Tom’s interview.
If you, too, want to find creative outreaches to get your students excited about reaching their friends for Christ, check out the Valentine’s Day Outreach ideas.
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>> Part II