Transformation is possible: don’t despise the day of small beginnings!

God is doing something amazing at the University of Texas! The Body of Christ, comprised of more than 60 campus ministries and churches, is working together as one united Church to reach all 50,000 students with the Gospel of Jesus. Campus ministries are working together, treating UT like one common mission field. They have broken the university population into 500-700 people groups and are equipping and sending students for impacting the group they are part of as missionaries. Already their influence is being felt broadly. As a result, for the past few years, an average of 500 students per school year have chosen to follow Christ. That’s 1% of UT’s population each year! Over the last 10 years the percentage of students actively participating in campus ministries has doubled, from 5% of the total UT student population to 10%. Mission Houston celebrates this unfolding story and gladly shares it as a current example of what God can do and wants to do through the Body of Christ working together. Here is a short excerpt from one of the college pastors involved in the movement.

It’s been said that 2 percent of an organization, if completely sold out to a particular vision, can change the entire organization. While I am not sure of the veracity of that fact, I can say from experience that just a few college pastors working together on a project (e.g., a mission trip or a campus event), attending a retreat, or uniting in prayer can have a marked effect on the direction of your entire campus movement.

At the University of Texas we can point to several such examples that were significant in the history of God’s work on our campus. Some years ago we watched a couple of the Transformations videos and suddenly, those of us who watched them were challenged with the notion that God could do far more on our campus than we had dared to think or imagine. This emboldened us to pray toward a level of campus-wide transformation, which we had not previously been able to conceive. Later, a small group of eight pastors and three or four staff from CRM attended The Institute for Campus Revival and Awakening held at Yale. It resulted in a deepening of relationships with pastors from other groups that we had previously only known through prayer and common events. By the time the weeklong trip was over we had grown much closer as friends and had a new level of intimacy, which also increased our ability to pray for the campus and pray for each other.

These stories are only a couple of examples that represent quite a few more instances in which we found ways to work together outside of the weekly times of prayer. The result has been a steady and increasing buy-in to what God is doing on our campus. Whereas before many of us could have been rightly described as skeptical of what God could do on our very secular campus, we have now seen God work in ways that increase our faith for what He is going to do in the future. Since I have been on campus, we have seen our weekly pastor prayer time go from about four to eight pastors attending to about 20 to 30 pastors, and sometimes more! We have also just completed our fourth year of hosting the Campus House of Prayer where over 100 hours of prayer per week are typically covered.

We have seen some of our dreams wildly surpassed and now we are dreaming new dreams! Please don’t underestimate how God can use your willingness to work with fellow leaders (whether students or staff) on your campus. And by all means, “don’t despise the day of small beginnings” (Zechariah 4:10) because, just as God delights in growing a large tree from a small seed, He can do huge things through your working together as the Body of Christ on your campus.

Mark Proeger
Hope Student Life
Campus Minister, 2003–2010

The story of what God is doing is shared in a great new book entitled Campus Renewal – A Practical Plan for Uniting Campus Ministries in Prayer and Mission.