How Can College Students Serve in Their Church While on Summer Vacation?

NATHAN W. BINGHAM: This week on the Ask Ligonier podcast, we’re joined by Dr. Stephen Nichols, president of Reformation Bible College and a Ligonier Ministries teaching fellow. Dr. Nichols, we just heard from Maria who wants to know how college students can productively serve in their church while on summer vacation. What advice do you have?

DR. STEPHEN NICHOLS: That’s a great question, and I think you’ll find there are probably many opportunities for you to serve over those summer months.

So first, let’s talk about actual service in the church. A lot of churches will have vacation Bible schools. Well, they’re always in need of helpers and assistants, sometimes even teachers. So, that would be something to definitely be on the lookout for—and probably ahead of the summer because a lot of those plans are worked out in advance of the actual event. But vacation Bible school.

It’s also a time where a lot of Sunday school teachers may find themselves on vacation. And so, there could be opportunities to substitute either as a helper or a teacher. So, paying attention to just some of those opportunities that might come up. Also, youth groups tend to be very active in the summer months because, of course, the kids are out of school. And so, there seems to be always events, and there could be opportunities there to serve as well.

And I’ve been in a lot of churches over the course of my lifetime, and I don’t think I’ve ever been in a church that does not have a closet or a storage room somewhere that could use a really good thorough organization. I’m mentioning that just to say that areas of ministry could just be areas of service. We tend to think of those times of service and ministry of when the services are taking place, and on Sunday, and the teaching ministries. But we also have to realize that there are a lot of just serving ministries that are needed in the church.

I know of a college that has a very intense internship program, and it’s a college that teaches shipbuilding and ship design. And in the junior and senior year, their internships are in an office where they’re working with ship designers, but the first year they’re at a shipyard. And they are scraping the boats to get them ready and sanding them to get them ready to be painted. They’re just doing the grunt work of the shipyard. And it’s very intentional in that college to train those students to be ship designers, to really understand the ship literally from the bottom up. And in church, too, we have to recognize it’s not always the platform ministries and the teaching ministries, but we also need those service ministries, the diaconal ministries and the ministries of mercy in the church.

The other thing I’d encourage you is to think along the lines and be mindful of ministry of mercy opportunities for the fellow congregants and the fellow members of your church. So, maybe not formally serving in the church, but maybe, especially, helping out the elderly with yard work, or just assisting them around the house, or even just being with them.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote this wonderful book Life Together, and it’s sort of a classic text about Christian community and life together. And he has a chapter on ministries, and he identifies seven ministries that we can do. And early on in his list, he mentions the ministry of listening, and he talks about how important it is to just simply listen. And we put such a premium on the teaching gifts and the speaking gifts that we tend to see, “Those are really important,” but it’s also important to just sort of take a step back and listen to people and hear their stories and let them tell their stories. And in the process of that, we’re actually ministering to them. But here’s the thing: you will also be ministered to because one of the things that you need to learn as a college student is—and really you can learn this by studying Scripture, but you can also learn this, I think, best by seeing it lived out in the lives of elderly saints—is that God is truly faithful to His people. We know that’s the promise of God: He will be faithful to us. But to hear stories of over the decades, over the many years of God’s faithfulness in lives—by just listening to those stories—I do believe you’re ministering to people, and you also then are being ministered to.

So, I love it that you have the desire to productively serve in your church over the summer. And I think if you are looking for opportunities and seeking out opportunities, eyes wide open, ears wide open, you’ll find plenty of opportunities to serve God in your church this summer.