College looks pretty different for me than most ministry majors—and it worked.
My name is Charlie Schaffer, a current student at Veritas Baptist College and church-planting pastor of Capernaum Baptist Church in Hammond, Louisiana. I’m writing because I think the lessons I learned through my journey may help you, too. Now, the principles won’t help people who don’t truly want what God has for them—but I think you do.
Before we get started with the two most influential lessons from my collegiate journey, I want to give you a disclaimer: I don’t have it all figured out. Some of these principles come from my taking the long way around. The changes I made to my college career were severe, so I don’t expect everyone to follow the same actions. But the principles can most certainly serve you, I promise.
So what’s my story? Just after graduating high school I embarked on something I’d never heard of in the college world—interning while taking college with me. Enrolling totally online meant that I could intern at churches across the country (and the world!) without missing school.
This meant now I could learn not just through concepts and classrooms but through personal experience.
Three churches across the U.S. took me on separately as an intern throughout 2019 and 2020. While I interned in Queens, NYC, in 2020 (as I began my sophomore year at VBC) God gave me peace about church planting in Hammond, Louisiana, just a half hour from where I grew up.
The plane took me from NYC to Louisiana October 21, 2020. My best friend Caleb and I began hosting a Bible study in Hammond just twenty days later. Now, I’m working alongside my church people to prepare for our official Sunday launch in fall 2023.
You probably want to know how my experience helps you. I think I unlocked the key to the most efficient and powerful ministry preparation system, and I want to share with you what I learned. So, if you’re interested in double-timing your ministry experience by blending college and real-world practice, try it for one month at your church this semester. Here are two strategies that will keep you on track while you do . . .
- Time management.
You know as well as I do that college takes a lot of time. And so does church planting, family life, teaching in a Christian school, developing content, personal improvement, working out, and—my personal favorite—being engaged (yay!). All of these are regular facets of my life, and I’m sure you’ve got plenty on your plate, too. That said, do you have a system to keep your time organized?
You may have heard that time is our most valuable asset—wrong. Attention is. I can prove this because we all have the same amount of time in the day, but some are more productive than others. It’s called paying attention for a reason.
Let me give you a practical tool to help you assess your time-to-attention ratio. We’ll call it the “Attention Payment Plan.” Make a T chart with the ways you need to spend time on the left. On the right, write the steps already in your calendar this week to accomplish your goals. How does that look? Now you see where your attention is, and you can keep doing this week after week while you double up on ministry experience.
- Following God in faith.
Doubling your ministry involvement will test you because ministry is hard and college is hard. So, I hope I can provide a few principles to apply to your own life to help navigate the balance.
First, be sure you’re inside God’s peace. Colossians 3:15 admonishes us to let the peace of God rule in our hearts. The word rule pictures an umpire who whistles when a player is out of bounds. Let God’s peace which surpasses all understanding (Phil. 4:7) keep you in the bounds of God’s will.
Second, have godly counselors around you. Often through the church planting process God has sparked a thought in me, I’ve prayed through it for a time, and then God used the Christian advisors in my life to offer advice which confirms God’s leading. The best way to get good counsel is to have good counselors, so be sure you have some people around you to offer value along the journey.
Although you’ll need several other tools, these two principles should keep us all on the right path while we manage other tensions. Blending college and real ministry is tough, but it pays dividends. Are you ready to double the experience you have month after month by serving and learning at the same time?