Encouraging Commitment

A few weeks into your semester, you may be wondering, “What can we do to get people more committed?” It’s a common question leaders ask at this time of year. Class loads come to a head, and “Christian” activities get dropped, sometimes as the first thing. There are several scenarios and some common themes:

The student who shoots hoops for an hour and a half every day, but can’t come to Bible study because of studies.

The student who takes off every Friday at 2 p.m. to go home for the weekend, and is just too busy during the week to do anything else.

The students who are in the play, the rugby club, Circle K, student government and two other Bible studies besides yours. They’d come more often if they just had the time.

We see students’ priorities in the way they live their lives. It’s hard to swallow the irony that for some their lack of commitment comes from being overcommitted to everything, while for others it seems they are undercommitted—mere spectators of university life. But before we get lost in a sea of individual problems, let’s take a look at the big picture. Let’s look at where you’re wanting to take people, and then we can discuss ways of helping them on that road.

Connecting belief & action

A few years ago I heard of a Russian classic piece of literature called The Brothers Karamazov. It sounded interesting, so I went to the library to find it. It was there, all dusty, all 900 pages. On about page 250, nearly three weeks later, I was bored stiff. The guy was still introducing his characters! I was ready to admit that whatever was valuable in the book must have been beyond me. Then a friend of mine happened to see me reading it and said, “Oh, I tried to read that a couple times, but I’ve never made it through.” Somehow, that prompted me. I had a week before the book was due, and 600 pages left. I finished it, but was robbed of my boast, because I was simply stunned by what the author, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, had made me see. In the background was the main plot of the book, a murder mystery. In the foreground was a portrait of how a Christian’s belief has an impact on how he lives. If you’re not into finely detailed portraits, you can find a thumbnail sketch like this in G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries; they’re short and rather Sherlock Holmesish. With students we’ve also used the movie Saving Grace, with Tom Conti as the star. All of them do the same thing: illustrate the connection between the depth of the belief and the strength of the outward action that results from holding it.

Behind the behavior

Looking at the commitment level of your chapter gives you a glance at the externals. The connection isn’t as direct in real life as it is in fiction, and a lot of other factors may come into play, but before working on the surface-level of behavior, we have to ask what beliefs are behind the actions. Do the people in your chapter value meeting with God? Are they being transformed by his Spirit? Are their lives being changed from the inside because of their relationship with Jesus Christ? In short, if their actions are any indication, how big is their God? Before you answer harshly, or self-righteously, remember this: assessing someone’s spiritual walk is not an area of idle speculation or complete objectivity. You can’t sit back and come up with the answers to these questions by the simple art of observation. This is a “people area.” To find answers, you have to know the people in your chapter on more than a surface level. Instead of finding ways to tweak the program, you have to find ways to impact the people.

People over programs

By doing this we move away from a program mindset (How do we get people to do more of our stuff?) toward a people mindset (How do we minister to these folks? How can we help them take the next steps in their discipleship?). In doing this, we also move away from a controlling attitude toward a partnership with what God is doing. Instead of pushing hard for the fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians 5:22, we begin to see that if our chapter stays connected to the Spirit, those things will be byproducts of that action.

Now for the clincher: the entire process starts with you. Are you gripped by God to the extent that it affects your actions? In the midst of doing things for him, are you getting to know him better? If the answer isn’t what you know it should be, then perhaps this commitment question has a more primary purpose than you first thought. The antidote to the petty jealousy between groups, or even between parts of one campus group, is simple: own it before you export it. It’s easy for me to see lack of commitment in others—as a matter of fact, it’s easiest when I’m farthest from God. When I’m walking closely with God, I’m less worried about others doing their share.

How’s your relationship with God? Are you serving him out of a sense of wanting to, or out of a sense of having to, because it’s your position in the organization? What’s the main thing you are exporting to those around you: a fresh heart for God? Or a stale, cold, grudging obedience? In Galatians, Paul’s exhortation to Timothy was to fan into flame the gift God had given him. Is your heart for God aflame with passion for knowing him? If not, stop everything and go there first. Pray for the desire to know him better. Then, perhaps you might find these tips helpful for spurring others on:

Check your chapter’s vision. Now is the time to do it. If your leadership team went to camp, they talked a lot about what the chapter needed to focus on in the year ahead. Do those things still apply? Or perhaps more importantly, are those things actually helping the chapter members meet God? Sometimes chapters leave planning camps with a nice set of goals, but run astray after the very first distraction that comes along. The distractions my groups have chased in the past have been very good things, hot issues, real conversation starters—but distractions nonetheless. Is your chapter’s vision on track? Is reaching the campus with the gospel a priority, or just an assumed value?

Feed their spiritual lives. One year we wanted to improve our chapter’s prayer life, so we sent the people who longed to pray out to gather others around them and multiply our number of prayer meetings. It wasn’t very successful because there was no one to encourage them. Another year we gathered the “pray-ers” together, and ended up improving the chapter’s prayer life. It may have just been an issue of timing, but I’m inclined to think that there is something to the idea of gathering people together who have similar hearts for things like prayer, evangelism or missions and then helping them to run where God leads.

Communicate positively. Anyone can stand outside the circle and cast stones at a group’s focus, mission or purpose. It takes true integrity to come alongside and be a catalyst for change. If I may borrow a concept from the book of Esther: “Who knows but that God might have brought you here for such a time as this?”(Esther 4:16) If you’re sensitive enough to see the need for more depth in your group, then you’ve got an important voice, but it will be heard primarily by what you do. Encourage others to go deep, and just in case they need to use you as an example, be a good one.

Guilt free

One word of caution: guilt as a motivator is highly overrated, and the key to a vital group is really fairly simple. A chapter with a heart for God is composed of a bunch of students, each with a heart for God. A chapter on fire for God does ministry because it wants to. God’s working through them will be a natural result of their pursuing him.

—Jim Merritt served as IVCF staff in eastern South dakota for six years. He still speaks at local I-V conferences on occasion. Jim lives with his wife, Cindy, and three children in Brookings, SD.