Trying to build community on your commuter campus? Here are a few things we’ve tried at Cal State Bakersfield, home of the Roadrunners:

First, we fight the commuter mentality. Our goal has been to try to make our campus a place to hang out, not just visit a couple of times a day. So instead of coming to campus with only enough time to make it to class, we try coming early or staying late with the hopes of running into classmates. We meet other students on campus instead of getting coffee at Starbucks off campus. We study in the library instead of at home. As I-V campus staff, I bring my administrative work with me and get it done on campus. We moved our leadership team meetings from someone’s apartment to the Student Union (which, by the way, has created great outreach opportunities to the SU staff).

We’ve made efforts to get to know our classmates. The difficulty is that most people don’t have time for more relationships, so they say. But a sub-community is created in the classrooms, especially when the whole class bombs a test together! Study groups or partnerships with classmates has been a safe, easy way to get to know people. One of our current leaders has been praying for a classmate for three years. This month, that class mate told her she and her boyfriend are seriously considering coming to our events!

We’ve used the residence halls to help establish community. Yes, we have a few small dorms. Six of them, all named after places from The Lord of the Rings, complete with their own Shire Council. Only 150 people live in them, mostly in their own rooms. There is a small community among the “dormies,” who’s shared interest is complaining about the bad dorm food! Every year we make sure to have at least one Bible study in the residence halls so that the small community there will have a chance to hear the gospel. And the off-campus leaders of that study make a point to eat dorm food at least once a quarter. One year two local students moved into the dorms for the purpose of reaching out to the dormies!

Our outreach activities are commuter-oriented, too. Guest lecturers, dorm-talks, basically anything over half of an hour just doesn’t work. We do a lot of “servant evangelism,” a phrase coined by Steve Sjogren in his book Conspiracy of Kindness. If we try special events, we advertise by hanging posters in every entrance to campus, as well as in the usual places students walk from the parking lots. Servant evangelism projects that worked well were:

• Giving free hot cocoa on cold days (yes, it gets cold in California!) and cold sodas on hot days (which occur more often than cold days).
• Since commuters spend a lot of times in their cars, we’ve washed windshields in the parking lots while everyone was in class, leaving a note under their wipers to let them know we did it because God loves them.
• Handing out bagels (sliced and packaged in Ziplocks with cream cheese and knives; pre-packaged is very important!) before the first classes of the day.
• Giving homemade cookies to the dormies during finals week.

We spend a lot of time as leaders caring for each other. Student leaders on commuter campuses are just as busy as their peers, only now they have small groups to lead on top of every thing else! Plus, having no one show up to their well-prepared Bible studies can be the last straw. What has helped them survive is a strong commitment to the ministry God has called them to, a passion for their classmates, and love for one another. We have retreats together twice a year. As campus staff, I make sure I spend a lot of time encouraging, caring for and praying for them. I challenge them to say no to other things so that they can say yes to being leaders on campus. And I remind them (while reminding myself) that Jesus loves our campus and calls us to be faithful to it.

—Tracy Mouser