After serving as pastor of Student Ministries at Cornerstone in Simi Valley, CA, Chuck Bomar planted Colossae Church in Portland, Oregon. He is the founder of CollegeLeader and has created numerous resources for college ministry leaders. Chuck speaks frequently and has a tremendous heart for youth workers, especially those in college-age ministry. Chuck is married to Barbara, and together they have two daughters; Karis and Hope. Oh, and lest we forget, Chuck is a regular ConversantLife.com blogger. His latest book is Worlds Apart (Zondervan 2011).  

We've heard rumors that you drink more coffee than anyone else in Portland, and that's saying something. Talk about your strategy of frequenting cafes as the pastor of a growing church in Portland.

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I am not a conference person.

But here are two in the next handful of weeks that I'll be attending, and am more than willing to promote:

1) The COLLEGE BRIEFING @ Forest Home, Forest Falls, CA: Given that it's this weekend, this option is for the college student looking for a last-minute Labor Day trip to the mountains. I've not been to Forest Home, or the College Briefing, but everyone I mention it to lights-up and says something along the lines of, "that place changed my life."

http://www.foresthome.org/briefing

2) DRINK Conference @ Thousand Pines, CA October 15th-17th: I will personally find a way to refund your ticket if you have a disappointing experience here. This is the only conference I know of specifically designed for folks leading in college ministry. College students are welcome, too, and I even recommend it to high-school/young adult pastors. The philosophy behind CollegeLeader (brainchild of Chuck Bomar...see www.collegeleader.org) targets the role of 18-25 year olds in the larger body of the church. It's small, family-style'ish and full of really engaging thoughts and conversations.

Asked in a recent interview what I thought churches should do to keep their college students coming, I answered, “Let them go.” The interviewer looked at me like I was high.

For all intents and purposes, college is a time of exploration, and “walking away” from the ideology that’s held you for eighteen-odd years. That is a fact. And frankly, I don’t think a negative one.

Embarking on any dream, let alone new life stage, requires loosing from that which is current. As I understand it then, our question cannot be one of “keeping” any particular part (age-stage, interest category, etc.), invested in our movements. Rather, it needs to ask our most beneficial investment in their movements and exploration. How can we as “the Church,” serve into another’s journey? How can I, as part of the Church, see dignity enough in another’s journey to validate its ways and embrace its movements as part of my own?

Like it, or not, we are one Body. All who claim to follow Jesus are part of one Bride. That means the rebellious college student, who is unsure, or even resistant to his/her role, as much as the elderly usher whose the first to arrive every Sunday. We get tripped-up walking down the aisle though, because we prefer uniformity and want our stride to be the one who’s chosen.

But that’s not the way love walks.

God calls us His Bride. Not His sick, incomplete, or naked Bride, until dressed in uniformity, but His Bride. Period. She is. We are. No part is greater. No voice is partial. And all parts make the only whole. The question is not about holding-on to anybody, but letting go enough that everybody feels free to fly.

The Church’s job is not to put walls around people—it’s to love.

Judging by history, Generation Z will be no different than any who has gone before. They’ll rebel against the generation who raised them, including the Church. They’ll want to be different. They’ll want us to be different. And God will be at work, in spite of our differences.

What would it look like to reserve our usual energies of becoming more relevant, or becoming less different, and actually start learning how we might relate in our differences—not because one is necessarily right, but because maybe being right doesn’t necessarily matter? Maybe being the Body of Christ isn’t about trying to make all our parts one, but learning to see one Body in all our parts.

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