By Olan Stubbs

Curtis Tanner, one of Campus Outreach’s first staff leaders, often talked about multiplication, laborers, and missions. In the early 80s, Campus Outreach made a logo of a C with an O inside it, representing the world. The staff sought a mission statement to match the logo.

Curtis said, “Building Laborers on the Campus for the Lost World.” Everyone loved it! It was quickly adopted. Curtis gave a staff training talk saying, “If it doesn’t have to do with building laborers on the campus and doesn’t advance the gospel to the world, we don’t have anything to do with it.” 35+ years later, it’s been tweaked, but the core message remains.

The vision of CO is anchored in Scripture. Matthew 9:35-10:1 is our missional foundation. Christ traveled to different places and people. His love motivated His action. He focused His ministry on His disciples. He showed them the harassed souls and how few laborers there were. He commanded them to pray for workers.

He also commissioned them to carry on His personal ministry more broadly than He had done. He multiplied His ministry, and He set the perfect example.

This mission statement serves as a north star for CO. Years ago, CO Birmingham was declining. Our leadership team met, writing the statement on a whiteboard. Everything else was negotiable. We fasted and prayed and rethought everything else. This anchor held. Abandoning it was abandoning who God had called us to be. Going to the campuses and building leaders to reach the world in many different ways is our slice of the Great Commission. He blessed us as we’ve stayed true to this.

CO has matured in many ways since this statement was written, but it hasn’t fundamentally changed, nor should it. The focus on building fruitful campus ministries must stay front and center. The only thing that is more central for us is loving God. We never want to be Martha saying we are “serving God” in ministry while really serving our own egos.

When we walk humbly with God, one of our primary expressions of loving Him should be serving Him by building laborers. In CO, our main “neighbors” to love are the staff around us and the students we serve. When we love and disciple them well, we also love the lost world well because we are helping them grow into the laborers that God will use to reach the world far beyond the campus one day.

There was a day when CO didn’t have area directors, women’s shepherds, or mobilization directors. Most regions have all three now and are glad they do. They serve our movements well to grow in fruitfulness. But we can never get the cart before the horse. It would be silly for a new region to spend a ton of time and energy trying to hire a mobilization director and form church-planting partnerships for future graduate teams when they hadn’t even led one freshman to Christ on campus yet.

The point is this: as we continue to focus deeply on building fruitful campus ministries by building laborers on the campus for the lost world, all the other fruit will come. If we ever start to take our hand from the plow to focus on secondary issues, not just our primary calling will suffer. Ultimately, all we do will suffer because fruitful campus ministries are the wellspring that leads to all the other good we are enabled to do.

Times have changed since CO’s founding 40 years ago. They’ve changed since 2000 years ago when Christ told the 12 to pray for laborers. That command is still applicable today. The college campus is just strategic today as it was 40 years ago. The only other places I can imagine having as much focused time with the same group of people would be a prison, a retirement home, or the military. All three places are great for ministry, but all come with severe limitations the campus doesn’t have.

Sometimes when we talk about the strategy of college ministry, some get uncomfortable thinking about all the down and outers around the world. “Shouldn’t we be loving them?” Of course we should. The reality is as we target leaders, we are loving those people. You rarely, if ever, hear of someone coming to Christ in prison or a homeless ministry and later starting a ministry for college students. But I’ve heard many stories of people saved in college who later started mercy ministries to prisoners, orphans, and the homeless. Ministering to people “upstream” in society does not mean you love them more. It is a strategic way to reach the world eventually.

The college campus has the unique potential to reach many future leaders early in life at a most impressionable time. The best thing campus ministers can do is focus on multiplying fruitful campus ministries. The challenges may seem tougher today, but no hurdle will be too high with Christ guiding and empowering us.

CO started in a fraternity at a small Baptist school in Birmingham, Alabama. Through multiplication, CO is now on every continent other than Antarctica. There’s a team in Thailand (with many unreached people groups) of almost all Thais. There’s a team in South Africa of nearly all South Africans. Look at how far the ministry has already gone! What might God do in the next 40 years?

Let’s all put our hands to the plow of ministry and faithfully persevere on campus in our target group. Let’s pray to the Lord of the harvest. Let’s see what He will be pleased to do through our small yet faithful efforts over the next 40 years.