Collegiate Collective

Read some important news regarding the future of Collegiate Collective and how we’re praying God will continue to use this ministry in the days ahead.

In 2013, Brian Frye and Rahul Agarwal sensed a growing need for college ministry resources. Different denominations and parachurch organizations seemed to provide training and online tools that were specific to their particular tribes, but there wasn’t a consistent presence for resources that transcended tribe and ministry model. Brian and Rahul dreamed together and began assembling a team who also felt that burden and brought unique skills to the task. That’s how Collegiate Collective got started.

Fast forward to August 2014 and we launched the site with a commitment to bringing two new articles and a podcast weekly that would help leaders like you to elevate and advance the gospel on campus. We added in some video series along the way. We built a Twitter presence. We also launched a Facebook group to connect the tribe.  Through it all, we were trying to foster a community. We genuinely desired the project to be a Collective, believing that the best ideas would come from the audience —-people like you who are leading and impacting students in the trenches.

It’s hard to fathom how God blessed our efforts. None of us had ever started a website like this before or even worked on a team comprised of leaders across the country. Nevertheless, God was pleased to bring us the people and resources we needed to get Collective off the ground. Since launching, our website has welcomed hundreds of thousands of visits and nearly one million page views.

We built Collegiate Collective as a free resource on a shoestring budget. Given that this project was a labor of love for our leadership team, we’ve had to shift responsibilities and change the scope of our work over time out of respect and deference to the primary ministry responsibilities we each have. We believe this is a normal part of the life cycle for teams like ours.

Here is where we found ourselves in 2018:

• The Collegiate Collective Facebook group had outpaced our expectations in becoming a community where practitioners were able to interact and share their best ideas with others in real time. The group has grown to over 2,000 members who represent a beautiful spectrum of the college ministry world. Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, non-denominational leaders, and more. Parachurch ministries, church-based ministries, collegiate church plants, and some in categories we don’t have a name for yet. In essence, the Facebook group is the fulfillment of what the website intended to be.
• Our publication rhythm from August 2014-December 2018 had produced over 700 articles and podcasts. Our community had produced a tremendous library of ideas, tools, and wisdom.
• Our leadership team found themselves in roles that continued to pull them out of direct ministry to students. God was providing new opportunities to influence beyond the collegiate sphere and was granting fruit in those endeavors. As such, we could no longer give Collective the energy and attention it needed.

In light of those circumstances, we worked hard to pass the site to leaders who could take it forward in ways that we couldn’t. We spent six months laboring on a transition plan, but in God’s providence, that plan didn’t work out as we had hoped and we were poised to enter 2019 without the people we needed to make it work.

After taking a prayerful look at where we are, we have decided to suspend the publication of new content on CollegiateCollective.com. We are working to rebuild the site so that it is more functional as a library with a searchable index so that you can quickly find specific answers and ideas for what you face in your college ministry.

The Facebook group, which has become the real gold mine, will continue to operate as it has, allowing you, the practitioners, to ask questions, share resources, and build relationships with each other as co-laborers in the greatest mission field on planet Earth.

There are so many of you who have invested their time, energy, and prayers into Collegiate Collective. As a leadership team, we could never thank you enough for sharing the ideas and strengths God has given you. We do not believe it was in vain.

So Collegiate Collective is changing, but not going away. In the most important way, it has become what we hoped to build – a community of leaders reaching across artificial lines to help one another reach and multiply disciples for the cause of Christ! Please stay engaged in our online community, but most importantly, continue in the spirit of humility and generosity so that we can all continue to elevate and advance the gospel on campus.

Here’s what we humbly ask you to continue to do:

1. Labor to see the gospel elevated and advanced on the campuses you serve.
2. Maintain a posture of humility and generosity with what God is showing you about how to reach, disciple, and send college students with the gospel.
3. Participate in the life of Collegiate Collective by sharing and interacting on our Facebook group.