A college ministry built on tables of four.
One hour a week, all semester. You pick the hour.
We’ll save you the seat.
Where does Jesus fit in your week?
At home, your faith had a schedule somebody else built. Church on Sunday. Maybe a youth group on a Wednesday. A ride there, and people who noticed when you didn’t show up.
None of that came with you. Three weeks into a semester your schedule is packed, and Jesus doesn’t disappear exactly — he just moves into the background. Nobody’s going to remind you. Nobody in your classes is going to ask how your faith is doing, at least not in normal conversation.
Two-thirds of students who went to church every week in high school stop for at least a year in college. The most common reason isn’t doubt, or hypocrisy, or politics. It’s this: I moved to college and stopped going.
Four years of school shouldn’t cost you your faith.
Nobody quits on purpose. The semester just fills up.
Somehow we let the semester get so full without him.
Source: Lifeway Research.
Pick the hour. We’ll build the table around it.
Every other option on this campus meets one night a week. If that night doesn’t work for you, there isn’t another one.
We’re not going to hand you a schedule and hope one of the times works. Tell us when you’re actually free, and we’ll start a table there.
Some hours already have students asking for them, and we’ll put you together. Some don’t yet, and you’d be the first one at that table. Every table starts with somebody being first.
What actually happens
Four of you, one hour. You read the passage of the day, talk about it, and say what you’re going to do about it. The next week you follow up on that. You pray and encourage one another. Somebody a year or two ahead of you runs it, and after a while, you do.
Nobody is called on. Nobody is graded. Nobody is going to make you pray out loud. If you miss a week, somebody texts you, and that’s the whole point.
It’s one hour, and it’s an hour you defend. That’s the part that makes it work.
Who’s running this
We’ve sat across from a lot of students who meant to keep following Jesus in college, and watched their schedule quietly win.
We’re new at Iowa. Travis isn’t new at this — he’s been teaching people to follow Jesus since 2013, and he has teams in Denver, Las Vegas, and Iowa. He lives in Iowa City.
Travis Gluckler — Campus Director
(319) 359-7117 · travis@arkidentity.com
Text him. He answers.
Pick your day and time.
Your name and a number. 30 seconds
Come sit in on one.
One table, one hour, no commitment. Nothing to bring. This week
Keep the same hour every week.
Same four people, all semester. Ongoing
Four years from now, if nothing changes.
Freshman year you tried to make Jesus a priority. By junior year he’d been in the background so long you stopped noticing.
Your Bible is the one your church gave you at graduation, and you know exactly where it is.
You go home in the summer and go with your parents, and it feels like visiting.
You graduate with a degree, and the faith you showed up with is the one thing college took.
It doesn’t have to go that way.
Four years from now.
There’s an hour on your calendar you’ve defended since freshman year.
You open your Bible without needing a reason to.
Three people know your worst semester because they were in it.
There’s a table meeting every week at Iowa that exists because you started it.
And when you graduate, it keeps going without you.
Pick your day and time
Your name and a number. Somebody texts you, and that’s it.
Not ready to sit down with three other people?
Start on your own. Ten minutes a day — the same thing a table does, minus the other three.
Bible. Listen. Obey. Repeat.
That’s it. Ten minutes, every day, and it’s free.
Get the journalWho else would do this with you at a table?
The questions people are too polite to ask
- Is this a cult?
- Fair question. Everything we teach comes straight out of the Bible, and we’ll tell you exactly what we believe before you ever sit down. Nobody asks you for money. You can stop coming any week and nobody will chase you. We meet in fours because it’s the only size where everybody actually talks, not because we’re hiding.
- I don’t have time.
- One hour a week, at a time you pick. If none of the times work, tell us and we’ll start one that does.
- Is it guys and girls together?
- Separate — guys with guys, girls with girls. A table of four gets honest fast, and that’s easier when it isn’t mixed.
- I don’t really know what I believe.
- Then you’re the easiest person to have at a table. Bring the questions. Nobody’s going to ask you to perform.
- I already go to Cru, or Salt, or a church.
- Good, keep going. This isn’t instead of that. This is the four people who read the Bible with you during the week.
- Do I have to talk?
- Not the first time. Or the second.
- Do I have to know the Bible?
- No. If you needed to already know it, we wouldn’t be much use.
- Does it cost anything?
- No. And we’re never going to ask you for money.
- What if I don’t click with the other three?
- Tell us and we’ll move you. No explanation, no hard feelings. Four people is small enough that fit matters, so we’d rather move you than lose you.
- What if I miss a week?
- Somebody texts you. That’s the whole point.
- What happens after a year?
- You’ll know how to lead a table well enough to start your own. Most people do, around a year in. That’s not a job we talk you into. It’s what the year was for.
- What do you believe?
- Nothing unusual. The same things the church has believed for two thousand years, and it’s all written out — worth two minutes before you come. Read it here.
One hour a week, three other people, and by the end of the year you’ll know how to lead a table of your own.
We’ll save you the seat.
ARK Iowa — a campus ministry at the University of Iowa.
- What we believe
- Who we are
- We’re hiring
- (319) 359-7117 · travis@arkidentity.com · Iowa City, IA
Parents: that number goes straight to Travis. Call it.