Realizing that college students could lose a connection to God and their church under the pressure of university studies, the Adventist Student Association (ASA) has renewed its focus on ministry and outreach to those students in the South Pacific. This included a recent leadership training session and a call for church members to help them connect with these students.

“According to a recent review of Australian data over 15 years, about 70 percent of Adventist university students stop attending church in their first two months of study,” says ASA president Dr. Sven Ostring.

“Most don’t purposely reject church or God. They’re just tired and under time pressure, or they know no one in their new city,” he says. “But if they’re not contacted and welcomed, they can soon drop out permanently.”

ASA is the coordinating organization for tertiary-student ministry, connecting a number of local Adventist student societies and working with conference-appointed chaplains. ASA—which receives support and funding from both the South Pacific church region and Australian church leadership—plans to contact an estimated 3,000 Adventist university students across Australia and New Zealand in March.

But, says Ostring, they need church members’ help to know who and where the students are. “Our ‘Dob in [Suggest] a Student’ campaign asks friends, family, youth leaders, church elders—anyone who knows and cares about a university student—to send their names and contact details to ASA,” he says. “We’ll invite them to a local church, to student socials and camps, and to service opportunities.”

This campaign reflects the renewed focus on university student ministry, evident at—and further inspired by—the ASA leadership training held in Adelaide from Jan. 31 to Feb. 3, according to Ostring.

“The new direction of ASA is purposeful mission in taking the gospel to university campuses both locally, nationally and across the Asia-Pacific region,” says Ostring.

As part of this push, ASA has also formulated plans to extend their impact beyond the existing local student societies. “At the leadership training event, there were students ... who went away inspired to develop student ministries in their locations,” reports Ostring. “ASA has plans to visit Canberra, Hobart and Darwin with the view to establishing university ministries there. And the university chaplain from Fiji also attended the ASA leadership training. He also has the task of building up the student ministry in Vanuatu and other Pacific islands.”

Ostring describes the leadership training and interaction with other leaders as inspiring, “leaving student leaders with a clear sense of the exciting mission that God has for them back in their home universities and overseas.” He says the main reason the ASA leadership training was a success is that God has evidently placed on many people’s hearts the love that He has for university students.