This blog post is adapted from an article I wrote a few years ago for , a semi-academic journal for people teaching in the theological disciplines. I have updated the article to reflect the fact that Trudi and I have now been living in community with students for the past eight years — not eighteen months as when I wrote the original article.

Before I entered the world of academia, I lived for seven years in the Middle East. It was in the Middle East, where hospitality and community life are fundamental cultural values, that my wife Trudi and I learned the value of community-oriented learning. Accordingly, when we packed our bags to return to the United States so I could pursue post-graduate studies and college-level teaching, I didn’t do so merely to become an academic nerd — though I wear the nerd-badge proudly. As with many who read this journal, my goal was to prepare students to impact the world for the Lord Jesus Christ — intellectually, spiritually, relationally — that is, to help them grow into young men and women who were equipped to make a lasting impact in whatever sphere of influence God placed them.

It didn’t take long as an early-career professor, however, to realize that my lectures and class discussions — scintillating though they were(!) — were not going to achieve all that I hoped would take place in my students. So once a week for ten years, Trudi and I invited students to our house for dinner (and some “table talk”). In addition, I set aside regular individual and small-group opportunities on campus for students with the hope that together we could process the theological, personal and relational challenges that my students were trying to negotiate outside of class.

But Trudi and I never lost sight of the power of life-in-community to shape hearts and minds such as we had experienced among communally-minded Christians in the Middle East. Thus, eight years ago, when God opened up an opportunity for us to move to a property (only two miles from Biola University where I teach in the Talbot School of Theology) that encompassed three separate living spaces — including three front doors and three separate kitchens! — my wife and I leapt at the opportunity. During the eight years we have lived in community with students (dubbed “The Berdhouse” by some of our early community members — note my last name…) we have housed nine, ten, or eleven students each year for a running total of seventy. (Seventy almost sounds biblical! — see Numbers 11:16 and Luke 10:1).

As a community, we meet six times a semester for community meals (and, of course, “table talk”), weekly personal mentoring times (either in one-on-one or two-on-one formats), optional morning prayer times, and have even done an occasional outreach together. These, however, are only the activities that appear on our shared Google Calendar. Our physical proximity allows us to cross paths with one another frequently, leading to informal conversations and, perhaps even better, epic table tennis matches!

It turns out that the idea of professors living with students is not quite as unusual as we thought when we launched this little mentoring community. A few years ago, U.S. News & World Report published a piece about colleges and universities where professors (and sometimes their families) live in dorms with students. The article claimed that “faculty-in-residence programs have proliferated, and an online search yields dozens, if not hundreds, of university websites detailing programs that embed faculty in dorms.” A growing body of research suggests a positive correlation with “satisfaction, persistence, learning,\ and personal development” for students in “living-learning” communities, that is, in settings where students and professors live and study in close proximity to one another. In addition to such educational benefits, students who have access to a professor outside of the classroom gain in other ways, most importantly to me in the areas of spiritual, moral, and relational formation. Trudi and I regularly hear students comment about how much they have learned about marriage simply by watching the way we interact with each other. Other students communicate their desire to show hospitality to others in the future after experiencing the warmth of our home. One student told us that she had never seen what a healthy family looked like until she shared dinner with us.

What are the pitfalls of living in community with students? Not long ago, Trudi and I looked at each other and acknowledged how tired we felt from so many years of doing this ministry. The emotional toll that community living takes on a natural introvert such as I can be palpable. Community activities also use up much of my time that could otherwise be allotted to writing, speaking, academic leadership and ministry in my local church. Moreover, some of the students who have lived in our little community have concurrently been students in classes I’ve taught. It can feel a little jarring to pray in the morning with a student about the burdens he or she is carrying, and then assign a low grade to the same student for a less-than-stellar paper submitted later the same day. Depending upon the arrangement, community living can present financial challenges as well. In our case, we collect rent from the students who share this community with us, since only in combination with their money and ours are we able to pay the large mortgage we took out to acquire this property. Honestly, we secretly dread the day when one of our students faces a genuine financial crisis and asks for grace on paying rent.

Community living is not an option for many professors, though it can be a powerful life choice for some. For those who cannot be so connected, it still inspires ideas for how to build more community-life into our relationships with students in smaller ways. One professor I know sits at a table outside our campus coffee shop for two hours on the same day of every week, inviting all comers to join him for coffee and discussion about — anything. Professors can serve alongside students (an evening at a soup kitchen), pray alongside students (a once-a-week prayer time in the campus chapel), read books with students (a reading club), sing with students (join the choir), play with students (intramural volleyball). It’s doing the same types of activities my wife and I do with students, even though you might not be your students’ next-door neighbor.

Our prayer is that this ministry will encourage students to be deeply rooted in God’s Word, faithful to prayer, committed to their local Christian communities (churches), growing in wisdom, learning social skills, and on a mission to impact the world for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Addendum and life update: This may be the last year that Trudi and I will be able to lead the residential discipleship ministry described above — though we are committed to continuing discipling students and opening up our home for years to come. A few months ago we received notice that we were going to be dropped by our homeowner’s insurance company. After an extensive search, we found a short-term solution for the current academic year, but it really isn’t sustainable over the long term. We have learned that insuring a property such as ours while housing so many unrelated-to-us students is viewed as precarious from an insurance standpoint — despite the quality of students we accept each year! Since Trudi and I both hold to a high view of God’s sovereignty, we are seeking to trust him in the midst of whatever he intends through this upcoming life change. We are so very grateful for the eight years of ministry and the seventy wonderful students with whom we’ve shared community life and friendship at The Berdhouse over the past eight years. (See also I wrote in July during the time we were searching for a solution to our insurance debacle.)

This and other resources are available at .

Notes

The original article was: “Sharing a Home—And So Much More: Benefits and Challenges of Living in Community with Students,” Didaktikos: Journal of Theological Education (July 2019): 8-10.

This goal aligns with the mission statement of Biola University where I teach: “The mission of Biola University is biblically centered education, scholarship and service — equipping men and women in mind and character to impact the world for the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Menachem Wecker, “At Some Colleges, Professors Live in Dorms, too,” October 10, 2011. . Accessed November 27, 2018.

Frank Shushok and Rishi Sriram, (2010). “Exploring the Effect of a Residential Academic Affairs-Student Affairs Partnership: The First Year of an Engineering and Computer Science Living-Learning Center,” Journal of College and University Student Housing 36 (2010): 76. Also Ernest T. Pascarella and Patrick T. Terenzini, How College Affects Students: Volume 2, A Third Decade of Research, vol. 2 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005), 604, 647.