Source: Justin Long’s Weekly Roundup, May 30, 2025
Two political trends are slamming into American universities, and ministries to international students will feel the shock.
The first is the geopolitics of China and the USA. Chinese students, in particular, are being targeted for visa revocation. The second is the political dustup between the administration and “elite” universities over DEI, campus speech, and the like.
International students may, as a result, be sent home (or elsewhere). The implication for missiological strategies in the USA: for a long time, there has been a strategy of “reaching the nations [that] are coming here.”
It is now perhaps time for international student ministry’s turn to feel what refugee ministry already did. This trend will also affect many Christian colleges that likewise rely on international students as a significant portion of their revenue stream. All of this might be reversed in another three years—given current patterns, it might reverse in another three months. But I wouldn’t count on it. I suspect that people who have student visas are living on borrowed time, and many may end up moving to universities in other countries.
Read the rest of this commentary.
Note that an annual event for people who work with international students takes place this week (June 5-7), and it’s all online (Association of Christians Ministering Among Internationals).