Welcome New Students

Welcome to the LCU community and family.

I am excited to be a part of a new chapter in your life. I am already thinking about when you walk across the stage in a few very short years (it will “go much faster” than HS) to receive your diploma. I want to see you fully prepared (professionally, spiritually) to competently serve in the Kingdom of God. I am excited!

I can’t wait to get to know you more. But in the meantime, Here is a little bit about me.

My name is Rondel Ramsey, and I am the youth ministry professor and head of the Children and Family Ministry and Youth and Family Ministry programs. However, I have my doctorate, but please call me Rondel.

Prior to joining the LCU faculty in the fall of 2001, I was the youth and education minister at Central Church of Christ in Streator, Illinois for 15 years. It was the best 15 years of my life. I LOVED it. In addition to all of the youth ministry stuff, for the first 5 years, I oversaw the adult education program including starting and leading our senior adult ministry program called Young at Heart. For the first 10 years, I did children’s ministry (VBS, acted in our Kid’s Choirs, led our after-school programming). For all 15 years, I was involved in our college-age ministry, deaned and co-deaned camps of all ages, led our church’s worship band and traveled with them all over Illinois, and was involved in all of the other staff-related ministries (married, buried, and baptized). AND, I did my main job which was leading the youth ministry. I built, developed, and empowered a team of adult leaders and together we traveled on mission trips, to youth conferences, went skiing, had incredible winter retreats, and had a blast each week in ministry. In addition, I partnered with parents so that they could disciple their own kids to maturity. Our youth ministry was crazy: we had guns brought to outreaches and guys thrown through plate glass windows. And, oh yeah, I saw countless lives changed for Christ. One year we sent 16 students to LCU to study for ministry. Crazy fun.

I loved youth ministry, miss leading local youth ministry, and have a passion to prepare the next wave of children and youth ministers who are consumed to make disciplemakers. Besides my involvement here at LCU, I serve in the student ministry program at my church, Lincoln Christian Church, where my son, Zach, is the youth minister. I also speak for conferences, churches, and consult for churches and youth ministries.

(Here is a little bit more about me, my education, my interests, and the rest of my family.)

I hope you have an incredible year of spiritual growth, ministry preparation, wisdom gaining, growing youth passion, and simply a great time being a Christian college student. May God truly bless you this year. Love God. Trust God. Obey God. Experience His goodness. Know him more to love him even deeper.

Let me close with what I consider to be a youth minister’s prayer for his youth, but I pray it for you, the youth workers who will impact thousands of students in the future.

“For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. 10 And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. 13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Colossians 1:9-14).

NEW STUDENT REGISTRATION DAY

You will be scheduled for a New Registration Day on the campus of LCU during the spring or summer. It is a chance for you to start your academic journey at LCU and a new chapter in your Kingdom ministry journey. Everything we do is to help prepare you for graduation day and you serving in a full-time profession in the kingdom of God.

There is a special login that you will be given if you have never taken courses at LCU.

Here are the instructions for new student registration (in case you need it)

AFTER YOU GET REGISTERED

• Access your course schedule - Now that you are all logged in to the LCU system, you can go back to the Student Portal and see your class schedule by clicking on “My Schedule.” Always be sure that you are in the correct semester. (Go to www.lincolnchristian.edu and click login and go to Student Portal. Remember, this will only work after you have completed the New Student Registration process.)

• Change your password - If you didn’t change your password from the temporary one given, do so right away using the instructions that you were given on your registration day. You will need at least a 16-digit password. I would suggest a sentence, like “mybestfriendisagoofball” This will need to be changed every 6 months.

  • As an adulting step, and because our password is really long, I would encourage you to get one of the password apps for your phone where you can store passwords, social security, and bank numbers, etc. It may cost you a bit, but it will be more secure than keeping all of that on your notes page. I use mSecure, I believe it was a one-time fee of $30. I use it all the time. There are just too many passwords to remember and they don’t let you type PASSWORD1 anymore!!! Ha.

• Order your books - You will want to get your books ordered using the instructions that you received on your registration day. That is very important. Be sure you use the ISBN numbers (13 digits) when ordering books (copy and paste them in the Amazon browser so that you will get the correct edition for each particular class). (Here are the PDF instructions for ordering books AND for using a voucher to put the books on your school bill, if you qualify)

  • Have a screen up for the courses that you are registered for.

  • Go to the Student Portal. Select the correct term (top-left). Click on Course Offerings. In the filter section, select MAIN (Campuses) and whatever your course prefix is (Department) and hit apply filter.

  • Be sure to notice the correct class - Check the section number (i.e., LA111.02). Sometimes, there are different professors teaching different sections of the same course name.

  • Then select the Book List button next to the CORRECT COURSE. Copy the 13 digit ISBN number of each book from that class and paste it into a document so that you can order your books. Do this with all of your classes.

  • Then you can go to Amazon and paste each of the ISBN numbers (you may need to remove the dash) and add then add each book to your cart. You don’t have to get new books. You could get used ones. I try to figure if a used book is 8.99 and there is a 3.99 shipping charge but the new book is $15, I will usually just go for the new book. However, sometimes you can get really good deals. Realize too that these 3rd party shippers may take a lot longer to mail your books.

• Check your email - Be sure to check your LCU Gmail (your username@lincolnchristian.edu) for updates and instructions prior to starting your journey with us.

  • I would add this email address to your laptop or phone’s mail service.

  • Don’t use your LCU email for other situations (i.e., sign up for notifications from your bank) because you will only have access to the LCU email for a short time after you graduate or leave school.

• Check your Google Drive - Let’s get organized. Go to Google Drive (LCU version of it - click on the icon in the top right of Google Drive to switch accounts. Login using your LCU credentials).

  • Click on MY DRIVE and then set up your folders by clicking on NEW and FOLDER. Title your first folder as LCU. Then on the LCU folder click on NEW again and make a new folder under LCU titled MY STUFF (or whatever you want).

    • Go to the SHARED WITH ME folder under MY DRIVE and you should find a shared folder from me called STUDENT-RONDEL COMMUNICATIONS. Click on the small arrow to the left of MY DRIVE and you should see the MY STUFF folder. Drag that STUDENT-RONDEL COMMUNICATIONS folder into that MY STUFF folder. In that folder is a shared Suggested Course Sequence File that we will use to plan your classes out each semester. Don’t type anything in that file yet. It has a bunch of formulas. We will update it this next semester when we register for your following semester classes

  • Go back to the LCU folder you created under MY DRIVE and you can then make a new folder called LCU CLASSES. Under this folder, you could add your classes so that you can get organized and story your coursework for each of your classes in the appropriate folder. It might look something like this:

    • LCU

      • LCU Classes

        • CURRENT

          • LA101 Writing Studies 1

          • BI111 Intro to Bible

          • SS171 Psychology

          • TH160 Basic Christian Beliefs (BCB)

          • SC259 Chemistry and Lab

          • YM111 Orienteering for Family Ministry Students

        • PAST

      • MY STUFF

        • Student-Rondel Communications - this folder is a shared folder if we have to work on anything together. You will find a course schedule file that we will use when registering for classes.

BEFORE SCHOOL STARS

If you need help with any of this or you have general questions, do hesitate to ask. Call or text me. I will find out who can answer your question if I can’t. PDF instructions

• Get into a growth learning mindset instead of a fixed mindset.

  • Check out this overview between the two mindsets from a great blogger that I follow, Shane Parrish: Carol Dweck: A Summary of Growth and Fixed Mindsets (it has a video too!!)

  • You will need to develop a growth learning mindset. Why? LCU is a challenging school. Why? Because kingdom servant leaders must be as prepared to engage the world as they can possibly can. Ministry is challenging. We want you to be prepared, as much as we can get you prepared, in your short time with us.

• Read some good books. Check out some of my Favorite books.

• Get as much ministry experience as you can possibly get

• Enjoy your family. If the college experience is anything like me, I didn’t realize how big of a NEW chapter this was. I went to a school that about 6 hours away, so I didn’t get back home very often. But as we were leaving the house to move in at college, my mom was crying. My response to her was, “Why are you crying, mom. I’m just going to college.” I didn’t realize that I would never step into that house for longer than 2 weeks ever again, and that was just after the first semester. The next summer I was in High Point NC on a summer internship and then I got married the following summer. My mom knew that her little boy was gone. I only had 18 summers with my parents. So enjoy your family. Build memories. Hang out with your siblings and grandparents.

This is a big step. It’s exciting (and sad at times of what we leave behind.) And I can’t wait to join you on this journey. I am honored to play a small role in this journey. I so look forward to it.

LET THE JOURNEY BEGIN!!!