Before you start
What a campus needs before anything gets booked.
Every ministry, not most of them
A night that four ministries put on is a big event four ministries put on. A night that every ministry puts on is the campus doing something together, and students can tell the difference before anyone speaks. At Indiana University the coalition was 12 ministries and it was built before a room was reserved.
Somebody has to own it
A coalition is not a committee. A Night with the Son at Indiana University was organized by one student who carried the thing end to end and kept every ministry informed. Shared ownership of the night is the goal; shared ownership of the logistics is how it stalls.
The ministries have to still be there in the morning
The night is one evening. The ministries that put it on meet all year, and they are the reason it counts for anything. If the ministries on your campus are not already meeting weekly and ready to receive people, build that first — there is nowhere to hand anyone off to.
The room has to be the biggest one you have
Not the biggest one you are confident of filling. The size of the room is part of the invitation: it tells a student who has never been to anything like this that the whole campus is going. At Indiana University that meant the basketball arena, Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.
The four steps
How a night gets built, in order.
Unite the whole campus
Every ministry on campus comes to the night to worship together.
Go to every Christian ministry on the campus, one at a time, and ask them to put on one night together. Not to attend one. To put one on. The ask is that they lend their name, their students and their leaders to a night that none of them will get the credit for individually.
At Indiana University
12 ministries signed on at Indiana University: Greek IV, Chi Alpha, Salt Company, CSF, FCA, Navigators, RUF, Cru, IV Undergrad, AIA, The Loft, Asian Christian Fellowship. They span denominations, Greek life, athletics and international and Asian American student communities, and every one of them already met weekly.
Watch for
This is the step that takes the longest and the only one with no shortcut. Ministries have their own calendars, their own donors and their own reasons to be cautious about lending their students to someone else's event. Expect to explain the handoff — that everyone who responds gets sent back into their ministries — more than once.
Book the biggest room on it
We book and fill the school's basketball arena, so that students from all over campus are encouraged to come.
Reserve the largest venue on campus, which at most schools is the basketball arena. Book it only once the coalition exists, because the coalition is the plan for filling it. Work through the university's own venue and event services rather than around them; a student organization booking its own arena is a process the school already has.
At Indiana University
Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall at Indiana University, on a Wednesday night in April. 7,500 people came, including more than 4,000 IU students.
Watch for
A midweek evening in term time is not an accident — it is when students are on campus and not travelling. Ask early about what the venue requires of you beyond the rental itself: staffing, security, production and insurance are usually separate lines and are usually not optional.
Worship, then the gospel
A full night of worship, then speakers who answer questions that students have.
Build the night around worship, then a speaker who takes the questions students actually ask rather than the ones that are comfortable to answer. Keep it short enough that nobody checks the time.
At Indiana University
1 hour 45 minutes. Tiffany Hudson of Elevation Worship led worship for the full night — seven songs. Cliffe and Stuart Knechtle of Give Me An Answer spoke, and the message ran roughly forty minutes. The Knechtles have spent decades answering the questions students ask on college campuses, and Cliffe stayed two more days for open Q&A.
Watch for
The invitation matters as much as the lineup. At Indiana University, Fernando Mendoza and Omar Cooper Jr. — both of whom went on to be drafted in the first round in 2026 — helped invite the campus, which reached students no ministry's mailing list touches.
Hand off to the ministries
Everyone who responds leaves knowing which ministry to walk into that week. The night is one evening. The ministries that put it on meet all year.
Decide before the night how a person who responds gets connected to a specific ministry that meets that week. Not a mailing list, not a follow-up email in ten days — a named group, a day, a time and a room. This is planned in advance or it does not happen at all.
At Indiana University
134 people committed their lives to Jesus for the first time and 632 recommitted — 766 in total. 1,850 committed to sharing the gospel more, and 325 committed to joining a church or ministry. All 766 left knowing which of the 12 coalition ministries to walk into that week.
Watch for
This is the step that turns a good night into something that outlasts the week, and it is the one most likely to be left until the run-of-show is already written. The reason the coalition comes first is that it is the only thing that makes this step possible.
Open questions
What we can’t tell you yet.
What does it cost?
We have not published a budget and will not extrapolate one from a single night. What we can tell you is what drives it: the venue rental and the staffing the venue requires with it, production and audio, and whatever worship leadership and speakers require. Those four lines will dominate any campus's number, and their sizes differ enormously between schools. Ask us and we will tell you what ours actually were.
How long does it take?
Longer than the room takes to book, because the coalition is the long pole and it moves at the speed of a dozen separate organizations agreeing to something. We have run this once, so any timeline we published would be one data point dressed up as a rule.
Will you run it for us?
One campus at a time. We go where a campus is ready to go together, and we would rather help one campus do this properly than put a logo on several. Tell us where you are and what your coalition looks like today.
Contact
Tell us about your campus
If you are seriously scoping a night, the useful first message is short: your school, which ministries are on it, and which of them you have already spoken to.