A Theory of Campus Fellowships

When I first came to UVA, I was surprised by the number of various Christian groups on Grounds. I remember being bombarded by flyers, events, and people that all wanted to introduce me to their respective fellowship. There was Chi Alpha, Cru, InterVarsity, Grace Christian Fellowship, Asian InterVarsity, RUF, the list goes on…

This reminded me of Tiebout’s theory of local expenditures, which says that the consumer-voter can be seen as picking a community that best satisfies preferences for public goods given set revenue-expenditure patterns under some certain assumptions. To describe some of the more relevant assumptions we can make that are similar to his model, you could say that students interested in joining a Christian fellowship at UVA have full mobility as the cost of moving from one fellowship to another can be trivial, although there are potential search costs and “startup” costs associated with looking for a different fellowship to join and making new friends, these costs are usually not considered to be very high when you are first entering college. Furthermore, there are many choices as described earlier. You can also argue that each fellowship has its own optimal size, whether it due to the capacity of the staff, buildings that they use, or ministries that they serve in. As a result, students at UVA might look to see which fellowships offer the type of services and experiences that they want, and decide based upon that. This is not limited to Christian fellowships at UVA; this article describes a scenario in which a consumer-voter came to one specific church on weeks they offered snow cones and another on the other weeks. 

In reality, this isn’t a perfect analogy. Students don’t have full knowledge of the “revenue-expenditure patterns” of the different communities, and most would probably argue that such a view on choosing a fellowship is very consumerist and contrary to their beliefs about church, as discussed later in the same article. However, this is a pattern that can still be observed, not only among people choosing a fellowship or church, but also a sorority/fraternity, cultural organization, or the like.