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Short and simple today, but it’s still a chance for brave, strategic college ministries to “go for broke”:
Start a (school-serving) tradition on your campus.
Believe it or not, your ministry would be far from the first to begin something that a campus tribe rallies around. There are instances of Orientation Week events that have been adopted by the school itself, T-shirts that have “made it big,” campus-wide games that have caught on far beyond the ministry’s normal circle, and so on.
And when this works, it has the potential to serve students – or even the campus and its long-term aims. There may be a strong recruiting or evangelism angle to some new traditions, whether through direct contact or through building bridges from the tradition to those things. Maybe certain traditions could help bring some needed funds to your ministry (like through T-shirt or other sales), or maybe by building this tradition with other organizations (Christian or otherwise), you’ll grow some amazing connections!
There’s no way I can wade into all the possibilities, though, because traditions are possibly the most contextual of all the characteristics of the campus tribes. So coming up with new traditions is a contextual art – and it’s also an area that would be really easy to fail in.
But that’s the idea of this “Going for Broke” series: Offering ideas that require a lot of wisdom and skill, but that might just be worth considering!
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This idea popped up as a Fridea a couple of years ago, but it seemed fitting for the “Going for Broke” series. This series offers some rather drastic ideas – they won’t fit every campus ministry, but they’re still worth thinking about!
When the new semester comes around, what if you took a week off to let student leaders absolutely “run things” all week – whatever “things” happen to compose your ministry?
I think that idea’s self-explanatory enough, but here are some thoughts if you need ‘em:
- Leader qualifications still apply; students who wouldn’t shepherd other students when you’re present certainly shouldn’t while you’re absent.
- Your “absence” is a relative idea. Some of you might give students the reins but keep a present, watchful eye. Others may choose to step out completely – to “go for broke” – and simply be “on call” all week.
- Of course, it doesn’t have to be a full week OR you don’t have to be absent from everything. It’s your call.
- Of course, this could also be longer than a week. It’s your call.
- Be sure to prepare your students.
- Be sure to debrief your students when it’s all done.
- Prepare yourself: for a weird ministry week… and for a few great new methods that you’d never thought of.
Oh, and one more:
- Don’t smile too much at your students’ challenges, and repeat after me: this isn’t revenge, it’s discipleship!
As always, we start with purposes, not with a “cool idea” that we then make up “purposes” for. If this method doesn’t match what God desires to accomplish now in your students and in your ministry, shelve it; it might come in handy later on. If you do give this sort of thing a try, don’t forget that it won’t only disciple your students, but it will give you the chance to assess how well you’re raising them up. (Scary, huh?)
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I’ll be posting a new series over the next couple of weeks or so, just in time for the Christmas Break (for most of us, at least). My genuine hope is that whether you’re in a “go for broke” place with your ministry or happily cruising, these ideas will get you thinking about your vision for the coming months, semesters, and years.
going for broke: big leaps for better impact
At the end of yet another Fall Semester (or Quarter), is your college ministry where it’s supposed to be?
Notice, I’m not asking if your ministry is all it could possibly be – of course things could be better. But sometimes when we acknowledge that need and then point to the small ways we’re incrementally improving, we’re missing better, bigger ways we should be improving.
It’s possible to hide behind our plans for perpetual perfecting when instead big shifts are needed. These could be shifts in who you’re reaching, how you use your own time as a college minister, or the overall structure of your ministry. They might involve adjusting a long-practiced part of your ministry… or doing away with it altogether.
The truth is, even college ministries that seem to be going swimmingly should consider major adjustments from time-to-time. (Considering isn’t implementing, after all.) Sometimes even the act of pondering the potentialities gives us insight into our ministries we didn’t have before. We might not make all those big leaps we consider, but we might realize smaller steps worth taking through that process.
And every once in awhile, a big leap is exactly what’s called for.
This could have been a standalone post. Because it is an encouragement to use the next month to pray and think through “going for broke” in any area of your ministry. So, for today, I do want to encourage that process to begin (maybe even today). Give yourself some time (and the permission) to think about big shifts.
But I want to do more. So scattered through the posts of the next couple of weeks, I’m planning to post thoughts on “going for broke”:
- ways some ministries might want to consider taking big leaps,
- and thoughts on why, when, and how we should make major shifts in our college ministries
I think it’ll be a unique series, and I’m looking forward to it – in some ways, I think it’ll be especially fun to write (so I hope it will be fun to read, too).
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The last couple of posts have dealt with the idea of college students stepping up as (even) more than normal Student Leaders – seeing themselves as your fellow College Ministers, indigenous missionaries to their own campuses.
If you can get your students to that point, then spending time brainstorming with them only makes sense. Yes, they’ll need direction. Yes, they’ll probably have to hear some “Nos” to their Big Ideas – although couching that response in “we’ll have to see if it works out” terms may be good. (Better, help your newly-fellow college ministers see why lots of ideas, though “good,” aren’t best.)
What if this sort of brainstorming became the focus of a special night – or even a college student (or leadership team) retreat?
“Brainstorming Brouhaha?” “Conspire Camp?” “Rack-our-brains Retreat?” Whatever you call it, if it’s done well, letting students brainstorm about specific areas and possibilities could unleash all sorts of great new ideas. They are, after all, the indigenous leaders – there’s a reason foreign missionaries try to raise them up to impact their own tribes.
Like I noted yesterday, that’s what we saw at the retreat I spoke at last weekend: several Stanford and/or Santa Clara students considering new outreach they might engage in on a local community college campus. It was exciting, and it was new.
One tip for making this great
Before I close out this Fridea, I want to point back to a principle that will make-or-break this experience for your ministry: learning to build forms around purposes, not vice versa. (I call it Backwards College Ministry, and you can read about it here.) Teach your students that stuff first, and this activity really could generate some fantastic next steps for your campus ministry.
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Yesterday, I decried two aspects of our field that I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten a “bird’s eye view” of what’s taking place across the country:
- A general homogeneity in the organization / structure of most college ministry work around the country – a “sameness” that doesn’t seem to reflect the wild diversity between (and within) the campus settings we serve.
- A disconnectedness among college ministers, leading to a lack of principle-sharing and wisdom-sharing (and therefore broad difference in the very things that could use a little more standardization)
So since it is indeed Friday, I wanted to throw out a few basic-but-powerful Frideas (both BIG and little) to fight these problems – and improve our own campus ministries in the process. Even if you just pick one or two to focus on for the rest of the semester, I bet you’ll see real invigoration in your work…
Fighting the Sameness
- Pray for insight and consider which parts of your ministry you incorporated “automatically,” whether that happened this year or twenty years ago.
- Consider which parts of your ministry are there just because “students like it that way” or “supporters like hearing about that,” not because it fits your purposes best.
- Go through your ministry’s activities and aspects, step-by-step, auditing for how well each is accomplishing its purpose. Consider for each one what might happen if you did it more, bigger, less, smaller… or if you scrapped it altogether.
- Ask if any parts of your ministry are context-specific, that likely wouldn’t fit most other campuses. If you don’t have any (or only have a very few), you’re probably not contextual enough.
- Fall in love with your campus (all over again). Get to know its peculiarities, its complexities, its eccentricities. Then reach it in light of those glories, not in spite of them.
Fighting the Disconnection
- Consider how many aspects of your ministry have been touched / tweaked by wisdom gleaned from others (especially other college ministers). There should be a lot.
- Take a day trip or midweek, multi-day trip to another campus. Meet with several college ministers there; even attend a few ministry functions. Take a lot of notes.
- Ask regional / state coordinators (whether or not they’re in your organization / denomination) who is doing awesome things in an aspect your ministry could use help with. Contact the campus ministers they suggest.
- Ask those same regional / state coordinators who’s doing awesome things in an area you think your ministry is really good at. Contact the campus ministers they suggest.
- Get yourself to a college minister’s conference! Any college minister’s conference. Whether or not you’re the exact “target audience” for that college minister’s conference. Sit and listen. A lot. Take a lot of notes.
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I wanted to revisit one of my favorite recent posts today, encouraging us to consider – strongly – spending time this school year building a stronger college ministry. My encouragement back in August, as it is now, is to pick at least one of the following “hills”… and climb it this semester.
Now that we’re past those invaluable first weeks of school (at least if your school is on the Semester system), I urge you to ponder these ideas.
How much better will your ministry be in November or March than it is in August?
Ministry improvement should be a year-round endeavor, not just something we tackle in the summer or at an occasional conference. In fact, many avenues for growth are only or primarily available when school’s in session. So hopefully you’re considering how you can move your ministry from a “7″ to a “8″ (or even from a “2″ to a “4″) well before next June.
As we stand at the base of a new semester, we have the choice to keep our ministries here for nine months… or to carry them toward new heights! So as you look at the possibilities for improving your college ministry, consider tackling at least one or two of these hills.
Strong small group leader training. Most small group leaders (students, adults, or even staff) aren’t naturally great small group leaders.
There are small-group-leadership skills (practical and spiritual) that can be taught, trained, tried, tested. While plenty of your leaders might be useful and impactful, if they’re untrained… they’re still untrained. Yet small groups are, for most college ministries, the “front lines” of discipling students – why leave this area underdeveloped?
Want to see your college ministry improve quickly? Significantly training your small group leaders might make the biggest difference of all.
Evaluating effectiveness (instead of impressions). If your big evaluation questions are “What went over well? What fell flat?,” then your effectiveness is suffering. (Even worse, of course, is not evaluating at all.)
The impressions we campus ministers take away from a big event, a message we deliver, or an entire semester aren’t of primary importance. Even less important are the impressions our students walk away with. OF COURSE impressions matter… but they simply don’t matter as much as overall effectiveness matters. Our biggest question for every activity has to be, “How well did we accomplish the purposes we planned around?” …which of course implies some things about how we planned in the first place!
Make this your primary assessment after every activity, and every aspect of your ministry will benefit.
Tailoring your ministry. If your decisions and activities aren’t particularly campus-specific, you’re not succeeding (or loving!) like you could be.
Another hill to consider climbing this Fall? More consciously tailoring your work to your specific campus. I’ve seen how different campuses are from each other, but college ministries don’t share nearly that level of variation. But just like with loving individuals, adapting our work to the campus will provide the best impact. You might even invent brand-new forms of ministry, after you notice the necessities and opportunities around you.
You have a unique mission field. Is yours a unique mission?
Learning your calling. If you’re not a learner, you’re not the college minister you should be.
Please notice that I didn’t say, “If you’re not a natural learner…” Not nearly all campus ministers have a personality bent toward regular learning. But if God has called us to college ministry, he’s called us to get better at college ministry – a field full of skills, aptitudes, areas of inquiry, and better methods to be explored.
So if you’re hoping to “up your ministry’s game,” it might have to start with… upping your game as a college minister. There are resources to learn from, and there are people to learn from. If you make it a priority, you can be a better college minister long before next summer.
Building barns. If your semesters aren’t building on each other, why expect a better ministry in the future?
The principle of Barn-building (taken from Tim Elmore’s Habitudes) teaches us that given two choices, we should choose to build our barn before we build our house… because the barn helps pay for the house! In our college ministries, we should be investing in a better future; though “Barn-building” may exist behind-the-scenes, it’s paving the way for greater impact.
This may mean training future leaders, choosing to teach on foundation-building topics, exploring support-raising avenues, spending months exploring a new ministry avenue, or building “quality” into your ministry before aiming for “quantity.” Even the four other ideas in this post have an aspect of Barn-building within them, too.
Barn-building isn’t as flashy or fun as our more obvious programs, but it makes all the difference for future semesters. So while Barn-building may not fit perfectly under “Ways to Improve Your Ministry for Fall 2011,” your College Ministry of Fall 2012 will thank you for attending to it now!
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As I spoke to the team of student leaders last weekend, one theme I visited was the concept of “Better Brainstorming.” It’s something I’ve discussed before here on the blog; you can listen to a longer version at the links below. (There’s a shorter, somewhat different explanation at this post, too.)
The purpose of this method is to help anyone creatively “tweak” their present ideas to better accomplish their purposes – even those ministers or students who don’t feel they’re very naturally “creative.”
But I added something to my explanation this weekend: Not only did I encourage students to consider how they might adjust the “Who,” “What,” “When,” and “Where” of their projects, I also urged them to add a With Whom axis. I told them that for each of their plans and events, they needed to purposely consider what other teams might be good to consult or cooperate with.
If the Activities Team plans a Game Night, they probably don’t have to take care of everything themselves. They can get some advertising fliers designed by the Advertising Team. The Freshman Team can make sure to tell first-year students specifically. The Team devoted to reaching out to another, underserved local campus can help Activities figure out an appropriate date/time if they want those students to attend. And so on.
There are always possibilities to bring more people into the discussion, and I love the model of cross-planning among campus ministry ministry teams. Each team can focus on building expertise in their area, then making it available for any project where it’s useful.
I realize not every college ministry has this sort of developed “Ministry Team” structure. But many ministries have individual students, volunteers, or staff members devoted – formally or informally – to individual areas of the ministry. The more these leaders see each other as resources and teammates rather than simply “other leaders in charge of something different,” all the better.
For audio of my “Better Brainstorming” talks, Campus Ministry United has made them available. Just use the links below; either right-click to save the file to your computer (by clicking “Save Target As,” “Save Link As,” or something similar), or just click to play them directly.
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I’m sick today. Some sort of head-cold. Ug.
Apparently I was sick right about this time last year, when I wrote the post below (but I’ll add a little bit for today). It’s a good one (in my humble opinion), and there’s a lot you could do with it here at the beginning of the semester!
What if your college ministry developed a “care team” to encourage, minister to, and practically help students who are sidelined?
While my original thought here was loving on sick students, this could also work (and might be even more important for) those sidelined with other situations – family stuff, funerals, a service project or mission trip that cuts into school days, etc.
Before a team was developed, staff could be ready to handle this simple, awesome chance for service. But the more preparation you can do beforehand – assembling a team, buying materials for Care Packages, writing up a few plans – the better you’ll serve students in tough (or tough-ish) times.
This is all a chance to serve your flock – whether it’s as simple as having a stash of Get Well Soon cards ready to send, or something extravagant like sending in the troops to hand-deliver flowers, notes from their friends, or a blanket and candy (or whatever a student’s mom says they might enjoy – yes, you can call their parents to get ideas, and their parents will likely really appreciate your gesture).
For those missing school: Unlike high school, missing a college class often matters, especially when a student hasn’t planned ahead for the missed day. Does a student need to borrow somebody’s notes from class? Do they need info on assignments they can be working on? Talking to their profs about why a student is out might help, too. So could “filling in” if they have some sort of commitment that really needs a fill-in.
Of course, the ability and mobility of campus ministries vary. In fact, this kind of ministry might actually be easier for a smaller group, I’d imagine. But any group that generates community and networked-need-sharing could pull this off.
(In fact, if we can’t even imagine our students getting behind this kind of effort, we might not have developed much of a true “community” yet.)
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On the day after Labor Day – which may be for you the first school day after Big Fall Retreat, Big First Week, or Other Big Milestone – I have a simple encouragement.
Let this be the first day of something big.
Let this semester be a semester of growing a stronger college ministry. Not just running plays you devised in August (or May). Not just constantly “taking the temperature” of the students and (only) responding to their felt needs. Not only doing the same thing (pretty much) that you’ve done for the last three school years.
There are books to be read, other ministries to be visited, and new thoughts to be pondered at length. There are new groups of students to be reached, new issues to be addressed, and new spiritual growth – in your life, I mean – to be pursued.
I hope you’ve got plans for this ministry to be stronger at Christmas than it is right now. This may be the day to get that started.
(And if you need at least five more BIG ways you could choose to build your ministry NOW, here you go.)
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I started to write today’s Fridea about making good use of the Labor Day Weekend – taking a road trip, maybe, having a service day, preparing students for loving on their families if they go home.
But then I realized it’s kinda too late for that kind of planning. And THAT fact led me to an even better idea.
All year long, you’re going to think, “Oh! We should’ve done that!” kinds of thoughts. You’ll realize that Labor Day Weekend was a missed opportunity, that you should have taken part in that one campus-wide event, or that a six-week Bible study for graduating seniors would have been superb.
At other times, you’ll have “Here’s how we can do it better next time” thoughts. (Hopefully you have those a lot – if not, you might not be assessing your activities very well.)
Since both thoughts will rise all year long, here’s this week’s Fridea: Determine right now a reliable way you’ll record AND review your ideas for “next time around.”
I always have big thoughts about how I can do something better next time. But I don’t always jot down those ideas in-the-moment, often assuming it’s such a good idea that I’m bound to remember it when the time comes. Instead, it’s far better when I record those thoughts – and store them somewhere I know I’ll look.
Where / How is going to look different for everybody. Maybe you need to put these kinds of ideas (with an alarm) in the calendar on your phone. Maybe it’s just a Word doc and a well-placed folder (although even then, an alarm to remind you to review them could help). A filing system and a determination always to review past notes. A journal handed down by the student leaders who organize each activity.
Whatever.
The point is, you’re going to think of tweaks – hopefully lots of them – to make future activities even better. It’s a shame if those “tweak decisions” don’t make it on the docket for next year. (And it’ll be a little embarrassing when you think those exact same thoughts – again a little too late – next year!)
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