You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘organizational structure’ category.
As you may have noticed, this week I’ve been highlighting passages that I’ve found enormously impactful for my own understanding of college ministry – both as I’ve practiced it and as I’ve coached others in strengthening their own efforts.
Today I turn to the book Simple Church, a book I found phenomenally useful – even though (like Under the Unpredictable Plant that I discussed earlier this week) this one’s not actually written for college ministries and those who lead them. But it’s easily translatable for our field, as you’ll see with the passage below.
This part is near the front of a chapter on Movement – one of the aspects of college ministry I think receives far too little attention (although certainly some college ministries have grabbed hold of this really well!).
Simple church leaders have designed their simple process with movement in mind. The ministry process moves people to greater levels of commitment – with ever-increasing levels of discipleship. The simple process moves people through the process of spiritual transformation.
Congestion is gone.
Movement occurs naturally. People are not stuck in the same place. There is a plan for transformation. People are challenged to progress through the simple process. Change in the lives of people is expected.
According to our research, there is a significant relationship between the vitality of a local church and the movement of the church’s ministry process. Movement is the sequential steps in the process that causes people to move to greater areas of commitment.
Do you have a simple process that moves people? Or is your [campus ministry] full of congestion?
…If you want your process to move people, your programming must be strategic and sequential. You must also intentionally move people, offer a clear next step, and provide a class for new members.
If your brain just hit the brakes at the thought of that last suggestion, that’s understandable; remember, this is a book written for churches, not college ministers. But the other mandates – strategy, sequence, intentional movement, and clear next steps – certainly apply.
(And you know what? I’m not so sure some sort of “Introduction” to our college ministries wouldn’t add to the levels of community and identity in our ministries, even if we never actually introduce some sort of “membership.”)
—————————————————————————————
[Click to ask questions, comment, or see any comments on this post!]
Hopefully you’ve been able to link over to Guy Chmieleski’s blogathon this week! Yesterday’s posts provided a first round of thoughts on the future of our field, from six different perspectives!
My own entry is called “Further In: A Future of Deeper.” It begins,
The brightest future for any individual college ministry might be found in going deeper, not simply wider. And coincidentally, this could just be one of the most exciting paths forward for our field as a whole, too.After exploring the wide world of American college ministry over the last four years, I’m occasionally asked about anything that I’ve found disappointing. One of my common responses: “It all seems too similar.” I’ve seen hundreds of ministries in action (in all four branches of college ministry), and while I’m quite excited about what they’re doing, it’s still rare to find ones that seem, well, all that different.
Of course, I’m not saying ministries are identical. But it’s far too rare to find… [Keep reading - and add your thoughts - at the Blogathon!]
A couple of my other faves were Russ Martin’s very simple, very practical exhortation and Jamie Noling-Auth’s reminder about the half of our audience (or probably more!) that we may be missing…
I don’t know if you caught the Bill O’Reilly interview with Barack Obama before the Super Bowl on Sunday, but I was intrigued by one exchange. And, naturally, I tied it to what we do in campus ministry.
O’REILLY: “What is it about the job that has surprised you the most, that you weren’t prepared for coming in here?”
OBAMA: “I think that the thing you understand intellectually, but you don’t understand in your gut until you’re in the job, is that every decision that comes to my desk is something that nobody else has been able to solve. The easy stuff gets solved somewhere by somebody else. By the time it gets to me, you don’t have easy answers.”
O’Reilly noted that this meant “wave after wave of complicated problems,” to which the President agreed.
I really did find that answer fascinating. And it rings so true, doesn’t it? It makes sense for the President to only deal with the items that haven’t been solved by others.
But then it hit me: As college ministers, we actually may need to move a little closer to that.
We’re often on the opposite end of the spectrum, aren’t we? Many of us college ministers are handling nearly every issue, every concern that pops up. We don’t let student leaders, volunteers, or other staff handle set up for the Large Group Meeting or decide what snacks we’ll have at the Super Bowl Party.
Clearly, many college ministers don’t have the luxury of interns, associates, or even adult volunteers. But…
- Even some ministers with staff or adult volunteers are delegating far too little.
- We should all aim to raise up student leaders who are prepared enough to handle a major portion of the decisions and activities that make up our weekly ministry work.
I know everybody points to Exodus 18 and Jethro’s advice to Moses about delegating – but it was really good advice! We’re not nearly in the position the President is in, but many of us do need to push our ministries forward in the area of delegated responsibility. I know it means we’ll be left with mostly the complicated stuff… but it also means we’ll have time and energy for them!
—————————————————————————————
[Click to ask questions, comment, or see any comments on this post!]
What priority have you placed on recruiting over the next couple of weeks?
Nope, this isn’t a republication of a post from September. I’m curious: Will your campus ministry invest in drawing students, letting them know about your ministry, and encouraging them to plug in somewhere (even if not with you)?
And the second is like it…
How hard will you push students toward small groups or other discipleship in the coming weeks?
Can every student who attends your ministry take their “next steps of involvement,” or are you really going to make them wait for eight months?
I’m well aware that this sort of post will apply to some college ministries more than others. Some of us have “rolling admission” to our small groups, a year-round emphasis on advertising, or other practices that help students perpetually. At bigger campuses, the recruitment thing may even come somewhat automatically, since your school holds Activities Fairs (or similar things) as each semester begins.
But I fear that some of us have given the Machinery of our Ministry greater priority than the people we once set out to impact. We’ve placed tidy calendars over needy collegians. College students don’t actually schedule their lives or make their decisions year-to-year, no matter how much easier that would make our decision-making processes. Most of their lives and plans revolve around semesters (or quarters) to a certain extent, so we should probably at least try to reach them at those junctures.
Beyond that, though, there’s really no telling when a new student will need to be drawn into the fold, or when they’ll wake up to their need for more intimate community than they receive at our weekly Sing-and-Speak. Are the opportunities there? How have you organized for the perpetual work of God in students’ lives?
Or would we rather the sheep be shepherded on our timetables?
—————————————————————————————
[Click to ask questions, comment, or see any comments on this post!]
I find it a little… confusing… that many campus ministries seem to plan their entire programs on a year-to-year basis. I’m not sure we can know where our ministries are headed or what our students are going to be up to next week – let alone nine months from now. We’ve got all sort of new students coming through semester-by-semester, ideas that pop up that we need to run with, new issues to deal with directly, changes on campus, and even whole ministry identity-shifts every once in a while.
The truth is, I believe your ministry and your campus are both too exciting to plan a whole year at a time.
If you did “master plan” back in the summer, let me encourage you to consider what (or whom) should be added, subtracted, tweaked, spun off, reined in, increased, decreased, encouraged, discouraged, confronted, or otherwise changed.
In a few areas, you might consider “re-upping,” strategically reinvesting in some of the systems and opportunities you already have in place. So that happy note is our College Ministry Fridea for the week, and here are some examples:
Your leadership team: Depending on how you do student leadership, it’s likely some new potential leaders have arisen. Have you considered re-upping your commitment to involving students by opening the leadership application process once again?
Your small groups: If small groups are part of the DNA of your campus ministry, why oh why would you only have a “push” at the beginning of the school year? Some students have matured, others have become intrigued by hearing about the groups, and some are simply new. Re-up your commitment to small group discipleship by opening present groups – or forming new ones – for next semester or quarter.
Your vision and values: Students have short attention spans, and a good chunk of next semester’s group probably wasn’t around when you shared your vision and values last semester, anyway. Re-up.
Your recruitment: It’s crazy to think that students are only going to join in the first few weeks. And besides, there are students out there who have wandered from your college ministry or others… and they need to find a new community LONG before next August. (Plus, you won’t have nearly as much competition recruiting in January or February!)
Your programs or teams: There’s no way every good service idea, ministry team, or other ongoing program needs to wait ’til August. Are there some “new institutions” you can start in January? (Hey, it’s the perfect time to start slow, too, and gear up for the Fall…)
—————————————————————————————
[Click to ask questions, comment, or see any comments on this post!]
Yesterday, I started posting why the 2010 Texas Rangers might make a really great college ministry. As all of us here in Dallas look forward to Game 1 tonight, here are two more reasons… and don’t be surprised if you hear about some of this from the announcers this week.
2. Good stories
One ingredient that would make the Texas Rangers a cool campus ministry is some really great personal stories. Hopefully you’re well familiar with Josh Hamilton’s spiritual testimony; it’s available for all the world (and your college students) to see at I Am Second.
But there’s also reliever Alexi Ogando, who had a long, painful road to baseball after being caught up in a fake-marriage / sex trafficking scam in his native Dominican Republic. You can read that story here.
Colby Lewis, who won two games over the Yankees last week, has a neat story of disillusionment, Japan, and baseball-redemption, too.
And I could go on.
The point is: Great stories (we often call them “testimonies”) make for great college ministries. Of course, when it comes to our ministries, I moreso mean the spiritual kind. But this is a metaphor, remember.
3. Strategy
Another reason the Rangers would make a great college ministry is that they don’t believe that games are won only in the games.
Read that again.
But for many college ministries, this philosophy would require a monumental shift.
The “talk of the town” around here includes General Manager Jon Daniels and the rest of the Rangers “front office” staff. For years they have purposely built a team, and the fruits can (finally) be seen this year. They employed a multi-year strategy – which along the way meant things like:
- caring deeply about nurturing not just present players but upcoming players
- building a strong “farm system” – making sure lots of guys are being raised up to play in the big leagues someday
- thinking systematically and longitudinally about success
- balancing success on the field now with working toward greater success later
- and even making moves that hurt the team in the short term but fit the long term strategy
Any of those three things can be (and should be) applied to college ministry.
In fact, I’d go as far as to say this: If we’re not working strategically and longitudinally, then our college ministries aren’t as good as they could have been. If we’re only “pursuing the win” in the game presently on the field, we aren’t going to be as impactful next year or next decade as we might have been.
It’s just one more reason these Rangers would make a pretty super college ministry.
[Post #3 in the series is next!]
—————————————————————————————
[Click to ask questions, comment, or see any comments on this post!]
The theme of this year’s Catalyst Conference was “The Tension is Good.” And while certainly not every speaker aimed directly for the heart of the theme (because that would have been annoying), it was woven throughout – and capped off by some excellent practical instruction by Andy Stanley.
The crux of that Catalyst finale was the idea that not all tensions should be ultimately resolved. Some tensions are meant only to be managed, left purposely “tensioned” because they represent not good vs. evil or even good vs. best, but good vs. good. Successful ministry will mean doing what wisely needs to be done this time… while leaving “unresolved” the tensions that will continue to instruct our future plans. (I’d encourage you to get the recording if you can.)
In the final gathering of our College Ministers Cohort (an update on how that went is here), a few dozen of us looked at several Catalyst-introduced ideas through the lens of our calling as college ministers. So we often found ourselves recognizing “tensions to manage” in college ministry.
Today, I simply wanted to list the tensions I heard during our time. But what’s important not to miss – indeed, the radical idea hiding within this simple list – is that these particular tensions are not to be resolved (at least in my view). In some way or another, we are each likely to face a give-and-take, back-and-forth, on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand tug for as long as we minister to college students.
Of course, if you disagree – if you feel that there is a definite way to lean for any of these – I’d love to hear about it. And if you have other tensions to add, please do that, too. I’m just listing the ones we talked about that morning, but there are plenty more in the messy practice of campus ministry.
(An extra thanks to Steve Lutz, who explicitly articulated several of these during our time on Saturday.)
1. College ministry involvement AND “significant involvement” in a local church. Applies for both campus-based and church-based ministries. As I noted Saturday, we haven’t done a good job of recognizing what everybody else believes “significant involvement” means… or done much of the hard work of ecclesiology to figure out what we each think it means, either.
2. Being “on mission” AND impacting those already present.
3. Discipling students for their “now” AND discipling for their “later.” Right now, we seem to skew heavily toward the former.
4. Discipling the immature or unchurched AND discipling the churched / mature. Besides evangelistic outreaches, it’s rare to see either group addressed individually. Not that there’s a clear line, either.
5. Students’ “spiritual” / ministry life AND their classroom life. Clearly, college ministry is famous for skewing toward the former.
6. At Christian colleges: Discipling students via college ministry principles AND appreciating how Christian faculty impact them. You think there’s ministry diversity on your campus? There’s probably no setting with more “styles” or different attempts at discipleship than the Christian college campus… And yet some office often is charged with being the “point people” for this impact.
7. Cooperating with other college ministries AND getting our own ministry goals accomplished. While I hear more complaints about ministries skewing toward the latter, it’s very possible to lean too heavily the other way, too…
8. Autonomy of students AND adult / staff direction.
9. Practicing social justice / compassion ministry AND helping students understand these things biblically. If we don’t do the latter, we’re happily creating legalists.
—————————————————————————————
[Click to ask questions, comment, or see any comments on this post!]
Is your college ministry already so planned – or will it be over the next weeks – that it will be nearly impossible to react to new opportunities in the new school year?
There have been – as there always are – many outstanding suggestions thrown around at the campus ministry conference I’m at this week. (We’re leaving today to head back to Dallas.) But a couple of ideas have come up that lead me to today’s College Ministry Fridea.
- The first came from a college minister who responded to the opportunity of numerous Nepalese students coming to campus. She commented that (for some reason) the opportunity might not persist, but for the moment, they’ve chosen to minister.
- The same college minister (I think) noted that she and her husband had also noticed that a local Christian camp drew lots of collegians to counsel youth during the summers. But very little disciplemaking seemed to be taking place. So their ministry has taken on these college students each summer.
Both of these are examples of taking advantage of opportunities that arise. And here’s the scary truth: Your campus will very likely present new opportunities in the first weeks of the school year.
So we have to ask ourselves some scary questions. And we have to examine this week’s Fridea seriously: Leave room (mentally, verbally, even structurally) for addressing new opportunities that arise after the year starts.
Opportunity may come very subtly: An article in the school newspaper. A rule change that seems small but creates an opportunity. A freshman class that is particularly… something. A “theme” God seems to be stirring on campus that would be easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it.
It may come very un-subtly: A tragedy. Surprising changes within another college ministry. New campus leaders that dramatically affect things.
It may happen within your ministry: A student who returns having had an absolutely life-changing summer. Students with ideas you hadn’t considered (and that they hadn’t thought to Facebook you back in July). Multiple guys and gals who God’s been speaking to in similar ways. Way more students showing interest than you expected.
Is our ministry already SO defined, SO planned, and – especially – SO certain that we won’t see the opportunities that arise in the First Weeks?
The pic was taken at (over?) Washington State during my yearlong road trip.
—————————————————————————————
[Click to ask questions, comment, or see any comments on this post!]
As the 2010-2011 school year comes closer and closer, ideas for excellence – especially in Month One – are much appreciated. So for this week’s Fridea, I wanted to link you to the two posts from this week’s College Ministry Blog-a-Thon that provided methods most directly.
Most of all, I wanted to make sure nobody missed these posts, penned by campus ministry all-stars Brian Barela (of national Campus Crusade leadership) and Linda Osborne (of national Baptist Collegiate Ministry leadership).
Descriptions immediately below, or you can go ahead and jump to Linda’s post or Brian’s post.
Linda’s post, “Making the Most of the 1st Month of the University Year,” offers 17 superb ideas centered around four key Tasks every college minister should take into consideration. As I commented there, Linda’s post offers wisdom on being great in the basics of solid college ministry in a way that few – because they lack her breadth of experience – can offer. She introduces those tasks by writing,
Collegiate Ministries have a key window of opportunity to enter into a student’s life during the first month of the year. Consider the following tasks for making the most of the first month…
Click here to read her outstanding post.
Brian’s brilliantly titled post, “4000 Ways to Maximize the First Four Weeks on Campus,” obviously deals with much the same focus. But like usual, Barela cuts to the chase with direct, practical, and unromantic observations about what will actually work. And also as he often does, his post inspired some outstanding Q&A in the comments, so be sure to check that out.
Brian begins his post by observing a problem in many college ministries:
I’ve been doing campus ministry for over seven years with Campus Crusade for Christ and I have never seen a ministry grow significantly larger than the size of the first official meeting. Yet ministries often treat the first day, week, and month the same as every other week, except with a larger amount of excitement and anticipation.
Click here to read the ways Brian suggests we engage the first weeks not only with gusto but with effectiveness.
—————————————————————————————
[Click to ask questions, comment, or see any comments on this post!]
I’m taking a quick break from looking at this month’s challenge to greater excellence (as delivered by Old Spice), but I’d love your thoughts on that. Hopefully THIS will be encouraging as you prepare for the upcoming school year!
Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean,
but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox. (Prov. 14:4 ESV)
It’s a simple matter to have a clean manger, a clean barn, a clean life… just don’t buy any oxen. Or, if you prefer a plowed field and the resulting abundant crops, you can choose the messy oxen route. It’s your choice, but you can’t generally have both.
Good college ministry allows things to get a little messy.
But the temptations include
- Trying to organize the messiness out of our ministry.
- Forgetting to treat people differently, because streamlining is so much easier.
- Forgetting to treat each semester differently, because planning is so much easier.
- Refusing to accept anomalies on their own terms instead of “fitting them into the system” – be they individual volunteers, surprise opportunities, teachable moments, surprise disasters, or needs-of-the-hour.
- Freaking out about the messiness in the students we serve.
- Looking to build “perfect” “unity” among local college ministries by removing any hint of programmatic overlap or competition. (Often we – and even moreso college students – overreach in this pursuit!)
- Having undue confidence in our program “as is,” since smooth sailing and steady growth are the (undue) expectations for the foreseeable future.
- Getting depressed about all the roadblocks to building a strong, long-lasting college ministry.
- Dealing with our students as we assume they are or hope they are or believe “college students in general” to be, instead of as our particular students truly are.
The lack of tolerance and expectation of messiness in college ministry seems to lead to a surprising amount of difficulty, disillusionment, and even conflict between people or ministries.
Personally, I am an “all-my-ducks-in-a-row” kind of guy; I don’t like “messy.” Maybe more than many of you. And since I’m that way, I would love to believe that I could start a college ministry, run some classic “Good College Ministry Plays,” and then let that tidy package bring abundant crops year after year.
It doesn’t seem to happen like that.
Perhaps more than any other ministry area, Collegiate-Ministry-in-a-Box doesn’t work. Boy, I wish it did. But if I have to choose between a tidy feedbox and fruitful plowing, I’ll choose messy ox over clean box any day.
This post was expanded from something I posted in September 2008. But c’mon – were you really reading this blog way back then?
—————————————————————————————
[Click to ask questions, comment, or see any comments on this post!]
Recent Comments