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While I’m definitely a fan of the group I’m posting about today, I promise they’re not paying me to write any of this! If you’re a college minister, it really is just an organization you need to be familiar with – and an event you should consider.
I got an email yesterday reminding me that Early Registration for the annual Growing Leaders National Leadership Forum is about to come to a close. While it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to go this year, it’s another chance to remind you about this organization (and their great event).
If you’re unfamiliar with Growing Leaders, I encourage you to change that. Tim Elmore (who heads GL) has probably been one of the three most formative individuals in my own understanding of college ministry – and without a doubt the most influential in my understanding of Millennials. Much of what I’ve written here at the blog about how we interact with the Millennial Generation (like my “Jimmy Fallon and Gen Y” series) comes very directly from what I’ve learned from Tim and Growing Leaders.
Tim’s recently put out a book, Generation iY, that not only looks at this present generation but even acknowledges some of the shifts that have taken place within the generation itself.
Meanwhile, his Habitudes series might be the curricula I hear the most about for small group studies in campus ministries.
For those who bring in speakers for conferences, etc., Tim and other members of his staff are excellent and able to speak on a variety of topics – both for training staff members and for speaking to students. I know two of the arenas in which Tim has been particularly well-received are in the enormous Southern Baptist campus ministry family and in the institutional college ministries at various Christian colleges.
Tim’s also had success in secular environments (like with collegiate sports teams). He and many of his materials are pretty good for that sort of thing – for instance, teaching Leadership to groups at your campus in a way that won’t run afoul of the administration. (Habitudes even has faith-based and values-based versions!)
I got to attend the National Leadership Forum a few years ago and really, really enjoyed it. It’s fun to attend something that very much caters to us as college ministers but is also well populated by other kinds of pastors, college administrators, secular businesspeople, and more.
So it’s worth checking out the forum – for this summer or the future – and it’s definitely worth knowing Growing Leaders.
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In a severely disjointed field, it’s rare for the “cream” in collegiate ministry to rise to the top. Even though a resource, a practice, or an idea might be extremely valuable, organizational and regional lines often keep exposure limited.
While that is quite a bummer, a silver lining is that it produces a pretty handy way to recognize the best of the best: by noticing the very few items that do get praised broadly. When something is known and loved broadly in our diverse and disconnected ministry field, it really must be remarkable. (In fact, I just told somebody recently that I can usually only endorse something if I’ve personally seen its value OR it has received acclaim from a broad array of college ministers.)
So today, I want to present two books that seem to have received that acclaim (although I’d love to hear your opinion, too). And then, a bonus: a brand-new book released by an author who has received that sort of broad acclaim before!
Funding Your Ministry
Scott Morton, a longtime staff member of The Navigators (since 1970!), published Funding Your Ministry in 1999 and revised it in 2007. (It’s been translated into Spanish, too!) It’s the product of his personal development of support-raising theology AND practice, and it’s been honed through sharing his thoughts over and over again.
If you have any involvement in raising money (for budget, for ministry, for trips, whatever), this seems to be a widely respected book on the topic!
Daws: A Man Who Trusted God
I’m not intentionally doubling up on The Navigators today, but Daws is probably the most well known biography of a college minister! This bio of Dawson Trotman, founder of The Navigators, was published by Betty Lee Skinner back in 1974… so the book itself has been impacting for Christ even longer than its subject did. Awesome.
And on a personal note, I started reading this one last night. Finally.
Make College Count: A Faithful Guide to Life and Learning
Derek Melleby received this kind of broad acclaim after co-authoring The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness with Donald Opitz. Now, he’s just released Make College Count, a book that I’m certainly interested in checking out myself. (The book has a whole web page under CPYU here.)
For all of us who are college ministers, this sounds like a potential “win” for our freshmen, for those about to enter college (which we should be striving to help happen well), and even for ourselves – to get ideas for what we teach our students.
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I wrote earlier this week on the need to raise up students who will accept and even revel in the unsettled, “sojourny” experience they’ll likely have after college – if indeed they’re open to the preparation and adventure God has for them.
Two helpful thoughts from recent books that could help here:
1. The 10,000 Hour “Rule.” In Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell famously presents a notion that to be truly great at something may just require 10,000 hours of work. You can read more about the idea in the book (which is phenomenal, by the way), or catch the Wikipedia take on it in the Outliers article.
And while there’s no sense in applying this sort of thing in a legalistic way, it’s at least a good principle to help our students understand that they’re probably looking at a long time of nose-to-the-grindstone work before things “feel” more “concrete.” (10 years at 20 hours a week would cover that “rule.”)
2. The Dip. Perhaps even more useful, get your students to read Seth Godin’s The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick), or read it yourself and help them understand the principles. (Really, this incredibly quick read could change the way you approach projects within your college ministry. It’s fantastic for us AND our students.)
Like Outliers, this is a secular book, but there still isn’t a better go-to book I’ve found for helping anybody who’s considering undertaking any sort of project.
And here, Seth Godin helpful compares and contrasts the 10,000 Hour Rule with The Dip.
I honestly believe that either or both of these books / ideas could help fuel your preparation for students’ long-term success – including a realistic understanding of the road ahead of them. They don’t replace the biblical wisdom, to be sure, but I do think there’s real wisdom here.
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Earlier this week, I reflected on the need for us to avoid the easy road of just “doing service” with our students, even though we’re in a climate when volunteerism, social justice, and compassionate concern are all the rage. Let’s tie into that cultural fad, to be sure, but let’s make sure we couple doing service with shepherding.
What does this look like? I can think of two biggie principles I’d at least want to make sure to focus on.
Shepherding means pointing students to the biblical motivations for service.
Why?
That’s the question we’ve got to answer before it’s asked, because it’ll be rare for today’s students to even ask it! But doing service without a biblical motivation is, at best, simply secular – and pretty easily tiptoes into the low-grade legalism our students are extremely susceptible to.
If we’ve ordained that Service, Social Justice, or some similar theme will be part of the “DNA” of our ministry and yet we haven’t made this a ministry-wide teaching point, I honestly believe we’re doing a grave disservice to our students. Without the biblical whys, they’re either “doing good just ’cause,” they’ll quit doing good after awhile, or both.
Shepherding means training students in serving well.
If you’ve got to pick one, choose the above thing. Biblical motivations will likely lead to pretty impactful service all by themselves.
But in our role as shepherds, we have the chance to raise up servants who are actually really good at serving. It’s that whole “loving in deed and truth” thing. It’s serving “with the strength God supplies.” It’s serving in ways not like somebody “running aimlessly” or “beating the air.” Instead, we shepherd servants who more and more land their punches, actually impacting the people and groups and world they’re aiming to impact.
I think this sort of shepherding – shepherding the how of service – will take two courses, and they’re both important. We’ll give our students all sorts of biblical principles for creating a giant impact in the world. And we’ll also offer them all the wisdom we – and plenty of others – have on the practical skills of service.
Of course, love covers over a multitude of sins, and really loving the people we serve has a way of working out the kinks in our service. But still we’re commanded to love in deed and truth and not just word or tongue. If we really examined the servanthood of our college students, what percentage of their service really exemplifies the “deed and truth” variety?
More thoughts to come. [Find the next post in this thought-train, on things we need to shepherd students away from, right here.]
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On Monday, I reviewed the new documentary Cool It; today I wanted to list some ways we might use it in our campus ministries.
Basically, Cool It is a helpful primer on environmental concerns that also provides an intriguing critique – aimed not so much at the prevalent science as much as at the present attempts to deal with climate change. (Remember, the movie doesn’t deny climate change is happening, and it doesn’t deny it’s a problem. This is not a particularly “right wing” film.)
A random example of the Cool It approach: Lomborg, the movie’s protagonist and narrator, argues that while present efforts to slow climate change will perhaps save one polar bear a year, many more polar bears would be saved if we simply quit shooting lots and lots of them.
There’s lots of neato inventions, too. And animals. I like animals.
If your college ministry needs to talk about this issue or if you’re on a campus that might be drawn to these sorts of discussions, I encourage you at least to go see Cool It. Then you can decide if you want to make use of it and/or the Bible-based discussion guide provided by Reel Truths (which doesn’t look like it requires actually seeing the film).
In any case, here are some ways Cool It might be a help to you as a college minister:
- It may help you catch up in the climate change discussion, regardless of what you believe. (It sure helped me catch up!) Do you know what “cap and trade” is? How much money is being spent on this issue? What happened in Copenhagen just this year? Understanding these climate change issues will at least help you discuss it, as needed, among your campus tribe.
- In general, something like this is great for kicking off discussion about how and why we help the world (both its people and the planet). Watching this movie with a bunch of students and then discussing it (even just over yogurt) would be a fruitful time.
- Specifically, Cool It proposes a vital question: What does it mean to truly impact our world for good? As Christians, we should be leading the charge to love in deeds and truth and not just “words and tongue.” As one person in the movie puts it, “It’s not about feeling good about yourself, it’s about actually doing good.” Could that be any more relevant to college students on our campuses?
- Another specific application from this movie is simply being wise about our stances. The movie helps (it seems) to balance out the arguments. If anybody needs to learn always to back up their zeal with knowledge AND not immediately assume that the popular or emotional arguments are automatically correct , it’s collegians.
- It’s a movie! And that provides a natural way to get students involved – including students who wouldn’t normally be interested. Couple that with discussion, and you’ve got a neat springboard. The study guide puts it this way:
While a movie provides the framework of discussion, the Bible informs the nature and the direction of the discussion. Your goal through each discussion, therefore, is not necessarily to cover every theme from the movie or to get to every movie clip. Instead, it should be to use the themes of the movie to point each person in your group to God.
I’d encourage you to check out the study guide. As I skimmed it, I was impressed – it’s got links to movie clips, great discussion starters, and so on. They’ve made it easy to discuss this from a spiritual standpoint, with Christians and non-Christians alike.
The movie’s main site is here, and you can find out if it’s in your city now or is opening this weekend.
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Cool It could be a useful tool for college ministers, helping them better grasp the climate change issue and start (or continue) discussions on how their students can help in all sorts of world concerns. The film brings up great questions about what it means to truly help; as the movie says, “It’s not about feeling good about yourself, it’s about actually doing good.” Could that be any more relevant to college students on our campuses?
Theming is fun, so this week is Movie Week here at the blog. Enjoy.
My free screening for Cool It last Thursday came in response to a mass email from Relevant magazine. [And you can go free this week if you live in D.C., Nashville, or Grand Rapids.] Maybe I shouldn’t have assumed the ticket site‘s repeated references to “God’s creation,” as well as the movie’s promotion by Reel Truths (whose tagline is “Finding God at the Movies”) meant there would be overtly religious content here. You might even think the Christian small group discussion guide available for the movie would indicate that it touches – at least somewhere – on the spiritual connection.
It doesn’t. But while the whole experience originally felt like a bit of a bait-and-switch, it’s been good for me to remember that creation stewardship is still a spiritual concern, even if no spiritual case was made within the movie. (And unlike the movie, the free, impressive discussion guide definitely turns that corner.)
In any case, I did enjoy this movie, which takes a look at world concerns and where climate change / global warming fits into those concerns. For somebody who hasn’t paid much attention at all to this issue (and I bet I’m not alone!), the movie at least “caught me up” a bit and put it on the radar for me. But one surprise I appreciated is that Cool It expands its vision beyond discussing climate change to looking at quite a few other world issues, including issues that more directly affect individual lives right now. (“Priorities” is a major concept in the film.)
For a few moments, this documentary reminded me of Expelled; both documentaries reveal ideas skeptical of prevailing scientific opinion that have been supposedly subjected to an excommunication of sorts. But that focus doesn’t turn out to be the meat of Cool It; although the introduction-of-sorts drags something like 25 minutes, it then curves toward even more interesting topics.
Unlike Expelled, the primary subject and the narrator are the same (very interesting) person, Bjorn Lomborg. And it’s important to note from the outset that he is – by no means – a “climate change denier.” This film doesn’t have as obvious a conservative slant as Expelled; for example, while Lomborg’s critique of Al Gore’s work is strong here, he also praises Gore for putting environmental concerns on the world’s agenda. A Reuters article quotes Lomborg elsewhere as saying, “A fundamental problem of climate change is that we seem to be stuck in two positions – it’s either the end of the world or it’s not a problem at all.” It’s thinking about a pragmatic balance that is the heart of Cool It, for sure.
From the movie’s official site:
Award-winning filmmaker Ondi Timoner travels the world with Lomborg exploring the real facts and true science of global warming and its impact. Lomborg is the founder and director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a globally respected think tank that brings together the world’s leading economists to prioritize major global problems — among them malaria, the lack of potable water and HIV/AIDS — based upon a cost/benefit analysis of available solutions. Amidst the strong and polarized opinions within the global warming debate, Cool It follows Lomborg on his mission to bring the smartest solutions to climate change, environmental pollution, and other major problems in the world.
So the movie focuses on more than climate change; it looks at priorities and asks what we can do to help with all sorts of difficult problems faced by the world community. As I noted at the top, thinking about true help vs. “help” is one of the best ways we can help our college students grapple with the very current social justice issue.
Later this week, ideas on why and how Cool It (or other movies) can be helpful to us as college ministers. But I’ve provided enough links and info that hopefully you can consider that already!
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Meatier matter from the College Ministers Cohort and the Catalyst Conference will likely come later this week – not only by me (hopefully), but as I point to others’ learnings, too.
But this blog should also report our successes as a field. And I would honestly say I think the College Ministers Cohort at Catalyst was a helpful experience for the field of College Ministry. We can celebrate that! Plus, as God brought it all together, all kinds of great resources rose to the surface – so I’m linking those below!
(If you want to see our official program from the Cohort, you can download it here.)
by the numbers
- 120ish attended Thursday’s college ministers lunch
- 150ish attended Friday’s college ministers lunch
- 30ish stayed an extra day to attend the College Ministers Debriefing
- college ministers from about 15 different states
By the time we actually got to Catalyst, it looked like we might have that sort of response. But until about two weeks ago, I was guessing we’d have 80 or so attend. So it was thrilling to see just how many college ministers cared about coming together during an already pretty FULL conference, to meet each other, eat together, and view Catalyst through “college ministry lenses.”
by the sponsors
Another encouraging factor was the number of sponsors who made a statement that they want to support the field of College Ministry. Look at these lists:
Financial Sponsors of the Cohort
- International Mission Board (IMB Students)
- Focus on the Family (Young Adults)
- Financial Peace University
- Newchapter
- Future Marriage University
Additional Sponsors of the Cohort (via giveaways)
- IMB Students / OneLife (gave a giveaway satchel)
- Financial Peace University (gave free trials of their online collegiate curriculum)
- Baker Publishing Group (gave copies of The Outrageous Idea of Christian Faithfulness)
- NavPress (gave copies of a few different books)
- CruPress (gave decks of the Perspective Spiritual Conversation Cards)
- Threads Media (gave several different collegiate / young adult Bible studies)
- Moody Publishers (gave copies of Generation Ex-Christian)
- The Hub (gave various DVD Bible studies)
- Growing Leaders (gave various books)
- Focus Leadership Institute (gave bags)
- Hole in the Roof design company (gave water bottles and pens)
- CCO / Jubilee Conference (gave a major conference discount to attendees)
Hospitality Awesomeness came from…
- Catalyst (who from nearly the very beginning offered their support)
- Georgia Baptist Convention (who hosted our Thursday and Friday lunches)
- 12Stone Church (who hosted – and also provided! – our final lunch)
Do you see those three lists? Look how many! Look how many major organizations! It is no small thing that these groups would get involved with a gathering of college ministers – even while many of them already had booths at the larger Catalyst Conference.
You can click on the links to see these groups and the opportunities / giveaways these sponsors presented. Nothing was frivolous; each sponsor gave things that were truly appreciated and that I’d encourage you to learn about.
And if you want to help our field (and help these groups continue to be involved), please let them know you appreciate the support!
by the by
I know that the Catalyst organizers themselves noticed our little ol’ Cohort – particularly because after all was said and done, it wasn’t little after all! Our turnout was apparently larger than at least several of the other cohort-ish lunches, gatherings, etc., dotted throughout the week. And we “did it big” twice! Our Cohort attracted the attention of other Christian organizations besides Catalyst, too.
From everything I could tell, the sponsors seemed genuinely happy to have been a part of this, too. I felt their presentations to our group were spot-on, with college ministers throughout the room recognizing that these sponsor-speakers understood their needs and had something significant to offer. A couple of sponsors (MJ from Future Marriage University and Ian from NewChapter) also took the opportunity to stay for the Saturday debriefing and contributed wonderfully.
Ultimately, I hoped that this Cohort would add value to the Catalyst experience for those in our field. I know it sure added value to my time, and hopefully it did for everybody else. And as I said above, I honestly feel like these sorts of thing help – in their own way – to advance our field as a whole. Hooray!
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By now, anybody who’s coming to the College Ministers Cohort should have gotten their tickets, and I look forward to seeing you there! If you’re not going to make it to Catalyst this year, you can still join in the fun… Be watching the blog for updates on what we’re doing, what we’re learning, and ways to enjoy Catalyst from afar…
We’ve had 120 or so officially RSVP for the Cohort – and we’ve already got college ministers planning to come “standby,” too. It’s the hottest (free) ticket in town!
And for all of us (whether you’re coming or not), I want to highlight a few groups that are PROVING they care about College Ministry! Please, please, please check out their sites and what they offer – I’m excited that within the huge Catalyst Conference, they’re sponsoring our little ol’ Cohort!
OneLife from IMB Students (unveiling this week!)
They’ve got their very cool-looking site up now: www.onelifematters.com. Check it out!
IMB Students is the Premier Sponsor of the College Ministers Cohort, helping in all sorts of ways. I really, really appreciate all they’ve done – and what they do as missions mobilizers. They are BIG fans of college ministers nationwide (and I know plenty of college ministers are already big fans of them, too!).
Future Marriage University
Michael “MJ” Johnson is pursuing one big thing in our field: Helping college students prepare for marriage like they prepare for their careers! He speaks at various Christian schools and other ministries around the country on these very things, and you can learn more about his ministry at www.futuremarriageuniversity.org.
I met MJ in person recently, and he’s made it clear he wants to know our field even better so he can serve us (and our students) even more. As part of that, he’s hanging out with us at (and sponsoring!) the College Ministers Cohort!
Focus on the Family: Young Adults
As you probably know, there are a whole lot of “parts” to the ministry of Focus on the Family, and a few of those parts connect directly with college students. The Young Adults division includes Boundless, a site I was enjoying way back in college myself! But the Boundless community has grown beyond just a web site and weekly articles to include a blog, podcast, and more!
I’m really excited that Focus has decided to connect directly with college ministers by spending time with us this week… and sponsoring the Cohort!
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A couple of announcements: The first is for everybody, including those who WON’T be able to join us in Atlanta next week. The second is for those who are planning to attend the College Ministers Cohort at Catalyst!
1. Our heroes, proving (once again) they care about college ministry.
Clearly college ministry is not a celebrity cause in the American Church, so it takes a special organization to be willing to pay real money so real college ministers can have a really great event. Even for those not attending the Cohort next week, I want to make sure I let you know about our amazing sponsors.
I’ll alert you to more of these heroes in the days to come, but the first few that stepped up include:
OneLife from IMB Students
This is an exciting program for college students that the International Mission Board is unveiling at Catalyst – making their sponsorship of our Cohort all the more exciting. Since the “launch” is next week, I’ll save details for now. Stay tuned!
IMB Students is actually serving as our premier sponsor of the Cohort. They were the first entity to jump on board, and I’ve long seen their commitment to helping college students and college ministries!
Newchapter
I’ve blogged on these guys before, and once again they’re stepping up to the plate to help campus ministries. That’s what they do on a regular basis: Work to help college ministries thrive in a very unique way. How? By establishing ministry-sponsored Student Living Centers that not only allow for an incredible ministry opportunity with residents, but can also help a ministry run in a self-sustaining way. Learn more here.
Financial Peace: Foundations for Life & Money
One of Catalyst’s biggest sponsors in the last few years has been Dave Ramsey and Financial Peace University. But now that organization has gone a step further and agreed to sponsor our Cohort. Did you know they’ve released a curriculum for college students? It’s true – and you can find it right here.
FPU is one of those sorts of organizations that we need to lend their considerable talents to our field. Hooray for that bridge being built!
2. If you’re coming to the Cohort…
- Please make absolutely sure you’ve RSVP’d as “Attending” at the Event page.
- Please make absolutely sure anyone who’s coming with you has also RSVP’d.
- Watch for VERY important details in the next few days, sent via Facebook to those who have RSVP’d. There will be details you have to see, or you’ll risk not getting in on our free lunches, etc.
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Whether for providing video clips to use in a message OR springboarding a small group to some deep discussions, some TV shows offer a chance to connect with students in a neat way.
Certainly, few TV shows are as clean as we would like. Sometimes DVRing and watching ahead is a good move; other times, you might decide you’re fine with showing something off-the-cuff. Pray it through, and do what’s best.
A few TV shows potentially worth your attention, now or in the coming weeks:
dating in the dark
I thought I had written about this show last summer, but maybe I’m just remembering that I wrote my community group at church about it. Because whether for college students or young adults, Dating in the Dark offers a surprising amount of truth-revealing and reflection-prompting.
Sadly, I think Season 2 just ended Monday, but you can watch some free episodes still on ABC.
The big premise (if you don’t know already) is that individuals have to decide if the people they’ve gotten to know in a pitch-black room are worth dating once the lights come on. Each episode offers that big theme to talk about (“How much do looks and ‘attraction’ matter?”), plus several other themes. So if you can find clips, they’d be great for a dating talk (or other talks), or I can see an episode being a valuable small group convo starter – even if you just need a break from whatever the usual routine is.
the office premieres…
…on September 23rd. While it might not prompt a lot of soul-searching discussions, just watching the premiere of The Office together could be a great get-together for your college ministry.
Although I could envision a small group for soon-to-graduate students that watches the new Office each week and then chats about life after college.
community
Last year’s season of Community was actually pretty great, and as I had hoped, it actually did address many of the issues of Millennials and collegians. Not every episode was spot-on for small group discussion, but plenty of them were. And of the three shows I’ve mentioned here, this one’s probably the most likely to “push the limits” morally.
Still, this is one you might want to consider; perhaps you could DVR for awhile and then pick your top 5 for a small group series.
Or, again, this might be a great show for providing clips for some of your talks on a variety of issues, for laughs or for contemplation. (This show goes surprisingly deep sometimes.)
Like The Office, this one premieres on September 23rd.
do you have any thoughts on these or other shows worth checking out?
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