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I’m continuing the “What You Do in Week Two” series, which focuses on some important adjustments we can make early in the semester that will affect our entire year. Read the intro post here; for the whole series, click here.
add to your leadership core
A pretty simple Fridea that could have a major impact on the rest of your semester…
Have you considered adding another ministry team or two? Or delegating some new tasks to a few more students or adult volunteers?
Surely by this point in the year – if you spent some time thinking about it – you could identify some additional areas where you could really use some help. There’s probably an area that’s taking up more time than you expected – but which could easily be delegated to students or other volunteers. Or maybe there’s just a hole that needs filling.
Assuming that’s the case, why not add to your leadership core?
If it’s the right kind of position, perhaps you could even draw from new students (giving them ownership right away). Other students might simply have missed the chance to sign up for leadership last spring. Others might jump at the chance to serve in this particular way; they just didn’t find a fit in the opportunities you presented before now.
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I’m continuing the “What You Do in Week Two” series, which focuses on some important adjustments we can make early in the semester that will affect our entire year. Read the intro post here; for the whole series, click here.
set (high) expectations for student leaders
So you’ve just gotten your student leadership underway, but classes, homework, and other clubs’ calendars are a bit more intense now, too. Are your student leaders keeping their commitments and living out the ministry’s vision?
If you don’t hold students to high expectations now, it’s going to be tough – and a little unfair – to do it later. And it will probably get worse, too. Of course, you can’t start adding official expectations you didn’t make clear when the students committed. But you can continue to hold them to what they signed up for, while also inspiring them to want to work hard at this ministry – whether they’re running the sound board or overseeing a large weekly effort on campus.
nip issues in the bud
Related to the above concept, “Week 2″ (with the weeks that follow) is when early problems have to be dealt with. They can come from several quarters:
- Student leaders failing in commitments, morally, or otherwise
- An issue with your ministry’s reputation on campus
- Your own lack of preparedness for events or teaching
- A small-but-nagging issue, like a problem with the sound or a need to update your web page
- A ministry on campus that appears to be unhealthy
- Apparent new difficulties / awkwardness with the administration
- And whatever else!
Obviously, each of these would be dealt with differently. The point is, we don’t often want to let these kinds of things slide until the middle… and then end… of the semester. They’re affecting your ministry right now, and the fruit of fixing them will be most apparent if you address issue early, courageously, and completely.
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What do we do after we’ve begun? I’ve decided to expand my “What You Do in Week Two” series, which really looks at all the ways we can maximize our ministry early in the semester. For the rationale, read the intro post; for the whole What series, click here.
start training anyone who leads
I had the neat chance to sit down with one of the ministers at my church the other day; he had asked for some thoughts on a program I recently went through. It was great – because even though his program is excellent, he still wants to make it better. And one point made him especially excited.
I pointed out that even though the “table leaders” for this multi-week study seemed to be really great people, there still might be room for them to become trained discussion leaders.
This thought came directly from my explorations of college ministry (and my own campus ministry adventures).
You see, we often forget (or don’t realize) that small group leadership involves actual, learnable skills. This is true even when students are just “facilitating discussion.” And it’s true for other forms of leadership: One-on-one disciplemaking has major skills and “best practices.” So does Sunday school teaching. Even leading a Ministry Team of students – whether it’s running a Men’s Ministry, planning a mission trip, or reaching out to the Athletic Teams – is done best by those who are trained to lead. This need for training applies to students as well as adults. It applies to those who seem to be “naturals” at their given task, too.
I’m not claiming that spending time training your leaders is easy. But I will claim that this is one of the best ways you could improve your ministry this year: Right now, in Week 2 (or 3 or 4), start training your leaders. (And if you have to start somewhere, start with small group leaders; I think that’s where a lot of “mission leak” takes place in college ministries.)
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What do we do after we’ve begun? This week, I’m discussing ways you can use early weeks of the semester to maximize your ministry’s impact. For the rationale, read the intro post; for the whole What You Do in Week Two series, click here.
look for holes
It’s incredibly tempting in the first few weeks of the school year – or even the first few months – to remove our Evaluation Hat completely. With so much necessary focus on finding new people, running new programs, and organizing once-in-a-year events, it’s very hard to find time to make sure it’s all working well.
But even as some of those front-of-the-semester activities pass, we’ve got to remember that we’re still early in our school year. Now is the time that evaluation pays the most dividends. And at this point, the best evaluation you can do is to look for holes. (And they won’t be nearly as apparent as you might think.)
Remind yourself, your staff and leaders of what your activities were supposed to accomplish… and ask how well each purpose has actually been met. Are there students who wouldn’t say your ministry is welcoming? Activities that are fine – but no longer worth the effort? Are you personally staying close to the Lord and your other relationships? Are your recruitment efforts reaching all of campus… and are they winsome and effective?
Where are the holes? The question isn’t whether there are any, it’s where they are. So how many hours of this next week will you spend on pure evaluation? I urge you to spend at least 2 hours – and then you can get right back to the programs.
fill the holes
A big part of the reason we don’t look for holes, I’m sure, is because we don’t want to have to fill them!
But that, too, is a vital “Week 2″ activity. Each hole you fill now – when you’re still actively recruiting, still forming first impressions, still setting habits and expectations for yourself, your leaders, and other students – makes a big difference.
Sure, some of the holes you find will need to be put on a list and fixed later (just make sure to calendar it!). But in some cases, it will be more important for you to fix certain issues in your operations than it would be to keep building the operation. Recruitment and earnestness matter, but so do excellence and effectiveness and other priorities.
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What do we do after we’ve begun? This week, I’m discussing ways you can use early weeks of the semester to maximize your ministry’s impact. For the rationale, read the intro post; for the whole What You Do in Week Two series, click here.
release your expectations for next semester
The other day, I had a great phone consultation with a church college minister in Kansas. Among many other things, one of the things we discussed was the advantage of planning (most of) his college ministry work one semester at a time.
Often, for the sake of expediency (so we don’t have to think about it anymore) or surety (so we don’t have to worry about it anymore), we plan our campus ministry calendar a year in advance. It comes naturally, for sure, but I’m not sure it makes a lot of sense.
Our students don’t plan like that. Campus life doesn’t really function like that. We recognize our mission field is one of the fastest-changing, and our ministries change pretty rapidly, too. Some students rise up as obvious leaders; others prove to have stepped back a bit. Some find their passions and callings. Service opportunities arise, as do other needs. We have very little idea what our ministry situation will look like in January, nor do we know what new doors might open for effective ministry.
So if we’re shepherding (and not just “herding”), wouldn’t we want to respond to the needs of the moment, and the new things God decides to do over the next few months?
Obviously, some things need to get planned well ahead; this theory doesn’t discount that. But just as the Kansan college minister noted the other day, freeing yourself to focus on one semester could be really powerful. In fact, it could be one of the better “Week 2″ decisions you make.
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What do we do after we’ve begun? This week, I’m discussing ways you can use early weeks of the semester to maximize your ministry’s impact. For the rationale, read the intro post; for the whole What You Do in Week Two series, click here.
observe the actual first impressions
WEEK 1 of your campus ministry’s “front door”: You were a little frantic, a little stressed, and in last-minute-detail mode. Your hospitality team of students had been assembled, so it was their job to welcome all the newbies.
WEEK 2: Now, spend some time purposely observing your ministry’s actual first impressions. If you can, do the same walk-up to your ministry that guests will – across campus, through a building, down a long hallway, whatever. Looking through a new student’s lens, what do you notice?
- Are there students or volunteers out in front, ready to greet?
- Is there a “way in,” or is everybody clumped up and talking to each other, making it seem like everybody’s already friends (and therefore not interested in befriending a new person)?
- Is it actually easy to find your group? How’s the signage?
- What do you hear as you approach?
- If you’re an extroverted student, do you feel like you could fit in here?
- If you’re an introverted student, do you feel like you could fit in here?
- Is information on the ministry readily accessible?
- Is the ministry’s first impression even attractive to an outsider?
- What else do you see?
Don’t think about what the ministry or greeters are trying to do; think about what new students – especially scared ones – might think.
find out where new people came from
WEEK 1: You were lucky even to meet (or hear about) the visitors who came to your Large Group, small groups, or a first-week event.
WEEK 2: Now’s the time not only to start meeting new people, but to find out how they discovered your ministry. Remember, it makes sense to maximize the forms of advertising and recruitment that are already proving to work best.
- Did the lawn signs get them there? Print 50 more.
- Was it mostly word-of-mouth? Send an email out to all your longtime students to encourage them to keep it up.
- Did an early event draw their attention? If you can, tie later recruitment to that event. (“If you loved our snowball fight, you should see what we do every week!”)
- Was it Facebook Check-Ins? Keep pushing that and other social media avenues.
I think you get the picture. The point is, your recruitment’s returns are diminishing as the semester moves along. So the more quickly you can maximize what’s working, the better. Find out what’s actually, specifically working, and then put more eggs in that basket.
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At the local SMU campus, this is Week 2 of the school year. So that got me thinking about how we campus ministers spend time after the Big Start. We spend so much time preparing for the first week or two of school, and rightly so. What what should happen next? Just running off the steam of the Start?
This week, I’ll be looking at several practical ways you can maximize the entire semester with what you do in weeks 2, 3, and 4. If we’re going to be the best college ministers we can be, we can’t just focus on the START, but also on how we follow up that Start with some important work.
Before I get to the super-practical ideas over the next few days, I wanted to begin with a word about why this stuff matters.
It seems to be a common temptation among college ministers to focus on running plays instead of actually shepherding. In doing the former (simply “running plays”), we design our Mental Ministry Playbook from various sources:
- Other college ministries we’ve led
- Other college ministries we’ve participated in
- Things we’ve heard about other college ministries doing
- Things that have worked well (or just “worked”) for us in the past
- Traditions and “standards” within our organization, denomination, or individual ministry
- Our brainstorming process(es)
- Just a vague understanding of “things a college ministry does”
(Sadly, I think that last one is a very common source.) Wherever our plays come from, we often simply run them – not because we’ve carefully determined that a particular method will help accomplish a particular purpose, but simply because “that’s what we do” or “students really like it” or “it brought a lot of fruit last time.”
The activity that “just running plays” keeps us from, however, is shepherding. Shepherds (of real sheep or of real people) are required to “note the condition of their flocks.” They have to think about not simply the needs of the year but the needs of the week. They have to recognize that some sheep are different from other sheep, that some days are different from other days, and that this whole process has to be rather “messy.” Because a well-oiled machine doesn’t work when the output (and the input) isn’t supposed to be the same.
I think what we do in Week 2 of our semesters (and Week 3 and Week 4) says a lot about where we are on this running-plays-versus-shepherding spectrum.
- Are we evaluating how our best-laid plans actually seem to be working out?
- Are we adjusting to the new, unforeseen realities on our campus?
- Have we begun processing what this year’s crop of freshmen means to our ministry, now that we’re meeting them face to face?
Those issues – and several more – will be addressed practically this week. So if you buy into what I’m saying, stay tuned. If you don’t, stay tuned anyway. You might be surprised at how much can be accomplished in Week Two.
[Jump into the first post here, or see the whole series so far here!]
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