Category: ministry

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When, What, and wherefore:

Colleen asked some great questions yesterday in the comments, and so that’s where I’ll start.

We will be moving probably in April.  There is a small chance we could go before then (with March as the absolute earliest), but I’d guess we’ll be going no earlier than April fools day.  (no joke.)

As we have prayed and thought through our current roles on campus, I’d say starting about a year ago (maybe more), we felt that more and more of our time was being spent doing operational support type things (websites, communication, graphic design, etc), and that type of stuff was very energizing.  That’s not to say we don’t still enjoy sharing our faith and engaging with students, or that we have changed our mind about our personal vision.  We still long for Christ to be made famous on the college campus.  We’re still devoting our energy to that end.

We’ve just broadened the scope.  Before we were praying and laboring for a handful of campuses in Western NC, representing somewhere in the neighborhood of 40,000 students.  In the regional office, the scope is 27 local areas (of which Western NC is one) representing a little over 1,000,000 students. (2 million if you count our partnership with Brooklyn)

So that’s the why.  What we will be doing in the regional office is working with the operations team.  On the team, each person is both a specialist and a generalist.  My specialty will be in the creative vein, working with web design, writing, and social media.  I also would love to help in leading worship/program planning at several regional conferences per year.  As a generalist, I will help the team in the vision to “increase capacity and sustain the mission of turning lost students into Christ-centered laborers” In short, we want to do things that will free up field staff to be more effective at what they are already doing, and enable and equip them to move out in ways they haven’t before.  Jacqueline will be helping out on a limited part-time basis in the office with the finance team and the conference/event planning team (both subsets of the operations team)

Colleen’s last question is one that I’m glad she asked.

“Is this at all related to the difficulties that you have had in raising support recently? How are you guys doing with that?”

Which is directly related to the most frequently asked question of them all.

“Will you still have to raise support?”

The answer to those questions, however, will take an entire post.  Tomorrow I’ll cover that.

In the meantime, what other questions do you have? (and a big thank you to Colleen for asking great first-round questions!)

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A few more Questions about the Move!

Here’s a few more questions we’ve been getting about the move:

Are you buying or renting?

We’re renting.  In fact, we already know where!  We’ll be in Holly Springs, for those who know the area.  We’re excited about the house.  Come see us once we move!

How many folks work in the regional office? Speaking of regional… how big is a region?

It’s not easy to get a count of everyone that works at the office, as there’s a lot of part-timers and other folks that filter in and out of the office. I’d say at least 25 folks work there.  On the team we’re joining, there are around 9 people, counting those raising support to get there (but not counting us).

Our regions consists of North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Marshall from West Virginia.  There’s approximately 1 million students in our region.  Also, we have a partnership with Brooklyn in New York City, and partnerships with locations overseas (read more about our regional partnerships here)

Are cubicles involved?

Yes.  Yes, a million times yes.  The cubicles had me at hello.

Where are you going to go to church?

We aren’t sure yet.  I just wrote a bit of a lengthy explanation of what type of church we are and aren’t looking for, but realized it needs to be it’s own post (and needs significant editing/filtering).  Check back tomorrow for that post.

Until then, what questions have we not answered about the move?

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The Most Significant Thing.

After a great weekend leading the music at a conference in Atlanta (and thereby missing the second big snowstorm of the season in Asheville), I am overwhelmed again that God has called us to be on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ.

The conference this time around was “Preview”–so named because we use it as a way to give a select group of hand-picked soon-to-graduate students a preview of staff life.  Except that in this fantasy-land preview, staff life includes the region paying for them to stay at a wonderful hotel (meals and everything covered).

And though we use it as a way to recruit new staff, this conference (in the two years I have attended) has served each time to be a fantastic re-hashing of my own personal call to ministry with Campus Crusade.  Roger Hershey, the speaker for the weekend (and a guy who’s been on staff with CCC for 37 years), cut me to the heart when he challenged us to be about not only loving Christ, but about the amazing privilege of mobilizing students to go to the ends of the earth.  Possibly the most significant thing any of us could be about in this life is the mobilizing of people toward fulfilling the great commission.

And you and I get to do that every day.  Thank you for your gifts, prayers, and heart to see God move on the college campus.

How are you mobilizing people to fulfill the great commission?

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Using Online Buzz in Ministry.

Last night I read/watched a great bit about how Doritos missed a real opportunity with their superbowl ad. It reminded me of how I once utilized the window of closing opportunity to reach thousands of college students in less than a weekend with a message of hope. 

And how our national Campus Crusade media team couldn’t share my story.

It was 2006, and facebook had just implemented a new feature called the “News Feed,” which showed in near-real-time what your friends were doing. I was browsing late one afternoon, and saw that three of my “friends” (a loose term for facebook acquaintances) had joined a group called “If 100,000 people join this group my girlfriend will let me have a threesome.”

I checked out the group, read the brief description of it, and noted that there were 26,000 members. Then, out of curiosity, I refreshed the page. The number of members jumped by 4,000 in just a few minutes.  I clicked refresh again.  The number jumped by 35 in less than 10 seconds. People were joining this sexualized group at an unbelievable rate.

That’s when I had an idea. We had a website designed for students looking for a safe place to investigate Christianity of which I was an administrator locally. One article on the site was entitled “Sex and the Search for Intimacy.” It was a well written piece about how sex is primarily not about pleasure or thrill-seeking, it’s about a search for intimacy that can ultimately be found in a relationship with Christ.

I decided that I would join the group and post a few links to the article on the “wall” for the group. Over the next couple of days, more than 5,000 people clicked on a link to that article, and 13 people indicated a decision for Christ after reading the article. Now, I’m not so naive as to think that a click on a link is the same thing as a commitment to Christ.  But let’s say that one or two people who came to that site left and reevaluated their priorities in light of eternity. I’d call that a victory.

A month later I got a call from our ministry’s corporate headquarters wanting to know how we had gotten so many hits. 

The next most visited site on the network had something like 1,000 hits in a month.   We had double that many hits in one day, thanks to my use of links.  When I told them, though, they were understandably hesitant to run the story.

The interesting part about the other site is that they spent hundreds of dollars on promotional pieces and online ads to generate those 1,000 hits.  I used a couple hours of time and $0 to generate more than 5,000 hits.  The power of social media (that Doritos should have harnessed last night) is that, when used correctly, you can reach a very targeted audience with your message, and not spend a dime.

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We all have things we regret about life. I regret being the good kid.

(this is part of a series of stories being ported over from the old website.  Here’s my story)

That’s not to say I wish I had been a bad kid.  I just wish I had been more aware of my heart’s true condition.

I was the youth group poster-child.  If there was a committee in my church with a youth representative, I was it.  I led Bible studies, I went on mission trips, and I even was an Eagle Scout.  Parents in the youth group all liked me.  I had a master key to the thousand-plus-member church on my key ring.

The problem is, I was a jerk (even if only internally).  I judged others on a curve, demonized their sins and gave myself a pass.  I might never have said it out loud, but I was better than everybody I knew.

The most major problem I had was theological, and is only clear in retrospect.  I saw the gospel, the fact that Jesus died for people, as just a doorway into Christianity.  I thought that once you get through the door, you are a good kid, and the gospel is old news.  This cancerous theology worked itself out in my life in so many ways.  I had this massive us/them split going on in how I viewed other people, for one.  The kids in my high school who smoked weed and drank beer were the “bad kids” and I, along with my Christian friends, were the “good kids.”  We were the insiders.  God liked us more.  And to make matters worse, I even saw myself as better than my Christian friends.  God liked me more, because I prayed in front of people, sang the lead in the youth group musical, and could play the guitar and lead people in singing “Lord I Lift Your Name on High.” What a smug pharisee I became.

Then I started to have trouble living up to my own standards.  God graciously took me to the point of seeing that I still, in spite of all my work, needed saving.  Seeing myself as the sinner still in need of a savior was simultaneously the worst and the best news I had ever heard.  And it’s why I am in full-time ministry today.  The us/them split has been shattered, and I am free to be honest with myself and others about our need for a savior.  God’s grace is heroin, and I am officially a junkie.

God called me into ministry with Campus Crusade for Christ in 2002, and it has been a blast “dealing” grace to college students.  I am passionate about men stepping out of apathy and addiction and into a vibrant and fulfilling walk with God.  I view Jacqueline’s and my ministry as a partnership where we, along with all the folks who prayerfully and financially support us, strive to show Christ to students, both the “good kids” and the “bad kids.”

What about you?  Were you the good kid? The rebel? How’d that work out for you?

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