The Overflow Show Discussion guides October 27, 2008
Posted by Gilbert Kingsley in Evangelism.add a comment
I was talking with Joe Hanford, Pacific Southwest Regional Office, last week. He and his team are doing a great job with The Overflow Show. Billing it as “5 Minutes to Better Witnessing,” the team takes ideas from the very top books on evangelism. They talk about party evangelism, authenticity, deep conversation ideas, and handling objections like the problem of evil or only one way to heaven. This fall, they added two more five minute podcasts on scientists who believe and how Christianity is viewed in the public square. The team has received great feedback from staff and students in the Pacific Southwest region. These 20 evangelism shows have increased confidence and excitement about sharing their faith.
When you check out the episode list, you will see a brief description of the book. You, then, have an option of listening or downloading the five minute podcast. What’s new this fall are discussion guides for each episode. Each guide has an application challenge for the next week. Here is a sample of one of the discussion guides.
Connecting Post-Moderns With the Gospel – Discussion Guide
Section 1
Discuss what you applied in the past seven days from the last Overflow Show.
Read 2 Timothy 4:2-4. How do the conditions that Paul warns about resonate with things you observe currently in our culture?
Section 2
Go to www.OverflowShow.com and listen to the 5-minute podcast titled “Connecting Post-Moderns With the Gospel.”
Section 3
What did you think? What stood out to you as you listened?
How surprising was it to hear the author say that post-moderns are interested in spirituality?
Discuss ways post-moderns version of spirituality might differ from the traditional definition of spirituality?
How surprising was it to hear the author say that post-moderns are interested in truth? What version of truth do post-moderns seek?
What are other characteristics of post-moderns regarding religion or spirituality?
Why is it not important to a post-modern to have logical consistency in her spiritual views?
The author says post-moderns base much of their philosophy on personal experience. How can we utilize that knowledge as we seek to connect with post-moderns?
The author recommended sharing our own story as a journey, eventually seeing the need for a guide of some sort, then seeing the need for a forgiver. What are a couple thoughts you have about this approach?
Why is it important to be transparent and share our flaws with others?
Share some old stereotypes of Jesus or the Christian life that have been greatly changed as you’ve embraced Christ and grown spiritually?
What did you think about the story of Mother Teresa’s outlook and action regarding the poor in India versus the Hindu people’s outlook and action?
Section 4
Discuss some ways we could apply a few of these principles in the next 7 days?
One suggestion (if needed): Develop a 3-minute version of your own personal story in the form a journey. If appropriate, include how you eventually saw the need for a guide of some sort. Then how you saw the need for a forgiver and how that impacted your life. At the end of the story, tell how you realized that the guide and forgiver was Jesus Christ and why. Practice your story on a fellow group member before next week’s meeting either in person or by telephone, or better yet, tell a non-Christian friend that your assignment from your spirituality group was to write a 3 minute version of your spiritual journey to share with the group, and ask if you can practice on her.
Overflow enthusiastically recommends the book - Evangelism Outside the Box by Rick Richardson, Intervarsity Press
www.OverflowShow.com
Before I left on a recent trip, I downloaded several of the podcasts to my iPod and listened to them on the plane. I like how Joe has given a synopsis of the book and zero-ed in on something practical that our students can apply as they “overflow into the lives of others.” Why not give it a try?
Making Vision Stick October 20, 2008
Posted by Gilbert Kingsley in Leadership.add a comment
I was handed a little book recently by Andy Stanley of North Point Community Church in Atlanta. Making Vision Stick is one of his Leadership Library books. I read Creating Community a couple of years ago and enjoyed it. But I thought I would give you a summary of Vision because there were some things that were particularly salient for us.
Making Vision Stick
We talk a lot about casting vision in our ministry. But Stanley says the leader is responsible for more than just casting vision. He mentions five different aspects.
- State the vision simply. Stanley says, “It is better to have a vision statement that is incomplete and memorable than to have one that is complete and forgettable.”
- Cast the vision convincingly. He suggests that we 1. Define the problem. 2. Offer a solution. 3. Present a reason. If we can’t do this, the vision won’t stick.
- Repeat the vision regularly. I forget how much we need to be reminded of what we are doing and why. Stanley says we needed to be reminded more often than we think.
- Celebrate the vision systematically. Celebration is important and it reminds others of those things that are important. For example, I send out a weekly email to our ministry partners. This is one of the smartest things I have done in MPD. I am surprised how often our partners refer to something I mention in those emails. It is a systematic way of keeping our partners informed of what we are doing.
- Embrace the vision personally. It is so easy to get distracted by secondary matters. We need to personally embody what we are talking about.
Stanley also mentions, what he calls, “vision slippage indicators”. First new projects, products and programs must be vision-centric. Lots of cool things come our way, but do they help us accomplish our vision? Then there are requests, stories and complaints. What we are getting back from our people lets us know whether the vision has caught on.
You can read Making Vision Stick in a sitting. But we want to live out those lessons all year long. I like to use the Transformational Community article at the start of the year. But throughout the year, I keep pulling out the prayer, win, build and send critical path. What works for you?
Partnering Between Immediate and Distant Teams October 17, 2008
Posted by Gilbert Kingsley in Coaching.add a comment
In a ministry like ours where we are trying to reach students in every ethnic community, all of the athletes, the Greeks, the Goths, etc., etc. not all of us have the skills necessary to reach every type of student on every campus. It will take partnering with others who have such specific training to reach those students. Whether it is Impact, AIA, Valor or Bridges, there are staff who can partner with you to reach every student on your campuses.
Lorna Johnson, Team Leader for the North and West Regions Field Ministry of the ImpactMovement, sent me her article that speaks to partnering with others. Here is a portion of that article.
New Lenses in Partnering
As a certified track coach, I have experienced the importance of working as a team to see an athlete excel to the best of their ability. I have been called the technician of the team. My focus is with hurdles. Others on teams I’ve coached are called sprint coaches, distance coaches or field coaches which involve events like high jump, pole vault, etc. I think you get the idea. As IMPACT and Campus Crusade endeavor in this partnership, we, too, are coaches on a field. II Timothy 2:5 states, “Also if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules.’’ Our target students, the African American descent, are on a track that is requiring our coaching abilities. Our desire is to provide discipline, strength, and endurance for this Spiritual race.
“Everyone one competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air; but discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.” I Corinthians 9:25-27
Being a team coach requires a wide range of skills and perspectives and the ability to know which to access and when. Underlying those are personal qualities of courage, risk taking and maturity. I will be referring to the two partnering teams as “Immediate Team” which is the team that is in close proximity, or on-site with the targeted students. “Distant Team” will be the name of the partnership team that is coaching from a distance. Skills and orientations needed for effective partnership coaching include:
- Clarity regarding performance and development. When a coach facilitates learning for the team as a whole, then coaching takes on a developmental dimension. This learning includes individuals gaining insight, practicing different behaviors and thought processes as an individual as well as their team members effectiveness. It also involves teams assessing and moderating their behaviors in order to increase overall effectiveness. There will need to be a sliding scale for a learning curve. In order for this to work, constant communication and repetition will be required.
- A legacy and altruistic orientation. Team coaching work does not always have an immediate payoff for the coach or the teams. The pulls of other outside forces not under either teams control are great and constant. Committing to this type of coaching does call on an altruistic dimension of the coach or a strong connection to the mission and its team members in both partnerships.
- Organizational savvy. The coach needs to be adept at being part of a coaching organization and not just be skilled at individual coaching. This means being collaborative and open to influence and learning. It also means being willing to share unsuccessful strategies so other coaches may avoid the same difficulties.
- Systems thinking perspective. Coaches must have enough expertise in organizational dynamics to conduct team coaching with awareness and understanding of the complex organizational dynamics in which the team operates. I call this flexibility and things being different not wrong.
- Comfort with ambiguity. Emerging organizational and team dynamics lend unpredictability to the process. Coaches must be willing to be led by the team, the “Distant Team,” to the ways in which the “Immediate Team,” carries out its work and the outcomes that the team delivers, rather than the “Immediate Team” expecting to drive the direction and specific outcomes. What this allows are athletes, our target students, that are getting the expertise of each coach as long as there is coordination of the workouts.
- Understanding, identifying and managing boundaries. Team coaching calls on the coach to be finely attuned to boundary management because there are many more active relationships involved on an ongoing basis, and the coach is working within at least three relational units: one-to-one with individual coaches, the teams and the students.
- Balancing individual, team and organizational needs. The team coach has to be able to balance the needs of each relationship and do that with clarity and consent. For the leader coach accustomed to the pattern and process of one-to-one coaching, team coaching requires a basic shift in orientation.
The ideas, concepts, and principles shared with you have been spurred on by The Center for Creative Leadership Handbook of Coaching (Jossey-Bass 2006). Our job description is calling us to extend our development and coaching responsibilities to entire teams. These teams are no longer the typical teams that are in close proximity but ones connected via a cause, a people group or cultures. The challenge for us leaders coaching is identifying what each partner significantly contributions to team effectiveness by using coaching practices.
So what does this mean for us? Say, for example, you have International Students on your campus that you have a desire to reach. However, you might not have experience working with Internationals. Having Linda Woods, on my Student LINC team, coach your students to reach Internationals is an example of that Distance Team connecting with your Immediate Team that Lorna is talking about. Here are a few others: (In some cases, they may suggest a person closer to your location or the one responsible for your region.)
- AIA: Scott Mottice
- Destino: Anna Pratt
- Epic: Darrin Mabuni
- Faculty Commons: Rick Hove
- ImpactMovement: Scott Crocker
- Korean Campus Crusade for Christ: Dong Whan Kim
- Nations: Mike Kelly
- Student Venture: Pat Senkbeil
- Valor Movement: Jim Hocker
If you would want contact info for any of these, email me and I can provide that information.
October’s Big Ten October 6, 2008
Posted by Gilbert Kingsley in Uncategorized.add a comment
There is usually a flurry of activity during the first six weeks of the Fall semester. You are recruiting like mad, connecting with new people in studies and ministry activities, and doing lots of evangelism. There is so much to do to make sure the campus year is getting off to a good start. But it is around this time of the semester when we need to take stock of what is going on and making any mid-course adjustments.
Ben Rivera, StudentLINC Consultant, writes a tip for student leaders. The tip usually mirrors those things he wants to cover during his coaching conversations. That is what makes them so practical. The latest one talks about some of those diagnostic questions that Ben covers with his campus leaders.
The Big Ten as You Think About October
- Have you planned your big evangelistic event for the month of October?
- Are you finding ways to get into spiritual conversations with students and invite them to your meetings?
- Is there a time to fit in a fun social event for the ministry this month? Hay ride? Barn dance? Indoor volleyball night? Dinner night? Be creative.
- Have you followed up on most of the contacts and new people from September? Invited them to the fall retreat?
- Are your posters all over campus so that people can find you if they’re looking for you? Maybe put up a new style poster for this month?
- Are your meeting/Bible studies well organized and sharp so that students will want to come back each week?
- Are you praying regularly for your campus?
- If you are graduating or transferring in December, is there someone you are actively training and pouring your life into who will take over for you?
- Are you personally staying fresh with the Lord through your devotions?
- Are you excelling academically so as to always be a good steward of your time, resources and future?
Ben is the consummate coach. All of his coaching takes place over a distance. That is what enables him to coach so many campuses. I sit close enough to him that I can hear him and observe how he coaches. As I listen to him connect with his campus leaders, he is a good listener, he is personable and he relates on a deep heart level with his leaders. Posted right over his phone is a list of reminders, a template if you will, that helps him help his leaders. You can see how some of these have informed what he told his leaders in the “Big Ten” above.
- Am I working with the right leader?
- Do they fully understand our distinctive and purposes for campus ministry? Vision encouragement.
- Are they sharing their faith regularly/once a month evangelistic event? Co-Journers, Big Six, CM’07.com
- Do they know and practice the principles of conducting a good Bible study? Cru.com/ultimate Road trip
- In their studies, are they covering key material?
- Leadership development/multiplication
- Fall Retreat/Christmas conference/summer project
- The importance of the first week of each semester
- Weekly tip via email, Facebook/MySpace etc.
- Are they praying?
As you think about where you are in the semester and where you want to go, here are a few more resources to help you keep on target.
