Expanding from 1-10 October 25, 2009
Posted by Gilbert Kingsley in Coaching, Leadership, Student Ownership, Volunteers.add a comment
As I write this I am flying back from a series of meetings in Eastern Europe where our ministry is looking to expand our ministry down to include high schools. The one issue that came up more often than anything else was capacity. How do we do that when we are stretched with everything else. That is precisely the point when we talk about growing ministries on our campuses.
In last week’s tip, I talked about filtering a leader. Today, I want us to consider growing a ministry from one leader to a team of leaders. As we build a leadership team, we build capacity. Some of these thoughts came from a roundtable of metro leaders some time ago. We gave them this specific topic of developing a leadership team when all you have is a key leader.
Building a leadership team
- Teach that lone leader to delegate, for their sake (so their burden of work is lighter) and for the sake of developing other students.
- The cell group small group concept naturally lends itself to raising up additional leaders with the different roles in the group, although some staff feel the cell group philosophy is a bit complicated for students to roll out at first.
- Use data from the Key Volunteer Application to understand the leadership elements of your existing key leaders. It is here that you learn who their friends might be and what other strength areas are needed to complement them.
- Is there a nearby church with a college ministry? Ask your leader to find out the contact person for you. You as the coach of that student, or the student could themselves, check with the church to find other potential leaders to come along side.
- Help the student realize if they can just find a couple more people, they are making progress that’s valuable.
- Help currently involved students to take initial steps of ownership, so that over time, leaders can be grown from within.
- Coach them to do simple gathering events, like FSK’s. A table may surface new leaders.
- Ask key contacts to see if they have other ideas. This helps them to problem solve.
- Train leaders understand what makes a leader and have them keep an eye out for it.
- Teach seniors to find and recruit freshman.
- Helping the leaders understand the vision for engaging underclassmen as “developing leaders”. Consider sending emails to the whole student email list of the group, and do some “masses coaching” to help develop the vision of all the students, not just the key contact. This helps ensure that vision gets ‘passed down’.
Some obstacles that keep this from happening
- When our key contact is not able to communicate our coaching to the other people on campus. (One solution is asking them to copy one of our materials and then just coach them in using that material). This points to the need to find other leaders to help lead.
- When another Christian group is present on campus, there can be a scarcity in finding more leaders.
- Two-year schools are a big challenge because we don’t have much time to find leaders. Just because they are at a two year school, does not mean that they won’t be at the same level as leaders we are used to at four–year schools. Some are simply going there because it is not as expensive as four-year schools. Two year schools can often provide leadership coming in to our four- year schools, though the time they have with us will be less.
- It can be tough to get the students to practice “selection” well in recruiting their own replacements or co-leaders.
- Some of our target students still live at home and therefore have less of an adult mentality and more of a “youth group mentality”, or “minister to me.” During a launch, they lack a model to look to and follow. However, some schools have adult populations who we could tap into.
- Relational issues tear up student leadership teams and block their synergy.
- A lone leader can sometimes turn into a dictator and become inflexible in sharing power.
- We may not see them do as much one–on-one discipleship, because they’ve never seen it modeled up close. We will need to think in terms of more group discipleship.
Particularly useful tools or tactics that have worked
- Using the transformational community article to show them how we want to go to the whole campus.
- In the late fall, evaluate the movement as you coach it and then go over that evaluation in January with your key contact, helping them think through how they’ll prepare to pass on leadership.
- Go over the critical path steps on the LLCP with your leader and talk about what needs to happen at each step and who might be able to help out.
- Of course, we rely a lot on retreats and conferences to help in this, opportunity to connect with them and train them in person.
- Many teams do periodic leadership gatherings (monthly or more frequently) where the leaders from multiple campuses meet for dinner and then do training. This also brings out peer coaching, and all the more if a couple can come from the same campus.
- If you cannot do periodic leadership gatherings, consider doing a “training overnighter” once a semester.
- When you visit the campus, meet with a potential leader to do ministry with them. Have them share their testimony or lead a segment of a training you might be doing, even helping in a small group.
- We want to look for people who can lead and gather others, we can always train them in ministry skills as we go along.
Most of us are on teams. That is a value in our ministry. Certainly we want that value to be reflected in our students and volunteers who are leading. GodSquad has resources designed for them. This page will lead you to articles on a Picture of a Leader, Servant Team Challenge, Developing a Leader and Assessing Your Leadership Style. MissionalTeamLeader.com also has a wealth of resources in the Lead Your Team Filing Cabinet.
Steps in Filtering a Leader October 18, 2009
Posted by Gilbert Kingsley in Coaching, Launching, Student Ownership, Volunteers.add a comment
In last week’s tip, I talked about the stages of development of movements and the skills needed at each stage. For the next few weeks, I want to double click on each of those stages and focus on specific skills. Today I am double clicking on Pioneering. The skill we need to develop is how to filter a leader.
Steps in Filtering a Leader
There are any number of ways that someone might express interest in starting a Campus Crusade for Christ ministry. Maybe they are the leader of an existing group or they have initiated toward us in some way. What I am going to describe is what I would do. You may have other resources and steps, but I think you want to have a process for helping you determine who your leaders are and helping them see that God has raised them up.
Garett found out somehow that Campus Crusade for Christ could help him start a ministry. When his email reached me, I emailed back to tell him that I was sending him a Starter Kit. I asked him to fill out the required information and then mail it back to me. Within a week or so, he sent me each piece filled out and we were on our way to launching a ministry SUNY New Paltz.
Several years ago the Starter Kit was developed as a way to filter leaders. It introduces Campus Crusade for Christ and explains our vision and plans for reaching every student on every campus for Christ. It also helps us get to know the potential leader. The hardcopy version that we have in our office has examples of specific tools for prayer, evangelism and discipleship. An on-line version of the Starter Kit is found on the Start a Ministry pages of GodSquad.
We start by looking for the most mature Christians that we can find. I ask them to read Transforming Movements. Then I would meet with them as a group to discuss the thought questions at the end and dream with them about how to reach their campus. I would also walk through or draw out the Local Leader Critical Path. This helps cast vision for what we are believing God to accomplish on their campus.
By the end of that discussion I hope to find one or two who have distinguished themselves as potential leaders. The others would hopefully see them as leaders and these leaders see themselves as such. Then I would hand each potential leader a Starter Kit, walk through it and ask them to prayerfully fill and mail to me the application, sign the Statement of Faith and Key Person Volunteer Agreement. The application helps us to get to know them. The volunteer agreement helps them see what they are committing to. And the Statement of Faith clarifies what we believe.
I believe we have two tendencies in this process. First we can rush to hand them a Starter Kit without taking time to cast vision and instill personal confidence that God can use them. The other is that we don’t ask them to prayerfully commit to being a leader.
There is nothing magical about the application and agreement as they are written. But I believe the process is valuable for the potential leader to consider their role. We must not discount what God does in the heart of a potential leader as they take personal stock of what He might be calling them to do. There is nothing like the joy of personal discovery as they begin to crystallize their thinking about their vision.
We do learn some things about them if they delay in filling out an application or they are superficial in their answers. But if they know that we ask every leader to fill out an application they will see this as a necessary step. Evon took over for another as leader on one of my campuses. I asked him to fill out each form and he did. Reading his answers helped me get to know him better and to see how God had prepared him for ministry.
The next step is to have a conversation with them. The Telephone Interview. is one way to gather typical contact information, some cursory campus demographics and get to know them. We get to hear some of their heart and how God has prepared them. I remember once finishing the interview with Jeff. He thanked me for taking the time to get to know him when he knew that I was looking for a person who could begin a ministry on his campus.
An optional step in assessing the qualifications of a potential leader is calling references. On the back of the application, there is a place to list references. A Reference Questionnaire helps us determine if the prospective leader is qualified to lead the ministry. It is a good idea to call these references if we have questions about their leadership qualifications.
Now we are at the point where we can make a decision about their being a leader. A helpful tool for this is the Key Person Criteria. This page lists several areas and assesses each with a “green light” (Go forward.), “yellow light” (Precede with caution.) and “red light” (Stop.). It helps to objectify the qualification process to that we can make an informed decision. Finally, we call them to inform them of our decision. From here we begin to dream and make plans to reach their campus so that everyone has an opportunity to say “Yes!” to Jesus Christ.
A lot of us have encountered a few of the same pitfalls over the years in launching and building movements. Two of the most common are not having the right leader in place and having to restart ministries because leadership does not transfer to the next generation after the original leader graduates. It is easy to rush to start with the first person to come along. We might be uncomfortable asking them to fill out an application or we don’t do references if we have concerns.
The first few times through this, the process can feel somewhat contrived. But it will cut down on the number of instances where we have the wrong leader. It will also help us when we or they realize that they are not the right leader, because right up front they know what we are asking them to agree to. By having a qualification process, we minimize the start and restart cycle.
The Will to Prepare October 11, 2009
Posted by Gilbert Kingsley in Coaching, Launching, Leadership, Student Ownership, Trusting God, Volunteers.2 comments
My pastor used as an illustration Sunday about an exchange someone had with legendary basketball coach, Bobby Knight. Someone asked how he was able to win so many games. He must have had quite the “will to win”. Knight was reported to have said, “The key is not the will to win… everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important.”
I think about what’s involved as we prepare to launch and build movements.
First we learn that there are stages of development of movements. Our ministry uses the following five terms for these stages.
- Forerunner– When we are trusting God to raise up a ministry on the campus.
- Pioneering– When we are actively looking and taking steps to start a ministry.
- Key Contact– We have a student or volunteer qualified to lead a movement on the campus.
- Launched– We have a leader and five aligned students involved.
- Multiplying–When we see winning, building and sending taking place and are impacting the campus.
Second, we have to know how to employ different sets of skills for each stage of development. I go back to Robert Coleman’s, “Master Plan of Evangelism”. The principles he outlines in that classic relate very well to the various skills, tactics, ministry perspectives and tools that we use along the way as our movements develop.
- Forerunner– Association. Skills include networking, visualizing something when there is nothing and being a spokesperson with churches, faculty and administration.
- Pioneering–Selection. Skills include gathering, casting vision, being a change agent and motivating others to the vision.
- Key Contact– Consecration, Impartation. Skills include recruiting, training, being an effective coach, helping our leaders assess their own skills and needs and how to build a team around them.
- Launched–Demonstration, Delegation. Skills include training in evangelism and discipleship, the ability to impart our core DNA into others and effective delegation.
- Multiplying– Supervision, Reproduction. Skills include setting direction for leaders and knowing how to set others up for success in ministry.
Much like the skills that we develop when we went through our New Staff Development, the skills required of us change as movements develop. Our leadership must adjust and adapt to those needs. As ministers, we must grow in our ability to lead at each stage of development. The tools we use change with a growing movement.
While our ministry requires us to become proficient at every stage of movement development, over time we begin to figure out how we are uniquely wired for ministry, what our gift mix is and how to steward those gifts. Some of us are simply better at networking, gathering and recruiting. Some are better at coaching, training and developing leaders. This is an interesting tension for us in a ministry like CCC. With an expectation of proficiency at every stage but a tendency toward specialization, this is where our team comes in. Hopefully, the team we are part of has the breadth of skills to launch and build movements, but also the desire, some who love to start new things and others who can develop those starts. You can find great resources to help your team launch and build movements on Missional Team Leaders.
