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

1. Have you planned your big evangelistic event for the month of October?
2. Are you finding ways to get into spiritual conversations with students and invite them to your meetings?
3. 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.
4. Have you followed up on most of the contacts and new people from September?  Invited them to the fall retreat?
5. 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?
6. Are your meeting/Bible studies well organized and sharp so that students will want to come back each week?
7. Are you praying regularly for your campus?
8. 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?
9. Are you personally staying fresh with the Lord through your devotions?
10. 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.

1. Am I working with the right leader?
2. Do they fully understand our distinctive and purposes for campus ministry? Vision encouragement.
3. Are they sharing their faith regularly/once a month evangelistic event? Co-Journers, Big Six, CM’07.com
4. Do they know and practice the principles of conducting a good Bible study?  Cru.com/ultimate Road trip
5. In their studies, are they covering key material?
6. Leadership development/multiplication
7. Fall Retreat/Christmas conference/summer project
8. The importance of the first week of each semester
9. Weekly tip via email, Facebook/MySpace etc.
10. 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.

• The Campus Ministry Year.
• The Cycles of Momentum.
• Sign up for Ben Rivera’s tips.

With all of the websites we have in the US Campus Ministry, it is hard to remember them all and to know which ones are used for which purposes.  Here is a list of movement launching, evangelism and coaching websites to get you going.

Movement Launching websites:

• MovementLaunching.com.  A good starting place for understanding ministry within different ethnic communities.  There are launching strategies for each of our strategic partners:  Impact, Destino, Epic, BridgesInternaional, Nations, KCCC, AIA, Student Venture, Faculty Commons and Valor.
• Global Learning Center.  An e-learning tool for launching ministries.
• GoCampus.org.   Resources on launching a High School Ministry. Check out the START handbook.
• For launching Valor movements.
• Specific sites for various ethnic communities.
  • Information and resources for working with International students.
  • Resources for launching and leading Destino movements.
  • Specific information about Epic opportunities.
  • Well-developed Impact Movement site with resources and opportunities.
  • For launching Native movements.

Evangelism websites

• EveryStudent.com.  Naturally.
  • The resources, posters, articles, Facebook ads and ways to link to the site.
  • For international students.
  • Follow up site for EveryStudent for new believers.
• Lots of training, articles and resources on GodSquad.
• More resources both within and outside CCC.
• LeaderU.  Articles on a Christian perspective for use in the classroom or for research.
  • The Spanish language version.
  • Understanding other religious beliefs.
• How to write your personal testimony.
• Resources for ministry within the Greek system on campus.
• Joe Hanford’s 5 minute podcasts on the best books on evangelism.

Coaching websites

• GodSquad.com/Staff.  You will need the userid and password that you use for other CCC sites.
• The Campus Staff site.  Go to Resource Center, then to Lanes/Lines, then Catalytic Resources, then Staff Resources, then Catalytic Field Training, then Look, Launch, and Lead
• Nebraska Catalytic launching movements videos.
• There are a lot of blogs out there.  Here are just a few.
  • John and Melissa Mitchell’s coaching site for their leaders.
  • On Leading Well, by Ken Cochrum, director of the Global Campus Ministry.
  • Steve Morgan, National Campus Director in Mexico.
  • And mine of course!

No doubt, I have missed something that should be listed.  You probably have your own list of favorites that you frequent and like to pass on to your leaders.  The fact that there are so many begs for a go to place for us.  GodSquad has been that for many.  But in the meantime, bookmarks was developed for just this purpose!

It is Labor Day in the US, the traditional start of the campus year.  However, many campuses have already started.  This is the time of the semester when incoming freshmen are deciding who their friends will be, what their real values are and where they get involved.  That is why I like what John and Melissa Mitchell, Southern New England Campus Ministry sent out to their student leaders last year.

We hope that by this point of the semester, new students have come to your Bible study and/or weekly meeting.  We trust that you understand the importance of reaching the Freshmen class and helping these new guests get involved in your ministry.

However, we don’t want new students just to show up once or twice, and just fade away as the semester progresses.  It’s important to help them KEEP coming.  How will that happen you ask?  The key is relationships.  Lots of people will check out something once or twice, maybe even 3 times, but after awhile if they aren’t connecting with others, getting to know people and feeling like they are wanted, then they won’t keep coming back.

Here are some ideas that should help:

• Invite new students to meet you for a meal (guys invite guys, girls – girls, you don’t want this to look like a date!).  You don’t have to go alone, you can invite other students to join you.  Don’t make it too many people, or someone could be overlooked in the conversation. You have to eat anyway and this is a great opportunity to really get to know someone.  Get other returning students involved in this as well.
• Share the gospel with new students!  Don’t assume they are Christians just because they come to your study, or they come from a church background.  Go through the Knowing God Personally booklet with them.  You can introduce it this way:  “Just so you know what we believe….”  This familiarizes them with who we are as a ministry, and to one of our tools.  Plus if they aren’t a Christian, you get to share Christ with them!
• Ask new students to help out with an event or activity, hanging posters, bringing snacks or helping to plan a social activity.  This helps them to start thinking of the ministry as “ours” rather than “yours” and they get to know others as they work along side them.  (Don’t ask someone that is new to lead a Bible study or some other spiritually significant responsibility without feeling confident that they are walking with God.)
• Personal invitation – invite students personally to come to a get together, help out with an outreach or to join a committee or small group.  When you ask everyone in the setting of a meeting, usually, “everyone’s ask is no one’s ask”.

We hope these tips help.  Building relationships is really foundational for a fruitful ministry – just like this example from the book of Acts.
“They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.  And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” Acts 2:46b-47
Wouldn’t it be great to have our ministries described like this?  Have fun connecting with one another!

More than just inviting freshmen to our meetings, we want to be intentional about building relationships and look for ways to connect them to others and what we are doing.  Here are a couple of resources on GodSquad offer more ideas
Six Weeks that Count
Reaching Freshmen
You can also read more about what John and Melissa are communicating to their student leaders on their blog.

Last week I mentioned four specific areas to get your student leaders up and running for the year.  It is exciting to see what students will do when we equip them, express confidence in them and then release them to watch God work.  But there are some things that the students, and all of us, need you to do.  Here are four:

Articulate your vision for a Transformational Community
I just love to paint a picture of what God would do through a student on their campus.  Incidently, this is just as effective over the phone.  Have a conversation using the Local Leader Critical Path.  I ask them to draw out the diagram and then we discuss Vision, Critical Mass and the critical path steps of Prayer, Evangelism, Discipleship and Sending.  Ask lots of questions about what God might do, what they are trusting God for and what they might do initially for each step.  When you ask them to assume leadership you become a resource by sharing your own vision and ways that you can help.  I would say that this is one of the most important skills you can develop as a leader.

Make sure your info is current on the infobase. (This is if you are staff or an intern in the US)

• Edit your profile so that the information is accurate.  You are the only one who can do this and it only takes a minute.  But it is so important for anyone looking at our ministry locators trying to reach you with a contact for a campus.  If you don’t know how, ask your director.
• Check to see if your name is attached to the right campuses.  Again, our ministry locators are in lots of visible places (GodSquad, EveryStudent.com, our campus ministry sites, etc).  We want parents and friends to tell us about Christian students.  If you are working on a campus and the ministry locator does not list a ministry there, the default is “Would you like to help us start a ministry?”  Far fewer will contact us when they see that than when they know that some ministry activity is already going on.
• If you have campuses within your scope that you would like to get to but you have not been there yet, list them as “Forerunner” campuses.  At least you will get any walk-in business that might come, rather than people going elsewhere if they think there is nobody there.

Decide which campuses you will do launching activities on.
If you are not intentional about pioneering on other campuses then it will not get done.  As a staff team, decide which campuses and when you will visit.  Three easy things to do there are FSKs, ES posters and QuEST interviews.  The ideal time to pioneer is during the first six weeks of the semester.  Students are the most open and available during this time.  If you feel like you are taking time away from existing ministries, prepare the leaders the week before by saying that you will call them to talk through what is going on in the ministry and answer any questions at that time.  And let us begin to pray that God will use your time of pioneering on new campuses to help the students on your launched campus to grow as leaders.

Learn how to direct and delegate rather than just doing.
I started driving tractor at 4 1/2 and a truck at 9.  After 40 some years I think I am fairly good at driving.  No matter how much modeling and teaching I provided, I finally had to get out of the driver seat and give the wheel to each of my sons.  They made some mistakes at first.  I had a few white knuckle moments.  But it was necessary.  We are developing leaders.  They won’t/can’t lead if we continue to do so.  A good starting place is the article “Delegating Responsibility“.

I tried to focus here on developing your leadership.  Leaders think strategically and with the big picture in mind.  Develop the skills of casting vision and delegation, and the character of dynamic determination.  Together let us pray that God opens up the doors of effective ministry on more and more campuses and within more communities, so that more and more students can hear the Good News of Jesus Christ.

What a great time of the year!  So much to do.  So much promise of what God might do in our ministries.  So many people to talk with.  So many options.  So where do I begin?

Let’s make this as practical as we can while we get our ministries up and running.  Our time is limited.  The first week that a freshman student is on campus is probably as important as the rest of the first semester combined.  This first week is when students will determine who their friends will be and what they will value in college.  Who are your key student leaders for each movement you are working with?  Coach them through each of these four areas.  As they see God use them right out of the blocks, it will build their confidence for the rest of the year.

Developing vision for what God will do this year.

• Have every student in a leadership position read or re-read the Transformational Community article.  This is what we are trusting God to do within every community on every campus.
• Here is a worksheet for developing vision for your movement.
• Here are some great suggestions and priorities for the first six weeks.

Making contact with the key players.

• Call each of the rest of your student leadership team to see how their summer went, inform them of the first meeting and what their individual responsibility is, and answer any questions they may have.
• Give your faculty advisor a call to inform him or her of the first events of the semester and to give them specific prayer requests.
• Check to make sure your meeting room is scheduled, any tables that you might be using for FSKs or surveys are reserved, and any ads that you might put in the newspaper are ready to go.  You want to make sure the details are covered.

A kickoff meeting with the leadership team at the earliest possible time.

• Share your vision for the year.
• Have a devotion from, say Nehemiah 1, about the start of a great undertaking.  Nehemiah is a great example of the dual roles of prayer and action.
• Inform them of the first few events and make sure that each responsibility is covered.
• Take concerted time to pray for God to move, for new students to connect and for the ministry to grow and make an impact.
• Encourage everyone to be familiar with the Campus Ministry Year on GodSquad.

Be thinking about your first outreach.

• If you plan to hand out Freshman Survival Kits, decide when to assemble them and when would be the earliest time to hand them out.  We know that the very first week is when first year students are determining where their allegiances lie.
• If you will have an open house, a “cower” or pizza party, etc. make sure that the right “people” people are greeting visitors to help them feel welcome.  Have the opening talk be brief, visionary and welcoming.
• If you use a survey to find interested students, schedule the table or dining hall to take the surveys.  Three easy to use surveys with transitions and nationwide tabulating tools can be found on the QuEST Resources.
• Start right away with posters.  Here you can find ads to put on Facebook.

If you are coaching your leaders to get started, why not forward this email to them, and schedule a time to talk through some of the details.  It is a huge confidence booster when a student begins to take ownership and sees God use them.  And it frees you up to be able to go to a campus that does not have the student leadership already in place in order to prayer walk, hand out FSKs or do an info table.

I am a slow reader. But I am interested in lots of topics. Sometimes I am asked to read a book to give an opinion. I had a few of those this year. So my reading list is varied. But one book I read this year was one I noticed someone reading on a plane, The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. Okay, so the book has been out for several years now. I am just slow. But I found the book so fascinating after taking it out of the library that I asked for and received it as a gift from my wife, Chris.

Gladwell examines “social epidemics” and the factors behind them. That is essentially what we are attempting to create on our campuses, spiritual epidemics. Subtitled, “How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference”, Gladwell’s book has great potential for us as we think about how to maximize limited resources for the greatest possible impact. He looks at three factors that push something past the tipping point to an epidemic.

We normally think about looking for people with gifts of leadership, evangelism, etc. But Gladwell says in the chapter on the Law of the Few, that there are three types of people that are instrumental in making a difference.

Happy New Year and welcome to another semester of Coaching Tips. I enjoy sending sending weekly doses about what God is doing through many of our best practitioners in campus ministry. Together with you, I am looking forward to how God will use us all to reach more and more students on more and more campuses for Christ.

Our third son, Tom, followed in his older brothers’ paths by running cross country. As a ninth grader, his best 5K time was a respectable 18:29 and he enjoyed watching the top seven runners on the team win their fifth state championship in six years. But to get that level Tom ran over 500 miles during the summer. The coach is fond of saying that the boys do not initially understand this, but what they do in June makes a difference in how they will do in October. Planning and preparation are essential to outcome.

With that in mind, here is a week by week coaching plan for the Spring Semester. This is intended to help you not do the ministry yourself, but rather help you help others do the ministry. A coach does not play the game, but sets the team up for victory in the game.

Our pastor told a story last week of how he wanted to drive the motor boat when his family spent a week at the lake as a boy. His step-dad told him to very carefully get up and come back to put his hand on the tiller (steering handle). All the while his step-dad never took his hand off. After a minute, he told him, “There, now, you have driven a boat.” Arriving dejected back on shore, his grandfather, who tended to live a bit more wildly, told him about an island that needed exploring and that a boy his age would be great at exploring it. But to get there, he needed to take a boat over to that island. The way he told the story was humorous, but the confidence that his grandfather instilled in him were all part of the growing up process he experienced to be the pastor of our congregation of 10,000. It is not what I do, but what others do because of what I do, that is the test of my coaching, mentoring or discipling.

Having a plan will help us achieve success. If this one helps you, great. But maybe this will spur your thinking to develop your own coaching plan. If you open this on-line, you can link directly to many of the tools on Godsquad and other sites. The topics in bold face type are the key emphases for the week if time is short.

If you have been reading these tips for more than a year, then you have seen this one. At this stage of the Spring semester while we are making final preparations for the summer and fall, I share an article that is one of my favorites.

You have prepared your students to survive the summer. You have done your fall planning. You have worked through your first six weeks' plan. Now one more matter of fall preparation. Have you thought about the first meeting of the year? In what has become something of a tradition, I want to pass on to you an article by Mike Woodruff that casts vision for having a strong start. Not everything applies in our Catalytic context, but this article speaks to the urgency of the first week on campus and the reality of how quickly a student determines allegiances on campus.

"Every group I’ve studied has followed roughly the same pattern. In fact, with only two exceptions, I have never seen a campus ministry grow after the first month of the year."

Off And Running by Mike Woodruff

Three weeks into the Fall quarter finds most students in a rut. They’ve picked their classes, joined their clubs and scheduled every waking minute between now and Thanksgiving. Some have carved out time for "significant others," most will have set aside entire weekends for football, pizza and parties, and a few will even have blocked out an hour or two for class. But by the end of the first month it’s all in stone. And if attending your large group meeting isn’t in their schedule by then, there is little hope it will be there come May.

During my 8 years with a church-based campus ministry in Washington State, I watched student involvement at our large group meetings climb from 150 to 700. With the exception of one small hiccup up, all of that growth occurred in the Fall. If we ended Spring quarter with 200 students, we started back in September with 350. That May we’d be down around 300-far from growing, every group seems to lose numbers over the year-but by the next Fall we started with 450. We grew by starting strong. Every other group I’ve studied has followed roughly the same pattern. In fact, with only two exceptions, I have never seen a campus ministry grow after the first month of the year. And that means that if you’re serious about expanding your influence you need to begin with a shout. If ever there was a time for a home run, it’s the first meeting of the Fall quarter.

Be Ready: Of course, starting strong is hard to do because first meetings are full of early season mistakes. The worship team is rusty, the microphones are lost and no one can find a three-prong adaptor to plug in the overhead. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Use the summer to jump start the Fall. Put summer students to work preparing publicity and drama. Work on your first message during June and July so it’s one of the strongest you give. Ask the worship team to come back to campus a few days early for a planning and preparation retreat. Or hire the worship band from a local church to help you begin with a bang. Hold a dress rehearsal the night before. Make it a party and buy pizza for the whole team.

Additionally, apply the popular business philosophy of continuous improvement. Keep a separate file folder just for the events that occur during the first few weeks of the Fall quarter, and as those events unfold critique them. What could we do next year? How could we have reached out more effectively to freshman? Should we have started the meeting earlier? Later? Gone shorter? Longer? By continually updating this file-technically called an After Action Report-you can insure that your kick-offs get better and better.

Be Visible: If you normally meet in a church or a room that is the least bit hard to find move your first meeting. We picked one of the most visible buildings in the middle of campus even though that meant competing with a back-to-school kick off dance right outside the door. If your school has an activity fair where you can advertise, set up the best booth and offer the most free food. I’d suggest spending up to seventy-five percent of your advertising budget for the entire year on your first couple of meetings-and be creative. Anybody can do posters. Try banners, balloons, sandwich boards, flyers, blackboard blitzes and, of course, personal invitations. We sent out letters to all returning students welcoming them back to school and inviting them to our first meeting. The invitation includes the who, what, where, when, and why of every event we have planned during the first week, and ends with me egging them to invite anyone and everyone they know to our very first meeting. If they will send me the name of someone they’d like invited, I’ll send them a letter or give them a call. We also make a special effort to reach freshman by handing out lots of flyers around the freshman dorms and in their registration lines. I know several Christian groups whose members come back to campus early just so they can help freshman move into the dorms. They find that by being one of the first friendly faces a freshman meets it’s easy to form friendships that might later lead to a chance to share the Gospel or invite someone to a meeting.

The Sardine Effect: During the 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy’s advance man picked small high school gymnasiums for their political rallies. He didn’t want the nicest auditorium to meet in; he wanted a place they could pack. We’ve done the same. In fact, the room we now use seats 150 fewer students than we expect. The fire marshal hates us, but the energy we create is incredible.

Pray, pray and pray. But not right before the meeting. The last place you want your leaders just before the start of the first meeting is locked up in a room with you. They should be out inviting friends, greeting early arrivals or picking up newcomers who need a ride. Hold your prayer meeting earlier in the week or earlier in the day. That frees everyone up to deal with last minute headaches and mingle with people.

Force Fellowship: Helping freshmen feel welcome is one of the biggest challenges you’ll face; especially since upper-class students all gravitate to friends they haven’t seen in three months. Place greeters at the door, plead with your Bible study leaders to befriend lost freshmen and end the meeting by asking people to find two people they don’t know and introduce themselves. I also explained that everyone-including our staff-feels like everybody here knows everybody else-except them. The bigger the group the more of an issue this becomes and the more proactively you need to deal with it.

The Meeting: First meetings are not for regular attendees. Serve food, skip inside jokes, explain all terms, don’t sing any songs that you do not have the words for and otherwise bend over backwards to make visitors feel welcome. Screen all announcements and any drama to be certain they are done well. Seekers and nominal Christians are more likely to check you out at the beginning of the year-actually, most everyone is there to check out the opposite sex. This is a point I make during the beginning of my talk because it’s guaranteed to prompt lots of nervous laughter-so adjust worship and your first message. Be light. Be user friendly. Be funny. Be short. Your goal is to get them to sign up for a Bible study and come back next week, not explain the finer points of the hypostatic union.

"… the first 168 hours after a student sets foot on campus represents the most strategic time for them to get plugged into your fellowship."

Follow Up: Life long friendships are often formed in the first few days of college, so cram as many opportunities for bonding into that week as you can. We held a picnic the afternoon after our first meeting and sponsored a social event that weekend. Additionally, our staff worked around the clock placing people in small group Bible studies. Our goal was that everyone who signed up for a study was contacted within twenty-four hours by his or her study leader. That means at least one all-nighter for our staff, but it was worth it. We wanted Bible Study leaders to be able to spend time with the members of their study during the first week. They could meet with them at the weekend social, walk with them to church that first Sunday and sit with them at the next large group meeting.Was all of this work easy? Not hardly. Trying to jump-start a college ministry is a lot like trying to kick start an aircraft carrier. At least two or three people will nearly die of exhaustion. But someone has to do it and without question the first 168 hours after a student sets foot on campus represent the most strategic time for them to get plugged into your fellowship. Plan now to begin with a bang.

I happen to be reading through Ben Rivera’s last GodSquad Weekly Ministry Tip. He usually has a reference to the current month’s “Roadmap“. It lists the essential ministry steps to accomplish for the current month. This week, he recommends planning for the fall semester and to complete the choosing of leadership for next year. I like the priority that he gives to preparing for the first critical weeks back on campus. The link to the GodSquad page on “planning for the fall semester“, lists several key planning questions and resources.

Planning for the Fall Semester

1. Transitioning to next Fall.
What leaders can you count on?
Do a brief study and summarize the “Transformational Community” article. Use the discussion questions to guide your study. Make enough copies of the article for each person in your study/weekly meeting.

2. Vision
Next, for personal perspective, read and study “Developing Vision for your Movement“. Turn this into a study for discussion. Establishing vision and motivation is important for your students.

3. Plan
Finally, in preparation for the fall, look at the “First 6 Weeks“. This will help you to specifically plan for your fall semester. Be sure to do the surveys the first week of classes. This will be your most important event to gather new people into your ministry for the year.
Read “Two Essentials for the First Week of School“.

My boys’ high school cross country coach was fond of saying that the things the runners did in June determined what the runners would be doing in October. This is just as true for us, too. The things your student leaders do this week to prepare for the fall, will make a difference in how things go in the fall.