If you have been reading these tips, you know I have been doing a series on the successive stages of movement development.
- I started by explaining those stages and the skills necessary at each stage.
- Then I passed on a Prayer Exercise for New Movements.
- After that we explored ways of Finding a Capable Leader.
- Then came Growing from 1 to 10, or essentially building our leadership team.
- Last week we looked at Expanding from 10-50.
Someone asked me this week if I was going to talk about going from 50 to 100 and 100 to 200. Just for the fun of it I went back through old notes and did in fact find a roundtable discussion on growing from 50 to 200. Most of the discussion appeared to be unique to those coaching them, but there were some principles that I thought I would pass on.
Growing from 50 to 200
Obstacles
- Not reproducing leadership
- Students abandoning the transferability content
- Tired of win, build, send
- Competing groups with better bands
- More fires in the same rooms. (Not certain what this was, but I have an idea.)
- Big time needs with student leadership
- Getting comfortable at 50
Best practices
- Start with freshmen
- Summer project involvement
- Spread out leadership/lots of ownership/add to the leadership pool
- Leadership retreats (current and emerging in the fall – actual leaders in the spring)
- Emphasis on evangelism
- EFM focus – Greeks – reaching those that are not reached.
There was an interesting addendum to the notes of that discussion:
- What would happen if your movement doubles – could your current leadership handle it? Would they be willing to handle it?
In other words do your current student and volunteer leaders have the vision for growth and the ability to lead that growth?
There is a lot that can be said about growing a movement from 50 to 200. CruPress Green has three pages of articles and resources for building a movement. One, A Movement(s) Building Model, is a fairly comprehensive treatment written by several folks with a lot of experience.
