Destino Conf San Antonio Style

I am sitting in the San Antonio airport after an incredible evening with Latino students from all over the US.  Other reports will flow in about this conference, but I believe this is another tipping point event.

A big time thanks and leadership kudos go out to Mark Vera – who, despite some concerns and doubts from powers that be (read: me) led as a man full of faith and did what God has called him to do.  This is true of all the Destino staff who rallied to make this event possible.  It was also very nice to see Alex Garcia, the man who helped begin the whole Latino journey for the US Campus Ministry.

Alex spoke last night and called students to “Represent” Christ in all they do and specifically in their community and on campus.  He called them to live a life beyond complacent faith and become passionate about who God has called them to be.  

Of the 150+ students at the event 50 were from California.  Today they are doing some practical training, outreach in the community in South San Antonio and talking about launching chapters on new campus.  It is very exciting to see God at work!

Epic Conference - Awesome

I spent this past weekend at the Epic Conference in San Jose. It was fantastic. But rather that reading me – here is what John Waidley (Regional Leadership in CA) had to say:

“I cannot thank you enough for your prayer for this weekend’s conference. I think all we asked you to pray for was answered with a Yes! Yes!
The final facts:
We had around 230 students and 40 staff, all but about 13 of the 270 was Asian American.

What went on:
This is really hard to describe as the facts don’t do justice to the passion that was in the room. But from the first meeting it was obvious God was up to something. Instead of your normal Friday night warm up, everyone get comfortable talk, Jeason Ma went for the juggler on the need for a serious walk with God and we were all convicted by the Holy Spirit by our tendency to not make prayer the center of ministries. There was a time of commitment to move from a vanilla Christian life to one that prioritized the Lord…well over 50% of the students responded on the spot.

Saturday morning built on that theme…added to that was the challenge of our ministries to move from a “come” mentality to a “go” focus. They were given multiple examples of what a “go” focus looks like. At the end of Saturday morning talk we were challenged to cry out to the Lord for our campuses….this is where you needed to be there but…students were praying very loudly and in tears as they prayed for their campuses. It was truly and amazing moment...but only a prelude to Saturday evening.

Saturday’s seminars were taught by local pastors and a couple staff…they all got great attendance (after three in a row this is a miracle) and reviews.

Saturday evening it became obvious that many of us were trying to do the ministry outside of the powered of the Holy Spirit. Again we were challenged about prayerlessness and the lack of Holy Spirit power in our ministries… this led to a time of group prayer. This prayer time can probably be best described as a visit by the Holy Spirit. As student repented and prayed for themselves and their campuses the environment was electric and serious and went on for an easy hour and a half. About one hour in the staff were instructed to pray for each student and give physical hugs as if given from the Heavenly Father. There were many tears of joy for the love of God being poured out on their hearts. The evening ended with the summer project directors getting a chance to share about the projects as a practical application point to going to the world and a natural transition from the prayer time. It was a four hour meeting! …and while most were tired, it was a good tired as if we had all done business with God. Most of the students stayed up long into the night reflecting on what the Lord was doing.

Sunday morning was clear and simple instruction on how to pioneer and build movements everywhere. It was simple and clear what the steps would be…and we closed discussing what needed to change back on campus.

A few things stood out to some of us from the conference. 1. The shear passion and volume at the meetings during the worship and prayer…when those quiet Asians from your campuses get together outside of the white community they let down...seriously. On said to me that the just feel like they can breath again. I have not been in a student environment like this on the mainland…it was truly amazing.
2. If one thing comes from this time I would want it to be the seeds of a regional prayer movement. If you have students who attended this conference it would be good for you to ask them how they are thinking about prayer. The bi-product of prayer will be new movements. 3. The John 17 sense of unity for the whole thing…we partnered with AACF, Local churches, IV, other regions etc. and the unity was tangible and many people commented on it.

A lot of staff and interns gave of their time voluntarily to this conference…not one needed to be there but they were compelled to come. The white staff who served behind the scenes put themselves in an extreme minority position and gave from their hearts. I am truly grateful you encouraged them to come…now they need a couple days off!

We hope to track with what the Lord is doing as a result of this conference. So if you have anything that you can report on directly related to the conference that is happening on campus I would love to hear it.
Please pray what began will take root in each heart.

Thank you again for praying!
John for the Epic Conference leadership”

Global Day of Prayer

This is cool. From Joel News International <joel-news-international@xc.org>

“Nations all over the world are preparing for the Global Day of Prayer
(GDOP) on Pentecost Sunday June 4. An estimated 200 million Christians are
estimated to participate in this event that has already been coined 'the
biggest prayer meeting ever'. The GDOP is preceded by 10 days of repentance
and prayer, and followed by 90 days of blessing (servant evangelism,
ministry among the poor and church planting). Information is available in
18 languages.”

Yahoo Study

A Yahoo study published by ClickZ International News, October 2005, found, "81% of college students say they turn to the internet first, before family, friends or other offline media for answers to their questions."

Stanley on Introducing Complexity

This is from Andy Stanley's, 7 practices of effective ministry. I think what he points out is true of our organization. This quote courtesy of Jeff Martin – part of the Crusade regional leadership team in the Mid-Atlantic Region.

"The shift toward complexity is usually subtle, and it's rarely intentional. Passionate leaders introduce innovations; persistent members promote their agendas; new programs are established; traditions are born; new ideas are added to old programs. And over time the ministry begins to lose its focus, and the church becomes paralyzed by its inability to purge itself. (italics mine). Ministry becomes diluted because it is flowing in too many directions. Years of adding and never subtracting have created layers of programs that all feel necessary."

W. Edwards Deming on Change

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
~W. Edwards Deming

I like this on change as well.

After you've done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully. After five years, look at it with suspicion. And after ten years, throw it away and start all over.
~Alfred Edward Perlman, New York Times, 3 July 1958

Thinking about change can come very naturally to some people - but to others it can feel like a painful unwanted break with all that is good and familiar. But change is part of the very nature of what we do in ministry. There is never room to manage.

To simply manage means to forget about going for the whole. To manage means accepting contentment with what we currently have. To manage gives us a false sense that we are being fully obedient to what Christ would have for us. Unless we are willing to change our practices, we will never achieve any greater results than what we currenlty have. Change can be the thing that forces us into situations of great faith and results in great breaktrough.

Scott Hampton on Change

If you can’t change the little things in your methods, you’ll never change the big things. Pick something, make it better. . . . BUT if you wait for everyone else to change BEFORE you will, remember that everyone else is thinking the same thing, and so nobody will change anything. Don’t wait for permission, or worry about doing something different, or invent reasons why you don’t have authority. Somebody has to make the first move. It might as well be you. Change your world, today. If you aren’t doing anything different, how can you expect to accomplish anything different? - Scott Hampton

More Steve Addison

From Emerging Church Info:

G. K. Chesterton once reflected that, “On five occasions in history the Church has gone to the dogs, but on each occasion, it was the dogs that died.” If Chesterton were alive today I have no doubt he would be writing about the sixth occasion. In this generation will it be the dogs that die? Will the Church be transformed to overcome the challenges we face? Leonard Sweet observes that, in the postmodern world the old maps are obsolete. We’re going to have to construct new ones as we go. Although the terrain is unexplored, we are not without a compass. Others have faced this challenge. more . . .

Category: Movements

Lorenzen with Addison - 5 Characteristics of a Movement

Jay Lorenzen interviewed Steve Addison at OnMovements.com (I am impressed - Jay is podcasting!). Jay is Crusade staff with the military ministry and basically . . . he is brilliant. Here is the interview. Here is the post. Here is a set up from Jay:

Steve Addison is a life-long student of movements that renew and expand the Christian faith. Steve currently serves as Director of Church Resource Ministries (CRM) Australia. Out of his research into Christian movements and work with church planting movements, Steve has distilled the following five characteristics of dynamic movements.

1. White Hot Faith
2. Commitment to a Cause
3. Contagious Relationships
4. Rapid Mobilization
5. Adaptive Methods

Fuel Movements: Genius Insights from the Expert

Good insights on moving fast and moving well.

Fuel Movements: Genius Insights from the Expert

Time with New Campus Staff - part duo

After the one hour pilgrimage through Acts of the Holy Spirit, we looked at Luke 10 and highlighted a few expansion principles that Jesus laid out (10;2b – LEADERS!). I then very very briefly brought up the concept of APEPT, or the Five-Fold Leadership Matrix from Ephesians 4. Rather than diving into the nuances of Apostle, Prophet etc., I simply gave 5 categories for how spiritual leaders function. Here is how I laid it out:

• Teacher – Are we right, accurate, true to what God has said?
• Pastor – Are people ok? Are people healthy?
• Evangelist – Are we engaged with the lost culture around us?
• Prophet – Are we doing what God has told us to do? Are we in tune with where God wants us to go?
• Apostle – Are we taking turf? Are we growing in to untouched places?
  

I had all the new campus staff (about 100 people) identify themselves in one of these categories. I was quick to point out that this was in no way intended to be some kind of gift test, I just wanted them to get into groups with a mix of people. About 10 people identified themselves as Apostle, Prophet or Evangelist. The other 90 fit into the Pastor and Teacher arena.
So we formed another 10 groups and worked this scenario: You compose a team in a city of 250,000+. Here is breakdown of the turf you are trusting God for:

• WatchaMattaU - Major State University of 40k students (4% African-American, 3% Asian-American, 1% Latino, Random assortment of International students – at least 1,000 in many little groups)
  
• Small Liberal Arts School
• HBC (Historically Black College)
• 4 Community Colleges (all in same system)
• 6 High Schools
• Cru (the Campus Crusade group) is about 100 students – 30 of which are spiritual multipliers (defined as – they take & make opportunities to share Christ)
  

We then asked, “What do you do?”
-----
After about 10 minutes of discussion I changed the question. I asked, ”After 3 years, your wildest dreams have been realized. There is 10% of the entire student population involved in Jesus activity? How did you do it?” (thanks Eric Swanson and Christian Washington insight into planning with the desired future in mind).
Here are their results (realize that the note taker was flying to get it all down, and that part of this is just standard fare, part is really not that great, and then part is emergent and amazing).
[After the exercise, I asked everyone if they thought they could implement their plan? To a group they all said YES! Let the young people run!]
The breaks represent different teams -

• pray and fast – seek God’s instruction
• Train students
• What are our student’s passions? - send them there
• Strategic Planning Process with students
  

• Seek after freshmen
• Leaders in fraternities/sororities
• Leaders of campus go to surrounding colleges
• Targeting RA’s in dorms
• Raise up leaders within movement to be RA’s
• Cast vision for spiritual multipliers
• Commitment to prayer
  

• Bringing in leaders
• Giving them the vision
• Giving them training
• Sending them out
• Send them where they are passionate about
  

• Target freshmen
• Intentional with discipleship of spiritual multipliers
• Find leaders
• Bible studies in freshman dorms
• Find who is ready to be sent
  

• Have 30 spiritual multipliers go with other 70
• Divide up multipliers to other parts of campus
  

• Target dorms
• Leaders on campus – athletes, Greeks
• Find leaders who are ready to go out
• Continue to cast vision
  

• Break up group into 5 categories – APEPT
• Break Cru into 15 groups
• Send people to share the gospel with the leaders of different groups everywhere
• Send in backup when something happens – teachers, pastors
• Keep moving through every group
  

• Send staff to talk to HS seniors throughout the city
• Spiritual multipliers to join Greek houses
• Starting conversational groups for international students
  

• Focus on most influential people
• Modeling well – sharing your faith
• Focus on Christ
  

• Students need to know that the Lord can do this
• Time of vision
• Target them toward specific areas of campus
• All out assault – outreach explosion
• Ministry teams target areas
  

• Partnering some of the 70 with the spiritual multipliers
• Send the students to work with seniors

Time with New Campus Ministry Staff #1

I spent part of early last week hanging out at New Staff Training in Daytona Beach. I was up their earlier in January to talk about Movements Everywhere. This road trip (in the mighty T100) was to decipher the “how” of the new staff job in light of [EVANGELISTIC!!!] [GROWING!!!] Movements Everywhere. Here is what we did . . . .and some of the results. There were about 100 staff in the room.

We started the time by getting in groups by regions (with two international groups). I started by talking about numerical growth in the early church. How did the church go from 25,000 people in AD100 to 20 MILLION by AD310!?! (I made them guess these numbers). I then stated, “the principles for this kind of growth are laid out in the book of Acts – in your groups you have 20 minutes to come up with all the principles you can muster from your vast, in-depth, communal knowledge of the book of Acts”

Here is the list (I've eliminated the duplicates – and this is in no particular order, but I did highlight some I liked)
· Preached boldly
· Prayed boldly/daily
· Went
· Praised God
· Filled with the Spirit
· One accord (they liked each other)
· Healings
· Shared
· Went outside the box / comfort zone
· Persecuted yet persevering
· Ice Cream Socials
· Took big risks
· Fasted
· They didn’t get comfortable – were on the move
· Unified
· Believed that Christ was going to return soon
· Went for influential people
· Went to influential cities
· Raised up Leaders
· Trusted the Lord for places
· Provided for one another
· Adapting the gospel message
· Focused strategy
· Delegated tasks
· Empowered and trusted younger leaders
· Used people who were committed to the vision
· Took every opportunity to speak on what the Lord has heard
· Spiritual multiplication
· Kingdom of God was their focus
· Endured persecution
· Body evangelism
· Commitment to sound theology
· Vision

We then asked , “What do you see up there that we DO in Campus Crusade . . . .and what DON’T we do?” (remember, these are new staff . . . .fresh from being students in the ministry).

There are some that contradict, but hey, this is not a science, right?

DO / GOOD / CONTINUE

• Continue to share the gospel boldly
• We have a great focused vision
• Leadership development
• We allow students to lead – before they feel they are ready
  

DON’T DO / PROBLEMS / CHANGE

• Too many restrictions for student leadership
• Not taking enough risks
• Afraid to fail
• Staff don’t share their faith enough
• Going deeper in relationship with key leaders
• Too satisfied with just one movement
• We don’t believe what we are sharing
• We do not make encouragement a way of life
• We need to do more relational based evangelism
• We try to disciple too many people (not the right people??)
  

After this . . . .a little APEPT and a case study (next post).