Five Reasons We CAN DO Movements Everywhere

I believe there are a handful of areas where Cru is positioned well in order to move forward in our stated vision of movements everywhere (so that everyone knows someone who knows Jesus!).

1. Goal Orientation
For much of its history, Campus Crusade has focused on accomplishing specific goals. Having been founded by a businessman (Bill Bright ran a candy company - if you are taking notes from home) - Crusade has a foundation of setting goals and moving accordingly. Sometimes we miss the mark, but we seldom miss setting a direction.

2. Strategic Resources
Along with goal orientation, God has granted CCC favor in order to generate resources. At the moment we may struggle with some institutional 'stuckness', but overall there has been the ability to throw good resources at good ideas (Jesus Film & EveryStudent.com).

3. Global Presence
Campus Crusade has a global footprint - so much so that we often use the term 'partner' in regard to stuff we are doing inside the organization. There is a large vast network that helps in coordinating efforts and accomplishing pieces of the vision.

4. Will to Succeed
As a whole, Crusade tends to be a driven organization (goals and all that). If we dream it, we usually move forward to help make it happen. Our tendency is to over dream and under pray (ok, speaking for me on that one).

5. Leadership Engine
Because of a university focus (which is increasing globally) we are able to generate people resources in the form of leaders. Students leave campus young, full of energy and ideas and able to make life altering decisions without being too encumbered (who in your church can take off for 8 weeks of missions activity this summer?). Students can do this.

In each of these categories I have listed, we have access to huge potential, as well as some major stumbling blocks to overcome. For instance in leaders - we must be able to create room for young leader to run wild with ideas, like those that came before them. The older we get as an organization, the harder it is for this to happen.

A Holy, Loving Critique

This caught my attention. Again, nuggets from from Hirsch: (if you don't have the book yet, you can read the whole first chapter here).

• A prophetically consistent Christianity means that we must remain committed to a constant critique of the structures and rituals we set up and maintain.
  
• We should . . . understand it as a form of 'holy rebellion' based on the loving critique of religious institution modeled by the original apostles and prophets - "holy rebels" who constantly attempted throw off encumbering ideologies, structures, codes and traditions that limited the freedom of God's people and restricted the gospel message that they are mandated to pass on.
• It is rebellion because it refuses to submit to status quo. But because it is holy rebellion, it directs us toward a greater experience of God that we currently have.
• Vital movements arise always in a the context of rejection by the predominant institutions (eg. Wesley and Booth)
• C.S. Lewis: "there exists in every church something that sooner or later works against the very purpose for which it came into existence. So we must strive very hard, by the grace of God to keep the church focused on the mission that Christ originally gave to it."
  
• We realize that the Bible sustains a thoroughly consistent warning against the centralization of power in a few individuals and concentration of it in inflexible and impersonal institutions.

Not that we want to be rebellious for the sake of rebellion, but I believe we must lovingly, graciously and genuinely question the forms and structures handed to us. What, if anything, hinder us? What would you change?

Or - think of it this way: If Cru were a denomination, what denomination would we be theologically? (A: some kind of reformed baptist kind of thing - with a latent charismatic undertow). Now structurally, if were a denomination, what denomination would we be? (think about our hiring, placement, reporting structures, etc?) What say you? How does this help us, hurt us and inform the conversation?