Minneapolis - TCX

Cameron (our 12 year old son) took this picture of me at TCX - a student conference in Minneapolis. He was sitting front row with about 1400 college kids behind him. (If you think I look fat here, you should have seen me on the giant screen! I looked up and lost my train of thought while staring at the huge balding guy!)

The best part about being with these students is the white-hot worship. I feel this generation engages Jesus with a reckless abandonment that is refreshing and fun to be a part of. But it is also a generation of pain, suffering and disillusionment. In general, they are skeptical of religion, shun church as usual, and are moving rapidly away from the faith the way grandma did it. This is an incredible opportunity. From my vantage point, it seems like a major shift unlike anything we have seen in generations. There is a redefinition going on (for good and bad I might add) and it has the potential to reshape our nation and even the world.

I particularly talked to this gang about engaging the culture around them with the gospel. In a nutshell, taking faith on the offensive without being offensive. Taking Jesus to those who need him without carrying the baggage of religiosity and condemnation. I did this by looking at teachings of Christ and having the students interact with each other over situations and groups on their campuses (like - how do you be Jesus to the Gay/Lesbian/Bi-sexual club).

As spirituality and faith increases on campus, we (believers) have a tendency to form 'holy huddles' that cease to engage the culture around us and become a bit sanctimonious and isolated (and, as one non believer stated, 'just plain mean'). None of which reflects how Jesus operated (in fact, he was too busy ticking off the religious by serving and loving those who were deeply trapped by sin and poor choices).

The true beauty of university students is their naiveté and zeal. They really believe God will do what he has done before (and more), and it is not a stretch for them to act on those beliefs. So the day after I spoke, all 1400 hundred of these kids (yes, they are kids now!!) hit the streets of Minneapolis to give food and gifts to those in need and to share the good new with anyone who wanted to hear it. What a great group of young leaders to run with!!

One of the things I asked them was, in teams, to build a simple plan to 'be Jesus' to a group of other students on campus. In a week or so I will email the leaders on those campuses to see if there is any progress, or if students are attempting anything in their communities. I hope so. I pray that my speaking was not just another talking head with some decent jokes, but that some actions will take place that make big difference.

Rob Bell - Pay Attention

Time Magazine did a great little piece on Rob Bell - may his tribe increase. I am really quite unfamiliar with his stuff (to my shame), but I like everything I see.

Go Rob Go. Re-invent for us all.

Great Plains and "The Way Forward?"

I am in Estes Park at the Stanley Hotel with the killer GPI region of Campus Crusade for Christ - they are having a discussion on 'The Way Forward' - the new directional direction from the National Team of the campus ministry.

You can look at the PowerPoint here - but here are some questions being asked by these leaders?

• What systems are in place for coaching these new teams - how does that look?
• What thought is given to getting more people on the ground?
• Tension between organizational control and expansion?
• What is a missional team anyway?
• Are we going to have the same success criteria?
• Does this mean that the local level with have more authority?
• How doest this look in partnerships on campus? Internationally?
• The strategic priorities - what exactly are these?
• Is this initiated at the local level / regional level?
• Is this an expansion of scope / or just a serious allocation to scope?
• Is there a bigger change coming? or is this it?

There seems to be a lot of confusion on missional teams. I love the GPI leadership is because they are honest about the confusion - and not trying to answer questions that they are not sure of the answers to. Good job.

Supernatural on Campus

The speakers at Supernatural at UCLA are Banning Libscher, Jaeson Ma and Neil Cole. I dont know Banning Liebscher, but I am sure he is the reasl deal since he is hanging with Jaeson and Neil - this conference should be a good time.

Here is what it is about: Campus Church Networks presents "Supernatural on Campus" a college revival conference to equip and empower student missionaries to awaken a generation to the love of God, make disciples and move in signs, wonders, and miracles to transform their campuses for God's glory. Cool.

Texas Retreat #2

On Sunday morning we tackled, in an interactive way, six principles of kingdom growth.

• The Principle of Abide / Obedience (of being a disciple) (John 15)
• The Principle of Sowing (the Farmer of Mark 4)
• The Principle of Oikos (Households) (Matthew in Mark 2)
• The Principle of “People of Peace” (the Samaritan woman of John 4)
• The Principle of Apostolic Mission (The 70 in Luke 10)
• The Principle of Mission Focused Prayer (Jesus from Matthew 9)

On hindsight, I think I tried to cram to much of this in and would be better served to space it out over the weekend. I had the whole group divided in teams of five representing their campuses. Each team had a big poster board and a scribe as they worked the process.

• On Abide we covered divine truth, nurturing relationships and apostolic mission.
• On Sowing, we worked through observations of the farmer, seed and soil.
• On households they listed each 'tribe' they could identify on their campus
• On POP we talked about the seed surfacing people who are ready to respond
• On mission, each team spent 10 minutes building a quick plan to 'out themselves and the gospel' among a few of the tribes they had identified in less than a 48 hour period. This is where we spent most of our time.
  

By the end of the time, there were a number of good plans in place and a number of teams were really excited about what could happen. However, I must admit that it was a bit too rushed and I think many of the students where simply not thinking bold enough (or concrete enough). I could have done a better job pushing the boldness quotient.

Time will tell.

Texas Retreat #1

I spent the weekend in the great state of Texas hanging with students from San Marcos, Houston, San Antonio, Laredo, Austin and Dallas-Ft. Worth at Camp Tejas near Giddings. The Cru staff from theses cities are doing a great job tackling the spiritual movements in all its complexities. Hats off to Erin, Ken, John, Lori, David, Sal, Lance, Mark, Cody, Becca, Doug and the rest. They are seeing some great things happen.

I continue to experiment (thanks guys) with the retreat format I used at UCLA last year - that is, to use the retreat for an interactive mission focused / training venue. Basically, assuming that the students that arrive at the retreat are the mission force for the schools they represent and that within them are the ideas to reach their fellow students.

On Friday I told my story and highlighted God's sovereignty and love. On Saturday night we got into 12 groups (by birthdays) and worked a simple process on the commands of Jesus (as compared to the commands of Jesus based religion). Jesus says obeying his commands will bring life and joy, so we wanted to see what those commands where, and then focus our conversation on what it would look like to live out this out on campus.

There is a sense of freedom that comes from obeying Jesus beyond (in spite of / without) adhering to the religious edicts of the day. All told, these students listed about 10 key commands of Christ. All very simple and doable and void of religious trappings and observable external rules. At the same time - simple to say but radical in practice. Things like 'love your enemies' are great on paper, but lived out can be a bit dicey.

I believe many of these students saw the implications of faith lived out this way. (and big time thanks to the Texas State Cru Band - they made a time of worship very strong and vibrant!).

Church Planting Movements

I took the opportunity to re-read David Garrison's Church Planting Movements booklet. Not only is this little booklet very inspirational, it also provides a simple guideline to rapidly reproductive church planting. You can download a pdf of the booklet at the link above.

David identifies ten key elements in a CPM:

• Prayer - the vitality of the missionaries personal life is key
• Abundant Sowing - cpms do not emerge where evangelism is rare or absent
• Intentionality - must be deliberately engaged in church planting
• Scriptural Authority - Bible (not training or men) must be the guiding source doctrine, church polity and life itself.
• Local Leadership - not the church planter, but the local leadership
• Lay Leadership - key leaders emerge from the people being reached. They reflect the same demographic
• Cell or House Churches - vast majority of the cpm churches are small. 10-30 meeting in homes or other locations not associated with traditional church.
• Churches Planting Churches - "members have to believe that reproduction is natural and that no external aids are needed to start a new church." (or movement I might add).
• Rapid reproduction - "When rapid reproduction is taking place, you can be assured that the churches are unencumbered by nonessential elements and the laity are fully empowered to participate."
• Healthy Churches - worship, missions, evangelism, fellowship, discipleship are all taking place.

So how does this transfer to 'movements everywhere' on university campuses in the US and abroad. It seems that we have a few of these key elements, but we may unintentionally prevent a few others. Prayer, scripture, health and decent sowing exist. We have a degree of planting intentionality, but more of our efforts seemed geared toward growing what currently exists. We struggle to see movements start new movements (in Campus Crusade language, a movement correlates with what David calls a church) and we do not rely on student leadership over our direction and coaching. We have very little expectation that we could plant a new student group and then come back to find that it has planted six more. In my experience, this is basically unheard of . . . but it does not seem that far fetched if we expect it to be so.

Holmes on Talk

I saw this quote and liked it: A good word for us blogger types.

Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both"

- Author John Andrew Holmes (American physician and writer. Best known for Wisdom in Small Doses (1927))

Galbraith on Change in Thinking

Faced with the choice between changing our mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy with the proof. - John Kenneth Galbraith

I can raise my hand on this one - quite often over the last few years. Below is a brief list of radical thinking changes that I resisted, but later came to see as quite obvious.

• Disseminated Leadership - upon joining the National Team of Campus Crusade a few years ago, I believed the best way to move ahead was to align every little niche group and tackle the direction together. Upon watching KCCC, and now Impact, it is obvious (to me anyway) that our best approach is to free leadership up to make primary decisions for their particular target. Duh! Good leaders with freedom usually generate great results.
• Apostolic Functioning - Dave Patchin once told me that I 'prayed to receive catalytic' back in 1997. True. Before that, I had been fairly resistant to the chaos. Now, after looking at afresh at how the kingdom expands, I tend to lean more toward efforts of church planting movements . . . . which are highly catalytic in nature.
• Volume over Precision - this relates to both things above, but, in a nutshell the best way to reach the world and have great churches / movements . . . . is to concentrate on having MORE churches / movements. If everyone is free to start one, inevitably you will end up with really good ones. (yes, this is the essence of capitalism and why the you never see Russian cars on the road).

btw - Gailbraith, who passed away in 2006, was an influential Canadian - American economist. His books on economic topics were bestsellers in the 1950s and 1960s. Now you know. (this was the only picture I found of him smiling - I am not sure if that is because he is an economist or a Canadian).

MLK on Friends

This struck me as painfully true:

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends."
- Martin Luther King

Charisma - God on Campus

The latest issue of Charisma has a cover article about God on Campus. It features some tidbits from Crusade, as well as many other quotes and comments about what is going on on campus. There are a handful of things striking to me from the article (which you can read here.)

• The number of churches becoming engaged on the campus (something I know Leadership Network is interested in). This was not the case 15 years ago.
• The rise of the supernatural (this article is in Charisma after all).
• The free for all that college ministry - Crusade / IV / Navs date way back, but not there are many new players approaching the campus in many new ways.

Conclusion: Despite a huge dropout rate among the churched kids, God is up to something on the college campuses of the world.

Saint-Exupery on Goals

"A goal without a plan is just a wish." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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Worse are plans that are not based in reality and boldness, but try to cover it by invoking the supernatural aspect of 'God choosing to move.' What I mean is this: God seems more accustomed to rewarding the foolish plans of the bold rather than the hopeful wishes of the passive.

Charging Jericho with a trumpet and a bunch of priests does not seem like a great plan, but it surely requires God to step in and do something dramatic.

To expect dramatic results without stepping out is more foolish than foolishly stepping out.

Pricey Moscow

Moscow retains its title as the world's most expensive city. The order?

1. Moscow
2. London
3. Seoul
4. Tokyo
5. Hong Kong

New York? Entering at 15 and the most expensive city in the U.S.
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source: CNNmoney.com (survey done by Mercer Human Resources Consulting).

Camu on courage

There is always a philosophy for a lack of courage
- Albert Camu

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Often times I feel I can easily talk my self out of difficulty by embracing a theological / biblical stance that limits possibilities, and therefore requires me to take little risk. I limit God because my possibilities are smaller than his.

We like the stories of miracles, but rarely do we take difficult action to see them take place - we don't risk in ways that only God can rescue us from.

Of course this plays out institutionally as well. We philosophize our way out of radical change based upon preconceived notions of ministry, success, risk, change and pain. We hope that incremental change will give us radical new results . . . but more often than not, our results are in perfect proportion to our risk.

Phil Cooke on Superstars

"For years, ministry leaders have used a business model in managing their churches. It's a legitimate attempt to get religious organizations working at a more efficient level and trying to make them more productive. But ultimately that won't work. Writer and consultant Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, says a business ins driven by profit, but a nonprofit is driven by mission. The two cannot be confused."

- Phil Cooke, Ph.D., is a media consultant to ministries and churches worldwide. Find out more at www.philcooke.com.
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For years I had this ache in my gut (something stuck in my craw) regarding the Campus Crusade leadership model. Well intentioned as it is, I feel it falls short of expressing a viable leadership framework for this spiritual / mission focused endeavor.

Some people are bothered by the business language - that is not that big a deal to me. The two things that do disturb me are:

• The inability of the model to account for a leaders' primal spiritual gifting. There is no reference point for how spiritual gifts influence how we think and operate. I don't care how much leadership model you digest, if you gift is primarily teaching, you will see the mission through that lens.
  
• The institutional framework of the model (notice there is not category for entrepreneur) - the model is built from the perspective of running an organization (institution) not unleashing the chaos of a mission focused endeavour.

But maybe it is just me.