An IM Conversation on Mission
IM conversations can be strange, and reading ones you were not involved in can be stranger. But, just for kicks I thought I would post this one.
I was sitting by the computer working on a who knows what, when one of the Campus Ministry regional leaders popped in and said hello. We ended up talking shop and what follows are our harried stream of consciousness - from the middle of an IM conversation.
You can follow along at home:
Me: So . . . why is it hard to fill these jobs?
Mysterious Regional Leader: our old guys love the field
and don't want to leave home b/c of kids still in high school
true
but what about the younguns
what is the word on the street - what is the take on the RD job?
more influence at the local level
not too many like the desk either
why is that? on influence
more contact with people
more of doing what you came on staff to do.
not sure, we have not talked details yet
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I feel like we have a bunch of soft ministries in the country these days
we're doing gather, build, send rather than win...
so how do we solve it?
get back to our distinctives,
kill the idol of "big"
quit measuring number of students involved
Amen brother
and sending the wrong message to the field
Amen and amen
is this something that you can speak into nationally
we do
I'm not hearing it
I'm hearing movements everywhere
more, more, more
not that movements everywhere is bad
Some of us would love to drop the IMB [we measure involved new believers] number and total involved and replace it with student multipliers as the key measurement
we're on the same page
our whole team is
it is mvts everywhere, but they are supposed to be evangelistic with leaders (spiritual multipliers)
Like XXX said, if our mvts look like what I am seeing, I am not sure I want them everywhere
yeah
XXX and I have talked about this . . - He and I are pretty much on the same page.
Now what do we do about it?
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we don't want to lose our big weekly meetings
we got ourselves into trouble by measuring number of staff and number at weekly meetings
and thus we don't want to offend
you are right
maybe you can write the new article, "you can't do small like you do big"
How about an experiment - Have a small RD team to move quick . . . . measure spiritual multipliers, decisions and gospel presentations - see what happens
you're a fun guy
can you see (other mysterious regional leaders) going for this
will national go for it
I know you will
I think you could push us toward it