How do you succinctly explain your ministry to a new staff or student leader?
Every college ministry, on every campus is unique. We all say we want to reach college students for Christ — what is your unique “gameplan” for accomplishing that?
I mentioned in the post on Monday that during Staff Planning we orient our team to our ministry philosophy by going over a sheet called “How We Do Ministry — One Page” (we get VERY creative with titles around her). Several of you mentioned you’d love to see that.
I put this sheet together last year because a new staff couple was joining our team and they wanted to know how we specifically approached college ministry at the University of Arkansas. So it forced me to think through our ministry approach, that has been pieced together over the last 7 years, and clearly communicate it to a pair of fresh eyes.
I hesitate to share something like this because it is so unfinished and rough. But I do so because:
1) I’m a huge believer in sharing resources freely with other ministries
2) I’d love your feedback on gaps in our thinking — what we should take off or add to the document
So here it is (you can download the Word document here which you are free to adapt for your ministry):
How We Do Ministry – One Page
Our Audience-Â Over 75% of Arkansas students consider themselves Christians.
So the typical student has been inoculated to the gospel and are now resistant to the “real thing”
Everything we teach should be Christ-centered- (everything communicated thru Discipleship, Bible studies, Cru talks, M29 etc)
- Because most Arkansas students are moralistic religious people who confuse religion with the gospel
- Religion is “I do good things so God will approve of me”
- The Gospel is that “I am far worse off than I ever imagined, but far more loved than I ever dreamed”
Our vision is “That everyone would know someone who passionately follows Jesus”-
That vision pretty much summarizes everything we do.
Everyone= Scope — every student on campus (meaning we think of the campus as a waffle)
Would Know= The gospel travels along the road of relationships (when we say “evangelism” we want students to think “share Christ with my friend” not “share with random dude in the union”).
Someone= Our Means of reaching scope= College students. Students reaching students within their spheres of influence. Students empowering other students to do the same.
Who passionately follow Jesus= What must be true of students involved in our ministry— gospel infused/motivated. The gospel is what drives staff and students to do ministry.
But it’s not enough that Joe Freshman knows a follower of Christ. His likely response, “that’s cool for him, it’s just not for me.”
The missing ingredient= Equipping. We have to have a way to effectively (and efficiently) equip our students⇒ M29 — Weekly Leadership Training and Equipping (2 hours every Tuesday night)
Our Vision hinges on our students not only passionately pursuing Jesus but also being able to boldly articulate their faith to their non-Christian friends (and to be able to mobilize their Christian friends to start doing the same).
To reach that vision, we are big believers in the movement building principles of reaching successively larger classes of freshmen. We will not reach the campus this year but we are building to a point (over years) to have a movement of the size, health and maturity so that “everyone would know someone who passionately follows Jesus”.
Staff’s #1 job is to empower students to have a ministry-
- We believe that students sharing with other students will be the key to reaching our campus.
- So staff are successful not if they have a thriving personal ministry but if they are pouring into students who are in turn pouring into others (Discipleship/Multiplication)
- So we focus pretty much every week with staff on “who are you meeting with and what are you doing with them?”:
- Are you doing the: Right things (Time in the Word, Building a Relationship, Doing ministry together) with the Right people? (Who are pouring into others)
- So we value:
- Student-Led Community Groups
- Student ownership (they run our weekly meeting, all socials, fall retreat, prayer, etc)
- Students living in the dorms to have a ministry
We reach Freshmen using 3 Area teams-Â Pomfret, Brough, & North Side (we’ve broken the campus into 3 areas with 2 student leaders overseeing the Community Groups/outreach/follow up in each area)
Community Groups are the backbone of our ministry-
- It’s how we measure success – “how many got plugged into CG’s thru Cru?”, “How many got in a CG thru our first 4 weeks outreaches?”, “How many freshmen are involved in CG’s?”
- It’s where life change happens (and students come to Christ)
We have the World in view — we are a sending pipeline to the world-
- Everything we do should be sustainable in producing life-long laborers (100% Sent)
So what would you add or subtract? What are the gaps? What is unclear or needs to be reworded?
What are some unique things you do in your ministry that would be on your “One Page” description?Â
photo courtesy of greatdegree