Large Cru Movements – Florida

This is part of a series: Learning from Large Cru Movements- a look at 8 of the largest Cru movements in the U.S.  Read the Series intro here.

Overview of the Cru Movement at the University of Florida:

Movement stats as of 2011

• 50,000 students enrolled at Florida
• 1200 at first Cru meeting in the fall (700-800 at a typical weekly meeting)
• 650 involved in 49 Bible Studies led by 200 leaders
• Typically raise up about 10-15 STINT/Intern/Staff (though 2011 was lower — 5)
• Want to see 30 people STINT/Intern/Staff this year (10 UF/10 Paris/10 around the world)
• 175 at Winter Conference
• 300 at Fall Retreat
• Staff team — 12 people usually (6 staff, 6 interns)
• 4284 people like their page on Facebook
• What is the next largest campus ministry at your school?
  • RUF — 200 involved or so
  • Campus ministry leaders get together and pray every week

 

Movement History

• 250 — at weekly meeting in 2002
• In the last three years we’ve really grown a lot to where we have over 1000 involved

 

Biggest Contributors to Growth

• God showed up — especially at a place like Florida which is pretty dead spiritually
• Community Groups — we changed our structure to a cell group model
  • CG’s have fueled the Weekly Meeting growth
• Students really owning discipleship
  • One student leader (a senior) really caught a vision for discipleship and it created a culture of discipleship
  • When people come into the movement, they hear about it and want to be discipled
• Big change — how staff team delegated our responsibilities

 

Key Points

• Our students have a phenomenally high level of ownership
  • Put on weekly meeting
  • Put on socials
  • Work with student government
• Just made a decision a long time ago to turn everything over to students and let them lead (sink or swim)
• I’m sure we could have a weekly meeting if I put 30 hours into it every week, but that’s not the best way to spend my time
• Frees staff to focus on ministry:
  • Discipleship
  • Evangelism

• Do you have a website? — just nominally that routes back to Facebook
  • We do everything thru Facebook
  • Plug Fan Page at weekly meeting (mention it every week “if you’re looking for more info or want to hear about stuff we talked about, check out our Facebook page — or like us)
  • There’s a small group finder on the Facebook page
  • All of announcements and Servant Team are linked in thru Facebook page
  • We have a few students who take it very seriously and will have it as their role
• What obstacles did you face in the growing process?
  • Solving the problem of too many groups for each staff person to oversee (especially for younger staff/interns — too much to have 5 or 6 groups)
    • This last year they took 6 students — 4 girls and 2 guys — and had them not be primary leaders of Cell groups, made them coach of their group and gave them 1 or 2 groups to coach
    • All those 6 were in a coaching session with MTL every other week — to touch base — how are your groups doing? What problems are you facing?
  • Weekly meeting
    • Rooms big enough to meet in (and paying for those)
    • Were in a room that held 500 people
    • Started booking bigger rooms
    • They hop around all over the place throughout the year
    • University auditorium and Univ. ballroom (cost anywhere from $400-$800/week)
    • Got more student government funding and have raised more
    • Have a couple meetings outdoors on a field

 

What does evangelism look like on your campus?

• Primary strategy = thru the Community Groups
  • They have their sphere of influence
    • They do intentional outreaches — floor meal and invite people to it; guys invite guys to play ball or ultimate; cookout for their area of campus
    • Once a month we do an outreach to the area
  • Students have really embraced it’s OK to belong before you believe (a significant number of CG’s have non-Christians coming to it)
    • Tons of students become Christians thru CG’s and getting plugged in relationally
  • Students share pretty relationally (thru challenging thru discipleship)
• Big outreaches? Sometimes — didn’t this year; not their bread and butter
• Did 3 weeks of 24/7 prayer in Spring

 

What do staff focus on?

• Staff primarily just do discipleship and evangelism
• Staff don’t lead any Bible studies
• They each have 5 community groups (and leaders) they focus on
  • Staff go to one of those CG’s every week
  • After going, meet with all the leaders of that group to give feedback (2 leaders as well as sophomore leaders — usually 2-5 guys) on their group
    • How’s the group going overall?
    • How could they pursue areas they are not doing as well on
    • Could be based on that week or focused big picture — how can they do outreach better
  • Bulk of time is meeting with Bible study leaders and guys from those groups (try to get appointments when they visit each study)
  • Disciple all the leaders of those CG’s (2-3 leaders of group)
    • Staff do 1 on 2 or 1 on 3 group discipleship
    • Meet with both leaders together
      • Share their faith once a month
        • Could be randoms (probably twice a semester)
        • Talk with one of their friends from class (in discipleship, asking who they’re reaching out to, they mention somebody, and you say, “let’s hang out sometime together”)
          • It’s on the student to set that up
      • Use the Compass a lot (for transferability) and CruPressGreen
  • Also have Staff team responsibilities — outreach team, Cru, prayer, etc
  • Staff team’s biggest win is getting people involved in Community Groups
    • So staff team needs to be more focused on that
    • So they raised the level of every on the staff team to be CG experts
    • Spent a lot of time discussing (3 years ago) what does a healthy group look like?
      • Biblical Content
      • Prayer
      • Outreach
      • Discipleship
      • Community
    • Those are the checkpoints — how are the CG’s doing in each of these?

 

Ministry Structure

Leadership Development/Training

• Mostly train through discipleship
• Do some random training in Fall — right before Cru — call it “Dr. Cru”
  • How to connect to God thru the Bible, etc
  • TNT happens same time — 7-8pm. Cru is at 8:30
• Once a month have a Sunday Night Leadership
  • Open to anyone in them movement (announced at weekly meeting)
  • Required for anyone leading with us
  • Probably around 150-200 students — 2 hours
  • A chance to pull the leaders together
  • Share time (at least every other time) on what God is doing
  • A lot of specific stuff on Community Groups
  • Vision for different things

 

Committees

• Staff meet weekly with Servant Team and Officers — Fridays at 3pm — about 12 students
  • Servant Team= Outreach, Socials, Cru, Prayer, Communications, Finance
  • Officers (4 key student leaders) → Meet with them once a week

 

Weekly Meeting

• Staff put very little effort into weekly meeting — the main staff guy puts in 1 hour a week into it
• Put all their time into discipleship and CG’s
• Students mostly lead it
  • A guy on servant team leads the team of 10-12 students
  • Set up and tear down/video stuff, sound guy
• Staff team speaks 95% of the time (mostly 2 senior guys)
• Band — rotates 2 worship leaders
  • Have a pool of 30 people they draw from — have a schedule of who’s playing when (practice on Wed. night and play on Thursday night)
• How do they promote the weekly meeting?
  • Most people come thru word of mouth/Personal invitation

 

Bible Study Structure

• Old system — start in a freshman study, and that will carry you through your time at UF
  • Tough for people to get connected after freshmen year
• New philosophy= Cell group strategy
  • All ages and open at all times (freshmen thru senior in group together)
  • Based on Spheres of Influence rather than year in school
  • When groups reach 15 or so they multiply (how often does this happen? Some groups multiply every year)
• The groups where discipleship is most owned and most healthy, those are the groups that multiply and grow
• The CG leaders (JR/SR) disciple sophomore leaders in the group
• These groups are the main avenue for reaching the campus — each has their own sphere of influence/TA (dorm, etc)
• We do start the year with freshmen studies (Real Life Groups)
  • We meet for 6-8 weeks
  • Sophomore/new leaders (who have gone thru new leaders training) lead those studies
  • Those freshmen studies get reabsorbed into the CG where they come from (into older studies)
    • The whole group owns the Real Life (freshman) Group even though only 2 sophomores are leading it; everyone chips in
  • We focus on freshmen as groups
    • The freshmen really get invested in by the older students and get to know them really well when they get reabsorbed into the larger/older Community group
• Student leaders are not in a Community group- they both lead and are in it (so there are no senior studies led by staff)
• What’s the process for becoming a CG leader?
  • Spring — 6 weeks “TNT” = teaching and training for all new leaders (mostly freshmen or new leaders)
  • How do you cast the net wide? Invite people?
    • Ask specifically the group leaders who they’d recommend
    • Announce it at Cru meeting
    • Had over 100 at the meeting in the spring (130?)
    • Going thru TNT doesn’t mean you will be a leader, but you have to go thru TNT to be a leader
  • Have to sign leadership agreement to lead
  • All CG leaders are discipled by a staff person

 

Funding

• Parents Weekend
  • Our normal meeting is on Thursday night
  • We move it to Friday night one weekend — early November for a home game
  • We ask our students to invite their parents to come to the weekly meeting on Friday night
  • We do a Giving Brunch next morning
  • 70-100 families give $50,000

 

What are your biggest takeaways from learning about the Cru ministry at the University of Florida?

 

photo courtesy of randomduck