Top Sending Campuses – Ball State

This is part of a series on Learning from the Top Sending Campuses in Cru.

See the intro for a full list of all the campuses profiled (and links to each). 

Quick facts on Ball State Cru:

• Avg # on staff team – 10-12 full time on campus (including interns)
• Avg Cru meeting size – 400-500 first cru= 600-700
• Movement size – 400 students
• Students at Ball State – 18,000 (3,500 freshmen)
• # in Community Groups – 400 avg – 430 last year
• 250-300 on fall retreat
• Partnership – East Asia

Sending stats last year:

• STINT – 4 new; 1 re-stint
• Intern – 2 re-intern (both Part Time Field Staff)
• Staff – sent 2 to NYC, 2 to Boston, 2 to U of Illinois, and 2 to U of Toledo.
• An update re: this year’s sending from Corey (the MTL): “We did our intern dessert back in Oct and now we have 12-14 students applying to intern plus 4 more applying for STINT. We are excited about that!”

Average year of sending:

• 4 new STINTers
• 4 new interns is the norm
• 2-4 staff/year
• Avg around 40-50 on Summer Missions
  • 1/3 overseas (last year was maybe ½)
  • 2/3 stateside  (Virginia Beach and Ocean City)

Here’s some insight on Ball State’s sending from their Missional Team Leader (MTL) – Corey Schumacher:

How did you become a sending campus?

• It has always been that way since I’ve been there (5 years) – It’s the culture before I got here
• Keys to Sending:
  • Having a partnership location
    • So people can be praying for it
    • There’s always been a partnership director on our staff team
      • Keeping the partnership and vision for the world before our staff team
      • When we pray together as a staff team
      • He was a former ICS (long term staff) in EA – really knows the partnership location well
      • We do a spring break to our partnership location every other year
      • He goes around to all the men’s Action Groups and does a Bible study on God’s heart for the world
        • Takes up an offering for the national staff
          • Adds to buy in to have students giving to the partnership
      • We always have the STINT team overseas connect with our movement
        • They make a video that we show at the partnership meeting
        • We pray for them in our small groups
        • The MC’s skyped them at the weekly meeting
        • As often as we can, we get their faces in front of our students
    • Every fall we cast vision for our partnership at Cru
      • Partnership week at Cru
      • Prayer week for our partnership
    • Every year we bring in the Traveling Team – early in the fall – September/October
    • Cast a lot of vision for the world early in the fall
    • Have our Action Groups pray for all the partnerships for our region
      • Each guy in the study is assigned a country – we give them an Operation World and they research it and present it back to their study and they pray for it
  • Over the past years, the female MTL is always leading Summer Missions to our partnership locations
    • Always going and saying “come with me”
  • Pretty much our whole team has been over to the partnership and been on STINT there
    • We encourage our students to STINT before they intern
    • Those who STINT come on staff
      • They get a vision for the world and they want to come back and mobilize students to the world
    • Those who intern, they do one year and they move on
  • Fall Retreat
    • When we do our class times – fish/soph/jr/sr
    • I take the Sr class and spend the majority of that time casting vision for STINT and interning
    • We have 40-50 seniors in that time.

What advice do you have for a campus that wants to grow from not much sending to being a sending campus?

• If I were starting fresh, it would depend on our staff team
  • I would take the lead as the MTL to personally own the vision for the partnership – keeping the vision before the movement
  • I would leverage what we already do
    • Small Groups
    • Weekly Meeting
  • I would personally infuse vision for the world at those
  • “Man, Corey just won’t shut up about the world”
  • The first thing I would do is get the staff team on board
  • Friday mornings we do devotional stuff – use those times to cast vision for the world
• Getting students on Summer Missions (even stateside)
  • Because they come back with a heart for the world
  • The international dinners (on stateside SM) are big

What motivates students to intern?

• Generally – they like the staff team
• They want to be a part of the staff family
• They want to do ministry alongside us
• They want to continue their ministry on at Ball State
• We don’t really push for interns
• This year we are –
  • We’re praying for 6
  • We’re taking them to a dessert in September.
  • To help lock them down sooner – to get some momentum
    • Hey, come intern with me
  • Content:
    • Vision for interning – what they’ll be doing
    • Support raising – answering questions
    • Even if you want to do the workforce long term, come become an expert in ministry first
    • Have a current intern share
• We’ve felt like our staff team has been a little dry – less fun – thinking that has translated to less people wanting to join us

What are your big takeaways from Ball State Cru? What was most helpful? What clarifying questions do you have?