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Tim Casteel

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Top Sending Campuses – Ball State

February 9, 2015 By Tim Casteel 1 Comment

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?

 

Filed Under: Sending, Top Sending Campuses Tagged With: Sending, Top Sending Campuses

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The goal of this blog is to share resources, best practices and strategy. Inspired by others who have taken the time to share their thoughts/learnings/resources, I decided to stop merely consuming and start contributing to the conversation.

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