Tim Casteel

Thoughts on Leadership and College Ministry

4 Things Your Leaders Need Before You Start the Fall

By

In college ministry, all weeks are NOT created equal. The first 4 weeks of the fall will have repercussions on your ministry for 4 years.
“If you pay the price in the first 6 weeks of the year you will reap the rewards for the next four years. If you blow the first six weeks you will pay the price for the next four years.” Brian McCollister
From a human perspective, what you do with your team and student leaders in August will determine whether you emerge from the hurricane of the first weeks riding a wave of gospel movement or find yourself completely spent with little to show for it.

 

So what do your staff need to do in August to get ready for the fall (while I focus here specifically on staff, most of this applies to student leaders as well)?

As you start the fall of college ministry, there are four big things your staff need:

  1. The Foundation= the indispensable priority of reading God’s Word

The foundation for the whole fall is built on your staff and student leaders walking with God.

Our ultimate goal in college ministry = every nation worshipping Jesus.

Specifically, we want to build movements of spiritual multiplication that send laborers to the world. We want students to graduate with a personal conviction from Scripture for fulfilling the Great Commission. The primary means for all of this is that our staff and student leaders would:

Read the Bible, see His glory, savor Christ, be transformed.

Only when this happens will He be proclaimed.

“God has made the natural act of reading the Bible supernaturally the indispensable means of achieving the ultimate goal of the universe.…The ultimate goal of reading the Bible is that God’s infinite worth and beauty would be exalted in the everlasting, white-hot worship of the blood-bought bride of Christ from every people, language, tribe, and nation. The Bible is not incidental or marginal or optional in God’s ultimate purpose for redemptive history. It is essential. It is necessary.” John Piper- Reading the Bible Supernaturally

Do not assume that your staff are reading their Bibles and walking with God. Do not assume that your student leaders know how to spend time daily with God. Start with the basics. Once students trust Christ, the greatest gift you can give them is a lifetime of reading and being changed by God’s Word. The way you give that gift to your students is by teaching them, in college, how to daily read and submit to God’s Word.

This two page article Spending Time Daily in God’s Word is a great way to discuss this foundational first step with your leaders.

 

  1. Connect as a family (who) – 71% of Millennials want their coworkers to be a second family
  2. Direction and clarity of role (what) – what does it look like for me/us to succeed? The short of it- success in the first 4 weeks = reaching freshmen by sharing the gospel broadly. Here is a step by step on how to do that.
  3. Vision for reaching college students (why) - “You can pretty much assume that most staff return [in the fall] willing and able but not very motivated and with little or no vision.” As Simon Sinek says, I usually begin with this step – the Why.

A few helpful starting-the-fall tips for Team Leaders:
  • If you are a Team Leader I highly recommend reading this short article - Orienting Your Team
  • Pick staff to fill two key roles:
    • First Week Director (coordinates outreaches during move in week) and
    • Follow Up Director (getting thousands of contacts and making sure they get followed up). This frees the Team Leader to focus on the team/movement instead of the millions of details associated with the First 4 Weeks.
  • Don’t assume that everyone is on the same page as far as Ministry Philosophy. Communicate clearly on how we do things. We have a one page sheet called “How we do Ministry — One Page” which, as you would expect, tells our entire philosophy of ministry on one page!
  • Meet with key students leaders to plan the two night student leadership retreat (this retreat happens the week before classes start)
  • Encourage staff to get all personal things done before they report back. I usually email something like this:
    • “Please have all your personal stuff done before next week (moving in, raising support, prayer letter, etc) as we will be pretty slammed starting Aug. 8 (so take advantage of the next few days to get all personal stuff done!)”
  • Confirm details for fall retreat – speaker, location, band, start work on brochure/promo video (highly recommend just using one of these excellent designs)
  • Plan out planning days. Here’s what our planning week looks like:
    • 2 days of planning 9-noon. Afternoons spent working on reserving locations, getting donations from local businesses (for door prizes for cookouts), working in smaller groups with other staff on specific tasks
    • 1-2 days on a staff retreat (all fun/no work)
    • 2 more days planning 9-noon. Afternoons working on team to-do’s.

Here’s links to details for each of our planning days:

  • Day 1 – connecting as a family; immediate to-do’s
    • I think it’s helpful to have a new staff/intern orientation (for new staff and interns) – One of our senior staff leads that in the afternoon after planning. Here’s our content.
  • Day 2 - nailing down critical path steps; refresher on what we planned in the spring
  • Day 3 – Vision and Clarity of Job What does it look like for me/us to succeed?
  • Day 4 – split men/women to nail down student community group leaders and discipleship; odds and ends; vision for sending
What I usually do to get ready for the fall is read back over all our notes from our 4 days of spring planning (kept in Google Drive). Just get myself up to speed. Then I look over the the first four weeks calendar. Here’s ours:
1st 4 weeks of class Calendar 2015

What helps you prep for the fall?