“November is Summer Missions month” – Jim Sautner, Destino National Development Director
Govember is a month-long focus on God’s heart for the nations and our role in that (specifically focused on Summer Mission and STINT – one year international internship). We focus on Govember all across our movement: weekly meeting, community group, staff meeting, and discipleship content.
I got the idea from talking to University of Wisconsin Cru (and I know many others do it) and we’ve adapted it for our campus.
“If you create the momentum for Summer Project early it will snowball throughout the spring months. Plus students can drop the bomb on their parents over Thanksgiving break. Take advantage of this month, it will pay off in March.” – Adam Penning – Cru staff at U of Wisconsin
If you want to use the Govember branding we use, here’s the logo.
Here’s what we do during Govember with lots of linked resources:
A monthlong focus at the Cru meeting on going – some ideas:
– Heart for the lost
– Heart for world (get the Traveling Team to come in November if you can!)
– Lordship
– Eternal perspective (my talk and slides)
– STINT night – this was by far the best Cru we did all year. Essentially, we spotlight Arkansas Cru grads who are serving God all over the world, mostly via video. Here’s the flow of what we do)
A Summer Missions recruiting dinner
– Here’s an overview of what we do
– Here’s the talk that I give at the dinner (and another talk I’ve used)
– A sample response card to follow up after the dinner (the pdf file is editable in photoshop)
All of our Community Groups do world-focused material during November:
– A 3 week study we adapted from The Traveling Team: Govember Study – Leader — Govember Study – Student
– A great idea from Ball State Cru: assign a country to each student in the Bible study – give them an Operation World and they research it and present it back to their study and they pray for it
At least one week of focus on the world in all our student discipleship
– The Compass lesson on World Vision
– An article to read in discipleship: A Brief History Of Campus Missions
Staff Focus
– A couple great articles to read with your team during this month: A Missionary Call by Robert Speer and Mobilization of College Students by Claude Hickman
– Kick off the month by doing the “how to do a summer project challenge” document as a devo with your staff team. Don’t tell them what it is for until the very end.
Some other ideas (that we haven’t tried) from Wisconsin:
8 by 12/08: Each staff person personally challenges 8 students to Summer Missions by Dec. 8th. Give your team 6-7 min in staff meeting to actually write their list. Remind your team about the 8 by 12/8 challenge each week at staff meeting during Govember. Follow up with your team half way through the month to see how it is going by writing the names of everyone who has been challenged down on the white board. Then take 10 min an pray for those names and people left to be challenged.
Man-sized challenge: Two staff men do “Man-sized breakfast for a man-sized challenge” together with four students at a time, using the “How to do a Summer Missions challenge” document.
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