Tim Casteel

Thoughts on Leadership and College Ministry

Movement Building

If All We Do is Focus on Freshmen, Are Upperclassmen Neglected?

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shuttle launchI often get asked the question — if most of what you do is focus on freshmen do upperclassmen feel neglected?

The answer is sometimes “yes” but it should always be “no”.

Yes, we have upperclassmen lament that they feel overlooked. And sometimes they are right. One of our goals this fall is to really invest in our upperclassmen Bible Studies because we DO feel like we have neglected those.

But here’s the thing: in reaching freshmen, we ARE developing upperclassmen in the most strategic way possible. Upperclassmen are getting an opportunity to lead and be developed and be stretched in ways that will pay dividends for decades to come.

What’s missing? Clear communication.

We need to help upperclassmen see that their primary need is not for “me-time” where we exclusively focus on them (see When Can Discipleship Actually Be a Bad Thing). They need to be pushed out of the nest to focus on others and be trained as a laborer for Christ.

Upperclassmen do need personal attention focused on their walks with God (first and foremost). But they also need help in becoming an adult which = the glad assumption of responsibility. And they need to take responsibility for the greatest need in the world — bringing the good news of Christ to the ends of the earth.

For us, that means communicating over and over to upperclassmen how they are benefiting from this indispensable training they are getting. Even though it may FEEL like you’re not the primary focus, in reaching others YOU are being developed.

The biggest “win” in our focus on reaching freshmen is probably that hundreds of upperclassmen are getting to taste the life-changing experience of being used by God to change another person’s life.

By reaching freshmen we are training up a new generation of laborers. And we want those freshmen being reached to turn the corner as quickly as possible: from being reached to reaching.

What do you think? Agree/Disagree?

Do More Freshmen Surveys Lead to More Freshmen Involved?

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On my Stuff You Can Use for the First Week on Campus post (which has spiritual interest surveys, fliers, brochures, and other free & helpful stuff on it), a recent commenter, Ron Cram, wanted more details on how we do spiritual interest surveys. And since I love data analysis I couldn’t resist sharing what the data tells us.

I think it’s pretty interesting to see what correlation there is between

  • number of surveys done the first week of school AND
  • number of freshmen that actually get involved (in Bible studies)

 

So here’s Ron’s comments/questions and my answers:

Tim, I am interested in an analysis of the data on the card. It sounds like you got 3000 students to complete the card…

We do about 3000 surveys over the first few weeks at various events. The stats below reflect the 2500 surveys we do at tables we set up outside of dorm cafeterias on the second and third day of class. Why not the first day? Because our Cru meeting is on Tuesday, and Dorm Studies on Wednesday. When we do a survey with them we give them a “Free Chick-fil-A Sandwich” card and a flyer for Cru and Dorm Bible Studies (and we say, “you should join us tonight at Cru/Bible Study”)

How many of them indicated an interest in Cru?

1 Minute Questionnaire

Click to see full size

To download a Photoshop file you can edit to use on your campus, click here.

We don’t keep stats specifically on each question because it doesn’t affect how we do follow up. We follow up anyone who checks “yes” on either question.

70% of students checked “yes” on one of the two questions.

30% of the respondents answered “no-no”. Not interested in Cru nor Bible studies (we don’t follow them up at all).

Here’s the breakdown of how they answered:

“How interested are you in exploring spiritual matters in college (1- not interested 5= very interested)?”

1 = 7%
2 = 13%
3 = 29%
4 = 21%
5 = 24%
No answer = 6%

So on our campus, about 25% of students are not interested in spiritual things. 75% are at least mildly interested. How does that compare to your campus?

How many actually got involved?

We noticed this a few years ago: it’s not important how many spiritual surveys we do, as long as we’re doing enough to have a plenty big pool of contacts to follow up (I’d say around 1000-1500). Doing more surveys does not result in more freshmen getting involved (at least for us).

That being said, we do feel that it is good to do surveys with as many freshmen as possible for several reasons:

      • Every person we do a survey with, we get face to face with and invite them verbally and with a flier to a Cru event. And they get something free (Chick-fil-A card or sunglasses) – hopefully a very positive first experience with Cru.
      • If we can do surveys with a high percentage of the freshmen class, we have a baseline understanding of where A LOT of students are at spiritually. As we bump into students later in the year (or the next 4), we can quickly look them up on Mission Hub and know “Michael was not very interested in spiritual things at all in August 2012 – he put 1-yes-no. Joey Smith met with him and invited him to a Bible study but he never came” 

Here’s what our stats showed us:

surveys vs freshmen involved

You notice from 2008 to 2009 we doubled the number of surveys we did. But it has zero impact on getting more freshmen involved.

Here’s what matters and causes more freshmen to get involved:

    1. Having more student Community Group leaders. You can see how the growth in Freshmen in studies correlates with (and I would say is caused by):study leaders
    2. The quality and thoroughness of follow up
      • Quality = sharing the gospel on each follow up and having several relational touch points
      • Thoroughness = tracking who we follow to make sure everyone gets contacted who wants to be contacted

 

How many people (staff or students) were involved in collecting this data? How long did it take? Was it all done in one day?

We do tables for two days at five locations (4 dorm cafeterias and the Union) from 11am-1pm and 5-6:30pm.

Our 10 staff are at the tables both days at lunch. Students are present at the tables for both lunch and dinner. I would guess that we have 30 students at lunch and 30 at dinner each day. Maybe a total of 50-75 helping during the two days?

Right after we collect all the cards we divvy up the cards among students and they enter in the information into Mission Hub. I have no idea how long that takes. I would guess 5 hours for about 20 students?

We also do spiritual interest surveys at two big freshmen cookouts during move-in week, a midnight “Frisbees and Flapjacks” event, and our Cru meetings.

 

Hopefully that data/information is helpful for you as think through a gameplan for getting in contact with (and reaching!) freshmen in the Fall.

Would love to hear from you what you have seen on your campus – what has resulted in you getting more freshmen involved?

 

Becoming experts in helping students reach their own campuses

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“We as staff need to learn to become experts in helping students reach their own campuses and the world they enter into after graduation.” — Brent Trickett

 

Valeree Joy Rillon, Cru staff in Manila, Philippines, wrote a brilliant post on Ken Cochrum’s blog on what she’s learned adjusting from staff-led to student-led.

students on denver campusTRUST GOD and TRUST THE STUDENTS.

We need to TRUST God that He has already prepared “harvesters” even in an untapped campus and it’s just for us to intentionally find where they are and are just waiting to be coached. We need to TRUST even a single committed student to OWN the VISION for his/her campus and rallying it to become a reality in his/her own strategies aligned with the principles of how God distinctively called CCC. Students feel how we view them. Honestly, I was so high-controlling before that my disciples viewed my personal strategies as their principles. They were boxed how I do things that they never even reflected on why they are doing what I was doing. But when I learned (and am still learning) to let go and gave them the freedom to strategize how to reach their campus, OWNERSHIP increased and their LEADERSHIP got more empowered.

Success in seeing STUDENT-LED MOVEMENTS is simply taking the initiative to challenge students to build spiritual movements in the power of the HOLY SPIRIT and leaving the results to God! To God be all the glory!

 

Read the rest (it’s short and well worth reading in its entirety – we will be reading it as a team this week during planning)

 

What do we as staff need to do to become experts in helping students reach their own campus and the world they enter into after graduation?

 

photo courtesy of University of Denver

What are We- a Group, Organization or Movement?

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Valeree Joy Rillon is on staff with Cru in Manila, Philippines and posted this great insight on Facebook:

As a Christian GROUP, we greatly rejoice when someone receives Christ.

As a Christian ORGANIZATION, we greatly rejoice when they come back for follow-up.

As a Christian MOVEMENT, we greatly rejoice when they multiply because we would see more people knowing, growing, and multiplying in Christ!

So what are we?gold lights

A Group?

An Organization?

Or a Movement?

 

Brings to mind that we constantly need to be asking our staff and students:

  • What are we?
  • What is success for us?
  • What are we trying to accomplish?

For us, as a team, it’s easy to celebrate (and count) conversions. But more difficult to keep a pulse on follow up and multiplication (therefore making it more difficult to celebrate).

How about you – how does your team celebrate multiplication?


photo courtesy of gracias!

 

We Need a Bigger Table

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Table of Salt

This is a great illustration from Tim Henderson at Penn State Cru:

Think about a table you are pouring sand onto. At some point the sand won’t pile any higher and it will start spilling off the edge. The only solution is to enlarge the table.

In our case the sand represents the students in the movement and the table represents our leadership. We will never have enough staff to form a table of the size that we need. Instead we need to free up and empower more students to be the table, while the staff function as the legs of the table. We will be here to support you, but it’s your movement; you are the leaders.

While we hope that the staff have been and will continue to be a significant advantage to you, in some ways our structure has limited your ability to own and lead.

Great vision to use with your students as you enter the fall.