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Tim Casteel

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Movement Building

Sending out Leaders Creates More Leaders (or the genius of launching multiple movements)

December 12, 2016 By Tim Casteel

Recently my bosses came into town for a campus visit. As we gathered, my team shared about what God is doing. They also shared of their need, their desires, and their pursuits.
Our staff team is made up of 4 independent, contextualized teams (see this excellent video from Intervarsity on contextualized movements). So on our team of 9, we actually have 4 teams:
  • 3 CFM staff (Campus Field Ministry – focused on the general population at the University of Arkansas),
  • 3 Athletes in Action staff,
  • 2 Bridges staff (International Students),
  • and 1 Impact staff (focusing on students of African descent).
The AIA, Bridges and Impact staff are Cru staff but they focus on athletes/international/African American students full time. They don’t come to our weekly meeting or fall retreat. They don’t do anything that doesn’t help them reach their respective audiences.
Even though we have a good size team of 9, every contextualized team feels small. And they acutely feel the need for more laborers. And in some ways, that’s really good. We only change when our current reality is painful enough to make us do the hard work required to change. Each contextualized team badly wants new laborers.
As they shared what they are doing to raise up new laborers, it hit me – it’s not up to me (as the team leader) to raise up an AIA female staff. Or an Impact staff or a Bridges staff. They’re doing it. They’re flying people in for vision trips. Not me. They’re taking key volunteers out to dinner, challenging them to join Impact staff. I din’t have to ask them to do that – I didn’t even know they were doing those things! They are truly leading. And (Lord willing!) laborers will be multiplied.
A couple weeks ago we had 3 separate thanksgiving meals that were a good snapshot of the exponential effect of multiple movements. Instead of one big meeting or dinner where maybe 100 CFM students would’ve gathered, we had:
  • 40 international students at the Bridges dinner
  • 30 athletes at the AIA dinner (which is low for them – they typically have 50-75)
  • 60 African american students at the Impact dinner
And in CFM, 200 students gathered in Community Groups across campus for thanksgiving parties and bible studies.
And that’s just on our campus. Across the globe, in East Asia we have 5 Razorbacks who hosted East Asian students for Thanksgiving. 5 sent staff who are very motivated to recruit laborers to join their team in EA.
Up until 2012, for the first 44 years of Cru at the University of Arkansas, we have had one team with one focus- reaching the majority culture at the University of Arkansas. In 2012 we had our first contextualized team – Athletes in Action – and we began to reach students at two nearby campuses (a four year university and two year college). This year, in 2016, our team spawned two more teams to focus exclusively on international students and African Americans.
Here’s how “ sending out” staff to reach new areas affected our staff team. Looking at the past decade of our staff team size, there are successive waves of increasing amplitude.
staff-team-size-through-2016
The seasons of lack actually seem to cause longterm growth. Why is that?
Pastor JD Greear  puts it well - “But here’s a principle we’ve learned that sustains us when our courage flags: sending out leaders creates more leaders. What you send out inevitably comes back to you in multiplied form.”
A small team forces you to do the things you want to do anyway – to avoid Ken Cochrum’s Two Movement Killers:
  • Movement-Killer #1 — Hasty (or No) Selection
  • Movement-Killer #2 — Staff Filling Their Schedule with 1-1 Appointments
Ken says that need is “a leadership vacuum that demands new leaders (&  gives real leadership experience to many)”. That has definitely been the case for us.
And it has come from:
  • sending first
  • sending our best
  • and sending until it hurts.
Four years ago we had 12 staff. Out of those 12, we “sent” 3 to do Athletes in Action full time (on our campus) and 2 began to heavily invest in launching other campuses – which means the next year we had 7 staff focused on CFM (the core movement) of the campus.
Last year we had 13 CFM (core movement) staff and 4 AIA staff. Out of those 13 CFM, we sent:
  • 2 of those to East Asia
  • 2 to do Bridges (international students) full time
  • 1 to do Impact (African American students) full time
  • 1 to do JESUS Film
We had several others finish their Cru internships or leave staff, which left us with 3 CFM staff on campus. 3 staff predominantly focused on University of Arkansas (with 1 of those staff spending one day/week launching at a school 1 hour away; and another staff spending some time at a local Christian college to try to mobilize students to go to the world).
So the (unintentional!) pattern over the last five years has been:
  • two years of plenty resulting in sending
  • a low year
  • two years of plenty resulting in sending
  • a low year
On the CFM side, going from 13 to 3 has been a little painful. 3 is a little small – I think 7 might be healthier (I don’t think much is gained in a staff team growing from 7 to 13, besides a temporary bump that can be dispersed to contextualized teams). But I think 3 has created space – a leadership vacuum that is sucking in new leaders. We don’t have any women staff. It’s looking like the result will be that next year we will gain several female interns.
So sending out leaders has created space for more leaders.
But here is one major caveat – one reason we can lead a good-size CFM movement with only three staff is that we have developed an established core of student leaders. We have 65 students leading Bible studies. For us, a solid hub movement has been the key to spinning out laborers to launch new movements. Bridges has successfully launched this year and has been very effective in reaching international students because we sent out 2 staff and 4 of our best student leaders from our core Cru movement. Our core Cru movement has suffered a bit from that loss of key leaders, but others hopefully will step up to fill that gap.
For many years Jim Sautner led Destino (focused on reaching Hispanic students). Jim has built movements and launched many kinds of contextualized movements. His advice to me:
“You need critical mass to produce laborers and launch new movements. You can’t give what you don’t have. You can’t give laborers to reach and launch if you don’t have any.”
We must build movements that plants new movements.

How To Reach Freshmen in the First Week

July 24, 2014 By Tim Casteel

Here at the University of Arkansas, pretty much everything we do in the first week to reach freshmen was gleaned from Brian McCollister. Brian is a national director with Cru who is one of the best in the world at reaching freshmen and building a movement. He served for over 20 years as a Campus Director at Ohio University.

The basics we do to reach freshmen the first week:

  • During move-in week we have big cookouts in front of the big freshmen dorms (and have them fill out a spiritual interest survey as they get a burger)Cookout 1
  • On the first day of school we set up tables in front of every dining hall on campus. We hand out something free (sunglasses, free sandwich coupon, etc.) in exchange for students filing out a spiritual interest survey (click here to download a sample jpg or Photoshop file you can adapt for your use). Between the Cookouts and Tables we do about 4,000 of these spiritual interest surveys.
  • Have co-ed Bible studies in every dorm the first week of class

Here’s the key: our staff and student leaders then follow up, one-on-one, with as many of these students as possible. We share the gospel during EVERY appointment and work hard to connect these freshmen to Bible studies. In the previous spring most of our leaders had been through training on how to share their faith. We share the gospel with every student, despite the fact that our University is in the “Bible Belt,” because the vast majority of students do not have a clear understanding of the gospel of grace. Many times we see students trust Christ for the first time.

Here is much of Brian’s wisdom on the critical first weeks of reaching freshmen –  in 2 parts:

  • A 15 minute talk from Brian McCollister walking through how to reach freshmen the first few weeks. You can download here.

 

  • A step by step of how to reach freshmen. This how-to was put together by St. Louis Cru which is great because it applies to the wide variety of contexts they serve in (community colleges, elite private schools, large state schools). It’s not exactly what we do at Arkansas, but very close.

https://www.timcasteel.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/CompassionfortheCrowds.pdf

 

Both of these are great resources to walk through with your staff team.

What are some key things your team does to reach freshmen the first week on campus?

The Two Most Important Days of the Year

July 17, 2014 By Tim Casteel

I was recently looking over some notes from a talk given by my friend Brian McCollister, a national director with Cru and a guru on how to build a college ministry.

He asserts that, in college ministry, the two most important days of the year are:

  • The first day of school
  • The first day of fall retreat

CalendarThe First Day of School

Really, it’s whatever day you do your big push to do as many spiritual interest surveys as possible. So for us, it’s actually the second and third day of school. On that Tuesday and Wednesday we do around 4,000 spiritual interest surveys (in exchange for a a free Chick-fil-A sandwich card). Why Tuesday and Wednesday? Because our first Cru meeting of the year is on Tuesday and all of our freshmen Bible studies (in every dorm) are on Wednesday. All 4,000 students who fill out a survey get a brochure (about Cru), a flier (with first week events on it), and a personal invitation from a student.

The First Day of Fall Retreat

“The second most important day of the year is the first day of our Fall Retreat.  Why is it so important?  Because it is then that you find out how well you have done in the first six weeks.  If there are a lot of enthusiastic freshmen and a lot of tired but eager upperclassmen, then you have done well.  You can enjoy the weekend!  And you have just greatly increased the number of potential laborers in the Harvest.  You have great momentum and can focus great energy on reaching lost students on your campus.”

What do you think? What are your most important days of the year?

And, more importantly, are you investing your resources (time/money/leaders) in a way that reflects their importance?

image courtesy of Dafne Cholet

Top Takeaways from Large Cru Movements – Part 1

August 8, 2012 By Tim Casteel

I want to wrap up the series on Large Cru Movements with 2 posts on my Top Takeaways. Click for Part 2 (click here for the Intro of the series)

If you want to go back and read about each campus here are the 8 Cru Movements I profiled:

  • University of Florida
  • Montana State
  • Michigan State
  • Cal Poly- San Luis Obispo
  • Miami of Ohio
  • NC State
  • Ole Miss
  • Penn State

Part 1 of Top Takeaways is mostly just a step back to see what patterns emerge from the Large Movements series. An attempt to distill:

  • What do Staff Do?
  • What do MTL’s Do (MTL = Missional Team Leaders = Directors)?
  • What contributed to the growth of these large movements?

Part 2 will be some of my personal thoughts and favorite takeaways.

Cru-10-24-11-MASTER-TM

What do staff do?

In most of these large movements, staff:

  • Oversee a ministry team: Weekly Meeting, Prayer, Outreach
  • Disciple key student leaders (and take them out to share their faith)
  • Lead a Bible study
  • Empower students lead as much as possible

 

Some notable thoughts:

  • NC State
    • Each of key staff leaders is like a mini-MTL — each run an area of campus or a distinct ministry (AIA, Bridges, etc)
  • Cal Poly SLO
    • This movement can survive without a weekly meeting, social and the events
    • But the backbone of our movement is evangelism and discipleship and small groups
    • That’s your job
    • Staff got a little off and thought coaching these teams is more impt
      • It’s public, so they spend more time on that
      • They want to feel like they are contributing
      • It’s easier to buy groceries
      • And maybe they don’t know what to do with discipleship
  • Ole Miss
    • Main question — how are you going to reproduce yourself?
  • Penn State
    • If our students are going to lead, what does that leave staff to do:
    • 3 things:
      • Set direction (“this is where we are going”)
      • Resource (skills, tools, money)
      • Develop
  • Montana State
    • Their primary job is to be in their target area, sharing their faith, with student leaders
  • Florida
    • Staff don’t lead any Bible studies — instead they coach 5 Bible studies (10 leaders)

 

 

What do MTL’s do?

Most MTL’s:

  • Lead staff meeting
  • Lead Leadership Meetings
  • Focus on staff Care (they meet with every senior staff every week)
  • Cast vision for the mission
  • Only disciple 1 or 2 students
  • Spend at least one day on planning
  • Rely on their Senior Staff to coach younger staff/interns.

Some teach every week at their weekly meeting, others hardly at all.

A few MTL’s lead studies but several do not.

 

Some notable thoughts:

  • Penn State
    • My job is to keep my staff happy so they’ll stick around and grow up to be MTL’s
  • Miami (really the whole post is worth reading if you want to learn how to be a good MTL)
    • The role of the MTL is in between student leaders and staff leaders
      • Lead the student leadership team and lead the staff team
      • Constantly trying to balance the tension
      • If I’m going to err, I’m going to err on letting students lead
    • I’m constantly thinking: How can I push more and more leadership away from myself?

 

 

Contributors to growth

I was struck by how diverse the 8 movements are – definitely not cookie cutter ministries.

But despite the diversity here are some consistent threads that contributed to growth:

  • The director had been there for a long time(except for one campus – for over a decade)
    • Take Miami’s two directors for example:
      • Mark Brown — 20 years
      • Jane Armstrong — 32 years
    • I heard this quote from Jim Sylvester repeated multiple times: “More happens in five years that I could ever imagine, but less happens in one year than I would hope”.
  • God decided to move/Prayer
    • I think this quote from Ken Cochrum applies here: “True spiritual movements are both intentional and organic (grown by God)”
  • Strong Community Groups
    • These large movements were not just a huge weekly meeting. Most had just as many in CG’s as at their weekly meeting.
  • Growing the number of Core Leaders—Doing the right things with the right people
    • Brian Langford at Michigan State:
      • I was trying to change things from up front but Hersh encouraged me that as long as I was doing the right things with the right people, things would change
      • He encouraged me to grow the number of core leaders (and make sure they are multiplying their lives thru discipleship)
      • “I took 12 guys to disciple, the strongest leaders. And that changed our movement. Every single guy leader in the movement [the next few years] came from those 12”
    • Montana State:
      • 5 or 6 years ago we really began to take spiritual multiplication seriously and asked “Are we really preparing people for a lifetime of ministry?”
      • Multipliers/Spiritual grandchildren.
      • Are there students involved in our ministry who are really helping students have a ministry?
      • “The grandchild has to be sharing their faith” — the litmus test of the leader
      • We work really hard at this and the number is still really small
  • A good overseas partnership
    • From Miami-Ohio:
      • It gives students a big picture and they get to share their faith
      • 24 Miami students in Fiji saw 100 students trust Christ the first week — how can that not change you?

 

As you learned about these movements, what are some common threads you saw?

What are your main takeaways or favorite thoughts?

Large Cru Movements – NC State

August 6, 2012 By Tim Casteel


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This is part of a series: Learning from Large Cru Movements- a look at 8 of the largest Cru movements in the U.S.  Read the Series intro here.

This post is a summary of two conversations I had with NC State staff — in Summer of 2008 and 2011. So some of the content may not 100% reflect the current reality at NC State Cru. But it’s such good stuff, it is worth sharing all of it.

Overview of the Movement at North Carolina State

Movement stats as of 2011

  • There are 35,000 students enrolled at NC State
  • 2,500 students at Meredith College (Private Women’s College; have their own servant team)
  • We’re using NC State as a hub (other campuses come to our meetings) and reaching out from there
  • About 700-1200 at weekly meeting (about 1500 at first meeting)
  • # in Bible studies — best guess would be 1000
    • some of those Bible study students never step foot in weekly meeting
  • 200 Bible study leaders right now
  • About 60 on SP every summer
  • Around 15-20 staff (including Faculty Commons, AIA, Bridges, interns, staff)
    • Usually around 2-3 interns every year
  • 300-400 at Fall Retreat
  • Winter Conference — 85 this year (with Passion draining)
    • Biggest year was 250
    • We are not battling Passion — I really believe it’s a movement of God
    • But we’re different
  • Mike Mehaffe has been the Campus Director at NC State since 1981 (over 30 years!)
  • How large are other ministries on your campus
    • Campus Outreach — probably 300 involved
    • Intervarsity — about 75
    • Navs — about 50

A couple thoughts on this movement

  • From my research, I would guess that NC State is the largest Cru movement in the nation
  • I once heard a Cru staff say that they want to throw the biggest parties on campus every year (he was talking about their weekly meeting being that party)
  • If there was a Party Ranking System for biggest parties at NC State, NC State Cru would completely sweep the Top 5 (more details on what they do below)

Movement History

  • 1981 — 30 students involved, 4 staff
  • Grew up to 100 within a few years
  • Stayed at 100 for a while
  • 1995 — Mike did a lot of prayer on campus
    • That’s where it started to grow
  • From 1995-2000 grew from 100 to 800 in ministry
  • Around 10 staff in 2000

Biggest Contributors to Growth

  • #1 thing — prayer — consistently student prayer for the campus
    • Mike Mehaffe is a big time prayer guy; Prayer is his thing
  • Longevity of the Director and long term staff
    • Todd (senior staff) has been at the campus for 13-14 years
    • Mike Mehaffe knows a lot of people on campus
      • Athletic Director
      • People high up in the residence halls
  • Having a finance/admin person (staff who loves doing admin stuff) → frees up Director and the team to run smoother
  • Leadership retreats have really helped the growth
  • High degree of excellence at weekly meeting and parties

What does evangelism look like on your campus?

  • Primarily through the geographic areas
    • Each area has own personality (dorms, greek, ethnic groups)
    • We ask them to think through how to best reach your part of campus
    • Areas have $500 for outreach (which we could increase that quite a bit)
  • Don’t do usually do big outreaches
    • Maybe do every three years
    • Last one we did: Debate — “Does God exist?” – William Lane Craig vs. Atheist
  • Mostly do prayer/care/share strategy [similar to Community 2:8]
  • 150 students come to Christ on average (most of those are through friends)
  • Starting this year: Encouraging our students to move back in the dorms for junior/senior year

What do staff focus on?

  • Discipleship is number one priority
    • Meet with every single one of our bible study leaders every week in discipleship
      • Students can also do this (but staff still touch base with them at least once a month or every two weeks)
      • One staff guy disciples 12 guys (all from the West side) — all one-on-one
      • Another staff disciples 20+ (all from Central) — some in pairs
    • What they cover:
      • Make sure they are pouring into people in their studies
      • Make sure they are sharing their faith
  • Each of key staff leaders is like a mini-MTL (Cru-speak for Director) over an Area
    • West Campus— around 300
    • Central Campus – around 400 involved
    • East Campus
    • South Campus
    • Meredith College
    • Destino, Impact, Faculty Commons, Bridges, AIA
  • Staff go to the servant team meetings sometimes
    • Teams will meet pretty much every week or two
  • 4 student men who are student staff — staff men shepherd them
    • They raise support
    • They come to staff meeting once a month
    • Been great for raising up staff (good picture of what staff life looks like)

What do you as Director do?

  • Give leadership, vision for the whole
  • Spend a lot of time on staff care and community
  • Make sure people care about each other and enjoy each other
  • Plan staff meetings
  • Still real connected with students
    • Works on South Campus
    • Leads Senior guys study
    • Comes to most of the events that they do
    • Meets with a couple student leaders
    • Goes into the dorms and shares his faith
    • Real big on community/university relationships (takes a staff guy with him and meets with them every year)
  • Don’t meet weekly with AIA, Bridges, Faculty staff
  • What Mike’s schedule looks like as Director
    • Monday
      • Just do planning — prepare a couple Bible studies (one for staff, one students). Prep staff meeting (for Friday). Preps Discipleship
    • Tuesday-Friday — on campus or meeting people all week
    • Tuesday
      • 9-11 Staff prayer every week (invite all AIA, Bridges, Faculty Commons that AM)
      • Thru 5pm – Training: 2 hours doing ministry together
      • Night — date night
    • Wednesday
      • 10-noon — MTL meeting (half time with campus issues; half spent planning staff meeting- making sure we are in agreement)
      • Afternoon — appts w staff and students
      • 5:30-7:00 — senior bible study
      • Meet for dinner at our house at 5:30 and then have study
    • Thursday
      • 7:30AM — accountability w a peer (ask each other the tough questions)
      • 9-11 Staff Development (educational portion) — discuss what they’ve read, listen to tapes (with all the new staff together)
      • Afternoon — appts on campus
      • Weekly meeting — 8-9:30pm
    • Friday
      • Staff meeting 9-noon
        • First 30 minutes — hot breakfast snack, sports page is open, staff hang out and goof off and talk
        • Fill out weekly reviews
        • Share time — what’s God doing (good or hard)
        • 10-10:30 — study of Mark — very discussion oriented
        • 10:30-11 — King’s business (evaluate our leaders retreat, etc)

Reaching Freshmen

  • Have info tables set up the first two weeks of school
  • Table on each part of campus — west, east, south
  • Coke donates a bunch of Cokes that we hand out (or we do freezie pops)
  • Give out info sheet with all the upcoming events
  • Do 2000 total spiritual interest surveys
    • Can check they want to be in a study
    • Primary way we fill our studies (is through these contacts)
    • Spend first month-month and a half following those up
    • Staff go with students and spend tons of time following up all those contacts
  • We also get restaurants and businesses to put coupons on the bottom of the survey that they can tear off

Ministry Structure

Leadership Meetings

  • Once a month, our geographic areas meet as leaders (led by staff and students) — about 40 student leaders in each area
    • Each staff responsible for getting their area together for leadership
    • They plan three things for the month:
      • Outreach
      • Community event
      • Prayer time
    • They share what’s going on and catch up
    • It’s how we keep our student leaders aligned
    • Leaders made up of:
      • Bible study leaders
      • Servant Team
      • Music Leaders (used to have guys who were great on guitar but sleeping with their girlfriend)
    • Leaders fill out expectation sheet in Spring
      • When they sign up, they give references from roommates
      • They sign Cru statement of faith and expectations
        • No drinking, morality w dating
        • Have to go to 2 of 3 retreats
          • Winter Conference
          • Fall Retreat
          • Spring Break
    • Music team is shepherded by a staff — making sure they’re walking with god and in integrity
  • Every other Sunday night MTL’s meet with Servant Team leaders
    • Talk about DNA of Cru — who we are
    • Each team reports — what they’re doing, where they are headed
    • Everyone on ST is a generalist (i.e.- everyone gives input on Weekly meeting) but also responsible for their particular area
    • Servant Team made up of younger students (2 co-leaders for each team)
    • Leaders are typically sophomore or junior
    • After they serve on ST, they then graduate to leading a dorm or bible study leader (usually serve for 1 year)
    • Older students are leading everything
    • Staff advisor mentors and develops students leaders on the servant team (how to lead, recruit new students, sound board for ideas)
    • Try to get freshmen involved on each team really early
    • Teams we have:
      • Weekly Meeting
      • Prayer
      • Community
      • Publicity
      • WSN (sending to the world)
      • Conference recruiting
      • I heart NCState — how can we be a blessing to NC State — where if we were dismissed from NC state the campus would notice

Leadership Retreats

Do leadership retreat at beginning of Fall and Spring

  • Meet with our leaders in August at the beach with all the small group leaders for 2 nights/3 days
    • 1 whole week before school starts
    • Students pay $40 (Older students get a discount)
    • Goals:
      • Align, care, pray
      • Connecting with one another
    • Staff get there a day early to student retreats and hang out and connect
  • 1 day leadership event at a church in January (all day)
    • Mostly for aligning
    • Charge students $5

Training

  • A lot of training for students takes place in discipleship and in small group studies
  • Have 4 training lessons we try to do with every freshmen
    • How to use KGP
    • Developing 3 minutes testimony
    • How to use Satisfied booklet
    • Follow up training
    • Sexual
  • Have 3-4 year discipleship plan [their website has what they use for discipleship and Bible studies]
  • Big fan of Transferrable Concepts — definitely use those to reinforce our DNA

Spring Break

  • 4 options we promote
    • Do their own beach trip — take 90 to that
    • 25-30 to campus oriented trip in NYC
    • Chicago inner city
    • Local church — good deeds campaign locally
      • 100 students went last year

Weekly Meeting

  • Mostly bring in outside speakers (teachers from seminary)
    • Speaker speaks for 30 minutes
    • Usually give $50 gift card to outside speakers
  • Mike rarely speaks – Once a year
  • Rotate in 2-3 staff per semester
  • Staff guy runs a lot of it with some student involvement
  • Don’t allow people to come in and hand out stuff (keep a tight reign)
  • MC is a student
  • Band — 2 full student bands
    • 2 key student leaders who lead it
  • Some Video — no skits or goofy stuff
  • Primetime card
    • Everyone fills one out and pass all cards down to the end to the bucket
    • Student enters in the students into the system
    • All the Bible study leaders go onto website and see who is new
    • Staff that who are over the key leaders in target areas make sure students follow up those students

Fall Retreat

  • 2 night retreat
  • Outside speaker
  • Use their own band (really low key — just a 1 or 2 people up there)

Bible Studies

  • We have a recommended contentfor Bible studies
    • Many like to go through a whole book of the bible — Ephesians, etc
    • Use Cru.comm
  • Bible study leaders stay with their bible studies until they graduate
  • Freshmen Studies
    • Put signs up everywhere
    • Main way they fill them is through the surveys
    • Start studies 2nd week back
    • First semester do topical stuff so people can come in and out

Parties

Once a month we have a big community event

  • Really high expectations/quality
  • A place to invite non-Christians to
    • No spiritual content or Cru Announcement — totally relational
  • Community team plans all the events (they meet weekly throughout year)
  • Establish traditions so that it grows every year
  • Serves the Bible studies
  • Make t-shirts for 2-3 events (pay $12 and get a tshirt plus get in free to party; $15 long sleeve) → creates excitement for things — makes them feel big time
  • All community events pay for themselves (charge for most of them and get a lot of food, etc donated)
  • Events we have:
    • 299_29067881366_4879_nHawaiian Luau in August
      • $3 cover charge
      • Biggest thing in the fall – Around 1000 come?
      • First weekend of school
      • Bunch of food out
      • Lots of decorations
      • Really fun environment
      • Apt. pool or city pool
      • Cru students meet students and invite them to weekly meeting189631_10150093186246367_315874_n
    • Barn Party293980_10150305080971367_1753881329_n
      • About 1000 come
      • In October
      • Rent big work lights
      • Staff direct parking – wear bright orange vests and flashlights
      • Bring in snow cone machine
      • $3 cover charge
      • Decorate it a lot
        • Trailer full of hay
        • Go around to country stores and get stuff donated like signs (Wrangler, John Deere)
      • John Deere Tractor for a hay ride
      • 18 wheeler trailer (without a top) — stage for the band
        • A clogging team comes in and we have a band
      • Pit cooker with a bunch of corn
      • Cornhole boards set out (beanbag toss)
      • Bonfire with Smores
    • Winter Ball Semi-Formal
      • Works great for us — our campus has a lot of engineers — where they need a little help in interacting with girls
      • They have to ask girls to the Winter Ball
      • Coat and tie, dresses
      • $15/person; $25/couple
      • Usually make money on our semi-formal
    • Tailgate for every football game
      • Make it big
      • Roast a whole pig, green beans, sweet tea, big flag, vanilla pudding
      • Movie Night
      • Rent Snow Cone machine and popcorn
    • Tacky Prom296457_10150330973416367_1636060713_n
    • Broom Ball just for Juniors and Seniors
    • End of Year Picnic (tug of war, bbq, etc)

Miscellaneous

A strength of our movement:

  • There are a lot of real healthy friendships (which is kind of rare at an engineering school)
  • Bible studies laugh a lot and share life together

Ways to make the movement feel small

  • Dinner for 10
  • People sign up to eat dinner together before the weekly meeting
  • Community Parties (detailed above)— make things really fun and cool to come to; way to meet people

What are your biggest takeaways from learning about the Cru ministry at NC State?

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