Tim Casteel

Thoughts on Leadership and College Ministry

Reaching Freshmen

New Approach to Community Groups

By

This year we are totally restructuring our Community Group system.

For decades we’ve had a pretty typical model – Freshmen studies, Sophomores, Juniors, Seniors.

From talking to Florida Cru, we really liked how their small groups are structured (with 650 students involved in 50 Community Groups, they must be doing something right!):

  • Intergenerational studies (freshman-senior all together)
  • Every group has a target area
    • A lot of them are dorms (80%)
      • The whole Community Group focuses on that dorm all year
      • Most will meet on campus in the dorms every week
    • Others are formed around affinity groups: Epic, Marching Band, Bridges, Greek, AIA teams, Majors (Kinesiology, etc)
  • Freshmen Groups meet for first 6 weeks then gets absorbed into an intergenerational Community Group
    • Freshman and CG’s meet at the same time and night

Intergenerational Community GroupsA few things we really like:

  • Our students leaders will just be in one Bible study – currently, all of our leaders are in a study AND also lead a study.
    • It looks more like life after college (mostly in that you are just in one study – even if you leading it, you can still grow from the community and be challenged by the Word as you process it together)
  • Everyone is engaged in pursuing freshmen (or other affinity group)
  • It makes it easier for students to invite their friends from their classes to the study they’re leading (because it’s not just for freshmen)

For us, what really prompted the change is that in the past few years are number of CG leaders has dramatically increased (like 4x as many), but the number of students in CG has not grown much. We want to be more effective in helping as many students as possible to experience life change through Community Groups.

Specifics on how the leadership of the groups is structured:

CG Coach (usually seniors)

  • Primary job= Coaching their 4 CG Leaders
    • Coach the CG they’re in as well as one other CG
    • Two separate coaching appts/month
      • With the 2 CG leaders  from their study & then 2 CG leaders from the other study they coach
  • Just show up to CG – Don’t necessarily lead – can lead in vision and mission and shepherding the group, but not the content and details of the group
  • Why Seniors?Wisdom and Experience

CG Leader (usually Juniors)

  • Primary Jobs= pursuing upperclassmen and leading the Community Group
    • in Content of the study
    • to stay on Mission (e.g.- reaching the Quads and upperclassmen peers)
      • set direction and plan details of outreach
  • Why Juniors?
    • Experienced leaders but not as much future pressures as seniors (not as focused on post-graduation yet)
    • More focused on what areas they desire to make an impact in while in college

Freshmen Leader (usually sophomores/first time leaders)

  • Primary Jobs= pursuing freshmen all year and being trained to lead CG next year
  • Lead the first 6 weeks of freshmen studies
  • Focus on freshmen throughout the year – connecting them to the Cru movement, doing follow ups, relationally pursuing them all year
  • Why Sophomores or First Time Leaders?
    • most connected relationally to on-campus
    • most excited and passionate, energy
    • Closest to just have gone through what it’s like to have been a freshmen (sophomores)

We’re hoping it gives sophomores a trial run at leading so they will be really effective leaders their junior year. And it gives our seniors a crucial role (instead of slowly fading out).

Here’s a one page summary of the intergenerational model.

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes for us this fall!

What are your thoughts on this intergenerational model?

 

 

Follow Ups – How to Actually get Face to Face with Freshmen

By

After you get thousands of contact cards, what do you do with them?

Alan Mitchell tweeted to me on Friday:

freshmen in dorm room

Question 1: How soon do you start following up?

  • We start immediately. We do the majority of our surveys on Tuesday and Wednesday the first week of class – timed to coincided with our first Cru meeting of the year (on Tuesday) and our freshmen Bible studies in every dorm (on Wednesday). So as they are filling out the survey on Tuesday, we are inviting them to the Cru meeting that night.
  • On Wednesday we get as many student leaders together as possible for a Follow Up Party at 6pm. We feed them dinner and split into groups to pray for the freshmen. Then we hand each dorm (students leading freshmen studies in each dorm) a printout of everyone who checked “I want more info about a Bible study”. The students then call and text everyone on that list and invite them to the freshmen Bible study in their dorm that night at 8pm. At 7pm the students go (with a freshmen escort they’ve met during move-in week) into the dorms and knock on doors of everyone that checked “yes – Bible study” (as well as inviting anyone with their door open).
  • After that initial Tuesday/Wednesday push we spend every afternoon as a staff team in the dorms calling and getting appointments.

Question 2: How do you follow up with them?

Last week, Chris McKinney – Cru MTL (Missional Team Leader) at Mizzou – emailed along the lines of Alan’s second question:

We have had a really hard time getting appointments from cards. Even from the “Yes, Yes, Yes” ones. We text them, email, then text again and try and stop by their dorms. I’m hoping maybe MissionHub will help and it’s been a card organization thing
but I’m kinda stumped. We do about 2000 freshmen surveys at tables so we have a lot. 

I feel like it could be the evidence of a changing culture but also want to see what you’ve experienced and what works well for you. It’s to the point where we celebrate just getting an appointment.

Our team has had similar troubles and have experimented a lot. Let’s pool our wisdom - I’d love to hear what’s working for your teams (in the comments).

Here’s what we’ve come up with on our campus (with pretty good success).

Overall Goals in Follow up

  • Train leaders to do future follow-up (multiplication)
    • Staff do what we are good at – initiate and boldly share the gospel. So our first priority (more important than getting to the freshmen) is actually modeling to our student leaders how to do a follow up (AND how to set up an appointment by boldly making phone calls) so they can then do follow ups on their own and train other students.
    • We then pass off key contacts to students who are good pursuers. As we pair up with student leaders to follow up, the student leaders take the relational baton and are the ones relationally pursuing after the first follow up.
  • Share the Gospel with everyone we meet with (Either they don’t know Jesus or they’re a legit Christian and they want to know about Cru and here is the essence of what we are about)
  • Relationally connect new students to the movement and ultimate goal= get them in a Bible study
    • Getting them in a Bible study usually happens after several more relational touchpoint

Making the Call

  • Be bold, assume they want to meet with us (in how we talk to them)
  • Missed call, then send text and tell them you’ll call later (don’t leave a voicemail).
  • Sample:
    • “Hey is this John? Alright cool well this is Erik with Cru. I’m calling because you filled out one of our survey cards at the Chick-fil-A table. Do you remember doing that? Cool well on that card you said that you wanted more info about a Bible study. Are you around right now – I’m in the lobby and would love to grab 15 minutes with you.”
    • If no (insert lame excuse- “nah, I have a class in 40 minutes. I have to take a nap…”) – “OK- I will be on campus tomorrow afternoon and Wednesday. Which one works better for you? Sounds good I will see you then.”

General Tips

  • Go in pairs – always take a student with you
  • After modeling it with a student leader, challenge them to take another student tomorrow to do follow up
  • Smile- remember their name
  • Be confident- it’s only as awkward as you make it (you’re setting the norm for their college experience. Everyone in college talks about God!)
  • Have the student leader set up a second “appointment” – basketball tomorrow, “I’ll pick you up for Cru on Tuesday”, “we’re going caving this weekend – want to go?”

You can download our Follow Up Cheat Sheet. It has everything listed above, as well as what we actually say on the appointment (too much content to share here!). Feel free to edit that Word document and make it your own.

I’d love to hear what’s working for your teams – how do you get face to face with freshmen?

image courtesy of Zach Dunn

What you Should be Doing the First Week on Campus

By

Some great wisdom from Brian McCollister here.

3 Keys for the First Week on Campus

    1. students on denver campusStaff must lead in evangelism. All else must suffer for the sake of getting face to face with freshmen. I tell our staff that your first six discipleship times of the year must be primarily spent in evangelism. If your upper classmen balk at this then that is evidence that you may not be working with the right upper classmen. There ought to be time to develop and teach but evangelism has to happen those 6 times.
    2. If you pay the price in the first six 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. I can tell how well we did in the first six weeks of the last four years by looking at the size of our classes.
    3. Directors must mobilize their best people assets into evangelizing/gathering freshmen into freshmen groups (staff/ student leaders).

We teach that discipleship is doing the right things (doing ministry together, time in the Word, relationally connecting) with the right people (faithful, available, teachable).

Here’s the key: those three things – Ministry/Word/Relationship – don’t have to happen evenly over the year. In other words, the first 6 weeks of the year will be HEAVILY weighted toward doing Ministry together. Talking about life and their summer and the new year as you walk on the way to share your faith. That’s one reason a Leadership Retreat before move-in week is so crucial. It gives your staff time to connect relationally with student leaders before you jump in the trenches together.

I always try to grab one-on-one lunch (Relationship) with each of my staff guys in the calm before the storm of the first 6 weeks because I know that August and September will be heavy on doing ministry together and lighter on Word/Relationship.

What are your thoughts on Brian’s 3 Keys?

 

How To Reach Freshmen in the First Week

By

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?

Foundational Articles to Read with Your Team as you Plan for the Fall

By

I love reading articles together as a staff team. There are few better ways to align your team and learn to speak the same language.

They’re short and to the point (at least the good ones are!).

And the articles can be the bad guy- they can speak authoritatively on a topic and staff don’t hear “my director is trying to get us to _____ (share our faith more, do more work)” they hear “that author who is infinitely wise is saying that we should ______”.

Whether your senior staff are reading these ideas for the 10th time or it’s a new staff reading it for the first, foundational ideas need to be over-communicated repeatedly.

It doesn’t always have to be articles, I’ll often print up a bog post (even my own!) to read with our team.

Here are some of the staple articles (all found on CruPressGreen) that have shaped our team (and that we’ll likely be re-reading this fall):

  • The First Two Weeks— our team reads this every year in preparing for the fall. Really short and to the point. Sets your team’s expectations for the first weeks (16 hour work days!):
    • Gathering Christians, reaching non-Christians…or both?
    • What to do on appointments
    • What to do with returning students
  • Building Movements on a Staffed Campus — this article has shaped our movement more than any other. Jim Sylvester shares his considerable wisdom in what it takes to build a thriving movement. An abridged version of Jim Sylvester’s epic source material on how to do College Ministry. Principles God Honors, the original, is 134 pages of wisdom on how to build a movement that will reach an entire campus with the gospel. Building Movements on a Staffed Campus is 8 pages and a great introduction to this phenomenal material.
    • Two shorter adaptions of Jim’s wisdom:
      • Going from 20 to 200 — Bob Fuh’s shorter and easier to read version of Jim’s principles. 5 principles to grow a small ministry into a thriving movement. This one might be better to read with your team or students than Jim’s.
      • Brian McCollister offers a slightly different take on the same principles here.
  • Hearing the Music Of the Gospel — a longer article but so good. Are you carried along by the rhythm of God’s Spirit through his Word or doing the mechanical dance steps of behavioral change? This is a good one to have your team read over an hour of time with God and then come back and discuss as a team.
  • Empowering Staff thru Staff Jobs— great wisdom from Eric Swanson on empowering staff to lead as directors. This fall we just quoted from this article and used the ideas as we communicated to our team on staff jobs — but a great read for team leaders.
    • “Each job is “director level” in that the other staff are subordinate to him or her in this area.”
    • “Each job is “owned” by the staff in charge and is autonomous in its responsibility. If the staff does not carry it out or motivate others to do so, it simply doesn’t get done. No one bails him or her out.”
    • Each staff is expected to be an “expert” in his/her job. He needs to read books, articles, magazines, listen to talks, and interact with other staff from other campus to develop expertise. He or she becomes a resource for the other staff in their area of expertise. You and the other staff may be purposefully ignorant: “I don’t know, but Rabs is the expert in that area.”

What are some of your favorite articles?