Tim Casteel

Thoughts on Leadership and College Ministry

Top Sending Campuses

Aligning Your Staff Team to Send

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The Top Sending Campuses

This is part of a series on Sending

Click to read the Intro and for a list of Cru’s Top Sending Campuses (with links to each post)

Sending Starts with Staff

From my research, one of the best ways to be a sending campus is to have a sending team. Not to just have one person on the team who is passionate for the world or is a Global Missions coordinator. But to have an entire team that is passionate about raising up laborers to go to the world.

How do you create that?

You need to put just as much thought into recruiting your staff as you do recruiting your students. Your staff need to be aligned to the needs of the world and the need to Send. If your team really believes in Sending, sending students will naturally happen.

A Team of Once and Future STINTers

The surest way to have a sending team is for it to be made up of once and future STINT’ers (a STINT is a one to two year internship; or for staff, a one or two year service overseas). Send students on STINT and many will come back to your team. Don’t have any ex-STINTers on your team? Send your current staff on STINT. Sure you’ll miss them. But the benefits are tremendous –

  • They will go and hopefully take tons of graduating students with them on STINT
  • They will come back with a passion for the immense needs of the world (and will likely be better leaders)

A Team of Go-ers – “Come With Me!”

The next best thing to STINT (and slightly less daunting) is getting everyone on your team to your partnership countries.

On our campus, we want every staff/intern to go to one of our partnership countries in their first 2 years on the team (either on a 10 day Vision Trip or Summer Mission).

We also want to set a norm on our team that most staff will go on one of our three Summer Missions partnerships EVERY summer:

  • East Asia
  • Ethiopia
  • San Diego

Our staff are actively seeking to lead our Summer Missions partnerships (both internationally and stateside).

“Come with me” is far more powerful than “you should go”. We’ve noticed a HUGE difference in the number of students who will go if we have our staff or key students leading a project (vs when they are being led by other campuses’ staff). HUGE.

Incidentally, your team is going to need to raise some individual support. It’s going to cost them money to lead Vision Trips and Summer Missions. Build MPD into your team’s schedule. Cast vision for how healthy support enables your team to make decisions based not on “how much is that going to cost?” but “what is the best use of my life for the sake of the gospel?”

A Learning Team

Constantly keep the needs of the world in front of your team by having a weekly focus on Sending in your staff meeting:

Take advantage of technology:

  • Regularly Skype your STINT’ers into your staff meeting
  • Skype in visionary leaders who bleed for the world
  • Skype in leaders from the Northeast or Northwest of the U.S. who can cast vision for the needs of those areas

Read together:

These are great to print out and read with your staff team. Because sending starts with staff.

Read and Discuss Passages of Scripture on Sending:

Work through this devotional together - The Antioch Movement in Acts by Brian McCollister

  • Within 20 years Christianity had spread to Asia Minor and Europe
  • The spread of the gospel can be traced clearly to the church at Antioch
  • Church in Antioch likely founded by 35 AD — sending out missionaries by 45 AD
  • Antioch serves as a model of a first century movement

Read and discuss Matthew 9:37-38

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

  • What is the world’s greatest need? The Gospel of Jesus Christ.
  • But what did Jesus say? The Harvest is plentiful…but what? The bottleneck is not that people won’t listen and accept the gospel.

Read and discuss Romans 10:14-15

“How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent?”

Commit to getting better at Sending by putting it on your strategic plan:

Noralea, the MTL at OU, shares how they became a sending campus:

I remembered that back in 2010-2012 our strategic plan had “create a culture of sending” as one of our three main path steps. It was a huge part of what our team spent two years focusing on and I really believe that God cause the growth and we’re seeing the effects now of focusing on it for two years 4 years ago. The culture has shifted and being sent with Cru or into the workplace is more of a “norm” or strength of the OU movement than it used to be.

Read more about what their sending looks like now.

Watch a short 5 minute Video together and discuss it for 10 minutes:

*HT to Dan Allan for finding these videos

  • John Deere
    • How is John Deere seeking to connect to Millennials who want meaningful work?
      • “here you can continuously advance your career while advancing the technologies that will build a better world.”
      • “any company can give you a mission statement. Here, we give you an honest to goodness mission.”
      • “You’ve always dreamt of changing the world. Here. It’s no dream.”
      • “Here the world’s brightest minds are tackling the world’s biggest challenges.”
    • What stands out to you in this video?
    • How do they cast vision and present their opportunity?
    • How do you express the need that we’re trying to meet?
    • Who is motivated to join with us, and why?
  • An Ohio State football coach casts vision for the program and the legacy and privilege of being part of Buckeye football
    • The actual speech starts about the 2 minute mark and lasts for about 5 minutes. Here’s a link to the written copy of the speech
      • What stands out to you in this video?
      • How do they cast vision and present their opportunity?
      • How do you express the need that we’re trying to meet?
      • Who is motivated to join with us, and why?

What has helped your team become a Sending Team?

Survey: Key Factors that Motivate Cru Staff to go into Full Time Ministry

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The Top Sending Campuses

This is part of a series on Sending

Click to read the Intro and for a list of Cru’s Top Sending Campuses (with links to each post)

From 2004 to 2011 Thomas Weakley conducted a survey of all new Cru staff in order to find key factors that motivate and influence Cru Staff members to go into full time ministry (the survey was initially part of Thomas’s doctoral dissertation).
Here is a summary of his findings:
Question #1: What are the identifiable theological factors that motivate and influence Cru staff members to accept the calling of God and enter vocational Christian service?
  • Only 11% had a sudden “damascus road” call to ministry. 89% had more of a progressive (over time) calling
    • Females seem to value the process over time and their leading appears to be more intuitive than males.
    • Men seemed to value the need for a more logical choice in the decisions than females.
  • Thomas’s Key Takeaway:
    • More teaching and seminars on the “calling of God” from a biblical and historical perspective need to be implemented.
Staff were asked what theological reasons motivated them to join staff:
  • Lostness of Man
  • Eternal Perspective
  • Lordship of Christ
  • Stewardship of Life
  • Great Commission
  • Spiritual Calling
Of these, Great Commission and Eternal Perspective were the biggest theological factors. Stewardship of Life was last.
Question #2: In what ways, if any, did personal relationship factors motivate and influence Cru staff members to accept the calling of God and enter vocational Christian service?
They were given these options:
  • Current Church
  • Small Group
  • Peers
  • Parental
  • Mentor
  • Professional Minister
Thomas found Peers and Mentor to be the two most influential by far.
“Ones gender did seem to impact their ranking of the relational factors. Females rated their small group and parents significantly more than males. Males rated the professional minister significantly more than females. “
Surprisingly, parents are the least important factor. Some of Thomas’ hypotheses:
  • Younger adults may place a greater value upon other adults (the Cru staff mentor) replacing the parental influence.
  • Parents may devalue the Parachurch organization due to their child’s responsibility to raise their personal finances for ministry.
  • Current Society may have influenced parents to devalue the role of the minister.
  • 82% of staff made a significant life change in college, thus parents were not part of the decision!
Thomas’s Key Takeaway:
  • Consider recruitment and placement of new staff in a relational context with their peers.
Question 3: In what ways, if any, did mentoring factors motivate and influence Cru staff members to accept the calling of God and enter vocational Christian service?
They were given four categories:
  • Intensive Staff; Occasional Staff, Intensive Peer, Occasional Peer,
And asked to rank the influence from 0-5 of mentoring relationship. Here’s the breakdown by gender:
Weakley mentor influence gender
Thomas’s Key Takeaways:
  • “The value placed upon Intensive staff mentoring may imply that the lifestyle, character and calling of Cru staff is very attractive to young adults. It is significantly higher than all other categories. “
  • “Since females respond well to peer mentoring incorporate more peer mentoring in the development of females.”
  • “Encourage the mentoring of males by Cru staff. – Provide greater and more frequent opportunities for men to be exposed to male Cru staff mentors.”
Question #4: What are the identifiable ministry experiences of Cru staff during college and in what ways did these ministry experience factors motivate and influence the staff member to accept the Calling of God and enter vocational Christian service?
New staff indicate that prior ministry experiences with Cru were the most significant influencers toward them joining staff
The top 5 ministry experiences which influenced people to join staff are (in order) –
  1. STINT
  2. Interning
  3. International summer missions
  4. US summer missions
  5. Leading a small group on campus.
“Long term experiences (BS leader and Ministry success) rank high among females due to the holistic perspective of females.”
Question #5: What category of Motivational factors had the greatest influence upon the Cru staff member accepting the call of God to enter vocational Christian service?
So, of the aforementioned categories (Questions 1-4), which is the trump card?
Ranked from most influential to least (across all years):
  1. Ministry Experience
  2. Relational
  3. Theological
  4. Mentoring
In 2011 (his most recent year of research) Relational had edged ahead of Ministry Experience as most influential reason for joining staff.
One thing I’m not super clear on – isn’t mentoring essentially the same as relational?

What are your key takeaways?

Which Yields More Long Term Staff – Recruiting to Stateside or the World?

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The Top Sending Campuses

This is part of a series on Sending

Click to read the Intro and for a list of Cru’s Top Sending Campuses (with links to each post)

I want to raise up long term college ministers who will change the world for decades to come.
So one of my lingering, pragmatic questions has been: “Which is better for raising up long term staff – recruiting to Stateside or the World?”
In the Cru world, I wondered:

Which yields more long term staff: STINT or Internships?

(STINT= is an overseas 1-2 year internship)

If our ultimate aim is to raise up long term staff, is it better for graduates to serve with us for a year or two, or for them to go overseas? Where should we invest our recruiting efforts?
Though the data is a little dated (2011), Thomas Weakley found:

The top 5 ministry experiences which influenced people to join Cru staff are (in order) –

  1. STINT
  2. Interning
  3. International Summer Missions
  4. U.S. Summer Missions
  5. Leading a small group on campus.
So STINT was more influential than Interning. International Summer Missions were more impactful than U.S. Summer Missions.
I asked Jim Rhodes, Cru’s national intern coordinator, what he has found. He has some great (and current) stats:
This past year, for Cru nationally…
  • 75% of our U.S. Interns stayed with us. This means they continued in their employment with us as either Staff, a 2nd year internship, or as Part Time Field Staff (PTFS)
    • Of the 75%:
      • 24% joined staff
      • 38% signed on for a 2nd Year of Interning
      • 6% transitioned to a part-time or Affiliate status
  • 59% of our STINTers stayed with us.  (Same meaning as above)
  • Overall … 68 % of our combined U.S. Interns and non-staff STINTers stayed with us
    • 22% of our Interns and STINTers joined staff this past year
    • 46% re-interned or went PTFS
    • 32% left our employ
So 24 % of the Interns joined staff … 19% of the STINTers joined staff.
I asked Jim: “One thing I’m trying to figure out – when it comes to raising up long term staff, is it “better” to recruit to STINT or Internship (i.e. – which one yields more staff).”
He responded:
I think recruiting to both is honestly the best answer to your question.  Transition to Staff rates are currently higher for U.S. Interns than for STINT, but my observation is that the leadership qualities of the STINTers who come on staff are higher. Both rates are well below are goals.  As a goal we are shotting to have 33% of both our STINTers and our U.S. Interns joining staff each year.  Our vision is to grow to the point where we are sending 1 out of 3 on staff … another 1 out of 3 staying with us for a 2nd year … and sending the final 1 out of 3 into the marketplace as part of 100% sent.  Currently, we are seeing 2 out of 3 stay with us each year … but we want to see one of those 2 joining staff each year and we are not quite there yet.
So the stats say Internship is higher yielding.
Historically (according to staff self reporting what motivated them to join), STINT has been more influential.
UPDATE: A few guesses as to why the disparity:
  • Things have likely changed since 2011. Maybe internships have gotten better?
  • Jim’s retention stats could be a little skewed because of the Part Time Field Staff. I just wonder if that skews the stats higher for Internships. Because I would guess very few STINT’ers transition to PTFS. Whereas for an intern staying in the same town, it’s more likely they’d do PTFS.

My take:

I would agree with Jim – people coming off of STINT are probably higher quality leaders. They’ve had to be self-starting leaders who solved complex problems in a cross-cultural context.
As a team, we want to be a sending campus. And from my research, one of the best ways to be a sending campus is to have a sending team. The surest way to have a sending team is for it to be made up of once and future STINT’ers.

What are your takeaways?

What We’re Implementing on Our Campus from the Top Sending Campuses

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The Top Sending Campuses

This is the part 5 in a series of posts summarizing key findings from researching 17 of Cru’s Top Sending Campuses in the nation.

See the Intro for a full list of all the campuses profiled (and links to each).

It’s one thing to take all of this in. To hear what these Top Sending Schools are doing and think, “Well, that’s great. Good for them.”

The next step is to consider: “What does our campus need to implement from these Top Sending Schools?”

I thought it might be helpful to share with you what we have implemented on our campus at the University of Arkansas, since I’ve talked to these schools over the last couple years.

We’re taking baby steps toward sending. We’re learning it takes years, not months, to correct our course. I would guess it will take about 5 years – to see a freshmen class raised up under a culture of sending.

“You are changing the culture of your movement not just getting people to sign up. This will take time, intentionality and prayer.”

What we’ve implemented from the Top Sending Campuses (in order of impact):

  • If you’re not sending it’s probably because you as the director don’t really believe in sending
    • This was my biggest realization.
    • I have had very few game-changing epiphanies in my time as a director. I can only think of three:
      1. Discovering Movement Building – reading this little article gave me incredible clarity on what it looks like for me to succeed in my job in college ministry.
      2. Discovering the Secret of Success for Fund Raising Dinners
      3. And this: If you’re not sending it’s probably because you as the director don’t really believe in sending
    • If you would have asked me a few years ago why we don’t send more, I would have listed out 10 things students need to be doing: we need to get more students on Summer Mission, students need to care more about the world, etc, etc
    • I can distinctly remember sitting down last fall with Brian White, Cru MTL (Missional Team Leader) at Texas A&M. I asked Brian: “How are y’all so good at recruiting?” He immediately and politely corrected me: “We don’t recruit. Sending is who we are.”
    • It’s not a matter of semantics. For Texas A&M it’s not recruiting. It’s in their DNA. It’s the air they breathe as a staff team and movement.
    • More specifically, it’s Brian’s DNA. Brian eats/drinks/sleeps sending to the World.
    • I just sat there and got schooled for the next hour in what it looks like for an MTL to bleed for the world. Brian lives to send to the world.
    • Realizing that sending starts with the MTL was a game changer.
    • “As the leader, as the mouthpiece, you need to be telling the stories and leading from experience.” – Brian White
    • It’s why I’m sitting in a hotel in East Asia as I write this. Because if I don’t go, I won’t bleed for the world. I can’t bleed for a country I’ve never been to. So I’m here seeing what God is doing. Asking God to break my heart for this country. Meeting with the national staff to hear what their vision for their country is. Going on campus to do ministry.
    • That is by far the most impactful takeaway for me personally, and hopefully for our movement: I as the MTL need to go and personally own sending
    • “Our movements always reflect our leaders’ passions. If I’m asking how do I change the movement, I need to ask, what do I need to change? I need to ask — how passionate am I about it? What am I teaching? What am I talking about? Am I living this out? Are we highlighting it?” – Bacho, MTL at Ohio State
    • A corollary: My co-MTL and I need to be the ones challenging students to join with us:
      • “I had to learn as an MTL: My words carry a lot of weight — I’m looking people in the eye and I’m saying: ‘I’d really like you to be on our team’”
  • Our family is committing to going overseas on Summer Mission every three years
    • It’s an extension of the previous point, but our family is planning on going on Summer Mission next summer to East Asia.
    • It costs a small fortune for my family to go anywhere. We have 5 kids.
    • family.001But in talking to Brian White and his wife Erin (Cru leaders at A&M), they would say that one of THE keys to them sending so many students into full time ministry has been their family going overseas every three years (and they have 4 kids – pictured (a long time ago!) to the right).
    • My oldest kid is 13 and we have NEVER taken them overseas on a Cru Summer Mission. I honestly didn’t feel like it was a good investment of God’s money to spend close to $30,000 for 1 of us to work full time on campus (my wife is working full time with Cru but would spend 95% of her time keeping up with 5 kids!). So we’ve never done it. I’ve taken a couple vision trips on my own, but our family has never gone.
    • But as I sat down with Brian and Erin White, I was convinced. They showed me a picture of a Summer team they took to East Asia 5 years ago. Something like 13 of the 15 students are interning or on staff with Cru now. That’s not a bad batting average. And both Erin and Brian pointed to the students really connecting with their family and coming back to College Station and continuing to be close to their family.
    • Why every three years? Not exactly sure! We’re just following the White’s wisdom here! I would guess because: It IS expensive and because there are other needs some summers (MPD, seminary, sabbatical)
  • Staff owning it
    • Again, this is an extension of the first point.
    • We’re not sending because our staff 1) Aren’t going and 2) Aren’t passionate about sending
    • “The main mouthpieces of the movement need to be speaking of the partnership from first hand experience. Vision trips or summer projects every few years are great ways to keep things fresh for those who are casting vision.” – Texas A&M
    • So a few things we’re implementing as a team:
      • We want every staff/intern to go to one of our partnerships in their first 2 years on the team (either on a Vision Trip or Summer Mission)
      • Our staff are actively seeking to lead our Summer Missions partnerships (both internationally and stateside)
        • Previously, we were pretty hands off with our staff’s summers. We were like the book of Judges: “everyone did what was right in their own eyes”.
        • But we want to set a norm on our team that most staff will go on one of our three partnerships EVERY summer:
          • East Asia
          • Ethiopia
          • San Diego
        • “Come with me” is far more powerful than “you should go”
        • We’ve noticed a HUGE difference in the number of students who will go if we have our staff or key students leading a project (vs when they are being led by other campuses’ staff). HUGE.
      • We are asking our staff to decide by August where they will be going for the Summer and Spring Break. So the minute they step on campus in the fall they are planting seeds with students- “Hey, what are you doing this summer? You should totally come with me to Ethiopia this summer!”
        • Part of this has been lobbying our region to move up their Summer placement to August
        • Previously, our staff would find out in November where they are going
  • Being proactive to select summer and STINT leaders for the coming year
    • They are the most important people to get on board (again, preferably by August)
    • Because they will assemble their team
  • GovemberGovember –we have done this for two years now and I think it has really helped create a sending culture. – via Wisconsin
  • We continue to really push Summer Missions and have started to really push Vision Trips
    • “Summer Missions are the lead measure for full time staff” — Wisconsin
    • “There’s a good chance if students go on Spring Break overseas, then STINT will be on their radar”
  • Junior Recruiting Dinner – via Virginia Tech
    • “We used to do most of our recruiting during student’s senior years. But we kept finding that we were too late. Students had already accepted jobs. For most of our students, the summer after the junior year internship is the job interview.
    • So we started doing a Junior Recruiting Dinner — the spring of their junior year.”
    • This spring we did two small dinners (about 6-8 students at each). We’ll likely do another in the fall to catch the students who were not able to make it to one of those spring dinners
  • We’re actively pursuing a Foundational Sending Class.
    • We made a little progress this year – we have 8 STINT’ers going and 2 interns staying. But next year we hope to have at least 6 on both of our STINT teams, and 6 interns.
  • We try to help students connect relationally with our staff team
    • We invite our Student Staff (8 juniors/seniors) to our weekly staff meeting as well as any staff socials
    • Because: “Healthy teams are attractive to students” and “It snowballs when your team is an attractive team to be on and students get to be around that enough and think ‘I want to be a part of that’”
  • Send first and send your best
    • “Be generous. The needs of the world are greater than on our US campuses. Challenge and send your best and brightest to the world…God will provide and give back.” “I would rather send a solid team than have a big team here.” – Texas A&M
    • This is really hard. But we’re trying. And I feel like our attitudes on our staff team are changing to “we need more laborers on our campus!” to “let’s just send as many as possible to the world!”
  • city_on_a_hill_higher_wordsVision for the world
    • We’ve shifted from just “let’s reach all 26,000” students on this campus to:
      • Let’s reach The Hill so we can be a City on a Hill to be a light to the nations (the U of A is affectionately called “the Hill”)
  • We’re pushing the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course.
    • We had 21 students take this intensive World Vision course this spring. It will be interesting to see how many of those students go to the world after graduating.
  • We’ve started tracking who we’re sending/have sent over the years – via Wisconsin

What are you implementing on your campus to become a Sending Campus?

10 Things That Make Students Want to Go into Full Time Ministry

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The Top Sending CampusesThis is the part 4 in a series of posts summarizing key findings from researching 17 of Cru’s Top Sending Campuses in the nation.

See the Intro for a full list of all the campuses profiled (and links to each).

In talking to these 17 Top Sending Schools, I’d ask “What makes students want to go into full time ministry?”

Here are the:

10 Things That Make Students Want to Go into Full Time Ministry:

  • Somebody asked them to do it and convinced them they could do it
    • “A lot of students just lack confidence that they’d be any good at it”
    • “We’d love it if you’d join our team! Are you praying about staff/internship?” – Miami
    • “And a lot of the time, that’s all they need”
    • It is especially meaningful coming from the MTL (Missional Team Leader)
      • “As an MTL, you have a lot of persuasion.”
      • “When the boss says, “I’d love to work with you”, it means a lot”
      • “There’s something very honoring about being asked by the guy/girl in charge”
  • They see other students do it and grow tremendously
      • “Having a place where they know they will grow. Ministry is bi-directional — God impacts us while he uses us.”
      • “When they see their friends do it, and it makes them think they can do it”
      • “They’ve seen interns grow tremendously over the past few years (and it’s attractive)”

 

  • Doing ministry with friends
    • “Everyone was going — everyone came back changed from Summer Missions and STINT. It was big that we did it together as a big group. I’m going to go so we can experience change together and come back and impact the campus together. A lot of people went on STINT to East Asia that didn’t particularly have a heart for Asia, but they wanted to go with community and do it as a team.”

 

  • They respect and enjoy the staff team
    • “They want to do it next to people they like and respect”
    • “As a student, I knew the guys sitting in the circle and I wanted my life to be next to their lives”
    • “They know they’ll be loved well and cared for on our staff team”
  • They’ve been deeply impacted by staff
    • “Usually when they’re joining us, it’s been because they’ve been deeply impacted by someone on staff.”
    • “Most students join staff because of a relationship with a staff person — they’ve been really deeply, personally invested in. I think people do care about the mission, but I think they care about it because of their close connection with staff.”
  • In college they got to really experience being used by God to change others’ lives
    • “Generally, students who will labor for a lifetime have to be taking steps of faith and sharing their faith and making significant investments into the lives of others (not just leading a small little Bible study)”
    • They led someone to Christ in college, they discipled students
    • “They experienced that they really are God’s plan A to reach the world. They get to see God use them”
  • They went on Summer Mission
    • 75% or higher – the percentage of Interns, STINTers, and New staff who have previously participated in a Summer Mission (an educated guess by a few informed leaders in Cru)
  • They became a Christian in college
    • Students who came to Christ in college are much more likely to consider doing full time ministry when they graduate
    • Chalk it up to: “he who is forgiven much, loves much.”
  • They want to be a part of something big and exciting
    • “This mission is worthy of your life.”
    • “At the end of time when the great book of the history of the spread of the gospel of Christ is written, I think an entire chapter will be devoted to what God did among college students on our campus. Do you want to be a part of that?”
    • “You can be a part of the big story of God changing the world”
    • “Come help change the world”
  • Realizing internship isn’t just for people who want to go into vocational ministry
    • “If you want to live on mission for the rest of your life, an internship is the best training opportunity that I know of that you can be a part of.”
    • “It will equip you to make an impact for a lifetime no matter where you end up”
    • “A good question: How and when will I get the needed training to have an effective ministry for a lifetime? If you think you can be more effective (long-range) in secular work, consider taking a couple years in full time ministry to get the training needed.”