Tim Casteel

Thoughts on Leadership and College Ministry

Top Sending Campuses

Three Steps to Move from Not Much Sending to Being a Sending Campus

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The-Top-Sending-Campuses

This is the part 3 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 top sending schools, I’d ask “How did you become a sending campus?”

Over and over I heard: “It’s who we are.” “Sending is what our movement is about — we’re about mission.” “It’s just in the air of our movement that students breathe.”

My question for all of them: “OK, that’s great for y’all but what advice do you have for a campus that doesn’t have that culture? What would you tell a campus who wants to grow from not much sending to being a sending campus?”

The answers can be grouped into:

Three Steps to Move from Not Much Sending to Being a Sending Campus

  • Cast Vision to Create a Sending Culture (It starts with Staff)

    • “As staff, we are cultural architects — creating a culture that loves and embraces the mission of sharing Jesus with people. And here’s an opportunity to do that full time.” – SLO
    • “Be a visionary for what we are doing. And then ask students to join you in doing it full time. Hopefully the response is, ‘yeah, why would I not want to be a part of that?’ – SLO
    • “Regularly use illustrations from your time overseas in talks and devotionals. Share stories often at staff team meetings and small groups”
    • “In Madison, when we talk about sending we don’t talk about just filling slots. We talk about changing the culture of our movement to care about the world. “We are Badgers. We go.” “Badgers Go.” It has become our culture not just the heart of a few people or just the staff. It takes time to build this into your movement but it can really change fast if the right students catch the vision.” – Wisconsin
    • “You are changing the culture of your movement not just getting people to sign up. This will take time, intentionality and prayer.”
    • “Don’t lose sight of the goal: we do what we do in the US to fulfill the great commission. Keep the world as the goal in front of your team and students all the time.”
    • Ohio State:
      • Our movements always reflect our leaders’ passions
      • The movement is always going to reflect the strength of the staff team
      • 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?
    • A&M:
      • “As the leader, as the mouthpiece, you need to be telling the stories and leading from experience. Our family goes every third year on international Summer Missions. Your wife has to be in it too. Because a lot of the work will fall on her (getting the kids overseas on Summer Missions).”

  • Normalize Going – Pray for and challenge a foundational sending class

    • “It needs to go from something only special people do to a normal option. This is a normal consideration for every Christian” – Miami
    • “Once it happens it becomes a norm and they see other students do it and they want to do it – OK State
    • “Pray for and challenge 4-8 graduates to go together. Once you do this the ball will start rolling down hill and future generations will want to do the same thing. Plant these seeds with your current freshman class. ‘where will you guys go together after you graduate?’”
    • “You need a couple really key students to buy in. Challenge the right students to really consider it and pray about it.”
    • Our best/fullest STINT teams all had the same scenario: a student committed to STINT early (Junior year or the summer before their Senior year) and they spent the entire year raising up a STINT team around themselves
    • Challenge students the spring of their junior year – 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.
      • At Virginia Tech we have a lot of engineering students who have lots of (high paying!) options after college
      • For most of our students, the summer after the junior year internship is the job interview. So they decide by October 1 senior year.
      • So we started doing a Junior Recruiting Dinner — the spring of their junior year.

  • Send First (from Texas A&M)

    • In Cru, our mission is Win-Build-Send
    • But for most campuses (in Cru) it becomes Gather-Build-Keep
    • You will rarely have “enough” (though we do ask staff to think through how they’ll replace themselves when they go overseas)
    • Like with evangelism, we can easily leave sending out to be added in later when someone is “mature” or our movement is ready to begin sending.
    • However, these things don’t really work being tacked on at the end.
    • They have to be part of the DNA of the movement.
    • When does the DNA get there? At conception. Same with sending. Students need to be hearing it from Day 1.
    • At the front door of people being involved with us, we want them to know we are actively helping students know Christ, and they can be part of that.
    • We also want them to know that the gospel needs to go to the whole world and they can play a part in that too.
    • We may not be sending freshmen on STINT, but we want to plant the seed in their mind that they could go down the road.
    • We can easily look at our current situation and say that we have nothing to give, or no one to send.
    • We seek the Lord’s blessing here in hopes that one day we will have extra to send. But God blesses us that we can be a blessing to others.
    • Psalm 67 starts: “God be gracious to us and bless us, 
And cause His face to shine upon us. That Your way may be known on the earth,
Your salvation among all nations.”
    • Whether it is with our finances or people there is generally too big of a gap between the receiving and the giving. We tend to hold on too long. We need to send out resources, or we will become ingrown.
    • I need young interns here to help reach the next class of freshmen, but if it comes to Interning here or Stint over at our partnership, I want to send them to labor there.
    • I would rather send a solid STINT team than have a big team here.
    • You’ll get a lot of them back (STINT’ers coming back as staff in the States)  – they won’t all go overseas long term though hopefully a lot do
    • We have 7 staff and 4 of them want to go overseas
    • And it’s going to be hard if they all leave
    • But I would send them.
    • If we have a smaller team, it’s OK
    • That’s what we are about

11 Keys to Being a Sending Campus

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The-Top-Sending-Campuses

This is the part 2 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).

Across all 17 schools I interviewed, these are the 11 themes that emerged pretty consistently:

  • The MTLs and staff own sending
    • MTL (Missional Team Leader):
      • “As the leader, it has to be yours. As the leader, as the mouthpiece, you need to be telling the stories and leading from experience.” – A&M
      • “You need to embrace that ownership comes from the top. MTLs [Team Leaders] have to lead the way on this and go themselves every 2-3 years to each of your partnerships. Unless you go and keep your heart connected to your partnership… your staff and students won’t keep their heart connected either.” – Wisconsin
      • “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’” – Missouri State
    • Staff
      • “The staff must own the partnership – By that they take personal responsibility for leading the projects, recruiting the teams, coaching them…”
      • “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.”
      • The best invitation is “Come with me” and we must have a continual flow of staff and interns leading these trips to give students their first taste of the partnership.” – A&M
      • “We get our staff to bleed mobilization. Every staff goes to one of our partnerships in first 2 years on the team” – Wisconsin
  • Creating a culture of going – everyone’s doing it – there’s momentum.
    • I heard this over and over: “It’s what our movement is about — we’re about mission.” “It’s just in the air of our movement that students breathe.”
    • Sending campuses don’t recruit. “It’s who we are.” It’s in their DNA. It’s the air they breathe as a staff team and movement. They eat/drink/sleep Sending to the World.
    • “You are changing the culture of your movement not just getting people to sign up. This will take time, intentionality and prayer.” – Wisconsin
    • Not super helpful if you don’t have momentum. But I think it gives hope – that once you push the snowball up hill you’ll eventually be chasing it downhill as it grows
    • “It’s not like they get to their senior year and start thinking ‘I want to intern’. A lot of them are thinking about it from freshmen/sophomore year” – UC Davis
    • To them it just makes sense — “why would I not at least give a year of my life to explore doing ministry full time. I want to get really good ministry experience before I go into the work world.” It becomes the norm- UC Davis
  • A Foundational Sending Class
    • How do you get there? How do you get to “Everyone’s doing it”?
    • It definitely was a theme among many campuses that they had an “Foundational Sending Class” of 4-6 interns. Or 4-6 STINT’ers.
    • “You need a couple really key students to buy in. Challenge the right students to really consider it and pray about it. If they have a great experience as well, everyone sees that and they think ‘they’re having a great year and really growing as interns’” – UC Davis
    • “Pray for and challenge 4-8 graduates to go together. Once you do this the ball will start rolling down hill and future generations will want to do the same thing. Plant these seeds with your current freshman class. ‘where will you guys go together after you graduate?’”  – Wisconsin
  • Consistent vision for the world
    • Global Missions is what the Bible is about and what God is about
    • Continually expressing the need
    • Sprinkle world vision into everything you do
    • Work long and hard at connecting everything you’re doing to a big vision that is compelling. Everyone wants to be a part of something that is big and compelling
  • Prayer –
    • Praying as a movement for laborers (“ask the Lord of the harvest”)
    • Praying by name for students to join your team or STINT
  • Having a large movement
    • Most of the top sending movements are very large.
    • Avg size = 549 students
    • I didn’t specifically interview them in this series, but I could have listed most of the schools from the Large Movements Series I did a couple years ago – i.e. – Florida, Michigan State, NC State, etc. These schools are sending a lot because of their large movements.
    • Obviously you can have a large movement and fail to send.
    • And you can send from a smaller movement.
    • But the benefit of having a large movement = you have more people. If you have 8 seniors involved, the most you can send is 8. If you have 50 seniors…
  • Having a healthy, fun team
    • “Creating an environment where people love doing ministry together”
    • “Our team is a lot of fun and we love each other and love our jobs (and students know that)”
    • “It’s creating a culture that students want to be a part of — where they feel valued”
    • “How can we make this an incredible working environment that people want to come work for us?”
    • “Healthy teams are attractive to students”
    • “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’”
  • A close movement that feels like a family
    • Good relationship with staff – “There’s no substitute for personally knowing well the people you’re challenging to go”
    • Many have a family atmosphere where student leaders are often in staff’s homes
    • This is particularly key for not-large movements (I hate to say “small” because the vast majority of college movements have less than 100 students involved. They’re not small. They have 100-200 students involved – but just in contrast to the handful of huge cru movements): UC Davis, OK State, Cal State Chico
  • Going in groups on Summer Missions and Vision Trips
    • 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)
    • “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”
    • “Generally our best leaders are the ones who have gone on these projects and been stretched by the Lord.”
    • “Sometimes vision trips are the best for producing STINT’ers because they get a good taste of STINT life”
    • “Pick a good project – not all projects are created equal”
  • Ministry experience
    • Students experienced being used by God to change someone’s life and they want to do it full time
    • “When we have asked great things of them on campus, they are not as overwhelmed when we ask them to join us either on staff or as part of a STINT team.” – Dan Allan
    • “Seeing God use them on their campus and around the world is a significant factor in choosing to serve Christ full-time after graduation. Whether overseas or on their campus, set them up to see changed lives happen around them.”
  • An intentional plan
    • “From August to May you need to have a plan for utilizing each part of the year for sending”
    • “Who are my potential summer leaders this coming year? Because they will assemble their team. They are the most important person to get on board”
    • Brainstorming, praying for, and meeting one on one with most juniors/seniors to intern/STINT
    • A well planned Govember

What are your big takeaways from these 11 Keys?

Which Yields More Laborers: Academically Elite Schools or Party Schools?

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The-Top-Sending-Campuses

This is the part 1 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).

How important are campus dynamics?

One of my theories going into researching the Top Sending Campuses was that campus dynamics are very important – that it’s easier to send from a Midwestern State than it is from Northwestern.

So is it easier to send from a less academically rigorous school where most students don’t have specific plans already for post-college? The answer is yes it’s easier, but not necessarily more fruitful.

Let me explain.

The reality is that it IS easier to send from the big state school that’s not academically rigorous. My alma mater Texas Tech and current ministry location – University of Arkansas would fall into this category. And God has used these schools to produce many laborers. I heard from many schools (see Cal State Chico, Missouri State, Oklahoma State) thoughts along these lines:

  • We’re a state school — anyone can get into it
  • Students are here because they wanted to party or they didn’t get into their #1 school because of grades or they did not have a plan for their life — they have no clue
  • Students have no career plan
  • Not a lot of our students are doing summer internships, a lot of them are doing victory laps (5th year)
  • It gives us the ability with a clean slate to cast vision for Summer Missions, Internship, and STINT

But here’s the thing: it may be easier to send from less academically rigorous schools, but that doesn’t mean those schools end up being more fruitful (in terms of numerical sending). Just taking a rough look at the Top 25 Sending Schools in Cru, it’s pretty evenly split between elite schools and “easier” school.

I was really surprised by that – that half of the best sending schools are academically rigorous schools (see Northwestern, Texas, Wisconsin, Ohio State – others I didn’t interview include UCLA, UNC Chapel Hill, Boston). Here’s why:

  • Elite schools can actually be incredibly fruitful despite the challenges because they ARE challenging. Elite schools are filled with leaders. Leaders respond to challenges. They may already have huge plans for life post-college. But once Christ gets a hold of their life, they develop huge plans for Christ. Students at academically rigorous (and often very secular) schools have to count the costs early on and decide to truly follow Jesus. They often instantly face persecution from classmates, parents, and professors. They have decided that Jesus is worthy of their lives.

Kim Johnson (Cru Team Leader at Northwestern) has some wisdom on sending from elite schools (and I heard similar things from the team at the very liberal University of Wisconsin):

  • You have to get it out of your thinking that “it’s just different here”
  • You can’t go in with the mentality that it won’t work here — you’re lowering your faith — “Oh, my students are different so it just won’t happen here”
  • You have to look at it — “Oh, I have more potential than other campuses because once they buy in, they’re all in”
  • We’re at an advantage at an academic school, because if they really make Jesus Lord of their life they’ve bought all in
  • Getting them on Summer Mission is huge — seeing other campuses — that this is normal

If you you do college ministry at an elite school, you should read the full posts on Northwestern and University of Wisconsin

 

For those of us on state schools that are less academically rigorous, what is the takeaway? For me it’s pretty challenging and inspiring to hear what elite students are “giving up” to go into full time ministry. A few random thoughts:

  • It makes me think we are underperforming in the area of sending. We need to step our game up. We have an incredible stewardship and opportunity that many of our students ARE a blank slate coming into college with no clear career plan. Friends on Cru staff at Harvard tell me how they have students involved who since they were 6 have wanted to go to Harvard and become a doctor. On our campus, most of our students are lucky if they know what they’re going to do this weekend. We can be and should be a pipeline for sending out hundreds of laborers.
  • I think it’s sometimes the case that some students from easier schools will go into full time ministry because they really don’t many other options. They’re not super ambitious and so they kind of back into full time ministry. Raising support is a great filter because it tests this crowd and their determination and initiative and faith.
  • Our staff need to pursue the “elite” students on our campus. The ones who ARE getting multiple job offers. We want the best and brightest to join us in full time ministry. I think we often gravitate toward “easy targets”. We buy into lies- “Well, she’s got a 6 figure offer from Google. She’s so smart, I’d hate for her to pass up that opportunity.” “He’s got a 4.0, and a free ride in grad school, I don’t want to ask him”. What do we believe about our jobs (full time ministry) when we see it as “less than”? We don’t REALLY believe that we’re offering an incredible opportunity to be a part of fulfilling the Great Commission. We need brilliant leaders to solve the greatest problem in the world – how do we get the good news of Jesus to every corner of the world?

I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Whether you serve on an elite campus or the biggest party school in America, I’d love to hear your thoughts and learn from your experience.

Top Sending Campuses – Northwestern

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Northwestern

This is part of a series on Learning from the Top Sending Campuses in Cru.

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

Northwestern is an Ivy League level private school who’s alumni include many Fortune 500 CEO’s, notable politicians, and entertainers such as Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, and Zooey Deschanel.

I talked to Kim Johnson (an Ohio State graduate) who has been at Northwestern for 18 years and led the team there for many years.

Quick facts on Cru at Northwestern:

# on staff team — 22 total

Avg Cru meeting size – 160             First Cru= over 200

Students in Community Groups – 180 students

Students at school — 8,000

Partnership — Desert Springs and Breakthrough (Middle East/Central Asia)

 

Sending Stats Last year:

  • STINT — 10
  • Intern — 10
  • Over last couple years — 14 joined staff — 12 of them didn’t know Jesus when they came on campus
  • About 30 on SM (Kim has led Ocean City for the last decade) and Breakthrough
    • A little more than ½ to Ocean City; little less than half overseas
  • 170 on fall retreat

How did you become a sending campus?

  • We are seeing students come to know God and then join staff.
  • Last year we had 30 seniors involved in Cru — 20 of them are either STINTing or Interning.
  • Probaby five years ago we had our first significant foundational freshman class — it went from seeing a chunk joining with us to 80-90% join with us
  • Most of the people we are seeing intern with us didn’t know Jesus when they came to college.
  • Of our 22 staff and interns on our team, 18 of them didn’t know Jesus as a freshman.
  • For last couple of years – 90% of students who intern or STINT have joined staff with us after they interned.
  • A student said to me the other day — “But if I intern, I’ll have to join staff” and I’m saying “no, you don’t have to!” but that’s how much it is in the culture
  • What do you attribute that to?
    • I really don’t know
    • There’s the God factor
    • We’re a high vision/high challenge movements
    • It’s a high filter
    • We practice selection
    • Once they’ve made it to junior/senior year they’re all in
  • We’ve always been a high vision/high challenge movement
  • Over the last few years we have doubled in size (our movement)
  • Our students are seeing their friends graduate and do this and now it’s in the water — it’s just momentum

Sending from an Elite, Academically Rigorous School

  • You have to get it out of your thinking that “it’s just different here”
  • You can’t go in with the mentality that it won’t work here – you’re lowering your faith – “Oh, my students are different so it just won’t happen here”
  • You have to look at it — “Oh, I have more potential than other campuses because once they buy in, they’re all in”
  • We’re at an advantage at an academic school, because if they really make Jesus Lord of their life they’ve bought all in
  • The cost of education at Northwestern is $250-$300k(!)
  • So these students who are joining Cru in full time ministry are having very difficult conversations with their very successful parents
  • They’re counting the cost
  • They’re willing to have the hard conversation with the parent who just invested $250,000 in their education
  • I’ve heard from parents: “Going on staff is for community college students, not for my child”
    • I’m thinking – “What I’m hearing you say is the gospel and Jesus is not for successful, intelligent people”
    • Your son or daughter could be so influential for the kingdom, that they need to steward that all the more!
    • I am so encouraged when I hear people like Ravi Zacharias or Tim Keller who are brilliant — it raises my faith
    • Our students have the potential to be brilliant Christian leaders like that
  • They’re natural leaders
    • We get to shape whether they’re leaders for eternity or just for themselves — being a CEO of a fortune 500 company
  • Once they buy in, they are all in
  • One staff, both of her parents are doctors, she scored perfect on the MCAT, and turned down med school to join staff
  • Most of our students are in the engineering program so they are offered huge salaries (Mechanical, Biomedical engineers)
  • Getting them on Summer Mission is huge — seeing other campuses — that this is normal
  • We tell them: Mormons give up a year or two for a lie, what will you do for the truth
  • It’s a rare day that I can overchallenge a Northwestern student
  • What I feel like, is a lot of people recruit in a narcissistic way — you can be developed if you intern with us
  • We recruit in a way — Jesus is worth it. It’s not about you. It’s about Jesus

What advice do you have for a campus that wants to grow from not much sending to being a sending campus?

  • Honestly I think we’ve had a lot come from just seeing lives transformed – we’ve seen a lot of people join staff who were not Christians when they arrived in college
  • Nothing groundbreaking, but it starts with sowing broadly and raising up a freshman class and getting them on Summer Missions
  • And I would say that not all Summer Missions are created equal
    • Get them to a Summer Missions where it will train them toward mission and sharing their faith
    • They are experiencing that they really are God’s plan A to reach the world. They get to see God use them
  • It doesn’t have to be a monstrous freshman class — but just start with a few
  • When students experience the gospel, how can you not want to turn around and share it?

Cru Staff Allocation vs. the Need

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This is part of a series on Learning from the Top Sending Campuses in Cru.

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

The chart below shows staff allocation and student need for each of the 10 Cru regions.

A helpful clarification as to how Cru works: Cru is divided into 10 regions (I’ve listed the states in each region at the bottom of this post). Generally, staff and interns that are raised up in a region stay in the same region. Staff and interns are placed by the regional team (with interns typically staying on the same campus from which they graduated). Interns and staff can request to go to another region, but that is not the norm (and involves not a small amount of coordination between regions).

In the past (I’m not sure what year - maybe pre-1991?) staff allocation was done nationally. I may be wrong, but I’ve heard that staff were intentionally sent out of their region – i.e.- if you went to school in Texas you would be placed on staff in New Hampshire.

A quick explanation of the columns:

  • Total FT = Staff + Interns in a region (as of 2013)
  • Sending FT = how many interns and staff that region raised up in 2014 (doesn’t count sending to STINT). I think this is helpful to see the trajectory of manpower for that region (i.e. – ____ may not have a lot of staff right now but they are currently raising up a lot; or _____ doesn’t have enough staff and there’s no help on the way unless it comes from the outside)
  • Students = how many total college students in each region (thanks to Scott Crocker for compiling these via The Chronicle of Higher Education Almanac & Open Doors Report. Numbers were published Fall 2014 & represent 2012-2013 School Year)
  • Students/FT = the staff to student ratio – how many students each staff needs to reach with the gospel. “The laborers are few.”
  • Involved = how many students are involved with Cru in that region
  • Involved % of whole = what percentage of college students in that region are involved with Cru
  • Involved/FT = the staff to involved student ratio – how many students are involved per full time Cru worker (staff & intern). This stat includes moms who are not full time on campus (most work 4-8 hours/week), which definitely distorts the numbers a bit; i.e. – on our campus we have 36 students involved/staff if you just count full time staff/interns on campus (not counting moms). 26 students/staff if you count moms.
Total FT Sending FT Students Students/FT Involved Involved % of whole Involved/FT
Great Lakes 378 150 2,717,402 7,189 9,232 0.34% 24
Great Plains 198 47 1,358,845 6,863 4,119 0.30% 21
Greater Northwest 137 21 1,211,181 8,841 1,592 0.13% 12
Mid-Atlantic 180 57 2,511,805 13,954 4,945 0.20% 27
Mid-South 217 64 1,470,910 6,778 5,742 0.39% 26
Northeast 155 35 2,350,253 15,163 2,796 0.12% 18
Pacific Southwest 206 95 3,474,494 16,866 3,580 0.10% 17
Red River 208 84 2,222,204 10,684 4,084 0.18% 20
Southeast 147 65 2,197,268 14,947 5,140 0.23% 35
Upper Midwest 197 69 1,300,398 6,601 8,064 0.62% 41
2,023 687 20,814,760 10,289 49,294 0.24% 24

What can we learn from this?

  • First off, I think it’s good to remember that while there is a lot of work to be done in the U.S., the need is still far greater overseas. There are thousands of campuses with no Christian witness. In just one region in East Asia where we send to, the population is the same as the U.S. and they have 50 staff to reach it (we have 34x that in the U.S.!).What can we learn from this?
  • The need is great. We have 1 Cru staff for every 10,000 college students in the U.S.. If you took 1,000 college students at random, 2 of them would be involved in Cru.
  • The regions with the most need (based on student/FT ratio):
    1. Pacific Southwest
    2. Southeast
    3. Northeast
    4. Mid-Atlantic
  • Of those, the Northeast has the greatest need – based on the pipeline of new laborers. I’m not sure what the rate of attrition is (people leaving staff/internships) but I’d guess that 35 new laborers/year is not enough to stay laborer neutral (much less grow).
  • I think the Involved/FT column is a great indicator of spiritual soil.
  • The hardest places to grow a movement:
    1. Greater Northwest
    2. Pacific Southwest
    3. Northeast
involved per FT map
Involved/FT

Thanks to Karl Udy for putting together these maps!

  • The hardest places to raise up laborers:
    1. Greater Northwest
    2. Northeast
  • It’s striking to see that the Upper Midwest has twice as much gospel saturation as any other region. Not that .6% is thorough saturation by any stretch that means that out of 1,000 students on every campus in that region, 6 are involved with Cru. But far (6x!) closer to “everyone knowing someone that passionately follows Jesus” than the PSW, Northeast, and Greater Northwest with 1 passionate follower of Christ for every 1,000 students.
involved per whole map
Involved/Whole
  • Every year the Great Lakes is raising up as many Full Time Laborers (FT) as the entire Northeast region (of course that includes interns who will likely only serve for 1-2 years)
  • I think this map is helpful. It’s the population at large (not just college students), but it shows the percentage of Evangelical Protestants and Mormons (?!) in different regions of the U.S. (the NYTimes has a clickable version where you can see % for each county):

Evangelical Protestants and Mormons map

evangelical map key

  • See that nice, clean gray space in the Northeast? And that map puts into perspective what God has done in raising up such strong Cru movements in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes where there are far fewer Christians (than the south). May He do the same in the Northwest, Northeast, and Pacific Southwest.
  • This map (via Pew Forum) might be more helpful- it just shows Evangelicals (sans Mormons):

Evangelical_Protestants__by_State

  • Another interesting ratio – number of laborers (interns and staff) a region raises up per existing laborer:
sending to FT
Sending/FT

What can we do about the needs?

  • I am not advocating for a return to the days of national staff allocation. I think that breeds resentment in staff (who are sent out) and teams (whose staff are pried away).
  • I’m a big fan of empowering leaders by showing them a problem or a need and asking them to be a part of the solution.
  • What I would love to see is a grassroots movement of campuses sending to where there is a need. A local-level driven movement where teams sacrificially send to the world and to more needy areas of the country. A mentality of “send first” and trusting God that He’ll provide the staff we need to reach our own campus.

I would love to hear what you think: What do you see as you look at the data?

States in each Cru region:

Great Lakes – Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio

Great Plains - Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Wyoming

Greater Northwest - Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington

Mid-Atlantic - Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia W., Virginia, D.C.

Mid-South - Kentucky, N. Carolina, S. Carolina, Tennessee

Northeast Region - Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New, Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont

Pacific Southwest - Arizona, California, Hawaii,

Red River - Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas

Southeast - Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi

Upper Midwest – Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin