Every June, the Southern California Region of InterVarsity heads to Catalina for our regional staff conference. It is a time for training, visioning, and resting with other InterVarsity staff. For me, I get to see friends from my college days as well as spend time with my new staff friends. I also get to spend some time with my students, as several of them helped with childcare for the week. Our training focus was on empowering and releasing student leaders into ministry. Our speakers, Jason and Sophia Gaboury, brought a powerful word about the transformation and growth they have seen in their region in New York/New Jersey. They shared powerful stories about how God is moving on the east coast and what we can learn from their region. Her are some of the key things that I felt God moving in me that weekend:
- Setting goals brings up a lot of junk in our own lives.
I was already seeing this before I arrived when I was discussing goal setting with my students. Much like fundraising, setting numerical goals for ministry brings up a lot of insecurities and fears of failures. As I discussed goal setting strategies with students, I met a lot of resistance about setting a number to how many students we want in our fellowship, how many small groups, and especially how many new believers. They would all tell me that putting a number to it can dehumanize them and they reasoned that counting them would make it appear that we value perfection over people. But underlying this, I think is was a major fear of failure. A fear of what will happen if we don't meet goals, the guilt of not fulfilling a requirement and the anxiety of having to live up to a standard.
I've seen goals been unhealthy set, especially when I was in the teaching world. I have seen teacher's identities and become solely focused on goal meeting and job performance. I've seen principals and administrators tear teachers apart for not meeting goals and I have seen schools that focus more on meeting test score quotas than they do on individual students. Setting goals sends me into a past pain of my own experiences in setting goals, the fears of meeting with supervisors to discuss them and the fear of being publicly berated for not having met goals. I have a lot of personal baggage when it comes to setting goals.
But that is not at all the kinds of goals God wants us to set. I believe that God wants us to create healthy goals to drive our ministry forward and use them as a propeller to meet the needs of students on campus.
Jason and Sophia took us through Nehemiah 1 and 2 to show us that setting goals and plans is helpful and valuable in God's mission. Nehemiah was fueled by a holy discontent for how things were and that pushed him into action. God was actively involved in the process but Nehemiah showed up and put forth a lot of effort. From his example we see that setting goals is not just about meeting a quota but about putting all your resources, energy, willfulness, creativity, and strategy into what God has called you two and goals give you a place to direct all of that.
- We will not grow in our region just by hiring more staff.
InterVarsity staff have a lot of value in campus ministry. They carry a lot of vision, passion, skills, and wisdom into college ministry settings but sometimes we get caught in the trap that we believe our fellowships will only grow if we hire more staff. As solo staff on campus, this can feel overwhelming because either I can think growth solely relies in me or that I will never be able to grow until I get a support team to come do ministry with me. There is a lot of danger in this line of thinking because it puts staff at the center of ministry rather than Jesus. If hiring more staff is the goal, then ministries only work when there is staff present. I've seen this mentality play out for the worse as some of my own students even believe to do ministry on campus they need staff there. False. Students are vital for ministry growth and the ever growing question is how can we empower and release student leaders to start being missional leaders on their own campus - to be Godly, goal-oriented, emotionally healthy, self-starting leaders. How can students be the ones to move growth forward, to catch onto the mission of building witnessing communities, and use IV staff as their resource rather than crutch?
How are we going to do this? Two things stood out to me: 1. We have to cast the net wide. We have to go and reach the thousands of students on campus and not be limited to the ones who walk by our table. The Gabourys pointed out that if we cast the net too small then we find those that need us, but we should be looking for people we need to join in mission. 2. We have to be clear about leadership expectations. I think many times we look at leadership as: can you lead a bible study but maybe we should change it to are you willing to be missional for the campus? Providing clarity in the expectations of leaders gives them opportunities to be the Godly, goal-oriented, emotionally healthy, self-starting leader that we desire as well as gives them clear expectations of what they should be doing at any time.
- You have to have a clear vision for your fellowship.
Almost everything we came back to was about communicating the vision for the fellowship to those on the campus. If the vision isn't missional, then the group won't be missional. If the vision is unclear and vague, then the mindset of the group will be unclear and vague. It needs to be easily communicable so that it can be passed along from person to person but also the answer to the question why. Why do we do this? Well because [insert vision here]. If some structure doesn't fit in line with the vision then we should question why we are doing it all. A clear and simple vision allows students to be the ones to articulate the purpose of our fellowship to other students and cast the net wide of those we want to reach.
I appreciated many of the things said at our conference because it validated many of the things we are already doing on campus as well as provide a new paradigm for campus ministry. It made me excited to be a part of the growing changes.
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