Interesting take on the value of synergy amongst your group and how someone trying to command leadership might cause more harm than good. Pay attention to the last question. Could this have value for student lead movements? (Thanks for the find Tim Casteel)
Communicate better – group texting service
A large felt need for our staff team is the ability to text updates to various groups of students in our scope. Perhaps a broad message to all students involved, a timely reminder to Discipleship Group leaders or even an announcement to students from a specific campus. I wrote about Texthub a while ago…which has since moved to a freemium model that prices us out of service as well as Begrouped.com which has cut service for a while. After searching high and low we’ve discovered a Portland startup called Celly! It’s worthy of a look for all you ministry leaders. The founders assured me they’re going to be around for a while.
Here’s what it can do for free…
- Set up cells (groups) of unlimited size that you can text and receive responses from.
- Send multiple cells the same message by including a #hashtag
- Adjustable settings to require a username to be made when they’re invited to join (so you can see who is in the cell)
- Provides a keyword for each cell so that members can text in a request to join
- Provides easy manual entry of invitations to join via either phone number or email
- Adjustable settings to allow reply all, or have responses go only to administrator
We’re just getting our feet with it, but it looks great. Our goal is to have it all updated with various cells before we break for the summer so that we can send timely reminders when the Fall season rolls around.
Do you use a texting service in your ministry?
End of the year strategy #2 – Evaluations with your staff
Understanding our reality and being good evaluators is key to moving our ministry ahead.
As we get close to the end of the year our staff team will take some extended time to review the year and plan for the fall. We’ll spend about 3 full days together as a staff team in May to prepare for the Fall. We easily could get bogged down in evaluated every little minute detail before moving to action. Here’s what we do to avoid that.
- Evaluate in real-time. Throughout the year we’ve evaluated key events, strategies and schedules. We’ve kept notes and my co-MTL and I will review those to see if there is anything we want to drill down on more as a staff team.
- Send evaluation questions out via email to our staff about 10 days before we gather. If you’re like me I work better with a little more time to think and evaluate rather than to try and think through stuff on the spot.
Often we use very simple evaluation questions. What’s going well? What is hard? Where are you stuck? We’ll then give categories that we want to make sure our staff think through…coaching movements, evangelism strategies, discipleship groups, etc. Sometime we’ll throw in other questions like, What do you need to do your job better? What needs to change in your schedule?
We like simple evaluation times that move us to action.
What do you do in evaluating the year?
Blue Like Jazz Review
About 10 years ago I cracked open the book Blue Like Jazz. I couldn’t put it down. It struck a nerve, and in a sense, defined my generation of college students seeking to follow Christ.
Then along came the movie, which I saw last week. The verdict is in….
I loved it.
I thought about the themes for the next two days. I loved the writing and I loved the story…partly because I can relate to Don’s story of struggling to follow Christ in the real world after coming out of a crazy Christian subculture. Once again I feel challenged to love Christ more and love people more. Thanks Don.
Secondly, the description of Portland rings true and yes Christ is still relevant in this weird city. Reed College is exactly as described in regards to weirdness as well. In fact, last year our local paper had a picture of Reed students sunbathing in a tree. Which wouldn’t be weird except that they were naked. Most Reedies study more in real life than in the movie though.
Thirdly, there were a couple of CGI effects that I didn’t love, but the story made it easy for me to forgive.
FINALLY a Christian movie that is real, raw and complex. Sometimes there are no easy answers or resolution in life, but there is humility, forgiveness and love to be found. This would be a movie I wouldn’t hesitate to take my non-Christian friends to continue to spiritual conversations. Do it. Buy tickets and head to your local theater on April 13th. It’s worth it. Here’s the trailer for your viewing pleasure.
***Note: This movie is rated PG-13. There is substantial swearing and scenes of drinking and conversation regarding sexual identity. Basically what I hear everyday riding the bus in Portland. As Steve Taylor (Director) said at the screening, “since when did labeling your movie as a Christian film mean that it has to be safe for the whole family? I’ve read the Bible and I’m pretty sure it would be a lot thinner if we cut out all the stuff that wasn’t safe for the whole family.” Read more about what the Christian Film establishment thinks on Don Millers blog here.
End of the year strategy #1 – Vision Night invitations
This is the first post in a series of what content our staff are covering this spring that will hopeful propel us into the fall and new stages of ministry.
Our spring-time Vision Night dinner is this April and is a key strategic event to challenge emerging studen
ts to invest in the ministry on their campus. We are doing our darndest to get the right people in the room for the night. We have about 60 invitations out to students and stakeholders from about 5 different campuses.
But even cooler than that is what happens during these personal invites from our staff. These meetings can turn into a significant time of affirmation and challenge for these students even in a just a 10 minute conversation. They also can lead into significant growth as student prepare for leadership over the last month of the school year.
Bottom-line is that almost all of our energy and focus will be on prepping to challenge emerging leaders to lead.
What do you do to prepare your emerging leaders for the fall?
Digital evangelism – Haley’s story
Recently I did some training at Big Break on how to use digital tools to be more intentional with starting spiritual conversations online. Haley from TCU took up my challenge of sharing her story online and tagging her friends. Here’s what she came up with….please note, she did a great job of inviting conversation at the end of it.
Haley wrote this message to me after I asked her if I could share her video…
Thank you! And you can show it to whoever you like! I don’t mind if you broadcast it. Thank you so much for challenging me to use Facebook and technology as a tool to reach people for Christ. I have had really cool conversations on Facebook since big break. I have been able to meet up with my big in my sorority who I randomly texted at Big Break and she started crying in front of me when I was telling her how much God loves her and wants a personal relationship with her. She came to church with me today and we have plans to meet up for lunch this week. I just thought that might encourage you!
Haley took a few minutes to move from treating technology as a toy to treating intentionally for the glory of God. What if a whole generation of students who follow Christ did this? Think about it.
This meeting was awesome
Last night I was in one of the most non-boring meetings I’ve experienced in a while. It was passionate, it was healthy debate and it was 
people not afraid to confront misconceptions and challenge each other. People listened for understanding and communicated well. People were engaged and bought in to the discussion. People were willing to risk to help solve the problem and ready to take action. There were tears and a handful of spontaneous applause moments. There was a lot at stake and people recognized it. Did I mention that I wasn’t bored?
This was my neighborhood association meeting.
The topic of this meeting was our lack of a neighborhood school, which is important to our families, but this got me thinking about our staff meetings with Cru.
Do I recognize how much is at stake? Our job is to take Christ to every corner of every campus in Portland and we’re not getting there yet… and people are dieing without Christ. Is this reality in mind as our staff gather? I’m imagining a lot more passion, risk and emotion in our staff meetings if the urgency of the mission haunts us a little more.
Big Break Social Media Seminar Info
Here are my notes and slides from my Big Break seminars on how to use social media more intentionally to fuel evangelistic conversations. Three things that I want to highlight that bubbled to the surface during my time in Panama City.
- Followers of Christ must move from using the internet purely for consuming and start thinking how to use it intentionally. It’s a toy for the most of us. Start by making a Facebook list of all the friends that you want to have spiritual conversations with.
- Pictures! Look at your Facebook timeline, it’s full of pictures. You will not spur serious engagement online without pictures (and other media for that matter). It’s the Facebook secretsauce.
- The principle that I think has the most potential for lasting impact is training our students in how to ask a “sometime” question both online and in person. Here’s a few that I made up for students to ask their friends back home during Big Break.
- I’m learning a ton at Big Break this year, I’d love to hear what you think about this stuff sometime, would that be cool?
- Sometime I’d like to hear more about what you believe about spiritual things, would you be up for that?
- God has been up to some cool thing in my life and I’m learning a ton, sometime I’d love to share it with you, would that be ok?
Big break Social Media Seminar
View more presentations from Matt McComas.
I had a great time interacting with staff and students on how Social media should supplement and fuel our life on life evangelistic efforts. We’ve got a long way to go to understand and harness the power of social media in evangelism, but praise the Lord for the opportunity.
Why videos go viral
Hilarious video on three distinct catalysts that help videos go viral. Worth the watch. Makes me want to be a better storyteller to engage the world with the reality of Christ. Thanks Karl for the find.
Team project? Try Asana
Recently I switched from my beloved Things task management software to try out Asana that is more of a team task management tool.
More and more of my job is involving multiple people contributing to a project. I’ve struggled in managing the tasks, what’s been assigned and not feeling like I’m nagging people by checking in on what they’re doing.
So far Asana has been a good fit. It’s free and it’s getting better every day. It’s simple enough that I could use the basics right away, but now I need to spend some time learn more of the intricacies. Right now it’s entirely web based and it’s iPhone app is lacking, but it sounds like improvements are coming for those things.
Try it out and see what you think.
