I took the liberty of taking a slide from John Chamber’s talk and tweaking it to fit the non-profit campus ministry organization I work for. I think I changed it enough to be legal 
I’ve begun to recognize that this collaboration and innovation wave of the future we keep talking about can be broken down into categories. This slide has given me structure for the discussion in a fresh way. Below are the three areas that we need to apply the principles of collaboration along with explanations of what that could look like. Study it, learn it, memorize it.
There’s a lot of info here to talk about, but what’s your first response?
Other LTI posts kinda like this one:
My first response is that for collaboration, our Achilles' Heel in the whole of campus ministry is the very last in the list: Learners. And, I'd suspect, that's also true for the individual organizations within the wide world of college ministry.
It's an Achilles' Heel because when we're not Learners with the collaboration we DO have, we don't facilitate additional collaboration: We don't buy books, so books aren't published. We don't read blogs, so interaction and blogging are limited. We don't fill classes, so seminaries don't offer them. We don't investigate outside our circles, so we don't develop additional questions, so our innovation is stunted, so our need for new learning is stunted. Etc.
Because of the experiences I've gotten to have in researching our field, some college ministers make it clear immediately that they're learners – by all their questions about what I've seen and learned. My story of meeting Mike Mehaffie at NC State is a story of just that very thing – even though he could have taught me from HIS wisdom for 20 years. But he wanted to learn.
I continue to be surprised / saddened how often that isn't the case.
So… great chart. Here's to hoping for more college minister-learners.
Benson, you’re a genius…or at least right on
I think we must continue to press that culture of seeking to learn. We get stuck in our roles, traditions to easy without carving out time to learn and grow and try new things.
Thanks for helping us all in that process!