Spring Break – Urban Immersion

March 27, 2011 in Innovation, Leadership with 0 Comments

Last week we hosted almost 30 staff and students from around the Northwest for a spring break urban immersion, Portland style. Many thanks to Chicago Cru for the inspiration. It was a blast.

Here’s why we did it:

  • To get students and staff in the city to experience the power, diversity and brokenness of the city.
  • To give them a taste of what it could look like to serve in ministry here. Surface potential future interns or staff.
  • To boost our movement at PSU and surface leaders at various other schools.

Here’s a brief summary of what we did:

  • Sunday night: Devotional on why we need the city and our vision for the week.
  • Monday: Evangelism training, scavenger hunt via public tranport and evangelism at PSU and downtown.
  • Tuesday: Launching day at four large community colleges in the area, seeking to surface leaders.
  • Wednesday: Acts 17 prayer walk experience in Hawthorne district and day of service at Portland Rescue mission.
  • Thursday: More evangelism training and evangelism at PSU and downtown.

Overall the feedback has been really good and I think we might do it again next year. It was a huge win for us and the students who joined us. God moved in their hearts. Feel free to join us next year :) .

Everystudent.com and Facebook Ad’s report

March 26, 2011 in Innovation, Technology with 5 Comments

Recently I ran some ad’s on Facebook for everystudent.com in the Portland area. My purpose was to add an element of broad exposure to our evangelistic efforts and well as test the response. Keep in mind that I’ve set up our ministry email to receive any everystudent.com questions that come from students at schools in the Portland area.

I targeted 18-21 year olds who are in college in the Portland area. The ad’s ran for a Sunday and Monday at about $1/click. Here’s the results.

Yada, yada, yada got 58,962 impressions and 5 clicks.

Human Kindness Matters got 400,649 impressions and 59 clicks.

Questions about Life got 9,970 impressions and a whopping 0 clicks.

Out of all of those clicks has come three emails. One person with a real question, one with no question and one that was belligerent.

On a side note this ad was dissaproved from Facebook. Haha!

Long story short, I’m still not sure how I feel about this strategy. I love the thought of reaching students that we don’t have access to right now, but was this worth the $60 I spent? How could I make it work better.

What is it about the City?

March 24, 2011 in Uncategorized with 2 Comments

On any given week I find myself in downtown Portland working with students at Portland State University. The easiest way to get there from my house is to hop on the bus that picks me up at the end of block. The bus route takes me over the Ross Island Bridge where I get a great view of downtown.

The other day I noticed that every time I’m on the bus almost everyone turns their eyes to take in all of the skyline as we putter across the bridge. Why is that?

Maybe it’s just the scenery of the sun hitting the building and reflecting off the Willamette River, but perhaps it’s something more than that.

Maybe there’s a deep understanding of the power of millions of people in close proximity. Maybe there’s an innate desire in people to find security and purpose that they think the city can provide.

Or maybe I’m over thinking this. What do you think?

8 reasons why every staff person should have a smart phone

March 3, 2011 in Innovation, Technology with 2 Comments

I can’t mandate it, but I can tell you that there is value to having a smart phone on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ. Here’s my top 8 reasons why.

  1. Facebook – can’t remember that students name? Pull it up quickly on your phone.
  2. JotNot – Take a picture of that receipt you need to send in to HQ and quickly turn it into a jpg. or pdf. No more scanning!
  3. Google Doc’s – If your team using Google Docs’s (and they should) access them from your phone
  4. Concur – Manage those pesky One Card reports on the go
  5. Task  Managements ( I use Things) – Get all your to-do list in one place and relieve some stress.
  6. Reeder (a blog reader) – stay up to date on leadership blogs, friends blogs, etc.
  7. Evernote – Keep track of any notes, ideas, meeting agendas with this handy app. It’s like my brain but never forgets anything. You can also take pictures of things and store them here…like that strategic plan masterpiece you drew on the whiteboard.
  8. The Bible – All kind of apps that put a multitude of translations at your fingertips. My favorite are YouVersion and the ESV Bible app.

How are we allocating our staff in Portland?

March 1, 2011 in Leadership with 1 Comment

I get asked all the time, “how is your staff team investing on the 20+ campuses in Portland?” Honestly, this is the question we have to deal with and I’m not sure we’ve figured it out but here’s what we’re doing right now.

We’re treating Portland State (largest university in Oregon) almost like a staffed campus. This is where our staff spend the most time. We share our faith, we disciple students, and we invest heavily with our physical presence. This allows our team to have an environment that is great for new staff development and have fun just doing ministry together.

We’re treating the rest of the campuses way more hands off. Probably more like what Campus Crusade staff know as catalytic. We want each of our staff to have their hands in launching and/or coaching a ministry eventually because there is incredible value in that experience,  but at this point we will not ask them to invest more than 1 day a week anywhere else. Whatever they do on the other campuses must be done on our launching/coaching day of the week (tuesday). This makes it easy for us to say no to opportunities that are beyond our teams capacity.

So as you can see we’re doing our best to accomplish forming a great staff environment (motivating, accountable, developmental) AND reaching our scope. We have a lot to learn about launching and coaching movements and we’re constantly reevaluated our schedule but so far it’s been a great step in reestablishing our presence in the city. Also, obviously the Spirit is at work opening doors that we never would have imagined so we hold this schedule and strategy with an open hand.

What do you think? Any metro/catalytic staff out there want to weigh in on how they allocate their staff resources?

The City So Far – People Matter

February 26, 2011 in Leadership with 0 Comments

I wish you all could experience ministry in the city. It’s incredibly refreshing, raw, complex and challenging. I’m about 8 months in now and I could not be more thankful for my experience.

The biggest lesson learned so far is that I often lack genuine compassion and care for the people. Students, who are the very people I’m ministering to can feel like the biggest barriers to seeing minister growth!  And then there are my my neighbors, my fellow public transportation users and especially people that are different than me. I’ve always struggled with compassion and the city has reminded me of need for it, because I’m confronted with humanity every day. God is softening my heart toward people.

There’s no getting away from people…and I like it that way. I love being confronted with the rawness of humanity. It challenges me. It reminds me of my brokenness without Christ. It teaches me to love and sacrifice in fresh ways.

What if the bottomline about ministry is less about effectiveness and efficiency and more about people…broken, messy people? Yes we learn, strategize and get better at our jobs, but if we do it without genuine love and compassion we’ve missed the point.

I’m thankful for the city. Not everyone is called to live, work or minister in a city, but everyone should consider it. Guaranteed it’ll expand your view of God.

Evangelism?

February 22, 2011 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

Not sure if this is true, but can you relate to this?

A new Operating System!

February 21, 2011 in Innovation, Leadership with 0 Comments

Recently in a Catalyst Podcast Daniel Pink talked about how we ought to respond to the culture millenials are bringing into the workforce. We need to create an environment where gamechangers will flourish!

1) Give them autonomy. Don’t try to control to much. A great example is the practice of allowing them a portion of their time to go work on whatever they want…just as long as you show it to us. We need to get out of the way and watch as what they create generally produces all kinds of fixes.

2) Help them gain mastery. Millenials have an internal desire to get better at stuff, thus one of the best things we can do is shine a light on the progress. Celebrate with them!

3) Give them purpose. People want to work for a greater story. Everything we invite them into needs to be painted with the context of the greater purpose! This gets me excited about the possability of recruiting to full-time ministry.

4) Add feedback to the job. This was suprising, but makes sense as people crave authenticity and being know. They want to work in an environment where everything is out on the table.

All of this is missing one particular spiritual element, namely the Holy Spirit, but gives us a better understanding of the nature of the people (staff, students, and volunteers) we’re working with.

Are you a millenial? Are these values true?

Things and stuff of the week

February 18, 2011 in Innovation, Technology with 1 Comment

Three things that might be of interest to you all:

I loved, loved, LOVED this post by Ryan McReynolds on the Cru Press blog about how we ought to view facebook. Lately I’ve seen a bunch of people give up Facebook. I don’t know the whole circumstances but I do know that God calls us to engage the culture and Facebook is a tool to do that.

We’re starting to try out a texting service called Begrouped.com within our ministry at Portland State University. We’ll use it for timely reminders, room updates, etc. So far, so good and it’s free. We’re also going to institute it at the Lake Tahoe Summer Project.

I knew about Arcade Fire before the rest of the world was alerted to them at the Grammy’s thanks to Tim Casteel, who’s blog I love. You should get to know Tim.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Next Level Blogging? Standard Theme 20% Off!

February 15, 2011 in Technology with 1 Comment

If you’re finally thinking about investing in a premium WordPress theme for your self-hosted blog, now’s the time with the recent sale on Standard Theme.

I switched to the Standard Theme almost a year ago now and haven’t looked back. I love the simplicity and how easy the dashboard is to use. It’s got all kinds of built in goodies and it’s incredibly customizable. Check out the showcase tab if you’d like a view of what it can do. If you’re thinking about taking your blogging skills to the next level, this would be a great investment.

I ponied up the money for the the support licence and have learned a ton about WordPress through the support forums. I currently use this theme on 4 different sites!

I fully endorse the Standard Theme for you serious bloggers out there.

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