Top 5 things that keep me from ministry
These are the top 5 things that keep me from life-on-life campus ministry (discipleship and evangelism).
- Dealing with ministry related financial rules and regulations
- Conferences/travel
- Responding to voicemail/email/facebook/twitter
- Developing ministry funding
- Planning and logistics for events
These aren’t necessarily bad things right? But they so easily sidetrack me from why I chose my job. Which is to step foot on campus and engage students with the life-changing message of Jesus Christ. Just something I’m thinking about.
What should our perspective be about these things, and how do we deal well with them?
Other LTI posts kinda like this one:
This discussion has been very prevalent in Canada for the last two years. There is a feeling among some that all this “stuff” gets in the way of doing evangelism and discipleship on campus.
While I agree it is critical to meet with students face to face on campus and we never want to lose that, I’m concerned that the discussion leads to a dangerous polarization and unhealthy understanding of the big picture of building a movement on campus. At times, it comes across as the idea that the only “real ministry” is face to face with someone on campus.
What is interesting to me is that as I have pounded the table asking, “What should we stop doing so we can be on campus more? ” No one has ever given me an answer. People get frustrated by all these other things (a.k.a “stuff”) that prevents them from “real ministry” but then will never give you a straight answer on what to cut nor do they stop doing any of these other time consuming things.
The reality is that all of these things contribute to building a healthy local movement. We must see the big picture and the total cost of ownership here. Real ministry is not only meeting people on campus.
Personally, I don’t think the answer is by necessarily cutting out “stuff”. I think the solution lies more in re-thinking how we structure, lead and staff a local ministry. Instead of creating polarizations about real ministry and the stuff that distracts us (which I’m not accusing you of – but has happened in Canada) I think there are some deeper questions we need to ask.
1. How can our staff work out of their strengths? Maybe we should through out the one-size fits all “campus staff” job description. Some people have a lid or 4 hours on campus a day. Others want more after 8.
2. How can we engage volunteers more?
3. What is the best way to structure a team to build a movement?
4. What other skill sets and roles should be engaged on a local campus team besides just the guy who goes out to share his faith and lead Bible studies?
5. How do we evaluate the effectiveness of all types of ministry activity and not just keep doing ineffective things?
Lastly, I think it needs to be okay to have time to think, share, explore, network and do other things that aren’t necessarily life on life, but still contribute to movement building.
From my perspective, the issue is more structural than a function of how a staff member spends their time.
Russ, I fully agree with your thoughts about the dangerous polarization of what constitutes “real” ministry. Stepping into an operations role, I’m fully aware of it. I’m doing my best to try and change the perception of what Operations is in our region. I’m not a just financial administrator or event planner
My thoughts are more about the lesser things that I can so easily let take up greater importance and thus greater hours in my week and how can we minimize them or delay them to do the more important things.
That being said, your thoughts about dealing with the structure of our organization are intriguing. Especially the thought about the one-size fits all mentality that can creep in. I think we’re doing good things helping people operate from strengths, but I think I’ve experience the one-size-fits all reality at times. which has led to frustration.
I’m probably making this post into more of an issue than you intended it to be. I agree that lesser things so easily creep up. I also struggle with this. I find it much easier to check my twitter feed than go have another conversation with someone about something that actually matters. I’m trying to be more intentional about this, especially as an ops guy when travelling, since that’s my primary interaction with non-Christians apart from my neighbourhood.
Another thought on the structure point. (Copied from a post I made in the GCX eMinistry community. NCD = national campus director).
–
I wonder if NCDs often dislike their staff “doing internet” because we have a higher value on prescribing activities and “transferability” than leading our organization in a results-oriented, “are we being effective?” culture.
i.e. NCDs become more concerned with activity than results. So, how many times did you read the 4 laws to someone on campus can be an activity that is very easy to prescribe and measure. However, it might not be the right or most effective activity for the situation to get the result we want. However, someone could be having the same amount of spiritual conversations / gospel presentations in another form on the internet.
For me, I’m passionate about getting our culture to a point of being really clear what results we are going for and then empowering local staff to figure out how to do this. I think sometimes we as national leaders get in the way too much dictating “effective” “transferable” methods that many of our staff don’t actually think (and experience) to be. Instead, work with the staff so they know what results are expected, resource them with some tools and have frequent check-ins to evaluate how things are going. That I think is a much healthy culture than “don’t do X activity cause it’s bad”. Instead, the conversation is, “how is X activity contributing to our desire outcome of Y.”
–
Focusing on more of a results oriented culture I think would foster innovation, greater ability to work from strengths and increased effectiveness.
I need to figure out the GCX communities. You’re the only person who has exposed me to those. I need to get on the ball.
Check out the GCX Help Center for all the details. I see they have a new YouTube channel as well with where they’ve posted lots of videos and tutorials.
GCX doesn’t have the best interface but has some really powerful collaboration tools.
I share your tension, and am always wanting to minimize the demands of organizational housekeeping so as to maximize my time amongst students and our students’ time amongst their fellow, mostly-not-Christian colleagues. While the reality is that we’ll always have to do some maintenance work that has no value apart from what it gets us, Russ is certainly right about there being better and more intentional ways of doing this stuff. I find that I am able to mitigate the tyranny of the necessary by following as much as possible the old discipleship maxim, Take someone with you. By involving students in much of the email, planning, and even funding aspect of things, it turns what would be an unwelcome task into an opportunity for face to face time with students that is often more productive than the coffee shop meeting, because centering around a task makes the time innately discipleship oriented.
Nick, you do a really good job at taking students along with you! Keep up the good work.