RE-Think Blogference

The posts from this year’s The Blogference authors have begun to arrive, and I could not be more excited! If you have participated in any of the previous online conferences–THANK YOU!

What we need in order to reach an entire campus with the gospel is exactly what Millennials crave – empowered leadership.

The Millennial Generation (born from 1980-2000) is the largest generation in American history. It’s a generation leery of corporate America, who do not respond to command and control management. They want choices, experiences, autonomy and opportunities to lead.

If your self-leadership development efforts were illustrated through spoons on a wall, what would it look like? Would have many spoons…or two…or maybe just one?

My mom has always had a collection of spoons – those little souvenir spoons that you can find while you are traveling. She has spoons from most countries in Europe and other places she has visited in her lifetime and they have been on the wall of her living room since I can remember.

“What you are doing is not good,” offered Jethro, “you will wear yourselves out.” Let me ask this: What Would Jethro See in Me?

When I think about leadership capacity I can’t help but turn to the story of Jethro counseling Moses on how to avoid burnout in Exodus 18. You know the plot. Moses had become the defacto decision-maker for two million people and it just wasn’t working. “What you are doing is not good,” offered Jethro, “you will wear yourselves out.”

True leaders might be known for lots of things, but living in the past “ain’t one of them.”

It was the infamous baseball manager Sparky Anderson who said, “ I have my faults, but living in the past ain’t one of them…there ain’t no future in it.” Sounds like something that other baseball philosopher Yoggi Berra might have said.

Being a campus staff I have noticed that the general feeling over the name change conversations for the past couple weeks have shown fellow staff to be either indifferent about the change or optimistic that it could help the organization.

Unfortunately I am adamantly against changing the name not because I hold to tradition, I lack vision for the future, or am unsupportive of our leadership. The reason is I truly believe that “Campus Crusade for Christ” is more than a name. I say more than a name because of the method our ministry obtained it. I have many reasons to be opposed to this change but I thought the most powerful argument for our future is to truly understand God’s work in our past.

If you could change one thing about an annual conference that you MUST attend, what would it be?

Brian Barela blogs regularly here.

Innovation takes many forms. It may look like a new use for an old tool; a new tool for an old need, or more commonly, a new tool for a new need.

Christian Maureira, the national director for Campus Crusade for Christ in Chile, innovated. He saw a creative opportunity to engage 33 miners with the reality of Jesus Christ. He took a common tool (the Jesus film in audio) and innovated a strategy to reach them 2660 feet below ground. And we all applauded his creativity, his courage, and his innovation.

LOOK FOR THE INTERSECT! Bill Bright was a man of many ideas—he threw them out rapid fire. Those of us who worked around him were the implementers of those ideas. So we learned to look for what he wanted to accomplish. We had freedom to think and ask,” Is there a better way to reach his objective?” If we had an innovative way to go forward, he was always open to it.

One of the best ways I’ve found to look for the better way for more effective ministry is to look for the intersect. Where does God’s Word/our mission intersect with the interests/needs of our target audience?

As you know, innovation has been a hallmark for Campus Crusade from the very beginning. Bill Bright’s entrepreneurial spirit led him to begin on the college campus at UCLA. In the 1950s, few ministries or churches were focusing on students. It was a new and strategic idea.

Back in the 1960s there was no simple booklet that people could use as an “audio visual tool” to help them present the gospel personally. God used Bill Bright to distill what he was saying to students into what became the “Four Laws.” In the late 1970s there was no widely translated, very biblical, feature-length film on the life of Christ.