The Necessary Things

Insight From a Church Planter

Just received this comment from Chris Knutzen, who has experience in CCC and church-planting. I wanted to share his comments as they provide great insight into this area:

Just wanted to chime in as one of those elders you talked about. I was part of the Mars Hill church plant. And I am currently working with my 2nd church plant in Russia. I want to share some thoughts on how it has been for me as CCC staff to be in these roles as founding elder/church planter and being full time staff.

In 1995, when we planted Mars Hill, I found it the ideal position to be in to help plant a church as I would be interacting with a host of potential church members on the campus of the UW. I was also able to help steer the direction of the church by being on the elder board and, through prayer and counseling, able to contribute to the spiritual growth. However, I constantly was stressed with the fact that there was so much more I wanted to do for the church but just didn't have time. I saw that Mark was max'd out so much of the time, but I could do very little to lighten his load. I remember asking him one time how I could be of greater help and, knowing my commitment to CCC, he told me, "Just bring more people to church, that's all". So I did. But there was always that tension in me.

Fast forward to Russia. When I left Seattle/Mars Hill in 1999 to do college ministry in Russia I knew there would opportunities to plant churches there. In fact I have been able to take part in 2 church plants, both from scratch with almost no official ties from the west. This has been a challenge but also a blessing as I've seen local people step up and lead. But again, the tension is still there, always wanting to do more for the local church. But every time I go to church and see the college students there I realize that, as long as I am here, my main contribution will be to bring people into the church. Of course I also sit in on elders meetings and counsel the younger leaders. But I take more of a back seat role in things. It is humbling, but it is where I know I need to be for now.

Who knows, maybe someday we might go full time into church planting. But for now and for the last 10 years, I dont regret being in that tension of taking part in something great (church planting) but also wanting to do more, realizing that God places others around me who step up.

Striving, Thinking, Impacting, or Relating?

Our Ocean City Summer Project staff team went through a Strengthsfinder training last week.

I enjoyed exploring the four domains under which all strengths fall.

I enjoyed thinking about how our organization functions with respect to these domains.

Based on my experience here's how I ranked the domains:

1. Striving
2. Impacting
3. Relating
4. Thinking

I'm very curious as to how you would rank our organizational strengths. I discovered that my personal strengths line up in this manner:

1. Thinking
2. Striving
3. Impacting
4. Relating

The fact that my number 1 is actually CCC's number 4 actually encouraged me! It provides a helpful grid to understand that not only are my strengths valued the least, but that it's not personal. As long as I choose to remain in the organization, I can expect frustration, resistance, and misunderstanding.

As I think about being a part of seeing redemptive organizational change, these challenges motivate more than discourage me. That's new for me, and definitely a work of the Lord!

How would you rank CCC or yourself in light of this grid?

Church Partnership Tweets

These tweets are from Paul Nunez, CCC staff member heading to San Jose State to lead the movement there. He is quoting Holly Sheldon, one of our National Directors (who is not on Facebook or Twitter--yikes!)

I'm hoping Paul can weigh in and clarify/expand on some of these quotes, as they are extremely pertinent to the recent discussions that happened here a week ago.

Reflections on Skill/Capacity Based Development

This summer I have experienced perhaps the best skill training available in Campus Crusade for Christ. The Ocean City summer project provides training that equips students and staff to spiritually multiply their lives.

Here are a few trends I have observed in ministry over the last few years:

• Skill-based training is great for immature/entry level leaders (student leaders/new staff) but a hindrance for seasoned leaders
• Staff rarely intentionally pursue capacity-based training until much later in life (late 40's-50's). I'm not that age but in talking to older leaders it's seems to be true.
• One survives on skill but thrives on capacity.
• Ministry 'plateaus' are often linked to a failure to develop capacity. It's usually less about the role and more about the leader.

Capacity-based training takes more thought, intentionality, and reflection than skill. Often times it leads those to pursue people and experiences OUTSIDE of their particular organization.

Do you have any links, books, quotes to share that speak to capacity-based training?

The CORE of Campus Crusade for Christ

"I think that title is appropriate for what I think CCC needs to get back too.  The key to the future is not old techniques but old characteristics of a movement that was on the frontier of ministry.  When both staff members who were on the front lines with Bill Bright in the beginning reflect on the past, they said there were 3 distinguising characteristics.

1.Intiative

2.Innovative

3. Spirit Filled"

Dan Birch interned at Chico State last year and now attends Campus Crusade's New Staff training in Fort Collins, Colorado. He shared this with me yesterday and I wanted to pass it on to you.

If you're on staff, how do you see these characteristics playing out? What do you think our culture is strongest/weakest?

In my experience we excel at initiative, battle to stay spirit-filled, and suck at innovation.

What say you?

The Role of Skills and Training

"I say I disagree because I think CCC has dominated at skills and training - a particular approach to discipleship driven by the movement's mission and vision."--Brian Virture

I would say that CCC has dominated at skills and training BECAUSE we are a apostolic leadership enterprise--at our heart we are called to give leaders what they need to accomplish the mission.

In the modern era, that was skill-based training. In the postmodern era, I believe it's going to be capacity-driven training.

An expectation that I have rarely seen realized is that I will be 'discipled' or that I will be able to 'disciple others' This may happen on occasion, but has not been part of the CCC culture.

When I think of my 'discipleship' as leadership training, and discipling others as 'training leaders,' all of a sudden everything falls into place. I no longer expect pastoral-type experiences from my leaders and seek those from pastorally-gifted people (some in CCC, most outside), and no longer try to function pastorally with those I lead, and encourage them to pursue other people in the body for shepherding.

It's not a cop-out for me at all or justifying my experience; it's more of a coming to grips with the reality of one part of our organization.

I agree that pragmatism proves to be a continual internal hindrance to CCC ministering out of the Spirit. I'm sure Brian Virtue could flush this out much better than me, but I can see how pragmatism negatively impacts our effectiveness. Brian said this:

"A lot of the discipleship and spiritual leadership I've seen in CCC has been pragmatism and programs "in the power of the Spirit."

Brian is a great friend and has been the most influential spiritual leader in my life; he 'discipled' me during my freshmen year at UCLA, and then worked hard to get me on a summer project that he was staffing where I ended up meeting my wife! Read his blog or follow him on Twitter!

Disciples or Leaders?

 "We all know what our weekly campus schedules looks and how we prioritize our time. Why the disparity?

If higher % of CCC staff were truly "making disciples" in the ways and styles Jesus and Paul modeled --- and were teaching them to obey the commands & disciplines Jesus and Paul taught their disciples --- we'd be having a totally different conversation here today"--Daniel Curran

Are we in the business of disciples or leaders? Before you quickly answer 'disciples' let me share some observations:

• Historically we have yet to ever master the art of making disciples. If we took our best and brightest from the beginning of CCC until now, would they have received more spiritual leadership or discipleship when we 'sent' them into the world? I would answer spiritual leadership.
• Historically we have trained our staff in spiritual leadership much more than discipleship. If we looked at the cumulative 'content' we have produced/taught to our staff, again it would lean HEAVILY towards spiritual leadership over discipleship.
  
• Historically we have DOMINATED at producing Christ-centered LEADERS. Who is left standing at the end of their college career in CCC? From my experience it has been the type A, socially capable, spiritually teachable, leadership-minded student.
  

"...teaching them to do ALL THINGS whatsoever I have commanded you"--Matthew 28:20

How can we realistically accomplish this when...

• students do not buy in to CCC's mission, vision, and values until the end of their sophomore year or junior year on average?
• staff must spend time planning, mobilizing believers, and personally engaging lost students? these are all 'resource drains' on 'making disciples.'
• staff are less equipped/capable to impart the pastoral elements of disciple making? the pastors in Chico that our staff team connects with are EXPONENTIALLY better than us at this.

Let's be best at what we are best at: apostolic spiritual leadership, and delegate/empower all the rest as much as we can. What do you think?

Is There An Organizational Difference?

Putting aside the denominational and theological questions, do you think there is anything different between high school (pre-college) and church planting geared towards recent college grads?

This question haunts me as I think about what it would look like to retain and develop students who graduate from our movements. When I think of 'Christ-centered laborers,' the second most strategic category of people to reach are recent college grads.

As great as other church planting networks and church plants are they do not have our VISION or VALUES. Just because they share our MISSION does not mean that we should partner with them.

Does anyone else see the organizational parallel? Or am I just talking crazy here? Not that this is THE reason why we HAVE to do it. I do not believe that at all. I'm stunned that we would invest SIGNIFICANT resources in reaching high-school students and NOTHING on reaching recent college grads who do not join staff or intern.

Thanks again to those who have been actively commenting and adding TREMENDOUS value to this conversation!

We Have To Do Something

"For awhile we have thrown around the idea of leaving staff and going into church-planting."--DJ Jenkins

I loved the discussion on church planting because it has not only surfaced staff's passion for the Kingdom, but revealed the many challenges our organization faces as it seeks to adapt to the changing Christian and secular culture.

more telling comments...

"Solution: "CCC NEEDS TO PARTNER WITH CHURCHES AND START PLANTING CHURCHES" CCC needs to be humble and partner with local churches and look at themselves and helping and serving the church. Whereas local churches can fund CCC things, and assist in there efforts. In reality this is a long term solution.

Short term: CCC should start planting local churches with qualified CCC staff members. They should oversea the planting of some churches and see how that would work."--Dan Birch

"Yes! And you need to clarify, the only issue is here in the West. It's not often publicized, but we do plant churches overseas. This past week, at the Advance09 church-building conference in Durham, NC, Mark Driscoll called us on it. He was listing what he would consider the defining marks of a healthy church and as he listed them we do seven of the eight. The only one that we do not currently do (in the West) is the sacraments. I think he was right when he said that the reason that we don't is purely practical and economic - churches support us and we're worried that we'll lose our support."--Jayson Whelpley

"After thinking about it though, there are some positives. In my mind, the biggest positive would be in the fact that CCC church planters could give their full devotion to planting and not have to get another job because their staff accounts could remain open. That's a distinct advantage to other church planters... most of them have to find a job to generate some form of income since they're not getting anything from tithes and offerings."--Alex Costa

"Also, Dr. Bright would turn over in his grave if we ever planted CCC churches or even came close to starting churches in that way. We may have some of the "marks of a healthy church" but that is a far cry from being a local church in all of its functionality."--Bob Fuhs

"In a word, “No.” I think CCC should stick to being a what God designed her to be: a servant and catalyst to The Body of Christ by pressing in and teasing out relationally what it means to truly partner in mission on a local level with the diverse missional denominations and associations affiliated with any given university."--Daniel Curran

Here's what I'm hearing from the discussion:

• Many staff passionately desire to retain and mobilize college students to live missionally upon graduation, but have no organization channel.
• Many YOUNG STAFF have seriously considered church planting in place of CCC staff and/or are doing it in some capacity ON THE SIDE.
• There are many QUESTIONS AS TO HOW it would look. Probably similar to when Dr. Bright proposed starting a ministry to college students...

What are you hearing?

Campus Crusade Should Plant a Church!

5% or less of our graduating students join or staff or enter into full-time ministry. 95% go into the marketplace. We pray for them and they go into a typical mainline evangelical church. They get lost in the pews.--Jim Kercheval, CCC Staff, Cal Poly Pomona

Jim speaks to a crisis that the church faces; how to MISSIONALLY develop young adults post-graduation. For those of my non-leaders who graduate and do not go on staff or into full-time ministry, I have little hope that they will have more kingdom influence than they did during college.

Campus Crusade should start a church-planting movement to facilitate the spiritual development of our post-graduate, non-student leaders and bless the church by overseeing the transition of our students from college to the marketplace.

Quotes from the following post that were powerful:

• In some ways, don't you think the pervasive church planting energy of 2009 (and the exodus of which you speak) is akin to the campus outreach energy and passion prevalent when Crusade was launched sixty years ago or so?--Phil Henry

• First, a genuine missional renewal necessitates its operational center to be located in the local church. Those Crusade staff who are invested in the leadership of local churches are in a better position to get it. Eventually, quite a number of these staff members will leave Crusade and become pastors like myself.--Raymond Chen

• What if the local local "bodies" of Christ in college-towns moved towards one another because they re-organized their relationships around the welfare of the university --- AND --- around the making of disciples of "all student groups" in town. The fruit and glory would be thrill our souls--Daniel Curran

• Looking at CCC, we might be in the nostalgia/questioning stage of the organizational cycle, but it seems some good changes are finally being made to allow more opportunity for leadership to happen at the local level--Jon Eastwood
  

I do not see CCC starting our own church-planting movement to compete with other church planting movements. For me it's a stewardship issue: we have invested four to five years of mission, vision, and values, they have taken steps of faith in our movements and view their time (generally speaking) in CCC as worthwhile and valuable.

My guess is that if we did something like this, we would retain SO MANY students that they would inevitably pour into other church-planting movements, or have the ability to partner in more powerful ways with other groups.

Excited to hear your comments. Thanks to all of you so far who have weighed in and provided valuable insight into this discussion!