Daniel Curran continues to encourage me with his wisdom and insight. His recent post 'Not Reaping Because We Didn't Sow' contained a number of ministry 'nuggets' that I wanted to comment on. Please read his original post if you would like the full context.
"CCC’s U.S. Campus Ministries growth in terms of increasing and retaining premium missional leadership plateaued at our finest universities during the past 20 years (like a bird population that stopped growing because there weren’t enough tree holes to build new nests). On the surface there weren’t enough open leadership ”slots” for new missionaries to function “apostolically”; however, underneath this phenomenon was a profound “quenching” the Spirit."--Daniel Curran
- I agree in many ways that our structure did not provide leadership slots for young emerging leaders. However, I believe we also have failed to use many of the roles we do have for leadership development. For example: conference leadership teams provide a great opportunity to exercise the skills required of a local leader (oversight, vision, consensus-based discussions, bold decision-making, and more).
- As a college student I faced the choice between joining Mosaic Church's movement or Campus Crusade Staff. Mosaic appealed much more to me in terms of its innovation, creativity, and missional spirit. I wonder just how many entrepreneurial/future oriented leaders have been 'lost.'
[Brian is in Ocean City/NJ training 120 student leaders this summer] What if you [Brian] equipped and commissioned all the project students at Ocean City to pray for, identify, "disciple", and plant simple churches amongst all the unreached student groups at Ocean City this summer?
- What about if this principle were applied to CCC? What if we started planting churches near large movements/cities whose leadership teams were made up of current and former staff? Would we see an exponential amount of retention and development of resources as a result?