Big idea: Although most affirmation, training, and measuring with the Campus Ministry is around initiative evangelism and good news, students today are coming to faith through relationships and good deeds.

In 2009, the Mid-South Region of Campus Crusade for Christ began a research project on evangelism effectiveness. On the research team was Howard Levin, Dan Flynn, Joey Payne, Roy Baker, Scott Blom, and Tim Henderson. Their challenge was stated as follows:

How can we increase the evangelistic satisfaction and effectiveness of Campus Crusade for Christ staff so that more lost students are presented with the gospel in culturally appropriate, positive ways and more students decide to place their trust in Christ?

This problem of course presumes some measure of evangelistic dissatisfaction and ineffectiveness among our staff. In attempting to better understand the causes of this, and to discover solutions, we conducted six streams of research. We:

• Surveyed Campus Crusade Staff to learn about their experiences in evangelism.
• Conducted focus groups with Unbelievers to learn how they perceive Christians and our message.
• Interviewed New Believers to learn what helped them come to faith.
• Interviewed External Leaders to learn how organizations other than Crusade are conducting evangelism
• Read several books on Culture and Evangelism to learn from those with expertise outside our predominant skill set.
• Read several books on combining Good Words with Good Deeds to learn about a topic in which we are particularly inexperienced.

Here is my executive summary of the 75-page report entitled Changing Evangelism: Mid-Atlantic SLI, May 13, 2009.

Staff 

Our staff are requesting explicit permission to spend their time in pre-evangelistic activities. They would also like better training and resourcing so they can help non-Christians reconsider their gospel-incompatible worldviews in a relationally safe manner.

As one staff member put it:

“Even though sowing is something that people say is good and acceptable, much of everything else in our ministry screams that it’s not. Our stats are reaping only! Almost all of our training is for ‘randoms’ which end up equipping our students to do something that has almost no relevancy to them after college.”

Unbelievers

Unbelievers are telling us that there is a disconnect between our efforts to convey the good

news about Jesus and their willingness to listen to us tell that message. Consider the three main findings of these interviews:

• The method of the messenger has become the message. Our audience wants a respectful, non-confrontational approach, but when the messenger is perceived to be disrespectful or hypocritical, the message is considered irrelevant. This has implications for training believers and for creating new tools/approaches to reach this generation. As one unbeliever commented, “They listen to Christian music, have fish on their cars, then tell everyone they are going to hell.”
• They are convinced they’ve already heard. Regardless of how we adapt our evangelistic approaches, it is significant to know that our audience thinks they’ve already heard the message of Jesus (even if, in fact, they haven’t). We found that 31 of 34 unbelievers we interviewed felt that they’d already heard the message of Jesus.
• Their conversational autonomy trumps our initiating compassion. For many, the power to decide when and with whom they will have a discussion about Jesus is a higher concern than the notion that believers feel compassion toward them in initiating a conversation about Jesus. Therefore, didactic or presentational approaches (as opposed to questioning and conversational approaches) may not get as much traction as in the past. We need new tools, of the right kind. “I’d prefer they didn’t (talk to me about Jesus). I’m an adult capable of making my own decisions.” We found in a world where savvy collegians filter most incoming information, our presentational approaches have become the unwanted “pop-up ads” on the computer screen of their lives.

Dr. Bright said, “The majority of non-believers throughout the world are ready to receive Christ when properly approached with a clear and simple presentation of the gospel by a Spirit-filled witness.” What if this is no longer true in our context? 

New Believers

Students are still coming to Christ, though perhaps not by the same means that they did 30 years ago. We suggest that not only have the times changed, but so have the avenues into a New Believer’s heart. Today more than ever, that road is navigated via the vehicle of a trusted friend.

We interviewed 30 college students between the ages of 18-23 from different ethnicities and geographical locations who have come to faith in Christ within the past 12 months. The goal was to identify obstacles that kept them from coming to faith earlier, identify the ministry mode that most assisted them to receive Christ, and understand their personal reasons for placing their faith in Christ.

Consider the three main findings of these interviews:

• Relationships are key. Our research shows that each person is unique, with different obstacles to faith in Christ. What was consistent, however, is that nearly every student we interviewed came to Christ via a friend.
• New Believers needed someone to take the initiative with them before they were willing to place their faith in Christ. Typically someone else took the initiative to reach out to the student. Approximately 5% trusted Christ by themselves. Though a few students identified a ministry-mode approach, the vast majority of New Believers most clearly connected to Christ via a natural-mode of evangelism, sometimes supplemented by the body-mode of a Cru weekly large group.
• New Believers needed someone to correct misconceptions they had about God. Many New Believers expressed having had misconceptions and a lack of understanding about what it meant to be a Christian. Often the Christians they knew while growing up exacerbated their misconceptions. In fact, though many New Believers grew up around Christianity, they would say that they’d never really heard a clear presentation of the gospel before college. 

Of the believers we interviewed, 95% made a decision for Christ through the direct influence of a trusted friend. Natural mode evangelism was by far the single biggest contributing factor.

External Leaders

Experts outside of Campus Crusade (Navigators, InterVarsity, leading churches) are experiencing the same obstacles to evangelistic effectiveness that we are currently facing. Campus Crusade’s strength in creating transferable tools and approaches can be a gift to the body of Christ, if developed to overcome current obstacles. Consider these four findings:

• There is value in rethinking our metrics for the Campus Ministry. Each of the ministries interviewed chose metrics based on their ministry’s mission— some included numbers for evangelism exposures and conversions. But surprisingly, others attempted to measure other values. For example, Ralph Ennis of the Navigators shared, “…we don’t count numbers [of decisions now], but instead count how many are walking with God later.”
• It would be wise to set an organizational goal for conversion growth, along with an intentional plan to reach that goal. There is an ongoing (but vague) disappointment in our conversion rate. It may be valuable to us to have a rule of thumb that we can shoot for and celebrate.
• Those who have embraced cultural changes earlier than Campus Crusade have valuable lessons to teach us. In many ways, Crusade has held on to our methodology longer than our peer organizations. In this regard, we may no longer deserve our reputation for being as “evangelistically innovative” as in the past. We may need to humble ourselves and be more willing to learn from those who are ahead of us in adapting to cultural change.
• The world needs us to apply our expertise in transferability to create a transferable “worldview-challenging” mode of evangelism. Campus Crusade can serve the Body of Christ by making a sophisticated approach transferable. David Bisgrove of Redeemer Presbyterian Church explained that they could use Campus Crusade’s help with worldview training: “One main reason people do not invite friends to [Redeemer Presbyterian] events is their fear that after the meeting they will be asked questions they cannot answer.”

Culture and Evangelism

Many of our evangelistic strategies are based on the assumption that most people are ready to respond in faith. However, there is evidence that this is no longer wholly true. In light of this, we should continue to simply and clearly communicate the gospel to the minority who are ready, while developing new expertise in helping the majority move toward readiness.

In developing this expertise, we can benefit from those who have studied, experimented with, and written about new solutions. From our readings on Culture and Evangelism, consider these three main lessons:

• We must learn to respectfully deconstruct students’ worldviews, in such a way that they come to question their own beliefs. “If people are currently comfortable with their non-Christian worldview, we need to know how to help them become uncomfortable with it, so that they may become interested in looking at Jesus.”

-Nick Pollard in Evangelism Made Slightly Less Difficult

• We must learn to carefully deconstruct students’ views of Christians, changing their perceptions through humble, loving interactions in which we carefully steward God’s reputation and the gospel message. “Most people I meet assume that ‘Christian’ means very conservative, entrenched in their thinking, anti-gay, anti-choice, angry, violent, illogical, empire builders; they want to convert everyone, and they generally cannot live peacefully with anyone who doesn’t believe what they believe.”

An outsider quoted by David Kinnaman in unChristian

• We must value the role of the sower, champion sowing activities, and develop sowing skills despite the lack of immediate fruit they will produce. “Those of us in harvesting positions must rethink our concept of ‘true ministry.’ We have come to believe that there are only two kinds of Christians: the harvesters and the disobedient. We must begin to teach that every Christian everywhere is a laborer. We must tell them that every laborer should learn to reap, and that God will call some to exclusively exercise this role–but everyone can learn to sow right now, right where they are. In short, we must revalue the role of the sower. . . so that one day the sower and the harvester can be glad together.”

Tim Downs in Finding Common Ground

Good News and Good Deeds

Historically Campus Crusade has focused exclusively on the good words of the gospel, while leaving the good deeds to others. A movement in the church at large, and in particular among this generation of students, has helped us to see there is value in embracing a more holistic approach. We should learn to incorporate both Good Words and Good Deeds into our normal ministry activities.

Some have expressed the fear that in embracing Good Deeds, we may find ourselves losing our focus on sharing the Good Words. Others worry that doing Good Deeds merely as a means to the end of Good Words is a bait-and-switch technique unworthy of ministers of the gospel. Both objections are answered when we understand that sharing Christ is always our ultimate motive, but never our ulterior motive. Indeed love compels us to meet basic immediate needs, but it forbids us from stopping there. We must love the whole person, body and soul. Being persuaded from our reading and interviews of the value of adding good deeds to our normal ministry activity, consider these three main lessons:

• Compassionate acts are tangible ways to serve those we are called to love. The world is dying. Every day we see and hear about the ravaging effects of sin in the world. The brokenness takes a thousand forms: poverty, pornography, the sex trade, starvation, illiteracy, oppression. We are the salt and light to bring solutions to a broken world that God loves.
• Compassionate acts serve as a corrective for the negative perception many non-Christians have of Christians. As described in our report “Unbelievers,” Christianity has an image problem. Radical acts of generosity and love can help reverse this. “Through witnessing these selfless demonstrations of love and helpful acts of service, observers believed that the church just might have something worth listeningto.” Rick Rusaw and Eric Swanson in The Externally Focused Church
• Compassionate acts create opportunities to communicate the gospel message to those we serve and serve alongside. “It takes between 12 and 20 positive bumps [refreshing encounters with the church] before people come to Christ. Our presence in the public square through service gives us opportunities to provide these refreshing encounters.” Dave Workman, Vineyard Community Church

“I have to admit that my own view of evangelism was about saving as many people from hell as possible—for the next life. It minimized my concern for those same people in this life. It wasn’t as important that they were poor or hungry or persecuted, or perhaps rich, greedy and arrogant; we just had to get them to pray the ‘sinners prayer’ and then move on to the next potential convert.”

-Richard Stearns, The Hole in Our Gospel

Our Analysis and Proposal

Throughout our research, a picture emerged that explains why our staff feel ineffective and dissatisfied in evangelism. In brief, there is incongruence between the behavior they feel trained for and expected to perform, and the behavior they feel would be most helpful to the majority of the lost on their campuses. The college campus has changed. As it has, the skills that an effective evangelist must possess have also changed. However, our staff have not kept up with these changes, nor have they felt the freedom to do so. Our rich culture and great historical success in evangelism have caused us to see particular modes and methods of evangelism as primary for our staff and students. However, our staff, unbelievers, new believers, outside experts, and the books we read are all telling us one thing: more comprehensive skill-sets and approaches in evangelism are required. Consider the following chart, which represents three different continuums of evangelistic skills:

Along the X-axis (horizontal) are dialogic skills. To the left (End-Game Evangelism) are skills helpful in explaining the essence of the gospel to someone who is potentially ready to believe. To the right (Pre-Evangelism) are skills an evangelist would need to explain the gospel to someone whose worldview is incompatible with belief in the gospel. We have historically been a harvesting organization and our staff are well equipped to explain substitutionary atonement to people with a worldview to accept it. We are much less skilled at graciously deconstructing worldviews of those who are not ready.

The Y-axis (vertical) represents the skills useful in ministry mode and natural mode evangelism.

Our evangelism model embraces both, but in our training and skills we lean heavily toward ministry mode. The Z-axis suggests the skills useful in proclaiming and demonstrating the gospel, or as we termed it elsewhere in this report, Good Words and Good Deeds. Good Words are to the fore, and Good Deeds, to the back. As we all know, we have focused primarily on proclamation (Good Words) and our skills reside there. All the skills represented at every point along each axis are valuable, but some skills will find greater usefulness based on the needs of the culture. Indeed, it’s likely that we developed our current expertise in the lower, left, front quadrant specifically because of the needs of the culture at the time of our founding (and through our early years). However, as the culture has changed, the skills needed to effectively reach it have changed as well. Over the years the number of students ready to believe the gospel has shrunk. Some still exist, and our traditional skills will be very helpful to them. However, since we are tasked to reach every student, we need skills to reach every student, including the green majority who are not yet ready to respond in faith to Christ.

“Although our training, affirmation, and measurement are in the RED ZONE, 95% of the 30 students who came to Christ in our studty, came to Christ in the context of the GREEN ZONE.” Howard Levin.

This means we must broaden our capacities to play (and win) at both sides of all three axes. We need to continue to excel in proclaiming the essence of the gospel in ministry mode contexts to those ready to believe. But we also need to learn a whole new set of skills that will help us move Unbelievers toward readiness. We need to learn how to combine Good Deeds with our Good

Words, address incompatible worldviews, and function comfortably in natural mode contexts.

Fortunately, the seeds for what we are proposing already exist within our organization. These seeds need to be watered and fertilized so they can come to maturity in the form of improved skill sets and a new balance in our approaches to evangelism. With great respect to our heritage and hope for our future, we recommend the following steps be taken:

1. Affirm Permission to Sow

From the highest levels of our Mid-Atlantic Leadership (and hopefully in conjunction with our

National Leadership), we must repeatedly articulate authentic permission to be involved in pre-evangelistic/ sowing activities. From speaking with our leadership, we believe staff do have this permission, but they aren’t experiencing it. Our rich heritage, the stories we tell, the metrics we count, and the experiences of Big Break and Summer Projects all speak more loudly than the permission that has been expressed. Our staff need to be persuaded that sowing activities will be regarded as meaningful and valid by their leadership.

2. Adjust the Paradigms

While our evangelism model values ministry, natural, and body modes of evangelism, our default posture tends toward ministry mode. For instance, though CoJourners demonstrates organizational approval of natural mode, many staff and students continue to experience evangelism as an activity performed with strangers. We need to champion new paradigms of reaching the collegians of the Mid-Atlantic (and US) by helping Christians reach those closest to them: their friends and classmates. We know that CCC is famous for crossing barriers into new places, but the truth is that few of our students are even reaching those who sit next to them in class. Given that people who come to Christ do so overwhelmingly in the context of relationships, we need to emphasize reaching those with whom we have the greatest opportunities for influence as we move toward reaching every collegian in our Mid-Atlantic (and US) scope.

3. Assist with Compassion

We should require some type of compassionate activity among our movements at their local address. We are encouraged by the energy being given to this already (e.g. GAiN & one million meals for Haiti at Big Break), but we have a way to go to touch our local movements. For the health of our own hearts, for our perceived image on our campuses, and for the simple fact that Jesus did this, we need to develop expertise in this non-traditional focus. As we grow in demonstrating the love of God, we expect more opportunities to express the love of God.

4. Accelerate Transferability

Part of the genius of Campus Crusade for Christ is our focus on transferability. We must apply that expertise in developing approaches, tools, and training to help our staff and student leaders develop the skills needed to sow and deconstruct/reconstruct worldviews. We have some tools for this, but we need more and better resources to equip students in these complex tasks.

5. Align the Metrics

Metrics must be amended to value pre-evangelistic and sowing activities described above. We believe there is value in motivating, celebrating, and monitoring evangelistic activity that takes place throughout a movement. We must count what both staff and students do across the full range of desirable evangelistic behavior. This measuring can help us to emphasize and value what will most help the lost.

6. Aspire to Dependence

Finally, our intuition says that even if we do all of these things successfully, we are destined for failure apart from an outpouring of God’s Spirit on our campuses. Therefore, we ought to afford ourselves every opportunity to raise up a presence of prayer to the Living God, to thaw the hearts of this generation of collegians and depend on him daily. Unless the Lord builds this house, we labor in vain.

For a full report of Changing Evangelism: Mid-Atlantic SLI, May 13, 2009 see http://changingevangelism.org/changingevangelism.pdf

On September 9 Leadership Network will once again host “The Nines”—an online conference geared to ministry leaders from over 100 ministry leaders, who each will give a 9 minute talk on “Game Changers.” Click on the link to see a brief video: http://thenines.leadnet.org/2010/tweet.html . Shoot! I may even have a one minute video on The Nines. Invite your staff. Order breakfast burritos…then Pizza, then Panda Express for all (It’s a long event.)

Imagine having a lone gunman enter your church property on a Sunday morning and randomly firing into the crowd, killing two beautiful girls in your congregation. That was Pastor Brady Boyd’s game-changer. Those few seconds of gunfire totally changed the future of New Life Church in Colorado Springs.

For Matt Carter, the game-changing moment came a few years back when he was diagnosed with cancer. It changed his whole outlook on life and ministry, and ultimately was a huge factor in the future direction at Austin Stone Community Church in Austin, TX.

And when Brad Powell, the Senior Pastor at NorthRidge Church near Detroit found out that a family that had been attending his church had been brutally murdered just weeks after they gave their lives to Christ, it forever changed the way that Brad viewed the urgency of the message he shares each week.

Game changers.

For Mark Beeson at Granger Community Church in Granger, IN, the game-changing moment was when he determined how he would deal with the critics in his life and ministry.

For Rick Bezet of New Life Church in Conway, AR, it was when ‘the light came on’ as to how New Life could actually be good at reaching the lost.

On September 9, 2010, Leadership Network has gathered over 100 church leaders to share their biggest game changer. They’ll be sharing at a completely online conference we’re calling "The NINES".

September 9, 2010 could also be the day that you discover YOUR game-changer.

For Wayne Cordeiro of New Hope Christian Fellowship in Honolulu, HI, the game changer was when he figured out that sometimes you have to say ‘no’… even to the people you love.

For Miles McPherson of The Rock Church in San Diego, the game-changing realization that he had more ministry potential in the seats of his church than he did on the staff of his church took The Rock to a whole different level!

Game changers.

We hope you’ll join us September 9. 9 hours. 100 speakers. Each with six minutes to share their game-changing moment.

It’s all on your computer screen. It’s all free.

But you must register to attend.

We know that The NINES will be a day of encouragement, a day of learning, and a day that many church leaders across the world will begin to define their own ‘game changer’.

Please join us… and tell everyone you know about this very special opportunity.

(This is a long post but it is fairly worthy…)

For 25 years my wife Liz and I worked in the Campus Ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ. During the ten years we spent in direct student ministry and the 15 years I served in a supervisory role I was frequently vexed by the demographical make-up of our campus ministries. We typically had a ton of Freshmen, fewer Sophomores, even fewer Juniors followed by a dedicated handful of Seniors. A year in which we (or any campus I was aware of) graduated over 20 seniors was a rare thing. Twelve to fifteen graduating seniors was seen as a stellar year. If we what we were doing was so good, why wasn’t the graduating senior class the largest class? Why did a diagram of ministry demographics represent a pyramid?

Perhaps the answer is found in College Guidebooks like Peterson’s Undergraduate Guide: Four-Year Colleges, 2011. One useful piece of information is the percentage of entering Freshmen who actually graduate…or even go on to their Sophomore years. It is not unusual for only 50% of Freshman students return for their second year of college. So the normal attrition can be part of the fault.

But I think there is a bigger issue at hand and it has to do with our (Liz and I are still on Associate Staff with Campus Crusade) approach to students. A long-time adage (though not value) of Crusade has been “Move with the Movers.” So if a student wasn’t interested in going deeper in his or her commitment to Christ we would move on to the next student, who perhaps would be willing to listen more or go deeper. We called this our “filter” system and illustrated it with either a funnel or a four layer wedding cake, with the smaller layer of cake and the smaller part of the funnel, representing the most committed students. I can’t help but think of my dear friends Kurt and Susie Richardson, who in a very cleaver, tongue-in-cheek jester, designed their actual wedding cake, after the figurative “Four-stage Environment” wedding cake. If you look closely you will see, written in white frosting OUTREACH, BIBLE STUDY, TRAINING, ACTION GROUP. Pretty classic….

My observation is that movements cannot be built based on a concept that promotes shrinkage rather than growth. What could we do to invert the pyramid so that each group of students, because of the excitement and life-change they were experiencing, would be inviting their friends to be part of a movement so that each succeeding class was larger than the class before…inverting the pyramid. How could this happen?

We are always looking for the really sharp students who would make great Crusade Staff. We would love for them to join with us on our staff, investing in the eternal and not the temporal. So when we meet a Freshman and ask, “What’s your major?” (or “Do you have a major yet?”) and the Freshman responds, “I’m going to major in journalism” or “I’m planning to major in Engineering,” their answers are most likely met with a tepid response, something like, “Well that’s nice…. Hey I’m starting a Bible study next week and I was wondering if….” Thus begins the filtering process complete with new challenges to lead a group, reach a target audience, etc. (How many staff do you know that said, “Well, I really majored in Crusade when I was in college. I started as an engineer but switched my major to Communication so I’d have more time for ministry.”) In their Junior or Senior year we either invite them to a “Life Options” (Staff Recruitment) Conferences, or have a 1-1 conversation regarding joining with us. At some point we / the presenter draws a line down the middle of a sheet of paper that forms a “Pro-Con” list. On the left-side of the line we write, “ENGINEER.” On the right side we right “MINISTRY” (or some other word that expresses vocational Christian Service). This is followed with questions like, “A thousand years from now, which work will have endured?” “Where would you like to spend the most energetic and productive hours of your day?” etc., etc. Truth is the quiz is rigged. There is only one correct answer. Those that make the choice to go into Christian service love this. This exercise confirms the direction of their lives. But what of those who say, “Yea, I know but I’m still going to be an engineer.” From this point forward the relationship between the staff and student is forever altered. It’s like breaking up with a girlfriend or boyfriend. In spite of the feeble promise that “we’ll always be friends,” the relationship will never be the same. Going forward, its always a bit awkward. Students go away feeling like they let the staff down. And perhaps they find themselves thinking, “Was all that kindness and interest in me just a three-year recruiting pitch?”

Understanding this scenario, helps us interpret why, in spite of the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of students being involved in Crusade, our alumni relationships are so minimal. It seems that those who are most committed to Crusade as alumni were least involved as students. “Yea, my Senior Year this guy came and spoke in our fraternity and I got involved in a house Bible study and went to Daytona (or Panama City) over Spring Break with Crusade and learned to share my faith. Man it was great!” He never was recruited to staff…never had the conversation…he just graduated and got on with his life.

Now let’s create a different scenario….one that takes kingdom thinking and domain thinking into our equation.

Scenario #1

“What’s your major?”

“Journalism.”

“Wow! Do you know that it is ideas that change the world and there has never been a movement of God without those are able to cast the vision and articulate a plan. I’ve got a Bible study going with students who relate to the written and spoken word—Philosophy majors, English Lit majors, Communication majors, etc. Each week we not only study the Bible and pray for one another but we also take what we are learning in school and connect it to what God wants to do in our world. We’re working on a project that…”

Scenario #2

“What’s your major?”
“Engineering.”

“Wow! Do you realize that nearly every major problem the world is facing from clean water, energy use, housing, transportation, etc. has an engineering solution? I’ve got a group of students from different environmental, design and engineering majors. Each week we not only study the Bible and pray for one another but we also are working on a two-year project to design and build a simple house, that uses renewable energy that can be built, using local materials, in nearly any country in the world for under $2,500. You want to join with us?”

Most likely students could group their majors around the 7 domains (See To Transform a City: Whole Church, Whole Gospel, Whole City. Swanson and Williams, Zondervan (2010)) of Business, Government, Education, Arts & Entertainment, Media, Family and Religion. Sometime during their Junior year (or earlier) they could be introduced to kingdom-minded leaders, from the city, from each of these domains that would serve as ad hoc mentors to these students. (Talk about building a robust alumni network!)

Students begin inviting their friends to be part of such groups. “…well the best thing I do during the week is a group I belong to that is changing the world. What are you doing on Tuesdays from 3-6?” (We also become their parent’s best friends as we are encouraging these students to excel in their majors!)

Eventually one of the students asks the staff, “Hey, what is it that you actually do?” The staff responds, “Oh, I’ve got the greatest job in the world. I connect passionate people from the different domains to fix everything that is broken in our world—everything that sin destroyed and God wants to restore—our relationship with God, with ourselves, to one another and to our planet.”

“Well, I think I’d like a job like yours…”

“No, I think you need to stick with business. You don’t want to raise your own support….”

“Yea, but I really think I do….”

Those that join with us really join with us with the majority of students graduating and figuring out how, not just to have start a Bible study for business people but how to transform business from a kingdom perspective.

Thinking in this manner reflects that we understand the difference between vocation and occupation. Vocation is our calling. Occupation is what we do to support that calling. The Scriptures tell us we have one triune calling. We are “called” to three things:

1. We are called to belong to Jesus Christ (Romans 1:6)

2. We are called to be holy—conformed to his likeness (1 Corinthians 1:2)

3. We are called to ministry (Acts 13:2)

The apostle Paul for instance had one call on his life but how he supported that call varied from time and circumstance. In Acts 18:3-5 Paul stayed with Priscilla and Aquilla and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them. Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.

[BUT] When Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ.

If he had to work as a tentmaker he did so and did his ministry on the weekends but when Silas and Timothy joined him he kicked up his involvement in ministry. One calling…several occupations.

The solution to the Great Commission is not more full-time laborers but rather it is teaching and helping people in every domain live out their kingdom calling.

This week I started reading (well, listening to it on my iPhone) a book called The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. In the introduction to the book, the author, William Rosen cites A. P. Usher from his 1929 book The History of Mechanical Inventions. In this work Usher defines four steps of every invention:

1. Awareness of an unfulfilled need;

2. Recognition of something contradictory or absent in existing attempts to meet that need, which Usher called “an incomplete pattern”;

3. An all-at-once insight about the pattern; and

4. A process of “critical revision” during which the insight is tested, refined and perfected.

Hmmmmmm. Pretty good stuff. Here was my immediate response to his four steps.

1. Awareness of an unfulfilled need; This past year and a half…wherever I have gone I have asked those I am addressing, “Who wants to change the world?…Please raise your hand.” And every hand goes up.

2. Recognition of something contradictory or absent in existing attempts to meet that need, which Usher called “an incomplete pattern”; Building upon what I have asked in my first question, I usually add this caveat: “Everyone wants to change the world but isn’t it sad how few people are regularly given the opportunity to do so?” Only about 6 percent of the population are self-initiators so though everyone wants to change the world, there is too much inertia to overcome to create movement and change. Very few people are really helping others change the world.

3. An all-at-once insight about the pattern; What if the church…yes your church became that place where everyone was regularly given opportunities to engage the world in such a way so that the world would be different because of him or her? What if people could invite people to church with invitation, “Come help us change the world” or better yet “Come to our church…we’ll help you change the world.” What if your one “success criteria” or measurement was this: At the end of the year, everyone has a story of how he or she changed the world—in ways great or small. Changing the world might be leading someone to faith in Christ or teaching a third-grader how to read. The point is everyone would have a story. Now what if you took those thousand stories and posted them on your Website—maybe a minute each. What if you regularly showed those stories when you gathered? The new norm would be “everybody has a story to tell of how they changed the world.”

4. A process of “critical revision” during which the insight is tested, refined and perfected. Of course you would refine and test…maybe not perfect—life’s too messy for that but it would be a great process to be engaged in.

Rosen, William. The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. New York, Random House (2010) P. xx

A couple of months ago I came across an article in Harvard Business Review entitled, “You Are What You Measure” (June 2010, p. 38). The author, Dan Ariely argued quite persuasively that CEOs of publically traded companies are measured by one thing—stock (shareholder) value. This measure drives behavior and performance. Ariely  convincingly states, “If we want to change what CEOs care about, we should change what we measure.” For credibility he writes, “…psychologists and economists…tell you… “Anything you measure will impel a person to optimize his score on that metric. What you measure is what you get. Period.” Now check out his all-too-real illustration! “Give someone frequent flyer miles, and he’ll fly in absurd ways to optimize his miles.” OK…time for a confession. Several years ago when I was flying to Orlando and back I would buy what were called “nested tickets”—considered a “no-no” by the airlines, but a great way to by-pass the “to get a discount you must stay over a Saturday night” rule. Basically you would use the front end of DEN-MCO going and the front end of MCO-DEN of another ticket for the return flight. One would then use the return segments for a completely different trip. One time I booked the back end tickets over spring break and took the needless flight to Orlando to get the miles and with the chance I might get bumped. The metric drove my (pathological) behavior. 

Ariely continues: “To change CEO’s behavior, we need to change the numbers we measure…. What are those numbers? … Here are a few choices: How many new jobs have been created at your firm.? How strong is your pipeline of new patents? How satisfied are your customers? Your employees? What’s the trust in your company and brand? How much carbon dioxide did you emit?”

Ariely talks about CEOs but what about pastors. Our “stock price” is usually measured in attendance and giving. We end up valuing what we measure as much as I valued and measured frequent flyer miles. If we value what we measure, what would happen if we changed what we measure? Back in March my friend Rick Rusaw and I released a book called The Externally Focused Quest: Becoming the Best Church FOR the Community. In the title we were attempting to change the scorecard. Every church has the same resources at its disposal—people (including leaders), facilities, budget, time, technology and prayer. Pastors can either use those resources to attempt to become the best church IN the community or use them to attempt to become the best church FOR the community. The preposition changes everything. Here’s an excerpt from our book: In June 2008, W. David Phillips posted an entry on his blog (http://www.wdavidphillips.com)) titled “Measuring Success in Ministry” David reflected on a question Len Sweet had posed in his doctoral class regarding “metaphors that will describe how we measure success in the church in the future.” Eschewing the traditional measurements of how many, how often and how much, here is the list the class (with a few later additions from David) came up with:

1. The number of cigarette butts in the church parking lot

2. The number of adoptions people in the church have made from local foster care

3. The number of pictures on the church wall of unwed mothers holding their newborn babies in their arms for the first time

4. The number of classes for special needs children and adults

5. The number of former convicted felons serving in the church

6. The number of phone calls from community leaders asking the church’s advice

7. The number of meetings that take place somewhere besides the church building

8. The number of organizations using the church building

9. The number of days the pastor doesn’t spend time in the church office but in the community

10. The number of emergency finance meetings that take place to reroute money to community ministry

11. The amount of dollars saved by the local schools because the church has painted the walls

12. The number of people serving in the community during the church’s normal worship hours

13. The number of non-religious-school professors worshiping with you

14. The number of people wearing good, free clothes that used to belong to members of the church

15. The number of times the church band has played family-friendly music in the local coffee shop

16. The number of people who have gotten better because of free health clinic you operate

17. The number of people in new jobs thanks to the free job training center you opened

18. The number of micro-loans given by members in your church

19. The number of churches your church planted in a 10 mile radius of your own church

I’m not suggesting these are these are the right measurements for your church but there are better measurements that you could discover and embrace and let them be something you and God really value because you will…at the end of the day…value what you measure.

On Friday my good friends, Jay and Laurie Lorenzen, came over to our house for a back deck meeting with a few friends to talk about a Four Chapter Gospel presentation he’d been working on while in Haiti. A thicker, 4-Chapter gospel begins w/ God making everything beautiful. Chapter two is about sin–Sin, man’s rebellion against God changes everything. Nothing is the way it is supposed to be. Our relationship with God, self, others and creation itself was marred. Chapter 3 is about redemption through Jesus. Colossians 1:19 reminds us that everything that was lost in the Fall was redeemed at the cross. Chapter 4 is about restoration–that God is inviting us to partner with him to restore all the areas of our world that are broken…that Jesus died to restore. Here is where we submit to the King and join him in the adventure of restoration.

I like Reggie McNeal’s definition of "missional," which fits well here: "The people of God, partnering with God,in his redemptive mission in the world." I’ve been thinking for a while now (and wrote about it in The Externally Focused Quest) that for everything that is broken in the world, God has put within people the desire to fix it…to restore it… to save it. "Maybe the world breaks on purpose so we have work to do." Some people want to save people, others want to save souls and others want to save the planet. Wanting to restore what is broken is just part of the way God made us.

N.T. Wright in Simply Christian says that every human being hears four “echoes” of God’s voice. Each human being has a desire for spirituality, relationships, justice and beauty. They want to be part of making things right because they feel, "it just shouldn’t be this way.” Good theology is found in the Scriptures but it is illustrated in real life. Take a look at this YouTube video (produced by Levi Strauss) and see how it fits within your kingdom theology.

On Friday my good friends, Jay and Laurie Lorenzen, came over to our house for a back deck meeting with a few friends to talk about a Four Chapter Gospel presentation he’d been working on while in Haiti. A thicker, 4-Chapter gospel begins w/ God making everything beautiful. Chapter two is about sin–Sin, man’s rebellion against God changes everything. Nothing is the way it is supposed to be. Our relationship with God, self, others and creation itself was marred. Chapter 3 is about redemption through Jesus. Colossians 1:19 reminds us that everything that was lost in the Fall was redeemed at the cross. Chapter 4 is about restoration–that God is inviting us to partner with him to restore all the areas of our world that are broken…that Jesus died to restore. Here is where we submit to the King and join him in the adventure of restoration. I like Reggie McNeal’s definition of “missional,” which fits well here: “The people of God, partnering with God,in his redemptive mission in the world.” I’ve been thinking for a while now (and wrote about it in The Externally Focused Quest) that for everything that is broken in the world, God has put within people the desire to fix it…to restore it… to save it. “Maybe the world breaks on purpose so we have work to do.” Some people want to save people, others want to save souls and others want to save the planet. Wanting to restore what is brokens is just part of the way God made us. N.T. Wright in Simply Christian says that every human being hears for echoes of God’s voice. Each human being has a desire for spirituality, relationships, justice and beauty. They want to be part of making things right because they feel, “it just shouldn’t be this way. Good theology is found in the Scriptures but it is illustrated in real life. Take a look at this YouTube video (produced by Levi Strauss) and see how it fits within your kingdom theology.

One of the things we try to consistently do at Leadership Network is to take advantage of the different styles of adult learning. Some people learn from listening, some from seeing, some from sensing and others from doing. Some people learn reflectively, others learn from verbal processing. I have a friend who consistently says, “I don’t know what I believe until I say it.”

At our Leadership Community gatherings leaders normally express “what is,” “what could be” and “what will be” with pictures and models. Relationships are seen through such pictures and models. We also employ an artist who scribes all verbal presentations which, for visual learners is a God-send. We believe as Aristotle did: “The soul never thinks without a picture.”

This past week a friend sent me a link to presentations produced by

http://www.cognitivemedia.co.uk/wp/.

The first is a scribed presentation on “Drive” by Daniel Pink. You’ll be surprised to discover how reward is not necessarily related to production. The second is called “The Secret Powers of Time” which is insightful for understanding how people / cultures understand time. It also may be a format that you may want to explore for your own presentations. Click on the above link to view this insightful presentation:

Yesterday I picked up my latest issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review (Spring 2010). I’ve found this publication to be most valuable in understanding the best thinking of what people are doing to solve the world’s big problems. One of the best articles in this issue was titled, All Entrepreneurship is Social by Carl Schramm. Here’s the premise of this insightful article. Schramm writes, One danger, however, is that the use of the modifier social will diminish the contributions of regular entrepreneurs—that is, people who create new companies and then grow them to scale. In the course of doing business as usual, these regular entrepreneurs create thousands of jobs, improve the quality of goods and services available to consumers, and ultimately raise standards of living. Indeed, the intertwined histories of business and health in the United States suggests that all entrepreneurship is social entrepreneurship. The pantheon of model social entrepreneurs should thus include names such as railroad baron Cornelius Vanderbilt, meatpacking magnate Gustavus Swift, and software tycoon Bill Gates. When we think about the three sectors of every society (Private Sector (business), Public Sector (government), and Social Sector (religious and human service organizations), it is the Private Sector that funds the other two sectors. It is the robustness of business that makes a society thrive. Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus notes, “Income is the best medicine.” I often say (quoting someone else, whose name escapes me), “There is no social program like a full-time job with benefits.” Sometimes, as church people, all we acknowledge is those who are good at church work. As we begin to think more missionally and more about the kingdom and domains of society it’s time to begin to appreciate those among us who create jobs and livelihoods. What would it be like to regularly acknowledge, thank and honor those in your church who create jobs and employ people? Help connect their story to God’s bigger kingdom story. Not only is all entrepreneurship social but most entrepreneurship can be spiritual.

We are very grateful for the endorsements we received from a few key leaders who read pre-released copies of The Externally Focued Quest.

I started a casual reading of this book, then couldn’t put it down, then decided my whole leadership team needed to read it with me. This book won’t just change your ministry; it will change the world around you.

Dr. Joel C. Hunter, Senior Pastor
Northland – A Church Distributed
Longwood, Florida

I read the book today. it took me all day but I loved every minute of it! First of all, it is a fantastic book, chock full of pertinent ideas and it leaves you with a heart for the globe that is fresh and vibrant! “The Externally Focused Quest is a must read for every follower of Christ today. Like me, you will come away with a heart bursting with fresh vision for the world outside the four walls of your church. I am making this a required reading for students in the colleges I oversee. It will challenge and dismantle your excuses; then it will inspire you, instruct you, and compel you to action. I am different for having read this book.”

Dr. Wayne Cordeiro, Senior Pastor
New Hope Community Church
Honolulu, Hawaii

My friends Eric Swanson and Rick Rusaw continue to challenge the church to look outward–to join Jesus on his mission in a hurting world, and to show and share the love of Christ. If you are serious about being the church for your community, this book will help provides the insight and tools you need to make it happen.

Ed Stetzer,
President of LifeWay Research

I am a big fan of Swanson and Rusaw. They are helping the church become what she has been destined for – to be outwardly focused. This is another great book that will help you get beyond yourself.
Steve Sjogren, Author, Missional Leader

I just finished reading The Externally Focused Question, and I LOVED it. Here is my endorsement—use whatever of it you would like: “Wake up, Church, and read the challenges of our world as opportunities for the church. We are called to serve, and at no time in history has the church had such amazing opportunities to be a transformative presence in the world. In The Externally Focused Quest, Swanson and Rusaw set our hearts on fire for becoming the church that will change the world, and then provide concrete examples of how to begin wherever you are in the church and the world. Swanson and Rusaw are redefining the church to be not simply a group of people who believe the same things but a group of people who are on a mission together as big as the world we are called to serve.
Diana Garland, Dean School of Social Work, Baylor University

Building on the already significant insights from their previous writings, Eric and Rick blend years of direct leadership experience with great theological insights and a real heart for missional impact, and so concoct up a really good book for our time. Our appropriate compliment ought to be to follow their advice, move into our communities, and transform them in Jesus name.
–Alan Hirsch, missional author, dreamer, and strategist (www.theforgottenways.org)

Or you can order a copy from Amazon at 34% off. Here’s a link to the Amazon page: The Externally Focused Quest