Love this video that Michael Allen (an intern on our team) made.

I love how it captures young faith. The only “old” leader is a sophomore. All the others are freshmen who are trusting God to take a step of faith and lead a study next year (actually there’s one junior girl who will be leading for the first time).

We showed it at our weekly meeting to encourage students to lead next fall.

Here’s our online application that we are having students fill out (nothing fancy – just a google form).

The new age of marketing is great news for college ministry.

Two reasons:

• Advertising is almost completely free
• It’s highly dependent on peer relationships

Every year we spend less and less on traditional advertising.

When I first came on staff with Cru we would spend hundreds of dollars on a single ad in the School Newspaper. Even as recently as 3 years ago we invested thousands on yard signs, facebook ads, and posters around campus.

Now we almost exclusively do free “advertising” on Facebook and peer-to-peer word of mouth.

This graphic does a great job summarizing this new era of Horizontal Marketing. It’s well worth clicking to read the full infographic (graphic via @mcryanmac who tweeted “This has very interesting implications for how evangelism on campus moves forward”).

“Horizonal marketing means creating a remarkable product and story and setting it up to spread from person to person.” – Seth Godin

I want to take a few posts and figure out together what this new era of marketing looks like in College Ministry.

Here’s where we’re headed in the next few posts:

1) What are we marketing?

• Cru (or church or whatever Christian group)
• or Jesus

2) Applying Horizontal Marketing to College Ministry

• Using social media for marketing
• Peer to peer marketing
• How can we make it easier for students to talk about what they’re up to and what they care about?

Let’s get the ball rolling:

What are some implications you see of how we apply Horizontal Marketing in college ministry?

I’ve got two new indie music mixes for your listening enjoyment in honor of Valentine’s Day:

Indie Love Songs

and

Not-So-In-Love-Songs 

(How can you not love lyrics like The National’s “It doesn’t work that way: Wanting not to want you doesn’t make it so”.

Let’s face it. Indie Music is basically 90% not-so-in-love heartbreak songs.)

Click on the title above to play it in Spotify (a free music service that is is definitely worth your time to download!).

Click “subscribe” at the top of Spotify if you want to add a playlist to your sidebar of lists.

Would love to hear from you: what are your favorite Love Songs and Not-So-In-Love-Songs?

photo courtesy of Leah Tihia™

Every week we start our staff meeting with sharing: “How have you seen God at work on campus this week?”. Always my favorite part of the meeting! But we recently realized that most of that good news of God at work is staying within the four walls of our staff meeting.

As we celebrated how God is working, we never took the time to pass on our excitement to the students whom God is using.

So recently we tweaked our schedule a little:

• After we spend about 30 minutes sharing
• we praise God in prayer for a bit
• THEN we spend 10 minutes texting students our team has shared about.

And we make sure that someone other than the staff that’s discipling them (or knows them best) texts them. Hopefully they’re frequently hearing encouragement from their discipler but sometimes it means even more coming from someone else.

An example that I texted to a student this week:

“Hey man. We were just celebrating as a team what God is doing on campus and Jon shared how encouraged he’s been by your passionate perseverance in prayer! So cool that you sacrificially serve in praying for Cru every week (and that you’re leading so many to pray with you)!”

This small investment of time has been huge in helping us be more intentional in encouraging students and saying “what you are doing is significant”.

Would love to hear from you other ideas you have to be intentional in encouraging those you serve in ministry.

photo courtesy of Stephan Geyer

The Motive for Evangelism

The first step toward leading people to become evangelists is to lead them to the waters of the Gospel.

If Jesus isn’t good news to us then we’ll never think He’s good news for others

A willingness to speak comes from a heart that is smitten by the only person in the universe worth talking about, and possibly looking foolish for.

When someone becomes a Christian, we make a big deal about it. We announce it on Sundays. . .we announce it on the web . . . we talk about it constantly. Many Christians report never having seen someone become a Christian before coming to our church. It is extremely encouraging for them to see something supernatural like someone “gittin saved.”

In celebrating someone’s conversion, we are celebrating evangelism. People need to know, especially in the Bible Belt, where Christianity is a cultural relic, that the Holy Spirit is alive and well, making disciples and building God’s Kingdom, and that they themselves can be a part of it. This celebration has awakened many to tell others about Jesus for the first time in their lives. Literally, evangelism begets evangelists.

Click to read the entire article.

Application for us (on this last part): at our weekly meeting we’ve started showing weekly videos of students experiencing life change).

The Method of Evangelism

Why you need to learn and memorize a clear way of explaining the gospel. A good apologetic on why you should learn a gospel tract (among other things).

A friend suddenly says to you, “Okay, tell me what this Christianity stuff is all about.” What would you say? Could you explain the gospel clearly in that moment?

Here’s the deal: if you think when the moment finally comes and your friend is ready to listen, that the gospel will flow “instinctively” and smoothly off your lips because, after all, you’ve been a Christian for years, you are wrong! It will come out of your mouth and fall on the floor in a muddled mess.

To be effective witnesses we must work at being able to take what we know in our heads and hearts and clearly express it out of our mouths.

Similar thinking (that’s verbalized in this article) has led me in recent years to a newfound love for the Knowing God Personally tract.

Strongly encourage you to read the entire article.

HT to @pablonunez for tweeting about this article – hooray for Twitter!

What are your takeaways from these two articles?

photo courtesy of . SantiMB .

One thing I wish people would share more of is what sermons they’ve listened to recently that they enjoyed.

So in the spirit of the Golden Rule . . .

Here are some sermons I’ve listened to recently that I loved. I’m talking mind-blowing.

Leave a comment and share with all of us what great sermons you’ve listened to recently.

Ranked in order of awesomeness:

Beau Hughes – Learning Contentment (click to go to download/read the transcript – also available in The Village Podcast feed)

Skipped right over this on the Village podcast because, well, it wasn’t Matt Chandler. And Beau is definitely not Matt Chandler. In style, probably his polar opposite. Kind of like Keller (at least in this sermon), somehow enthralling despite its dry delivery.

• I think it’s good for us to be sobered by how horrible our discontentment is. It’s not just a respectable sin that we can deal with here and there.
• Contentment= Our highest ambition is to be the Lord’s and to be at His disposal
• The first sin in the Bible is mankind being discontent with the blessings of God.
• Discontentment erodes worship, rejects ministry and hinders joyful obedience.
• It’s really hard to follow someone that you don’t trust, and it’s even harder to follow someone with whom you are angry. So discontentment is not the soil that joyful obedience grows in. Do you think you’re going to be obedient to God when you’re frustrated with Him and you don’t trust Him?

Tim Keller – Marriage as Commitment (click to go to podcast in iTunes)

So good (and I assume he unpacks a lot of this in his book that is still sitting on my night stand waiting to be read)

• Marriage is a commitment first, and a feeling second
• Marriage requires the ability to hear criticism without being crushed
• The ability to give criticism without crushing
• God takes your selfishness in marriage and uses it against you for your own good
• You finally have to come to grips with your sin/selfishness because its ruining your life in your marriage. For the first time in your life, you can’t run

Matt Chandler – A Call to Pray (click to go to download/read the transcript – also available in The Village Podcast feed)

This is how to give a talk on prayer

• The main issue in our prayerlessness is we have a problem believing and grasping that God likes us, enjoys us and delights in us.
• “Do you think God delights in, rejoices in and enjoys you right now?”
• I do not think that you struggle with believing that God likes you ten years from now. Because you ten years from now is awesome.
• “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden.”
• You’ve got to hear this invitation as it relates to prayer. Because the invitation isn’t, “Start doing what’s right.” The invitation is, “Come to Me. You’re not doing what’s right.” So the solution to what ails us, what weighs heavy on us and what exhausts us is not us trying harder at overcoming those things, but it’s rather us coming to Jesus, walking with Jesus, being in a relationship with Jesus that overpowers our affection for the struggle.
• It’s, “Come to Me. Are you a train wreck? Come here. Are you broken? Are you stuck in lust? Are you stuck in anger? Are you stuck in fear? Get over here!”

Tim Keller – The Story of the Lamb  (click to go to podcast in iTunes)

Keller helps us “Behold the lamb of God” through unpacking one of THE dominant threads of the Bible.

Brilliant in making clear (even to a secular mind) the need for substitutionary atonement.

Tim Keller – God With Us (click to go to podcast in iTunes)

A Christmas message that matters all year long. Tim Keller takes a sometimes trite phrase “God with us” and makes it come alive. Why “God with us” should excite and transform us.

Share the wealth – what great sermons have you listened to recently?

Quick background: We’ve noticed that our student leaders are great at doing ministry but not great at recruiting new leaders to join with us (whether that’s to Winter Conference, Summer Project, to our weekly leadership time, or even initiating with new people at Cru).

So we’re seeking to create a culture where Leaders not only do ministry but act as mobilizers.

Kind of like “Teach them how to fish”,

“Be a Barnabas” is sticky – it vividly and memorably captures what a leader does.

Just wanted to share for others to be able to use/adapt for their leadership times.

Here’s my notes:

• Tell me everything you know about Paul [greatest missionary ever, wrote most of the New Testament, persecutor, dramatic conversion, etc.]
• Now tell me everything you know about Barnabus [not much- the only response from students: “he was an encourager”]
• Lets read Acts 9:26-31; 11:19-26
• What did Barnabas do in each of these situations?
• Barnabas sought out Paul, Barnabas brought Paul to stuff
• He saw something in Paul that others did not
• He gave Paul his start and connected Paul to a missional community that eventually sent him out to become the greatest missionary the world has ever seen
• Paul’s influence/impact far exceed Barnabas’
• God may have you here at the University of Arkansas, leading a freshman Bible study, to raise up 3 missionaries to Ethiopia. To raise up the next great leader whom God will use to bring revival to this campus.
• Your job as a leader is to get as many people on the playing field (doing ministry) as possible.
• To not only lead for Christ but to raise up as many leaders as possible.
• To be a Barnabas – To raise up the next Paul.

“Sir Humphry Davy was a distinguished chemist of the nineteenth century. When asked late in life what he considered to be his greatest discovery, he replied, ‘Michael Faraday.’

Davy had found Faraday, the ignorant son of a blacksmith, taking notes at his lectures and longing to study science. As Davy began to teach young Faraday, he found a brilliant mind that promised to eclipse even his own achievements. He knew that no one discovery of his could possibly compare with the many discoveries Faraday would make.”

- From Tim Elmore’s book Nurturing the Leader within your child

What sticky metaphors/ideas/phrases do you use to create a missional culture?

photo courtesy of  Lawrence OP

The critiques have been pouring in on the very popular video “Why I hate religion but love Jesus” (you can watch it below).

Mega-blogger Justin Taylor tweeted this good perspective:

• in 6 days 12 million people have watched @JeffuhsonBethke’s “Why I hate religion” video.
• In 10 months 650,000 watched the Love Wins trailer.

Several differences in the two firestorms:

• Love Wins was an internal fight among Christians.
• Why I Hate Religion has reached viral status among the broader world.
• Love Wins was justifiably critiqued. It’s pretty much heresy.
• The Why I hate religion but love Jesus video is not flawless in its wording but it’s a great attempt at evangelism

Tullian Tchividjian responds to the critics with, I think, a very helpful correction that’s well worth the read.

I’ve found that in college ministry our main battle is definitely what Tullian writes: that the gospel is “going to have to be distinguished from religion because “religion” is what most people outside the church think Christianity is all about—rules and . . . cleaning yourself up and politics . . . and self-salvation”

Cru’s “Changing Evangelism” research project found an interesting pattern among most non-Christians:

“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 . . .

When in fact, most 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. 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.”

I have found that when you talk to most college students about Jesus they will immediately think you are talking about religion and they will dismiss you out of hand (and won’t hear anything you’re saying). On our campus, one of our chief goals in evangelism is to contrast religion with the gospel (a la Tim Keller: “there are three ways to approach God: Religion, Irreligion, and the Gospel; which makes me think – what does Keller think about all this fuss?? and how come people are lining up to criticize this video when no one has taken on Keller for his use of “religion” as the word to represent a moralistic approach to God).

I think the “Why I hate religion” video, while not perfect, definitely creates tension to where a person might for the first time think:

“Maybe I don’t really understand Christianity and the gospel.”

And that’s a great place to start.

To be fair, I have tremendous respect for guys like Kevin Deyoung and others who have criticized the video. And Kevin, et al, have some valid (though I’d say relatively minor) quibbles.

And you should definitely read Kevin Deyoung’s post where Jeff Bethke, the creator of the “I hate religion” video writes to Kevin to thank him (with incredible humility) for his loving critique:

“If I redid the video tomorrow, I’d keep the overall message, but would articulate, elaborate, and expand on the parts where my words and delivery were chosen poorly. . . thankful for your words and more importantly thankful for your tone and fatherly like grace on me as my elder”

But one commenter on Tullian’s post says it well:

“This young man should have received a pat on the back, instead he got thrown under the bus by a lot of people who should have known better. Props to him for boldly speaking about Christ in a public medium. Not to mention taking all of the criticism in a humble, teachable way.”

As the saying goes: No one has ever built a monument to a critic.

Or to paraphrase another of my favorite sayings: I like the way Jeff is sharing the gospel better than the way they’re not (not saying they don’t share their faith. There just seems to be far more concern for semantics than passion for the lost).

He made a very well produced video that obviously connected with a lot of people (presumably a lot of whom were non-Christians) and created tension on a critical issue, hopefully awakening many to the fact that they really do not understand the amazing news of the gospel.

What are your thoughts?

How do you get through to students/others who hear “religion” when you say “Jesus”?

Me: “How was fishing this morning?”

Brother-in-law: “Um, it was fun in a different way. It was a lot of work.”

Me: “What do you mean?”

Brother in law:

“Well, I never got to fish. I took a friend and his kids out fishing.

They’d never been fishing before so I spent the whole time baiting their hooks, netting their fish they caught, retrieving fishing poles the kids dropped overboard. So it wasn’t fun per se. More rewarding than fun- but so fun to see their faces as they caught their first fish.”

 If you’re not growing the number of small group leaders:

• You either have a problem on the front end – involving more freshmen
• Or on the back end – of identifying and developing leaders

I think the converse holds true:

If you’re not growing the number of freshmen involved, you are not raising up enough small group leaders (we count “involved” as # of freshmen in Bible studies).

Either way, the focus remains: I think the primary win for the spring is growing the number of small group leaders who will lead in the fall (here are some thoughts on how we plan to do that).

80/6*2=28

Let’s say we want to involve 80 freshmen in the fall. We need to work backward from there:

• If an average study has 6 students in it. . . we need 14 successful freshmen studies
• If each study has 2 co-leaders, at the very least we need to have 28 students leading freshmen studies
• So our goal for the spring should be to raise up 28 freshman Bible study leaders

It’s been said: “Good falls begin in the spring.”

Would love to hear: What is your team doing this spring in order to have a good fall?