If you have not then please consider reading, commenting, and sharing at least once this year! The Blogference brings together ministry leaders from around the world to discuss relevant ministry issues. By leaving a comment and sharing your thoughts you create a diverse and energizing experience for leaders seeking to have an influence for Christ around the world!

The Topics This Year:

• Virtual Evangelism–A Personal Story

• Virtual Ministry–A Challenge

• Evangelism and Latinos

• Leading as  a Mom

• How Social Media is Influencing Culture and Changing the Church

• Thriving at College

• Missional Campus Ministry

• Spiritual Leadership

• Leading Strategically

• 50 Year Olds and 20 Year Olds–One of Campus Crusade’s Biggest Internal Challenges

To Participate the Blogference:

Randy Newman has served in ministry with college students, the Pentagon, and various churches in addition to publishing Questioning Evangelism, which helps non-evangelists do the work of evangelists.

What sorts of challenges are you facing in evangelism? What are you learning about the culture to whom you are ministering? What questions do you have that could make you more effective?

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.

But thanks to the creativity and efforts of Paul Eshleman and others the Jesus Film was produced, translated into over 1000 languages and shown in every country in the world.

Some years back the US Campus Ministry published a book which catalogued 280 strategies and materials which were effective in reaching college students at that time. I think almost all of them were developed by people just like you – people who were discovering better ways to reach people by trying new things.

So, let me encourage you to keep innovating: try new tools, develop your own or alter the existing ones. You understand your audience better than anyone else. And I am guessing you have already seen some areas of your ministry where you could bring new thinking.

Consider Facebook and YouTube as you dream. Consider other new media platforms and technology. By all means seek to improve existing tools. I am praying for you during this blogference, and as you trust God for more and innovative ideas to reach the lost.

Steve Douglass leads Campus Crusade for Christ with a passion for ministry built over nearly 4 decades of service. Campus Crusade for Christ is a worldwide, interdenominational Christian evangelism and discipleship organization, founded by Bill and Vonette Bright in 1951.

You can read his blog by clicking here.

Follow Steve on Twitter by clicking here.

Certainly if you are on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ like I am, then you have personally witnessed the Four Spiritual Laws, or its newer cousin, the Knowing God Personally (KGP) booklet, bear much fruit.  Perhaps you are even willing to say yes to those two questions after thinking of the 4-Laws/KGP.

But what if our culture, by and large, is so diverse now, and the spiritual beliefs of people are so diverse now, that it is actually unhelpful for today’s CCC staff (or anyone) to think of a “right” or “best” way to share the gospel?  What if what we most need for today’s students is to have a spirit of innovation in regards to how to share the one true message of the gospel?  This is exactly what some of the leaders on evangelism inside and outside of CCC are arguing today.

In May of 2009 the CCC Mid-Atlantic Region commissioned a group of senior staff to do an intense study on the state of evangelism within Campus Crusade movements.  This study can be found at http://www.changingevangelism.org/.  I highly, highly encourage everyone to read through it.  I think it is actually a tragedy this study hasn’t circulated CCC more.  Either way, here are two things they highly recommended our National & Regional leadership must do:

1. “Acknowledge at major events and in major communications that our traditional evangelistic methods are not sufficient to reach every student in the American campus culture.”
2. “Invest energy in communicating, even overcommunicating, why we must have an expansion of our evangelistic skills.”

And pastor and missiologist Tim Keller writes (in an article that is up on CCC’s Cru Press Green website):

“No one form of the gospel gives all the various aspects of the full gospel the same emphasis. If, then, you only preach one form, you are in great danger of giving your people an unbalanced diet of gospel-truth. What is the alternative? Don’t preach just one gospel form.”

So what should we do then?  I propose that CCC adopt the spirit of the Apostle Paul in his ministry to various cultures:

“For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might WIN more of them…I have become ALL things to ALL people, that by ALL means I might save some.  I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.” 1 Corinthians 9:19, 22b-23 (emphasis mine)

For the sake of the gospel, Paul became all things to all people and adapted the gospel differently depending on the audience he had.  He tells us he does this so he might “win more of them” and “that by all means I might save some.”

We have such an amazing heritage of evangelism within Campus Crusade for Christ.  Let’s continue this rich tradition by leading the charge in innovation in evangelism beyond one tool or one method, like the Apostle Paul himself.

We must train students effectively to live missionally.

As we are convinced that a relationship with Jesus Christ is the only solution to the world’s brokenness, we can then encourage others to be burdened with compassion for their campus and friends.

Besides teaching students about the heart of evangelism, there are two things we must do to mobilize them to live missionally. First, equip students with training. Second, take them with us regularly to share our faith. And 9 times out of 10, this means ministry mode evangelism.

These might seem like no-brainers, but often the latter is an after-thought in our busy ministry schedules.

1)  Equip Students to Listen, Ask Good Questions, and Communicate the Gospel.

We all know this generation of university students is hard to reach. Many arrive from broken homes and are searching for anything that will give them love and life. The average student does not come from a churched background and is confused about the concept of truth. Oftentimes the conversation must begin with the mere existence of God.

In order to reach every student, we need to train ourselves and our students how to dialogue about God’s love and grace. Learning how to listen, asking reflective questions, and communicating what we believe and why are the needed skills. Only then can we move out of the paralysis of reaching a post-modern world.

Sometimes we have to start the training at square one.

• How do we listen to others for the purpose of understanding?
• How do we create moments when we allow people to share vulnerably about their opinions and hurts?
• How do we ask thoughtful, reflective questions about their faith obstacles?
• How do we share our thoughts without shutting the other person down?

Besides teaching our students to ask wonderful questions and listen well, we must also teach them how to ask for permission to transition to more of a “gospel presentation.”

Personally, I use many different transitions. Here are just a few: “It sounds like you might be interested in learning a little more about God. Could I take a minute to share with you what the Bible has to say about knowing God personally?” or “Hmmm, those are really challenging obstacles of faith and definitely worth investigating more. Supposing there might just be a God who loves you, could I share with you what He is offering you today?” or “You said you believe Jesus was a great leader and a good teacher. Could I share with you some things he had to say when he was here?”

More often than not, people answer these questions with a “yes” when they feel heard and loved.

And of course, we must train our students to communicate the actual content of the gospel. I don’t mean using Soularium, a survey or showing a video (all of which are good ways to start spiritual conversations), but I mean these points: God, man, Christ, response.

• Are those we lead able to communicate the gospel with words and Scripture?
• Do they know how to transition the conversation to gospel content?

Knowing God Personally booklets are as straight-forward as you get. Some people may think that KGPs are lame, but I have used them continually at one of the most liberal, post-modern places around, Berkeley, and have had great responses. In the midst of an honest and relational conversation with a student who is spiritually open, I find it’s totally possible to share the gospel, and even use a booklet.

The new Perspective cards are good too. They’re like Soularium and the KGP-lite combined. A little more brief in terms of gospel content, but a good tool for spiritual dialogue. Backstory creatively explores our deepest longings. It’s a little more verbose, and honestly I’m still learning how to navigate the tool. With these three gospel tools in our tool belts, we can have evangelistic conversations with pretty much anybody!

Training is key to help our students and staff have these types of gospel conversations.

2)  Take Students With You as You Initiate Spiritual Conversations.

The best kind of training is practice. Every good athlete and musician would certainly agree. You can only learn so much in a classroom or by reading a good book on evangelism. Students getting out there and observing staff and student leaders share their faith is key to mobilizing more Christ-centered laborers.

About a year ago, I was talking with a senior staff person about evangelism. She shared how she hadn’t communicated the gospel in over a year on campus. How can that be? If this is true of some of our senior staff, how often must this ring true for our new staff and interns? And if our staff members aren’t modeling evangelism, there’s a good chance our students aren’t doing it.

Now, this staff person had spiritual conversations, but never really got to gospel content.   What held her back in evangelism? Proper training and practice. And maybe just doing evangelism regularly on campus.

Natural mode evangelism is all the buzz these days. And I agree, if you’re talking percentages, it is more effective for long-term change. But when we move away from ongoing ministry mode evangelism in our movements, often the natural mode doesn’t really happen either.

Consequently, we stumble in mobilizing students to live missionally.

With training and modeling, ministry mode evangelism can be fruitful, meaningful (if you’re going out there to listen and love), and even fun!

For the most part, I think you’ll find that it’s the students who have experienced on-the-field training in ministry mode evangelism are actually the ones sharing their faith with friends, classmates and family.

They probably have observed a staff member or two share their faith and caught the vision for reaching the campus too! Whether that be on an evangelistic summer project or at your ministry mode sharing times on campus, these are your students and staff who are on the front lines evangelistically.

Why? They’ve got a lot of practice (and eternal perspective). When you share your faith often enough, not only do you gain confidence and skills, but your heart starts to beat for the lost too. And when your movement does a lot of evangelism – you start seeing more and more people cross over from death to life.

Without regular practice in initiating spiritual conversations and sharing the gospel, we can easily get rusty and miss those divine appointments, particularly with folks we already know. We forget how to communicate effectively with a non-Christian with grace and salt, and most of all, we lose our sense of urgency.

• Do you have a weekly time for ministry mode evangelism that is well-attended?
• Do you regularly take your disciples to reach non-believers in their scope on campus?
• How do you equip your students for a lifetime on mission?
• How are we doing as an organization in reaching this missional objective – “mobilizing Christ-centered laborers?”

Thank you so much for your engagement and interaction these last three years. I’m hopeful that by expanding the people contributing content to the blogference that the learning and dialogue will increase and encourage you to lead more boldly and passionately for Jesus!

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Listen first, talk second.

Think about the people that you love to be around. Think about the people you respect, the people that you know care about you. What’s the common denominator? They listen.

• They don’t “half-listen” while thinking of the next thing to say.

• They ask questions based on what they’ve heard me say, not just a question list tucked away.

• They’ve shown me patience by listening well, thus I feel valued.

Why you should teach your local movement to listen better in evangelism:

1. Listening in evangelism fuels relationship. You may have noticed that millennials are excited about authentic relationships. Yes, a rote presentation has it’s place for training, steps of faith, etc., but if we end there, we’ve dropped the ball. Think of the kingdom impact a graduate who is skilled at listening will have relationally.
2. Listening in evangelism opens a dialogue with a culture that has religious baggage. I live and work on the west coast and I still use the 4-laws (nothing beats the clarity), but I have found that if I’m going to have any chance of being heard with whatever my evangelistic method of choice is, first I have to break through major barriers by listening well. Our movement in Portland has to listen first and talk second if we’re going to transform the campuses.

Two things that are hard about creating a listening culture in evangelism:

1. It’s tough to teach good listening skills in a seminar. It’s even harder to teach how to ask reflective questions. It’s messy, has to be modeled, doesn’t come quickly and is tough to make transferable to Suzy freshman.
2. I’ve got a lot to do and a lot of results to get to. Listening first and talking second tries my patience. I often have to check my heart to make sure I care more about the person across the table than just getting through my presentation.

What does it look like to listen in your context? Are we listening first and talking second? If not, where do we need to change?

Picture courtesy of Kanpeki Yume

Too often our evangelistic approach looks more like a firework display than a simmering fire.

Campus Crusade National’s Leadership have asked every campus team to come up with an Evangelism Plan for this year. As we talked through this at UC Davis it became clear that we needed to think critically about the evangelistic culture we are trying to build. We need to have tactics for the year that flow from our overall vision of reaching the campus. Through this important and lively discussion, a few disturbing trends about our approach to ministry emerged.

From weekly, ministry-mode evangelism times (“Randoms”), to Campus-Wide Spring Outreaches, we too often go for big results in a short time, and the outcome is usually more harm than good.

We discuss how we are going to ‘reach the campus’ then we go out in a specific time-frame, hoping to see something radical happen. I want to establish that I am a huge fan of Ministry Mode evangelism…if it’s done well and with a healthy perspective.  There’s been some great discussion on that subject (check out this short video discussion titled Ministry Mode Evangelism is Not Dead), so i’ll address the negative things that come from how we do ‘campus-wide outreach’.

A few years ago we started talking about how to reach out evangelistically in the Spring. A few students had an idea for a big outreach involving plywood, sharpies, flyers, and many gallons of paint. The physical, emotional, and financial cost was pretty high and the return seemed to be pretty small. The students were well-meaning and I don’t want to disrespect them. Instead, I see how they were living out some philosophies that they have largely learned through us, CCC staff. While there are likely a few positive things that came from the outreach, we can learn more from the cost it had on the students, the movement, and our mission

• So much time and energy went into it, that the capacity for living evangelistically afterward was pretty low.
• We had something to ‘hang our hats on’, so the urgency of our need to reach out to the people around us was lessened.
• The students had a “Copy/Paste” approach (heard of something that happened at a different campus and tweak it for our campus).
• Creativity/Innovation were lost: Rather than thinking seriously about our own campus/surroundings, we tried to apply something from a totally different place. The campus likely saw how un-aware we are of our surrounding culture, or they just didn’t notice at all.

We celebrated with the students the effort we all put in, then invited them to do some serious evaluation. The decision was to put a freeze on such efforts in order to seriously consider how to see the gospel carried throughout the whole campus, and start from there. We’ve been implementing a strategy with that long-term goal in mind. We have used the ultimate goal as a measuring stick for what we want to do and what we need to not do.

This fall, we have started thinking about some evangelistic efforts that could be considered ‘campus-wide’. The Outreach is specific to the campus around us, and it makes a lot of sense for where the students in our movement are. Most of all, we know where we are heading, and we are trying something that will help us get there.  We would love to see some fire-works, but we realize that a constant smoldering of purposeful evangelism is where we need to be.

*Have you tried “Big Event” tactics, and what is usually the bottom-line outcome (cost/benefit analysis)?

*Have you seen ‘trying to do too much too soon’ hinder long-term effectiveness?

Dave Goffeney has been on staff for eight years and currently leads the Campus Crusade movement at UC Davis.

Follow him on Twitter

Check out his blog

photo courtesy of mikelduke

“But I find that most first 6 week stuff is centered on getting contacts, which tend to be Christians or think-they-ares”–via @djjenkins

“Maybe we need to think in terms of “Turning lost & found students into christ centered laborers.” ?–via @bobfuhs

“Gathering” Latinos just isn’t working. You have to “win” them. Maybe that’s why Destino isn’t working. via @destinoeric

“wow, just had this conversation with my wife today. In audiences where we MUST win and not just gather we fail (esm)”–via @destinoeric

“My 2 cents: non-X-ians will come to Christ relationally throughout the year via those we gather in 1st 6 wks”–via @timcasteel

“I’m beginning to wonder if gathering christians and then aligning them to evangelism really works. We align them to gathering”–via @pablonunez

The main goal of the RE-Think Blogference is to facilitate discussion on ministry philosophy to sharpen your ministry skills and connect you to other like-minded missional leaders.

We are launching a podcast to expand the amount of content and connections we can bring to your door via the internet!

There will be interviews from ministry leaders around the world but I would love to see a significant part invested in answering questions and discussing issues that you are currently facing in your leadership role.

Here are some thoughts related to the categories/topics we will cover:

• Evangelism: best practices, new tools, response rates to various types of evangelistic initiatives, how to train others, etc.

• Leadership Development: books, articles, blog posts, productivity tools, productivity practices, mentors, sharing power, empowering those “below” you, etc.

• Mom’s, Wives, Women: balancing work and family, unique leadership challenges, helpful and encouraging books/articles/blog posts, etc

• Sharing and Collaboration: online and offline tools, strategies, and tactics for creating an environment of sharing, etc

Please share your thoughts in the comments and on Twitter! Just reply to @cccblogference with your thoughts or leave a comment below!