Nor Cal / Nev College Ministries

Effectiveness Questions

1. What percentage of my group converted under my ministry?
2. Do I have more freshmen than upperclassmen?

Leadership Questions

1. Are more than 1/3 of your student leaders new this year? If not, you are not prepared for sustainable growth.
2. Does joining your leadership team make a student's life better or worse? If better, then why don't you have more applications? If worse, then why?
3. Do you hear frequent laughter in leadership meetings?
4. Do people reguarly disagree with one another in your leadership meetings? If not, then you have a problem. Either people don't feel safe or all your leaders are too stupid to form opinions.
   

Discipleship and Fellowship

Dr. Nicholas Tavani, a Christian Sociologist, has said, "Fellowship only occurs in srnall groups." By that he means that fellowship (the purposeful and intimate sharing of our lives) cannot occur at a large group level (over 12 people). He claims that it is impossible for us to have significant, con-current rehztionships with more than a dozen people. (Surely the nurnber of close friends through a lifetime would be much higher, but on any given day of our lives we can handle no more than a dozen.) Most of us never come close to having a dozen dose, concurrent friends. Probably most of our relationships are benevolent acquaintances. Some people never find a true close friend for major portions of their lives. However, scripture calls us to, and Jesus models a lifestyle of personal openness and vulnerability which becomes determinative for the way we relate to each other as Christians. Therefore, fellowship is a major aspect of a Discipleship Small Group.

Living Wisely

"We seem not to live long enough to take our lives seriously." George Bernard Shaw

No one can say of us that we are not busy people. We continually fill our lives with activity and flurry, so much so that phrases such as "no time today", "I'm really busy", "Boy, I'm tired", and "maybe later" seem ubiquitous to our vocabulary.

Now, being busy is no sin. But the tragedy which often snares so many is that we have such fuzzy, nebulous understandings of why we're going so hard (let alone knowing where all this hustle and bustle is taking us). It is truly a sad commentary that some people can live their entire lives, and can certainly point to many accomplishments, but still not have the slightest idea why they lived as they did. Was what they were living for worth it?

Introduction

We come now to the conclusion of our study of the components of Jesus' discipling methodology as outlined in Robert Coleman's book, The Master Plan of Evangelism. In this lesson we will focus on the final two aspects: Supervision and Reproduction.

SUPERVISION: He Held Them Accountable

To quickly summarize where we have been thus far:

• We have watched Jesus carefully select faithful individuals to be with Him.
• He has repeatedly emphasized the need for total commitment to bring in the Kingdom of God.
• He has demonstrated the conquering power of love.
• He gave them practical tasks and responsibilities so that they would develop Kingdom ministry skills.

Now it was necessary for Jesus to hold them accountable for what they had learned. Jesus expected the disciples to grow in their understanding of the nature of God, the sinfulness of man and a host of other issues through the tasks they were doing. He was not just trying to teach them a few tasks to do for Him after He left for the right hand of the throne. Jesus had one primary goal in mind-the salvation of the world. If this goal is to be reached His disciples must keep that focus ever in front of them and not only settle for minor victories.

A couple of hundred years ago there was a view of God that maintained He was a Master Clockmaker. He made a giant blue dock and called it good, and gave it the name earth. As this view goes; the Master cloclunaker then wound up this blue clock and left for parts unknown in the universe (presumably to make more clocks). This view affirmed God as creator, but saw Him as transcendent, and distant from His creation--an absent God.

Sometimes this scenario can happen in a ministry. Student leaders can be well trained and then commissioned. They have passed all the requirements to serve as discipleship leaders. They have been pointed at a handful of students and told, "Go, make disciples". They do go, but shorily after, they begin to feel very burdened, later to feel overwhelmed. They feel responsible and abandoned. You then find them sitting in your office, giving you a rafionale for why they need to resign from their leadership role.

The campus ministry was only a few months old, but graciously it had a good beginning. The campus pastor and his wife were able to start (between them) three discipleship small groups with four to five incach small group. About a month before finals of the fall semester, a weekend retreat was held with most of the students attending. The retreat was on the discipling process.

After much prayer the campus pastor went into the next main weekly meeting ready to challenge the young group to become a committed discipling campus ministry. The night was given to reflections on the retreat and student's personal reactions. Then the pastor asked, "Do we desire to become that kind of a ministry?" After some serious contemplation the consensus was "Yes".

There seem to be some natural stopping points in campus ministry--places that growth stalls out.

The Stopping Points

• 12: at this point the group has a hard time viewing itself as anything other than a cell group. In fact, it's dangerous to start having a large group meeting at this size. Some people can pull it off, but it would be better to get two or three Bible studies going and then combine them when you launch a worship service. See Launching College Ministry.
• 30: at this point the group values intimacy and community so much that they begin to sabotage growth (unknowingly). You need to teach that it's okay not to know everybody in the group. In addition, it's at this point that a college minister first begins to feel the strain of meeting everyone's needs. You must build a team of leaders! Remember Jethro And Moses!
• 70: something usually sticks here - either your worship isn't on par with the preaching, or the fellowship times aren't as fun as the worship is good, or some other critical factor is missing. Find it and fix it.
• 120: at this point the obstacle to growth will not be how you relate to your students but how you relate to your leaders. Your student leaders need to undergo the same paradigm shifts as regards the leadership as they did regarding the group as a whole. In fact, what has probably happened is that the ones who were there at 30 never really had to give up the community that they treasured so much--they just all became leaders together. Now the intimacy of the leaders is threatened. Go back over the same stuff with the same people... (get used to this theme in ministry, by the way).
• 200: at this point your group should have an extremely well-developed small group system, a deep leadership pool, awesome worship, and be taking several missions trips a year. So what stalls? Vision. The group is everything people hoped it could be. Also, the group is becoming more and more inwardly focused and less and less outwardly focused. Consciously assign staff and money to outreach even if it means making some of your members unhappy.
• 400: it's just hard to get past this point. Most campuses don't seem to be able to sustain a group past this point in non-revival periods. Do a bunch a stuff and let us know what works. :)
• Beyond?: they probably exist beyond this point, but very few college ministries ever have to worry about them. See Mega College Ministries.