The following blog post comes from Benson Hines and I found it to be a helpful reminder to college ministers as they continue to plan out their spring break itinerary.  I had posted near the end of last year an idea of bringing your ministry to beach reach and if you need other ideas feel free to contact our office.  Benson's blog site is exploringcollegeministry.com.  

I was thinking about Spring Break last night, and I figure I’ll post a few times about that this week. (While some of you may have some big plans already in the bag, I figure it’s still a good week to think about that BIG WEEK coming soon on the college ministry calendar.)

Today, an easy question that might require a hard answer:

Are you letting tradition decide what you do this Spring Break, or prayerful strategy?

There are college ministries out there that have “standard fare” for Spring Break activity – it’s a ski trip every year, it’s a mission trip to the same place every year, it’s a mini-Sabbatical for staff every year, it’s a rotation of two or three things every two or three years.

And traditions can be a great thing – if they’re the best way to accomplish your present purposes. But what may very well have fit this ideal two years ago may not, in fact, be best for hitting this year’s targets. So can you honestly say you pondered this year’s Spring Break like you should have, or did you just go with the norm because it’s the norm?

As college ministers, we daily face the temptation to “run cool plays” rather than score points. Spring Break is only one of many moments when good traditions can sometimes be replaced by traditionalism.

I came across the following blog from Tim Elmore regarding leadership lessons that can be learned from the Costa Concordia fiasco near Tuscany.  Sometimes great lessons can be gleaned from tragedies and I believe that Elmore proposes some excellent lessons for us as leaders to learn.

The following blog from TIm Elmore appeared on growing leaders' blog site on January 17, 2012.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I watched the news on Saturday and saw an ocean liner slowly sink into the water off the coast of Tuscany in the Mediterranean. Four thousand people have been rescued and three have been reported dead so far. The photos of the “Costa Concordia” were unbelievable. Several on board said, “It was like no one was in charge.” This is a classic “leadership fail” that we can learn from.

Here are some headlines from the disaster:

• Passengers said it was “chaos” as crew told them: “go back to your cabins.”
• The captain couldn’t be found at first; later arrested for abandoning ship.
• Survivors leapt for their lives into the icy sea as the liner rolled on its side.
• The ship was four miles off course when it hit ground.
• The lifeboats were so pitiful, they had difficulty being launched.
• At least three people died and many more are injured.

My guess is, you are a leader who’s experienced your own set of sinking ships. Maybe it wasn’t this severe, but things went awry and someone wanted to wring your neck. From this tragic cruise ship disaster, may I offer some leadership advice for you when you face a crisis?

1. Stay visible. Be public. Don’t run from the problem.

In this case, the captain was arrested for doing the opposite. Leaders must stay calm and model the way. People do what people see.

2. Prepare and execute a plan.

It appeared the captain and crew had no plan for such disasters and certainly didn’t execute an effective plan to help the passengers in a crisis.

3. Give clear direction to followers.

In crises, people need clarity more than anything else. Unlike the ship’s crew, offer clear and wise counsel to people on what steps to take in response.

4. Outsource what you must to furnish solutions.

Hotels and cafés offered restrooms and shelter for passengers, but it was random. The crew was not in touch with nearby establishments to care for the people.

5. Over-communicate.

When things go wrong, people are down on what they’re not up on. Keep people informed and repeat your words often. Emotions can cloud folks’ reception.

I’d like to hear from you. Are there any other lessons from this disaster? What have you learned from dealing with crises as a leader?

Details continue to emerge from this disaster.

For more info, see this article:  ”Coastguard raged at liner captain, tape shows”

Also see this post for more leadership lessons from a sinking ship.

The following blog is from Desiring God and originally was posted on June 1, 2011 by Paul Tripp. 

God’s Word really does open up to us the mysteries of the universe. It really does make us wiser than we could ever be without it. And yet, having said all this, it's sad that we don’t take more advantage of this wisdom God has given us. It's sad that we don’t think his thoughts after him, that we don’t require ourselves to look at life through the lens of his revelation. It's sad that we swindle ourselves into thinking that we are wiser than we are. We're not irritated by his foolishness, nor are we motivated to seek his help. One of the places you see this most clearly is in the struggles we experience in our relationships.

Why have I reminded you of all this? I encounter people everywhere I go who are discouraged and confused about their relationships. I want you to think about your own relationships and look at them through three perspectives derived from biblical wisdom. These mentalities are essential in creating and sustaining a healthy relational lifestyle.

1) You must live in your relationships with a harvest mentality.

Paul captures this mentality with these very familiar words: “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). This is an essential mentality if you want to live with habits of reconciliation. You have to buy into the principle of consequences. Here it is: there is an organic relationship between the seeds you plant and the fruit you harvest. In the physical world you will never plant peach pits and get apples. In the same way, there will be organic consistency between the seeds of words and actions that you plant in your relationships and the quality of harvest that you will experience later as you live and relate to one another.

Every day you harvest relational plants that have come from the seeds of words and actions that you previously planted. And every day you plant seeds of words and actions that you will later harvest. Most of the seeds you plant will be small, but one thousand small seeds that grow up into trees will result in an environment-changing forest. Your relationships are continuously planted with little-moment seeds of words and actions grow into the forest of either love or trouble.

2) You must live in your relationships with an investment mentality.

We are all treasure hunters. We all live to gain, maintain, keep, and enjoy things that are valuable to us. Our behavior in any given situation of life is our attempt to get what is valuable to us out of that situation. There are things in your life that you have assigned importance to, and once you have, you are no longer willing to live without them (these principles are laid out in Matthew 6:19–33). Everyone does it. We live to possess and experience the things upon which we have set our hearts. We are always living for some kind of treasure.

Every treasure you set your heart on and actively seek will give you some kind of return. An argumentative moment is an investment in the treasure of being right, and from it you will get some kind of relational return. If you aggressively argue the other person into a corner, it is not likely that the return on that investment will be his or her appreciation for you, nor will it be the desire to have similar conversations again. If you invest in the treasure of willing service, you will experience the return of appreciation, respect, and a deeper friendship. If it is more valuable to have control than it is for your friend or spouse to feel heard, loved and understood, then you will live with the return of that in the quality of your relationship.

Investment is inescapable; you do it everyday, and it's hard to get away from the return on the investments you have made. Ask yourself,

What are the things that are valuable to me right now, the things I work to experience everyday and am unwilling to live without?

How is the return on those investments shaping my relationships?

 3) You must live in your relationships with a grace mentality.

When I got married, I didn’t understand grace. I had a principle-istic view of Scripture that caused me to bring a law economy into all of my relationships. The central focus of the Bible is not a set of practical principles for life. No, the central theme of the Bible is a person, Jesus Christ. If all you and I had needed was a knowledge and understanding of a certain set of God-revealed principles for living, Jesus would not have needed to come.

I think there are many Christians living in Christless relationships. Without knowing what they have done, they have constructed law-based rather than grace-based relationships. And because of this they're asking the law to do what only grace can accomplish.

The problem with this is that we are not just people in need of wisdom; we are also people in need of rescue—and the thing that we need to be rescued from is us. Our fundamental problem is not ignorance of what is right. Our problem is selfishness of heart that causes us to care more about what we want than about what we know is right. The laws, principles, and perspectives of Scripture provide the best standard ever towards which our relationships should strive. They can reveal our wrongs and failures, but they have no capacity whatsoever to deliver us from them. For that we need the daily grace that only Jesus can give us.

So, we must not simply hold one another to the high relational standards of God’s Word, but we must also daily offer the same grace that we have been given to one another so that we may be tools of grace in the lives of one another. Our confidence is not in the ability we have to keep God’s law but rather in the life-giving and heart-transforming grace of the one who has drawn us to himself and has the power to draw us to one another. When we live with this confidence, we look at the difficulties of our relationships not so much as hassles to be endured, but as opportunities to enter into an even deeper experience of the rescuing, transforming, forgiving, empowering grace of Jesus, the one who died for us and is always with us.

Three mentalities—each an essential building block for a healthy biblical, relational lifestyle. Each require the honesty of personal humility, and each encourage us to be reconciled to one another and to God again and again, and again.

The Gospel Coalition recently posted a blog title 9 Keys to Reaching College Students that I thought would be beneficial to share with you.  As college ministers we should always be looking for more insight as to how to reach or connect with college students and this blog post provides 9 good lessons for all ministers to apply to their ministry to help with doing so.  Below are the 9 lessons with explanations of each lesson. 

The following was written by J.D. Greear and Rupert Leary and originally appeared on the gospel coalition blog site on Jan. 18, 2012.

1.  Whatever you do, don't shy away from depth

Students are not dumb; nor are the college professors filling their minds five days a week. These students are being challenged with deep questions, and simplistic answers not only fail to persuade them, but actually make them more skeptical of Christianity. So take them deep, and do it often. In almost every sermon we try to have an "apologetic moment," where the preacher explains how this or that biblical truth counters the cultural norms they absorb in their college. The most popular series we have done have related to straight, deep answers to challenging questions.

Furthermore, teach the hard stuff---like what the Bible teaches about gender roles, sexuality, and divine punishment. Most students already know generally what evangelical Christians believe about these things (if for no other reason than spoofs by their professors and Saturday Night Live), so we gain no ground by ignoring or apologizing for the Bible. Speak truth convincingly with clarity and grace. Recently a practicing lesbian student said that she comes to our church because we at least teach the Bible clearly, even though it sometimes angers her. "I don't want someone just telling me what they think I want to hear," she said. "I know what the Bible says. I'm trying to decide if it's true. I want someone to explain to me what it says and tell me why it's true."

2.  Preach the Gospel

The beauty of the gospel, as well as its outrageous claims, intrigues most students. It engages both believer and unbeliever. It exposes the root idolatry that drives our behavior and reveals God's radical agenda for the world that calls for a dramatic response. The gospel "secret" is that everything we want to see in students, things like "radical generosity" and "audacious faith," are produced not by telling them what they must do for God, but by exalting in what God has done for us. (For more, see Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary.)

3.  Love on display is often the most effective apologetic

Jesus said so himself (John 13:34-35). We often think we can convince unbelievers by showing that our smart guys are smarter than their smart guys. True cynics are more often convinced, however, by the beauty of Christ's character in us than by meticulous logic. (This is not to diminish, at all, the vital role of giving intelligent answers to hard questions.) Note that it was when the first church "shared all things in common" and "there was no need among them" that Luke says they had "favor with all the people" and "God added to their number daily those that are being saved." Serving is the church's greatest persuasive power (cf. 1 Peter 3:15; 4:7-11).

4.  Remember that we live in the Bono generation

Serving the community and the poor around the world is now, for lack of a better term, "cool." And while TOMS Shoes certainly has a different agenda than does the church, this generation's awareness of global suffering ensures that any message that fails to address global and societal needs will fall on deaf ears. The awareness of global suffering actually provides a wonderful opportunity for the gospel. We can show the gospel provides a better, more holistic answer to the problems of the world.

Our church has identified five groups (the homeless; the orphan; the prisoner; the unwed mother; and the high school dropout) that we ask students to serve. We use these ministries as opportunities not only to win our community, but also to disciple students, both believer and unbeliever alike (many unbelievers will gladly serve alongside us in projects directed toward these groups).

5.  Lift their eyes to the nations

God's agenda for the world is nothing short of people from every people group worshiping Jesus (Rev. 5:9-11). We should teach students to choose their life's path based on this ultimate goal. Even those students who do not go into full-time paid ministry can choose their career path in light of the Great Commission. They have to get a job upon graduation somewhere, so why not do it in a place where they can be a part of church planting? We teach our students that unless God has put a better plan before them, they should spend two years in one of the places we have a church plant (both domestic and abroad).

6.  Aggressively develop summer projects and overseas opportunities

Summer projects and mission trips are great "farm teams" for training students in mission. We have seen tremendous returns from students who served on one of these projects. Currently, we have projects each summer in our city, in places we have church plants domestically, and overseas.

7.  One-on-one meetings and small groups are often more effective for evangelism than large gatherings

The "come and get it" approach of many churches and campus ministries has become less effective with today's students. Plus, there are usually a lot of groups already doing that on campus, so that "market" is already glutted. There are still tons of lost kids on campus, however, and most of them won't go to those large groups. We have found that one-on-one meetings and small groups reach many of these "radically unchurched" students. Also, it's easier (and cheaper) to draft younger, "just out of college" workers than it is to hire a career "college pastor."

8.  Providing multigenerational connections within the church is essential to discipleship

Students need a connection with older men and women (Titus 2). This can happen in both formal and informal settings: encouraging healthy couples and families to integrate students into their families; hosting multigenerational small groups; and having students help out with children's and student ministries are all ways students can connect. Five college students guys hanging out together sharing their collective wisdom is not the "manifestation of God's varied graces" God promised in the church (Eph, 3:10; 1 Peter 4:10); it's Lord of the Flies.

9.  Cultural Adaptation is important, though not essential

Why do churches hold on to the cultural mores and styles of previous generations if they are trying to reach this one? We can't make the gospel more attractive through our "coolness," but let's face it: if the 1950s ever come back, many of our churches are going to be ready. That said, ultimately the appeal of the church has more to do with its timelessness than its trendiness. The essential element is not a cool pastor or loud music but an authentic message.

Traditionalism is a killer not because it is "uncool" but because it is a counterfeit of the gospel. Some churches that are very effective in engaging students have more of the ancient, reverent feel than a vibrant, energetic one. Our church has more of a modern feel, but we think the gospel's power can reign in both settings. We would encourage you to lay all cultural elements of your church at the feet of Jesus and ask him to show you how to prioritize the mission over preference. Every effective missionary in every culture has thought this way. God help us if we value our cultural traditions more than our children!

Nate Stewart's webinar on January 9th titled Thinking Through the New Semester is available for download through our SugarSync account.  

The link to obtain the download is as follows: Nate Stewart Webinar 

Nate gave us excellent insight as to what thought process college ministers should go through at the beginning of each new semester.  He provided practical helps for ministry that can be applied to your ministry this semester. He touched upon the importance of a ministers focus for each semester and long term vision and planning that needs to be done.   What are "wins" for your ministry and how to does your ministry work towards those wins?  Nate's webinar helps you think through focusing on this new semester in a fresh way.