Here a Conference, there a Conference, Everywhere a Conference, Conference. The abundant Conference surge across the United States, and especially here in Texas, is overwhelming. The "How To Take Your Ministry From 0 to 14,000 in 2 Days!" Conference is among my personal favorites. The only problem is, when you want to just relax, spend some quality time with your spouse and your leadership team, in a setting that is conducive to moving your College/Young Adult ministry forward without spending hundreds of dollars on fees, hotels, transportation, and food, what do you do? The SBTC INTERSECT Leadership Retreat provides a solution for each of these endeavors.

Dictionary.com defines a "Retreat" as "A place of refuge, seclusion, or privacy." As such, the weekend of January 14-16, 2010 will be just that. The amazing Great Wolf Lodge, which is centrally located in Grapevine, TX, will provide 3-days of focus on these objectives with the purpose of moving your Collegiate/Young Adult Ministry forward as you relax and re-fuel for the Spring season. The essential elements to the weekend will be a platform to exchange ideas, to provide an environment that will invigorate vision casting and leadership development among your team, and an opportunity to build contacts with an abundance of other ministers from across Texas.

For the first time, this year's event will be open to ALL ministry leadership
• Students
• Young Adults
• Adults
• You are encouraged to bring your entire leadership team!

November is here already. Can you believe we are 5+ weeks from the end of the semester? It just seems to fly sometimes. Depending upon where your ministry is, the holiday season can be a very slow time or your biggest time of the year. Here are a few tips and thoughts for you as you transition into this season (the key here is BE STRATEGIC in the transitional times)

Away Holiday Ministries

If you are in a college town, everyone goes home or somewhere during the holidays. That may take your group and completely deplete it. A few thoughts for you in that transition are:

1. Don’t be afraid to talk about how many are leaving and going home. Encourage your collegiates to connect at their home church while they are away.
2. Encourage them to spend time with friends at home and share what God is doing in their lives.
3. Challenge them to share their faith with an old friend.
4. Help others see they are different when they come home.
5. Get them excited about the Spring Semester. Since you’re coming to INTERSECT, you might want to get them pumped about that.
6. Have them write out how this Holiday season will be different than past ones, and let them see what they wrote when they come back in January to see if they followed thru.

Note: This also provides a great time to connect with those who stay in your ministry. You have a chance to deepen relationships and really connect in a way you normally do not have.

Home Holiday Ministry

If you are in a town where everyone comes home during the holidays, you have a very brief and unique time to connect with collegiates. As they come home, many will revert back to their old ways and their old friends. If your collegiate ministry is one where some students never connected before they left for school, it will be very difficult to get them when they come home. They are more inclined to go to church with their parents or friends and skip your ministry. How do you change that:

1. Do something big! Have a big event where they can connect and have fun. You can get them to a party or a gathering to interact with you and with the rest of your group.
1. Get word out while they are still at school: Facebook, Twitter, their friends
2. Do something that makes a difference
2. Have lunch, coffee, dinner or coffeecakes with as many of those who are away during the year as you can. Don’t try to recruit them just connect and build the relationships. Most likely they will be back in the summer; and the more they know you and your heart, the better chance you have of connecting with them during the summer and the weekends they come home during the year.

I was saddened to hear about the death of one of my childhood musical heros Michael Jackson. Then two days later the death of Billy Mays. You know, the OxiClean guy who then sold me a big purple “ShamWow.” It seems the whole world stops with the death of celebrities and it is so tragic. I was reminded that from the time anything is birthed, it is dying. Yes, even the iPhone is doomed if Apple doesn’t innovate and grow. It’s called a life-cycle. What about your ministry? Is it merely functioning as an Organization or an Organism? Organizations offer structure to complexity but can die out if they don’t produce something. Conversely, an Organism can multiply and reproduce itself naturally and consistently to prevent death. Jesus’ discipleship model uses the latter. If our ministry, even with extravagant structure, doesn’t produce disciples, it too will suffer death. So in this dry time of summer, you could be preventing ministry death by doing a few key exercises:

• Mentor 1-2 new key leaders one day a week over lunch
           o Tim Elmore has some great resources at GrowingLeaders.org
• Take 1-2 key Administrators at a local campus out to lunch
           o Share your vision with them and find new opportunities to partner
• Identify 2-3 student organizations that you can partner with for events
           o Look for opportunities to make new bridges onto the campus

The idea here is to invigorate internal growth (mentoring leaders) and explore external growth (opportunities on campus). Develop 1-2 new leaders who can step up in the fall semester. There are plenty of doors on the campus that the Lord is waiting to open, just seek His direction. The death of our Savior brought life for us, our ministries and so many lost souls on our campuses. Remember, every day is one day closer to the end, yet our Gospel thrusts us toward that Day which we long for as believers in Jesus. Death was defeated at the Cross. What great news we have to share!

Nate Stewart

SBTC Collegiate