Who's Holding You Accountable?

May 23, 2011 by Ryan Hayes

I recently came across an article by the Barna Group that included research statistics related to how well churches were providing members with accountability opportunities.  The results weren't that great with only 15% of evangelicals polled claiming to have some form of church-centered accountability.  While this percentage was the highest out of the "Christians" polled, it still shows how lacking our churches are at accountability. (I used the quotations on Christians because I don't know what criteria Barna used to determine Christian designation)

George Barna gave his opinion as to why churches aren't holding its members accountable.

"Barna Group studies among pastors and other church leaders have consistently shown that such leaders have a distaste for initiating any type of confrontation and conflict with congregants. Another barrier is that many followers of Christ are uncertain about the difference between judgment and discernment. Not wanting to be judgmental, they therefore avoid all conversation about the other person’s behavior—except, sometimes, gossip.

One of the cornerstones of the biblical concept of community is that of mutual accountability. But Americans these days cherish privacy and freedom to the extent that the very idea of being held accountable by others—even those with their best interests in mind, or who have a legal or spiritual authority to do so—is considered inappropriate, antiquated and rigid. With a large majority of Christian churches proclaiming that people should know, trust and obey all of the behavioral principles taught in the Bible, overlooking a principle as foundational as accountability breeds even more public confusion about scriptural authority and faith-based community, as well as personal behavioral responsibility."

To read the entire article, go to http://www.barna.org/congregations-articles/454-study-describes-christian-accountability-provided-by-churches

So what does this mean for college ministries?  Well I believe that in order to change this statistic around it starts with the future leaders of the church, which are college students.  I would encourage you to implement some form of accountability for professing Christians in your ministry, at the very least for those who are leading in your ministry.  Let them see the value of living in community with other believers and confessing struggles and sins and even encouraging one another.  I would also encourage ministers to model this accountability structure to their students, for as goes the leaders so goes the students.

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Read Me and More by Jason Crandall

May 20, 2011 by Ryan Hayes

READ ME and more
by Jason Crandall
 

This year I struck out to effect our college ministry and church as a whole by putting together a series of classes on spiritual disciplines.  Read Me is a class designed to help believers in Jesus study and understand their Bibles.  I teach the hour and a half class in two parts.  The first part is designed to help the students understand why we should study the Bible.  It deals heavily with the doctrine of inspiration, inerrancy, transmission, etc.  In the second part, I teach a very simple, but effective Bible Study method that involves reading and rereading texts, "translating" into their own words and then journaling an application for themselves.  Talk to Me is a class designed to help Christians communicate with God.  In it I do something very similar in that I want students to understand how they can easily and effectively communicate with God.  I teach the A.C.T.S.S. acronym (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication and Silence).  Beginning May 1st I will be teaching a basic doctrines class called: Believe Me.  In this class I will teach our people basic doctrines that Christians believe.  Those taking this class are required to have gone through Read Me (Now over 150 people in our church have).  We set it up like this because we will be drawing our doctrines from the Bible and in Read Me we spent the first half of each class discussing the "why" of Bible Study.  In the future I'll be doing short-term classes having to do with accountability, giving, etc.  

These classes are all in an effort to deal with issues that our church is facing which in a word is immaturity.  Read Me, Talk to Me, Believe Me, and the other classes are helping us rebuild a foundation of biblical understanding within our church.  We have had great response from all kinds of groups in the church: college, high school, families, seniors, etc.  Our goal is really to disciple our people in simple short-term classes.  For whatever reason so many of them have not been taught simple things that Christians do and believe.  We are taking those who go through these classes and putting them back in as mentors to help others going through the classes.  

This post is a follow up to Jason's first post titled READ ME.

The intent of the team blog website and format is to aid collegiate/young adult leaders in their ministry to college age students in Texas.  The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention does not necessarily agree with or condone all of the thoughts in every blog written by ministers, they simply are providing a platform for resources and thoughts to be shared through this blogging opportunity.  If you have any questions contact our offices.



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John Piper discusses Achilles Heels of Young Adults and Collegiates

May 19, 2011 by Ryan Hayes

John Piper talks about the promise of young adults and college students but warns against achilles heels that may prevent their fervor and zeal for the kingdom of God.


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Thinking Through Leadership Teams for the Fall

May 18, 2011 by Ryan Hayes

Now that the summer is here for most of you, you may be to a point where you are starting to think through and accept candidates for leadership positions within your ministry for the fall semester.  I would encourage you to at least think through what students are modeling leadership characteristics or potential for leadership.  In doing so, there are certain characteristics that experts say are common to healthy leaders.  In fact, Tim Elmore has provided some assessments on leaders emotional intelligence, or EQ.  On his blog, Tim quantified these characteristics in his blog titled Inseperable (Part Seven): Relationships as follows:

1.  Self awareness
2.  Self management
3.  Social awareness
4.  Relationship Management

He continues to identify certain skills that these healthy leaders build in themselves, which are also helpful to identify in your collegiates.

1.  They're a host. (They take initiative with others).
2.  They're a doctor (They know how to probe with good questions)
3.  They're a counselor (They know how to actively listen and empathize)
4.  They're a tour guide (They can take someone on a journey and succeed)

Always be evaluating your students and keep an eye out and an ear open to potential leadership characteristics or potential within your ministry.  I hope your summer has started...and has started off well.

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Personal Discipleship within Your Ministry?

May 17, 2011 by Ryan Hayes

I finished up my I-term class last week that was focused on College Disciple-Makers.  This concept wasn't new to me but it was encouraging to see what disciples looked like at an older age, they looked liked disciple makers.  I had the privilege of being taught by Max Barnett for the week who is recognized as one of the top disciple makers in the Southern Baptist context.  It was a beneficial class where I learned many things that I hope I can transfer to the local church context.  While trying to decide what to blog about regarding what I learned, I came across Benson Hines' article titled "The Tailored Impact" that actually contained some similar ideas regarding disciple making disciples, so I thought I'd share his article with you...

This blog post was originally posted on May 12, 2011 on exploringcollegeministry.com

All week long, I've been looking at "ingredients" that might be worth considering as you prepare next year's bountiful college ministry feast.  Today's suggested ingredient is like the others: It's an element we'd all agree is wonderful, that some campus ministries have found enormously beneficial, and that's often in shorter supply than - perhaps - it should be.

Here's a question: How regularly are students in your ministry being personally discipled?

I'm not talking about small group discipleship or even the "organic" conversations that so often pop up within our contexts.  Those things are highly important, but so is the more intentional, more systematic shepherding that happens when a leader disciples a college student, or one college student mentors another.

I was blessed to be in a college ministry and at a school where one-on-one disciplemaking was both natural and widespread.  But I realize that's not most of our contexts, and unless we're involved in college ministries that have made this a pillar (like The Navigators), it's likely this awesome tool gets overlooked in light of methods that involve more people, more "performance," or more popular acclaim among students

In my mind, though, there are few methods that produce more individual growth...and yet because strong disciplemaking is always multiplicative, the impact can spread far and wide in only a few semesters.

Honestly, disciplemaking doesn't only have to come from a formal, "Sign up to get discipled/ Sign up to disciple somebody" format.  In fact, that may not always be the best way to go (though it can be useful if it's done right and trained well).  But what if small group leaders looked for someone within the group they might disciple?  What if strong, older students [or adult leaders] made it clear they'd love to disciple a person or two in the coming semester?  What if you too looked for a few individuals who are clearly teachable and ready for some tailored impact?

Sprinkle this ingredient liberally in your college ministry, and I bet you'll see some awesome fruit in the years to come!

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