So Your College Student Wants to Be a Leader?

Apr 11, 2011 by Ryan Hayes

How many times have you had a student come up to you asking to be a leader in your ministry?  I would assume that whether they directly come up to you with that request or sign up for a leadership team on your ministry, you will encounter at least one student that wants to have some role of leadership in your collegiate ministry. 

While some of you may have leadership covenants or interviews, or maybe both, some may not have very many students that do desire for leadership roles in their ministry.  When selecting or encouraging students to take roles of leadership in your ministry, Tim Elmore reminds us, in his recent blog on Growing Leaders,  that their are two recurring characteristics that he sees in most every leader:

1.  Solve Problems - Tim writes "Instead of complaining,
                               they seek to find solutions to problems
                               or challenges that arise. They are
                               solution-based.   The fastest way to gain
                               leadership is to solve problems for people
                               and teams."

2.  Serve Others - he writes "Instead of being self-absorbed, they look outward and always
                            find new ways to meet the needs of others. The most efficient way to
                            deepen your influence is to serve others without asking anything in return."

I would clarify that Tim seems to be speaking to more of a general leader and not specifically to a leader in a college ministry but I think these characteristics can be seen here as well.  I would obviously add some qualifiers from 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 that speak about the character of the leader (elder) in the church and probably look for those qualities in a leader as well or at least challenge college students, who want to lead, to strive for those characteristics.  

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Greetings from SENT Conference

Apr 08, 2011 by Ryan Hayes

Hey guys and gals,

Lance and I are at SENT Conference at Champions Forest Baptist Church in Houston and looking forward to a great couple of days learning about how we can live a more missionally sent lifestyle.  For more information about what's going on at SENT conference go HERE. 

We are excited to have over 130 college students and ministers who are attending this weeks conference.  We will be taping some of the workshops and providing those for free downloads during the conference.  I will include links on Monday.  Also, the conference is providing a free download of Matt Boswell and Matt Papa's new song Let the Nations Be Glad.

You can download it at the following link: Let the Nations Be Glad - Matt Boswell

The words to the song can be accessed HERE.

I will keep you all updated on what happens this weekend.

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Does the Local Church need College Students?

Apr 06, 2011 by Ryan Hayes

I believe I am probably preaching to the choir in this topic but I wanted to pose the question to ministers throughout the state.  Better stated the question would be; Do you think that the local church needs college students?  Have you ever really though about that question?  Hopefully you have and can provide some great insight to your collegiates and their local campus.  Guy Chmieleski recently wrote about the question and came up with 3 reasons why churches need college students.  You can find the full post HERE.  They are:

1.  College students bring energy and an 'edge'

Anyone who has ever worked with college students is aware of this energy and edge that they bring to your church as a whole.  They are on fire for serving the community and impacting them in a positive way.  Guy points out that they also bring new questions that the church may not have heard before, which calls the church to be "on their toes" with their faith.  He admits "I don't know if there is any other demographic in the church that can do this."

2.  College students set a model for both young and old

This goes hand in hand with the first reason and basically acknowledges that college students are typically more bold about sharing their faith and asking the tough questions to the people with whom they interact.  They can serve as models when they do boldly share their faith because young people see that people near their age are passionate about Christ and people older than them can catch some of that passion that years of being in "the grind" may have stripped them of.

3.  College students are the future of the church

While they may not be the future of your church's ministry, they are the future of the church in general.  College years are some of the most influential years of ones life and many students commit their lives to the call of vocational ministry during these years.  This means that they will actually be leading many churches in the future.  It is important that the church does not lose sight of this fact and realizes the need to invest in them, both time and money, so that they will turn around and invest back into the church.

We held a webinar in May of last year with Spencer Plumlee which also discusses the reasons why both collegiates and churches need each other.  You can access that webinar HERE.

I pray that your churches realize the great need of collegiate ministries and appreciate the work you and your ministry does!!

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Webinar Recording with Lance Crowell

Apr 05, 2011 by Ryan Hayes

Collegiate Leaders,

We wanted to provide those of you who missed it with a link to the webinar yesterday which was led by Lance Crowell. Lance discussed the intangibles of being a collegiate leader today.  He provides practical advice on how to move your ministry forward while reviewing the importance of knowing your ministry.  He gave valuable information that he has noted from his experience in working with both collegiates and collegiate ministers.  He also gives a lengthy list of resources that he recommends for college ministers to read. 

We have listed the link to download the webinar on our box.net page, FOUND HERE. You can download it and watch and listen when you have time!

We also have power point slides that can be accessed HERE, that go with Lance's webinar.

Give us some feedback so that we can know how better to help your ministry.

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Webinar This Morning with Lance Crowell

Apr 04, 2011 by Ryan Hayes

We hope you will join us at the webinar today, April 4 from 10:30am to 11:30am (we will not keep you longer than the hour).  We will be talking with our own Lance Crowell, former college minister who currently serves the SBTC as an Associate in the Church Ministries Department.  His areas of ministry include Collegiate, Young Adults, Young Married, Men's Ministry, and Family Ministry.  His goal is to develop and resource this generation of leaders.

In this session, we will think through some principles that we must always keep in mind to help us be strategic and more effective tomorrow than today.  Also we hope to encourage you as a leader in these few minutes, something I know you do not get enough of most of the time.  Come join us, it will be 60 minutes well worth your time.

 For instructions on how to join the webinar please click on the following link: collegiate-ministry.com/webinars

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