Two Chapters in One Post!

Chapter 10 – Revitalization to Missional Ministry

Here are the things I thought were relevant to this chapter for us. It was kind of a research project. I’ve adapted this to our situation.

Make a list of the fastest growing, biblically faithful, and culturally engaged campus ministries/churches and go visit them. Then bring home what you’ve learned and discuss it. What are these ministries doing and why is it working? What are we doing and why is it not working? What can we learn from these ministries? What can we try in our group that we saw them doing?

Planting Missional Ministries (chapter 11)

Church planters who break the code are learning a better way than franchising the successful models of the mega-churches; they are finding methods and models that connect with their community. How?

1. They are learning their contexts before choosing their methods. I have often told people that each new campus mission will look different than all of the others. We need to know our students before we try to reach them and choose a method.
2. They are learning from others without copying them. Instead, they are modifying.

Are My Teams in Place?

Before going public with any kind of public launch (if this even applies to any of us), we need to examine the state of our teams. Our families must be on board. We need a planter’s ministry team. By ministry team, the authors are referring to one or more people who feel called to commit their life and ministry to the church-planting (or campus mission planting) endeavor. We need an initial group of adult investors. We need a significant number of team players committed to the plant before we are ready to launch.

Have We Solved the Resource Challenge?

Questions:

1) What will it take? We need to consider a start up budget, operational budget, and salary support.

2) How much will it cost?

3) Who will pay for it?

Do We Have a Clear Vision?

Values – what are the core convictions that drive the form and function of the campus ministry?

Vision – What will it look like twenty or thirty years from now?

Mission – How are we going to accomplish the vision?

Strategy

Results

Have We Networked My Community?

What niche does our mission fill on our campus (or community)? Imagine if a large segment of the community or your cultural group could answer that question. Networking in a community involves a number of things which are represented in this list:

• Determining the spiritual climate and reading the culture,
• Creating a positive perception
• Building credibility within the community
• Penetrating social and relational networks
• Building personal relationships
• Inviting people into a biblically functional community
• Baptizing new believers, and
• Sending believers back into relational networks with purpose.