It’s one of the biggest messages are student leaders need to hear this year:
Failure is NOT fatal; Perfection NOT a requirement.
Because the truth is that — for fear of failure — many of our students will struggle to really give themselves fully to their leadership roles this year.
Of course, this sounds counter-intuitive at first — but when we give less than our best, less than 100%, we’ve then got an excuse for when things don’t go well.
Yesterday was our day of campus-wide leadership training.
It’s a time when we bring together all of the students leaders of varying student groups across campus for some shared training and team building.
For the day, we set aside the planning and preparation for our specific areas to recognize that we — as leaders — are not alone on campus. There are others who aspire to similar heights, and face many of the same challenges that we do.
From year to year it’s never quite the same — and I think this year might have been one of our best efforts!
Personally, I had the chance to co-present to our student leadership population of 350+ about the lies many leaders believe. Many of these lies were identified by different student leaders who have seen them — in some shape or fashion — played on within the student leadership culture on our campus.
Strong ministry leadership is foundational to success.
Informed, well-trained, and intentionally supported student leadership is essential to magnifying the power of, and exponentially expanding the reach of, your ministry on campus.
Student leadership isn’t just important for your ministry, but it’s an incredible opportunity for students to develop their gifts, explore their passions, and serve Christ in their campus community.
But good student leaders, and good student leadership, don’t just happen.
The beginning of the school year — it’s one of our busiest times of the year.
So many students to meet, so many to reconnect with.
It’s a season in which life seems to move at an incredibly pace — nearly impossible to keep up with — or so it would seem.
Yet I was recently reminded that while this might be true for many of us, it isn’t true for everyone.
I’ve got a friend I’ve been visiting in the hospital the past few weeks. In my visits with him I’ve been reminded that time moves slower there. Much slower.
You may already know the top issues for your incoming freshman, but Dr. Tim Clydesdale has actually asked them. And in a workshop at this year’s National Collegiate Summit he shared seven common themes uncovered by his interviews with college-bound high school grads.
The #1 theme? Navigating relationships (making friends, finding a boy/girlfriend, getting along with roommates) and managing gratifications (particularly sex and partying, hence connecting gratifications to relationships).
A College Student, A Homeless Man, And A Rabbi Walk Into A Coffee Shop.
That may sound like the opening line of a bad joke, but it actually describes an experiment I started last semester at the University of Delaware.
A couple volunteers and I were discussing the example we have in Jesus and his disciples, who were intentional about sharing their faith with friends “friendship evangelism” and with strangers “initiative evangelism”. When we scrolled through our phone contacts to count how many friends we actually had who weren’t Christians, we realized something had to change.
I’ve been asked to contribute a few suggestions for resources that can be used to equip those who do campus ministry so that we might do the job well, insightfully, profoundly.
I love that simple verse in 1 Chronicles 12:32 that names the reputation of the “sons of Issachar” who “understood the times and knew what God’s people should do.”
Reading widely can help us become Issacharian, helping us understand our context and how best to serve.
About 925,000 people go to bed hungry every night. Food insecurity plagues one in seven people on the planet. Around 25,000 people die every twenty-four hours from hunger or hunger related disease – more than those who succumb to malaria, TB and AIDS combined. Most of them are children – ten children die every minute.
What makes these statistics not only staggering but sinful are these two additional facts. There is enough food produced for each person on the planet to consume 4.3 pounds of food per day – that’s equivalent to seventeen quarter pounders. Even college students don’t eat that much food! And this: nearly 3 trillion pounds of food goes to waste every year.
“What are your plans now?” This question tortures most soon-to-be college graduates.
High School Seniors are barraged as well, “Where are you going to college?” They are asked over and over again.
I hear it when my friends ask, “When are you getting back into your Doctor of Ministry program?”
Even my seven-year old twins aren’t immune to our culture’s obsession with the future. “What grade will you be in next year?” What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Truly, middle class North Americans love planning for the future. Perhaps no sub-culture is more future-oriented than that of higher education. Faculty and staff are planning for their upcoming semester or their tenure applications, students are planning for the next week, for the rest of the semester, for next semester, for after graduation, etc.
Right about now collegiate leaders all around the country are having a severe dose of reality. Pure pandemonium is about to commence because we’ve realized that in just over four short weeks we’ve got students arriving back on campus and our Fall Semesters will be in full swing.
Dang that was a short summer!
All of our well thought out plans and strategies are about to be tested with a vengeance. We’re hoping our student leadership teams are prepared and have brought their A-Games. And we ourselves are screaming like banshees praying like mad that we haven’t forgotten anything because before we realize it we’re going to have incoming freshman crawling out of the woodwork all over our campus.