Creating Synergy Between Locations

Over the past year, we reorganized our student staff into two broad categories that we have called Catalyst and Campus. The Catalyst team is responsible for creating the content for our programming. Examples of Catalyst roles include those who write our small group curriculum and our large group messages, those who develop the creative content (music, videos, etc.) for our celebration services, those who plan our large events for students, and those who supply our graphic design needs. These catalyst products are used at all locations. This allows even the smallest of locations to benefit from the larger ministry system. On the other side, our Campus roles are designed to take the materials the Catalyst team creates and implement them effectively at a campus location.

Each member of our Student Community Staff wears both a campus and a catalyst hat. This allows us to direct each location while also allowing each staff to offer a specialty (in relation to their giftedness) that will impact the overall team. Each staff has the opportunity to invest more time in the areas that are their strength and in turn benefit from the specialty of others on our team. For example, we have one staff member who oversees a location while developing the small group material that every location uses. We have another staff member who oversees a location while writing the message that every location uses. We have another staff member who oversees a location while creating the graphics used in publicity for events and in our large group celebration services. Our full-time staff do take on a larger catalyst role than our part-time staff, but everyone contributes to the success of the overall ministry.

We have found that our dual roles have created a high level of teamwork and synergy between our campuses. Though there is always a healthy level of competition, any success we experience at a campus is a “win” for the whole team. We really sense that we are one team and one church that serve students at multiple locations.

Comments

[erin]

just so you know...our stuco team ROCKS!!!!

[Christy]

I'm in kids min and linked here from Tammy's site. This description of staffing structure is very helpful. I look forward to reading more. I also referred our youth pastor to your blog. Keep blogging!

[Dustin]

Our ministry is somewhat similar. There may be a campus student minsitries pastor at one campus, but they also have a global responsibility. Be it small group development, special events, video, etc.
We're trying to pool our resources together by sharing the weight of the programming making it easier and more creative to pull off something larger than ourselves.

[ali]

Hey this has nothing to do with your post, but what do you think of the emerging church with the mindset of student ministry? Do you think that we already have that relational aspect to ministry? Oh and happy aniversery/birthday!