Multi-Site Students

New Book: Big Idea

We have exciting news here at Community Christian Church!  This week Zondervan will release a brand new book written by our own Dave Ferguson, Jon Ferguson, and Eric Bramlett.  It's called THE BIG IDEA: focus the message, multiply the impact.  I had the chance to get an early copy and am proud to say that IT IS REALLY GOOD!  THE BIG IDEA is one of the most essential components to the success of our church strategy 

Personally, I'm a big fan of THE BIG IDEA.  What excites me most about THE BIG IDEA is how it naturally creates teachable moments for the family.  Here at CCC, the entire family experiences one BIG IDEA each weekend.  Hopefully this alignment increases the chances of families having spiritual conversations at home.  THE BIG IDEA sets parents up for success as they take ownership for the spiritual development of their family.

So if you would like to increase the impact of your weekends, order a copy of THE BIG IDEA and learn from the journey we've been on here at CCC.

Dividing Ages for Events

In my last post I received a comment from Matt that I thought would good to answer in another post. Matt asked, "Why do you spilt the ages the way you have [for events]?" This is year was the first year we divided our students in this manner for events. As we wrestled with this question as a staff, here was our thought process:

1) Traveling with our students to Florida (from Chicago) is a long trek. Last year we took 100+ high school students to Big Stuf in Florida and found there were a few challenges traveling with this large of a group (i.e. longer stops made for longer travel time). We thought that it might be best to take two smaller groups instead of one larger group.

2) We wanted to give the incoming Freshman class a better chance to connect to our high school ministry. We assumed that they would be able to connect faster and more effectively with a smaller group that was closer to their age. Combining them with the Sophomore class gave them exposure to the overall high school ministry, but was far less intimidating.

3) We also wanted to create an intermediate step for Freshman parents. The jump between our Junior High Camp (in Wisconsin about 3 hours away) to Big Stuf Camps (in Florida about 20 hours away) was a hurdle for many families. Many students were not able to attend last year's trip with us because the parents were not yet comfortable sending their students across the country (this has never been an issue for the older students).

4) We now also created a scenerio where students can look forward to the next event they will be able to attend. They attend our JH Camp for 3 years, HS CIY for 2 years, and then HS Big Stuf for 3 years. All three events are high quality events so the draw becomes more about the location than about the program.

Shared Events

There are many aspects of our Student Community that allow us to function as ONE church. Centrally we collaborate together, we share resources, and we also plan big events together. Each year we create eight events where we bring students from all locations together. Summer is an incredible season for these shared spiritual experiences. We are coming off the heals of taking our High School students to a Christ in Youth conference in Anderson, IN (9th and 10th grade) and to Big Stuf Camps in Panama City, FL (11th-Grad). We are now currently preparing for our Junior High camp at Skylodge Retreat Center in Wisconsin. We have found many "wins" in doing events together.

1) We can raise the excellence factor by pouring all of our staffing resources into creating, producing, or planing an event.

2) Students have the opportunity to connect with people from other locations challenging them to step out of their current relational box. Since the demographics of our locations are very different, students get to be apart of a very diverse, healthy group.

3) Student get to be apart of the energy that comes along with the large group, but do not lose the intimacy of the smaller group.

4) Students have the opportunity to celebrate life-change in their peers across all different locations. More than anything, this seems to bring us together as one.

Each season of ministry, we love bringing all of our locations together for shared events. As we continue to grow and add location, I anticipate this becoming more and more necessary to unify the hearts of our students and the direction of our minsitry. You can check out some pictures from these events in the photo albums.

The Fantastic Four

Multi-site student ministry rises and falls on our ability to reproduce and develop leaders. It is the engine that moves the system forward. It is through more and better leaders (of small groups and teams) that we are able to provide care, nurture and a missional challenge for every person in our church. If you are looking to move your ministry to two sites, three sites, or beyond, then your greatest focus should be on developing new leaders.

Yesterday, we wrapped up a series of staff retreats where we determine the initiatives for the next year. Right now it looks like we will plan to start at least two new locations as a church in the next 12 months. As a ministry we cannot wait for the launch to figure out the leadership component; instead, we must be preparing months (if not years) in advance for these new campus plants.

One of the most effective ways we are preparing leaders for these new launches is through apprenticeship. We consistently challenge our current leaders to teach their role to someone not yet on our student team. But just as we ask our volunteer leaders to train aprentices, we have recently begun to do so as a staff. Those who assume a staff apprentice role are volunteers who have proven themselves as high caliber leaders, desire to pursue vocational ministry, and love and believe in our mission and culture. In many ways our staff apprentices do function as unpaid staff as they work side-by-side with our student campus directors. They carry large leadership responsibility, they are involved in major minsitry decisions, they attend staff meetings (when their schedule allows), and they take part in retreats or conferences with our staff. Our staff apprentices know that they are the first ones to be considered for any new staff position we hire whether it be at an existing or a new location. Currently we have four fantastic staff apprentices. Jake, Tim, Ray, and Jason are an essential part of our team, strategy, and mission. I am very thankful for their sacrifice as they are fully committed to help students find their way back to God. I am very excited about their role in making our new campus launches a smashing success.

Magnetic Culture

Tammy Mechien, our Kid's Director at CCC, recently told me about the new Georgia Aquarium that opened up near Atlanta. Apparently, this new attraction is drawing thousands of visitors from around the world each day. But not only does the aquarium draw visitors, it has also begun to draw volunteers. Though they do have many staff to operate the facility, they also created many volunteer roles that serve in a variety of ways throughout the aquarium. Tammy shared with me that the Georgia Aquarium actually has a waiting list for volunteers (more people wanting to volunteer than actual positions to serve). Wouldn't that be a great problem to have in ministry! But what I found most facinating is that these volunteers actually pay to serve. Now I am sure that there are lots of perks, but the payoff must be worth the time, energy, and money they invest to serve.

This caused us to wrestle with a very important question, "If our volunteer leaders actually paid to serve in our ministry, what would we do to make sure they were getting their money's worth?" How can we create such a magnetic leadership environment that people cannot wait to get plugged into Student Ministry. As a ministry we have done many things to value leaders:

1) Notes of encouragement
2) Free t-shirts
3) Minimal costs on events
4) Banquet (or event) each December
5) Building community among leaders
6) Opportunity to be apart of life-changing moments

But even with these simple steps, I feel like I want to do more. I want Student Ministry to be the most attrative place to serve in our church. Is there anything that you are doing to value leaders that has has made your ministry more magnetic.

Recruiting Leaders in May

As with most ministries, May is not the most intense recruiting season for our Student Ministry. Many times it feels like the season where you wind things down and shift gears for the summer. I usually assume that people are beginning to check-out and even need a break during the summer months. But this year has been an exception. We decided early on that we wanted to transition our 5th grade students into junior high and our 8th graders into high school during the first week of June (normally we wait until Fall Kickoff). We are tryiing an earlier transition this year because...

1) Our summer events are designed to help cultivate relationships which will make transition easier for students.
2) We want to give students more time to adjust to their new age group.
3) We want to hit the ground running in the Fall without having to wade through a transition.
4) We want incoming students to get to know older students that attend their school so that they will have a few familiar faces when they step into the halls of their new school in the Fall.

So with the earlier transition, we had to ramp up our recruiting process to get ready for the new classes. I have been very surprised at the number of leaders who have responded during this time. May really has turned into one of our most successful recruiting seasons that I can remember. We are introducing over 20 new leaders to our student ministry across all of our locations. I never would have guessed that we would see this much success at this time. I am now thinking that we should see May as a primary recruiting time in the future.

Short Film in Student Ministry

Ralph Winter is a top Hollywood producer who has worked on such films as The X-Men, Planet of the Apes, and Star Trek IV: The Undiscovered Country. I heard him speak at a creative conference last week at Daybreak Church in Michigan. At this conference he made a very bold statement, "Short Film is the new teaching pastor." He was suggesting that in our media driven world, a creative short film (much like Rob Bell's Nooma videos) will replace the "in person" teaching pastor as the most effective method for teaching. I really wonder if his statement will hold true and also wonder if it will hold true within the context of student ministry.

There are churches such as Life Church in Edmond, OK that already use a short film product as the primary vehicle for teaching in student ministry. This multi-site church centrally produces a short film product that is used at all 8 locations for their students. I am personally beginning to wrestle with this becoming a possibility for our student minsitry at CCC. Will we be able to continue to hire campus pastors with teaching ability when we go to 10 or 20 or 100 locations? Or should we centralize the teaching compenent and hire leaders for each location?

Here are some of the pros and cons I am wrestling with. I would treasure and thoughts and feedback.
1) We live in a media saturated culture. A short film allows us to use a familiar vehicle to commucate God's truth.
2) Students usually do not remember the theme of a night within a few days or weeks but they can quote movies that they saw years ago.
3) Short film allows you to tell a story with your words and the environment serving as teachers. The visual and the audible learners may connect.
4) Though you have to pour more resources into the short film to make it effective, you potentially take pressure off the campus staff freeing them up to lead more effectively at their location.

On the other hand:
1) If your campus people do have teaching ability, you need to find ways to leverage that gift.
2) Student ministry is TOTALLY relational. If all the teaching is done via short film, the campus must work overtime to make sure the campus is relationally strong.
3) It may be difficult to address specific needs at a location through a short film. It will have to be broad enough to connect to different locations and demographics. This will put more pressure on the small groups to make sure that personal needs are addressed in relation to each topic.

I am not sure where we will land as a ministry, but I am sure that we will experiment with the short film over the next few months. We may come up with some hybrid model where some weeks are short film while others are "in person" teaching.

Leadership is Key

Though multi-site ministry poses its challenges, the leadership advantages to this model are numerous. We have discovered that people respond to visionary and missional moves with their lives. The start of any new location instantly creates many new roles and leadership opportunities.

For student ministry, new locations have provided part-time staffing roles (10 hours a week). These roles are ideal for any current volunteer leader who is excelling in their current ministry role. They are able to explore vocational ministry in a safe environment while playing a critical role in a new launch. From a church staffing perspective, this also creates a low-risk opportunity to allow a current leader to prove their leadership and develop their potential. By developing and sending leaders, you will create a missional leadership culture within your ministry.

There are also many new adult leadership roles within the student ministry connected with a new campus launch. We have found that adult leaders in student ministry are more likely to contribute at a location closer to their home. Since many adults are commuting during the week to work, they are less likely to do so on the weekend to serve at church. Additionally, adults are more likely to serve at the campus they attend.

We have also found that multiple locations have given students a larger level of ownership of their location. Those students who faded into the background of a large location have come to the forefront of leadership in a smaller environment. With a higher level of ownership, students are much more excited about the community and much more excited to bring their friend. Multiple locations have allowed us to challenge students to make missional decisions with their lives raising their evangelistic temperature.

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.

Reflections from Life Church

Today I had the opportunity to sit in on a session led by Terry Van Winkle, the Executive Director of Student Ministries at Life Church in Edmond, OK. Currently, Life Church is a church of 17000+ meeting at 8 locations. Though Life Church is a church of many locations, they are committed to be ONE Student Ministry. One ministry with the same mission, the same vision, the same core values, the same philosophy of ministry, and the same central support network.

Terry made a few key statements that really helped define and drive his multi-site approach that I found very helpful:

1) Life Church is committed to "provide a comprehensive youth ministry at every campus regardless of geographic location, facility limitations, or number of attenders."

2) A scaleable youth ministry model allows us to serve an infinite nnumber of campuses.

3) A scaleable youth ministry model should have a limited number of ministry focuses (Life Churches focuses are: Bring In, Build Up, Train, and Send Out).

4) The most effective [multi-site student ministry] model will be centrally led and centrally supported.

5) The central component of the student minsitry can (and should) ensure quality, consistency, and excellence at each location.

6) A centrally supported youth ministry frees the [campus] student pastors to invest their time in developing our most important resource--people.

Though Life Church's model of multisite ministry looks different than CCC, I found his philosophy and structure very insightful. How do these principles impact your student context?