College Ready

So for those of you who may not know, my parents work for Family Life which is a division of Campus Crusade. Anyway, dad works in the publication department of Family Life and manages what they place in the store and how much to price it, that sort of thing.

Since I am the Freshman Coordinator for the Arkansas Tech BCM, as well as a youth intern, dad thought it would be great for me to test out a new six week study called College Ready.  This material is ment to help students with their transition into college life.  This can be shown to both high school students as well as college freshman.  I even remarked to a friend that I got something out of it as a sophomore in college.

I watched one session from the series just to get a feel for what the material was like.  The session I selected was 5. Have Fun, simply because it was the only one not on the list of topics for Freshlife, as well as it had the potential of being a weak topic.  However, they pull it out well and it proves to be just as valid topic as the others.

This definitely appears to be very solid curriculum to use, and should you have any questions direct them to Family Life.  I really hope that if you have the need for a Freshman or High School senior curriculum to take care of this curriculum and reuse it.

Everybody trying to sell me their product...

          So today we had the organizational fair for timeout for Tech.  This is where you set up your material to promote your group to incoming and prospective students.  The BCM sets up a booth to promote not only BCM but specifically Freshlife.  This is our ministry for freshman.  Our booth was between two other ministries, that were between two other ministries, that were between two other ministries; sounds like alot of Jesus right?
          Anyway so I got to thinking, we have all these ministries, there for the same purpose, to try to engage students in a meaningful relationship with Christ as well as other believers.  Each ministry just has their own unique way of doing it, sure there may be some aspects that look the same, there are even times when they talk about the same subjects, but each place has their own identity.
         If we all have the same purpose, then why do people involved in the different ministries not approve of the others?  This isn't anything new, in ministry we see it everyday, but it's something that I wanted to talk about real quick.  Sure, sometimes things are done that are contrary to Scripture, but then if you really stop and think about, there is something each of us has done recently that is contrary to Scripture, (speeding, malice towards a brother, something...).
          Why then do ministries speak out against each other, are we not supposed to instead edify each other?  We are supposed to lift each other up, we should be thankful for the amount of students that we have attending each individual group on campus.

Think Strategy not Programs, Small Group Philosphy

So tonight for Freshman Leadership we are moving into working from two books and not just "7 Practices of Effective Ministry" by Andy Stanley. From 7 Practices we will be talking about strategy not programs. What organizations have a tendency to do is to create programs to fill a need instead of a strategy to move past that need. Once a strategy is in place, not only will a need be filled but there will be room for growth instead of the same thing taught repeatedly. This helps an organization grow and realize their full potential. From our second book "Leading Life Changing Small Groups" by Bill Donahue we will be talking about Small Group Philosophy, within this topic we will talk about vision as well as structure. Essentially with the students we will line out what they want the purpose of our freshlife groups to be and then we will talk about how to set up a structure to have a thriving small group that will help produce students who are growing spiritually as well as being prepared to be leaders themselves, or as the book calls them "apprentice leaders."

Fast times

So for those of ya'll who don't know (all five of my followers) I'm at intern at London First Baptist. That started about the time I came back from semester, so I'm doing that as well as working in BCM (Baptist Collegiate Ministry) Leadership, over Freshlife or Freshman Ministries. As well as my other paying job as an RA in Paine Hall. As compelled by my Multi-Media Practicum class, I will be updating this blog twice a week, during the next semester. Most of the topics I will be covering will be in relation to the internship as well as BCM stuff, so yeah, look forward to getting back into the blogging realm.