October 2006

Leading Movements

What does it mean to direct these movements? How do I accomplish this while maintaining my personal ministry, making time for my family and still doing an effective job? These are the questions I have been trying to answer the past few weeks .

Things Stay the Same

In many ways my day-to-day ministry has not changed.  I still meet with student leaders on my area of campus. I still meet with staff for training and development. I still get to lead Bible studies and do evangelism on campus.

Things Change

Other things have changed for me because of this new role.

¨ I have been up front in front of students more, whether it has been speaking at a weekly meeting, just welcoming people to a social event or leading a training session with our student leaders.

¨ While email has always been a central part of my ministry, the volume has increased significantly (I didn’t even know that was possible).

¨ I have more meetings to plan for and run, including staff meetings and our key student leadership meeting.

¨ I have more “random” appointments with people like local pastors and other campus ministers.

Encouragement and Challenges

I have felt relatively comfortable in my new role as campus director and have been very encouraged by both staff and students. God was preparing me for this role for many years and this change came at a good time for me in my own development as a minister.

One of the challenges of this role has been to not take too much responsibility on my shoulders. It is easy to try to do too much, to be overly concerned about temporary problems, to micromanage things instead of trusting others to do the job or to simply succumb to anxiety about the state of various aspects of our ministry. Through this I am learning to allow others to do more and to trust them with those responsibilities. I am realizing once again that God cares more about these movements than I do and has a lot more to do with their success than I ever will.

Another challenge has been to not allow this new role to so dominate my time that I don’t have enough to give to Shelly and the kids. I have begun to limit the times I can be on email. I try to spend time with the kids after dinner and before their bedtime. Shelly and I try to get regular dates. I take Saturday completely off, unless you count watching football as work! Finally I have kept up my running program and am even running in my first half marathon on October 29.

Line dancing at our annual Barndance where 250 students got a taste of how much fun Cru can be! Next up...Fall Retreat!

Prayer Requests

Fall Retreat

Fall Retreat is coming soon. This is a critical event for our movements because it allows students to connect with each other, with our ministry and, most importantly, with God in a way that does not happen with any other event that we do during the school year. Pray that many students would attend, especially new students who do not feel fully connected to our movements.

A New Partnership

We have taken on a new partnership. We will be in Budapest, Hungary for a couple years, then looking to places like Berlin or Bombay for the longer term. Pray that we would be able to generate excitement among our students for Hungary, where God has been doing some significant work, and that we would see students go for spring break, summer project and for a year internship this next fall.

Our family and one of Lauren’s friends at the Barndance.

All the kids have fun picking (and eating) apples.

Kids' Column

We have been on a couple field trips. We went to a dairy farm and got to milk a cow and feed a bottle to a calf. I had fun playing with the other boys who were there. When we picked apples I had to climb the trees to get the really good apples. It was a lot of fun!

I keep telling Mommy that I love school. It is so much fun to learn my letters and go on field trips! I was a good apple picker this year. We picked two kinds of apples. Caleb is getting to be more fun to play with, too.

I tried to help pick apples but the first apple I picked was so good I just had to eat it. For some reason Mommy didn’t like me picking apples off the ground and putting them in our bag. I am talking a little more now and call my brothers “Dew” and Caybub” instead of “Boy” and “Baby”.

I am finding that it sure is fun to be able to get around. I like to army crawl like my big brother did. No matter how hard my parents hide the cords I will find them—I think that’s a game! I also got my first tooth today. Maybe that’s why I haven’t been sleeping as well. It sure is hard work to get a tooth!

Caleb

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