Bob Fuhs

Roger Hershey on Building Movements

Roger Hershey, a campus ministry guru, recently addressed the Cru team leaders in the Pacific Southwest Region. Here are the MP3's of his 2 talks:

Download Roger Hershey Movement Building #1 P

 

Download Roger Hershey Movement Building #2 P

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Comm Lab Day 2

We just wrapped day 2 of the Comm Lab. Who knew communication would be so intense? I really need to get to bed, but here are some quotes from today:

From Tim Downs' first message:

-"How you say what you say is as important as what you say."

-"If all we have is content, we die."

-"The non-Christian world is happy for us [Christians] to exist as long as we are marginalized."

-"The church must be profane." (Profane-meaning "outside the church." In other words we must go to the people and not wait for the people to come to us.)

-"If Christ is not significant outside the church, He is not significant inside the church." RC Sproul as quoted by Tim Downs

-"Paul's model was to first persuade, then if that's not working to proclaim."

-"Public speaking is dying to yourself in front of a group of people."

-"Think of the spotlight as an x-ray...The longer you stay in it you'll get a deadly disease."

Tim Muehlhoff talked about "The Power of Human Communication."  Here are some quotes:

-"Most of us take communication for granted...I mean, we've been communicating our whole lives."

-"Dialog is to love what blood is to the body." (quoting another author)

-"Communication is God's gift to form connection."

Honestly, Muehlhoff talked about so much that it's hard to break it into some quotables.  He really drilled down into the theory of communication on a deep level, asking "what is communication?" The whole point being we need to understand how complex it is to actually communicate with another person. Like he said at the start, we've done it our whole lives that we just take it for granted. And that's why most of us stink at it.

He just published a new book called "Authentic Communication" that we all got that I am very excited to read and recommend. You can buy it here if you like.

We also spent time in our coaching groups working on eye contact and gestures. We want to teach communication like you would a sport, so we are doing lots of hands-on coaching and drills in speaking mechanics. My group really made me proud as they stepped out of their comfort zones and tried some new skills.

So far the Comm Lab has exceeded my expectations! I'm beat, so it's off to bed but there will be more to come tomorrow...

Comm Lab Day 1

I am in Westfield, Indiana for a training event for Campus Crusade staff called the Comm Lab and I'm hoping to post some of my learnings throughout the week. The Comm Lab grew out of a training program CCC used to offer for staff and students that I went through during the summer of 1991 in Colorado as a senior in college. I came out of that training with 2 talks I wrote designed to present the message of Christ in a relevant way to groups like a dorm floor or a fraternity. My last semester in college I spoke to groups in every dorm on campus and that training changed my life. Now I am part of the faculty and design team providing the training. Wow...how time has flown! Content will come mainly from Tim Downs, speaker and author as well as Dr. Tim Muehlhoff, a professor at Biola University and a popular speaker in his own right. I'm excited to share with you ove the next couple days some of the insights from these two stellar communicators. To be continued...

Outreach Idea: Pizza Discussions

A campus leader in the Upper Midwest Region was once asked what he needed by way of resources to reach more students on his campus.  He responded with one word, "Pizza."  While I'm sure he was being a little simplistic, it's amazing how the lure of free pizza still draws college students.

With that in mind, one of the outreach strategies we have used with some good success has been a "Pizza Discussion." (Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure it was that same ministry director who said the above quote who told me about Pizza Discussions).  The concept is pretty simple: Invite some friends over to have a discussion about your spiritual beliefs and you supply the pizza.  We know those kinds of discussions were going on at the wee hours of the night anyway, so why not offer an organized forum for those kinds of discussions?

At the end of this post there is a link for you to download a short Leader's Guide and Training Guide for having a Pizza Discussion.  I think you'll find it a very effective way to get students together to share their thoughts on God and spirituality.  Let me know how it goes if you end up trying one.

Download Pizza discussion guide

Download Pizza discussion training

Adding Play to Your Work

You know what they say about all work and no play making Jack a dull boy, right? I say that all work and no play makes work dull as well.  So why not try adding some play to your next meeting?

I learned this from my friend Vicki Guinn who now works with Campus Crusade's music and arts ministry called Keynote.  To keep the creative juices flowing at meetings she would bring in things to play with like modeling clay, finger paint, markers, jacks, etc...  At one meeting she had someone craft a replica of a 1700's sailing ship out of popsicle sticks!  For the more creative people, instead of this being a distraction, this actually helps them stay engaged in the discussion.  And it sends a signal that says, "We don't want business as usual here.  We want you to think creatively and out of the box."  

If you're a CCC staff person or student reading this, odds are you have some lengthy planning meetings coming up here at the end of the semester or quarter.  Why not stop by the dollar store on your way to the meeting and pick up some play things?  Throw them out at various points in the meeting to stimulate fun and creativity.  Who knows, you might actually have people saying, "That all day meeting was fun!"

(If you are reading this on Facebook, this was taken from my blog at http://bobfuhs.typepad.com)

What To Do With Freshmen At A Cru Fall Retreat

It's been said that freshmen are the lifeblood of a campus movement.  I wholeheartedly believe that! Freshmen bring new life and excitement to your movement.  Freshmen are also very strategic in terms of building a movement that will reach the whole campus.  So, as a campus leader I did everything I could to do a better job year-after-year of reaching and involving freshmen.

One of the ways we did that was to pull together the freshmen for a meeting at our Fall Retreat each year.  We actually did what we called "class seminars" which were special meetings for students in each class. This helped to bond them as a class and it helped them see thier unique role in the movement.

Below is an article explaining what I did for that freshman time.  Feel free to copy it and send it along to anyone you think might find it helpful.

Fall Retreat Freshman Meeting Leader's Notes -

One Genius Fall Retreat Idea

Have the students bring snacks.

Seriously...I learned this when I spoke at a Fall Retreat for the University of Toledo a number of years ago. As students were registering, they each brought a snack item. Some brought a bag of chips, others brought cookies, some brought 2 liters of soda, etc... I learned from then Team Leader Nancy Bartolec that, part of the cost of coming to the retreat was to bring a snack item to share. So simple, so genius.

The previous year at our Fall Retreat, the camp foodservice was so miserable that we blew so much money trying to make up for it with various snack foods, so I was very excited to try something new.

And it worked great! It just wasn't a big deal for a student to pick up a bag of chips on their way to the camp and we had tons of great snacks all weekend. We asked a couple of students to serve as "snack wranglers" and set out some on Friday night and some on Saturday night to even things out.

I'm not sure why it worked out so well.  I guess that there's a principle in which people don't mind contributing in some way over and above the cost of the event.  But, it needs to be a small price and one they are willing to pay.  It can't be frustrating, like airlines charging for your bags. Bringing a snack is small and an easy way to contribute that really did keep the cost low for the retreat.

Where's the Elephant?

I spent a couple days this past week on the phone connecting with each of the campus ministry leaders in LA and Orange County.  In one of the conversations, one of the leaders said this:

"I just had to de-elephantize it..."

What he meant was, there was an issue out there that he knew would be an issue if he didn't call it out.  There was an elephant in the room.  I loved that phraseology!

I do something like this just after we select our student leaders on the summer project I help lead.  I sit down with the male director and female director and say, "What does the other person need to know about you and how you lead?"  The guy might say, "I'm an internal processor.  So, if I'm quiet, it's not that I don't care, it's that I'm probably thinking." And with that statement, the elephant slowly slinks away...

So, is there anything you need to de-elephantize this week?  Maybe you haven't been honest with your spouse about your spending...Or you need to let a coworker understand who you are a little bit more.  Perhaps, you need to de-elephantize the fact that you are a Christ-follower with you family or neighbors.

The truth is, an elephant takes up a whole lot of room that could be used for other things...

John Mott on 100% Sent

“The Student Movement renders the further important service of trying to place upon every student who is to go out to the non-Christian world to engage in other than the missionary calling, a burden of responsibility for advancing the interests of Christ’s Kingdom….In filling these men with the determination to make their influence tell for Christ, the Student Movement is doing a work scarcely less valuable than the raising up of an equal number of missionaries.”

John Mott, The Decisive Hour Of Missions, pp. 136-137

 

Today in CCC’s campus ministry, there is a renewed call to set a goal of sending 100% of students who graduate from our movements to influence the world for Jesus, not just those who decide to go into what we call “full-time Christian work.”  That effort has been branded, “100% Sent.”

 

These words from John Mott, founder of the Student Volunteer Movement, were written about 100 years before anyone in Campus Crusade for Christ thought of the term “100% sent.”  Pretty amazing, isn’t it?

 

Here’s the deal: Your movement has to give much effort and lift to sending everyone as a missionary.  Gene Appel of Eastside Christian Church said this past weekend, “God takes a full-time minister and disguises them as a police officer, a teacher, a government worker…” Everyone is a full-time minister, it’s simply your setting that changes.

 

Felt Problems Vs. Real Problems

The adage goes: “A problem well defined is a problem half-solved.” But, how do you go about discovering the real problem?

I was in a strategic planning session today where we were talking about problems facing our ministry.  The leader of the time had actually brought a list of 5 or 6 for us to think about, and, as we discussed the problems around the room we discovered that there were problems behind the problems. 

Have you experienced that in your leadership? You come to a point where you think you have discovered the problem, but after some thought (and probably getting a second opinion) you discover that the real problem is different.

I am watching the US Open Tennis tournament this week (stay with me, I have a point).  The world #1 player is Darina Safina and she was recently ousted.  On the surface, you might look at her game and think, “She needs to work on her serve…” or, “She should work on her backhand.” And, if you were her coach, you’d come up with a certain solution.  But, what if the real problem is in her mind? What if she doesn’t believe that she can close out a match in a major? Now you have a whole different solution to pursue. See what I mean?

How do you discover the real problems? I think there are probably lots of things you can do, but here’s a couple thoughts:

-You have to keep asking the why question until you think you’ve gotten to the bottom of it.

-You get brutally honest with yourself and with your team.  Don’t be afraid to uncover a sacred cow or call a spade a spade.

-Ask “What?” instead of “Who?” I wrote about this in an earlier post.  Instead of blaming people, ask, “What in our system, or our way of doing things is causing the problem?”

What do you think? How have you been able to define the real problems facing your ministry or business instead of wasting your time coming up with solutions to problems that aren’t the real issue?