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

3 Keys To Aligning

Step 1: Love

The people you are leading and trying to align to a plan or program need to know that you love them.  They need to know that you care about them and their welfare.  If they don't believe that, they are very close to being used and seeing your alignment as simply running them through the meat-grinder. My friend Jim Sylvester used to say, "People will take anything from you as long as they know you love them."

Step 2: Listen

Hear them out.  Listen to their wants and needs.  Ask lots of questions about their work and what they feel is going well or not so well.  This is Steve Covey's "Seek to understand before you are understood" principle.  If you are feeling resistance to a new emphasis in your ministry, perhaps you need to spend more time listening to your people.  They will feel more comfortable with change if they know that you understand them and their concerns.

Step 3: Involve

Nothing creates buy in more than involving people in the change process.  As a campus leader this usually meant involving our leadership students in our strategic planning sessions.  A few years back we were struggling with our weekly meeting space as we grew and could not find a room big enough to hold us.  We got about 20 of our top leaders together and walked through a problem-solving process together. By the end of the time we were all on the same page as to the solution.  That created way more buy-in that if me and the staff team had simply come up with a solution ourselves and told them.

As the adage goes: "Involvement breeds commitment."

So, if you are experiencing alignment issues in your area of influence, odds are the problem can be traced back to one of these three things. Maybe it's time to step back and ask yourself, Do the people know that I love them? Have I listened to them? Have I involved them?

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?

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Emcee and Weekly Meeting Training Audio

Download Emcee and Weekly Meeting Training

I led a training time on how to emcee a weekly meeting, as well as basic principles that will help your weekly meeting become more effective!