New National Director School - meet the students

I love the people I get to work with on staff.

Earlier tonight I had dinner with the other new National Directors (formerly "Regional Directors"). It was a lot of fun connecting casually before really getting down to business tomorrow. There are only seven of us, so we'll get to know each other pretty well over the next few days. Here is the lineup:

- Matt and Liz: Matt was formerly the Missional Team Leader at University of Missouri. He and Liz just recently moved to Boulder, CO to be the Campus Field Ministry Directors for the Great Plains Region. Matt spoke last summer at our New Missional Team Leader training in Colorado, sharing some of the work God has done in his life. Sometimes we'll hear of crazy testimonies that we'll tell other staff "you've got to hear his/her testimony". His is one of those.

- Sheila has been at Missouri State and is, like Matt, taking on the role of Campus Field Ministry Director for the Great Plains Region (for those of you not familiar, that role typically has a male and female in the role coaching the field staff leaders of the region). She just came off helping lead the San Diego Summer Project.

- Ben is my Operations Director counterpart in the Great Lakes region. He was the Missional Team Leader for the Cleveland Metro ministry before he and his family moved to Indianapolis to join the Great Lakes Leadership Team.

- Tim is in the middle of the biggest transition of all of us. He has been the Missional Team Leader at Northwestern University but is moving out of his native Great Lakes region to take on the Campus Field Ministry Director role for the Red River region in their regional headquarters of Austin, TX. He has a seminary degree from Trinity, and was planning on pursuing a PhD, before this opportunity came up.

- Amy has been the Western US Field Coach for the Impact Movement (Campus Crusade partner ministry to African-Americans) this past year but is now returning to her native city of Portland to be the Ethnic Field Ministry Director for the Greater Northwest. Amy has been based in Orlando for the past year and just finished packing her stuff up to be shipped back to Portland two hours before we had dinner tonight.

- Me, the new Operations Director for the Greater Northwest.

We're all staying across the street from our world headquarters at Wycliffe Bible Translators where they have some nice apartments for us to stay in during our time here. (Best part: they have wifi.)

Really looking forward to learning from and interacting with these other leaders.

[Breaking news: Trae from Bridges (International Student ministry) just started ringing our doorbell at midnight. Fortunately I was still up to let him in. I guess there are eight of us now! Trae is based in Austin and is a Field Ministry Director for Bridges.]

Update: New National Director's training this week

I'll be in Orlando the rest of this week at a training for those new in their roles as Regional National Director's. (The nomenclature is still new and unfamiliar organizationally. I'm a National Director of Operations that shapes the US Campus Ministry as a whole but focuses within a particular region.) It came on the calendar relatively recently, but I'm looking forward to getting time with our national leadership in the USCM as well as other new regional/national leaders. There will only be eight of us, so probably won't be able to hide in back during meetings. ;)

Hopefully I'll be able to share some of the content and insight from our time during the event via twitter and this blog. The schedule is above.

Anything on here you want me to make sure and take good notes on?

Update: Campus Crusade at Creation NW news

I spent some time on the phone today with a staff guy that works on conference and events out of our National Conference Office in Orlando. He's getting ready for New Staff Training kicking off down at Rollins Colllege while he is simultaneously coordinating Campus Crusade being at the NE and NW Creation events. Really fun to talk to operations people that are relational, detail-oriented, visionary, and energetic. Glen is all of those.

As for news...I found out from Glen that several campus movements were launched just from contacts that were made at the Creation events in 2009 - when we weren't nearly as organized as we will be this year. We'll have a six person team at the Creation NW event (5 students and one staff member - me), most of the time interacting with high school and college students that come to our booth (which is going to be pretty cool - Glen has done some great advance work with Creation and thinking through an engaging booth for us to set up). Also, one of the students on our team will speak from the main stage each night for a minute or two, sharing a little about who we are and inviting attendees to come talk to us at our booth. That will be in front of 20,000+ people. Whoever this person turns out to be (I'm working on that now), they'll have to get used to a lot of eyes on them...and having acts like Switchfoot, David Crowder Band, and Tenth Avenue North follow on their heals.

Event planning: "The right information to the right people at the right time"

Everyone that does campus ministry does event planning.

Small groups, socials, leadership meetings, retreats, conferences, summer projects...all of them require us to plan for a multiple-person event with a start time, a stop time, and an event between the two. Right?

My fellow Ops director (that I mentioned in my post last Friday) is an experienced event planner. One of the things he said he enjoyed about producing events was getting "the right information to the right people at the right time". I like that. 

Having produced and attended a lot of ministry events, combining those three things can be difficult. Ever shown up at an event, found something out, and thought "I wish I would have known that before I got here!"? Me, too. Of course, I've also shown up at events that I planned myself and thought the same thing!

So I've got an event coming up next month that is taking a little planning and coordinating. What needs to be known? By whom? When? Amazing how many details pop out of those three questions. Think about those three the next time you're planning an event.

News: Campus Crusade at Creation NW

We're working on putting together the details, but it looks like Campus Crusade is going to have a pretty substantial platform at Creation NW. I'm working right now with our national headquarters and some staff and students in our region to get all the logistics nailed down and I'll share more info as I have it.

Bottom line: This Christian music festival is a great venue to connect with incoming and current college students. We can help graduating seniors plug into ministries at their future school, and we can also find current college students that would like to reach their campus for Christ and may want to launch a movement if none exists.

If you're thinking about going, or know someone who is, comment below or contact me via Facebook!