Are you comfortable with other leaders spending time creating something that you have already done? – Brian Barela
Many of you can recount a similar experience:
Last fall I was teaching a one hour training session on the role of the Holy Spirit. This is content that has probably been shared literally thousands of times by Cru staff. But a search on the Cru Wiki turned up 3,000 results with nothing helpful. So I spent 4 hours prepping a lesson that sits on hundreds of staff’s hard drives across the country. Really frustrating.
I know many of us wish there was more resource sharing in Cru.
For a while I put the blame on Cru (whoever Cru is): “If only we had better systems for sharing!”
But as I’ve thought about it over the last couple years I have realized that the bottleneck in Cru is that we don’t have enough producers.
We are all consumers wishing more people would share good resources with us.
We need more sharers.
Our Cru movement at the University of Arkansas has been the recipient of incredible sharing.
Nothing we do on our campus is original. Our ministry has seen tremendous growth in the past few years as a result of importing (and adapting to our setting) the best practices of campuses across the U.S.
In the past few years we’ve implemented ideas from Cru movements at:
University of Arizona - Chico State - Ohio University - Penn State - NC State - Portland Metro - Ontario, Canada - University of Oklahoma - Texas Tech - Montana State - University of Florida - St. Louis Metro - Cal Poly SLO - Miami, Ohio - Michigan State – Northwestern
But until recently it has been a one-way street – receiving great ideas but not reciprocating.
For me it came down to cost/benefit in regard to time. I didn’t do much about idea sharing because I wasn’t sure the time invested would be worth the pay off: if I start blogging, not many people would see it or be helped by it (i.e - it will take me 4 hours to write a post and 4 people will read it).”
But here’s what convinced me (among other things):
In the excellent post “ Tithing your Time Online ” Cru Canada staff, Russ Martin, states:
“By spending five minutes to upload the presentation from your last small group leader training you could save someone hours.”
There’s probably someone who knows a lot more about reaching students than you.
There’s probably someone who could really benefit from what you know about reaching students.”
Like all good investments, a minimal investment can have multiplying effects. It costs me some time on the front end but I can save literally hundreds of hours for a multitude of staff to get on campus and spend time with students (instead of re-writing a talk someone has already given)
Let’s create a culture of sharing. Think of it as an investment in Movements Everywhere. We need, what Keith Seabourn dubbbed , an “ecosystem of innovative movement-building.” And that ecosystem is built by you and I being willing to take a little extra time to share.
I truly believe that we can reach thousands more college students in 2012 as we
Free up staff to not reinvent the wheel
Share best practices and resources to more effectively reach students for Christ.
SO LET’S START WITH THIS:
What keeps us from sharing more resources/ideas in Cru?
What steps can we take to do better in this area?
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