When I was a kid I took golf lessons. The instructor kept telling us, “Keep your head down and keep your eye on the ball.” If you looked away when you tried to hit it, you might as well just start walking towards the rough, because that’s where your ball was going to end up.
For the campus leader, there are lots of distractions. There are lots of good things you can be doing with your time. But, what are the best things you need to be doing? What do you need to keep your eye on?
Most companies have a roles like Chief Financial Officer and Chief Information Officer . But here are three unofficial titles every Cru Missional Team Leader must live up to in order to lead well:
It is your job to make sure that your staff and students are practicing 2 Timothy 2:2 spiritual multiplication. That means you need to stay on top of what’s happening in discipleship. Are leaders spending their time raising up and developing the kind of people who will be able to raise up and develop others?
As the team leader, I need to be involved in coaching other leaders how to multiply their lives and select the right people. I am involved in educating them on what to look for and helping them hone their instincts. I am formulating strategies to help them get face to face with students and faculty to share the gospel and lay out the challenge to multiplication. I am casting vision for a movement of multiplication. I am thinking through how to train and equip students and faculty in multiplication and I am aligning them to the necessity of multiplying their lives. And I am modeling multiplication myself. I am developing multiplying disciples and passing on the ministry to them. Bill Bright said, "Never be satisfied with spiritual addition; our ultimate objective should be spiritual multiplication. Ask yourself, 'How many spiritual great-grandchildren can I name?'"
One of your jobs as a leader is to help your movement get the resources it needs to carry out the vision in your scope.
The rub for me is not how to get the cash I need (Cru has some great tools and resources for that) but when to go about it. It’s about finding the balance of raising cash to do the ministry and not neglecting the ministry.
As a team leader, I need to remember that it is not shirking my duties to take time off campus to meet potential donors and plan the vision dinner. I once heard that Dr. Bright spent 80% of his time raising money. Translated into terms I can get my arms around, that means he would spend 16 days out of 20 raising cash. Keep in mind that there are seasons in ministry. A good fund development strategy should allow you to get on campus during the crucial first six weeks of the fall.
Jack Welch (the former CEO of GE) says, "As the CEO, my job is to walk around with a can of fertilizer in one hand and a can of water in the other and help things grow!" This speaks especially to our role as coaches. The coach doesn't score the touchdowns, but he provides the encouragement to the players who do. We need to create the kind of environment that helps people score. It is very intangible, but it pays off in the end.
A very practical book on the subject is called Encouraging The Heart by Kouzes and Posner (the authors of The Leadership Challenge ). In Encouraging the Heart , they outline their "seven essentials of encouraging." I suggest that you read the book and ask your leaders to take the “encouragement assessment” included in it.
You can’t do everything. But you do need to keep your eye on the ball. That means you need to see yourself as the CMM, CRR, and CEO.
DISCUSS: Which of these roles comes easiest for you? Which is the toughest? Comment below.
*Photo courtesy of Brett Farmiloe (Flickr Creative Commons).
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