My dad sent me this lovely piece. The timing couldn’t be better as the campus ministry I serve is right in the middle of our massive, annual “H2O Project.”
Read this amazing story of a bartender who is serving beverages of a different kind in far away places.
I posted the simple opinion that it isn’t the best use of resources for ministries to “do their own thing.”
For example, if there are 4 organizations in a community that would like to do a canned food drive to help alleviate hunger in their space, that’s great. Most likely, each group will invest its time, energy and money and pull off a food drive.
My thought is, instead of four organizations investing four times the resources into the same kind of event, what if one invested its time, energy and money and the other three just joined in with that one? It would result in a more focused effort and it would free up the other three organizations to invest that time, energy and money in other places of need.
Here is an example of how we have done this. Just this last week I noticed a flier on a campus bulletin board promoting a drive to collect necessary items for the local women and family shelter. We have worked with this shelter before and love serving them. We could have just copied this organization and done our own necessity drive.
However, we simply asked our students to donated the needed items and then we took them to the organization running the drive. No need for a separate drive. This provides us with a couple of benefits:
This last point is extremely important to us and is worthy of its own post later this week.
Every year for the last several, our campus ministry has done what we simply call The H2O Project.
Our hearts are broken by the thought of 1.2 billion people in the world who do not have access to clean drinking water. Disease and poverty tear these lives apart, and the solution is so simple.
We need to get them some clean drinking water.
We challenge our college students to give up all beverages except for water for two weeks. No coffee, soda, juice, tea, milk or energy drinks. We ask them to save the money they would have spent on those drinks and divert those funds to The H2O Project. All of the money we raise goes to build clean water wells in Haiti.
That’s one aspect of our Project. The other aspect is our toilet. Allow me to explain.
For one week, we set a take a (clean) toilet on to campus and set it up right in front of the food court. As students are going in to eat their meals, we sit on our toilet and hold a sign that says, “$1 will give 1 person clean water for 1 year.” And we ask if they can share $1 to make a difference. Almost everyone has an extra buck.
We raise these funds, but we also want to raise awareness on campus. We hand out statistics and stickers with a picture of a toilet on them.
The purpose of the toilet is simple: to draw attention to the fact that everyday we pee in cleaner water than 1.2 billion people in the world drink.
Last year, our group raised over $1,000 from giving up beverages and another $1,000 from sitting on the toilet. This year, we hope to raise $3,000.
Please pray for all of our students involved in the Project and for the hearts of other students to be moved with compassion for those who are going without water.
The more who join us in the Project, the more impact we make. If you will give up your beverages for the next 2 weeks, and divert the funds to the Project, leave a comment so we know who you are and can pray for you. You can send your funds via online donation or by mail to:
CCH
PO Box 352
Maryville, MO 64468
(Please indicate H2O Project in the memo line.)
You can donate online by clicking this link.
See our Facebook event page here.
Ministry leaders have been guilty, I think, of re-creating the wheel. We always insist on doing our own thing, even if that thing is the exact same thing someone else is already doing and doing well!
For example, let’s say some students involved in my campus ministry get the idea to do a food drive over the holidays. And so, we invest tons of time and energy in brainstorming for our food drive, promoting and publicizing our food drive, and then executing our food drive.
And this is a good thing…but is it the best use of our resources?
Let’s say that while we are doing all of this, there is another organization on campus doing their own food drive. And they are investing tons of time and energy as well.
My question is this: instead of our organizations investing twice as much energy and time and resources into the same thing, why shouldn’t our campus ministry simply jump in with what other organizations are already making happen on campus?
This is the model we are adopting at the Christian Campus House. Instead of constantly attempting to do our own thing, we are always on the lookout for what other organizations are already doing on campus. And then we join in the effort.
In the next few days, I hope to elaborate on what this could look like and how we are doing it. There are benefits and pitfalls, but I think the positives outweigh the negatives.
Stick around…would love for you to join in the conversation.
It’s been a struggle for me to blog since I got home from Catalyst. For several weeks leading up to, and for 3 solid days, all I did was blog and tweet and live on the computer. (See all my Catalyst related posts.)
I think my body is detoxing.
And thus, I haven’t had much time, nor desire really, to post a lot here. I have some ingredients in the pot though and hope to roll out some yummy blog goodness starting next week.
Until then, I thought I might share a guest post I wrote recently. My friend, Benson Hines, asked me to share some campus ministry related Catalyst thoughts on his blog, Exploring College Ministry.
Here is an except. Or jump and see the whole post.
When Benson originally asked me to share some insights from the recent Catalyst Conference and how those insights might apply to college ministry, I froze. I drank so deeply from the well at Catalyst that simply choosing one or two insights would be nearly impossible. However, ideas shared at Catalyst have begun conversations within the campus ministry I serve. And it is our responsibility to ensure those conversations translate into action.
One of the most stimulating thoughts I absorbed at Catalyst came from a man named Shane Hipps. Shane served as an advertising executive for Porsche several years ago before God led him to become a Mennonite pastor. Shane stated that we, as Christian leaders, have often heard the phrase, “Methods change; but the Message must never change.” As college ministers, we probably understand this better than most.
Shane, though, challenges this statement. Tapping into his marketing knowledge, he made this simple statement: “The method is the message.”
I have a couple of weighty posts coming in the next few days or so. Before we go there, though, I thought it would be cool to bring you up to speed on some great conversations regarding college ministry happening elsewhere.
Ed Stetzer, Lifeway Research Guru, shares some statistics about college students and their use of Facebook. College ministers need to be where the students are at and there is no doubt they are on Facebook. But, what is the effect it’s having? Read Ed’s post.
Guy Chmieleski asks the question “Is it OK to close the door?” How do we balance our to-do list and relationships with students? Jump in.
The brand new blog over for the Association of Collegeiate Ministries is called HeartOfCampusMinistry.com and there have been some great posts kicking things off. Tim Hawkins offers 3 Points for Tuning Up Small Groups. I made a quick post about college ministry being a sort of Reverse Missionary Work.
My good friend Benson Hines is traveling around the country (again!) and visiting lots of campus ministries. Follow his journey.
That should give you something to read for a few minutes. As always, thanks for popping over to MyNameIsBrandon.com.
This story is about a year old, but I just stumbled upon it.
Apparently, a woman bought a house that was being foreclosed. And, then she worked out the details to give it back to the original owner. And, they didn’t know each other.
Good stuff, right there.
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