This is a guest post by Nick Johnson. He is the Director of InterVarsity for the State of GA and he is working hard with his team to make a culture shift to own the whole field of college campuses and commit to reaching all 90+.
Shortly after my wife and I got married we were wrestling with how we could better love the poor in our city. After reflecting on why it was hard for us to make it a priority, we realized it was where we lived. The Starbucks, nice shopping mall, and trendy restaurants nearby were a distraction. To fully press into this value we had, we needed an environment change. So we moved into a low-income neighborhood.
I wonder for how many of us our environment is hindering our abilities to fully press into our mission?
As the director for InterVarsity in GA, I gathered some staff earlier this year and we began to ask a similar question. How can we more fully press into our mission to reach every corner of every campus in Georgia? In order to reach the 90+ campuses in our state, something needed to change. We realized if we were going to get there, our staff needed to begin to own the whole field and not just the campus they were assigned to. But how do we do this? And does our environment encourage us to do this?
The more we reflected and dreamed, we realized our current work environment did not encourage this. It actually created silos. There was little collaboration in all areas of ministry. Staff felt alone on their campuses to figure it all out by themselves and struggled to think about other campuses because they were busy trying to figure out their own.
So we began asking how we could change up our environment to enable us to reach more campuses, own the whole field, and encourage more collaboration on staff.
The strategy we landed on is what we are calling huddles.
Huddles
When we think of huddles, we often think about the offense gathering together before a play in football. Using the sports definition, a huddle is an action of a team gathering together, usually in a tight circle, to strategize, motivate or celebrate. Huddles are important for the sports team to accomplish their mission: to win.
We are defining a huddle as missional/functional grouping of three to five staff on five campuses, at least two of which are unreached. Staff will no longer be assigned to just one campus but will assume responsibility of all five. It is up to each huddle to figure out their own strategy to reach their five campuses. This allows for models where there is high collaboration and teams reach campuses together to a model where staff still have primary campuses but collaborate to reach new corners on existing campuses and unreached campuses in their huddle. It will enable us to better strategize, motivate, and celebrate so that we can win at our mission.
It was important for us to realize too that we don’t want to create another organizational structure or layer. This is just a strategy to better accomplish our mission and so it can change as our mission does. In everything we will be asking what makes most sense now for our mission.
This is a big environment change for us that we believe will help us more fully engage in our mission.
We hope this environment change for us will accomplish a few things:.
- Staff will own the whole field: When your area of responsibility grows and includes unreached campuses you approach mission differently. It forces you to own the whole field.
- Increased collaboration: Our staff will be able to better utilize their gifts in our communities on campus. It’s more fun to step out and take risks on new campuses when you are doing it with others.
- Professional Development: As staff work in teams to come up with huddle strategies they will grow important leadership skills they would not otherwise develop by themselves.
- More campuses will be reached: If getting to new campuses relied on me, the director for GA, we would never get there. Now everyone owns the responsibility and we believe we will get to new campuses much quicker as everyone is owning the responsibility towards our mission.
- We believe these changes in our ‘work’ environment will open up new possibilities for engaging in our mission. Pray for us as we step into these changes this fall that we would ultimately see every corner of every campus reached in Georgia.
So What About You?
Here are some questions to see if your environment is keeping you from fully engaging your mission:
What does your ministry environment tell you about your ministry?
What would it feel like as a first year staff to experience being engaged in your mission?
Which structures help and which hinder you from accomplishing your mission?
It doesn’t have to be as big of a change as our approach with huddles, but what are some changes in your environment you could make to help your team more fully engage in your mission?
PS – If you have any contacts on or around campuses in Georgia, let me know at nick.johnson@intervarsity.org
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