CAMPUS LAUNCH PAD

This is the third and final installment.  If you missed the first two, here is Part 1 and Part 2 . The nine months leading up to our first child’s birth I slept great!  My wife on the other hand, would experience the full spectrum of emotions and changes accompanied by many sleepless nights. I never woke up from heartburn or a kick to the ribs.  Those first nine months was the easiest, most low-maintenance parenting I had ever done!  However, everything changed when Noah was born.   All of a sudden parenting was hard-work!  The pregnancy and birth were so vital, but raising Noah and his siblings has been a full-time, all-hands-on-deck experience. In the same way, it takes work to recruit and train people to send out, but caring for them after you send them is vital to developing a culture and your ministry’s heart for starting new work.  One of the best recruiting tools for new workers is a successful first example of someone who was recruited,trained, sent,and cared for. Use the Whol

This is part two.  If you missed the first post, you can read Part 1 HERE Eager to begin the sending process we cast vision for one of our graduates to go help with work in the Northwest.  This was our first one - our first fruit! We commissioned him and sent him off with high hopes.  In retrospect, we rushed the process and ignored some red flags. Within a year they were overwhelmed and depressed which led to some drastic moral failure which to this day they are still walking in. We blew it.  I blew it. I was so ready to send that I cut corners and rushed the process, the casualty rate was high. If you’ve cast vision, exposed students and staff to the need, and set the direction you will have students and staff respond.  It’s only a matter of time.  There is something about unreached people and places on the hearts of God’s people that, marinating under the influence of the Holy Spirit, pushes us to those places.  Now the question isn’t about do we send but who do we send and how do

“I have never been so honored for someone to tell me to go.  Thank you for believing in me.” I was cleaning off my bulletin board above my desk and found a note with the above statement written on it. It was from a recent graduate who we’d asked to go to another campus to help a newer ministry build momentum as opposed to coming on staff on our campus.  It brought me to tears… again. Our Story In 2015, I was trying to build a staff team.  We needed more work on our campus and we could use more hands to put to the plow in the harvest field.  I was hoping that with “enough” staff I could cut back and start working a 45 work week and avoid burnout. Then the Lord asked me one of those bone-chilling, soul-tilling questions he does so well, “Clayton, are you ok having a large staff on a ministry-saturated campus when there are campuses without a multiplying gospel presence, small teams laboring while being under-resourced and under-supported, or without Gospel work at all? Are you b