"Not Reaping Because We Didn't Sow, ...Reflections on CCC's (Under)Developed Missiology"

Healthy soul-searching and self-criticism after a season of work is good for a campus missionaries heart, mind, and soul. This year I developed a new friendship with Brian Barela, a hip, young, social-networky campus minister at Chico State. I like how Brian's UCLA-trained brain thinks. I like the big questions Brian is asking. The following is in response to one he just posted on his blog:
http://brianbarela.typepad.com/the_necessary_things/2009/06/the-way-forward-as-a-win-strategy.html --- Welcome to Brian's (and my) world!

CCC’s U.S. Campus Ministries growth in terms of increasing and retaining premium missional leadership plateaued at our finest universities during the past 20 years (like a bird population that stopped growing because there weren’t enough tree holes to build new nests). On the surface there weren’t enough open leadership ”slots” for new missionaries to function “apostolically”; however, underneath this phenomenon was a profound “quenching” the Spirit.

For the past 20 years CCC has naively developed 2 categories for discipleship (“Win” & “Build”). We fed one and starved the other. Fundraising and campus efforts have focused on evangelizing the “whole” campus homogeneously via mono-movements (or catalytically creating more mono-movements on 2nd-tier schools and community colleges). In the process we’ve naively done violence to the ways God has sovereignly designed the university’s sociology. Consequently we’ve hit a wall. To their credit our national leadership has been reading missional church theology (ie. Darrell Guder), comparing notes with church-planting movement practitioners (ie. Southern Baptists), and listening to our best critics (ie. George Barna).

Over the past 20 years CCC "lost" an inordinate number of its most promising staff and student leadership to genX/emergent expressions of church, new church planting movements, and to overseas mission agencies (WSN, others). God has been in control and is growing his church. However, this leadership flight was NOT due to a strategic “sending” strategy by CCC; but rather by default (and the Spirit disciplining us). This left behind a dearth of staff leadership on the field and regional levels who were good faithful classic ministry managers vs. cutting-edge outside-the-box missionary entrepreneurs. Basically, we failed to see the university as God has designed it: comprised of hundreds of "people groups" versus "one campus”. Maybe we need to change our name from U.S. Campus Ministry (singular) - to U.S. Campus Ministries (plural) as a token act of repentance...

Many of our best missionaries, because of how God designed them, were compelled to flee U.S. movements because of our systemic issues. Sadly, on their way out the door to new fields, they literally stepped over thousands of unreached student groups at our finest universities. The consequences of 50+ years of not continuing to press in and discover ways to "make disciples" within the "10/40 Windows" at America’s finest schools is mind-boggling when you think about it. I’m glad we’re waking up.

[Brian is in Ocean City/NJ training 120 student leaders this summer] What if you [Brian] equipped and commissioned all the project students at Ocean City to pray for, identify, "disciple", and plant simple churches amongst all the unreached student groups at Ocean City this summer? (is. Russian students, college lifeguards, local HS kids, international students living in the same boarding house, Penn State students living all summer in The Gardens section of town) ...instead of primarily "reaching the beach" and "hitting the boardwalk". The OC project could be an terrific context to address CCC's immature missiology --- or just another venue that perpetuates it.

To read a primer about a compelling, holistic, missiological option for CCC and other campus ministries visit: http://www.friendofmissional.org/ Grace, mercy, and peace to us.