As much as we love tight friendships and close relationships in our fellowship groups, we also long to see more people enter God’s kingdom and start to grow as Jesus’ disciples. We don’t often talk about numerical growth, but it’s an important part of chapter life. So how do chapters grow?

The Chapter Building Task Force met in October 2004 and in January 2005 to understand and describe the essential components of growing InterVarsity fellowships. All of the staff participants have seen substantial growth in their campus fellowships and are recognized in their regions as a “chapter builder.” We focused on chapters at the median chapter size that have experienced rapid growth in recent years. We began with open-ended discussions of the most significant factors contributing to chapter growth and found a lot of agreement and common emphasis.

According to InterVarsity’s 2004 Fall Field Report, a tool staff use to help the national movement track our growth, half of all campus chapters are smaller than 32, while half are larger. The median for Graduate and Faculty Ministries chapters is smaller, at 19 students. Of the 560 undergraduate fellowships counted in the 2004 Fall Field Report, more than 400 had 50 or fewer students involved. And, on average, these small fellowships are not growing, but remain small year after year. Our task force’s hope is to contribute to the rapid growth and even doubling of a hundred or more of these small fellowships around the movement, contributing both to the significant enlargement and deepening of our ministry to students and to the increased satisfaction and morale of our student leaders and staff.

Our goal of growing the work is built on four foundational perspectives. Each of these perspectives also speaks in part to the question of why we ought to care about numerical growth:

God’s Work: We believe that God is already at work on the campuses of this country, whether IVCF is present or not, whether the fellowship is growing or not. Our proper zeal is found in joining his prior work, and doing this as effectively as possible.

Context: We share a commitment to take each campus context seriously. Our strategies are not a one-size-fits-all blueprint for how InterVarsity leaders should undertake ministry, and the principles stressed here will need to be pursued in different ways for different kinds of campus settings and populations.

Quality: We believe that quality is not in opposition to quantity; rather they go hand-in-hand. A group growing from 30 to 60 generally develops deeper disciples than one that is stagnant at 25.

Partnership: We honor and value partnership between staff, students and faculty. This analysis is not meant to imply a staff-centric, top-down approach. We need partners, and identify them generously.

With these perspectives in view, our task force wants to make some claims about growing fellowships without implying that numerical growth is the top priority or the only valid sign of success in ministry. It is, however, a worthy goal, as we know that the sower went out to sow his seed in order to bring forth a tremendous harvest.

We identified seven factors that seem consistent among growing fellowships. These could be divided into two groups: 1) fundamental disciplines of a growing chapter and its staff, and 2) concrete activities that apply the fundamentals in ways that attract and retain new students. These could be differentiated as those activities that any newcomer would see and perceive and the subterranean foundation on which those activities are built, but which would only be likely to be visible to the leadership team or an especially attentive fellowship observer (see the diagram; fundamentals in blue, visible activities in green).

Fundamental Disciplines:

Vision for the campus and fellowship growth: As we discussed growing chapters, we found that for a fellowship to grow, someone (either an individual or a group) must have a specific vision for growth. Fundamentally, they have a specific vision of what the fellowship would look like when it has grown. This person or team must then marshall their resources and those of the fellowship to bring this vision to reality.

Such a vision is based on a rigorous assessment of the demographic opportunities and challenges of the campus, as well as an honest assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the current fellowship. It is based in reality but not bound to it. This vision, though initially that of an individual or small cadre of leaders, must be articulated in many settings so that it is widely held by the leadership of the fellowship and others in the core of the group. In this vision, all the other components of fellowship life and strategy will be present: small groups, large groups, new student outreach, evangelism and others. These activities are not simply the job tasks of the staff person or the ministry assignments of students, but they are the means by which the vision is accomplished.

Leadership development and training toward the vision: Another common feature among growing chapters is a leadership team that is also growing, both in size and in depth. Consistent, high-quality leadership training plays a key role, for student leaders must have fruitful and satisfying experiences for the leadership team to grow. As well, the number and types of leadership roles will expand over time to contribute toward the accomplishment of the vision. There are a variety of roles beyond small-group leaders, the worship team and the executive team. These other roles combine a task role (for example, GIG leadership, hospitality, publicity, drama, outreach, prayer, tech crew) with an influence role (relationally investing in the people that role serves). These leadership roles bring more students into the ministry in meaningful and developmental ways. Each task role needs to be well thought through and given direction and partnership, but leadership training can focus on the influence role, the values and vision of which are common to everyone serving on the leadership team.

Growing fellowships have a deep commitment to ongoing on-campus training, even though they frequently have a consistently high involvement in chapter camps and other kinds of off-campus and periodic training opportunities as well. If cross-cultural mission is integrated into the ministry strategy of the fellowship, then urban and global missions project and team participation serve to deepen the leadership experience of students and move the fellowship toward the mission.

Concerted prayer toward the vision: This has long been viewed as the fundamental backbone of a growing fellowship, but the simple reality is that fewer InterVarsity fellowships are built around the typical “Daily Prayer Meeting” of the halcyon days of yore. Yet the value seems to be firmly consistent: while the specific structures for prayer may vary from campus to campus and era to era, growing fellowships and the staff who lead them are characterized by a commitment to regular, concerted prayer toward the vision of fellowship growth and campus engagement. So while we are always glad when students gather to pray together, we can distinguish between the kinds of prayer gatherings which offer up prayers for tests and ailing aunts and the gatherings that bring students and faculty to their knees over the state of the hearts of their lost friends and colleagues. All-night vigils, campus prayer walks, small-group prayer meetings and one-to-one prayer partnerships, when focused around efforts to engage the campus and bring the gospel to it in fresh, relevant and attractive ways, seem to bear fruit in growth and depth.

Concrete Activities:

When the fundamentals are in place, visible chapter activities become meaningful and attractive.

Targeted small groups: We discovered two key factors in growing chapters: 1) small groups help leaders focus ministry around the pastoral needs of the fellowship, and 2) they involve target audiences, populations on the campus with whom leaders take initiative and for whom they pray (dorms, Greeks, international students, ethnic groups, athletes and more). This is specifically in contrast to groups that are simply organized around “all people who signed up at large group for the Monday night small group.”

Excellent large-group meetings: In growing fellowships, the emphasis here was on quality, attractiveness and consistency: do well what can be done, given limited resources. We talked about the need for relevant messages, creative drama and media presentations, high-quality worship (with good verbal leadership), attention to hospitality, and the physical location and layout of the meeting space. Enthusiastic publicity and thoughtful “branding” (making InterVarsity widely recognizable) seem crucial.

Strategic evangelism and outreach: This emphasis grows the chapter by bringing in seekers who are genuinely curious as well as Christians who are interested in evangelism. No single strategy emerged as the main factor in strong chapters, but evangelistic activity (such as GIGs, seeker-targeted events, campus-wide outreach and individual student training) contributed to group growth.

Attractive New Student Outreach: We said little new here, since NSO emphasis has been around for a long time. Good NSO does not ensure a rapidly growing fellowship, but bad NSO can sink one. In strong chapters, NSO must be energetic and creative (both coming up with new events and building off of existing traditions) and help new students to see the fellowship not simply as it is but as it will be as it begins to accomplish its vision. Effective NSO helps the small but growing fellowship to look bigger and more developed than it is. This can create needed momentum to help the chapter get into its next growth phase. NSO is completed only when new members are fully incorporated into the mission and vision of the fellowship, completing the cycle.

—Rich Lamb and Cam Anderson created this summary report. The Chapter Building Task Force has further case studies and other resources that will soon be incorporated into sections of a new campus Web initiative. Watch for developments via the current SLJ website at www.intervarsity.org/slj/.