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David Acierno |
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Rebecca had come into the chapter at the University of Wisconsin–Platteville as one of those fired-up freshmen. She was from a wonderful Christian home, had a heart to see people come to know the Lord and had a number of gifts that she wanted to use to serve God. She came to campus, got involved with the InterVarsity chapter and started leading people to Christ left and right. It was exciting just to sit back and watch her bring a new person to the large-group meeting almost every week. Our leadership selection team took note of her enthusiasm and invited her to become the evangelism coordinator after her freshman year. With tremendous excitement she agreed and soon found herself in the midst of event planning and administrating. We didn’t realize it, but the time she spent in actually doing evangelism disappeared. The next year, due to her tremendous ability to organize, she was asked to become the chapter president. Once again she stepped up to the role and served well. Unfortunately, our chapter had a mindset that it was the leaders’ job to do everything, and everyone else just showed up for events. The chapter laid a heavy burden on Rebecca and the other leaders. As a senior, she shared with me that she had lost all motivation for evangelism and serving God due to being burdened with all of the administrative functions that she was asked to perform. There are many things that can lead to to struggles like Rebecca’s. One is that we often fail to realize that we are a part of something much larger than ourselves. As the body of Christ, our chapter members need to find their roles and fulfill them to the best of their abilities with the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit. We need to develop the mentality that we are a team, a “witnessing community” to support each other and serve the Lord more faithfully. Once we realize this, we won’t lay unnecessary burdens on our leaders, and they’ll be freed up to serve the Lord. Rebecca’s story has caused us to ask some hard questions, not just about how we treat our leaders, but also how we choose our leaders. And the issues are not only about job fit, but also about timing. Over the past several years we have been rethinking the time frame in which we choose our chapter leaders. The end result has been to choose leaders in the fall rather than the spring. That small change has had a dramatic impact. losing good leaders For as long as anyone around here can remember, chapter leaders were chosen by a committee during the spring semester and usually began their leadership terms as soon as school was out for the summer. We realized that we had been losing a number of good leaders for a variety of reasons, so we started brainstorming some ways to help alleviate the loss of our best people right when we needed them most. So now, instead of choosing new leaders in the spring and having their term run with the school year, we choose our leaders during the fall semester and have the leadership term serve for a calendar year. This change has generated a lot of excitement and renewed the vision for our chapter and its leaders. We are hopeful these changes will help us to be a more effective “witnessing community.” There are four major benefits we have experienced from the timing change.
Leadership Selection Our seniors found themselves asked to commit to weekly, two- or three-hour meetings as well as multiple interviews with candidates. Add this responsibility on top of senior design projects, sending out resumes, interviewing for jobs, “senioritis” and, after a long Wisconsin winter, just wanting to get outside, and it’s no wonder we had a hard time getting people to help choose the new leaders! In addition to the difficulty recruiting a selection team, the team itself often felt it was simply filling leadership slots (as in Rebecca’s case), not because they felt God leading them, but because they wanted to finish and get on to other things. That did not seem like a very good way to choose the next generation of leaders (2 Timothy 2:2). By moving our leadership selection process into the fall semester, the selection team is less worried about the next stage of their life after graduation and is better able to focus and serve in the selection of leaders. A side benefit is that they are around in the spring to give advice to the new leaders they helped choose.
Leadership Pool In order to serve others in a leadership position, it’s best to experience good leadership and observe a good model of leadership before doing it. One helpful model for thinking about this is the “member, apprentice, leader, mentor” framework (thanks to John Jordens, area director of southeast Wisconsin). In this model, freshmen start out as members of a chapter, then move into an apprentice role their sophomore year, learning and growing as co-leaders of small groups or as assistants to those with roles such as large-group coordinator. Their junior year they actually take on the leadership responsibilities, having been both recipients and learners. As seniors, they become mentors to all of the younger students, helping them to grow and challenging them to step out in faith. By choosing leadership during the fall, we cut all freshmen from the running for core leadership positions. That way, we aren’t tempted to put someone we don’t really know into a leadership role. It also takes out of the running anyone graduating the next spring. This is helpful because those students need to be freed up to pursue the next step in their journey with the Lord as graduates. One of the difficulties with this model is that it significantly decreases the pool from which we choose leaders. At UW–Platteville this doesn’t affect us too much because our chapter is large (more than 100 participants), and most students are around for at least five years (or even six or seven). If your chapter is smaller, or students generally graduate in four years, it might be a little more difficult to choose leaders in the fall for the coming calendar year, but not impossible.
Summer Chapter Training and Planning As soon as school was over, the new leaders would attend the “Exec Planning” track at our chapter training event, spend a few days getting to know one another and then try to cram a whole semester’s worth of planning into one afternoon. This caused a lot of tension, and generally we didn’t take time to seek out the Lord’s guidance. It was no surprise that most of our plans came crashing down. With the new system our leaders are chosen by November 1 and then have two months to tag along to see what their predecessors are doing. Both the old and new leadership team plan the spring semester together, with wisdom coming from the old group and new ideas, enthusiasm and ownership welling up from the new group. A January retreat is held for the new leaders to do team building and to pray. Then we jump right into the semester. Our summer training week then becomes a halfway point for reflection, thanksgiving, prayer, rest and renewal. Rather than merely planning for the fall, the entire week is spent in Bible study and prayer, thanking God for all he has done, and then looking forward to what he will continue to do. To make this work even better, we may ask people to commit to two years for our core leadership positions. The first year would be spent as an apprentice, and then the second as the actual leader. Then each fall a new group of apprentices would be selected.
Fall Start-up By choosing leaders in the fall and starting in January, leaders are already familiar with their roles when NSO comes around. They find they devote far more of their attention to meeting new students and welcoming back the old ones. It took several years for Rebecca to rekindle her passion for seeing people come to know the Lord, but it’s back like a roaring fire. She’s currently working full time as a civil engineer while helping start a new church! Likewise it has taken some time to work the kinks out of our system, but so far it has worked out very well for us. Perhaps our experience can help your chapter too. [How does your chapter choose leaders? Tell us what works for you, so we can pass it along to others. You can e-mail us at slj@ivcf.org.] |
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. . . . . . . —David Acierno is in his sixth year as a staff-worker at the U. of Wisconsin–Platteville. He leads worship at his church and loves spending time with his wife, Ellen, and his two daughters.
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“I don’t want to be involved anymore. I’m tired and worn out. I’ve lost the passion for seeing lost people come to God that I used to have and I want to get it back.” So began my conversation with the chapter president. She was in her last year, and I was losing the most influential and gifted person in the chapter right when the group needed her the most. The fellowship needed Rebecca to invest in its younger students, passing on her wisdom and experience to the next generation of leaders. Yet she wanted to withdraw. Something was wrong.
