Campus Outreach StaffCast
The Campus Outreach StaffCast encourages and equips those laboring in God's harvest field – on the campus and beyond. This podcast is produced by Campus Outreach SERVE in partnership and collaboration with the greater Campus Outreach movement.
Campus Outreach StaffCast
#66 | Paul Poteat | The Need to STRENGTHEN
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Our guest this week is Paul Poteat, Midwest Network Director for Campus Outreach. Paul's staff experience and his interaction with many CO teams over the past years uniquely position him to speak into the context of how the seven strengthening needs came to be. Drawing on 40 years of CO history and the current waves of cultural impact, this episode reviews the challenges and opportunities campus ministries face. Paul concludes our episode with a charge to actively pursue what will strengthen, not only for a successful ministry, but also for a fulfilling life with Christ.
Movement Spotlight: Campus Outreach Indianapolis
Season 5 will focus on the Ministry Strengthening Needs that we believe every Campus Outreach location has in this current season: spiritual fervency, evangelism culture, multiplication, contextualized strategy, church alignment, partnering culture, and expansion commitments.
Music by QubeSounds and Bamboo Corporate
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The Campus Outreach StaffCast is a production of Campus Outreach SERVE. The mission of Campus Outreach is to glorify God by building laborers on the campus for the lost world. To learn more, visit www.campusoutreach.org and serve.campusoutreach.org.
Welcome to the Campus Outreach Staff Cast, where we encourage and equip those laboring in God's harvest field on the campus and beyond. I am your host, John Elam, and with me is the Campus Outreach Serve Executive Director, Kent Bailey. You ready to begin season five, Kent?
SPEAKER_00Looking forward to this. It's going to be really good, John. Thanks.
SPEAKER_03Great. Well, Kent, here we go, kicking off season five of the Staff Cast. Uh, and this season we are focused on strengthening. Is that right?
SPEAKER_00Yes, it is. And, you know, it's a concept as we're gonna unpack as we go through the season that, you know, is not something we made up. It's a biblical idea. And one of the first things that we really want to remember is that it's you know we have a part in it, but it's a work that God significantly does. And so it's interesting to me that Paul begins Romans by saying, you know, he wants to come to Rome so that he can strengthen them, to, you know, impart to them a spiritual gift that will strengthen them. But he concludes in Romans 16, and I'll just read the verse there, it says, Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, you know, he clearly is landing the plane in the right place to say, you know, I'm a part of this, but it's God that does the work. And so as we're looking at this idea of strengthening over the course of these episodes and as each ministry is focused on that, I think that's a great balance for us to remember. And I'm excited that today we're gonna get to talk about that with Paul Petit and hear from him what he's been thinking about this, even what the regions within kind of the scope of ministry he's looking at are doing. So it's gonna be good.
SPEAKER_03It's great, yeah. Well, as you said, today we are welcoming Paul Petit with us. He is the Midwest Network Director for Campus Outreach. So please, Kent, would you just give a good welcome to Paul to the staff cast?
SPEAKER_00Well, Paul, as we were just commenting before we started, you are one of an elite group of repeat guests on the staff cast. So glad to have you back and thanks for being willing to take out some time here and talk to us and talk to all the staff around the world.
SPEAKER_01I feel honored and love this opportunity and love ways to connect all across the different ministries and regions and networks of campus outreach. So thanks for the opportunity.
1) Paul's story - faith and staff
SPEAKER_00That's great. Well, I would encourage anyone who hasn't listened to Paul and Sam's episode, uh Paul's wife from season two to go back and do that. It's a great episode, great things that they're saying there. But Paul, if somebody's already this far into this podcast and hasn't listened to that and doesn't have much context for your life, uh, give us just a bit of your story and then even just to where you are now, family, and so we can have a bit of who you are as we jump in here. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I grew up in South Carolina and would have said growing up that I was a Christian, but went to college mainly just religious and trying to do the right things and do it really well so that God would be happy with me. But my freshman year, I met a guy who was on staff with campus outreach named Matt Means. And he started spending time with me and uh through our conversations and studying the Bible together and just him modeling and living a life that was a Christian life that was just different than anything I'd ever seen. It became very clear that this is not the kind of Christianity that I've been living or professing. And so I think somewhere in my freshman year, I I came to Christ. And then it was the beginning of campus outreach's time at Presbyterian College, and so I got involved early on and got to see the Lord work in really encouraging ways on the campus and got to see a lot of students come to faith. And that experience just set me on a trajectory that that's what I wanted to do. And I remember coming on staff, I said no to going to medical school, but kept all of my books because I thought, well, you know, if this doesn't go so well, I need to keep I need to keep my options open. And I just remember after the first year on staff, just taking all those books and throwing them away and realizing, you know this is what I'm gonna be doing. And so I was on staff with Campus Outreach at Presbyterian for three years. And then in 2003 was a part of a team that moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota to begin the ministry there out of Bethlehem Baptist Church. And my wife, Samantha, was a part of that team as well. And we both worked at the University of Minnesota, and probably two years into our time there, we got married and continued ministering in Minneapolis at the University of Minnesota and then started ministry at St. Thomas University, which was a private Catholic school. Um, we were there for 19 years. Uh, I was a campus director and an area director, and then led the region. For those on staff or familiar with campus outreach that lingo means something. Others, uh, you might have to go to other episodes and and learn the drill. And uh then probably in 2020, which it was a great time for anyone and everyone to make big decisions and transitions and changes, is when I stepped into directing the Midwest Network and was doing that in Minnesota for a few years, but was traveling a lot more into the central Midwest. So our family just decided it would be a little bit more effective to live closer to all that. So we moved to Cincinnati, Ohio in the summer of 22 and have been here now four years. And we have two daughters. Our oldest is 17, our youngest is 15. So they're jumping into life in high school. And we've enjoyed our time here in Cincinnati, and it's been really helpful for me to be more central, just the proximity that I have to the ministries in Columbus, uh, Lexington, Indianapolis, Peoria, Grand Rapids, and then every now and again now I fly to Minnesota. I'm not going to make that drive again if I don't have to.
SPEAKER_00That's great. Paul, that's
2) The story behind the strengthening needs
SPEAKER_00great. And I think we need to tell some of the story that led up to these strengthening needs, how that all developed. And so, at least in my thinking, it really grew out of us seeing what was happening after the pandemic. And we begin to see that there are both some needs, kind of some rebuilding, if you will, that needs to take place. But then there are also just some incredible opportunities, students coming to faith, but also God opening up new doors of ministry for us on some new campuses, but also in new locations, even in the U.S. and around the world. And so I'd love for you to unpack that a little bit. What kind of what over the past two to three years was sort of your vision, your understanding of the needs that were out there kind of across the movement, but then also opportunities. Just give us some of your perspective on that.
SPEAKER_01Well, definitely 2020 and the three to four years after that, I think really made everyone in college ministry, and not I to my knowledge, not just Camp Syridge, but as I've interacted with other ministry leaders and other organizations, it was just a similar effect that it hit the reset button in a lot of ways, but because there was a a year or two for some where ministry was more challenging and you know, students who didn't really get to experience their senior year or their freshman year in college. I just think what that led to was a little bit of maybe a a heightened sense of individualism and maybe a heightened sense of distrust in organizations or institutions. And so when people aren't really looking to participate within an organization and they're a little bit more isolated and individualized, that's just a challenging landscape for campus ministry because you're trying to connect with people and you're trying to help them be a part of something beyond themselves. And uh I, you know, I think initially when things started to open back up and I think people were a little bit more interested in connecting with the ministry. Personally, I think I got really excited that, okay, like let's let's get after it and let's move forward. But then what I feel like I learned is that we're not in a position to move forward. Like there's some things that need to happen in the strengthening vein that uh are necessary before we can just get back to business as usual. Um, and and even learning that some of the expansion work that we had done and more pioneering work that Campus Irish was a part of doing in the first 40 years of the ministry, it was just more challenging to step back into that because we lost a decent number of staff. I think in maybe over a two or three year span, we maybe lost 60 or 70 staff. But we hired around that's that same amount, maybe 70 to 80. So you could look at it and say, well, that's a net positive. But what I've told people is, you know, that's like trading away all your best players for draft picks. Um, you know, yes, we've we've got a lot of new staff, but all of these experienced veteran staff are now gone. And so we've got a lot of young staff. So I feel like around that time is what really spurred the thinking of how do we train all these staff? And how do we train them maybe in a more centralized way? I think one of the beauties of campus outreach is that we've had a decentralized type structure that has allowed for expansion to happen more quickly because you've got lots of different areas that can then continue to grow and spread out. But when that happens, you have people reinventing the wheel and uh repeating some of the same mistakes and not really sharing or partnering or collaborating. And so I think with the loss of staff, but then the hiring of a lot of young staff, it just made it clear that there are ways to partner, ways to collaborate, ways to do some things more centrally. And so uh, and I don't I don't know, maybe this is is getting a little bit too practical, but you know, in the Midwest, we started doing staff trainings with all of those staff together. Whereas in the past, those types of trainings would happen in regional expressions, but this was one where we would bring six or eight regions together and all go through the same content and help them be connected. And so I just think that helped strengthen. It helped teach, it helped train because again, we've got a lot of draft picks who a lot of the things that were somewhat tacitly experienced by some of our older staff need to be more explicitly mentioned to the newer staff. And so I think that's just one clear way that it became evident that we can't really do some of the pioneering, expanding type work that we so long to do because we want just like the Great Commission, we want the gospel to to go to the ends of the earth. And so there's always something about the vision and the of the heart of going to places where there's not a ministry. But if you don't have healthy, mature staff or leaders, you can't do that. And the way that you get healthy and that you grow in maturity is you have to be trained, you have to be taught, you have to be invested in, you have to be strengthened. And so I think in seeing where we wanted to go, we realized the only way to get there was to really help and invest in the people who are part of our team so that they would be resilient, have a greater sense of maturity, that they would feel equipped to do the work of the ministry.
3) The opportunities
SPEAKER_00Paul, that's great. And I'd like to hear your perspective on what you just were mentioning there, the opportunity side of that. Because there are the now infamous red dots sprinkled around the world of, you know, more than 30 churches who have said, you know, we want there to be a CO team to come here and work with us to reach students in our area. And then even specifically within the Midwest, you were just invited to a location where there was a church, even a group of churches saying, you know, hey, we got such an opportunity here. And our thought in that was okay, there cannot just be one region that's sending out teams to all these places. We need every region strengthened and multiplying so we can get out to these places. So I'd I'd love to know in your head, how have you engaged that thought? How have you been casting vision or cultivating vision towards that?
SPEAKER_01You know, I think the way that we used to think about expanding to new places and starting new ministries was one region would send out some staff to start a new ministry. And and that connection was always really, really strong for a couple of years. But then after a couple of years, the pipeline dries up and you don't want to send your staff to go to that place. You want those staff to come on your team. And what I've even seen in the Midwest is some regions that were launched with a lot of energy and excitement after a few years feel a little bit more on their own. And part of that is because other regions didn't buy in or feel invited into the partnership to be accountable for that new work and to agree together. Because one region said, this is what we want to do, all the other regions felt like, all right, that's your deal. But I think now, as we're thinking about expanding or maybe going to new places, the thought of having every region in our network buy into that, it really matters because if everyone buys into it, then they're going to be responsible, they're going to be accountable to really help that fledgling ministry get established and then grow and then supplied and then resourced. And if that happens, it seems like we'll be able to add new works as opposed to it gets really exciting to start new works, but the most discouraging thing in all of ministry is when you have to pull off of a campus or close down a region. And when when that's because you outpunted your coverage or because you tried to go somewhere without having the the necessary maturity or or staff or or whatnot, that's that's really tough. So I think there are a lot of opportunities because again, in some ways, with 2020 and the some of the setbacks of the pandemic being behind us, I think over the last year and a half it's it's become evident that there's more interest, there's more eagerness. Um oddly, it seemed like 2020, maybe to 2024, that even people's openness to spiritual things, it seemed cooler, but over the last two years it seemed to warm up somewhat, and there seems to be more spiritual interest. And so the place that you were referencing is a local church in Detroit, Michigan. And they have a group called the Detroit Project that is planting churches around Michigan, and there's seven or eight campuses within about an hour and a half radius, including right across the river in Detroit into Canada, a university there. And so the thought, just all these campuses being really close by in proximity, and then all these churches that they're starting to plant. So I was at a at a table with seven church planners from that area who all said, this is what we want. Like the thing that's missing from our work is engaging with students and student ministry. And the Lord has used student ministries for so many generations to start movements of God in the United States and you know across the world. And so we really want that to be a part of what we're doing. And so, can you send someone yesterday? Uh, was kind of their their posture. So there's that, there's other churches that are in Wisconsin. Um, we've had churches and pastors who are interested. So there are, even within the Midwest, some red dots. And what's so hard is is again, you just want to go. You just want to do whatever you can to go there as fast as you can. And the disciplined reality is how do we stay patient and really invest in the staff that we have so that it's it's a good and healthy and wise moment to send people out. But it feels like the clock is ticking. You know, my my biggest fear is that some of these pastors in Detroit are going to find someone else that they get excited about who goes in, and I'm gonna feel as though the ship has sailed and that I miss the moment. But I just think that's not a very faith-filled way of ministry. That's a very territorial scarcity mentality to think that we've got to get there and that the Lord shouldn't use other ministries or other plans as opposed to thinking, yeah, there's a great opportunity. And as much as I would love to get there, if someone else can go, and that would be a healthy and fruitful thing, that would be beautiful. But I think there's a lot of opportunities like that. And, you know, maybe another opportunity is in those COVID years, I feel like a number of the ministries in the Midwest that used to send staff and then student leaders every summer on cross-cultural projects, you know, short-term missions trips, some of those stopped. And just over the last few years, the ministries are really eager to go somewhere. That's right. So Campus Outreach in Lexington hasn't sent just their own cross-cultural project in a number of years. And so they're thinking, where can we go? Where can we send people? Campus Outreach Indianapolis, same thing. Where can we go? Where can we send people? So uh I just think across the board, not only are there some opportunities stateside, but then opportunities for partnership internationally. Maybe we weren't thinking about as readily a few years ago, but now it seems like we are. And again, that goes into strengthening because people get an experience like that in another culture, engaging people with the gospel, and that helps grow their own vision and their own sense of maturity and their own dependency because you see how big the task is. Maybe that's that's something that I've been thinking about a lot is we need a network, we need ministries to partner together to do some of this work because it's just so much bigger than one region. And I think in the past, maybe we thought we can have a really healthy region, and if our region is really strong, then we can take care of this. But I just think that's a a misunderstanding of truly how complicated and how significant the job that we're being called to do is. And it's a job that can only happen if we work together.
SPEAKER_00Paul,
4) How did we land on specific needs?
SPEAKER_00that's that's super in there. I think one other part of the story that I'd want to make sure that we get is as we were saying, okay, there are needs and there are opportunities. And then what's it going to take for every region to be strengthened to a place where they can really participate in meeting those needs and taking advantage of those opportunities? And so you and a number of other leaders, you know, really a year ago began to think about, okay, what's that look like? You know, we just say, oh, everybody be strengthened, you know, and that could mean a lot of different things, but no, let's let's really think about it in some specific ways, some practical ways. And so the idea was, you know, there's no region that is absolutely weak in all the areas that we'll talk about in a moment, nor is there a region that is perfectly strengthened in all of those. And so there's there's going to need to be some both evaluation, but just collaborative development. So again, I'd love to hear kind of how you thought about it in in that time, how you've thought about it since, just this idea of having common focus points that could be helpful to all of us. How have you in your leadership thought about that?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think one of the challenges in leadership is to get an abbreviated list of focus points because there's so many things. I think the real challenge is not addition, it's subtraction. It's it's not coming up with priorities. So I, you know, I think the first thing was to try to think through in all that we're doing in ministry, what are all the needs? And then is there a way to begin grouping some of those needs into categories and things that would resonate and make sense? And and some of those came out of if we're not experiencing spiritual fervency, then it just becomes more of a business model. And we're just in this for certain results, but there's not an engine that is the loving God and understanding what Christ has done and who we are in Christ and the power of the gospel and the beauty of God's word and the the way that we're called to be a part of the church. And if you start losing those things, so some of it was we want to maintain these elements. And so what was clear in the 2020 to 2023 is that evangelism is more difficult. And what helps us get to a place where we can actually take advantage of these opportunities and meet certain needs is as we're sharing our faith and as people are coming to faith and as they get a vision for this. Um, you know, as we lost staff, we realize we need more staff and we need to multiply that. And oftentimes it's easy to think of having young staff. But what we really started to see is if we're gonna take advantage of some of these opportunities like Detroit or like Wisconsin or like other places, we need mature leaders. And so we need to have a bench that's deep of men and women who've been on staff for a while and would actually go somewhere because we're not gonna send someone young into one of these opportunities. And so we need to think about developing and multiplying additional leaders at a higher level and not just first, second, third year staff. And so that means we've got to keep staff for a long time. And so how we help those staff not just come on staff and be there for two or three years, but stay on staff for 10 to 15 is really important. And so again, that got back to the staff conference we had of partnering together and people who might not know anyone else who's doing staff on a campus like this in their region, but then they get around other regions and it's like, oh, you know, you too. And when staff meet each other and they understand that those things happen. So it just started a little bit of a domino effect, and we were able to list out six or seven things that really made sense to focus on. And conversely, if we don't focus on those things, there's six or seven pitfalls. That we can fall into and that we want to guard against. And we don't want we want our ministry to be marked by this, and we want our staff to be identified in this way. And we and so often that's true in scripture, right? It's not simply putting off, but it's also putting on. Take off this and put on this. Remove this and pursue this. And I think that's what's happening in this season of ministry in Camp Side Reach is we don't just want to be uh have a business model and just look to increase our numbers. We want it to be built off of spiritual excitement and energy. And we, you know, we don't want to just have the same people doing the same thing. We want new staff and new leaders and and to fill up the pipelines. And so I think all of that has helped us try to identify some of those points to focus
5) Movement Spotlight - CO Indianapolis
SPEAKER_01on.
SPEAKER_03We're taking a break from our conversation for our movement spotlight. Today we were here from Campus Outreach Indianapolis under the authority of LifePoint Church Indy.
SPEAKER_02Hey friends, my name is Matt Casey, and I serve as the regional director for Campus Outreach Indianapolis. I just want to give a quick update on the Indianapolis region. We have two teams serving at Purdue University and IU Indianapolis slash Purdue Indianapolis and kind of encouraging updates of note. A year ago, we embraced an evangelistic curriculum called the Journey Books, which is a five-week evangelistic Bible study that helps you understand the beginnings of the Christian life and answers five big questions. The journey books were written by the Central Illinois team over an 18-year period of time with Mike Jackson, who worked with Campus Irish for 30 years. It simplifies the staff days. At least your first five evangelistic meetings are simplified. But the other thing is that it just gets student leaders in the game. So we saw journey book groups pop up everywhere at the schools we serve at. We had people in sororities, intramural teams, classmates all jump in, the journey book group led by a student leader. And so it just made it very easy for them. So last year, 150 students sat across from a staff or a student leader, at least started the journey books with them. And so 41 students made professions of faith at Purdue and IUND, which is just tremendous. We're super excited about that. And even the fruit of the journey books is that our summer project was filled with a ton of new Christians who came to faith and were eager to grow in their relationship with God. So this year, our goal is 185 new students participating in the journey books with our staff and student leaders. Over the last few weeks, we've been meeting as many students as we can. And now we're beginning our weekly evangelistic meetings on campuses. And even last night, some Journey Book groups started up. The year's been fantastic so far, and hope you all have amazing school years as well. It's a privilege to serve with each of you.
SPEAKER_03Let's take a minute to pray for CO Indianapolis. Father God, we come to pray with the CO Indy team as they celebrate and praise all that you have been doing and their evangelism on their two campuses. The fruit of collaboration and excitement around the journey books is so exciting to see, both staff and students actively engaging with others in so many different areas on these campuses. We pray that this school year they continue to see fruit of new life and multiplication as these believers join and support one another, building in love as each part engages in the labor of sharing the good news of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.
6) The Strengthening Needs
SPEAKER_00Paul, that's a great narrative of kind of how we came to those. And so you were alluding to them as you went through, but I'd like to, just for the benefit of our ongoing episodes here, and so I'll just list them out. Spiritual fervency, just as you mentioned, the idea of us ministering out the overflow of our connection with Christ, evangelism culture, just that's normative that we're engaging non-Christians with the gospel, multiplication at a number of levels, both at a student level, at a staff level, contextualized strategy that we're really thinking more creatively about in each of the locations where we are, just about how we can bring the same gospel but in a helpful way to those locations, church alignment, just that with our hub churches and partner churches that we're working together to see laborers built, which therefore partnering culture. You reference that just even within the networks, between the networks and beyond the networks, that are we willing to work together to see the gospel go out. And then just expansion commitments that each team ministry would have their eye on. Maybe it's one more campus or maybe it's a whole new region. But they're thinking about that, praying about that. We've seen the power behind that. So though those are the things that we're going to unpack. I'd be really interested if you would kind of take us inside that, even from a Midwest or even a US network director perspective, or even if you want to speak movement-wide, when you look at that list, and I trust you just said and you have said, you know, they're all important. But if you said that your primary concern maybe over the next year or so, might be, well, I'd really love to see us take some steps forward in these two or three areas around the world, but just love to hear your perspective on that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, thank you so much for giving me the ability to say two or three. I thought you were leading up to pick one, and that was the one. That's that's tough because if if you don't pick spiritual fervency, then then that means that you I felt I felt like it was a trap. But two to three, I don't feel so trapped. I do think, and and this is not just continuing with that idea and being cliche, I think the reason that spiritual fervency in every list that we've had of that, that's at the top of the list because I think that really does matter. And I think it's just really easy in our day and age to lose sight of that because uh you can just go listen to a podcast or watch a little video. Um spiritual fervency is not spiritual knowledge, it's not it's not having information. Spiritual fervency deals with transformation and being changed and motivated internally. And I think it's easy for students to be involved with our ministry and really enjoy their experience and receive teaching or training or whatever, and then want to go do it, but not to do it out of a heart that's really rooted and grounded in God's heart. And when you're doing spiritual things without that spiritual fuel, then you're being disingenuous. And I just think that's what this generation can smell from a mile away, is they need to see someone who actually does love the Lord and not want to magnify the name of Camp Sayreich or the name of Paul Petit, but to see people love God. I I can't remember who it was, if it was Benjamin Franklin or someone would go listen to George Whitfield or Jonathan Edwards preach, and they they weren't. Do you know who it was? So I'm I'm wondering if you know who it was.
SPEAKER_00Franklin listening to Whitfield.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so Benjamin Franklin would go listen to Whitfield, but I don't think he was a professing Christian. So his friends would say, Why are you going to listen to that guy? You don't even believe that. And he said, I know, but he does. You know, like he could he could tell he's got some spiritual fervency. And I don't and I know nothing of that. And I just think we live in a world where so many students and people in general they want that, they long for that, but they don't know what it looks like. And so when they come across someone, it didn't fit his paradigm for how the world was put together. And I just think Christians need to do that. How do we minister on a campus? How do how do we be on staff and interact with other staff in a way that is fueled so that people say, that doesn't fit what I'm used to? That's what I saw in Matt, my freshman year. That's who I wanted to be and how I wanted to live. Um, so I think that's really important. Um again, I think because the job, the task, you know, I think about Acts 1, you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth. And then Great Commission, Matthew 20, I just read it today. Go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and aloha with you always, even to the end of the age. But if we're going to all the nations, and that's the task, is there's people that don't know the gospel and students that need to be engaged and churches that need to be planted and all of that. It's just bigger than any one region or any one person can do. And so I think the partnering culture idea, I've just seen it happen in the Midwest as we did the first Midwest staff conference back in 2022. It was good. I I thought, man, this was a slam dunk experience for all of these staff in the Midwest. And then we had one two years later, and I thought, you know, sophomore album is never good. Uh, sequel movie, Ghostbusters, I loved it, and Ghostbusters 2. I mean, who cares about that movie? It's terrible. Is our second staff conference going to be Ghostbusters 2? And uh it was really good. And then we had a third one at the end of April this year, and I just thought, okay, there's just no way. Only Toy Story can continue to make movies, and they all be really good. And we are not Toy Story. But we got all of the staff together, and once again, it was incredible. And so much of it is because they're seeing people who are doing what they're doing, and it feels like together we can do so much more as a movement than we can as individual ministries. And I think that's what we're seeing in in the Midwest. I think that's what we're seeing in the United States, I think that's what we're seeing globally for Camp Sarich is in our pride or in our naivete back in the early days. I think we thought, I can go, you know, I can go do this, you know, or our ministry, we can go make this happen. But I think now it's become evident only as we work together, only as we partner, only as we share and collaborate and um learn from one another and are for one another. You know, Jesus said that the world will know that you're my disciples by your love. And so there's something about the way that people interact together, that Christians love each other and relate to each other, that is going to fuel the world knowing who Jesus is. And I think Campus Outreach is partnering and working together in a way now that we weren't doing even five years ago. I mean, I think that's even something that happened through the pandemic as a strange, severe mercy is because we all experienced something and felt so shut down and so challenged, we were forced out of our insular worlds to interact with other people to say, how are you navigating this? Like, what are you doing? And that spirit has just continued. So I think spiritual fermancy, partnering culture, and I really do think church alignment. You know, one of the unique things about Camp Cyrus is how we partner with the local church. And I think that the opportunities there are as plentiful as they've ever been to work with churches and a lot of churches. I mean, I just told you, I'm at a table with a guy and seven other church planners, and they're all saying, How do I sign up? I mean, like whatever it takes, let's do this. And so how we do that and how that looks, it really matters. And I think that what the last 10 years has done in just the evangelical world in the United States is there's been a fragmenting and a splintering, and some of the partnerships and the ease with which churches and denominations work together, it doesn't happen as naturally anymore. And what we're doing as a ministry is we're we're engaging with multiple denominations and trying to get people together and bought into a vision that they all agree with, but to link arms across denominations and and within those, that means across theological differences. And I just think in in the United States, and it's it's probably been that way internationally for even longer, but getting people who disagree to put aside their disagreements to work together towards a common aim, that is supernatural work. And I think that contextualization, though that they're all supernatural, but contextualization, it seems like, man, we can really think about this and trial and error our way to throw things until it sticks. But working together across denominations and with churches and getting alignment on that level, it feels like God's got to show up and do something to help us here. So those three to me feel really big.
SPEAKER_00Well,
7) Why listen to this season of the StaffCast?
SPEAKER_00Paul, you have already been in the process of working on these and helping regions to think about these. There have been resources starting to be created over the past few months to address some of these needs and to create that strengthening. And, you know, our hope is just this staff gas would just be another one of those resources that people could tap into to be encouraged around these needs, to be stimulated to think in maybe new ways around these needs. So I'd love for you to speak into if since this is episode one and we're going to begin to look at these other needs in more depth through the other episodes, if you encourage people, said I I'd love for you to listen to these episodes. What what is it you'd like for people to get out of listening to input around these strengthening needs?
SPEAKER_01I think that if you're listening, keep listening because I think in campus ministry, because you can see results relatively quick. I I heard someone quote the other day growth happens in a crisis or on a quest. That's where you experience growth in your life. It's either a crisis or a quest. And I think, what is college? What is 18 to 22 if not both of those? It is a crisis. Who am I? Where am I going? What am I doing? And a quest, like, I want to get this degree, I want to meet this person, I want to have a family, I want to live here. And so so much growth can happen in in that place. But how it happens is really important. And I think that's that's a lot of what these topics get into is how do we want to do ministry? And you know, at first glance, you could think, oh yeah, like spiritual fervency, like check and yeah, church partnership. Yeah, check. But I think having different episodes that kind of drill into those, I really do hope, makes people think about them in a slightly different way and with greater nuance than what they've thought about before. Um because I I think it's really easy to hear a list like that and think these things have been prioritized in some ways before, but I think we're gonna come at them in some different angles and with greater understanding. It's it's like reading through the Bible. I'm in the midst of a Bible reading plan, and this time around, Ecclesiastes, it was as though I'd never read it. You know, I know that's a book of the Bible. I knew it was a book of the Bible when I was six, but for some reason at 48, it's hidden, you know. And I think it can be easy to hear some of these topics and they could sound familiar. But when you hear people talk about them from different contexts from different parts of the world in different areas of ministry who've experienced them in different ways, I think it will add a certain kind of flavor and depth to them that would help staff not just think about what they're doing, but how they're doing it. And I think that really matters to a watching world. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well,
8) Word of encouragement from Paul
SPEAKER_03I agree with the historic narrative of our ministry, but also in general, as campus ministries around the world are trying to figure this out. And so I'm excited for the season. I'm excited how we're going to be laying that out and getting these perspectives. And so what I'd like to ask you to do that we like to do at the end of our episodes here is if you could just give a word of encouragement to everyone who is out there laboring, and then also pray for our staff in the multiple contexts that they're in and the places that they are laboring, that they would be encouraged, they would be equipped through these episodes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um I heard someone talk about Proverbs a few days ago, and they just mentioned there's a verse in Proverbs that says, the beginning of wisdom is this, get wisdom, you know, which I mean it does say the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, but then like a chapter later, it's the beginning of wisdom is this, go get wisdom, go get it. And I think if you're on staff in in the United States or in other part of the world in a similar vein, be strengthened. Seek to grow, seek to be sharpened. Um there's so many things you can read and so many things that you can listen to, but very few of them are going to try to be contextualized and nuanced into your story, your history, your experience, the philosophies and the methodology that that has been, you know, invested and imparted into your life. But hopefully this podcast would be one of those. And it's going to talk to you about some things that you are familiar with, but that are really important in your life and that you need. And so our goal as leaders in the ministry is that you would experience strengthening in your own life, but don't passively sit back and wait to be initiated towards. Do whatever you can to grow. Do whatever you can to be strengthened and sharpened. Not only because that will make you effective in ministry, but I really do believe it will make you the happiest Christian that you can be. And there's nothing better than to look back at your life two years ago and now to look at that person and think, that person was so immature compared to who I am now. You know, when you see growth and maturity happening in your life, it's so encouraging. Like I love thinking about myself five years ago and how much of a moron I was because that just reminds me, like Philippians 1, 6, like God began a good work and he's completing it. And being strengthened and growing is a part of that. And just to get the opportunity to grow is such a gift. And so lean into that gift and make the most of it. So let me pray for him. God, thanks for this opportunity and just the chance that we've had to talk. I'm so aware that there's nothing that I would say or that any of us would say in and of itself is effective and helpful in anyone's life. And so, what we're asking, kind of like the disciples, they brought some loaves and some fish to Jesus and he took it and he broke it and it multiplied and fed 5,000 people. And we're just hoping, God, that some crumbs, meager rations of words that we use, that you could take them and that you could multiply them, that you could make a very ordinary thing like a conversation and like a podcast into a very miraculous thing because of your spirit's movement and your ability to change lives. And so use something today, use something in this season to meet men and women where they are. And if they're struggling, would they feel encouraged? And if they feel a little overly self-confident, God would maybe use some of this to shake them up so that they look at things and humble themselves and look to you in a deeper and truer way. So we're asking for big things. And so we we come to a big God who's very capable of providing that. And so would you be gracious to us in those ways, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.
unknownAmen.
9) Closing credits
SPEAKER_03We thank Paul Potik for joining us and for strengthening Campus Outreach teams and staff as we seek to glorify God by building labors on the campus for the lost world. Make sure to follow the Campus Outreach Staff Cast on your favorite podcasting service to catch each new episode every two to three weeks during season five. The Campus Outreach Staff Cast is a production of Campus Outreach Serve. To learn more, visit serve.campusoutreach.org.
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