September signifies the start of the fall and cooler temperatures. It is also right in the middle of a strategic time on campus we like to call the first 6 weeks. In the first 6 weeks of ministry on campus, each one of our ministries is ramping up and trying to get things off the ground.
As the Juniors, Sophomores and Freshmen from last year step up into leadership roles within the ministry, there is a brand new group of students who are making their way on campus. Most of them are Freshmen. These students are the key group that we try to introduce to the cru ministry during these first 6 weeks.
One of the main ways we try to connect with this group of students during the first 6 weeks on campus is through a short questionnaire. We ask questions like: How important is your spiritual life? Would you be interested in a small group bible study? Would you like to hear more about cru? Would you like to know more about a personal relationship with Jesus?
We use these questionnaires throughout the school year to connect with students on campus and engage in spiritual conversations with them.
Can you imagine trying to connect with 5000 freshman college students with a team of 10 or maybe 15 staff and a group of student leaders? This task feels insurmountable and often some of these contacts fall through the cracks. How can we make this questionnaire/contact card generation easier? And how do we make sure that we connect with each one of these students after we have their information? These are questions I love asking.
You may remember a project I was working on last year called Bonfire. Bonfire has been added to a nationwide cru software project called missionhub. Missionhub is a web application that helps to connect students with the ministry on their campus.
Beyond the campus ministry, the goal of missionhub is to connect students, ministries, churches, and local business professionals and others in the great commission. Missionhub will include many of the features that Bonfire possessed in the near future but the strength of missionhub right now is helping our ministries connect with students on campus.
Missionhub allows our staff to connect with students and retain their contacts in a streamlined way that is easier to manage. Instead of using contact cards (pen and paper), missionhub harnesses the power of facebook and social media to put students who volunteer their information into a database that our teams can access and even sort and assign to other members of the team.
Imagine if you were a staff member on campus and you could log into missionhub and see everyone on your campus who has filled out a survey. Not only that but you might be sitting in the lobby of a dorm on campus right now and you can see who lives in that dorm and pull up their phone number (which they have provided) and give them a call.
“Hey Matt, this is Ryan on staff with cru. I just pulled up the questionnaire you filled out last week in the quad and you mentioned you might be interested in hearing more about Bible study opportunities on campus. I lead a Bible study in your dorm and I am in the lobby right now. Do you have some time to get together?”
And you can do all this without carrying around a stack of contact cards or spending hours typing all the information into an excel file. Missionhub is completely mobile. You can access it anywhere on the go using a smart phone or iPad. The staff around the country are using this program as you read this. This is a great example of how I want to continue using my skills to help make ministry on campus more efficient so that more time can be spent engaging students with the Gospel.