It can be a scary thing when you realize just how important you are to the success of the ministry on your campus. Wait, isn’t it all up to God? Don’t worry, I’m not trying to encourage some kind of egotistical, chest beating, God-can’t-do-this-without-me type of spirit when I say that. But what I have realized is that most of the time students will only go as far as we go.
I remember sitting down to dinner with an atheist after only a couple of months working for BASIC. My wife and I had just started a BASIC group on a local campus and we had about 3-4 students attending each week. One of the girls who had been coming was eating with a friend that night and we invited them to join us. We were eating with another student before we headed over to the week’s BASIC meeting.
After they had settled in and we talked for a couple minutes we invited Sarah to come to the meeting that night. She quickly pronounced that she was an atheist and had already told her friend that she would never come. I left to set up for the meeting, praying as my wife continued the conversation.
Sarah ended up attending BASIC that night and later gave her life to the Lord. It was incredible to see the transformation, but it was also encouraging to see other students stepping out and sharing their faith after that dinner. Without realizing it, we had just modeled how simple it is to share your faith and invite others to attend our BASIC meetings.
As leaders, it can be easy to forget that students are watching everything you do. We didn’t think that we were doing anything extraordinary when we invited that girl to dinner and eventually to our BASIC meeting, but that small conversation opened the door to much more.
In the BASIC offices we call this concept setting the lid. We have a set of principles for how we operate that we call The Code. Here’s what it says about this in our staff handbook.
We set the lid – By God’s grace, we are leading a movement. The students we minister to will not give more, learn more, sacrifice more, or love more than we do. Therefore, we will go above and beyond to serve as examples, just as Christ was our example.
So, my question for you is this: what are you doing as a leader to raise your lid? A lot of what Ryan talked about last week about getting filled up can help with this, but I think it’s also important to consider how often we’re among students modeling the Gospel.
It’s essential that we take time to go out and minister on campus. Students need opportunities to visit us in our homes and see us interact with our family and neighbors. We need to make time to serve beside them, pray for their friends and model true outreach for them. Remember, they’ll only go as far as you go. You set the lid.