My Brain Is Fried

Chuck on February 2nd, 2010

In the last two and a half months I have co-authored a book called “The Slow Fade: why you matter in the disappearing story of twentysomethings” and written another one by myself titled, “College Ministry From Scratch: a practical guide to starting and sustaining a successful college ministry.

In other words, my brain is fried.

Obviously neither of these books are available yet.  In fact I just finished and sent the manuscript for CM From Scratch to Zondervan last night!  But I thought I’d tell you at least a little about each of these.  In the not so distant future I will post video blogs about each book, giving a detailed overview of what they’re all about and how your ministry might be able to benefit from them.  But here’s a VERY brief summary of what’s to come…

The Slow Fade (May 1, 2010 release date, David C. Cook): This is a book written to an adult who desires, or needs to be encouraged to invest in a college age person.  This book walks them through the need for them to be involved in the life of a college age person, helps them overcome the intimidation of that by clearly defining their role, and gives them very practical steps to take.  I co-authored this with Reggie Joiner and Abbie Smith.  We each contribute from different perspectives on this issue: Abbie as a single twenty-something woman, Reggie as a pastor and dad of college age kids, and me as a college pastor as well as a church planter implementing these concepts in my church.   I’m really excited about this.  It’s a fairly quick and easy read…perfect to hand to your (or soon-to-be) adult volunteers.

College Ministry From Scratch (Sept. 1, 2010 release date, Zondervan): This is as practical as you can get, I think.  I describe my quest to define what it means to be successful in college ministry – giving you the ways I define it, how to appropriately measure our effectiveness, developing a job description that keeps us focused, what to do your first 90 days in CM…and a couple more chapters in that first section.  Then I devote a chapter to each aspect of daily ministry: small groups, working with interns, leading mission trips, doing retreats, what to talk about in one-on-one conversations, recruiting older adults, teaching topics and approaches….you get the idea.  There are 19 chapters in total – unless that changes in the editing stages, which is possible.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to lately and why I’ve lagged on blogging.  I can write so much.  But, I’m going to kick it back in gear here as much as I can, so stay tuned.

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Elliot at 2:53pm February 7

Man, I wish I could grab that ‘CM from scratch’ book right now – just starting off…and I’m struggling to figure out what to do!

Tish at 9:21am July 7

Me Too! Doing the same at my church. Just became head of this department 6 months ago.