The "New" Look of Ministry

The following are some thoughts from Sam Osterloh, our National Catalytic Director, about where we have come from as a ministry and where we need to go. Then, I appreciate Sam's story about Hanover College. Please share your thoughts by clicking on the 'comments' link.


Part 1

A week or so ago our team engaged in an exercise, that at the time, I though would not be very productive…but, in the end it turned-out to be very insightful. Since we have old people in the room, what we did was to have everyone do a one minute description of what win, build, send (dna) meant when they got first got involved. Well, as you can imagine, the journey from the early 70’s into the 90’s produced some interesting observations…and, that didn’t even take us all the way back to the 60’s or 50’s, nor did it give the snapshot for today. For the sake of time, I’ll give you the span and you can fill in your own time period, but I’d challenge you to give this some thought.

Win - Build - Send Today

Win – Dinner-line surveys and trying to get 80 freshmen involved, so that you’ll end the year with 40. A big event sometime during the year. ESC.
Build – Worship and teaching at our attractional meeting. Conferences, summer projects. Life discussions at coffee shops.
Send – International summer projects, internships, STINT, Staff.

Win - Build - Send in the 60’s

Win – Widespread sowing. Lots of personal evangelism by both staff and students. The napkin. (People wrote the gospel on a napkin.) College Life (evangelistic meetings.)
Build – Assurance of salvation. How to turn around and share your faith with your roommate, friend, someone in your family. Being filled with the Spirit. Being in an Action Group, which simply meant you were in a group with people that shared their faith with others.
Send – Turning around to immediately share the gospel with others. Seeing others come to Christ.

Okay, so there are many observations, but foremost is this: We used to have a high speed replicative process. Students might come to Christ on Monday and be sent to lead a roommate to Christ on Tuesday. That was our DNA. Replication. Today, most of our energies are in building the enterprise called Cru…that and a lot of coffee shop discussions.

Of course, number one of the top five arguments is this: Look at all the problems students have now. (Age old argument…times are worse now than they’ve ever been. People are more messed up now than they’ve ever been.) Listen, I’d challenge you to find people more messed up than the youth of the 60’s drug/sex culture. Yet, somehow the Gospel changed lives and the Jesus Movement was born! Maybe a better argument is this: The Gospel just isn’t as powerful as it used to be…lost some of it’s punch, I guess. Watered-down to increase profits, and all.

Well, the obvious point here is to get you thinking about our DNA! When we go to launch, what’s the DNA that we’re showing up with? Our we trying to build an enterprise and so we need a business leader. Or, are we trying to build a replicating transformational community, where the Gospel has power to change lives and students are all over the mission, sharing their faith, leading Action groups, etc.

Part 2

Okay…I’m going to paste a thing I wrote after coming home from Indiana last night. It’s a little long, but probably worth the read. Lots to tap into here about redeeming spiritual history, replication, prayer, etc. I’ll highlight in yellow some of the key passages for those of you who don’t want to read the whole thing. It’s called the Hanover Chronicle, and yes, is purely anecdotal. But, as we all know, facts are for those who lack good anecdotal evidence:

God first took me to Hanover College in February of 1983. At the time I was serving as the campus director at Indiana University which was about two hours away. As a ministry, we were embarking on KC 83’, which was billed to be a gathering of 25,000 college students. It was an unusually warm February day and Paul Konstanski and I somehow wondered onto campus on a faith whim, wondering if God might want to do something there. At the time there was no missional group on this, the oldest private college in Indiana (founded in 1827).

I was awed as I drove onto the campus. It was breathtakingly beautiful and sat atop a high bluff overlooking a awesome triple bend in the great Ohio River. Paul and I stopped and got out of the car and simply were led to pray there at this point overlooking the river.

Later I would learn that this spot was called The Point! Even though it was February, the sun penetrated cold bones and we basked in a warm sense of what God might do there.

We met with the chaplain who basically said, "There’s the campus. Have fun!" We ate French fries, decoded a little, and met some students. Within two weeks God raised-up a wonderful cadre of student leaders, and within a year, at one event held in the auditorium, nearly seven hundred of the estimated 1200 students at the college were exposed to the Gospel.

Nineteen years later, again on a faith whim, Chery and I drove back onto campus with Annie, our daughter, who was then a high school senior. She immediately fell in love with the Anne of Greengables sort of campus, and ultimately God led her to school there…20 years after my first visit there. My prayers of 1983 found an intersection in the reality of my own daughter ending up in school there. My interest in this little college on the banks of the Ohio was spurred again as we began to trust the Lord for Annie’s college years.

Last spring, Annie took leadership of the little catalytic Cru (Campus Crusade for Christ) ministry at Hanover, and Chery , Annie and I began to double our prayer efforts. This fall, instead of flying her back to school, I drove her, largely so that we could engage in prayer together for the camps and for the year. The Lord had been making us more and more aware of strongholds on campus that needed to be challenged, and so immediately on driving onto campus we began to enter into prayer, claiming spiritual authority and asking God to redeem His glory on campus!

I had done some research into the history, learning that in 1846 the college was near bankruptcy. Miraculously, a new president, Sylvester Scoville, emerged to try to revive the struggling college. A firm believer, the new president set as his foundational step to share Christ with every faculty member. Several came to Christ. From there, he proceeded to personally share Christ with every student that would attend. Many were born again.

With this foundation, he set out to raise money and the Lord honored his faith and commitment and the college survived and thrived, although Scoville died in a cholera epidemic in 1849. However, in 1848 a group of students formed The Society for Religious Inquiry. This group, followed the leadership of Scoville in proclaiming the gospel and living lives of faith. Then, in 1840 God sparked into being the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in London, and by the 1870’s the YMCA began to have an impact on college campuses. The Society for Religious Inquiry at Hanover adopted the YMCA name in 1870 and became the visible expression of this missional group on campus. In 1883 the first collegiate YMCA building in the world was dedicated. Students used the building to meet, pray, worship and aggressively spread the Gospel!

In 1904, the Hanover yearbook carried a picture of the Y building, citing it as the oldest known collegiate YMCA building in the world. A hundred years later, the Y building was moved from it’s original site, though it was preserved, I assume, because of the historical significance. It now sits on a remote part of campus and is basically used to store junk, but, stands as a memorial awaiting God’s redemption. Annie and I went there this morning and prayed again for the spirit of that history to be revived and for God to bring awakening on campus!

In 1905 the keynote article in the yearbook was a thorough description of the students that had given their lives to serve as missionaries in the Lord’s harvest. This was during the height of the Student Volunteer Movement and certainly, little Hanover was involved. Included were accounts of scores of students who sailed to China and India and other places around the world!

Four weeks ago I was invited to speak at the Cincinnati Fall Retreat in which Hanover students would participate. Recently I’ve been sharing messages from the book of Ruth, hinged around the revival in Bethlehem, and the overwhelming picture of God as a redeeming God. One of the stories that I share is that of Evan Roberts, the student in Wales who was willing to trust God for 100,000 souls in 1904. Against all odds, God honored the faith of Evan and his friends and the Welsh Revival was born with hundreds of thousands coming to Christ. The influence of this revival sparked revival around the world, including the famous Asuza revival in California.

My prayer when I speak at these retreats is that there would be a modern-day Evan Roberts in the crowd who would arise to spark revival and awakening, and something of these messages struck a chord with the students of Hanover. They returned from the retreat confessing their lack in the area of prayer. They exclaimed, "No wonder we’re not seeing God break-out on our campus. We’re not praying!"

The first thing they decided to do was to meet every night at 10.00 PM to pray for their campus. At one of those first meetings, one of the students challenged the others saying, "I think we need to believe the Lord for 100 students to come to Christ at Hanover." (One hundred students would be roughly 10% of the student body.) Since then they’ve been praying every night for students to come to Christ and daily looking for opportunities to engage others in spiritual discussions. Last night at the prayer time, God directed one of the students to challenge others to begin looking for God-miracles to start happening on campus. Last week at their weekly Cru meeting another student shared a stirring message recounting the spiritual history of Hanover and challenging students to pray and trust God for the redemption of that history on campus.

Yesterday, I visited Annie and the campus. Someone said to me, "You’re the National Catalytic Director; I assume you’re speaking at the at the Cru meeting?" It was my extreme pleasure to say, "No, I’m not. The students are doing it!" Frankly, why do I need to speak when students are already challenging their friends to revival and awakening? I went to the meeting, which was attended by around 60 students (more than 5% of the student population) and basked in Spirit-led worship and watched as the students shared their passion for Christ!

Paige, Annie’s roommate, gave an unbelievable message both challenging and training students to share their faith with others. Apart from Annie and a few of her friends no one even knew, or cared, that the National Director was there! As it should be, the students were the heroes! They are the ones believing God for the mission on their campus!

This week the students are lobbying the administration to open the YMCA building and hold an all-night prayer vigil there.

As I was flying out of Louisville today, I had an emotionally overwhelming experience. After several flight delays, we were finally airborne and about 15 minutes out of Louisville. A frequent flier, I’m not often compelled to look out my window. But, for some reason, I had this overwhelming urge to glance out. As I did, I noticed a river and soon wondered if we were over the Mississippi. But then, in a flash I knew exactly where we were. I looked down and there was the unique triple bend in the river and I was looking down right on Hanover College. God had gotten my attention and at 15,000 feet there it all was...the Point, the Y building, Annie’s room, all of it! I was overcome with emotion and I found myself weeping and praying. I could picture God’s Spirit breaking through the patchy clouds and bringing revival fire to the campus. I could picture God’s glory breaking through! I could picture Him giving those student leaders the campus. I could picture it all in His hand! As the scene passed from my sight, I wept.

Just before I left for this trip, God gave me this verse, Ezekiel 44.4: "And He brought me by the way of the north gate before the house. And I looked, and, behold, the glory of Jehovah God filled the house of Jehovah. And I fell on my face." I wondered about my trip north. And with a deep sense of emotion I prayed more fervently for the glory of Jehovah God to fill the house at Hanover!

Sam Osterloh
sam.osterloh@uscm.org