1. Show the Purdue or UGA Video to your student leaders and/or staff team.
The “Purdue Video” is an exciting and visionary 90-second burst of gospel-convictions from eight Purdue professors. It is powerful. An similar video was produced of UGA professors.
Show it to your staff team, your leadership students, your weekly meeting, and/or your professors.
The Purdue video is found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQd_V-B_0js
The UGA video is located at www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBSGpOVONM0
Be prepared to follow up the video with questions that will bring out the power of faculty and students working together to reach the whole campus. Some possible questions would be:
What would missional Christian professors add to a movement such as ours?
In what ways could we involve Christian professors in what we are doing?
Considering all the profs at our university who are not believers, how can we reach out to them?
2. Ask a committed Christian professor to come to your staff meeting or student leadership meeting.
Do you remember the first time you went to a CRU meeting?
Okay, there may have been those thoughts of whether you’d like them, and they would like you, but beyond that and the hot guy or girl on the third row… You found out that there were Christians, really committed Christians on campus. And they weren’t dorks, they seemed really like people you would like to be with.
Professors see students every day. But they usually see students at their worst – ones who come to their office because they are struggling in class: they’re working two jobs and have no time to study; their parents are going through divorce; or illness — and they’re having to navigate new waters. Professors rarely get to hear from committed Christian students talking about their faith. So coming to a CRU meeting can be so visionary for a professor.
If you do invite them to a CRU meeting or a leadership meeting, include several minutes for them to talk. They will expect that. Try including in an email that you’d like them to talk about their spiritual journey, for example, for about five minutes. We think you’ll find the students very encouraged, and they will applaud the professor at the end. And your students might subtly realize that part of their witness is to do their very best in class.
3. Change how you pray for the campus; pray in a “whole campus” way.
Share with staff and involved leadership the importance of reaching the “whole campus”.
For example:
Read a passage of Scripture like Matt 28:18-20 focusing on “making disciples of all nations” and applying that to your campus.
“We want to bring the hope of Jesus Christ to the whole campus—students and faculty. Students have unique in-roads to reaching faculty as do faculty in reaching students. Christian students and faculty need each other if this whole campus is going to be reached with the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Begin to pray as a team for the following requests (obviously you can add others that come to mind and are more specific to your campus):
- Pray for God to give each team member and the students in your movement and Christian faculty on campus a vision for the whole campus.
- Pray for God to surface Christian faculty that may be able have a part in reaching the whole campus.
- Pray for key student leaders in the movement to begin to cultivate relationships with their non-Christian professors.
- Pray for a spiritual awakening across the entire campus.
- Pray for God to raise up a few Christian faculty and key student leaders that would have a vision for reaching their college on campus. Pray that God would do this for each college in your university.
- Pray for your events (ie. weekly Cru meeting, Community groups, etc.) would have an impact in reaching the whole campus.
4. At a staff meeting send postcard/letters to Christian professors, thanking them for their calling as a professor and for their strategic role on campus.
- Start the staff meeting in prayer. Thank the Lord for the Christian professors on campus.
- Make a list of those professors. Look up addresses.
- Write them a personal note, thanking them for: a) following their calling as a professor b) their strategic role on campus
- Here’s a sample note: “Dear Dr. _____ I wanted to send you a personal note thanking you for living out your calling as a professor at _____ university. You hold a very strategic role on this campus. I appreciate you and thank God that you are the light of Christ our campus. Let me know if I can ever be of service for you.”
5. Pass out Prof 101 and encourage staff/student leader to read it.
https://www.facultycommons.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Prof-101.pdf