Vision week in pictures.

We put on a picnic in the middle of campus to engage with students in spiritual conversations and eat chicken wings.

This is a picture of yours truly facilitating a prayer walk for potential leaders on campus.

This is Aziel (one of our student leaders) praying for another staff (Theo) before he shares a message to kick off Vision Week.

Another picture from the picnic.

Esther, Chelsea, and Crystal (another staff!) after a leadership meeting.

A response board we asked students on campus to contribute to. The point: start conversations.

Another response board we asked students to contribute to. The point: start conversations.

No more little small room

For the past as many years as I can remember, our NAU InterVarsity chapter has met in science building rooms with a maximum capacity of 200ish people. 

Every year, especially during the first few months of school, that baby is packed.  Fire codes are usually broken (secretly, of course) because there are so many people in the room.  But then it starts to get uncomfortable and people just start trickling away until the room fits the regular number of people.

Not this year.

Now we’re in the du Bois center ballroom.  Which can fit nearly double the amount of people of any room we’ve ever been in.  We won’t have to turn people away, they’ll be space for people to move around, and we’ll be able to get uber creative with what we do during Large Group.

I have no idea what’s actually going to happen.  But that’s the beauty of it, He can take the reins and surprise us with more than we can possibly imagine.

I can’t wait.

I don’t want no sugar daddy

A couple weeks ago I sent out 195 Facebook video messages inviting people to be on my ministry email list.  A lot of them have said yes and it makes me feel like 18 times better that more people are praying for my ministry.

When the time is right, I’d like to ask these people to give financially as part of the team that sends me to the university campus as a witness for Christ.  My yearly ministry budget is $60,000, here’s why it’s like that, and here is what the giving team looks like that would cover my whole budget.

The way I structured my giving team right now it would take around 70 people giving various amounts for my ministry to be fully funded.

As of this moment, there are 155 people on my email list who get updates and pray for me, if all of them gave $32.26 a month I would be fully funded.  Isn’t that crazy?

There’d be no need for a sugar daddy to give me $30,000 a year.  It’d be 155 actual people teaming up together to do something none can do on their own.

And I’d like a team more than a sugar daddy any day.

Why my InterVarsity budget is $60,000 a year

The short answer: because employees cost a lot of money.

The long answer: we have to fundraise for everything.  This includes training, conferences, travel, camps, business meals, office supplies, national overhead, social security, benefits, taxes and salary.  Notice I said like ten things before salary?

InterVarsity staff is my actual work.  Developing student leaders, engaging in conversation with skeptical college students, conflict resolution within a messy community, training people how to lead in prayer, asking people to donate money, teaching in front of 300 people, the list goes on….and it takes a lot out of you.  It is work.

If $60,000 for my yearly budget still seems like a lot to you, here are some links from different sources to get an idea of how it works for hiring an employee:

CNN: http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/26/smallbusiness/employee_costs/index.htm

Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/resources/management/pay-benefits/5-steps-for-determining-an-employees-salary.aspx#stepsfordetermininganemployeessalary

MIT: http://web.mit.edu/e-club/hadzima/how-much-does-an-employee-cost.html

U.S. Department of Labor: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.nr0.htm

Entrepreneur Magazine: http://www.entrepreneur.com/hiringcenter/index80158.html