A Campus Changer
Brainstorm
But first, a quick story:
Christopher Nolan’s “Field of Corn”
Before shooting this scene from the movie Interstellar, Director Christopher Nolan, decided he wanted it to feel more realistic on screen and therefore needed real cornfields. 500 acres and 2-3 months later, the location was ready for his vision.
It’s a big reminder that it takes advanced planning to tell a story beautifully. To do it right.
What I’m proposing below is an attempt to use my “5 Stones” to help the HOPE team take down maybe it’s biggest natural enemy: advanced planning.
The Harvest
“The hardest working staff in America” needs help and I’m here for it. The HOPE team is by any measure a highly trained, highly efficient special forces unit. But even the Navy SEALS underperform when they’re sleep-deprived, distracted, multi-tasked, and underfunded.
What if the full-time team was freed up to do what you do best?
There once was a construction company.
Skilled builders swinging hammers with one hand, while using the other hand to draw up designs for their house…and the next one.
Being closer to the weekly operations now for the last 8 months, I’ve had a chance to do some observing and learning. What stands out first are the amazing people and testimonies. But I also can’t help but see the symptoms—flaws in the building structure. The thing about the construction phase and the design phase is they’re very different, and should be done at different times. And usually with different crews.
To summarize the symptoms I’ve seen and experienced:
How can the future of the movement be designed if everyone on the team is swinging hammers at the same time?
The Campus Changer Network: reimagined as a “design” firm…of sorts
The CCN, from where I sit, doesn’t have much bite to it—in it’s current iteration. It’s a loosely defined nonprofit in name only. And if you want to call it clearly defined; it’s just too close to HOPE Church Movement’s messaging.
Here’s what I would do. Or at least I think there’s part of an answer in here.
What if we redefine it as a think tank or braintrust: a 501c3 nonprofit (created by but separate from HOPE that becomes an active NPO with something like this core value:
“Campus Changer understands the world’s problems are too complex and unpredictable to be solved with a conventional approach. We believe a thriving campus-based church movement, fully focused on reaching Gen Z, is the unconventional solution the world needs. And we believe it will take equally focused city leaders to support this work. The Campus Changer Network is a 100% marketplace professional membership; a regional network of business leaders who organize and “run to the battle line” using their 5 Stones: their time, talents, treasure, technology, and testimonies.
The brightest minds solving specific problems that require months of strategic planning, resourcing, business expertise, and their faith, with one primary mission: freeing the full-time missionaries of HOPE Church Movement to change the campus.”
City Members from any church, any business, would be welcome but it’s an invite-only network (by HOPE leaders).
City Members who “get it” meaning this is the formula that changes the world: it takes a campus, a church with campus missionaries, impact events, and strategic business leaders to ignite world change.
City Members who are willing to aim all 5 Stones at mankind’s enemy, and into their professional industries, and into the college campuses in the region in which they live. For me, that’s aiming at aviation, Hollywood, and UW.
City Members who are willing to “go” from existing HOPE sites, even years in advance, to other college towns in the US (and abroad), to learn the cultures, embed themselves in those communities, make connections, etc. Their Campus Changer membership goes with them for the beginning of a new regional chapter.
Annual Campus Changer meetings in PHX where it all started. Winter meetings of course :)
Leadership by Brian & Wendy, the Vales, other board members, and the full-time team will be essential! I see vision casting, testimonies, etc that fuels city hearts and minds.
Officially brand the CCN image and probably keep the name. Although, themes like Advanced Planning & Expansion, Future Labs, College Town, etc resonate. We just need something slick that speaks to business leaders especially. “Campus Changer Network” is hard to beat.
“We rely upon it to push us toward excellence and to root out our mediocrity. The Braintrust, which meets every few months or so to assess each movie we’re making, is our primary delivery system for straight-talk. It’s premise is simple: put smart, passionate people in a room together, charge them with identifying and solving problems, and encourage them to be candid with one another.”
WHAT WE DO
We design and deliver resilient and pragmatic solutions for today’s most pressing frontier: clean energy technology. the college campus.
This is about life & death innovation, so we need courageous hearts and the brightest minds.
We’ll change the campus and the world by getting on top of HOPE’s 10 biggest challenges which I would define as this: anything that requires months of dreaming, outrageous thinking, what-if-ing, R & D modeling. Advanced planning and development that the full-time staff mostly does not have the bandwidth for because they’re actually doing the work of changing the campus! It’s time for the City Membership of the Campus Changer Network, in every college town chapter…to get to work.
Here are my starting 10 categories in no particular order:
Impact event sponsors
Impact event strategy & planning
Church site expansion
Resource mapping & big donor relations
Brand strategy, storytelling, marketing
Christian school student recruiting: in every region nationally
Cultural, economic, and global trends
Organizational opportunities, challenges, and threats
Suggestion box capture & activation
MVMNT trends (data capture), future technologies
Look at this definition of innovation:
Innovation is a process by which a domain, a product, or a service is renewed and brought up to date by applying new processes, introducing new techniques, or establishing successful ideas to create new value.
Who would lead a rebooted Campus Changer Network?
This seems like 100% a full-time staff position and someone who physically sits next to Brian & Wendy often. They will need this person’s ear close by.
We’ll just call his name Mike McElroy for now. I don’t even know what Mike does these days, but this seems like his jam. But Mike has to surround himself with top City leaders, innovators, engineers, lawyers, etc and that group is where I see my seat.
We could also call this person Wendy.
Or maybe a retired pro like Rob Hecocks with a deep resume and has the time?
The Team
This is a team filled out by a squad of marketplace leaders outside of day to day ministry operations with NO campus responsibilities. What isn’t working inside the Movement, from where I sit, seems to fall within one of the 10 categories; all things no one on staff has any focused time for.
It’s 10 bottom line responsibilities to 10 city leaders. Each category is a team with a leader who is tasked with driving that category forward, and reporting back to Mike, Wendy, anyone else who needs to run this thing.
We need male & female leaders
We need ethnic diversity at the table
We need faithful/trusted/proven people
Some categories will cost money, so let’s get the budget ready
How this could start
It could start with a “5 Stones” style vision meeting(s):
City volunteers are asked for: pick a team(s), the teams begin to meet and solve our biggest problems!
Campus Changer groups begin to meet around the country. Once per month or so. In cafes, breweries…all the places professionals already meet at.
Campus Changer Network has no authority, but recommendations will be heard and responded to by the HOPE execs at a regularly intervals—quarterly perhaps. They are recommendations, not orders.
Bi-weekly Campus Changer “dashboard” briefing email for the execs to review/respond—or not, up to them—at least they'll have awareness of what we’re working on.
Campus Changer Network will not speak into matters like campus evangelism strategy, leadership dev, discipleship, fall launches, outreaches…but of course there will be overlap sometimes.
My Co-Vocational
Job Descriptions
(PAID)
Earth Uproar Creative Studio
Designer-Writer-Producer, “multimedia support for aviation & Hollywood brands with a story to tell.”
Campus Changer Network: Impact Events, Commercial Partnerships Studio
(paid by % agreement)
(VOLUNTEER)
Campus Changer Network
Director of Innovation (or something like that…serving with Mike/Wendy or other CCN directors)
UW Expansion & Outreach Director, (incl some interim UW pastoral duties, and longterm team involvement as a city leader interfacing regularly with the full-time team & students)
"We would need to formalize a few things...."
Church membership
Working on it, but for the near term, dual membership (possible?) seems the best with a split tithe from the Dominys. Or singular membership here at Newlife with full membership in Campus Changer…until there’s actually a standing HOPE Church site at UW where our family is attending.
Written job description
Working on it? I guess I’m proposing some bigger picture ideas first.
Schedule/accountability
Same thing.
Insurance plan: select one of our nationwide plans
Not needed at this time, we’re exploring others
Licensed minister on staff
Recommending not needed at this time.
