Living in Community
Community Groups and Purpose
Community Groups are Faculty/Staff led - STUDENT focused - gender specific groups.
Purpose:
While there are many admirable desires for the direction in which the individual Community Groups head, the primary purpose is to be a point of contact in order to serve students in their needs. Anything else the groups experience will most likely flow from your talents, gifts and abilities.
Vision
Increased Student Leadership:
Over the past few months, we have had to say goodbye to some old friends, many of whom led a Community Group. Saying goodbye to so many has been difficult both personally and professionally. Those Community Group leaders who have departed have left voids that need to be filled. Fortunately, we have recently welcomed some to the CSU family who have embraced the vision of Community Groups and have volunteered to lead a group. However, we are still presented with a challenge of filling a leadership void in some of our groups. We believe with some creativity; we can not only overcome the challenge, but actually advance our mission.
Over the past year we have experimented with student leadership in Community Groups on a small scale, utilizing Graduate students and qualified upperclassmen. We have experienced enough success that we believe we can increase student leadership opportunities within Community Groups. Increased student leadership opportunities will first provide the necessary leaders and second will serve as an additional platform for student discipleship and leadership development.
If you expressed interest in having a co-leader this year, we encourage you to embrace the vision of student leadership to assist you with the facilitation of your Community Group. If you have a student whom you believe has the potential to lead and facilitate, we encourage you to reach out and recruit them to be involved! If they agree to engage in a leadership role within Community Groups, please let me know.
Leading, Serving and Facilitating According To Your Giftedness
We believe that your group's greatest opportunity for success is for you to be yourself. That means to lead, serve and facilitate according to the talents, gifts and abilities that God has given to you in birth and new birth.
We want you to be confident and secure in your giftedness. If you lead, serve and facilitate within this confidence, I think you will experience several things.
- First, as you lead according to your giftedness you will most likely invest time outside of the scheduled chapel hour and it may not even feel like "work."
- Second, leading from a secure position in your giftedness should allay a sense of inadequacy and should diminish a sense of comparison.
Community Appreciation Day
This year we will conduct our annual Community Appreciation Day through our Community Groups. We experimented with this last year and we received many positive comments from both leaders and students.
Here is how it will work:
2. If you are able to be with your group on Community Appreciation Day, then you will choose one of the following options:
- Submit your own service opportunity for that day. Your group will make the contact and all arrangements for the day.
- Request a service opportunity from us for that day. We will make the contact and all arrangements for the day.
There will be more communication in the very near future.
Fall 2017 Schedule
Friday, September 8
Friday, September 22
Friday, October 6
Friday, October 20
Friday, November 3
Friday, December 1
Friday, December 15
*Tuesday, October 10 - Community Appreciation Day