The Hsu’s Views

Aside from googling oneself, how often does something you write make it to the top of google’s search results? I wrote an article a few years back in an attempt to help reframe Campus Crusade’s strategy of Win, Build, Send, to more palatable language as we move into this new and rapidly changing world we find ourselves in today. The amazing thing is that when you google “win build send,” you will get my article (Thanks Dan Didriksen for bringing this to my attention.)

For various reasons, stated in my article, I believe a rough correspondence can be made with the words “Believe, Belong and Bless.” I say “rough” because you can’t just take new words and impose a linear, sequential, formulaic usage upon them, otherwise you wind up with the same problems.

The article entitled, Contextualizing Win Build Send, is posted at my website (ranked sixth in google). It is also at Eric Swanson’s blog (1st place in google.)

A moment of internet notoriety.

I finally finished the paper, “Campus Crusade’s Adaptive Challenge“that will wrap up my writing for my current BGU class. Here is a description of what I tried to do.

“This paper will attempt to show that in the midst of the massive shift in current culture, Campus Crusade for Christ, along with the church in North America faces an adaptive challenge, necessitating leadership that might feel more radical than many would feel comfortable with. I will propose that in identifying who Campus Crusade “is,” we should focus on the apostolic impulse that resides in our DNA, and not merely our organizational values and proven strategies. Finally, I will also draw some observations from a recent trip to India that will offer suggestions as to how Campus Crusade should be approaching the gospel transformation in cities that now characterizes a global priority of Campus Crusade.”

Your comments, as always, are welcome.

(The comments below are from a paper I’m currently working on… and need to finish really soon.)

From my limited vantage point, I can say that Campus Crusade has been actively engaging the issues of organizational change for at least the last decade. We have talked for years about the danger of becoming an institution instead of a movement. We have also been trying to address the organizational inefficiencies that allow our various ministries to operate largely independent of each other. Recently, the transition of leadership from Dr. Bright to Dr. Douglas has spurred many healthy conversations amongst our own leadership and with other mission organizations.

As Campus Crusade prepares to move into a new era of ministry, in a world which is rapidly changing, we must not only ask if the proposed solutions will work, but whether our approach toward leadership is correct. From all appearances I would say we are approaching this change from Heifetz’s “operational leadership” stance. It seems as if we acknowledge the challenge before our ministry, and our approach is to look back to our tried and true strategies of increasing organizational efficiency and attempt to reorganize or restructure ourselves to health. However, if we are in an adaptive challenge, we may unknowingly be choosing to “die” instead of “adapting” on the order that is necessary to move us into this new era.

Adaptive Leadership for Campus Crusade
What would adaptive leadership look like within Campus Crusade? Adaptive leaders are people that can help transition the organization by moving it to the “edge of chaos.” This is the point of uncomfortable tension where an organization knows it must innovate, and when change is most conducive. Hirsh is helpful here:
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