Millionaire's Forum and Vida Estudiantil

Last week, we began a partnership with the Millionaire's Forum. Tom Waller, the director, met Terry and me last summer at CSU during staff training. His vision is to bring top entrepreneurs and business leaders to help reach campus leaders. It is a great match. Many wealthy and successful business leaders feel much gratitude for how God has blessed them and they desire to give back and be a blessing to others. And what student leader would not want to gain from 20 years of business successes and failures for free?

Eddy and Cris Dubon ran a lot of the logistics and networking. I went with him to several new campuses to meet with the university presidents to explain Vida Estudiantil, Millionaire's Forum and what this event was all about. About six top campuses in the city brought their top students to the dinner. Joel and Paul shared about their successes and failures in business and in their personal life, and how Jesus Christ and faith are first in their lives. The student body leadership from one campus said afterward, "We need to hear more about these things on our campus!"

Also in attendance were members of our LIFE Team and their wives. Our LIFE Team consists of Mexican executives who are investing their LIFE in helping us reach college students. LIFE is an acrostic for Labor, Influence, Finances and Expertise. The idea was to cast vision to them for how God can use them to reach student leaders in a city. Some are already giving talks on campuses around Puebla and helping us open new campus ministries.

Here are some personal "revelations" I have had during the time. We have been talking about how the different ministries can work more integrated. Up until now, that has been a little foggy for me. I really like the idea, but the "how" of it just was not that clear. One thing we did say was that the campus staff would not do everything. All staff would focus on their main area of ministry and not try to do everything. Well, this is what started to happen. We had the Forum Dinner scheduled to reach top student leaders. Then, the next morning we had scheduled an evangelistic breakfast for professionals. Also that evening, was a Summit Dinner to talk with Mexican Christian business professionals about the vision to reach top student leaders in the country. About a month out from the event, we were feeling stressed...as if we were trying to do too much. We were! We were trying to run two different ministries at the same time. So we cancelled the professional breakfast. The result would have been to funnel resources away from campus and poorly execute two mediocre events. With the way we did it, everyone won. Campus won with top student leaders hearing about Christ; we potentially started ministries on two new campuses; and we gained credibility in the city and with university officials! Professional ministry won also because more businessmen get involved in the Great Commission. I am seeing that when the flow of resources is toward campus ministry, everyone wins in the long run. Well, I am kind of going on a soapbox now so I think I will end. I will post some pictures of the event later.