A Ministry Made New
The Big Idea: We’ve made some big, important changes under the hood to ensure that Christian adulthood ministry carries on for decades to come.
On January 1, we launched the Christian Adulthood Initiative, carrying a 20-year legacy of ministry forward into a new organization.
After 5 years at Biola University and 15 years at Wheatstone Ministries, we’ve worked hard to make CAI the best home yet for the summer camps and youth ministry reform work that have changed so many lives since 2000.
Starting CAI wasn’t just about maintaining the status quo. We’re building this organization for the next 20 years of ministry and beyond. We’ve made careful improvements to our governance, funding, identity, and offerings. The result is an organization that’s worthy of our legacy, and equipped for our future. Today I’m excited to share some of these improvements with you.
Governance
We wrote our bylaws with long-term health in mind. We built an organization with clarity, stability, and flexibility.
NEW STRUCTURE
We separated the roles of Chairperson and President, with clearly defined roles as leader of the Board and leader of the Staff, respectively.
MEMBER TERMS
We added three-year terms for Board members, with a built-in system for current members to identify new recruits. This will reduce the risk of burnout, ensure that CAI gets fresh ideas and leaders, and give clarity to the nature of Board members’ commitments.
ADVISORY BOARDS
We’re building three dynamic Advisory Boards: a Business Advisory Board led by the Chairperson to advise on CAI’s strategic plan, a Staff Advisory Board led by the President to advise on mission and ministry, and a Strategic Advisory Board led by Dr. John Mark Reynolds to advise on vision and build new relationships.
Funding
We’re fundraising for the long term too, by prioritizing self-sustaining and diversified sources of donor income, and by recommitting ourselves to our donors.
ENDOWMENT
We’re pleased to announce a new effort to build an endowment for CAI, led by alumnus and Board Member Gabriel Choo. Gabriel has seeded the fund with over 10% of our starting goal of $1 million, and he’ll oversee the effort to recruit additional contributions.
If you’re interested in helping to secure the future of Christian adulthood ministry, contact Gabriel by emailing endowment@christianadulthood.org or calling (714) 864-0640.
MONTHLY GIVERS MATCH
In addition, a generous donor has offered to match monthly gifts in a savings account, with the goal of building a savings fund that maintains the equivalent of at least 3 months of operational expenses.
You can support this goal by becoming a Monthly Giver, or joining him as a Monthly Giver Matcher.
DONOR BILL OF RIGHTS
Finally, we published our first Donor Bill of Rights, our commitment to accountability, gratitude, and ethical behavior. You can read it on our Donate page.
Identity
We chose ministry names that would help us communicate more clearly and reach new people more quickly, then built audience-focused identities for each.
The clearest expression of this change is in our websites. Rather than maintaining one website for summer camps, youth ministry reform, fundraising, and resources, we built three websites, one for each audience we serve. CAI (christianadulthood.org) serves our donors and the general public. Never Stop Growing Up Youth Ministry (NSGU.org) serves youth pastors and churches. And, very soon, Passage Camp will serve alumni and families (stay tuned!).
THE CHRISTIAN ADULTHOOD INITIATIVE
When we decided to spin off from Wheatstone, we knew the new organization had to have “Christian adulthood” in it. That’s our mission and our purpose, and we wanted people to understand that as quickly as possible. “Initiative” added a sense of motion and drive, and allowed us to start using the acronym CAI. After settling on the name, we made a logo and identity to carry our ministry forward.
For the curious: The story of how we made our logo and what it stands for!
Posted by The Christian Adulthood Initiative on Tuesday, January 5, 2021
NEVER STOP GROWING UP YOUTH MINISTRY
For our service to youth pastors, we decided to leverage our most successful tagline: Never Stop Growing Up, and built NSGU.org as its online home. NSGU is a Christian Adulthood Initiative, the first of many Initiatives.
PASSAGE CAMPS
We’re putting the finishing touches on a website for our summer camp ministry, with a new name: Passage Camps. Passage will be the home for upcoming camps, for alumni events and services (including alumni from The Academy at Biola University, Emmaus Forum, Wheatstone Academy, and The Academy by Wheatstone Ministries), and for a few more treats that we’re announcing soon. We can’t wait to share the new home for the best camp ever with you.
Offerings
In addition to our life-changing summer camps and live, in-person trainings, we’ve been working hard to offer services that anyone, anywhere can use. The backbone of that effort is our new high school youth ministry curriculum.
CURRICULUM
We’ve built the best tool yet for advancing our mission to make youth group the place where kids become Christian adults. It’s everything you need to build a youth ministry that leads to adulthood. Learn more at NSGU.org/curriculum.
Interested in being a beta testing youth group? Get in touch
In addition to being one of the best offerings we’ve ever made for advancing our mission and changing students’ lives, curriculum will become a significant passive income stream, further securing CAI’s future.
ONLINE EVENTS
We’ve also increased our mission-effectiveness and accessibility by moving our core youth ministry training event online, and offering discussions and classes that are online and open to everyone. This is just the beginning, as we continue to build our online offerings, bringing our core ideas and effective methods to churches, no matter where they are.
AND MORE…
This is just the beginning. We’re excited to see our new emphasis on accessibility bear further fruit, both for NSGU Youth Ministry and for Passage Camp. We’ve got some great new, accessible products in the pipeline that we think you’re going to love. Stay tuned!
Conclusion
This is a banner moment for our ministry. We’re starting a whole new era, with a stronger, better foundation than ever before.
With your help, we’re going to keep proclaiming the good news that growing up in Christ is the best, truest, most beautiful way to be human. We’re a ministry MADE NEW, and we invite you to join in.
