An Easy Guide to Using the Rusty Wright Lecture Series Operations Manual


This manual is packed full of helpful ideas to assist you in reaching people for Christ in your city or on your university campus through Rusty Wright’s speaking ministry. These practical and fun ideas came from other Christians in ministry around the globe. Feel free to use the ones that will best supplement your own creativity.

The manual is divided into four main sections, which the Lecture Series Coordinator (see below) can give to each leader who is responsible for that area. Those four leaders can, in turn, distribute subsections of their material to their own teammates. We have tried to do as much detailed planning as possible to help you divide the labor and to make everyone’s job easier. The four main sections are:

● Prayer

● Publicity

● Physical Arrangements

● Follow-Up

What you should do next:

● Make a digital backup copy of this manual file and keep it in a safe place.

● The local ministry director should select a Lecture Series Coordinator (LSC) 16-14 weeks before the lecture series begins. The LSC will give leadership to the entire operation.

● The director and LSC should read through the manual and discuss overall goals for lecture series scope, attendance, etc. These important decisions will influence the size and nature of your entire outreach campaign.

● The LSC should approach candidates for the four main assistants by 12 weeks before the lecture series and ask them to consider accepting the responsibility.

● The LSC should have the four main assistants confirmed and oriented by 10 weeks before the lecture series.

●Together the team should devise a plan to carry out the lecture series and begin to implement it by 8 weeks before the lecture series.

Have fun, and may God bless your efforts as you faithfully follow Him!



Rusty Wright

Lecture Series

Operations Manual






Lecture Series
Operations Manual


How to Effectively Utilize
Rusty Wright’s Speaking Ministry
On Your Campus or in Your Community or Sphere of Influence






Dear Director:

It is with great anticipation that I look forward to my visit to your location. I pray that God will use our team effort to expose thousands of people to the gospel! My hope is that many will come to know Christ and eventually become strong disciples as a result of these evangelistic meetings.

In John 4:38, Jesus told His disciples, "Others have labored and you have entered into their labor." That's how I feel: I will be entering into your labor. I want to be a servant to you, to help you accomplish your personal and ministry objectives, to help you grow in your faith.

This material has been carefully prepared to help your ministry gain the most from my visit. It includes ideas that have worked well at other locations.

There likely are many more ideas here than any one ministry could reasonably use. You and your leaders should prayerfully decide what your goals are for exposure through this lecture series and then design your strategy to incorporate those activities which will help you accomplish those goals. Ask God to give you goals that will require you to exercise faith. Ask Him to give you the proper balance between faith stretching and not overworking your volunteers.

The manual has been designed not only to help you get the job done, but to help build and develop leadership as well. We have tried to distribute the workload so no one will be swamped, but so everyone can work together efficiently to have a maximum impact.

The entire manual should be read through before initiating any action. Each person involved should read through their responsibilities before beginning to plan and act.

As Director, your job will be to select a qualified person to be Lecture Series Coordinator and to work closely with this individual, assisting him/her as necessary. If you have additional ideas that will help maximize the impact of this outreach, please feel free to implement them.

I am thankful to God for you! Be confident of my love and prayers for you as we labor together in the Lord's harvest. To God be the glory!

Because He lives,



Rusty Wright


This Manual is Not as Big as it Looks

Please do not be daunted by the size of this manual. It's not as big as it looks! We have attempted to divide it into several "mini-manuals" so that each worker can have a unit that is nearly complete in itself. Some of the material (organizational chart, management guidelines, etc.) is reprinted and included for nearly each worker. This makes the entire manual seem bulky at first. The real effect, though, is to save you the trouble of having to create and copy the material for each worker. You can simply distribute the appropriate subsections to each worker.

On the other hand, the manual does contain quite a bit of information. There are several reasons:

● We want students and other volunteers to always consider how their work on the Lecture Series contributes to the overall objective of building committed disciplers to reach the world. Thus, we have tried to saturate the manual with this perspective of "relational thinking."

● We want to help develop leadership in your movement by giving volunteers quality experience in tasks that will help them learn and force them to trust God. We want both you and them to consider their job as "preparation for the future." Thus, we have included lots of management helps and reminders to trust the Lord.

● We are committed to excellence. We wanted to do the best job possible to provide you with tools to enable you to do the best job possible of influencing many people for Christ. Thus, the manual is designed to promote larger events that help reach a large segment of a campus or community at one time. It enables you to mobilize volunteers and demonstrate that the Christian movement is a significant one that has a message many people are eager to hear.

● A large job like this involves a large amount of work and dedication. We tried to provide all the best ideas we could glean so you could sift through them to tailor-make a plan for your campus.

● Finally, the manual is large because we wanted to help you by putting as much of the organizational work as possible down in writing. Thus, there are written responsibility descriptions, helpful guidelines, checklists, etc., all designed to divide up the labor and to promote group cooperation and efficiency. We hope this will free everyone's minds and hands to be creative and serve the Lord effectively.

Special note on distributing sections of the manual: You may find it best simply to print out sections of the lecture series manual and distribute hard copies to the appropriate workers. Or you may wish to distribute the material in digital form, so each worker can read and use their material on a computer. (There are many sample letters and charts that workers can adapt to their needs, so having digital versions may make their jobs easier.)

Preface

The purpose of this manual is to help in the following ways:

● Answer questions that might arise while planning for Rusty in your location.

● Take away the many headaches that come when someone asks, "What do I do next?" or "How shall I do this job?"

● Give your and Rusty's partnership a uniform and professional appearance from the first planning to the last follow-up appointment.

● Give guidelines as to proper delegation and planning.

The manual is written to Christian workers and volunteers (students on university campuses and laypersons). Each ministry is different. Some universities enroll 5,000; others enroll 25,000. Some have 500 involved Christians; others have 50. Some ministries have 50 discipleship groups; others have 5. Some campuses have an open environment for sharing the gospel; others do not. Some campuses are radical; others are conservative. This manual is not written to a specific university but to universities in general. Though the emphasis is on university outreach, the principles apply to other ministry settings as well. Rusty is quite well received among executives, diplomats, and professional athletes and in the secular media.

If you are on a large campus with a very small ministry, you might find some suggestions in the manual to be unrealistic. Do not let this bother you. The manual is designed to help, not hinder. You should expect to make adaptations to your particular situation. The material is written in such a way as to allow you maximum freedom to be creative.

As you read and plan for the Lecture Series, be aware of two points:

● Rusty's objective is to serve you in the best way possible. He wants to help you meet your goals for your ministry. Our satisfaction comes from knowing that we have helped you.

● It is extremely important to involve students and volunteers. The quality and depth of this outreach is directly proportional to the number of students and volunteers involved.

There are two major aspects of Rusty's ministry of which you should be aware:

● Evangelism: You have a wonderful opportunity to make the person and work of Jesus Christ a real issue in your place of ministry. A large percentage of the nonChristians will be confronted in a variety of ways from several perspectives. Using Rusty as an evangelism filter, you have the potential of securing a large number of evangelistic contacts.

● Discipleship: The fruit of evangelism and the evangelistic contacts generated through Rusty's lecture series will be directly proportional to the strength of your ongoing discipleship ministry. If viewed correctly, Rusty's ministry can be an effective component of your discipleship ministry.

Because of the nature of Rusty's ministry, you will want to involve every available, willing Christian student or volunteer in the planning, preparation, implementation and follow-up of the lecture series.

Approach this ministry, not as another program, but as an opportunity to disciple these men and women. As students become involved, assume responsibility and see God use them, much in-depth discipleship will result.

Our acknowledgement and thanks go out to the thousands of Christian workers and volunteers who have contributed the material in this manual and to Josh McDowell, Andre Kole and the Paragon Experience for their willingness to share their ideas with us. (This manual has been adapted from manuals used by those three ministries, incorporating material from Rusty's own ministry and The Campus Ministry Manual.)

Utilizing Rusty on Your Campus or in Your Community


A. Purpose of Rusty's Time with You:

    1. To participate in evangelistic outreaches designed to help meet your goals.

    2. To motivate Christian workers and volunteers regarding evangelism and discipleship.

B. Possible Activities while With You:

    1. Evangelistic Outreaches and Student Meetings

        a. Campus Classic Series (a series of 2-3 mass evangelistic meetings on successive
            evenings with each one geared to promoting and increasing attendance to the next).

        b. Group Meetings (with Greeks, student leaders, athletes, executives, etc.).
            Rusty has a fraternity background and is very well received by Greeks.

        c. Classroom lectures

        d. Free speech or outdoor rallies

            1) Outdoors at a crowded time
            2) Some campuses have scheduled Rusty to speak in the school cafeteria at lunchtime
                (it was too cold outside!). The Student Government Association
                cosponsored the lecture on one campus.

    2. Weekend Retreats (See section on Suggested Guidelines for Retreats.)

    3. Mass Media

        a. Radio or TV talk shows
        b. Interviews

C. Lecture Series Topic Order

The sequence of secular topics for major outreach lecture series is important, as some lectures are designed to build on each other and to cause audience interest to grow. For multi-day lecture series intended to motivate members of the same target population to return each successive day, we recommend the following topic order. Of course, you should select the topics you want, but once you have chosen them, we recommend that you sequence them according to the order below, ranging from first date to last date:

The Resurrection: Con of the Centuries?
The Other Side of Life
How to Be Successful and Satisfied
The Dating Game: The game you both can win!
Dynamic Sex: Unlocking the Secret to Love

This means, for example, that you would schedule “Dynamic Sex” after “The Dating Game,” rather than before. If you choose “Successful and Satisfied” plus “Dynamic Sex,” you would schedule them in that order, not the reverse. If you wish to use for major meetings topics from Rusty’s topic lists other than the five mentioned here, please contact our office for advice on sequencing.

D. Benefits of Using the Evangelistic Lectures

    1. The topics are good drawing cards and can be used to expose large numbers of individuals to the gospel.

    2. They speak to areas of need and interest in many people’s lives (both non-Christians and Christians).

    3. They can act as a filter to provide a source of contacts for personal evangelism and discipleship.

    4. They can be used as momentum builders to give additional exposure to the movement.

    5. They can be great public relations tools.

    6. They can provide encouragement to Christian students as they see someone
        boldly proclaiming the gospel in public.

 

Organizational Chart and Lines of Communication

Using Rusty in Affinity Group Meetings, Conferences, Free Speech, etc.

Affinity Group Meetings

    A. Rusty has a fraternity background and is very well received by Greeks, leaders, and athletes.

    B. He is a member of the Lambda Chi Alpha social fraternity and Phi Eta Sigma
        national academic honorary fraternity. Also, Rusty's grandmother, mother, and
        sister are/were all members of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. These facts often help open
        doors for Greek meetings.

    C. See current topic lists for topics appropriate for fraternity/sorority audiences, leaders, etc.

    D. Be sure not to schedule a topic that requires 60 minutes for a 30-minute speaking slot.

    E. Often several fraternities and sororities will gather at one house to hear Rusty speak.
        You can talk with the presidents of the houses to suggest this. Sometimes one house will
        have another over for dinner and/or dessert, followed by Rusty's talk. Other
        times, one house comes over after dinner. Sometimes you can arrange "two-on-two"
        or "three-on-three" - combining two or three fraternities and two or three sororities.
        Though meeting indoors is preferable, if the crowd is too large and the weather is
        nice, you can gather people on the front lawn. (Remember to use a PA system if necessary.)

    F. You may also want to use Rusty for a "Greek Life" meeting (an outreach meeting especially for Greeks).

Retreats and Conferences

    See Rusty’s current topic lists for conference series topics and individual talks appropriate for
    Christian audiences.

    Free Speech

        A. An outdoor, open-air meeting (or in the cafeteria or Student Union, etc, if weather is bad)
            is an excellent way to reach people for Christ. It permits extremely high visibility on
            campus, exposes large numbers, and definitely builds the faith of the staff and Christian
            students who observe. It often attracts very positive newspaper coverage and is an
            additional method of promoting evening lectures. Following are some essential
            points for effective "free speech."

        B. Location: A central "high traffic" area of campus is best. Often this will be a main
            quadrangle, Student Union steps, etc. Pick a spot where Rusty will be readily visible
            but (if possible) where the audience will not be distracted by pedestrians,
            bicyclists, etc. passing in front of or behind the speaker.

        C. Publicity: Should be handled the same as your overall publicity. A campus-wide
            publicity campaign helps generate lots of interest and makes students even more
            interested in stopping to listen to the speaker. Especially important is a massive
            distribution of handbills the day of the talk, to be accelerated during the last hour and
            especially at the class break a few minutes before the talk. Have the MC announce the
            talk over the loudspeaker several times during the 15 minutes before the
            talk.

        D. Timing: This is crucial. You should plan to start during a big class break. Usually
            noon hour is best, though you may want to schedule talks back to back (say at 11:00 AM,
            Noon and 1:00 PM). Observe the class breaks several weeks in advance and
            find the best time to start. If classes break from 11:50 to 12:00, it is best to begin right
            as the big crowds start coming - perhaps at 11:55, or even 11:53. Waiting too late can
            cause you to lose a large potential audience. We can't emphasize enough the importance
            of timing the start right during a large class break. Many in the audience will attend
            simply because they happened to be passing by at the right time.

        E. Christians: Make a special effort to get all the Christians there early to start a large crowd.
            Remember, "a crowd draws a crowd." People will stop to see what is happening and stay
            to listen. After the talk, Christians can share Christ individually.

        F. Singer; MC: A good singer doing one or two secular numbers can help draw the crowd.
            The MC should then introduce Rusty.

        G. Physical Arrangements: Secure a riser or platform that places Rusty above the crowd so
             the audience can see him. Place it so he is not removed from the crowd. The closer he
            is to the people, the better. Secure a good PA system. Rusty prefers a clip-on wireless
            microphone, but sometimes these do not pick up sound sufficiently for outdoor audiences
            and you will need to use a hand-held microphone.

        H. Cards and pencils: If appropriate, plan to use comment cards (and pencils if necessary,
            though most students will be carrying a pen or pencil between classes). Scatter lots of
            Christian students throughout the crowd with cards and buckets. Have them move quickly
            to distribute the cards. They'll need to get them out much faster than at an evening meeting,
            since the crowd is so transient.