When you want to re-start a Christian faculty community the key word to begin with—besides trusting the Lord—is networking. That is, who do you know among your colleages that could join you in putting this together? Are they the kind of people who can bring the beginnings of a re-start project to a successful end? How do I get them to better see the vision of what this could be, and how do I put the parts of this launch together so that the fellowship continues for decades?
Every so often and for various reasons a local Christian faculty network or fellowship needs to re-start. The difference between crafting a re-start for a network of Christians, with the aim to bring it back to a witnessing community in academe and a somewhat different project of re-energizing the group (or keep a good thing going—which usually comes following a change in leadership), has to do with the number and quality of the leadership you currently have and the general momentum of the group.
In this section we address crafting a re-start, which implies there are currently not enough leaders and followers on your campus to consider this a re-energizing of the group project. You’re pretty much where the starters are, except you might have some history that you can “parlay" into a useful resource. Since that comes by matter of degree, consider going back and reviewing our resources on starting a Christian faculty community.
Seeing this successfully happen involves God’s grace and providence. So going about this challenge is matter of trusting God to provide, praying before and during the process, and trusting the results to God.
On the human side of the equation, it is key is to communicate the vision of the group to enough potentially qualified missional academics to secure a critical mass of activists. That is, the goal is to present your vision to as many qualfied people as you can who will likely respond to the challenge of giving leadership to the group in the future. When you reach a critical mass, then you can begin to influence the group towards the goals of the network or fellowship.
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The resources on this part of the site are devoted to helping find a critical mass of these people.
Step 1: Review: Focus on the Telos section including the introduction and the nuts and bolts sections and taking notes as reminders for what you see best applies to your situation.
Step 2: Discuss the Involvement Issues presentation and the Building in Stages presentation in the Sections of the Nuts and Bolts with your coach. The key will be to take notes on how these things relate to your project and adapt them to your situation. If you don’t have a coach, write us and we’ll help coach you, if we can.
Step 3: Create a CONFIDENTIAl, un-edited and un-evaluated list of Christians in your academic environment that you could contact. Get references from your present contacts to add people to your list.
Step 4: Once your CONFIDENTIAL list grows to between 50 and 75 contacts, then and only then, begin to rank them in two ways. Next to their names, create two columns--one column would be named "Likely Responsive” and the second column would be named “Rank & Influence.” It might look like this example where you see the names and the two columns to the right.
LR RI
Dr. John Doe
Dr. Jane Smith
Dr. Alistar Jones
Dr. JoAnn Johnson
Then, begin to fill in and and maybe rank them something like this:
LR RI
Dr. John Doe likely lower rank but high influence
Dr. Jane Smith very likely very highly ranked
Dr. Alistar Jones unknown middle rank
Dr. JoAnn Johnson very likely highly ranked & influential
Work with your ACI coach to make sure you have some tools prepared to communicate your vision and begin to meet with the most likely and highest ranked and influential folks one or two on one. For example, your best “bet” would be to start with (in the case above) Dr. JoAnn Johnson because she is thought by you to be very likely responsivehighly ranked and influential to challenge and she is . Then, Dr. Jane Smith, then Dr. John Doe and then Dr. Alistar Jones and so on…
Keep notes on how they responded to what you presented with the idea that after a time you’ll be inviting all of them to a special meeting where you will, in a group setting, re-present the vision and ask for commitment to the start-up project.
Step 5: Following your vision presentation and commitment asking period, if you have enough leadership, begin holding some quality meetings for the whole fellowship and continue to use these meetings to build into your potential new leadership group. Delegate things to those folks and get them involved in some way in your meetings. (Involvement breeds commitment.) This builds into their commitment and also gives you some opportunties to evaluate their faithfulness to getting those projects completed.
Step 6: Set a date and a good meeting place where you can hold another group meeting to challenge your group again…usually with a “bigger and better” vision tool, like a really well 
put together Powerpoint slide show or video adapted to your campus situation. Here’s a link to a vision resource we crafted for a particular campus that probably could not be used in other places, but can give you an idea of what we can make for you.
Step 7: Launch or re-launch the new program in a big way. Have an outside speaker come in and speak to something that needs addressing in the Christian academic community that you can use to inspire confidence and momentum to your group. Use the meeting to give a lead-in to your next meeting and so forth, tying one event to another (typically done by your email contact list messages and your MC at the meetings) and building momentum.