Perspectives - Spring 2011

The Perspectives class is coming to Columbia/Fulton and GRACE is hosting it. If some of this stuff on this blog is interesting to you, you should probably take the class.

In case you don't know, my involvement with student missions largely hinged on the content in this class - specifically that high school kids needed to experience some of the concepts outlined in this class and were not. SPACE, and consequently Ember, were started out of a response to this class. Seven years after I took Perspectives, there's a small group of co-conspirators that understood some of the class's ideas and they are making their mark.

Anyway. Here is the outline for the Spring - some fantastic speakers with worlds of knowledge. If you are on the fence, you should lean towards signing up.

[Update: Sign up here.]

Course Overview & Registration : January 03, 2011 : Joseph Steinitz
The Living God is a Missionary God : January 10, 2011 : Matthew Ellison
The Story of His Glory : January 17, 2011 : Bruce Heckman
Your Kingdom Come : January 24, 2011 : Charlie
Mandate for the Nations : January 31, 2011 : James Rhodes
Unleashing the Gospel : February 07, 2011 : Dave Shive
The Expansion of the World Christian Movement : February 14, 2011 : Francis Patt
Eras of Mission History/Pioneers of the Movement : February 21, 2011 : K.
Cold Weather Shelter [week off] : February 28, 2011
The Task Remaining : March 07, 2011 : Charlie Klepadlo
How Shall They Hear? : March 14, 2011 : Virgil Amos
Building Bridges of Love : March 21, 2011 : David Shenk
Christian Community Development : March 28, 2011 : Jan Bean
Pioneer Church Planting : April 04, 2011 : Keith Swartley
The spontaneous Multiplication of Churches : April 11, 2011 : Paul McAlister
World Christian Partnership : April 18, 2011 : Dave Shive
Celebration Class : April 25, 2011 : Susan Patt

The Most Extraordinary

The most extraordinary thing in all the world is an ordinary man, and an ordinary woman, and their ordinary children.

- G.K. Chesterton [quote posted by Blaine Hogan]
picture from Sept 2010.

Book Notes - Uncharitable

Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential by Dan Pallotta

The First Error - Constraints on Compensation: Charity and Self-Deprivation Are Not the Same Thing
+ pay scale for people that work in the NPO space should be competitive with for profit businesses.
The Second Error - Prohibition on Risk: Punishing Courage, Rewarding Timidity
+ donations are tied to specific programs which don’t allow the NPO to innovate, stifling future growth.
The Third Error - Discouragement of Long Term Vision: The Need for Immediate Gratification Institutionalizes Suffering
+ donations can't sit - they need to be used right away as opposed to earning capital
The Fourth Error - Discouragement of Paid Advertising: If You Don't Advertise Here, Your Competition Will
+ the big machine of advertising, design, ad campaigns, etc. for charities is seen as bad
The Fifth Error - Prohibition on Investment Return: The Limits of No Return, and a Stock Market for Charity
+ stigma of investing in the future

If we have the courage to be true to our most daring ideas, the ideology will have to surrender to their magnificence and our determination to make them real.

Harvard Business School's interest in social entrepreneurship led them to commission a case study on our methods in 2002. On a functional level, the events broke with tradition in three ways. They lasted days instead of hours; they required participants to raise a mandatory minimum of contributions that ranged from $1000 to $10,000, depending on the event; and they were marketed to a mass audience using funding levels and methods that previously were largely the domain of big consumer brands. On an emotional and philosophical level, the events asked people to do the most they could do, instead of the least. Tens of thousands of people responded. It was like a coming out for their humanity.
From 1994 to 2002:
+ 556M in total donor contributions
+ netted $305M, after all expenses, for direct charitable service
+ The company produced seventy-nine large-scale multi-day events, each with an average of 2,279 walkers or riders, each traveling anywhere from sixty miles on foot to six hundred miles by bicycle.
+ A total of 180,043 people rode or walked.
+ Tens of thousands of people volunteered for days on end as crew members on the roads and campsites of the events.
+ Approximately 7.4M individual donations were made to the events.
+ The average participant raised $3039 from his or her friends and family.

Methods and Controversy
+ For-profit structure, for-profit sector compensation philosophy
+ The most you can do [asked of the participants]
+ Paid, professional advertising and marketing
+ Brand building
+ Desegregation of causes
+ Taking risks [trying new markets or revenue streams]

+++
Great read, but skimmed a lot of it. It's definitely thick with a ton of information in it. The author hits on the 'Puritan work ethic' quite a bunch, which I could have done without. But his overall points are very intriguing and are worth thinking about. The end section on his company and their Methods and the Controversy surround the methods makes the book well worth the read.

Booth Street Conversations

In the morning:
A little boy said to Rachel, "Can I tell you a secret? I'm scared to live here. It's dangerous. At night I hear gunshots."

In the afternoon:
After hearing about a church going into their community to run a kids camp, Rachel asked me, "Do you think I could do something like that at Booth Street?"

Yes, Rachel you can. Yes you can.

Reading The Forgotten Ways in 1 Day

If you've been here for a while, you know I'm a big fan of The Forgotten Ways. Lots of great content in there and when I consider how we form global leaders of the future, this book is at the top of the list.

I will admit that it is some pretty heavy stuff - it can be quite cerebral and has some big words. So when I've asked high school students to read it, they get bogged down in it. What works better seems to be when we read it together - interacting over the material. The best question seems to be, "When you have you seen this?"

So for Ember Salisbury Cast, our team read it together, as much as we could. Here's the 24 hour summary - you certainly could have spent hours on each point, instead we spent 10-15 minutes on them, if that. It was fantastic - I think we got through everything but the last two.

+ fringe:
all great missionary movements begin at the fringes of the church p.30
+ cultural distance: p. 57
+ tribalization of western culture:
On one occasion some youth ministry specialists I work with identified in an hour fifty easily discernible youth subcultures alone. Each of them takes their subcultural identity with utmost seriousness, and hence any missional response to them must as well. p. 61
+ organic structure p. 77
+ TS Eliot
The great proof of Christianity for others is not how far a man can logically analyze his reasons for believing, but how far in practice he will stake his life on his belief. p. 101
+ action learning discipleship
At Forge, we have built the entire system around this concept of action-learning discipleship. Our twin aims are to develop missionaries to the west and to develop a distinctly pioneering/missional mode of leadership. p. 124
+ missional impulse
A genuine missional impulse is a sending rather than an attractional one. The NT pattern of mission is centrifugal rather than centripetal. And this cannot be emphasized more highly. When Jesus likens the kingdom of God to seeds being sown, he is not kidding. p. 130
+ incarnational lifestyle
presence, proximity, powerlessness, proclamation p. 132
+ church follows mission
Start with mission and its likely that the Church will be found. Mission Shaped Church, p. 143
+ apostolic web of meaning
p.168
+ APEST leadership p. 175
+ movement lifecycles p. 192

[Related: Alan and Deb Hirsch speaking to one of our student teams, July 2008]

Ember Salisbury Cast

Amazing 24 hours spent with the Salisbury Uni Campus Crusade team over the weekend. We didn't just reach a goal, we experienced a win. Here's some details and reflections from our time. Warning - long post ahead. Don’t feel bad about skimming or stealing what will work for you.

If you've tracked this project from dream to execution, you know that TayEst is the point person - a college student, totally sold out to both local community impact and global mission, an alumn of SPACE - the local church student missions component I used to be a part of. Loved, loved, loved working with her on this. We already started dreaming of the next step. [Developers....]

Friday night was used to expose students to some of the core core principles we were thinking about for this weekend over an ice cream party. See the pic. The overall goal of the weekend was a tangible report to give to future ministries about what we learned about the community today - a gift to the future. While we did that, we would learn first hand about context, learning postures and engaging the place where we live. See the win sheet for more details.

Saturday morning was a very lightly planned few hours where students would go into the community to serve, engage but mostly listen. We used a thing we call the Matchbox - some tangible tools to help us engage. This was very organic, very experimental. No, I have never done something like this before.

My specific team went to a location called Booth Street, a community of underprivileged and government subsidized homes. While there, we invited a bunch of kids to hang at the park with us while we played football, basketball and had fun. Not a huge group of kids. Booth Street was chosen by the Salisbury team because they already had some students who have a presence there - a weekly kids camp that they run there every Monday afternoon. Becky knew most of these families and their kids names. Oh - Becky and Tayest who run this started this initiative on their own. Right, that's the kind of college student we are dealing with.

All teams met at a local park for lunch and for a quick decompress. Stories included a ton of students engaging the homeless, students not realizing how poverty was all around campus, meeting some homeless that lived in a tent enclave who told them that they were fine and to go help someone else, and seeing the community through new filters. Right there, according to our sheet, that's the win.

The whole team split into two for the afternoon, one team working at Joseph House, another team - the one I was on - worked at Halo ministries. Halo has a ton of stuff going on but the core is a women and children shelter. We sorted through a bunch of donated canned food and some of the guys demo'd some old furniture as well as building some partitions for the shelter area. Amazing story of how they fell into this massive space.

We also heard from Celeste, the executive director. You would never see the visionary in her from the outside but on the inside, she's the executor of dreams and visions for this place. Loved hearing about that - those are the kinds of people the future needs.

We finished the day with more snacks and another recap/decompression. In the next few weeks, Tayest and I will chronicle what the teams found from this day and package it up for someone in the future - church planter, community activist, campus catalyst. [Will make that available when it's ready.] That's our small gift to the future. Ember's big gift to the future is, hopefully, the eruption of some of these students into an amazing trajectory that serves a great world in need. And thanks to those of you that prayed for us on Friday - you are throwing fire with us.

More images here. [Related: Ember Philly Cast, January 2010]

Say A Quick One

Would appreciate quick prayers for our Ember Salisbury Cast weekend coming tonight. Specifically pray for:

+ safe travels and being wise as we serve in areas in the community
+ God to really lead us as we listen to the community
+ A vision for the future for some of these high school and college kids.
+ For Dea, who isn't totally feeling great.

Had some fun opportunities open up this week for Saturday, which is always pretty wild. There is something about these kids at Salisbury - God is granting them favor. Excited to join them in it for a little while.

Thanks for praying!

Thursday Burn

::: Become an early adopter
Link via MMI


::: Tony Morgan's notes on Leading Change by John Kotter
"One bad succession decision at the top of an organization can undermine a decade of hard work."
"Successful transformation is 70 to 90 percent leadership and only 10 to 30 percent management."
"With a strong emphasis on management but not leadership, bureaucracy and an inward focus take over."
"A good rule of thumb in a major change effort is: Never underestimate the magnitude of the forces that reinforce complacency and that help maintain the status quo."
"Two types of individuals should be avoided at all costs when putting together a guiding coalition. The first have egos that fill up a room, leaving no space for anybody else. The second are what I call snakes, people who create enough mistrust to kill teamwork."
"Sometimes the only way to change a culture is to change key people."
"Highly controlling organizations often destroy leadership by not allowing people to blossom, test themselves, and grow."
"The best-performing firms I know that operate in highly competitive industries have executives who spend most of their time leading, not managing, and employees who are empowered with the authority to manage their work groups."
Wow.
Part 1 and 2

::: What does a family look like?
Link
And the implications for student pastors?

Desire

Whoever can no longer desire the impossible will be able to achieve nothing more than the all-too-probable.

- Martin Buber as quoted in The Forgotten Ways

Week 45

Four things happened last week. I'm still in awe. And I'm probably writing this down so I remember.

1 - I officially declined a leadership opportunity. I'd been serving in this realm in a temporary status for about two years and although it's a great opportunity, it's not quite in my sweet spot. I'm being obscure on purpose but those of you close to us probably can guess what this is. Suffice to say that after I gave the official word, there was a huge sense of relief. Maybe tell you more one day.

2 - The very day I declined, somehow my name made an internet list. I will be the first to tell you that the other people on this list are amazing - many of them inspire me and I almost always click all the links when this thing comes out every month. So I'm humbled and flattered to be thought of in the same manner. Making the list was not about the arrival somewhere. In the context of this particular day, it was confirmation about my earlier decision.

3 - I met with the Ember board for our first official meeting. As you might imagine, I don't know much about running boards. What I do know is that I value each one of these board members as friends and co-conspirators. What I had no idea about was how much each of them believe in Ember and the challenge they would put forth to really run this thing so we could serve more and more students. Their vision scared and awakened me. We throw fire.

4 - Finally, attending and sharing at the ACMC conference. The combination of sharing what we learned, interacting with some friends about the material, and being at a conference which really was implicitly about the future - all of it was so generative for me.

And so.... this week?

ACMC 2010 DMV conference

Had a great time at the Advancing Churches for Missions Commitment [ACMC] DC/MD/VA conference on Saturday. Our little group that went consisted of Leslie - Ember board member, Joyce - Ember board member, Robyn - college student/trying-to-figure-out-life, and my 12 year old daughter Kt.

There were some really great sessions and George Verwer, founder of OM, was ridiculous in the two plenary sessions. Ridiculous in terms of very engaging and lots of really good information. I thought my breakout went really well and I had a great time doing it.

Met some interesting people as well as caught up with some old friends doing neat stuff. The quick list:
MBoorman - new youth pastor at Barcroft Bible - they have 6 languages in their congregation
DH - old friend who runs NavYouth, been running open mic nights to connect with students who are musicians, now going to try an experiment with music studios.
Dave Shive - former prof at Washington Bible College, now works for ACMC full time, in his mid 60s but probably has a higher Millennial score than I do. His session on passing the missions leadership baton from the older generation to the younger generation was fantastic - see the notes below.

The demographic was, sorry to be blunt, old. As far as I could tell, there was 2 or 3 people involved with students there. I saw one middle or high school kid - mine. All of this is unfortunate because I think any high school or college kid interested in global leadership would have had a lot of fun at the conference. Next time, Ember focuses on recruiting a whole bunch of students to attend.

Finally, I know they conference organizers had some trouble putting this thing together - last minute issues and cancellations and all that. But it really was a fun day so my thanks to them for their efforts and for inviting me to run a breakout.

My notes to follow - enjoy.

+ George Verwer - Plenary 1
Any missions event in 2010 should start with Thanksgiving. We are making progress.

Acts 13
1. church - the local church
the church is in a credibility crisis
2. worship
3. Holy Spirit
4. Sent
5. Prayer
6. Preached
social concern + proclamation come together
Luis Palau - new kind of evangelistic outreach [related]
7. Helper
George has had 55 personal assistants - all do it for one year and live with him as family, all young men. All 55 are still walking closely with Jesus.

+ Dave Shive - Passing the Baton to the Next Generation lf Church Missions Leadership
'missions activist' - love that term he used
passing the baton has a backdrop of precision

older gen needs to decide if they trust younger gen to create new structures or to micromanage them
older gen needs to decide whether to pass it on, what exactly they are going to pass on, how do they pass it on.

responsibility rests on older gen - form of church is irrelevant to Dave - as a 60 year old, he doesn't need his needs met by a church

10 problems
1. maturation - spiritual growth is important in this discussion - love and maturity between generations
2. alienation - goal is not to alienate
3. stereotypes
young are lazy
old are stuffy
from the audience - a youth pastor and his wife - a lot of this is also based on our expectations of people - they rise or fall to what we expect of them - very very true.
4. change - change is essential - technology also makes us aware of the change faster
5. changing interests
6. control
7. departures - kids leaving the faith/church
8. faith loss - younger people have less loyalty to institutions
9. gender - large issue for men - feminization of the Church
missions used to be the brave thing to do
70% of boys will leave church in their teens and twenties
10. old age - we all die

+ George - plenary II
top 10 impossible countries
1. North Korea
2. Tibet
3. Afghanistan
4. Iran
5. Iraq
6. Saudi Arabia
7. Yemen - Socotra - not one believer on the island of about 50,000
8. Libya
9. Tunisia - few hundred believers
10. Somalia/Turkmenestan

Christianization of America is a greater priority than the evangelization of the nations.

Top Trends
1. most church growth in history
2. house church movement - alpha course, G12 colombia
3. emerging missions
new range of sending countries - from anywhere to anywhere
4. partnership
5. rapid shift to holistic ministry
6. business as missions
7. explosion in short term missions
8. explosion of technology in missions

"I've never had a boring day since my conversion"

[Related: ACMC conf notes - 2004, 2003]

Taking Back The Future

Here are my breakout "Taking Back The Future: Transforming Students into Cross Cultural Workers" notes for the Advancing Churches in Missions Commitment DC/MD/VA conference tomorrow. If you download them, make sure you open up the notes section in powerpoint [sorry hahaha] so you can see some of the actual stuff I'm talking about instead of just pretty pictures about some phenomenal people. If you are reading this today and want to attend, I'm pretty sure there is still room. If you are going, please stop by to say hi.

[Update: had to update the slides, if you download it, make sure it's version 9]

I've included a list of resources on the last slide - here's the list with some links. As always, with anything and everything you find on this blog, feel free to take, steal or borrow what works in your context.

The Forgotten Ways - Alan Hirsch
An Unstoppable Force - Erwin McManus
Waking the Dead - John Eldredge
Movements That Changed The World - Steve Addison [blog]
Perspectives
Rob Wegner
Alex McManus
Bob Roberts
Swerve - Lifechurch.tv
Andrew Jones
Ben Arment

Thursday Burn

::: Rob Wegner at AND
Link. Make sure to check out this graphic about Granger's attractional and missional combination - it will make your head spin, in a good way.


::: Google and Endangered Languages
Link


::: A Sugar and Salt Solution for Haiti's Cholera Epidemic
Link via Becky Straw

The Salisbury Win Sheet

You reach a goal, you experience a win.

- Andy Stanley

Here's the link to our "win sheet" for the Ember Salisbury Cast coming up in a few weeks. As always, with everything on this blog, feel free to steal whatever works best for you. Just remember to contextualize it. =)

Book Notes - Forces for Good

Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High Impact Nonprofits, Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant

12 orgs after thousands of interviews of npo execs.
America's Second Harvest
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
City Year
Environmental Defense Fund
Exploratorium
Habitat for Humanity
The Heritage Foundation
National Council of La Raza
Self-Help
Share Our Strength
Teach for America
Youthbuild USA

++ Chapter 1 - The 6 practices of high impact nonprofits
1. Advocate and Serve
High impact orgs don't just focus on doing one thing well. They may start out providing great programs but eventually they realize that they cannot achieve systemic change through service delivery alone. So they add policy advocacy to access government resources or to change legislation, thus expanding their impact.
2. Make Markets Work
No longer content to rely on traditional notes of charity or to see the private sector as the enemy, great nonprofits find ways to work with markets and help business 'do well while doing good.'
3. Inspire Evangelists
Great nonprofits see volunteers as much more than a source of free labor or membership dues. They create meaningful ways to engage individuals in emotional experiences that help them connect to the group's mission and core values.
4. Nurture Nonprofit Networks
High impact organizations help the competition succeed, building networks of nonprofit allies and devoting remarkable time and energy to advancing their larger field. They freely share wealth, expertise, talent and power with their peers, not because they are saints, but because it's in their self interest to do so.
5. Master the Art of Adaptation
All the orgs in this book are exceptionally adaptive, modifying their tactics as needed to increase their success.
6. Share Leadership
They distribute leadership throughout their organization and their nonprofit network - empowering others to lead. And they cultivate a strong second-in-command, build enduring executive teams with long tenure and develop highly engaged boards in order to have more impact.

++ Chapter 2 - Advocate *and* Serve
Five Principles for Successful Policy Change
1. Balance Pragmatism with Idealism
They would rather win than be right. They strike a balance between achieving results and maintaining their integrity.
2. Practice Principled Bipartisanship
3. Preserve credibility and Integrity
4. Hire Policy Experience
5. Find Funding for Advocacy

+ Policy advocacy is a powerful force for social change.
High impact nonprofits understand that they cannot achieve maximum results without advocating for policy reform or without accessing the power and resources of government.
+ The best nonprofits both advocate and serve.
Ultimately the two activities reinforce each other.
+ Don't be afraid to jump into the political fray.
+ It's never too late to advocate.

++ Chapter 3 - Make Markets Work
Env Defense Fund and McDonalds' trash issue
Env Defense and FedEx packaging more env friendly and revolutionizing company's truck fleet
Cap and Trade - a market for trading pollution permits

These nonprofits don't seek to act like a business so much as leverage the power of business.

It's hard to change the world without changing business.
There are three ways to harness market forces:
1 - work with business to change corporate practices and make companies more socially responsible.
2 - partner with business to access more resources for their cause
3 - some orgs run their own businesses to generate earned income

++ Chapter 4 - Inspire Evangelists
"I was more interested in building a movement than an organization. The key ingredient of a movement is abandon - you don't hold back. It takes passion, commitment, dedication." - Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity

top cultivation events - transform volunteers into evangelists:
City Year - serve-a-thons - one-day local volunteer events for thousands
Share Our Strength - Great American bake sale
TFA - TFA week

High impact groups are particularly strategic about identifying, converting and cultivating powerful individuals or super-evangelists.

For the social entrepreneur, the solution is to make the network not as a tool for information or resources but as a community defined by a common set of values. The community itself becomes the agent of change - Joel Poolny, dean of Yale School of Mgt.

++ Chapter 5 - Nurture Nonprofit Networks
Adopt a network mind-set
Share Knowledge
Develop leadership
Work in Coalitions

Networks are the future [references to Wikipedia, open source software and The Starfish and the Spider.]

++ Chapter 6 - Master the Art of Adaptation
The Cycle of Adaptation
Adaptive capacity is one term used to describe this phenomenon - and high impact nonprofits have it in abundance.
"It is one thing to deliver a program ... [and another] to know where and how to change programs and strategies so that the organization is delivering on its mission. For an organization to be more than the sum of its programs, it needs the ability to ask, listen, reflect and adapt." - High Performance Nonprofit Organizations - Christine Letts

"The limits to innovation have less to do with creativity and more to do with management systems." - Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators

We observed that 'staying close to the customer,' to borrow a business phrase, is the most common impetus for adaptation.

- listen to the environment
experiment and innovate
evaluate and learn what works
modify programs

- what not to do
Many nonprofits fail to find this delicate balance - they are either so freewheeling that their cultures are more chaotic than creative, or they are so structured that they become hidden bound and paralyzed. But high-impact nonprofits are able to work with this tension.

++ Chapter 7 - Share Leadership
These CEOs take the Level 5 leadership concept one step further. They not only put the interests of their organizations ahead of their personal egos, they often put their overall cause ahead of their organization’s interests.

++ Chapter 8 - Sustaining Impact
People - develop a people strategy and invest heavily in top performers. First what, then who. All the orgs we studied are guided first and foremost by their mission, and this purpose is the primary reason a person will take the job. [opposite of Collins - First who then what]
Capital - find the right sources of funding
Infrastructure - invest in overhead, despite the pressure to look lean

+++
Great read. Not that Ember is even close to being some of this, but here's a few ideas that are percolating:
1 - Policy change [chapter 2] reminds me of global missions strategy.
2 - Love the stuff about leadership and adaptability. Knowing that it's an art and not a science.
3 - What kinds of businesses are out there that align with something like Ember?

Latest Kindling

Hello Nov Ember! Got a few crazy weeks up ahead - but all very generative.

+ Advancing Churches in Missions Commitment DMV conference in 2 weeks - would love to meet you if you are going to be there.
+ Ember's board of directors meets officially for the first time next week. Praying for summer 2011 is on the agenda.
+ Very much looking forward to Ember Salisbury Cast. I'm sure the students there are still amazing as last time.
+ A leadership event proposal I helped write was accepted - the Leadership Collective - scheduled for late January 2011. I am almost sure I bit off more than I can chew. Learning by doing.
+ Had to make some adjustments with the interns - both of them are overwhelmed with senior year, jobs, college apps, their small groups and Friday night youth ministry outreach leadership opportunities. It's a lesson in contextualization - I'm not going to pull them out of where they are already making an impact to 'teach' them about leading.

Thursday Burn

::: The core competency of any movement is apprenticeship
Link


::: Rob Fairbanks apologizes for all Americans
But this is funny....
Youtube Link


::: Today
A video about children and mission, shown at Capetown.
Youtube Link via Andrew Jones


@rickwarren : "I don't dream at night, I dream all day; I dream for a living." Steven Spielberg
@alanhirsch : An apostolic movement is its own R+D department
@jontyson : The priesthood of all believers is the most neglected doctrine in the church. Everyone is a priest. Everyone has a parish.

You Don't Hold Back

"I was more interested in building a movement than an organization. The key ingredient of a movement is abandon - you don't hold back. It takes passion, commitment, dedication."

- Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity, as quoted in Forces for Good

Tracking Some Global Leadership

So Capetown came to a close - sounded like a pretty amazing experience and I loved being able to read a ton about it. So thankful for the technology to be able to do that.

You might imagine that I was most interested in the topic of global leadership [see this post - related to this advance paper.] Kind of a no-brainer - if we are going to have successful teams, mission organizations, churches, nonprofits, social enterprises, etc., the people that lead them are going to have to be solid. And since 99% of all leaders are not born, someone somewhere has to intentionally do the difficult work to cultivate and grow them.

I was disappointed in the CapeTown session for only reviewing the current gaps in leadership. Granted I wasn't there so I might be wrong on this but it didn't seem like there was any focus on the bright spots of people developing global leaders with positive results.

In light of that, here's a few global leadership initiatives that I'm tracking:
Leadership XP
Christian Associates
Xealot
Fuller MAGL
National Community Church Proteges
Mosaic proteges
Acumen Fund Global Fellows
[Tracking mostly meaning that I've got google reader searches turned on for them...]

One BIG caveat to these - most of them have a big Western American context. What kind of global leadership movements are you watching?

Yeah We Celebrate It