BRU and AZ favorites

Click to enlaaaaaaaarge.

Also, I'm starting my annual blog sabbatical a little early. It's been a bit crazy since I returned. I'm also writing a report about our time in Europe, contact me if you would like a copy. See you in September.

AZ 2012 wrap up

Here's a few insights I'm reminded of as I think about our week with Amadeo:

- We need all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people. If you've followed along for a while, you know Amadeo is 6 years old, pretty organic and very community impact focused. Ben is an amazing leader - highly creative, willing to risk, sold out to serve his community, pioneering and has a great deal of missional imagination. Our experience focused on two goals - helping catalyze some spiritual movement in their community and giving some students an experience to learn from Ben. This experience fulfilled both fantastically.
- Ben has created a culture of prayer in his community. Just like in 2010, it's inspiring.
- Unlike many mission teams I have led, it didn't seem like we spent all of our time in 'ministry.' Instead, it was a very laid back schedule, which seems odd for a 'missions trip.' Ember is moving in this meaning that these summer experiences look less like normal mission trips and more like leadership labs. That is a good tension we are moving towards.
- Distributed mission teams can work but it takes more concentration on logistics. In this case, ORapp's flights lined up well with ours including being in the same terminal. For minors that are flying to meet us, we should be more careful rather than leave it to chance. [Ask our daughter K about the guy she sat next to on the flight home - he had just been released from jail.] In the even more collaborative future, this will become standard. And I loved being able to do this together with a great missionary family.
- Amadeo and Ember have benefited from the value of long term relationships - the time span on this one is 7 years and counting. Excited to see what's next.
- From a conversation with Zak and Kat about another ministry they dropped in on a few weeks ago as part of their nationwide tour: Your 'ministry activities' must be simple and reproducible enough so that a person who works a normal job can do it.

More pictures of our time here.

AZ - Redemptive Analogies Session

On Monday evening in AZ, I facilitated a short discussion on redemptive analogies with the Amadeo youth group. In case you were interested, here's some links:

Children of Men
ET
I am Legend
Wide Awake, Katy Perry

Remember, a redemptive analogy is a story that is parallel to the Gospel and is well known in the culture. Today, our predominant media is film, and with students, a case could be made that it's youtube.

AZ - Friday

Spent the day at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, which is always a great time.

Matt did a session at lunch, my notes are below. And again, content that not many high school kids are hearing.

Evening was the coffee house - some very talented and artistic students. Love that. More recap later.

matt
passion
fishing
disciples fishimg to kill time
zak and kat uniqieness
mt 4
mt 22 - the greatest commandmemt
is your passion about loving god
what direction are you going
actively participate in finding your passion
time
try diff things
diff service churches
what interests you
its not cheating if you are good at it
ask god for great opps
ask him that you wont miss great opportinitoes
dont be afraid to try strike out
just move fwd
talk to people you trust about your ideas
some might help you
process
make a plan
execute it with god
talk about it with god how is it going

combat the nonreasons
comfort
its not that bad
other people i work with are great
who is going to catch these fish if i dont

AZ - Thursday

Last day of kids mini camp was today. Dea and I got to have breakfast with Ben and Mandy. Zak and Kat taught a session today [notes] Ben and Mandy also spent a good amount of time with Zak and Kat today. Water slide was of course a big hit this time again.

Cookout this evening at the house we are staying in. Tomorrow we go to Tucson for the day for a desert museum. The week has gone by fast. Somehow Ember mission trips have great food.

AZ - Transference and Replication

Zak and Kat taught on the concepts of transference and replication, all within the context of investing in others and creating disciples.

The discipleship square:
D1: I do, you watch
D2: I do, you help
D3: You do, I help
D4: You do, I watch
It is a simple paradigm for the transference of information. In other words, you best learn something when it is modeled and you do it for yourself.

Multiplication/replication - Jesus spoke to a lot of crowds but invested himself mostly in the disciples that could in turn teach others. 2nd, 3rd and 4th generations.

As you probably know, I love this kind of stuff and firmly believe that students can and should be engaged in these kinds of concepts. There are simply not enough youth workers coaching this kind of stuff with our students. They are not too young and are fully capable of engaging this kind of material. Lots of good discussion about this stuff today, including lots of expanding on the example of people learning to make coffee and then teaching others to do it. The coffee example is indigenous to Amadeo.

AZ 2012 - Missiological Concepts

Your middle and high school students are fully capable of understanding these concepts. You will set your students up for success in cross cultural leadership ff you teach them the theory and then take them out to see these ideas lived out.

- contextualization
- cultural distance
- redemptive analogy
- indigenous
- person of peace

We used these for AZ 2012 and in the midst of that, had a great sidebar conversation about diversity in churches, the church homogenous unit principle and how those things relate to new churches. Like I said, your students are fully capable.

Note that I'm not that artistic. You don't need to be either.

AZ - Wednesday

Mens breakfast with breakfast burritos. Morning devotionals with 2 chapters from Love Does and other Scriptures and questions. Morning session on missiological tools. Lunch, games, water slides and movie with the kids for the mini kids camp. We did worked on some yard projects at Bill's house and then had dinner there. Ended the night with a pool party at one of Amadeo's elders house.

Bill has served on Ben's teams for since somewhere around 2004, originally hosting students at a drop in center and then transitioning with Ben to help in whatever capacity as they started Amadeo. He is in a wheelchair but continues to cook dinner for students and apartment complexes as well as make a mean espresso.

AZ - Tuesday

This morning was some prayer walking in around the old downtown section of Queen Creek, looking at past, existing and future businesses and talking through some of those business relationships Amadeo has. The prayer walk was a combination of a city tour, cultural observation and listening to Ben's missional imagination.

The afternoon was our first kids mini club day, including lunch, crafts, games and a movie. Lots of fun. The evening was spent visiting a small group that was just starting and prayer walking that neighborhood. This included stopping in front of every house in the area to pray for the people that lived there. Ben prays. A lot.

Decompression with our team tonight was great. They are all learning a ton and watching a very creative, pioneering leader. Great fun for me to see that they are learning what I hoped and imagined they would.

UPDATE - I forgot to write that we also worked with Restore, which is the food pantry that spun off from Amadeo. We sorted food to be placed in the pantry and then created food boxes to be given to people. Every Tuesday, Restore uses one room of the community center for people to show up to get a food box. This week, they also gave out info and scholarships for people to bring their kids back to mini camp this week.

AZ - Monday

Some intros to Amadeo context this morning. We also passed out some flyers inviting people in the neighborhood to the kids drop in that the church is hosting starting tomorrow, Wed and Thursday.

Ben taught this afternoon on intercessory healing prayer. This evening was a youth specific gathering, where there was some worship, prayer and I did a little talk on stories and redemptive analogies.

A very low key missions trip, which is counter intuitive to a lot of what we do missions-wise.

AZ - Sunday

Two services at Amadeo Church this morning. A very refreshing honest community. And every time we are here, we hear Ben say that this church exists to bless the community. Z and K were brought on stage to hear about their stories which was fun and they totally felt welcomed. We handed out some free pool stuff at a local pool and then had some sessions on the Kingdom, the story of Amadeo and Ember.

Our team is having lots of fun - as always Ben is a great host and our team is learning from his entrepreneurial, globally connected, high risk style.

Still a Good Idea

I'm leaving with an Ember team for Queen Creek, AZ later today. It's been kind of a whirlwind between returning from Europe earlier this week and AZ today. Jet lag, re-entry eating, a swim meet for my kids, and getting a few hours in at the day job to burn as little vacation time as possible - I thought it was a good idea at the time.

Actually, I still think it's a good idea. There is a small group of students that are going to have the trajectory of their lives clarified through this experience and it's Ember's responsibility to catalyze that as best we can. If it means slugging through jet lag to get on another plane a few days later to eventually watch these kids impact human history, well you agree - that's a small price to pay.

Thanks for thinking of us this week as we serve with some leaders that are sold out to bring the love of God to their community.

Creative Revenue Plan Update

For those of you that have been tracking with the Creative Revenue Plan, here's one success story. DeannaK decided to take babysitting jobs for her Plan to help fund Ember AZ 2012 and here are the results:

$800 - total goal
$850 - total raised - 106% of goal
$180 - raised from Plan - 22%
$670 - raised from support letters - 78%

The initial idea also included bringing in some training in business skills to our teams. That didn't happen this summer but we'll try that again next time. My personal Plan didn't go quite as expected either, but that's okay. We knew these would be experiments that might flop.

Based on positive feedback from some career missions thought leaders, DeannaK's results and the nature of creative access being a requirement for future missionaries, we are going to keep continuing this in the future.

Ember AZ 12 - Mtg 2

Our 2nd meeting - the bulk of which was spent taking and talking through the Myers Briggs Type Indicator personality test. It's my fave. We almost always use this with teams including talking through the 4 pairs, how each can affect teams that work together and charting everyone's types with everyone else so that each person walks away with a chart.

We also talked about:
- cultural distance and how that is relevant to both every day mission and new faith communities
- one person leaving our team for an epic opportunity
- we swapped him for a middle school girl
[tell you more about both of these later]
- creative revenue plan updates
- some logistics and ministry tasks we are all preparing for

[Related: AZ 12 Meeting #1]

Ember AZ 12 - first team meeting

Our first Arizona meeting was this past weekend. With a young married couple, one high school senior, one just graduated college young adult, one Ember board member, and all 4 Shengs, it's a small and eclectic team. [But we've got some other things in the works...]

After our time together, I'm even more confident that God has placed each person on this team for a specific reason and for His specific time in history. Our hope is that some amazing things happen in Queen Creek AZ and to us because of this investment.

Here's some of the things we talked through:
+ the paradigm of a catalyst
+ the history of working with Ben Cloud
+ person of peace [part of our preassessment]
+ some admin stuff - meetings, travel logistics, etc.
+ blood sugar sensitive dessert

If you are in charge of a short term student team this summer, I'm sincerely hope you are preparing them. One of the reasons The Ember Cast exists is to help leaders do this.

[Related: 2010AZ mtg #3,
2008Hungary mtg #3,
2007Hungary mtg #3,
2006Cameroon mtg #3
2005Brasil mtg #1]

Creative Revenue - Myers Briggs sessions

Ember believes that missionaries of the future will rely on a 'portfolio of revenue.' [credit for this term goes to Ben Arment.] In other words, they will need to actually make some money outside of personal donations. As part of this summer, our team is required to dream and execute a Creative Revenue Plan - a way to make some income based on their talents and gifts. This unique income will go directly towards the funding of their missions experience. Prayer and financial support letters are also required.

My Creative Revenue Plan is as follows:
+ I will offer a single, informal Myers Briggs Type Indicator session to individuals or teams. The MBTI is a well known personality test that organizes people into 16 different personality types, based on the temperaments of 4 domains. In this highly interactive session, we will cover individuals and their types as well as how the types interact in your specific context, including your organizations goals, structure and culture.
+ The session will last no more than 2 and a half hours.
+ 100% of this goes to supporting Ember's Arizona 2012 team.
+ Rates are as follows: $50 per person for 1-5 people, $25 per person for 6-10 people. Payments are to be paid to The Ember Cast, Inc. More than 10? Let's talk. tonytsheng @ theembercast.org
+ I will provide all handouts for you and your team.
+ Participants will take the test in advance - the session will only interact with people who have completed the test.
+ Locations for these sessions must be in either Maryland or Washington, DC. Outside of these areas and still interested? Let's talk. tonytsheng @ theembercast.org
+ Although I'm not officially certified as an MBTI practitioner, I've walked hundreds of people through this personality assessment in over 20 years of working with the test. It's one of my favorite things to do with teams. The test you will take is not official, but will still score with a high degree of accuracy.

If this doesn't work, my Creative Revenue Plan B has to do with a power washer, sandals and a bathing suit. Plan C may have to do with some creative, strategic technology work.

My 2012 Missions Support Letter

"To know the will of God, we need an open Bible and an open map." – William Carey

A few months ago, I worked with some student mission leaders and gave them the paradigm of being a mapmaker. One step further than Mr. Carey, this idea conveyed that in times of constant, disruptive change, you could learn to read a map or you could learn to make your own maps. This summer, I have the opportunity to be involved in two interesting projects that fall under the mapmaker paradigm.

Most of you know about my little student missions nonprofit called The Ember Cast. I'll be helping lead a team with Ember to Queen Creek, AZ, working with my friend Ben Cloud and Amadeo Church. The team will see up close how a relatively new church works, learn about starting a new ministry in some detailed sessions with Ben and contribute to some community impact projects that form a structure that allow our team to be catalysts for what God may do in the Amadeo community. Ministry activities include serving with ReStore, their food and clothing pantry; Friends Feeding Friends, their homeless ministry; and various other community projects. Most or all of the Sheng's will probably participate on this team as well and this trip is July 7-16. My grand hope for this team of leaders and students is that this experience propels them on a trajectory where instead of reading maps, they start making their own.

The second project is with Grace Community Church, our home church. I have been invited to be on a 'vision' team, which will scout out the possibilities of some potential ministry partnerships in Brussels, Belgium as part of Grace's long term global strategy. Our team will have meetings with a variety of ministry leaders and will be observing, listening and discerning from June 28 to July 4. Our hope is that this experience helps set up a clear map with regards to potential partnerships for Grace in Europe.

We welcome and thank you for your prayers for both of these experiences. If you feel led, I'm raising 50% of support for both trips. The support target for Ember 2012 AZ is $1500 [for all the Shengs] and the support target for Brussels is also $1500. Unfortunately, support for both organizations must be kept independent, so that requires two separate donations if you give to both.

Ember believes that missionaries of the future will rely on a 'portfolio of revenue.' In other words, they will need to actually make some money outside of personal donations. As part of this summer, each person, including me, is asked to dream and execute a 'Creative Revenue Plan.' My Creative Revenue Plan involves providing one teaching session on the Myers Briggs Type Indicator personality assessment for interested individuals and teams. We will walk through each person's results, talk about how it fits with a team and discuss the assessment in the context of their organizations goals, structure and culture. All proceeds will go to supporting the Ember 2012 AZ team. If this is something you or someone you know might be interested in, please let me know.

Get in touch if you want to send financial support. If you are local and want to donate, let me know and I will come buy you lunch. Please make sure your checks are payable to either The Ember Cast, Inc., or Grace Community Church, depending on which project you feel led to support.

You may also contribute online to The Ember Cast. Online donations are done via amazon.com - be aware that Amazon takes 2.9% + .30 for each donation. The Ember Cast is a registered 501c3 nonprofit and you will receive a receipt for your donation approximately 6 weeks after your donation is received. The Ember Cast reserves the right to re-direct your support in the case that the person you are supporting is 100% funded. However, 100% of donations go to catalyzing global student leaders. Your donation is very, very much appreciated.

As always, thank you for your long standing passion for student missions. I'm convinced, like you are, that we need more global leaders than ever and that those leaders come out of students who are poised right now to make a difference in our world. I will be sure to tell you not only how we make maps this summer but how we make mapmakers that go on to mark human history. Thanks again for your support and prayers!

[Related: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011 Mission Support Letters]

AZ Part 3 of X

Part 1. Part 2. We do part 3 this summer.