Asking for Discipleship

If there was one fantastic thing that came out of the Grace AZ 2013 experience, and I'm limiting myself by only listing one, it is that a fantastic leader agreed to disciple one of my kids. I don't mean one of Ember's students, I mean one of my biological kids.

Amadeo, like many newer church plants led by Gen X or younger leaders, counts discipleship as a core value. I know it's part of their culture because I've heard Ben lead high school students in this concept. Remember, this is the lead pastor describing to students that they can dialog with others along the questions like "What is God telling you?" and "What are you going to do about it?"

The gift we were received, the Shengs I mean, is that Katie meets with Rachel [in the middle in the picture above] every Sunday morning for about an hour and a half, which includes breakfast and currently, a slow moving study on the book of Acts. Every Sunday, I tell Katie not to take this gift for granted.

Lots of people these days think we are missing the boat on discipleship. Two things could help this issue easy: Young people, get up the nerve to make the [sometimes big] ask. Old people, identify those you think you could maybe help.

2013 Summer Missions Financial Model

Here is a rough picture of our financial model for this summer's experiences. Before I get to that though, here are two quotes that inspired and informed us and not just about this summer:

Don't let your budget determine your vision. Faith is having vision beyond your resources - Mark Batterson
Nonprofit is a tax strategy not a business strategy. Your idea needs to be profitable to be sustainable. - Ben Arment

2013 summer financials - all approximates:
Ember X income: 26582
Ember X expense: - 24150
Ember X overall : + 2432
* included in Ember X was $500 of 'salary' for two interns each

AZ income: 345
AZ expense: - 1752
AZ overall: - 1407
* included in AZ expenses was $500 of 'salary' for AZ Ember guide

Summer overall: + 1025

I've had some summers where the financial piece feels like it's pulling teeth. This summer was just the opposite and I've got to believe that it was a combination of our efforts in redefining missions support [via the Creative Revenue Plan] and having a team that was totally in for the vision of what they were doing. Each one of them would have easily done whatever they needed to in order to raise the funds.

We've got some good stuff planned for the Fall with our two interns and hopefully some other emerging global leaders and the excess from this summer gives us some good margin for executing these plans.

Future Casting from 2013

Ember exists to help prepare for leaders of the future and in order to project into the future, you must see the present clearly. Here are some of the current concepts that we saw this summer that may cast direction and intention for the missionary of the future.

1 - Multi-dimensional Connections
Combine global urban migration, digital natives and the ease of world wide travel and student mission experiences today are full of multi-dimensional connections. Students connect with lots of other people from lots of other places in the world. They continue these connections long after they come home from various medium via technology, such as sharing pictures and videos, texting each other and maybe talking via skype or facetime. One of our team still 'talks' with people from France at least a few times a week. Future student missions experiences should anticipate this and use it as an advantage.

2 - Belonging Before Believing
Both experiences in Aix and Phoenix involved significant contributions from students that didn't necessarily have a Christian world view. Now, of course, there is a sensitive line involving leadership roles and how relevant faith is in those positions. The challenge for the future is to navigate these challenges with a 'belonging before believing' posture.

3 - Creative Access and Creative Revenue
Creative access means various ways to get you to the field of service and creative revenue means generating the revenue to get you there. Our creative inspirations this summer included the Aixtraordinary Journey that ICCP put on and the fabulous community platform that Amadeo Church hosts at their 3rd Place Cup coffeehouse. Student missions in the future continue to inspire us with new and bold initiatives with regard to access, revenue and platforms. Be sure to include the idea of business as mission under this creative heading too.

4 - Sustainable Charity
Both of our hosts were passionately and deeply embedded in their communities. They exist to see these communities changed for the better. Ember uses the concept of a catalyst as our primary paradigm and it continues to help us filter our activities to spur on teams and not do anything that they couldn't do for themselves. As we think about the dynamic of self -> serve -> systems, these two hosts definitely helped us be catalysts and not create unreasonable dependencies.

Emily and Wendy

Loved hanging with them last week in AZ. Ember doesn't happen without these kinds of talented, passionate leaders.

Post AZ

Our projects with Ben Cloud and Amadeo Church continue to be some of the most catalytic experiences we can dream of. Ben is one of those rare leaders that combines creativity, innovation and a passion for his community. This is one of Ember's distinctives - connecting emerging global leaders with some of the best leaders we know who are doing the stuff.

+ By all accounts the Grace AZ ladies [10 of them] had an amazing week. I was only there a few days but I saw an amazing team. They worked and served hard during the VBS and a neighborhood cleaning project. Learning deeply, at each session most of them were taking notes. They enjoyed each other and had fun together, encouraging other and dreaming together. Our last few moments together were spent in worship and taking communion - it was stunning.

+ Ben and I continue to dream about the future. It's invigorating because he's a total dreamer but got the raw nerve to actually execute. He and Mandy have just come through a very tough season of deepening community and organization clarity. Not an easy time.

+ Emily Swinburne served as a fantastic guide for this team. She represents the execution of a different paradigm for Ember - one where we sent a trusted guide to serve as a leadership resource for a team that we didn't know real well. It worked perfectly.

+ Wendy is also having a great time serving with Amadeo. Also a new accomplishment for Ember - sending someone to a trusted partner for an extended amount of time for a deep learning experience.

+ Our Katie landed from France at IAD at about 1pm on July 11. Her flight left IAD at 8am the next day for Phoenix. Well... she's my kid so I approved that...

Some more pictures here.

Third Place Cup

This is the coffee house that Amadeo has opened up to the community. Weekend nights its open for music, coffee, and community. Very much a third space.

I fly home tommorrow afternoon. The Grace ladies fly in the morning and Wendy comes back to Merryland at the end of July.

It has been a great four days. The team here has seen lots including a church so devoted to serving their community as well as a much different expression of Church. All kinds of churches for all kinds of people. They worked hand in hand with Ben and Mandy and been able to see what he does and how he thinks. That is the Ember win right there.

Noah , Wendy and Ben

Team is working on a little neighborhood project helping out some of Bills neighbors.

Also heard Johns PG version story. Its a great one.

Apples and Orchards in AZ

Ben does a Q&A session with the Love of God tour saying, "If you were interested in church planting, what questions would have?" This is one of the many reasons why we love the Love of God tour.

One of Ember's mantras is in every apple there is an orchard [stolen from Alan Hirsch...] - meaning, the potential for world transformation is in every Christ follower.

Personal Decompress

Im waiting for my flight to Phoenix right now. Im thrilled to hang with Amadeo and Ben and the Grace AZ team and Wendy and Emily - all those great people - just for a few days. And our Katie is there too.

Ive spent the past few days on a personal decompression from France. Its been good and quiet and Imagine Dragons, Sade, John Mayer have helped. And of course sage John Eldredge always helps frame life, death and the fact that 'the reason you doubt there could be a glory to your life is because that glory has been the object of a long and brutal war.'

AZ - 2005 to 2013

From the archives.... February 23, 2005 - a comment from our infamous friend Ben Cloud back when he authored a blog called Praying Mantis [hence the initials PM]. This comment sparked our first shared project together, an experience in missional imagination. In July of 2005, I flew out, sight unseen, and spent a few days serving with him and his students, sleeping in his living room and having meals with his beautiful family. That was part 1. [The image is a screen shot of exported comments from a previous commenting system...]

Part 2 was in 2010. Part 3 was in 2012. Part 4 started yesterday when Wendy Usher landed for the beginning of a 5 week experience with Amadeo Church and Ben and a Grace student team serving there in the middle. We haven't decided how many parts this is going to have.

Announcing Grace AZ 2013

I'm very proud to announce the Grace AZ 2013 missions experience that Ember is involved with. When we first imagined The Ember Cast, one of the reasons for its existence would be the connecting of various like minded people in order to share resources and collaborate for better practices, all in an effort to mobilize more students for missional leadership. The Grace AZ experience is a good representation of this desire becoming a reality.

This project is a collaboration between two organizations that are our friends - Ben Cloud from Amadeo Church and the Love Moves student missions team at Grace. Ember's responsibilities include helping with the diverse and various tasks when putting an experience together like this - tasks such as helping form the vision of the team, facilitating partnerships between organizations, and staffing leadership. I'm also delighted to tell you that Emily Swinburne, one of our very capable Ember guides, will be our guide for this team, working with two leaders from Grace. You might remember Emily being with us in AZ in 2010.

Lots of fun for us to help execute this project. Side note - this team is all girls. Eventually, the boys will catch up...

Related: 2005AZ, 2010AZ, 2012AZ