Friday Burn

::: The Crisis Text Line
Fantastic read about teenagers, texting and how it all comes together in The Crisis Text Line, the first and only national, 24/7 crisis-intervention hotline to conduct its conversations exclusively by text message. Must read if you work with students.
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::: East Asia's Massive Urban Growth
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::: 8 Ted Talks to Watch Before You Speak
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::: Diagnosing HIV with a smartphone
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::: If you blow it at home, you’ve blown it as a leader. >> Leadership begins at home - @ToddAdkins

Photo: Paris, 2013.

Window Seat

Our oldest, Katie, is flying home right now. After spending two weeks with the Ember 14X team, her and Olivia spent 10 days in Madrid working with Mountainview International Church and a basketball camp they ran for their students.

This is her first international flight alone and, of course it's no big deal to her but mom and dad were tracking her connections pretty closely. Her first leg landed late and she had to make her way through Heathrow. She boarded with just 2 minutes before they closed the doors.

I never thought that either of my kids would be so brave. When I was growing up, the ideas of risk, bravery and pushing the envelope were not valued at all - in fact, they were distinctly frowned upon. Consequently, I'm a big chicken. But I'm glad my kids are changing the pattern.

Photo: window seat, BA 265.

Sending Katie and Olivia

Prayed and laid hands on Katie, Olivia and John this afternoon. Our time together came to an end too soon. So proud of all of them and the bravery they possess.

Hard for a dad but good for the world.

At the gate

We never wear team shirts, it's kind an edict I have. Never wear the same thing when we travel. You know those teams, you avoid them in airports.

I'm not against team shirts per se but you can do better to build a team. The shared t shirt is easy. The shared team identity takes a lot more work but you know it is so worth it.

Ember 14X - Meeting #6

Our final team meeting... This was the first meeting where we were all there face to face in real life. It's what you deal with when you work with distributed teams. Topics included:

+ final important details that are outlined in the travel doc including what not to forget [your passport and the Holy Spirit, like KYoungstrom says]
+ sharing what God has been saying to us about this trip
+ praying for the experience

We had 6 team meetings for this team and that was probably the minimum we could have had. But like most teams, I love these kids like my own. And like every time 2 days before we depart, Dea and I ask ourselves if we are crazy for doing this again.

Thanks for praying for this team, specifically for courage, initiative and be dangerous.

97.14%

4 days from departure, and our funding is at 97.14%. Phenomenal. 14% of that is from creative revenue and we are about $700 away from the official target.

This year, I'm a lot more relaxed about the budget because we started this season with a good amount of funds and we made some larger estimates and $700 among a team of 11 proportions low.

And of course, we are so grateful to around 200 people that donated. I think you will get a great return on your investment. It will just take a few hundred years.

2014 on the move

Here is who and what we are tracking this summer....

+ Ember 14X - of course you have heard about this.
+ John, who leads on Ember 14X and then travels for at least 9 months through Greece, Turkey, Nepal, SE Asia... He is doing some 'global recon' as to where and how he might be strategic in a specific place and season.
+ Katie and Olivia - 2 weeks in Madrid working with Mountainview Church
+ Wendy at a House on Beekman
+ Andrew who is in Philly right now but on the way to East Africa.

2014 Creative Revenue Plans

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.

This summer our team made around 12% in creative revenue, which is right along our target goal for this. The plans this summer included:
+ babysitting
+ tutoring
+ job as a lifeguard
+ lawn mowing
+ making jewelry

We do this because the global leaders of the future aren't going to be as easily 100% funded by supporters. Between the global recession, cause and donor fatigue and the nonprofit space becoming more and more transparent, cross cultural leaders of the future will have less and less funding from checks in the mail. The global catalytic leader of the future is very very entrepreneurial and this is one of our best ways, so far, of helping them prepare for this reality. Every year, watching this process with students is one of my favorite experiences.

Ember Advance - Tentative Schedule

Ember Advance is our first ever overnight missions prep experience and I'm excited to see it fly. We've done similar things before but never with this set of people and resources. I dream about this every year and every year, it gets better. Certainly the concepts matter a great deal. But what is even better are the people our students are going to meet throughout the weekend.

Feel free to steal what you want from this rough schedule. Even better if you understand the intentions and concepts behind each element.

Fri night
- neighborhood mapping in Baltimore - the Bs
- the Gospel narrative - the Ys

Sat
- brunch
- hearing from some missions legends - DS and KM
- Kids Week prep
- visiting one of my favorite churches in DC
- dinner and more

Mission Support Letters - Disruption Needed

Remember when mission support letters looked like this? And... I'm not trying to be mean... this is the result of a simple google image search. And I've certainly written my share of letters that look like that too.

I've said for a while now that missions support letters need to be disrupted. They are a really crass way of trying to engage your friends and family for support and they minimize your relationships with a tri fold brochure that usually isn't very compelling. However, this year, may mark a turning point. Here are two [1, 2]fantastic examples of letters from this year's round of support. Granted you don't always have to create something fantastic, but maybe you should...

Take aways:
+ Both of these took around 10-15 hours to create. Our new benchmark will be making our students spend this kind of time on these.
+ They both focused on something more than just the individual experience.
+ Both Trevin and Katie have grown up around this kind of stuff so pushing it further was pretty reasonable for them.
+ I'm not saying that you cannot raise a good amount of money if the letter you write doesn't look like this.

PS - I have a whole Google doc folder dedicated to mission support letters.