The Last Match

The Poland ladies returned a few weeks ago and we had a decompression session a few nights ago. You should know this but if you don't, decompression is one of your big responsibilities if you are involved in cross cultural teams. It is the make or break, the smoking gun, the silver bullet. If you help students process their experience, they might change and grow. If you skip it, they almost certainly will not.

We worked through Ember's decompression toolkit, something that we have put together over the years of our experience. It includes things like having students write a few different summaries of their trip, exploring re-entry patterns, and thinking about missional imagination and idea models. As good as this is, I've said for many years that Seth Barnes has the treasure trove for debriefing here.

This was our last Ember project for the foreseeable future. Since these ladies are some of Emily's best friends, we've known them for years. Not only have them been involved with lots of Ember's projects, they've been an integral part of our lives. We've gone to the beach with them, they've spent countless hours at our house, they have eaten so much of our food. Could not think of a better last match for The Ember Cast.

This blog goes into pause mode for a little while. Thanks for joining us for the last incredible 16 years.

Day 20

Today is the last full day of our family trip. We've had a great time and I'm thankful for such an opportunity to see what we have seen together. When we were planning this, we knew that if we were going to be in Greece, we wanted to see our friends at Streetlights, a youth community leadership development org in Athens. I also felt a bit of obligation to offer something to Ember students that had spent time with us this past school year. So we combined the two and a team of 4 ladies have joined us the past few days here.

Today is also our last and kind of only day of ministry with Streetlights. The ladies were delayed in London for a night so they missed Friday. But the neighborhood here is all about presence so although there was no formal ministry, there certainly was being present. Present in getting gelato and visiting a church and watching the jump-over-burning-flowers festival. Present in riding the bus and dinner on Fokionos. Being present among 30 or 40 some nationalities in one of the most dense communities in the world. This is what the future looks like: urban, Eastern, dense, pluralistic, multi-lingual, coffee until late in the night.

We send three of these ladies to Poland tomorrow to work with another Ember partner of ours doing some church planting. The ladies are eager, learners and creative. The picture above is them sketching and journaling with the Parthenon in the background. For our last Ember project for a little while, I'm super proud of this one.

GP Team Mtg #1

Our GP Summer Sends and I just started reading Underground Church. It's a good read but not for everyone. But these ladies are ready to think about the intersection of leadership, cross cultural service and different expressions of Church.

Highlights from reading 1 included:
+ metaphors for disciples, including sheep, missionaries and apostles.
+ prevailing frameworks for Church: a hospital, a school, an incubator
+ the nothingness of starting something new might be the essence of discipleship

Remember, young people are more than capable of engaging with this kind of material. In fact, many of them long for the opportunity.

Creative Revenue - Commissioned Art Work

The Ember Cast 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. Since 2013, our summer teams have been 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 10-25% of funding of their missions experience. Prayer and financial support letters are also required.

We ask students to dream up these plans by helping them assess their talents, skills and networks, and this is done as part of their application to summer teams. I'm proud to say that over $23K of revenue has been made as part of these Plans over the past 9 years and it represents students growing in skills such as pricing their product, making a pitch, dealing with customers and lots of hard work. All skills that benefit just about everyone.

If you need some commissioned art, like you have a picture or photo but want it drawn by a super talented artist, one of our Summer Sends is doing this exact thing. Contact me and I will put you in touch with Kate - all revenue will go towards her efforts for travel to Greece and Poland this summer. See more of her work here.

Photo: Kate's birthday gift to her mom, who is also an artist.

Bible Translation Mini Lesson

Last week, I took some of our Ember team to join me when I taught at a local Perspectives class. Perspectives continues to be one of the best mobilization tools around although it perhaps needs a bit updating and has limited reach. The real reason I take Ember people there is to help students of the class reimagine what cross cultural service with the emerging generation might look like. I'm really just showing off some of Ember's fruits.

Before the class, we grabbed a quick dinner with my old friend JMM. We worked together on staff at Camp Hemlock way back in the late 1980s. He's currently Director of Operations for the American Bible Society and has been a key resource in using technology to help speed up Bible translation all around the world. JMM's second oldest son is also currently on the World Race Gap Year, which is the same thing our Emily is going to do starting this September, so she was able to ask him a few questions about that too. We got a mini lesson in the current status of Bible translation, which was super informative, facts such as:

So many translations and versions in English but most languages have one.
Around 7100 languages. 2200 are questionable or dying. Total needing translation ~4900. Translation complete or underway - ~3300. Translations needed to start - ~1500
Indigenous churches can't really grow healthy unless there is the Bible in the mother tongue.
AI/Machine Learning can help translation - not just computers learning but even helping advise translators: "You translated this word two different ways, is that what you meant?"
Technology can help with other tools besides just translation efforts - typesetting, layout, etc - formatting Adobe InDesign in hours versus days so that the document is ready to print.

Thanks JMM for hanging with us!

2019 Summer Sends

Periodically, The Ember Cast will execute what we call Summer Sends, sending a handful of older students that have worked with us in the past to serve with some of our trusted partners. Summer Sends represent somewhat of a progression - older students, usually a bit longer in duration than a summer team, and more autonomy. We are thrilled to announce that we are executing a Summer Send for 2019.

Ember is not running a summer team this year. Instead, the Sheng's are doing some personal travel since Emily is graduating from high school. We did the same when Katie finished by spending an amazing 3 weeks in Australia. This summer, the plan is to spend 3 weeks in a specific part of Europe.

Our Summer Sends are 4 students and they will join the Sheng's for a few days in Greece, serving with some Ember partners. After those days, 3 Summer Sends will continue on to Poland for about another 9 or 10 days while 3 of the Shengs and one Summer Send flies back to Merryland [take a wild guess on which Sheng is not flying back to Merryland...]

Thanks in advance for your support for this project.

[Reminder - we don't publish dates or locations on social media but can communicate privately.]