Student Mission Team Training

It is one of my personal convictions that student mission teams usually aren't prepared well enough and this conviction has overflowed into The Ember Cast becoming pretty good at helping prepare these kinds of teams. We had the privilege to help architect a training event last weekend and here's an overview of what we did and why. If you are leading a team this summer, it isn't too late to prepare your team.

On Friday evening, we sent just the team leaders into DC to do a variety of things, all while doing some cultural observation and reflection with their leadership team. The cultural observation piece was very similar to our Culture Aixchange last summer and they were asked to reflect on two team concepts: this first quote in this post and the Tuckman model of team development.

This was not an Amazing Race type of thing, instead, it was designed to make them have to make decisions together, travel together and grow together. We decompressed at the top of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where we talked about what they did together and why and also a variety of other stuff including: theology of place, innovation in ministry, cities as mission fields, and how they can model this kind of cultural decoding for their student teams this summer. This evening was probably my favorite part of the weekend.

Saturday was with all the teams and there were three elements to Saturday - a prayer time, tradecraft sessions [which we borrowed from the Upstream Collective friends] and team building. Prayer was having each time pray for other teams, not only having them invest some time in praying but also giving them a sense of the other teams' cultural context as well as what they might be doing. Our tradecraft sessions visited the topics of person of peace, contextualization and ambassadorship. Two of the three of these are considered important enough that they are on our core curriculum - meaning that we track how students understand this before and after they serve with Ember. The third team building element was getting them moving as a team performing certain tasks - it's like team building like you know - somewhat campy and goofy tasks. But we do this so teams 'storm' before they get to the field. And lots of storming with those hula hoops.

Lots of people worked together to pull this off. My utmost thanks to Kristen Youngstrom, the Grace student missions lead this year; Leslie B [Ember Board of Director]; HopeK [ProtoGuide 2014]; and TessP [Prague 2015 leader] for running the Tradecraft workshops; the Prague team for helping with the team building activities; and Kristen, Hope, Tess, and KatieV [ProtoGuide 2015] for helping out with the Friday night leaders adventure.

More pictures here.

Breakfast with Glenn

In 2005, as the result of exploring what existing international connections our church already had, I ended up leading a student team to serve and work with Glenn McMahan who lived in Londrina Brasil with his family, there to serve and connect with university students. It was a fantastic experience based on the idea of a culture exchange - two cultures sharing around common cultural elements like film, games, food and such. Many elements of that experience are still paramount to us today including the culture exchange [which we just used this summer], persons of peace and hearing about the result of a decades long friendship [who later gave her life to Jesus], and how people can care about their communities despite differences in cultural context.

Glenn and I have kept in touch over the years and I would jump at the chance to work with him again. He's recently engaged in a new leadership role, helping to engage in both medical initiatives as well as business as mission for a global missions organization. I was thrilled to be able to interact with him this past weekend as well as have him meet two of our three current ProtoGuides. Our conversation included ideas such as:

- shipping containers used as medical clinics, like what we saw in Coney Island
- As an American, Glenn won't be the point person for anything but will be helping resource and support local leaders who are. The indigenous who know best are in charge.
- microbusinesses have a good amount of need for people that can come in and help with business plans, strategy and execution.
- Ebola and how that may change things. Liberia has a ratio of 1 doctor for 77000 people right now.
- We grow your kids to love the world and then we are surprised when they want to leave home...

I loved catching up with Glenn as well as having our ProtoGuides in the conversation. Ember thrives on setting up conversations and connections like these - a well experienced, Gospel centered cross cultural leader sharing some wisdom with passionate, interested emerging global student leaders. Sadly, we forgot a picture with Glenn.

Ember 2014 Investments

I know I go on and on around here about the emerging generation and how Ember exists to resource them and blah blah blah. But I'm proud to tell you that this summer, we put our money where our mouth is.

We helped fund a few projects this summer, which is great fun for us. This list included:

+ John and his trek around the world. He is now on the northern Peloponnese coast.
+ Our 2014 ProtoGuides. This was as a credit to their support goal for Ember 14X.
+ ORapp, who traveled with our daughter Katie to Madrid. Look for some kind of final report on that in a few weeks.
+ Ember guide Trevin Hoekzema, who with his wife, helped lead a team to Poland.

This was all to the tune of about $950 and we believe these to be really significant investments in the future. And... if you have given financial support to The Ember Cast in the past and are not comfortable with this kind of decision, please get in touch.

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

ProtoGuide 2014 ends

Loved being a part of the Intern/Mentor reception at Hammond High a few weeks ago. Every year that I go, I'm always amazed at the talent of high school kids in our county and the types of internships they work at.

Ember is so fortunate for this program, for it lets kids study something really deeply outside of a normal class or outline. And in our case, we've tried our very best to make it experiential and contextualized to topics the students are interested in. And it's a win for us too because these kids keep us young and we love having their help for our various projects.

And we do love the name: ProtoGuide.

Photo: Terah, Tessa, Measu, me. [Tessa, who is on the Ember 14X team, interned with Terah at Grace Community Church.]

Our 2014 Support Letter

Our 2014 support letter [pdf version] - having written and helped teams write these for years.... maybe I'll tell you what I really think of them one day...
+++
It is a privilege and honor for us to work with such passionate and talented young people and it is our hope that this summer's experience launches them on a trajectory for this kind of catalytic, entrepreneurial, creative ministry in any culture and any context.



[Related: My missions support letters - 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012,
2013]

Toxic Charity Seminar Notes

In late 2011, a college student we had been working with told me that I should read the book Toxic Charity. Her recommendation was right on and the book has been a vital part of Ember's ethos.

I was thrilled when I heard the author was coming to our town to do a little afternoon seminar. Dr. Lupton was fantastic, sharing insights from the book with stories, principles and reflections from decades of urban community development experience. His time was such a gift to us, access to this kind of content is not normal and I'm thankful that some of our Ember people could attend as well.

We were also able to host a smaller group for some debriefing over dinner. This crowd included Ember guides and ProtoGuides, some college kids highly invested in various community projects around their city via Wendy, and the IllumNation folks. Great crowd.

In short, if you are any kind of nonprofit/missional/charity leader, having any influence in that sphere at all, this should be required reading for you.

A subset of my notes are below with some various edits.

Change our outlook on our neighbors. See them as people with resources, image of God, having talents, everyone has something to contribute.
Homebound seniors = crime watch.
They are always looking out the window and on the phone with their friends.

Never do for others what they could do for themselves.
'proof of poverty'
Universal truth - everyone loves to find a bargain. Even poor people.
Fair rate on a desired commodity - the market. God's fabulous gift to us.

Food pantry -> food coop
someone wanted specific kind of food - she became the buyer
someone had to deal with accounting - who pays what, what about if they need credit/borrow
inventory
decisions as an org - what are the rules
peoples talents and giftings start to emerge
community cooking and sharing
someone wanted to start a restaurant -
church staffer connected them to a restauranteur and a grant writer
Tummy and Soul - an outgrowth of the Georgia Street Food Coop
** I absolutely loved this whole story. Beautiful.

Service Projects
people in community initiate
doing planning - community led
supervising
people in the community share about what is happening - evangelism both directions

We are in a key moment in history - time honored practices of charity are now being questioned
When Helping Hurts
Toxic Charity
Dead Aid
now talking about outcomes in ways we have never felt comfortable about before
downturn in charity as we shift

It's bad when you get kicked out of a poor country.
The community must be the first investor.
What the poor need is a connected, compassionate neighbor.
You can't do community development well unless you know people connected to city systems.
The poor are isolated and this perpetuates poverty.

Pastors/church leaders - get out of the one way giving business - church benevolence funds, etc. If you have extra money, start an employment training center.
Church subsidy systems are far less effective than government subsidies.

A rising economic tide raises all the boats.
All social issues can be addressed by connected neighbors.
Nothing more demoralizing for police when they arrest someone and the accused walks because they could not get any witnesses to come to court.
Healthy bodies/communities can isolate disease. Save or expel it.

The most strategic thing churches can do today - develop/preach a theology of the redeployment of the saints.
Does God have an opinion of where you live?
We have to become neighbors.
'Where we buy a house' is a sacred cow.
Spiritual gifts discernment.
Talents abilities calling strategic deployment
** spot on. talents, abilities, calling, vocation.

You cannot serve a community out of poverty.
The one thing that moves a community out of poverty is a job.
People that go on mission trips are people that serve. What we need are people that can create jobs to go on these trips.
The spiritual gift of wealth creation. Never heard a sermon on that.
Business people feel unspiritual because they can only create wealth. They haven't heard the affirmation that God has entrusted them with this.
America is full of entrepreneurs - it is in our DNA.
** He is so right. And the recent stat I read somewhere that 59% of Mils believe they are entrepreneurs.

Why We Exist 2014

2013 has been the best year of my life thanks to the Ember Cast. And I am not just saying that to make Tony Sheng happy. Nope. It’s the absolute truth. I’ve been able to have so many experiences this year, completely unique to Ember. I’ve made new friends from all over the world. I’ve had cross-cultural experiences this year that I never thought I’d be able to have. When I went overseas, I was equipped with the knowledge I needed to adapt to new cultures. My friend from France moved in with my family and I learned how to live alongside someone from a completely different culture. And lastly, and probably most importantly, I have strengthened my faith upon deep roots and solid soil which will not falter when I go to college. - Hope Koumentakos, Ember ProtoGuide 2013-2014.

500 years from now, you can say you read about Hope. This is why The Ember Cast exists.

Ember Baltimore

Ember facilitated a short leadership service experience last weekend based in Baltimore with some of our friends from Salisbury. If you've followed along here for a little while you know about Wendy and us sending her to AZ last summer. She's the current ring leader for a group of college kids at Salisbury who are deeply invested in a bunch of different community impact projects. Wendy approached us a few months ago about setting something up around the theme of churches with unique impact to their communities.

There seems to be a groundswell of stuff happening in Baltimore - lots of recent new churches starting and some interesting under the covers service stuff. If you follow any of this, you probably know the name Colleen Smith. She is a Baltimore legend. We first met many moons ago when she was Kt's Sunday school teacher. Fast forward through her journey with the inner city, serving at Charm City Church, hosting block parties for Mission Advance and her most recent move to work with Captivate Church. [Read the story about their inner city property.] When we thought of the theme, Colleen certainly came to mind.

We spent the morning with Colleen and some of her kids club kids, walking with her around her community and listening to her stories, like: the police raiding her house multiple times, her now babysitting the kids of the first homeless man she ever met, and executing a bedroom makeover for one of the teenagers in her neighborhood. If you ever get a chance to walk her community with her, you'll see that she literally knows everyone and everyone knows her. Just so you know, this is her life pattern and it's amazing to see.

Around lunch time, we took some pre-made lunches to a spot where lots of homeless people gather. The original plan was that each of our team would give out 3 lunches and actually eat with homeless people. Instead, we ran out of food and spent a little time having conversations with some of the people there. Interestingly, most of our team felt a little awkward about the whole exchange. That's healthy to see because it certainly was an inequity of power [a la Toxic Charity.] It's also healthy because a number of years ago, young people I served with would have been fully satisfied by this - now, they want to serve the less fortunate while caring about their dignity. Of course, trusting your local host is one great step towards the right balance in this tension.

After lunch, we distributed some flyers around the neighborhood for Freedom Church, whose staff is in the midst of starting up a Sunday night church service. Instead of actually starting a gathering, they have hosted a number of community open forum nights to hear from people about what is good and bad about where they live and how could a church help with some of those issues. The flyers we distributed were to publicize another one of these coming up that Sunday. Absolutely love that approach.

Be encouraged about the emerging generation. They desire to connect and learn from legendary practitioners like Colleen. When they execute on their passions and principles from those that have come before them, the world will be a better place.

A Letter From...

When Ember ProtoGuide Measu wanted to get in touch with the author of a significant book she read but couldn't find an email address, she wrote him a letter. Like with a paper and pencil. An envelope and a stamp.

Finding a resource, raising some funding, shaping a team, starting a movement. Emerging global student leaders find a way. The rest of us have no excuses.

Perspectives - Lesson 12 - Ekklesia Church

Fantastic time teaching the Perspectives class at Ekklesia Church last week. The lesson I taught was #12, Christian Community Development and I loved being able to bring some emerging global student leaders to listen in on the class.

Here's a few items to note:
+ There was about 20 people in the class, maybe half spoke Spanish and the other half English. The original intent of the class was that it was to have used real time translation via a translator and Spanish speakers wearing headsets to hear the translation. They ended up not doing that anymore because the people that really needed that stopped coming to the class. In either case, fun to see a class like this move to something like that.
+ Perspectives typically has an older demographic, much like anything else you term 'missions.' There were however, a few young adults in there. I'm a firm believer that if more young people heard about this class, they would take it.
+ Worship was in English and Spanish.
+ Met a girl who had lived in Brussels all through her high school years and we knew some of the same people [small world].
+ She was also family friends of someone who sits on our Ember board of directors [smaller world].
+ We also dropped in, before class, on a good friend of mine and his family who lived in Bangkok and Okinawa. Loved hearing them talk to young people about crossing cultures.
+ My slide deck. It's going to go through some major rewriting though. As always, steal or borrow what you wanna.

Latest ProtoGuide Posts

Part of the ProtoGuide experience is reading.... and most of the reading is about current issues in global missions and writing reflection blog posts about those readings. We make them read because.... well... you know reading is good for you. And we make them write because you have to be able to clearly articulate your ideas, no matter what you do for a living. This year, we took a little different path and are working through a few of my favorite books.

Here's some of the latest and greatest posts from the ProtoGuides, in no particular order:

That being said, Lupton's book is about exactly what the title suggests. It argues that a good percentage of the charity work being done by Americans is actually toxic to those being "assisted," rather than being legitimately helpful. When I first read this opening argument, I was shocked. "How?" I demanded. "How can you say that charity work is bad?" Lupton explains, saying that charity is "almost universally accepted as a virtuous and constructive enterprise" but its “outcomes are almost entirely unexamined." - Toxic Charity

The Word of God grows best in fertile communities, just like how it does in fertile hearts. Arment refers to some situations he's watched happen where churches with the same outreach ideas completely fail in one area and flourish in others. This concept of spiritual fertility is one I've been exposed to for so long, but never actually realized till reading about this concept. - Fertile Soil

This church is, in some ways, very similar to the church that I attend regularly, but in other ways, it is very different. This makes sense though, because these two churches are surrounded by completely different demographics of people. As I've done more and more with Ember, I've begun to fully embrace the idea that not every church will work for every person. - DC Metro Church

I remember talking to one my friends and asking her where she was from. It was such a casual and straightforward question in my head, but I had failed to grasp what a third culture kid was because this friend of mine froze. She explained that she didn't really know where she's "from" because she had been born in one place, raised in another, and ready to move to a totally new location. - What is a Third Culture Kid

The Well Silver Spring

That is Matt Klingler with the beard, talking for a few short minutes with some of the Ember tribe about church planting and leadership. I've known Matt for a good number of years - he was the first person I met when I came to a high school student outreach many many moons ago. Ember visited The Well last weekend, which is Matt's new church plant, based in downtown Silver Spring. They've been up and running for just over 2 years, originally starting in his basement.

If you know Silver Spring, you know gone through an enormous redevelopment and is a new urban hub for young professionals. That's one strategic reason Matt and his team started The Well there. I loved the service we attended and really appreciated how articulate Matt was about this community being 'on mission.'

After the service, Matt talked to our students for a few short minutes. He touched on stuff like:
: What he would have told himself 15 years ago about church planting: have an intimate relationship with God, church planting brings out all your leadership insecurities, be friends with normal people.
: Entrepreneurial leadership is important: Matt started a lot of stuff when he was younger - Bible studies, ministries like a young adult gathering at his old church, he likes the chaos of starting things.
: Did you have a lot of people leave because the church has moved it's gatherings? [Matt's basement, an auditorium in a retirement comm that was a little hard to find, this church annex building right now] - the people that come to church in your basement will probably stick around for a while.

Atypical Typical Third Culture Kids

Sarah just landed in DC a few days ago. Although her family is from Pennsylvania, she grew up in Aix-en-Provence [the same place that Ember X traveled to this summer] and is doing a gap year this year, spending part of the time here in DC. In a very Ember-ish series of circumstances, she is living with Ember ProtoGuide Hope and her family.

Sarah is your typical third culture kid, meaning she is atypical. [See this interesting article about TCKs in the Obama administration.] She also has all the traits of an emerging global student leader - she's traveled a ton, is highly adaptable, her parents have a large view of the world and her faith always informs her interest in world cultures. These emerging global student leaders also, by the way, want to lead something. All these traits combined - that's who Ember is for.

Welcome, Sarah. It's great having you in DC.

Photo: Sarah, all the way on the right left, being greeted in the airport by some of our X team, Oct 2013. Photo by K Koumentakos.

Sometimes, It's What You Know

and sometimes...it's who you know.

ProtoGuides blogs with comments about Church in the Making.

DC Metro Church

Lots of fun this past weekend visiting DC Metro Church in Alexandria with some Ember people. Our contact was Lynn, who was one of our core students when I ran student missions for our church and she's been really involved with their DC GO initiative, which is a collection of community impact projects. This was a great Ember learning experience where we interacted with their DC GO leaders about their vision, ways they execute and current challenges as well as attending a service at the Alexandria campus. You might remember that one of the learning outcomes of being a ProtoGuide is to experience different expressions of Church.

Lynn has been one of our bright spots - a high capacity leader with a great personality and a proven history of catalyzing those around her to make the world better. We are always thrilled to both visit with former students like Lynn as well as connect our current team with people of her caliber. We've got some ongoing discussions about how Ember might collaborate with DC GO in the future.

DC Metro was a great experience. I loved their gathering space - not too small and not too big. Lead pastor Dr. David Stine's message was tremendous, both in terms of Biblical insight and content as well as delivery. Definitely a church to track with if you have a passion for the DMV.

ProtoGuides 2013

This fall, we've given our Ember intern experience a new name. I've never quite liked the term 'intern' before - it doesn't quite convey everything that we do with these students. Instead, we are calling them ProtoGuides. Proto coming from the concept of protege and Guide because they serve at an Ember staff level, having some of the same kind of responsibilities that our Guides have. The ProtoGuide experience is a lot more than busy work.

We've started their experience this Fall already. Two of their readings already include Church in the Making by Ben Arment and The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch, both favorites of mine and fantastic reads for anyone interested in global leadership. Check out their blogs for some good postings already [here and here] Those aren't ordinary reading for high school students. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't.

If you know a high schooler that might be interested in something like this in the future, here is a quick infosheet on the ProtoGuide experience.