Cultural Navigation in Chinatown

If you've followed along here for any length of time, you know that Ember highly values pre-field team training for any and all kinds of mission teams. The odds, statistics and anecdotes are true - the better your team is prepared, the better your experience. Leaders that ignore this step probably shouldn't be leading these teams.

Last night, some of our guides walked a short term team through navigating some areas of culture, specifically food, people and architecture. A lot of helping people understand culture is modeling how to be observant. Observe first, then interpret and then futurecast. It was a perfect night in Chinatown DC.

Remember, it's not too late to try to get your team ready.

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!

Ember March Dinner

Special guest Nat Blessing, 2nd from the left, who was with us for 2015Prague and 2016Italy. Last summer, she was doing medical cross cultural stuff in Honduras. Our first Ember alum as a monthly dinner guest. First in hopefully a long, long line.

Souls 2019

The team at Bay Area Community Church killed it on Saturday with their Souls Missions conference - truly an inspiring time. Love their missions team there and their lead pastor Greg St. Cyr drives that church to be more and more globally focused as time goes on. Some selected notes and commentary below.

Also, if you attended my workshop, thanks for being there! I had a great time with both my sessions. Here are my slides.

Todd Ahrend - The Traveling Team
* TTS - Todd was a phenomenal speaker, he spoke three times and his talks all flowed together and his content was excellent. World class speaker also in terms of his technical speaking ability. Some people may not like what he has to say.

The mission of God - once you see it woven through all the Bible, you won't be able to unsee it.
'Live close to my family' - almost a badge of honor for American Christians.
1600 times - peoples blessed through you
John Stott - the most important Bible verse is Gen 12:1-4
Kansas State - 'family' - football games, in the family but not in the game - similar to missions today
'All, peoples, nations, tribes, earth, languages' - read through the Bible marking those
Gen 12 - Jude - the plot of the Bible

**Is 49:6 he says: “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

The Missionary Mall - Utah
Parents there were thrilled that their kids were going on a mission - buy whatever you want!
Mormons gives 2 years, Christians give excuses.

'What countries would you ask God to send them to?' You would think we were asking to send them to the moon - if you asked Christian parents this about their kids.

Savings, safety, my kids - what we value and everyone else does too so no one holds us accountable
We want the blessing of salvation without the responsibility of the nations.

I used to think God was interested in reaching as many people as possible. Now, I think that he is interested in reaching first and foremost a community from every people group.

I drive past seven churches in 20 minutes when I go to my church. My wife and I traveled some 1500 miles in the Gulf countries and didn't pass one.

Unreached - less than 2%,
Unengaged - all zeros across the board
Top 5 countries in need: India, India, India, India, China.

Movements - 1000 or more baptized believers within 10 years.
610AD - 1890: 0 movements
1890 - 1999: 13
2000- today: 70
More Muslims coming to Jesus in the last 19 years than in the last 1400 years combined.
Why
Our missions methods
The Bible in their native tongue
Extremism makes some question their identity
Quran in their native language

A little lady in a nice church in Iowa told me she didn't want to bring that evil book into her house. I told her that I have 6 kids and 5 Qurans in my house but no television. The television will bring evil faster in to your house than anything else.

: Greg St. Cyr - Leading the Church to Reach the Nations
* TTS - Greg is the real deal. Incredible husband, father, pastor and leader.

First short term missions trip to Poland - 'Greg, you were made for this.'
8 years in Poland
Been 25 years as lead pastor at BACC
15 years in, mentor said to him, "See yourself as a missionary leading a thousand missionaries.'

'If Jesus comes again, I don't want to be in seminary.'
Learn to love maps, globes and hourglasses.
BACC has divided the world into 17 regions and wants to be in every one of those.

A short term missions trip is a fast track to discipleship.

Lots of quotes from John Mott.
Foundation: Christ's supremacy and the nations
Get a world map and globe, learn to persevere in private prayer
Theology of nations
Get a STM to go with you
Educational plan for congregation which includes preaching an annual series on God's heart for the nations
Continually cast a God-size vision for the nations
Designate a faith percentage of offering to missions while growing a culture of generosity
Implement a leadership pathway designed to equip future global missionaries, focusing especially on young people
Prayerfully initiate a partnership with a global missionary who shares church's vision and doctrine with the goal of discerning whether this is one of God's global partners.
Draft a global missions policy manual for elder approval

After his wife complimented him, Greg said, "Mary Kaye, you are the best."

: Michele Rollins and Amy French - STM leader training
* TTS - This team has developed an incredible process around supporting and training team leaders and a comprehensive manual for this. Really impressive. There is such clarity in vision that starts from the church's overall vision that informs how they do global work.

Role of the leader - disciple your team through a cross cultural experience
Not about a single moment or team
Supporting a God given purpose in another city

Shift - doing ministry yourself to equipping your team
Want to give authority and autonomy to our leaders
God puts perfect teams together.

BACC focuses on church planting among 1 - unreached, 2 - needy, 3 - urban - intentionally broad, let the Spirit guide them into partnerships.

Ember February Dinner

Once a month, The Ember Cast hosts a dinner with a select group of students and a special guest who are some of the most creative and innovative in the global missions/nonprofit space. The intention of this dinner is for our students to learn, interact and be inspired by these amazing individuals who have created something incredible from nothing.

Our guest this weekend was Dave Shive, who taught at Washington Bible College for over 15 years and also taught Perspectives for over 30 years, probably over 1200 classes and countless students. He is one of the missions patriarchs of the DMV.

+ Background:
Insight from taking Perspectives:
God did not become a missionary God He was a missionary god.
God is missional by nature

Usually a trip a year but slowing down now.
Last five years - SE Asia doing leadership development

A few years ago, visited friend doing work among the Roma, Roma Bible Union.

+ Most interesting right now:
Movements of people. Spawned by discovery bible studies
653 right now
Disciple someone before they start to follow Jesus.

Bible translation
1500 languages still lack NT

+ Execution from dream:
This kind of thing all through Church and missions history
Wycliffe
Moravians - Zizendorf
Cameroon Townsend
Donald McGavern
Ralph winter
Recent former student example - Malaysian guy started by being a food critic - sky is the limit in missions right now - any career path, then started a trivia game

+ Advice for young people:
1 - Develop people skills, ability to deal with conflict - most missionaries can't deal with their team

2 - Learn how to really pray
The two are tied together

3 - Read Missionary biographies

Don't doubt what God can do with one person.

ProtoGuide Blogs

One of the pillars of our ProtoGuide Experience is having the students read and write. They are given a weekly reading assignment and they are to write about their experiences through the semester or year by posting on a blog. I still believe what Seth Godin says about blogs - that consistently posting to a blog is one of the best ways to lead your tribe. So we make the ProtoGuides write one too.

They read a variety of things, including books and articles, all designed to give a postmodern, innovative glance at the global missions space. And they write because no matter what you do, you must be able to communicate. The best practice for writing is writing.

Here's a few posts that you might enjoy:
A Day in DC
My College Essay
A Wee bit Irish
Are you a Rung

Thanks for reading. You can follow along by adding their blogs to your RSS reader [I use feedly.]

Photo: John and Drew, the very first Ember ProtoGuides. Philly, 2010.

QCommons Baltimore - notes

Some quick notes from the QCommons gathering last night in Catonsville.

: Jo Saxton
hospitality - it is not a gift but it is an instruction
leaders and influencers - you are to be hospitable
take this personally, offer this freely

: James Misner, World Relief
the evangelical church is the most hostile to refugees
WR has signs in their office instructing people how to use toilets because sometimes their clients don't know how
22M refugees worldwide - 66% of these are Jesus followers
We cannot buy a solution to the refugee crisis.
Congo and South Sudan [vs Middle East] are where most of the displaced people are today.

: Jeanne Allert, The Samaritan Woman
this talk was crazy good.
no notes would give it justice.

: Scott Harrison, Charity Water [huge fan]
solution agnostic - we use 13 technologies for the water issue
Dirty water is illegal in Heaven
personally traveled to 69 countries, been to Ethiopia 37 times
Do not be afraid of work that has no end.

: Bob Goff
People follow availability.
We go where we are accepted, not informed.
I make coffee nervous.

: Luke Casagrande, Grace Fellowship
God is omnipresent, we are singularly present.
Our phones give us an idea that maybe we can be more than singularly present, which divides and diminishes our presence.

I would have thought turn out would have been more - probably less than 50 people there. All 3 local speakers were excellent, as well as the broadcast ones. Liked the format - 9 minute talks with breaks for discussion, very TED talks like. The push for donating to money to World Vision right after Scott Harrison's talk was very odd - it felt weird to ask for money for a different charity than from the speaker we just heard from. I've followed some of the Q stuff in the past and have found the content helpful. Tonight was well worth it and loved having some of the Ember team there.

Photo: Hailey, Audrey, Hope [previous ProtoGuide and now staffer with The Samaritan Woman, which is why the barcode], Emily, me.

Ember October Dinner

Our guest this past weekend was RM, who is in the midst of starting an agricultural training center to provide tactical farming skills for people interested in this kind of thing. The applications are broad, including being a grower state-side as well as in another culture. This starts this coming summer, based in PA to start with, and would be a summer long training and mentoring experience. Ping if you need a lead.

Some highlights from our time:
+ RM always had an interest in growing things, from the time he was very young. Gardens, farm animals, etc. Your past shapes your dream [Dream Year.]
+ A pivotal experience was being overseas and seeing this kind of thing in it's context in SE Asia.
+ Original plans included a global export business but that fell through.
+ The ability to grow things is fascinating to everyone. Neighbors always want to see you if you are growing something.
+ Lots of agricultural concepts are redemptive analogies - mustard seed, sheep, death to life.
+ There was a good discussion between the adults about scale and multiplication. I appreciated that because students don't hear that kind of conversation very much - scale or bail.
+ Advice for a young person: take every opportunity that comes your way and find a mentor.

Lots of students tonight. Special thanks to RM for being our guest.

10GDC

Ember facilitated a culture service learning experience with a group of 10th grade ladies this past weekend - we had a great time getting to know them and were super impressed at their passion for the world, their grit to getting things done and their posture of learning. We are better for working with them. Here are some of the elements:
+ A Friday evening session introducing the weekend and some of our Ember mantras and concepts.
+ Sat morning - serving with A Wider Circle
+ Sat lunch - cultural navigation in the Shaw neighborhood of DC
+ Sat aft - church at The Miracle Theater gathering of National Community Church
+ Sat eve - dinner and decompress near Eastern Market

Really appreciate A Wider Circle and their approach to poverty alleviation and they have a huge reach. I love their best reminder: that items should be in 'dignity-condition'. This summer one of our partners received a box of donated food and it was all expired. Many of us believe that it is totally acceptable to give our trash to those less fortunate.

Modeling cultural navigation continues to be a central theme for Ember and the students we work with and I'm thrilled at how we have grown in this skill. Shaw is a great place to do something like this - very safe, lots of opportunities for this kind of observation because its a big mixing bowl, a good place to walk slow and concentrate on learning.

Pastor Heather Zempel preached at NCC and in light of the past few weeks, it wasn't planned out that way. She did however preach a fantastic message from Rev 2 about the church at Thyatira. A standing goal for Ember is to expose students to different expressions of Church when we can and NCC is one of the most futuristic churches I know.

Special thanks to ProtoGuides Hailey and Audrey for serving with this team.

ProtoGuide 18-19 Fall Reading

StrengthsFinder - One of the best personal leadership and influence assessments. We take every ProtoGuide through this because knowing yourself well is foundational for leading others.
The Circle Maker - Part memoir about a church down the street that is one of the most innovative organizations in America. Not many churches and lead pastors have a vision that gives people chills. Every semester has one book that is on the list for just fun to read, this is that one.
Movements That Change the World - Addison breaks down social structures that are ingredients for every movement and catalytic leaders think in movements.
Western Christians in Global Mission - A good primer to put an end to thinking that we in the West know the best, have the most and are the only ones that can get the job done.
Multiplying Missional Leaders - On the ground, tactical leadership behaviors.

If you know someone else reading books like these with high school students, I'd love to meet them.

Ember February Staff Dinner

We have started a new experiment this year as part of some Ember staff development: a monthly staff dinner with special guests. The goal of this is to gather our staff to hear from some of the most creative, missionally imaginative and innovative people we know.

This months guest was Trevin Hoekzema, our very first Ember guide way back in the day. He's currently in a pastoral residency program at Bay Area Comm Church, which allows him to get a seminary degree while being mentored by BACC's staff. He's working on the Masters in Global Leadership at Fuller which is the only seminary degree most readers of this blog should look at.

Some highlights of our conversation:
Successes:
Redirected Christmas time efforts to come alongside some local ministries doing better work than previous efforts.
Deep engagement for short term mission leaders and team members.
Organized first ever short term missions one day conference [Edge]

FutureCasting Missions - what is present or future now but something we don't know about:
Discipleship making movements
Discovery Bible Study
Fuller emphasizes spiritual formation more important than knowledge
'Guide on the side not the sage on the stage'
The West will no longer lead the missions movement

Advice for students:
Talk to every missionary you can
Always eat the chicken feet

Left to right:
Terah, boutique houseware artisan entrepreneur
Trevin [sorry for the bad picture]
Emily, Ember spawn
Hailey, Ember 2018-2019 ProtoGuide
Sherrill, almost published author and illustrator
Gary, attorney
Deanna, Ember creative director
Mandy, The Well in Curtis Bay