From Intern To

One of the first summers of the existence of The Ember Cast, we partnered with Serve the City Baltimore to deliver a few talks for one of their teams. This was the first time I met Deanna [yes, same name as my wife], 7th from the right in the black shirt. She would later join us as an Ember intern - before we renamed our intern program to ProtoGuides.

Deanna joined us as an intern for literally almost everything we did. She was pretty much constant for 18 months, including two summer teams, lots of student gatherings, a few large scale training events, and at least four culture service learning weekends.

Since her time with Ember, she finished college, got married, moved to Philly for a season, led teams to Latin America and Asia, and is now going to be serving on a local college campus with her husband in vocational college ministry. We're thrilled for the Lord's call on her life and expectant about this next season. Ember might be partnering with her ministry with some things around our core competencies too.

Not everything we do works out great. And the cycle of return is at least four years. But there's a few bright spots that we keep in touch with that makes it stick: Emilie 06, Trevin 08, Tricia 08, John 10, Drew 10, Carolyn 11, Wendy 12, Deanna 13, Hope 14, Tess 14, Lindsey 14, Shannon 15. Keep on, the world needs you at your best.

Ember Curtis Bay

I love being around people that have started things from nothing and naturally, The Ember Cast has gravitated towards this as well. One thing that makes us unique is our ability to expose emerging global student leaders to the type of people that have done these kinds of things - creative, innovative and entrepreneurial to the core. Gospel centered missional leaders of the future will need to have the skill to find a way or make a way. Last Saturday, we had the privilege of seeing lots of this kind of thing.

DK [ProtoGuide 2013] and Wendy Usher [AZ 2013] have worked with us for a few years and we love the leadership they are providing at their respective colleges. On Saturday, they brought a bunch of their friends to serve at a service day hosted by Ember.

We worked with The Well in Curtis Bay and got to know Mandy Memmel, the founder and executive director. The Well is primarily a resource for women living in Curtis Bay but talk to Mandy and you'll find a catalytic leader that is hoping to change the very culture of their community by helping the women that live there first.

DK brought about 20 college students, which is no small feat. She's been making Ember proud by working on Towson Cru's service team, heading up community outreach initiatives for their community.

Wendy Usher has been working with an after school club of sorts with some kids from her community. Recently she has pivoted that into a mentorship type agreement and has found a small group of college students willing to serve and lead and tutor these kids. In a bold move, she brought 6 volunteers and 10 of these kids in her mentorship initiative to Curtis Bay this weekend. I know you might be thinking of the liability issues in this - trust me, I know. But besides that, exposing kids that are served every week to getting outside of themselves to serve others is a huge win and Wendy and her team pulled it off.

Getting high school kids involved in service projects is almost never a bad thing. But don't forget that somewhere in the past, God birthed a vision in someone. You really win when this person who found a way or made a way shares their passion with your students.

Absolutely loved every piece of this day including the fact that it was our first Prague team excursion. And The Well has one of the most organized clothing closet I have ever seen, accomplished by someone in their mentorship program.

Announcing Fall 2013 Interns

I'm thrilled to announce that Hope K and Measu B are our Fall 2013 interns. The high school internship is a core competency of Ember and it's always great fun to work with global emerging high school leaders. Both Hope and Measu were on the 2013 Ember X team, so we have worked together before and they know what it's like to travel with the Shengs.

I originally met Hope and Measu in the summer of 2011 when Ember helped prepare their team as well as visit them when they were on their mission trip in DC. Since then, they've been involved in some great global stuff, like a well project, as well as jumping in with Ember projects. Hope, you will remember, also interned in the Spring of 2013, so she's continuing on.

One day, we will call them something else instead of 'interns'. In the meantime, we are thrilled at this opportunity to learn, serve and work with these two. And we are always on the lookout for these types of emerging leaders.

If you or someone you know might be interested in the future, here's the internship info sheet.

Photo: Hope and Measu, Parc Jourdan, Aix-en-Provence, France. July 2013.

Ember X team mtg #6

:: Skype with Teal Rapp, who gives an overview about camp, the context for Europe - how it's expensive and materialistic and how ministry is so different than in other contexts, and what does post Christian mean.
:: Talking about cultural distance, what that looks like for traveling to different global cultures and how that relates to clusters of cultures within our own culture.
:: Smores.

Thanks for praying by name for this team. Back row: Deanna, Measu, MK, Katie, Emily. Front row: Deanna, Tony, Mike, Hope, Victor. Fantastic team.

Student Missions Prep - The Tipping Point

Part of why Ember exists is to help student mission teams get ready for their missions experience. If you are like us, you know that there are lots of student mission teams that are woefully unprepared. One of our core competencies is helping prepare student teams and its always a joy to be involved.

GRACE termed their student missions preparation day The Tipping Point [which is a great book by the way] and it was our privilege to help facilitate a day like this for around 90 students and leaders broken into 9 different summer teams. GRACE has lots of mature systems when it comes to student missions and this day is part of their system.

Here's a rough outline of the day, feel free to steal what you want. If you want deeper details - get in touch. Our prep days like these are always customized and contextualized and we would love to help you.

+ Team Leader session
Trevin and Amy dived into the idea of kairos moments and how they related to the context of student mission trips and the larger context of discipling students. This was a phenomenal session and I loved both the content and their style of delivery. The content was something that leaders need but maybe didn't quite know that they need - who doesn't want to learn about helping students mark pivotal times in their journey and making significant decisions in light of those moments. Their style of delivery was Amy explaining the concepts interspersed with Trevin telling his stories of traveling around the world and how those experiences molded his missions perspective. Some of this content was taken from Building a Discipling Culture from 3DM.

+ Round Robin Prayer Rotation
Students rotating through each of the teams, praying for the summer experiences.

+ Tools of the Trade
There were three breakout sessions of 20 minutes each, based on cross cultural tools. These are simple, reproducible tools that students can use to understand another a new culture and also tools that will help them navigate the culture that they live in. Our hope is that they help prepare these students to both be an agent of change this summer on their missions trip as well as here at home. The three tools were mapmaking, person of peace and redemptive analogy, which are all concepts in our core curriculum. A great resource for this is the book Tradecraft.

+ Team Building Initiatives
The final element was team building initiatives. I've been pretty impacted by the book The Advantage and the emphasis on the idea of trust. So when we were imagining this element, I asked Amy if there was a way that we could help teams explicitly learn to trust each other. We all know that trust is earned over time and experience so doing the same thing in an afternoon was a challenge. I think the exercises helped facilitate did that, but of course, we'll know at the end of the summer.

I'm so proud of what our team did this day. Amy, Trevin, Kristen, Dustin and some other guests did a phenomenal job as well as some of our Ember X team who jumped in to help. These missions prep events are some of our most catalytic events and I'm expectant to see how these student teams throw fire this summer.

Ember X team mtg 4

+ extended sharing and prayer time
+ talent - who does good at what
+ person of peace - part of our core curriculum
+ finance and creative revenue plan updates
+ next team meetings
and... we have a team blog.

April Kindling

+ Ember X finances are at about 54%, which is huge. This team is seriously doing the work of raising support - both via personal letters as well as creative revenue plans [these are awesome by the way]. Put a deposit on lodging last week, buying airfare in the next few weeks.
+ This works out to about $305 on average per day.
+ The X team is full of introverts. Oh boy.
+ Some of the X team is hearing the typical argument against mission trips to Europe - is this a vacation, pretty rough experience, do they really need you, etc. My response is something along the lines of "if you know anything about cultures becoming post Christian, you would know to help the next generation learn to lead in that." Or something like that.
+ Support raising: I go from feeling incredibly humbled and grateful to sometimes feeling dirty.
+ The GCC AZ team spent all day this past Saturday serving with an inner city ministry in Baltimore this past weekend, a small part of a bigger initiative known as ServeFest. Service opportunities are great ways to gel a team.
+ Guides are continuing to work towards preparing for a student missions training day in May.
+ Caught up with an old friend from college who is going to Madagascar and riding motorcycles through the villages showing the Jesus film later this summer.
+ Great read about boards of directors, passed on to me by one of Ember's board members.
+ My friend Joshua Symonette is helping host City Fathers in DC in early June. If you love the DC area, you should be there.
+ If you work for GE, The Ember Cast just became qualified to receive matching gifts.

Ember X Mtg #3

Our Ember X meeting #3 included:
+ Dinner
+ Hearing from Ember friend JMeeder about her background as a missionary in Argentina for 2 years and a new season of service working with Araminta Freedom Initiative, a collection of churches to combat human slavery.
+ The Myers Briggs test
+ A rough schedule for our time in X [plan a at least]
+ Support, fundraising and creative revenue plans [I can't wait to tell you about some of these...]

We almost always walk through the Myers Briggs test with our teams. It's a fantastic way to fast forward relationships. [If you are putting together a mission team and looking for this kind of insight, Ember has the opportunity for you...] Luckily for this extrovert, most of our team are introverts... And it was always fun hearing from JMeeder - one of Ember's sweet spots is the ability to connect students with slightly older people who have jumped into cross cultural service and then hearing from them. JMeeder is always doing cool stuff. I joke around that everyone wants to be a social justice missionary these days and although that might be partly true, Araminta seems to be unique in that it's a collection of Baltimore churches leading the charge on this. And... I can't wait to tell you more about the creative revenue plans that are being executed. Soon and very soon.

[Related: Ember 2012 AZ meeting #2,
2010 AZ meeting #3,
2008 Hungary meeting #3,
2007 Hungary meeting #3
2006 Cameroon meeting #3
2005 Brazil meeting #1]

Aixtraordinary

Skype call earlir this week talking between Aix-en-Provence, France, Columbia, Merryland and Austin, Texas. Some of the players for Ember X include Jim - camp coordinator, Mark and his wife Alice - logistics for short term teams, Teal - our good friend who is bringing a team from Austin. He and his family lived in Aix for 5 years while he was the executive pastor of ICCP. And moi. Loved the overall spirit of everyone on the call - gracious, thankful, on mission for helping those distanced from Jesus.

Amazing conversation that included past background in missions, status of where teams are at now and a quick review of some documents outlining the schedule and overall theme for camp. Lots more drilling into details soon since this was a quick call to put faces to names.

In the meantime, the clear goal for Summer Kids Camp 2013 - An Aixtraordinary Journey: "To create an unforgettable memory of Jesus for children and their parents."

Ember TSW

Ember partnered with Serve the City Baltimore last Saturday and hosted a few teams for a service day at The Samartians Women, which is an organization that serves women recovering from trauma. Located in Catonsville, they have a large property that is used for a residential program, an urban farm, and a vocational program. Our teams spent some time helping with various landscaping projects, cleaning up part of their vineyard, getting part of their urban farm ready for crops, and seeding plants in the greenhouse. The farm is a pretty significant piece for TSW: what they grow gets contributed to help the food desert in Baltimore [a new term for me] and the farm is also a piece in their culinary arts program, helping give recovery victims tangible skills. It's a good example of helping move people from self to service to systems.

Our coordinator at TSW did a great job of outlining human trafficking at a very high level. It seems like lots of people within Ember's circles know about the prevalence of human trafficking, what you may not know is that the Balt/DC area is a hot bed for it. Three things help contribute to this: an airport, an interstate and a seaport.

During lunch, we had a few Ember guides share about their global leadership experience. Trevin shared about context and persons of peace, including stories of his time in Ghana and South Africa. Leslie [who is also a board member] shared about the concept of who has the power and expertise in service relationships - sometimes you come in with the power and don't know it. Both talks were short and to the point, interactive and, I believe, well received, given the kinds of questions. Another reason why these teams we hosted were awesome. This is one of Ember's sweet spots.

The most fun I had all day was connecting with people we've worked with in the past. I felt like it would have been great to have meetings with so many of these people all day and I actually did that, mostly getting people to wheelbarrow stuff with me and talking while we did it. You call it talking, I call it working. Developer, futuristic, woo and wheelbarrows. Kristen, Wendy, Sam, Brooke, Carolyn, Alex : Ember X, Mt St Marys, Salisbury - throwing fire.

Ember and Serve the City Baltimore this Saturday

Ember is partnering with Serve the City Baltimore this coming Saturday for their March service day. STC days are always great fun and Ember is honored to host two college student teams this coming weekend. We'll do some light facilitation around global mission concepts while helping STC with one of their projects. Dan, the director, has become a good friend and has a very Ember-like background that includes church planting in a global city overseas.

These STC days also seem to be a great environment to attract, and therefore, meet some emerging global leaders. We've been fortunate to work alongside some amazing young people as a result of some of these days. This Saturday will be along the same lines too as some of the people we know in these college teams are pretty amazing.

Ember X is also serving together Saturday - our first collective team project. If you've got some time on Saturday, a desire to serve Baltimore with some of your energy and want to meet some fantastic global leaders, get in touch.

2013 Missions Support Letter

For those of you that might be interested... here's our 2013 support letter [pdf version]
+++
Europe is a part of the world that has been and remains close to our hearts. In addition to the charm and history, we are captivated by the challenge and future of missional leadership in Western cultures and a big part of this is represented by Europe: post modern, post Christian and post evangelical. What happens in Europe foreshadows what happens in the US – unless the next generation of missional leaders thinks with innovation, risks with creativity and acts with boldness.



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

Intern Blog Postings

The 2013 interns have been writing some smashing blogs of late. Topics like people groups, domestic missions, post Christianity mission, doing something about poverty, and serving in Baltimore. Seriously, you should click on at least some of these links and put their urls in your reader. [Did you see the ember domain... =)] You'll probably notice that the interns read some pretty intriguing non traditional readings about missions - that is intentional.

We make them write because:
1 - Leaders must be able to communicate.
2 - They are slowly writing down a journal of sorts that they will be able to look back on one day.
3 - A blog is still one of the best mediums for leaders.

Spring 2013 Interns

Ember is proud to recognize our Spring 2013 interns, DK and Hope Koumentakos. If you've hung around Ember recently, you know their faces.

DK has hung with Ember for the better part of a year now and been involved in projects like STC Baltimore service days [twice], a discovery session as Ember put together a service experience, some student missions prep and our AZ 2012 experience. Hope is brand new and starting just this month. She's already taken the StrengthsFinder assessment, which we try to do towards the beginning.

And of course, they both are already catalytic in their life and leadership, both helping plan and execute different youth outreaches for their friends outside of their student ministry. Among other things, DK works with a Christian student club at school and Hope is helping spearhead a water well project. Yeah kids these days...

There are emerging global student leaders already out there. Ember is privileged to work with two of them.

Photo: Reuniting some past and present Ember interns. Hope - 2nd from the left and DK - 4th from the left.

Fall Intern wrapup

When we bring on interns [and we really need to call them something else], we make them write a blog. Say what you will about the medium of blogs in the age of facebook and twitter – I still think it's an amazing medium, which is why you are reading this. I'm always interested to see what they are thinking about the readings and our various experiences – blog posts are the perfect medium for that. And what they may not realize until much later is that the blog is a great journal for their season with Ember.

DK has just finished the Fall with us and it's been a great semester of various experiences and content. Here's some of her posts that show both some of the stuff she's been involved with and what she's been learning.

Shifting of Christianity
The American church
Being a catalyst
European vision
Serve the City Baltimore

DecEmber Kindling

+ Very excited about 2013. Ember has some great opportunities if all the plans come together.
+ Two dream projects for this summer - one is almost finalized and is a collaboration between some of my favorite people. These projects are going.
+ We are also booked to do some missions team training - one specific for mission team leaders and one for whole teams. That is always so much fun.
+ DecEmber marks the 12th month of diabetes for my wife Deanna. It's been a long year but we are all proud of her resolve.
+ Overjoyed to tell you that DK has signed on for another semester with her internship with Ember and we bring on a new intern in January. Intern isn't the best name because we treat them like the catalysts that they are.
+ Went to a ministry pitch gathering yesterday for a good friend who is going on full time staff with a church. The financial model is that he raise X months of salary and the church brings him on 25% every 6 months. Thoughtful and intriguing.
+ I had coffee with Mike Hall a few weeks ago. Mike and I connected because he was at Dream Year DC too although we didn't meet that weekend. He's seeing his dream of being a motivational youth speaker come to fruition and he's recently published a second leadership book for students.
+ Heard of a college/young adult missions agency that reenacts a city urban environment for their week long training camp, characters included. That is certainly admirable. But why not just do a week in a real city?
+ Snapchat - lets call it what it is. It is for dirty pictures.
+ I paid a guy to hang icicle lights on my house. It's easier than falling off a roof.

Ember Pen Lucy

Last Saturday, Ember collaborated with the Educators for Justice Society at Mt St Marys with STC Baltimore and the Pen Lucy Action Network to facilitate a service/leadership day in Baltimore. The specifics for this day were spent helping clean up a vacant lot in the neighborhood of Pen Lucy. The bigger picture was helping move the lot one step closer to a refurbishment into a landscaped, public gathering place.

This particular Saturday, the STC Baltimore Fall Service day, had four other projects going on around the city: the Baltimore Free Store, Second Chance, The Creative Alliance and The Maryland Food Bank. We helped clear the lot of trash and debris, mowed the grass and finished putting up a split rail fence. This was Phase 1.

PLAN came about from Faith Fellowship Church Faith Christian Fellowship, [edit - I got the wrong name] which has been committed to Christian community development for their neighborhood. They've implemented a series of interesting community development ministries, such as tutoring, recovery programs, sports leagues and adult GED classes.

It's always fun for us to work alongside local community activists, global student leaders and others who are interested in serving those less fortunate. Better yet when we help people go from self to service to systems.

Speaking Notes - HCC Cru

Loved speaking to Cru at Howard Community College last week. Carlos, the volunteer staff person, was involved on a SPACE team long ago and it was great to see the community he has helped pioneer. Worship was authentic and passionate and there was an ethos in the community that communicated encouragement and belonging. What Carlos has done is not an easy task.

My notes from speaking below - like always, steal whatever works.

+++
One big idea
Two things you can do

1 - The big idea - in every apple there is an orchard - Not my original idea, I stole this
But when Jesus enters a life, there is a transformation - redemption, regeneration, sanctification, all the big words
In essence they all mean that you are capable of change. In you and others.
you change and you are an agent of change
redemptive activities
your vocation your ministry your family life your thought life your talents, skills, network
Matthew 28

so because you believe that - and if you don't, you should. You will later tonight, I think. two things you can do - handles per se.
concepts that if you understand them correctly, will give you some meaningful tools to engage the world around you.

A - context
lets play a game - one volunteer
tell me how you traveled here tonight to get here
starting from the parking lot
who did you see
which way did you go
peoples accents, what ethnicity are you, where were you born - lady in CT from NZ
surrounding - industry - interplay between people like teams - culture at large
Paul Acts 17

B - influencers
who knows who - social capital
story - TJ - you know who is a youth leader
facebook twitter linkedin
Jesus - person of peace - Matt 10
Fatima - Brasil 2005

closing story - Gabriella in Brussels

Societies of World Changers

On the left is AHons, a college sophomore at a small private college here in Maryland. She runs the "Educators for Justice" society at her college campus and invited Trevin to come and speak to them about his recent global experiences.

A few other Ember peeps went along since this was a possible entry point for us to facilitate something for these group of college kids who are, obviously, already interested in concepts like wealth, poverty, aid and development, and charity. So some of our time with AHons before the gathering was in discovery - her community's values, goals and context.

Trevin did a great job with his talk and a few of the students had intriguing questions like, "How do you build sustainability into a missions vocation," and "Do most people that do this follow the model of work-for-a-time and serve-for-a-time?" These questions should, in fact, inform us about this emerging generation. For starters, they are intent about making a difference in the world.

These emerging global student leaders are all around us. Sometimes there are 'societies' of them. Other times, we have to dig for them. But they are there. And Ember exists for them.

October Kindling

+ The transition for our family to having a high schooler and a middle schooler has been interesting. But everyone is doing well overall. I might unpack this later.
+ Both girls went on our church's youth retreat this past weekend. It was a combined middle/high school retreat which they don't always do.
+ I've always been amazed at the logistics it takes to run something like that - think 6 buses and hundreds of volunteers.
+ CStolte, Ember 2011-2012 intern, helped out in our Ems 6th grade girls cabin. Love that.
+ Trevin is speaking tonight at Mt Saint Mary's University to their Educators for Social Justice club. Who knew there was such a club? I'm going along for the ride.
+ Our intern is doing the work. This past month has been focused on some missions concepts that she's reading and reflecting on.
+ Some Ember peeps are hitting Perspectives next week in Baltimore. Love taking people to drop in and listen to some of those classes. Everything changes after taking that class.
+ Had lunch last week with DanP from Serve the City Baltimore and Ember guide Amy. Dan is a fabulous leader who spent time in London on a church planting team before coming back to his hometown to run STC. We had a great conversation about student missions, culture and leadership.
+ I'm speaking at Cru at Howard Community College later this month. Stop by if you are around.
+ I'm futuristically trying to imagine summer 2013. Excited already.