TOTYNTK - Chapter 4 - Great Leading

Chapter 4 – The One Thing You Need to Know: Great Leading

** The difference between great managers and great leaders:

Great managers discover what is unique about each person and capitalize on this uniqueness. Great managers serve as intermediaries between the individual and the company, and like all intermediaries, they perform their role well only when they perform it one on one.
Great leaders must play a different role. Their job is to rally people toward a better future, and as such, they are not intermediaries. They are instigators. Driven by their compulsion for a better future, their challenge is to do everything in their power to get other people to join together to make this future comes true. So, by definition, they will perform this role well only when they find a way to make many people, regardless of each person's uniqueness, excited by and confident in this better future. If, through their words, actions, images, pictures and scores, they can tap into those things we all share, they will succeed as leaders. If they can't, they will struggle.

** The essence of great leadership:

Discover What Is Universal and Capitalize On It.

** What are the universals of human nature?
[A very interesting discussion on culture, by the way. And.. remember, one significant thing about a culture is how many words they have to describe a concept.]

Anthropologist Donald Brown – Human Universals

1. Fear of death – the need for security
2. Fear of the outsider – the need for community
3. Fear of the future – the need for clarity
We are aware that the future is unstable, unknown and therefore potentially dangerous.
This is why, in every society, we give prestige to those people who claim to be able to predict the future.
4. Fear of chaos – the need for authority
Two universals reveal this fear – first, every society has devised its own story of how the world came to be and in each story, in each creation myth, the world was created out of chaos. Second, one of the most universal of human traits is our need to classify things. Out of our desire for order springs out need for authority. Every society has a word for leader.
5. Fear of insignificance – the need for respect
Usually the need for respect is attended to by an intermediary, by someone who deals with people one-on-one. Today, in the world of work, this intermediary role is played most effectively by the manager, not the leader.

** The job of a leader:

The job of a leader is not to win people's loyalty. The job of a leader is to rally people toward a better future. Winning people's loyalty should be a means to this end, not the end itself. If you have grappled with our fear of the future and somehow neutralize it, even turn it into something positive, you will have positioned yourself to pull off something truly significant as a leader.
[The job of a leader is not based on universal 1, 2, 4 or 5. It is about #3 - leading is about the fear of the future.]
The problem for you, the modern-day leader, is that you traffic in the unknown. All of your conversations concern the unknown, the future, and the possibilities you see there. If you are going to succeed as a leader, you simply must find a way to engage our fear of the unknown and turn it into spiritedness. If great managers are catalysts, speeding up the reaction between the individuals talents and the company's goals, then great leaders are alchemists. Somehow they are able to transform our fear of the unknown into confidence in the future.

** Clarity is the key:

By far the most effective way to turn fear into confidence is to be clear; to define the future in such vivid terms, through your actions, words, images, pictures, heroes, and scores, that we can all see where you, and thus we, are headed. Clarity is the antidote to anxiety and therefore clarity is the preoccupation of the effective leader. If you do nothing else as a leader, be clear.

** The balance between giving people clear direction and yet still enough white space to create and innovate

This doesn't mean that you describe in precise detail all of your tactics and plans and deadlines. On the contrary, as we'll see, to keep your followers challenged and engaged, you must allow them plenty of white space to invest, create and experiment. But it does mean that your ability to be clear and your followers feelings of confidence are causally linked.

** Points of Clarity – Where are your followers crying out for clarity?

1. Who Do We Serve?
You the leader must be clear about whom you are choosing to serve because we, your followers, require it of you. When you do this with clarity, you give us confidence – confidence in our judgment, confidence in our decisions, and ultimately confidence in our ability to know where to look to determine if we have fulfilled our mission.
A leader must not be clear on all points and that one of the areas in which he should allow significant ambiguity is in the strategies and tactics selected by his employees. Yes, he should be clear about whom he is trying to serve, but then he must actively encourage his employees to devise novel and as yet unproven ways of serving them. This is the only way to keep the organization alive.
2. What Is Our Core Strength?
3. What Is Our Core Score?
By zeroing in on one core score leaders brought clarity to their people.
Ideally, this score will be a leading indicator of success, such as employee engagement or employee safety or crime, rather than a trailing indicator, such as sales or profit or tax revenues, but from the perspective of your followers, what matters most is that it's clear.
4. What Actions Can We Take Today?
Two distinct types of actions – systematic and symbolic
Systematic action – interrupts our day-to-day routines and forces us to become involved in new activities. It disrupts us.
Symbolic action – doesn't alter what we do, it just grabs our attention. It distracts us, thereby giving us something new and vivid on which to focus.

** The Disciplines of Leadership – How do the best leaders achieve this clarity?

1. Take time to reflect
2. Select Your Heroes with Great Care
You must remember that the employees you choose to celebrate will reveal the future you are trying to create. When you bring an employee up onstage and praise her performance, this has a management impact. It will make this particular employee feel appreciated and will motivate her to do even better. However, it will also, if you do it well, have a leadership impact. If you can tell us, your followers, exactly what she did to deserve this recognition, if you can show us the people she served, or the strength she embodies or the scores she achieved, or the actions she took, you will make everything much clearer.
3. Practice

** Summary

Effective leaders don't have to be passionate. They don't have to be charming. They don't have to be brilliant. They don't have to possess the common touch. They don't have to be great speakers. What they must be is clear. Above all else, they must never forget the truth that of all the human universals – our need for security, for community, for clarity, for authority, and for respect – our need for clarity, when met, is the most likely to engender in us confidence, persistence, resilience and creativity.
Show us clearly whom we should seek to serve, show us where our core strength lies, show us which score we should focus on and which actions must be taken today, and we will reward you by working our hearts out to make our better future come true.

My thoughts:
1. For such a grand topic as being a good leader, this chapter has given some very clear - get it - and tangible suggestions for improvement. Core strengths, clients and scores are very concrete things we all can work and concentrate on.

2. You can teach a person to be clear and vivid. But can you teach a person to be a visionary? If they get the vision, you can teach them how to communicate it with clarity. But what if they never form their own visions? How do we create visionaries? I suspect there might be something supernatural here - see Joel 2.

3. Some ideas that relate to SPACE --
- I would like to think that I have been pretty clear when I have prepared teams that I have personally led. It usually centers around an idea like - "Our whole purpose is to serve and bless our GCC mission families." For overseas summer mission teams, that is who we serve. And I would think that at least some of my team members got tired of hearing me say it so much. The bigger question is how clear are we on our mission with SPACE on a bigger scope.
- Knowing our core strengths - not just within our teams but the student ministry overall [LC and CpR] - is important especially as we put summer team experiences together. If our mission teams are really put together with a partnership in mind, knowing our core strengths is an important piece.
- I see SPACE having two primary core scores right now: One of them is the proportion of students we send out versus overall students in the ministry and that theoretically, this proportion should grow. The second core score is how many students actually leave the student ministries to serve intentionally. Which reminds me that I'm working on an update for this year to my "The State of the 03" post from August of 2005 - more on that score later.

Related : My notes from Chapter 2

Youth Ministry in 50 years

Marko posted yesterday about what youth ministry might look like in 50 years, along with this link to an article from CT. Interesting question that I have been pondering for a little while. I thought I would throw my opinion out there - feel free to comment. Also, I haven't read the article yet but will as soon as I post this. I thought it would be more fun to come up with my ideas before I read it.

"Tell me what will be different about youth ministry in 50 years."

1. Your student ministry is no longer pale
You think the world is flat now.... Our student ministries will be full of a mixture of students from all kinds of backgrounds. The global and urban migration will extend into student ministries mixing ministries full of bi-, tri- and multi-racial students who bring all kinds of cultural, emotional and family issues and experience. Third culture kids [who have lived all over the world and in different cultures] will be a larger percentage of the kids we minister to.
The average youthworker will be interested in different cultures, have a vast view of the world and love to eat Sweet and Sour Pork, Tandoori Chicken and rice and beans. Our suburban churches become mixing bowls of world cultures all coming together for the mission of Jesus. The average youthworker will probably not be Caucasian.

2. Serious About Contextualization
Speaking of culture, our student ministries will have a new focus on the idea of engaging culture. Not in the present sense of 'culture war' - not fighting Hollywood, public schools or DisneyWorld.
Instead, our students ministries will be fleshing out the idea of contextualization - how do we engage the culture we live in and the culture our students come from. Ethnocentrism will no longer be tolerated - thinking your culture is the best is not going to get you very far in building relationships and impacting students.

There will be new elements of engaging worship from a student perspective [rebellious, loud, edgy] as well as the cultures that they were brought up in [African, Asian, etc.] Prepare for a cool mix of worship music that is born from adolescents but mixes world music, beats and instruments.

3. Bigger Freaks
Churches will be in decline and the society at large will continue to be cautious of religious extremism. Being an evangelical will be even less tolerated. Students sold out to Jesus are seen as even bigger freaks. The threat of terrorism around the world will continue to shake us - mission teams will have even more to think and plan regarding that threat. People that are serious about following Jesus stick around. The ones that are not serious leave fast. There is an even higher calling of commitment.

4. Creativity and Imagination
Creativity and imagination in student ministries shape a new level of engagement with students. Ministries we have not even dreamed of yet are created and implemented by and for students. Youthworkes are amazed at how vast their students imagaintions are.

5. Precision Missions
Short term missions is going to continue to explode - but it is going to be framed with more precision and strategy - in good ways. Local churches are going to hone this vision and step up to require student missions have a good context and synergy. Many more students are going to understand typically missiologist terms like people group, syncretism and conextualization - and are going to have hands on experience with those concepts.

5. Your present students are going to mold this vision.
And the best one I think - the students you are working with now are going to shape and mold this vision. They are the ones that will build relationships, in the future, with students you haven't even met yet that will be the youthworkers in 50 years. The creative, the committed, the one that brings the African drum to worship on Sunday, the ones that love Tandoori chicken.
Looking at your middle schooler of today and scared about the future ministry they will invest in? Nah - instead, be energized and excited. She will come around, with your patient encouragement, clarity and prayers. The time you invest in her, your modeling and when you both see a life impacted - it will all make a difference in her life. And really, when it comes right down to it, the future of youth ministry needs her.

In The Light

From the article entitled "How Many Lightbulbs Does it Take to Change the World? One. And You're Looking At It."
The impact of a compact fluorescent lightbulb:

What that means is that if every one of 110 million American households bought just one ice-cream-cone bulb, took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads.

How really long they last:

Swirl bulbs don't just work, they pay for themselves. They use so little power compared with old reliable bulbs, a $3 swirl pays for itself in lower electric bills in about five months. Screw one in, turn it on, and it's not just lighting your living room, it's dropping quarters in your pocket. The advantages pile up in a way to almost make one giddy. Compact fluorescents, even in heavy use, last 5, 7, 10 years. Years. Install one on your 30th birthday; it may be around to help illuminate your 40th.

And the company that is determined to change the lightbulb industry:

A year from now, chances are that you yourself will have installed a swirl or two, and will likely be quite happy with them. In the name of conservation and good corporate citizenship, not to mention economics, one unlikely company is about haul us to the lightbulb aisle, reeducate us, and sell us a swirl: Wal-Mart.
In the next 12 months, starting with a major push this month, Wal-Mart wants to sell every one of its regular customers--100 million in all--one swirl bulb. In the process, Wal-Mart wants to change energy consumption in the United States, and energy consciousness, too. It also aims to change its own reputation, to use swirls to make clear how seriously Wal-Mart takes its new positioning as an environmental activist.

Much more in the article about business partnerships, CFLs being a classic example of creative destruction - like how digital music transformed the music industry - and how one light bulb you buy may in fact impact the world.
I replaced four normal lightbulbs with CFLs in my house tonight.

Tuesday Potpourri

** Steve Addision writes about Ireland:

In 2003 there were nine ordinations for the whole of Ireland, eight in 2004 and eight in 2005. In 2005, for the first time in its history, the Archdiocese of Dublin, with of over 1 million people, didn't have a single candidate for ordination, and in the whole Archdiocese there was a single priest under the age of 30. In a country that once used to export thousands of priests and nuns and brothers, African and Vietnamese priests are now a familiar sight.

Related - Leslita B's post of her notes from The Celtic Way of Evangelism.


** From Bart Campolo - change in strategy:

So now, instead of a thrift shop, imagine a big, clean, homey neighborhood laundromat, where everyone gets welcomed by name, with good machines and a nice little coffee bar, comfortable furniture, books and toys for kids, and really good music. The kind of place where they'll drive you home if you don't have a car, or pick up and deliver your laundry if you're too sick or frail to carry it, and where the attendant is always ready to listen to your troubles and pray for you. The kind of place where anyone might stop by anytime to talk sports, movies, or politics, where the bulletin board is worth looking at, and where on Thursday nights you get invited to the big family dinner upstairs.

** Sivin posts some video from some worship at YLG06.
Related - my post about leadership workshops at YLG06.

In A Pit...

Mark Batterson, lead pastor at National Community Church - the church that meets in Union Station in DC, as well as two other locations - has a new book coming out today entitled In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day. Sounds like it's going to be a good one.

Your greatest regret at the end of your life will be the lions you didn't chase. You will regret the risks not taken, the opportunities not seized, and the dreams not pursued. Stopping running away from what scares you most and start chasing the God-ordained opportunities that cross your path.

In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day is inspired by one of the most obscure yet courageous acts recorded in Scripture: Benaiah chased a lion down into a pit. Then, despite the snow and slippery ground, he caught the lion and killed it (II Samuel 23:20-21).

Unleash the lion chaser within!

NCC has been a church I've been following on and off for a few years. Being from the DC area, it's very cool to hear how they are impacting the city. Innovation, risk and fun are all terms that come to mind when I think about them. Also, when we took a day team to serve in DC in the summer of 2005, NCC sent us a whole bunch of contact cards in case we met anyone that wanted to connect with a church in the city. I've read the first chapter and I think most of you readers would enjoy the book as well. Click on the graphic to order from Amazon.

Lip Syncing

Tonight was CpR's first 'outreach' of the school year - Lip Sync night. I put the word outreach in quotes because I think our definition of outreach is changing - in a good way.

It's always a blast to see how creative and talented the students are, in terms of choosing the music, putting together dance moves and combining it all for a few fun minutes on the stage. Don't believe people when they tell you suburban churches are not artistic and creative.

What was a bit different about tonight from other outreaches in past years was that there was a short time before the program started where kids were sent out into the community to bless strangers. I and some other leaders took some kids to a local high school football game to give away sodas and candy. Granted, there may not be very many people that will be interested in church because of getting a free soda. But this medium allows students to be stretched a little bit in terms of risking for others, blessing strangers and getting out of the church walls.

Photo: Some our Senior girls [LF in the black and AW in the red, from both the Brasil and Cam teams] - click to enlarge.

The One Thing You Need to Know - Buckingham - Chapter 2

I picked up this book on sale over the weekend and had skimmed it a few months ago. It was a good deal so I grabbed it. Tonight I read chapters 1 and 2. And it grabbed me. Look for more notes soon, but take a good read at some of the stuff here.

Chapter 2 - Managing and Leading: What's The Difference?
There is a vital distinction between managing and leading - they are not the same.

** On managing

...great managers are catalysts, and this analogy still holds. At their best, great managers speed up the reaction between each employee's talents and the company's goals.
The starting point [of the manager's responsibility] is each employee's talents. The challenge: to figure out the best way to transform these talents into performance. This is the job of the great manager.

** Qualities of leadership

When organizations say that each and every employee can be a leader, more often than not they are referring to those four behaviors: initiative, creativity, the courage of one's convictions and integrity. But they err when they label these behaviors leadership.
Yes, all leaders should possess integrity, but so should the rest of us. Integrity is not just a desirable leadership trait; it is a desirable human trait.
The same can be said of the other three behaviors. If you take initiative, improvise creative solutions to changing circumstances, and have the courage of your convictions, you will be a formidable and effective human being, and surely an asset to any organization, but you will not necessarily be a leader.

** The only satisfactory definition of leadership

Great leaders rally people to a better future.
What defines a leader is his preoccupation with the future.
You are a leader if, and only if, you are restless for change, impatient for progress and deeply dissatisfied with the status quo.
"I am not satisfied." This is the mantra of the leader. As a leader you are never satisfied with the present, because in your head you can see a better future, and the friction between the 'what is' and the 'what could be' burns you, stirs you up, propels you forward. This is leadership.

** The Leadership Talent of Optimism

If the core talent of great managers is an instinct to coach others toward success, then optimism and ego are the talents underpinning all great leadership.
The need for a talent for optimism is almost self-evident. As a leader you must believe, deeply, instinctively that things can get better.
When I say leaders are optimistic I mean simply that nothing - not their mood, not the reasoned arguments of others, not the bleak conditions of the present - nothing can undermine their faith that things will get better.
Properly defined, the opposite of a leader isn't a follower. The opposite of a leader is a pessimist.

** The Leadership Talent of Ego

However, no matter how reprehensible their actions [the recent spat of executive crooks - Enron, WorldCom, etc.] may have been, to explain their misfortune as a function of excess ego is actually a misdiagnosis. The reputations of these executives fell not because their egos were too strong but because their principles were not strong enough. They had too little integrity, not too much ego.
The key thing about leading is not only that you envision a better future, but also that you believe, in every fiber of your being, that you are the one to make this future come true.
Or think about Saint Paul returning to Jerusalem and informing the apostles that he, not they, knew what Jesus would have wanted for the young church, and that they should modify their practices to accord with his teachings, rather than the other way around. What gall. What ego.
This doesn't mean that they think they have all the answers. On the contrary, the best leaders have a strong expertise orientation.
Nor does it mean they are brash or abrasive. Nor does it mean they are egomaniacal. The difference between a leader with a powerful ego and an egomaniac is how the ego is channeled. The effective leader takes his self-belief, his self-assurance, his self-confidence and presses them into the service of an enterprise bigger than himself.
But this does mean that they make outstanding claims to excellence. It does mean that their self-worth is inextricably wrapped up in both their appetite to make such claims and in their ability to realize them.
So if you want to help develop a budding leader, don't tell him to deflate his ego into humility, to lessen his dreams, to downplay his belief in himself. This is confusing, negating advice. Instead, challenge him to be more inquisitive, more curious, and thereby more vivid in describing his image of a better future, and then encourage him to channel his cravings and his claims toward making this image come true.

** Leaders Are Born Not Made

They are born. A leader is born with an optimistic disposition or she is not. If she is not, then no amount of 'optimism training' is going to make her view the world in an overwhelmingly positive, opportunistic light. To lead effectively, you must be unfailingly, unrealistically, even irrationally optimistic. Like it or not, this is not learnable.
The same applies to ego. Through careful nurturing you can make a person feel more self-confident and more self-assured than he used to be, but nothing you can do will ever imbue him with the kind of powerful, claiming ego that so characterizes the best leaders. He either has it or he doesn't.
None of this implies that a person cannot be helped to improve as a leader. She can be helped to refine her picture of the future, even to change it entirely, and to employ ever more effective ways to present this future to her followers. But what you cannot help her do is see a better future, believe in this future and have faith that she is the one to create it. here, she's on her own.

** Summary

The manager's starting point is the individual employee. He looks at her palette of talents, skills, knowledge, experience and goals, and then uses these to design a specific future in which the individual can be successful. That person's success is his focus.
The leader sees things differently. He starts with his image of the future. Only with this image clear in his mind does he turn his attention to persuading other people that they can be successful in the future he envisions. But through it all, the future remains his focus.

A few things strike me:
1. The measure that I have been using to determine potential leaders [the qualities of initiative, creativity, the courage of one's convictions and integrity] is potentially not the right measurement.

2. The ego talent found in leaders [you believe, in every fiber of your being, that you are the one to make this future come true] reminds me of Waking the Dead - how we have a crucial role to play and how if we don't believe it, that's the beginning of losing our heart.

"I'm sorry if I'm the one to break the news to you: you were born into a world at war, and you will live all your days in the midst of a great battle, involving all the forces of heaven and hell and played out here on earth." - John Eldredge

3. I'm interested to read what else the books says about reproducing leaders since they cannot be made. I'm not totally sure that I agree with ego not being able to be reproduced - to a certain degree. I know people who have been transformed - they didn't use to think they would amount to much, but these days, they know they will mark human history.

Are you an Aussie Sender?

Had a fun time meeting with JWinter this evening, who is a recent UofMD graduate and going to Melbourne, Australia for a one year term, leaving in November, working with a college ministry with Campus Crusade. She is in the midst of raising support and is part of our Fusion community at GCC. As well as a neighbor of ours we had never met before. As well as friends with RP and JP, who helped start the campus movement in Melbourne a few years ago. Small world.

I remember when R and J got ready to leave. We were all working with high school small groups and hearing them talk about Australia was part of the convergence of information at precisely the right time that helped birth SPACE. I can still see the passion in his eyes as he talked about the majority of Aussies that didn't even know the name of Jesus. It's pretty wild to once again be a small part of what is happening in Melbourne.

If any of you readers feel specifically called as a sender for people going to Australia and would be interested in hearing more about JWinter, leave a comment or email and I can put you in touch.

Blog Spam

Some of you readers that read from an RSS feed might have noticed a strange post last night in the middle of the night. Think Chinese characters with lots of vibrant, neon, disco colors. No, that wasn't anything about students, mobilizing or mission. It was better - it was spam.

Up until yesterday, I had enabled a blogger feature that lets you post via email. Simply jot down your post and email it to your custom email address and it gets posted automatically. It's a really cool feature and I've used it to post from my phone via a text message and from Internet cafes and the like. Most recently, I used the address to post an update from when I was in Cameroon. During my time there, access to the web was limited but I did have the ability to send updates over someone else's email. So as I would write updates to our home team, I also included the blogger posting email address. One slight bump - when people replied to all, those got posted too. Good thing I gave D all of my important passwords.

Anyway, I've disabled the email posting - hopefully no more disco colored Chinese characters on here for a while.

Summer of 1991

In the summer of 1991, right after I graduated from college and right before going to grad school that fall, I took a summer camp counselor job at Camp Shenandoah Springs in Madison, VA. It was kind of on a whim, I had spent a weekend there on a retreat and fell in love with both the place and the family that ran the camp. I applied for a position in the early spring and then suddenly, 4 weeks before camp started, they had a last minute opening and offered me the job - 8 weeks as a counselor for a Christian camp run on an old Civil War-era farm in the Shenandoah mountains of Virginia.

They had what seemed to be a pretty cool summer camping program with some very cool elements - a lake, horses and girls. About that last element... almost all of my ministry experience up to that point had been with high school guys. I felt like it would be a growing experience to work in a residential camp ministry with guys and girls at the same place. Growing it was.

We had an amazing staff team of 8, including the lead counselor, a horse whisperer, a lifeguard and three worship leaders. I taught canoeing, first aid, and crafts. I also got a reputation for driving a black 4x4 in and through Civil war farmland.

Up until that point, I had had a lot of great ministry experiences. But boil them down and they were mostly about having a lot of fun. Summer camps, high school retreats, weekend camping trips, intentionally spending time with students. They sounded right on, but this summer made me see something that was missing - someone that had passion.

I had never seen someone weep - and really weep - for the future, watching them count the days they had left with these precious students. I hadn't really experienced living with someone who gave - almost at every moment both waking and nonwaking - to the charges they had been responsible for 24x7. I had never experienced morning staff prayers like this one - where our unified team openly begged God for safety, mercy and impact. This was the summer that I saw passion embodied - it was packaged in camp counselors.

A few days ago, one of the counselors I worked with connected with me via this blog, after not being in touch for over 10 years. He told me they were having a 25 year anniversary party today and asked "So, what are you doing this weekend?" The girlies and I were able to go and it was a great time to reconnect with some great friends - friends who like to package passion in human form.

Photo: CFine, BGoins and me, 15 years after serving together.

Technorati tags:: Camp+Shenandoah+Springs

Conversations ...

- with a college student trying to find a missions experience this coming summer
- with the director of a parachurch youth min in our area about Bulgaria and Cameroon
- lunch with one of our GCC Turkey team who is now aligning his future with his values and personality
- going to listen to a college grad who is going to Melbourne Australia for a year - following up on the work on a college campus that some of our friends [R and J] started a few years ago
Let's continue to find those workers....

D and I are getting away for the night. Our house is well guarded at night by two dogs and two dog sitters and guarded by day by MAB the mad roofer who is a really good shot with his staple gun.

Temporary Solace from the Cubicle of Doom

Balance of $0

Well we have almost closed the summer finances and I now have a whopping $0 in our SPACE fund. It's definitely a weird sensation. Some of you readers will remember that last December, I was asked to put a plan together to spend quite a bit of extra I had in the fund, instead of just letting it sit in the bank.

My spending proposal [which was approved] was outlined in the post entitled Extra Cashola. Out of that proposal, here is where the money actually went:

- gift for support for JAB and FZ and their team from IV-UofMD to a week in NOLA - December 2005
- help cover costs for SPACE winter expedition, January 2006
- send 3 leaders/students to one day training with the Urban Youth Worker Institute Seminar, March 2006
- help pay for leaders to be a part of the Senior NYC weekend, May 2006
- bought 30 StrengthsFinder books - part of Summer Leader Development, May 2006
- help cover costs for Mission Advance, June 2006
- gift for support for AMsr - going to India for a semester with Adventures in Mission [I think she left yesterday or today], June 2006
- help cover costs for Cameroon team, summer 2006

Since we have no money now, that really means we have to be totally self-sufficient. If we want to do something, provide an experience, buy some books, plan a winter expedition, we will have to come up with the resources ourselves. And I don't think that is a bad thing to have to do at all.

3-7

GCC Leader Development

My post entitled Leader Share [and the post with my answers] was a small attempt to frame my mind for some structured leadership development that was coming up. I'm humbled and very excited to be a part of a pilot leadership development program at GCC. The general structure of the program is that it is centered around mentor/coach relationships that already exist in some capacity, with complimentary workshops to help address specific areas of leadership. These workshops are held once a month for three months this Fall, the first one being last night. Along with workshops, each gathering also includes a 'Grace Anatomy,' where the ethos of GCC is peeled back and communicated. The intent is that most of the learning and development happen in the context of the coach-leader interaction so there is an emphasis on action plans based on the principles touched on in the gatherings and workshops.

As we finished this past summer, leadership development was a concept that I really felt like SPACE needed to focus on and this pilot program was a great opportunity. I think SPACE can serve as a conduit to identify, grow and launch missional leaders - we just have to figure out how to do that best and this program and the ideas from it can really help serve that goal.

Last night's sessions included an outline on GCC's flavor - our 'tribal smell' and Principles of Servant Leadership, and both were well done. I was especially energized by the tribal smell session - so many of the ideas like:
"We are committed to the World Missions enterprise"
"We are volunteer driven - paid staff is to mobilize the saints"
"We unleash people"
helped remind me why our family is a part of this community and why GCC is exists.

Since the coach-leader relationship is where the learning should be happening, I'm thinking that this whole thing is going to require a bit more than I originally envisioned - which I think is a good thing. What I don't want to do is to keep it academic and informational only. But that is going to require some thought, creativity and experimentation. Tell you some more about this later.

Monday Potpourri

** A quote from Shane Claiborne's The Irresistible Revolution:

Sometimes people ask me if I am scared, living in the inner city. I usually reply, "I'm more scared of the suburbs." The Scriptures say that we should not fear those things that can destroy the body, but we are to fear that which can destroy the soul (Matt. 10:28). While the ghettos may have their share of violence and crime, the suburbs are the home of the more subtle demonic forces - numbness, complacency, comfort - and it is these that can eat away at our souls. (p. 227)

from Al Hsu's blog, the author of The Suburban Christian. Both are on my to-read list.


** Advice for [Design] Teachers and Students
For teachers:

- Assign at least 3 books for each course you teach.
And a bunch of blogs, and magazines. But...
- Don't test them on that reading.
... Send the message that reading is a natural, wonderful part of becoming a designer; that that's just what designers do. Also, not testing them will evidence something else: that you trust them. You assign a book, you expect them to read it; you're not wasting their time, and they're not children.
- Teach them to write thank you notes.
Designers need other people—for research, collaboration, support, everything. But people skills are hard to teach. This one's easy. Thank you notes are the right way to do business (or pleasure), and will help inject some civility back into this world.
- You don't teach a class.
You teach a group of individuals. Whether it's a lecture or studio or seminar or fieldtrip, you must never forget that you are teaching unique students who happen to show up at the same time and at the same place.

For students:

- Hone your presentation skills.
Walking the walk and talking the talk are different skills. And no matter how good a designer you are, without a certain level of presentation skills, nobody will ever know. Practice public speaking, present your head off in class, and write, write, write.

- Photograph everything.
... Make sure you bring your camera to class (not the expensive one though—your roommate's) and have fellow students photograph you presenting your work, conducting interviews, that kinda thing. Finally, have others take pictures of you making your models up in the shop. When you've looked at enough portfolios (car, toothbrush, chair, toy, form study, car, toothbrush, toy…), those "process" photos are positively the most exiting thing in your book to a jaded interviewer. "Did you make this model?" Well, yes. I did.

- Do more; consider auditing a class.
"The people who do more are people who get more done." Duh. It's no secret that busy people often get a lot accomplished, and this is the same for students.

- Read the paper.
This is the single best way to be and stay connected with the outside world. A killer-talented designer with nothing so say isn't much use to anyone (though the marketplace would expose the idealism of that argument!), and there's nothing more dangerous than an ignorant mass producer.

- Don't work alone.
I know you know that design is a collaborative effort, so there's no reason why you shouldn't practice getting along with others while you're still in school.

I'm not a design teacher [or a teacher at all]. But I think these principles have a lot of relevance to the way we mentor and lead people and how we can challenge ourselves to continue to be learners. And we should be concentrating a little more on the concept of Design. [Maybe more about that later.]


** From this month's Next Wave - Brenda-Based Youth Ministry vs. Family-Based Youth Ministry

When I scheduled the youth group to prepare a meal for the homeless shelter, I didn't get the expected hesitation of too many minors in the industrial kitchen without the appropriate number of adults. I got a chipper relief in her voice when I told her we do youth group with our parents required to be involved. But that is not why we do it.

We do it because we realize that teens take their spiritual cues from their parents. Even if they don't have spiritual parents but spiritual longings, these teens attach themselves to other parents who do. Sometimes even fondly calling them "mom" or "dad." So in all reality, a teen's faith will only grow as far as the parents' faith. So why not challenge the parents alongside the teens?

Leader Share - My Answers

Here are my answers from my Leader Share questions from a number of days ago. Not too late if you want to add your answers.

1 - Name a leader you look up [can be someone you know personally or not] to and the character attribute you most admire about them. [You don't have to name them here if you don't want to.]
Erwin and Alex McManus - for their level of innovation and creativity. From the way they can evoke your engagement while they talk about a story in the Bible, to the way they imagine how to erupt passion from a community, to creating and shaping a culture that impacts the future, it seems to me like they are another species.

2 - Envision the future of your community of faith in 15 years - what is the biggest impact you would have made on it and what compels you about this area of impact?
My vision of the future is that GCC is at the epicenter of a vision of what a church could do to resource, train and send people to other cultures - and not neccessarily overseas. GCC becomes an body of people that blurs the lines between a church and a mission - and the culture of the body delights in it's function as blurry. "Well we are sort of a church, but a lot of people come and go for really big purposes." This vision compels me because it can start with middle and high school students.

3 - In what area of gifting, talent or character have you grown in within the past 10 years?
I've grown in my toleration of risk and the unknown.

Photo: One of our sessions at Kribi, Cameroon. [a few images photo stitched together for wide wide angle.]

Packing List Extras - Video

For the text and more details see the Post titled Packing List Extras.

YLG 06 blog

From September 24-30, 500 young Christian leaders will will descend on Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from all parts of the globe for the Lausanne Younger Leaders Gathering(YLG-06). These hand-picked leaders represent the next generation of those who will be responsible for leading churches and missions towards completing the Great Commission. Keep up to date with the YLG06 blog. Also, check out the leadership workshop listing here.

If I was going, here would be the workshops I would attend:
- Leadership in context
Understanding the world we’re living in. How can we consider some of the cultural, ethnic, religious and political realities of the world we’re trying to reach?

- Leadership and disciple-making
Learning to disciple others to follow Christ for a lifetime. How can we model a faith that others will want to chase after?

- Leadership among poor people
Developing Holistic Ministries around the Gospel. How should the church really serve poor people? How can we encourage those around us to engage with poverty?

- Leadership and family
Keeping My Marriage growing and strong in a demanding leadership role. How can I give my best to my ministry and to my family? Which comes first? How have older leaders kept ministry and family in balance?

- Leading the Way
How can I keep focused on what I believe God is calling me to? How can I cast a clear vision and set a direction to help others move forward with me?

- Learning to grow
How can I keep developing as a leader? Understanding the bigger picture of leadership development, including formal and informal education, on the job training, feedback, reflection and evaluation.

Sounds like a phenomenal time. [related post here]

Technorati tags:: YLG06

Back to School Night Sighting

The book K is reading - found in her desk. I'm such a proud father!

Packing List extras

Well after Cameroon, I learned some more about what to bring.

1. A headlamp - better than a flashlight.

2. A high quality water bottle. Even though you will probably be drinking bottled water, this will still help. And sometimes you may be getting water from filters, like in someone's home. I didn't bring one to Cameroon and I wish I had.

3. Lemonade [or other drink mixes] in single serving packets. To reduce the monotony of drinking just water - although keep in mind, there might be some people living in the country you are visiting that don't have access to clean water.

4. This really cool book light I found at Target for $2.50. Also really great on the plane.


5. A nurse. Or if you can't bring a nurse, a good first aid kit with a thermometer. Body temperature is something important to monitor if someone gets sick.

6. Purrell or other equivalent hand sanitizer. In the 2 oz bottles. Plan on one bottle lasting about 2 days of vigorous sanitizing - vigorous for a group of about 8 or 9.

7. Toilet paper from your house. Before I left, D rolled a bunch of it for me into Ziploc bags. She estimated how much each 'outing' would take. One more hint - you can roll one outings worth into the tube and save space that way. And yes, it did come in handy.

8. Your life will be easier if the electronics you bring run off normal batteries instead of having to be charged via an electrical outlet. Shavers, cameras, music players, etc. Bring double the amount of batteries you estimate. I used a set of new batteries for my digital camera every 3rd day and I took about 400 pictures in 12 days.

9. A flash drive or two with any important info.

10. Copies of passports and visa documents. Each of our leaders had copies of both [and emergency contact info.] I also scanned in passports and sent the images to my email.

11. Journal and extra pens.

12. American money. If for nothing else, to show and give away.

13. Hair clips and scrunchies for little girls - to give away.

14. Insect repellent. Let me just say that I hate wearing repellent. But this Off Active stuff isn't too bad. And you don't want to get malaria. So buy it, bring it and wear it.

Wednesday Potpourri

** Globally, overweight people now outnumber the undernourished. There are one billion overweight adults and 800 million undernourished. Link via BoingBoing.

** AfriGadget blog - a blog about solving everyday problems with African ingenuity. Also via BoingBoing.

** Church Planter reading list. Good list of books and I think not limited to just church planters. Via Jordon.

** EarthWallpapers.org, a collection of wallpaper from Google Maps photos. Via Kottke.

Intern First Steps

This year's SPACEintern gathered a few of her friends a few weekends ago and went into downtown DC to hang out in the city, make a few waves and impact a few people. Her team went to the city with no set agenda - rather it was more of an exploratory outing. Sounds like something SPACE would be a part of huh? This non-agenda approach concerned her dad a bit and I can relate to that. They had a good time, were able to bless a few strangers and it was a generally positive experience. [Read more here.]

Here are a few things that are off the top of my head regarding this outing:
1 - KCoats has initiative and this isn't just a pipe dream. I know I've said it here before - tons of people have tons of ideas but don't do anything about them. Not with her - she is taking the initiative and trying tons of stuff out. It's a good thing.

2 - It is important to say that, although random acts of service are great, there is greater value in learning from people and organizations serving in a full time basis in the community. Acts of service are a great way for people to be exposed to the realities around them and to grow in that kind of mindset. Taking people and giving them an environment to learn from ministries that live and serve full time is an opportunity for us to grow to the next level.

3 - In light of #2, we are going to make her have a bit more structure for the next few outings. The structure will be that she and her team are serving with organizations and groups that have ministries, plans and firm strategies. I see a progression for her that ties ministries and organizations first and then more movement second.

AWNM - Abundance

Just a few more from A Whole New Mind about abundance...

- During much of the twentieth century, the aspiration of most middle-class Americans was to own a home and a car. Now more than two out of three Americans own the homes in which they live. In fact, some 13% of homes purchased today are second homes. As for autos, today the US has more licensed drivers - which means that on average, everybody who can drive has a car of his own.
- Self-storage -a business devoted to providing a people a place to house their extra stuff has become a $17B annual industry, larger than the motion picture business.
- When we can't store our many things, we just throw them away. The United States spends more on trash bags than ninety other countries spend on everything. In other words, the receptacles of our waste cost more than all of the goods consumed by nearly half of the world's nations - Polly LaBarre

End of Summer 2006 Mission - Media

Sorry it's taken a little while but I've finally uploaded some media related to our summer mission teams. Both the video and audio here are from the Mission team reports held at GCC on Sunday, August 20.

Video - developed by the GCC video team.
Audio - from the 1st service. Cameroon starts at about 8:27.

Rendezvous #1

Culture and Cities
Fact 1 - What does the Bible mean when it says "Nations"
http://www.thetravelingteam.org/2000/world/8_print.txt

Fact 2 - Cities - A Strategic Mission Field
Link

Fact 3 - County Census - 2005 - Foreign Born Population
Howard County Census - 2005 - Foreign Born Population
http://tinyurl.com/fmf6y

After reading these three factoids, we had to go around our mall with a magic marker and a transparency print out world map and ask random people to show us where they were born. The image above is the three transparencies on top of each other, showing all the countries that we met people from - right in our mall. Pakistan, Nepal, India, Korea, Chile, Peru, Mexico, China, Russia, England, Ireland, Germany, and one country in Africa. Notice also that the 10/40 window is roughly outlined.

You will hopefully be seeing some of the students adding comments this coming week - their homework was to intentionally meet someone from another culture face to face AND share that with a virtual online culture.

AWNM - Symphony

I've been working through "A Whole New Mind" by Daniel Pink and it has been a fascinating read. It is a book that deals with our culture in light of the global landscape, gaps in our primal human instincts due to changes in culture, technology and economics, and the skills you and I and our kids are going to need in order to be successful as our culture and the world is transforming. Some people classify it as a business book - I think it's much, much more. Most readers of this blog would enjoy it.

The first section is on background - what Mr. Pink refers to as the movement from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. The second section focuses on six 'senses', specific skills that will help people effectively engage and be successful in this new Conceptual Age. In many ways, the six senses are the primal human urges that the Information Age forced out of our culture, the six senses being Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play and Meaning. Just read over the list and compare it to the high-tech, linear, get-it-done world we are used to. I think you will agree that they have been missing from our culture and there is a groundswell to get them back. Each sense has a chapter devoted to it and - this is what I loved - has a section in the back called 'Portfolio' which includes a bunch of resources and exercises for you to look up in order to get better at that sense.

I particular was entranced by the chapter on Symphony - I think because I have that Arranger strength. Here are some of my notes:

Symphony is the ability to put together the pieces. It is the capacity to synthesize rather than to analyze; to see relationships between seemingly unrelated fields; to detect broad patterns rather than to deliver specific answers; and to invent something new by combining elements nobody else thought to pair.
Automation has taken over many of the routine analytic tasks that knowledge workers once performed. Many of those tasks are also heading to Asia, where they can be done equally well for much less. That is freeing and in some cases forcing professionals to do what computers and low-wage foreign technicians have a more difficult time replicating: recognizing patterns, crossing boundaries to uncover hidden connections and making bold leaps of imagination. [Idea of pattern recognition the true sign of intellgience.]
1. Boundary Crosser - develop expertise in multiple spheres, speak different languages, and they find joy in the rich variety of human experience.
offshoring creates demand for people who can manage the relationship between the coders in the East and the clients in the West - literate in two cultures, comfortable in both the hard science of computing and the soft science of sales and marketing, able to move between different, sometimes antagonistic groups with the ease of a diplomat. Boundary crossers reject either/or choices and seek multiple options and blended solutions. They lead hyphenated lives filled with hyphenated jobs and enlivened by hyphenated identities. Those who possess this talent often elude traditional gender role stereotyping. As Samuel Taylor Coleridge said two hundred years ago and as boundary crossers remind us today, great minds are androgynous.

2. The Inventor - The journey from innovation to commodity is so swift that successful individuals and organizations must be relentless. Most inventions and breakthroughs come from reassembling existing ideas in new ways.

3. The Metaphor Maker - metaphor - understanding one thing in terms of something else/imaginative rationality/Metaphorical imagination is essential in forging empathic connections and communicating

Big Picture
The boundary crosser, the inventor and the metaphor maker all understand the importance of relationships. But the Conceptual Age also demands the ability to grasp the relationships between relationships. Systems thinking, gestalt thinking, holistic thinking. Simply the big picture.

Fun book, you guys would enjoy it. Oh and... I wrote Mr. Pink a little email with some questions and he wrote back with a phenomenal response. Very cool.

Leader Share

Thought up these questions the other night for something sort of related to SPACE - feel free to share your answers...

1 - Name a leader you look up [can be someone you know personally or not] to and the character attribute you most admire about them. [You don't have to name them here if you don't want to.]

2 - Envision the future of your community of faith in 15 years - what is the biggest impact you would have made on it and what compels you about this area of impact?

3 - In what area of gifting, talent or character have you grown in within the past 10 years?

Mission Advance 1.1

D and I have had lots of ideas floating around our heads this weekend about SPACE for this year. It's been both surprising and interesting to me. By the end of the summer, I was pretty toasted and unrealistically wondering what viability SPACE really had left in it. In other words, it was a phenomenal summer but I was pretty spent.

This weekend was definitely a rebound. The meeting I had on Saturday was so energizing and a lot of thinking has been catalyzed because of those discussions. So, here is the first piece of some of it.

If we have enough viable summer teams this summer, we are going to do Mission Advance again. Call me crazy but I'm not. During the actual weekend, some people heard me mutter that I would never do it again. But I was dead wrong and it only took 3 months for me to really see it clearly. [Pass the word on to other people that I was wrong....]

Here are some expanded thoughts about the weekend:
- Everyone involved loves the idea of teams going away together to get to know each other and that will continue to be one of the central goals. The other goals also remain the same [some missions prep topics, some kind of community impact, formal and informal group building and dynamics.]
- We will strive to make the destination every year different - build the unknown to make it more fun and different - much of the same feeling that you get on a missions trip.
- We will toy around with the idea of doing Mission Advance in an urban setting.
- We will make it a hard requirement for team members and leaders - ie if you can't go on the weekend, you can't go on the actual summer team.
- We will attempt to get some students involved in facilitating one of the discussion/workshop pieces.
- I will ask for more help for the weekend and I will ask a lot earlier.

One Month

Well, one month ago, August the 4th, I was in Cameroon. On that day, we toured a local trade school, had lunch in town and attended the first high school small groups the Navigators ever had in Yaounde. [See more from the Cameroon Metapost.] Yesterday, I emptied my Cameroonian bag of the straw that it was made from and double ziploc bagged it and wrote on the bag, "The Smell of Africa." Ah, the smell.

Today is an American holiday called Labor Day, originally devoted to the American worker. Nowadays, in addition to a welcome holiday off of work, it has become more of a symbol that summer is over, school has started and life has gotten back to some sort of routine. And the real time to apply all the convictions you got from your summer mission experiences to your life in the day to day.

Photo: the bag the Cameroonian Navs gave me, along with the bottles of Purrell I emptied while I was there.

SPACE Rendezvous

Rendezvous is the name of our new SPACE gathering - one of the ideas that we are going to experiment with this year. This gathering will focus on investing in students that have been a part of our summer teams and/or are students interested in global cultures, cross cultural mission and the future of the Church. These gatherings are one of the key strategies in our slight change in direction for SPACE this year and I think it's going to be really cool to see how it works out. The essence will be to invest in these kids in those aforementioned areas - culture, mission and the future - but also give a slight spin to those topics towards some kind of leadership development. The gathering is going to be in two parts - information and action. Not only will the students learn something [I hope], they are going to have to go and do something about it - both right then that evening and also the next week. And I like that the name we are using is French. Ha.

Here are the details for Rendezvous #1:
Friday Sept 8
7.30-9.30pm
Meet in the food court at Columbia Mall - in front of McDonalds. Bring a pen, a little extra money and a journal or notebook.

Incidentally, last Friday for the first CpR Friday, SM and all the kids that showed up went out in the pouring rain and blessed two other youth ministries in the county. I wasn't able to go to the beginning as they went out, but was able to show up at the end when they closed the night with some prayer and worship. Many of the students told me it was the best Friday night ever. GCC's student ministry is transforming into an epicenter of sending.

Don't think church, think mission!- The Shaping of Things to Come

Technorati tags:: student+missions, The+Shaping+of+Things+to+Come

A Saturday for the Future

I spent over 2 hours this morning doing some evaluation about our summer trips with a select few people. This morning, the elder at GCC in charge of missions, his wife who is the head of the Missions Task Force, a lady who is the coordinator for adult short term trips and myself had some deep discussions about this past summer and planning for the future.

The topics we discussed included an evaluation of each trip from this summer [GCC had a total of 7 trips - our 5 SPACE teams and Uganda and Honduras,] Finances, Leadership Development and Training. We also tried to do an honest evaluation for each trip - should we go back, was a short term team part of their overall strategy, how did the concept of a locally, indigenous team working with the ministry fit in with the trip. All in all, a really fun discussion because each one of us are passionate about how GCC can be mobilizing workers for the world.

Here is a short list of things we decided to do in the future:
- Find a locally based travel agent and use them for all of our travel logsitics. Must ensure that they can get 'missionary' rates. Also, apparently British Airways allows you to check in 3 bags instead of 2 if you are a missionary or something like that.
- As support funding comes in, that information should go directly to the team members, instead of relying on the team leaders to get the information out. This will allow for team members to know their support status faster and is just as easy over email.
- Target knowing what overseas teams are going in a January timeframe. [They were all laughing at me when we were talking about this...]
- Attempt to have people that might be interested in short term trips make themselves known to the MTF in the Fall.

It was not, at first, at the top of my list on what I wanted to do on a Saturday morning. But there is definitely an organic movement of people in our church that are interested in going on short-term trips. I know that our discussion is going to help frame how GCC is going to get even better as a church that is serious about sending people and helping create churches for the future.

End of Summer 2006

Well happy readers, sorry its been so sparse here. We've had our first week of school, I thought I should spend a little more time on my career and getting up in the middle of the night with the puppy has been - er - interesting. Anyway, the school year has started and SPACE is going to change a bit like I alluded to in a previous post. I'm excited to try a few more new things.

Since it's now September, I thought I would officially close out the summer with this post. Most of you know our summer was phenomenal. We took SPACE to a new level this summer and it wasn't just incremental change - it was scary change. This new plateau is based on a few things. The two biggest things were almost doubling the number of students we sent on summer teams [and the associated financials to support these teams almost doubled as well] and implementing Mission Advance - a weekend away to prepare kids and build their teams. Both were huge. The other aspect to this summer was the trip to Cameroon. I think we broke new ground with the level of risk and unknown we allowed student teams to embrace. The idea of a student team going to Africa was a big emotional block for many, me included. But this summer proved it could be done if all the right circumstances lined up for it. I'm not saying that our students should now go anywhere and everywhere, but I think the mere sending of a team to Africa will open up our imagination even more for the future.

Finances have been foremost on my mind this week - trying to close the summer and ending up in the black. Our total expenses were broken down by something like this:
Cameroon - $30,103.41
LA - $10,463.53
DC - $6,840.00
Merge - $4939.00
Grand total - $52,345.94
[The LC team is a self-funding team since we don't pay hardly any expenses to go and serve there and the kids pay a flat fee to go.]

When I got home from Cameroon, I was really worried about our financial status - we were way in the red. My beloved wife, who has this weird gift of faith when I don't, was always confident. And the good news is that we are very close - less than $400 I think. And rumor has it that at least that amount came in via GCC's general offering for summer missions. And overall support raising for the summer included over 630 individual contributions. Amazing.

If you gave financially or prayed for a team or hung out with a student or thought about me or read this blog - THANK YOU - you were a huge part of what we did this summer and you invested a lot in the future.

Besides the standard mission team stuff, you should be proud of these two investments:
- a hotel room in Paris so a bunch of students could tell me, "That was the best shower I have EVER had," after ten days in Africa.
- a full scholarship for a leader to help lead his team after the sudden passing of his father this past spring.

And two more stories...
Our team in LA...
CUt said he had been praying about the trip and a name kept coming to him, Miguel. Wouldn't you know he met a Miguel the first day that he really connected with. They became best of friends, having conversations in Spanish sharing stories, Miguel telling CUt his plans and dreams, playing soccer and basketball and just hanging out. The way CUt loved on Miguel and other kids you sensed that he belonged there in many different ways. God speaks and CUt intently listened.

Our team in DC...
One of our team leaders along with the CSM host got into a slight scuffle at one of the ministry sites - and one of the other parties had a gun. The gun was never fired, everyone was totally safe and it was quite an interesting situation. Luckily, none of our students were there and our leader handled it great. CSM also did a great job with the DC police and making sure our team was both physically and emotionally healthy. After our team was told about the incident they were given the option the next day to go back to the same ministry site where the incident happened or to a different one. They all chose to go back to the same place, because they felt compelled to be light in the dark. The one who blesses others is abundantly blessed; those who help others are helped. Prov 11:25

Photos: all of our teams at the beach; SF, Miguel, and CUt; KQ tutoring.

Blog Day 2006

In honor of Blog Day 2006, here are 5 blogs that I haven't linked to before. I know - a rather eclectic mix. Enjoy.

Ben Saunders | Adventurer, Athlete, Motivational Speaker - And some awesome pictures

Metacool

Floyd and Sally McClung - If you have taken Perspectives, you will recognize the name

Escape From Cubicle Nation

Blue Passport - who I picked up from Dennis

Technorati tags:: blogday

Disturb me

Disturb us, Lord, when
we are too pleased with ourselves.
When our dreams have come true
because we dreamed too little.
When we arrived safely
because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
we have lost our thirst
for the waters of life.
Having fallen in love with life,
we have ceased to dream of eternity.
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
we have allowed our vision
of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly.
To venture on wilder seas
where storms will show Your mastery.
Where losing sight of land,
we shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
the horizons of our hopes;
and to push back the future
in strength, courage, hope, and love.

This we ask in the name of our Captain,
who is Jesus Christ. - Sir Francis Drake

via Marc van der Woude

First Day 2006-2007

Congrats to all of you out there that started your first day of school today - Kindergarteners all the way to college kids. May this year be an incredible year as you impact your friends on the way to changing the world.

Photo: K - 3rd grade, E - Kindergarten.

Evolving for 2006-2007

I'm freshly back from the Youth Leaders Retreat this past weekend. One of the marks of our ministry that I love is that we take our student ministry leaders away for a planning/prepping weekend every August. It's a little hectic for me, because I've only been back from Africa for three weeks. But nontheless, ready or not, this school year is starting. And I think it's going to be a much different year for SPACE. We must keep in mind that our ministry to students - "our ministry" like yours if you are a dteam leader or pass out Bibles on Sundays or drive kids to the Mall for movies - our ministry to students must be open to changing and evolving and looking to the future.

With that said, this year is going to be different because the overall student ministry has evolved a bit. When we first started SPACE one goal was to provide environments where students could serve the community. Over the past three years, there has been a slow, subtle movement towards empowering students to serve their community on their own - over the whole student ministry. The momentum erupted this past summer with TNTs for high school students, where kids were sent out into the community in teams with the intention and purpose for doing random acts of kindness. Additionally, the same kind of thing has been happening on the middle school side, with service teams being formed and sent out during Light Company's Tuesday night CORE gathering.

Indigenous leadership is an important concept in cross-cultural ministry. When the local tribes or peoples or cultures start to do it themselves, the non-local mission person must find a way to step away. If they don't exit, they can do a disservice to the local, contextualized growing movement.

The interaction between SPACE and the students we serve is very similar and the same exit strategy is important here as well. Students are doing it themselves, in a way that three years ago they were not. And if we continue to provide opportunities, we can accidentally comparmentalize the notion of 'mission' [I don't need to help my friend today, I can just go on Saturday with SPACE] and relegate mission to a specific time period or a specific opportunity rather than a lifestyle.

What this means for SPACE this year is that we focus a bit less on the community service aspect compared to previous years. We are not going to plan any big scale Launches. Instead, we are going to help a bit more with some of the CpR Fridays - where there will be a similar thing - students being sent out into the community with their peers to make a difference. I think this give SPACE a little breathing room to focus on a bit more on global-mission-culture-future-of-Church kind of stuff this year. A part of that is going to be facilitating a monthly-or-so gathering of interested students from the summer teams to continue to invest in them towards the concepts of cross-cultural ministry, the realities of today's world and what the Church looks like in the future.

It's definitely a different school year and I am both really excited and a bit apprehensive. There is another huge aspect of impacting a community that involves not just random acts of kindness but non-random, strategically partnering with local, indigenous, incarnational ministries already living and ministering to their community. I think we can still definitely serve students and their leaders in helping be a resource for some of those ideas. But like every year, we are open to giving it a try and seeing how it works out.

This evolution is bittersweet. We had some amazing times launching kids into service and we have seen some incredible kids have their lives marked by service experiences, sending their future into a different trajectory. It will be hard to not be an intimate part of that. On the flip side, it's an important exit that we make. A lifestyle of mission has to be intrinsically motivated - not dependent on a ministry team or a segment of your life.

Here are the high level goals for this year. Much, much more about them later. And would love to hear some feedback from those of you that have been involved [and even those of you that haven't...]

goal: help to shape a student ethos of impact and mission - use momentum from SPACE summer teams and TNT to collide into CpR Fridays

goal : intentionally use SPACE as a medium to develop leaders that are creating leaders not just followers
KCoates
JBourq
summer team leaders

goal: give LC a presence from a SPACE resource
KCoates connecting with Spotlight teams

goal: continue to invest in SPACE kids - kids that have shown interest in global cultures, the future and cross cultural ministry

goal: continue to build missional/mission team leaders

goal: continue to send summer teams to GCC missionaries when we can and cultivate those relationships for long term perspective

goal: rearchitect the LC summer missions experience

goal: replace the MERGE missions experience with something more aligned with service and evangelism - targetting incoming 10th graders

goal: help facilitate an environment for KCoates to engage urban realities

Reference Questions for Potential Mission Orgs

Sorry I haven't been posting too much lately. If you come here with anticipation for new posts, sorry. But, trust me, there is definitely some cool stuff happening under the covers. Hope to tell you more about some of that soon.

In the meantime, I am a firm believer in getting reference checks. For summer team leaders, for potential small group leaders and especially for mission organizations one might be planning on interacting with.

Here are some reference questions I would ask - my personal commentary below the actual question. I have also broken up the questions into two sets - one for the organization and one for the references they give you. And yes - you will ask them for a list of five reference contacts, at least three of whom you will contact.

To the organization
1. What is your overall goal and motivation?
Probably on the web or application. But you want to hear it from someone interactively.
2. Describe one person who is a success in your eyes 5 years after they have been involved with your ministry.
What does success look like to them?
3. What kind of qualifications do your leaders have to have before they lead your teams?
Leadership=almost everything
4. What kind of retention rate do you have with your leaders?
Leadership=almost everything
5. How do you integrate local, indigenous ministry leadership with your outreach sites?
The fine balance between indigenous leadership and visiting teams doing outreach.

To the references they give you:
1. How was the food?
Important and can be indicative of how they treat their people - if they don't provide enough bagels, will they really care about something more important?
2. How did your team get along and what was done when to deal with team unity issues?
Certainly, there is going to be some issues.
3. What were some of the quality characteristics that you loved about your leaders?
Leadership=almost everything
4. What was the biggest change that occurred in your life from your experience?
5. Would you go again and if so, how would you prepare yourself better?

These are just a start - if you are checking out an organization or ministry, you should come up with at least three more on either set. And one more thing - not many of these deal with pure logistical and tactical issues (how many on a team, transportation, safety, etc.) These are more leadership, intention, life transformation questions.

EDIT
Amy M emailed and added a bit of her perspective too --
"How closely did the trip planners follow the stated plan? What kinds of deviations occurred and how were they handled?... I see root of this logistical issue in a leadership issue. Is the leader aware of the talents and abilities of the group and willing to use them to benefit the team? Is the leader willing to change the plans of the day in order to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit? How much of the focus of the leader is aimed at the needs of the group and how much is aimed at the needs of the leader."
Good questions good questions.

Wednesday Potpourri

** Foreign Service Institute Language Courses
Breathefire posts about original texts and audio files from the Foreign Service Institute language courses - used at one time to train government employees in foreign languages. The courses are now public domain information so it is okay that the courses are online.

Available Languages:
Cantonese
Mandarin
French
German
Greek
Portugese
Serbo-Croatian
Spanish
Turkish
http://fsi-language-courses.com/

** 10,000 new churches in the US?
Steve Addison posts about US church planting trends versus population growth.

Just to keep up with the current US population growth between 2000 and 2004, 10,000 more new churches were needed.

It's an interesting dynamic to keep these statistics in mind as well as compared around the world - like an estimated 1.25% of Christian mission giving is going to missions work in the 10/40 Window, and ninety-seven percent of the world's trained youth workers - mostly from the US I would suspect - live and work in the United States, ministering to less than 3% of the world’s youth population.

** Global Startup Ideas

1. Build cheap Wi-Fi networks for Brazilian resorts.
2. Become a biodiesel producer in Argentina.
3. Create an ad network for India's mobile content developers.
4. Launch an exclusive social network for Russian millionaires.
5. Open an American-style restaurant in one of China's fast-growing cities.
6. Remodel homes for China's burgeoning middle class.
7. Flip mining claims in Bolivia.
8. Export the planet's next great wines - from Greece.
9. Import fine wines to upscale restaurants - in India.
10. Export gourmet coffee from Rwanda.
11. Become a social entrepreneur in South Africa.
12. Be among the first to invest in the new Libya.

The cover story from the August issue of Business2.0. #2 and #5 sound awesome to me.

** Water Statistics

- $46 billion - Amount spent per year globally on bottled water
- $1.7 billion - Amount needed per year beyond current spending to provide clean drinking water to everyone on earth
- More than one billion - Number of people worldwide who lack reliable access to safe drinking water
- 80 - Percentage of world illnesses due to water-borne diseases

The full post from the Defeating Global Poverty blog

Post Trip Sunday

Our church services this morning heard about all of the summer mission teams that went out from GCC this summer. It was a lot of fun. All in all, GCC had seven teams this summer, five of them were student teams.

This morning's service included a video highlighting some people from each of the team and then some live interviews with three teams - Cameroon, Honduras and Uganda. There was also a baptism at the beginning of the service and following the interviews and video, Pastor M talked about the connection between giving and going at the end of Phil 4. Like a lot of times, I never thought about it the way he put it.

There will probably be some kind of media available - when I have some links, I will update this post.

It is really important we teach kids how to report back to the people that sent and supported them. Fun morning - wish you all could have been there.

Staring at 2006 - 2007

I can hardly believe it - but next school year is looming in our faces already. Regarding SPACE, it means that I'm late to the party in terms of thinking about next year. Because summer doesn't mean a break for SPACE people - in fact it means more work than through the year - it's a different kind of cycle than other people in the student ministry. So we will just do the best we can.

Here is a recap of goals from last year with some commentary. I'll be post something about 2006-2007 goals soon. HA.

2005-2006 goal: Build the next generation of mission leaders
3 year view picture:
2004:
3 teams (LC, NYC and DC) of 36 people
7 leaders - 5 of those were students - 71%
approx $7,500
2005:
3 teams (LC, Brasil and Trinidad) of 37 people
12 leaders - 10 were students - 84%
approx $27,000
2006:
5 teams (LC, Merge, DC, LA and Cameroon) of 68 people
20 leaders - 16 were students - 80%
approx $52,000

2005-2006 goal: Engage middle/high school students to impact GCC kidzone kids
implement: partner with children's ministry to run SPACEcamp, summer 2006
goal not met
unrealistic goal - a bit too large to pull off at this point in time - also with the move into the new building during 1/2006, not quite the right time
I believe this is still a long term goal - some kind of partnership with childrens ministry to do something very cool. Timing will be right eventually.

2005-2006 goal: Continue to provide missional, impactful community service environments
- DC - Sept - goal met - Baltimore homeless experience
- DC festival - Oct - goal met - Luis Palau festival with SPACE crew
- the raking bus - Nov - goal met
- Orbit - early Dec - goal met
not in original goal - CT winter expedition
not in original goal- Senior NYC mission weekend

2005-2006 goal: Continue to send summer teams to GCC missionaries
goal met with Cameroon and LC teams

Intern Reading

If you are interested in reading what our new intern is reading these days...

- from a earlier this summer - some of you may have read these already:
1 - Organic Multiplication
2 - Self awareness as a leader
3 - Leadership Lessons from Paul

- and more currently:
ServLife's global resource links
Two Roles of a Mission Leader
The Art of Self Leadership
The Secrets of Great Groups

Welcome home Phoebe

Romans 16

Sort of a Break?

Alright, I'm not quite taking a break. If you haven't noticed, I'm doing a lot on blogger, just back dating. It is a huge deal for me to write up posts regarding the recent trip. Huge but very good for me, I process well when I write. Very theraputic for me. Check out the Cameroon Metapost for when posts get updated.

Besides the posting about our trip, I'm trying to come as close as I can to closing the summer financially. We are still a significant amount away, it's going to be close. And that PrayingMantis - he sent me, among other things, an Amadeo Church tattoo. Not your father's pastor.

I've had this stomach thing since August 2. It's been more annoying than anything and has required some rather sharp eyes while traveling. I took my worm medicine that the Nens gave us and I think it might have cleared it up. Now, about those hamburgers I have been craving.

D is away for the weekend at Women of Faith in CT. On Saturday we are getting a new puppy - and yes, she knows. Believe it or not it was her idea.

Read this article entitled Rise of the Aerotropolis. Significant impact on human culture and connection.

FZ emailed me a response to a question I had for her that said, "I thought you were taking a break." I would love to take a break, but the world doesn't have much time left....

2006 Cameroon - Metapost

Thursday July 27, Day 2
Friday July 28, Day 3
Saturday July 29, Day 4
Sunday July 30, Day 5
Monday July 31, Day 6
Tuesday August 1, Day 7
Wednesday August 2, Day 8
Ask the Cameroonian Missionary
Thursday August 3, Day 9
Friday August 4, Day 10
Saturday August 5, Day 11
Sunday August 6, Day 12
It All Means... [tony's personal debriefing]

Photos: The plaque on the bottom of the wood engraving of the country of Cameroon, the wood engraving. A gift from the Navigator team in Yaounde Cameroon to GCC, Maryland.

Photo sets:20060726Cameroon flickr photoset, Webshots[warning over 900 pictures there]

LB's cultural observations - part 1 and part 2

Home Sweet Home

We are home. It's great. The trip was an amazing experience and it's going to take me a while to process throught it.
In the meantime, I'm taking a blog and SPACE break. I'll be working through the trip via posts on the blog that will be back-dated. But other than that, no other kinds of posting. SPACE also needs to sit on the shelf for a little while - so if you are trying to get a hold of me regarding something SPACE-related, be patient, I will get back to you but its going to take a little while.
See you in a few weeks maybe.