Easter 2013

+ In Florida.
+ It took us 3 planes to get our direct flight there.
+ Cocoa Beach was only in the 60s. [cold]
+ Disney's electric light parade and the fireworks were as good as you remember them.
+ I had the good fortune to connect with two of Ember's dear friends while in O-Town.
+ Seaworld sells some expensive dead fish. But they are worth it.

Friday Burn

::: Catching Up with the Global Church
Link


::: Doctor hacks his iPhone to detect parasites
Link


::: Should Britain let go of London?
Link


::: The goal is NOT to turn Kampala into Chicago. The goal is to help both Kampala and Chicago to look more like the New Jerusalem. @NoelCCDA @Fikkert

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."

Announcing 2013 Wendy AZ

Ember is delighted to help facilitate our good friend Wendy serving with Amadeo Church in Queen Creek AZ this summer for 6 weeks. Wendy has been the ring leader with a community of college students at Salisbury Uni who have a consistent presence among different community impact projects near campus. and we've worked with her 5 or 6 different times through various missions/service/leadership events and weekends. She's the kind of global leader you want to hang around - funny, compassionate and convinced that she should serve others because she has been served.

We are expectant to hear some great stories about Wendy and Amadeo - both are going to bless each other like crazy.

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.

Friday Burn

::: Global Cities of the Super Rich
Link


::: 4 Lessons to Learn For Every Missional Leader
Link


::: America's Fastest and Slowest Growing Cities
Link


::: ‏Too many churches are more concerned about keeping their traditions than they are about reaching their grandchildren. @jdgreear
#Advance13

Photo: Plane bathroom selfie. 2006, I think.

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.

Book Notes - Tradecraft

A few years ago, I outlined some training notes for future student missionaries called The Global Leader Guide. Instead, I should have just waited for Tradecraft: For the Church on Mission written by Larry McCrary and some of his friends at The Upstream Collective. Many of the concepts in the book are right on target with ideas that Ember believes students should be exposed to and taught - its wonderful to see it all put together. I think Tradecraft may become essential for us.

Some of the these concepts include:
::: people of peace

Jesus did not send out the 70 with a mission to find a partcular few who would be persons of peace, per se. He had sent them out to represent the Kingdom and proclaim its message, which would inevitably lead them to those whom God had prepared, immediate or not.

Now, the person might well be a person of high reputation, as were Cornelius, Lydia, the Ethiopian enuch and others. But consider the demon-possessed slave girl with the spirit of divination, or the Gerasenes man among the tombs with an unclean spirit. No one was able to bind him anymore. But everyone knew of him. He was a person of reputation, and he manifested himself to be a person of peace. [Expanding on the idea that persons of peace have a reputation but it might not need be a good one.]

::: indigenous

Model - Assist - Watch - Leave

::: mapping

Mapping is an invaluable skill for all ministries... As you study the city, you come to understand its people. This is the first step in incarnation - putting yourself in the shoes of those to whom you want to minister....Ideally your map would have at least three layers: geographic, social and spiritual.

::: exegeting culture

Andrew Jones, missionary, blogger, and global nontraditional church guru, has often said that his job is to 'throw parties and tell stories.' Thom Wolf taught that the missionary's role is to retell people's stories back to them in light of the gospel. This is very good missionary tradecraft indeed: find out what people are talking about, and show them how it all relates to the Most High God.

: contextualization

For the sake of mission, contextualization means adjusting how we communicate the gospel so that people do not need to join a new culture in order to hear and understand the message.

One final thought - the Following the Spirit chapter was very thought provoking for me. It's a chapter devoted to missions strategy and makes the case for following the Holy Spirit, especially at the beginning of trying to define a strategy for a church or organization. I really appreciated the chapter, especially since I've been involved in a lot of this recently. I wish the chapter gave more structure to this idea, but that's the exact problem they are writing about. Sometimes we want exact directions when it's a lot more 'mystical' than that.

Thanks Larry and Upstream for writing this book.

Disclosure: I was provided a copy of this book for review purposes.

The First

support donation for our family for 2013. Always, always humbling.

My 2013 Creative Revenue Plan(s)

Ember believes that missionaries of the future will rely on a 'portfolio of revenue.' [credit for this term goes to Ben Arment.] In other words, they will need to actually make some money outside of personal donations. As part of this summer, our team is required to dream and execute a Creative Revenue Plan - a way to make some income based on their talents and gifts. This unique income will go directly towards the funding of their missions experience. Prayer and financial support letters are also required.

My 2013 plan is as follows:
+ I will offer a single Myers Briggs Type Indicator workshop. This workshop can be for individuals, couples, families or teams of up to 10 people. The MBTI is a well known personality test that organizes people into 16 different personality types, based on the temperaments of 4 domains. In this highly interactive session, we will cover individuals and their types as well as how the types interact in your specific context, including your organizations goals, structure and culture.
+ The workshop will last for 2 hours and must be within 60 miles of the 21044 zip code. I will come to your location.
+ Rates are as follows: $40 per person for 1-5 people, $30 per person for 6-10 people. Payments are to be paid to The Ember Cast, Inc. All of this goes directly to support The Ember 2013 X team.
+ I will provide all handouts for you and your team.
+ Participants will take the test in advance - the session will only interact with people who have completed the test.
+ Although I'm not officially certified as an MBTI practitioner, I've walked hundreds of people through this personality assessment in over 20 years of working with the test. It's one of my favorite things to do with teams. The test you will take is not official, but will still score with a high degree of accuracy.

My Plan B, which has been executing for quite some time now, is that I have a guy that stays at my house during most work weeks. He likes to make a very nice contribution to Ember and it's a win/win because he saves on hotel charges and gets a tax deduction while Ember gets some very generous funding.

Friday Burn

::: Is the future of church planting bi-vocational?
Great article on both the traditional full time planter as well as embracing new bi-vocational roles.
Link


::: Is National Community Church's Mark Batterson the Most Innovative Pastor in America?
Great read on NCC.
Link


::: Chris Tomlin - the most sung artist on the planet
For perspective, consider Tomlin's musical success against one secular counterpart. In 2012, Katy Perry's record sales dwarfed Tomlin's, but Billboard reported her songs were played 1.4 million times on the radio. Using CCLI's low-end calculation, Tomlin's songs were played 3.12 million times in churches.
Link


::: Doctor Who 'Cured' Baby With HIV Is Former Christian Missionary
Not just a great story, but a great example of vocation and calling.
Link


::: Micro loans can lead to organ trafficking.
Link


::: Talk doesn't cook rice. - Chinese Proverb @revtrev

Photo: the audience at a recent student missions kick off gathering. via Terahgram.

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]

Tribal

Many missionaries employ a methodology that relies strictly on a one-to-one proclamation of the gospel. The thinking, of course, is that a decision to follow Christ is personal and individual. However , as tribally-connected people, we are limited in our capacity to process major life decisions on our own. Tribal people do much of their thinking in community.

- Tradecraft: For the Church on Mission

Ember X Team Meeting #1

First Ember X team meeting this past weekend, except two of our great team were missing. Love this team.

Our meeting included talking about the 7 better behaviors from the Short Term Missions Workbook, looking at maps, talking about support raising and getting ready to execute everyone's Creative Revenue Plans [very excited to tell you more about these later...]

Here are some rough notes, as always, steal what you want.

[Related: 2012AZ team mtg #1, 2010AZ mtg #3, 2008Hungary mtg #3, 2007Hungary mtg #3, 2006Cameroon mtg #3, 2005Brasil mtg #1]

Friday Burn

::: I don't want a big tree. But I don't want a small tree either. I want an orchard.
Mike Breen on success versus faithfulness.
Link


::: Who Owns Leadership Development?
Link


::: B environment merits B effort
Managers who complain about slacking staff without examining their work environment are deluded. Being a slacker is not an innate human quality, it's a product of the habitat.
Link


::: 28 learnings from a month of online fundraising
Really insightful stuff from DJ as he transitions and looks at appropriate fundraising
Link

Photo: Never, ever, wing it. Instead, have a plan A and B, or more. [This was not the case here either.]

Moving Violations on Mission

A parting gift from Yonkers... Illegal right turn on red.... But trust me with your kids...

Team Training Tools - Tuckman

High performance teams go through the following stages, outlined by Bruce Tuckman: forming, storming, norming, performing. As a team leader, it's pretty vital for you to understand this cycle. Your team will go through it. You get to choose whether they do it before you get to the mission field or when you get there.

Photo: Vienna, Austria, Hungary 2008.

Announcing Grace AZ 2013

I'm very proud to announce the Grace AZ 2013 missions experience that Ember is involved with. When we first imagined The Ember Cast, one of the reasons for its existence would be the connecting of various like minded people in order to share resources and collaborate for better practices, all in an effort to mobilize more students for missional leadership. The Grace AZ experience is a good representation of this desire becoming a reality.

This project is a collaboration between two organizations that are our friends - Ben Cloud from Amadeo Church and the Love Moves student missions team at Grace. Ember's responsibilities include helping with the diverse and various tasks when putting an experience together like this - tasks such as helping form the vision of the team, facilitating partnerships between organizations, and staffing leadership. I'm also delighted to tell you that Emily Swinburne, one of our very capable Ember guides, will be our guide for this team, working with two leaders from Grace. You might remember Emily being with us in AZ in 2010.

Lots of fun for us to help execute this project. Side note - this team is all girls. Eventually, the boys will catch up...

Related: 2005AZ, 2010AZ, 2012AZ

We Celebrated

With Kellan and Ashley last night.

Friday Burn

::: Why I Left World Vision for Finance
This week's must read on calling, vocation and theology of place.
Link


::: Leaders and the Questions They Ask
My favorites:
4. How do you encourage creative thinking within your organization?
10. How do you help a new employee understand the culture of your organization?
19. What are you doing to ensure you continue to grow and develop as a leader?
Link via Leslie


::: The reality for practically all denominations is that the time has come when the M.Div model of leadership is no longer tenable
If the North American church is to become a missionary movement in our culture, it will need a leadership that is not primarily shaped by executive, administrative and expert roles. These leaders will need to become more like Abbot and Abbesses; men and women whose vocation is cultivating local movements of God's people.
Link


::: Lessons on Leading
So good.
1) Great leadership is measured not by the number of people a leader manages, but by the number of people that leader inspires.
5) The more you give, the more you give.
Leaders recognize that we should feel 60% mastery and 40% stretch in our jobs at any given time
Link


::: Literacy will not be defined by those who cannot read and write, but by those who cannot learn and relearn. - Alvin Tofler @johnsonwhitney


Photo: The back row of Ember guides.

Announcing Ember X

Ember is traveling with a team to Aix-en-Provence, France this coming July. The team that we have assembled is an amazing group of young people interested in global missions, leading in the future global matrix and marking human history. Our partners are a fantastic team that have been in Aix [pronounced 'X'] for a good few years seeking to bless their city as well as another team coming from Austin. The work we will be doing involves a camp the church in Aix runs for their community every summer.

You might be saying, "yeah pretty rough - a missions trip to southern France." And you might be right. But regardless of what you think, Ember is executing this project because for this summer, this is the best method for this fantastic group of young people to deeply learn from world class global leaders and apply their learning real time. This summer sends these students on a trajectory to learn, serve and lead for a confusing and foggy future that will be pluralistic, massively diverse, post modern, post Christian and culturally distant from almost every existing expression of Church in 2013. In case you haven't noticed, Ember is committed to helping students like these connect with the best global leaders we can find.

You want to change the future - watch these students and learn from them. Obviously, I'm telling you more about them and Ember X soon.

Matt Beach

Matt Beach found out about Ember on the internet somehow a few months ago. He left me a comment and then we started interacting over Twitter and got connected about nonprofits, catalytic leadership and stuff like that. Come to find out that we are very similar, he's been leading and teaching a church community of college students and young adults for thirteen years... in addition to working a full time job with lots of required travel while also taking care of a wife and young children.

The picture is from this past Sunday when he interviewed me via Skype with his class, talking about leadership, starting an organization, reflecting on the 3:12:120 idea and why I started Ember and what kind of impact we have made. It was a fun time and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Loved connecting with Matt and all that he is doing for his faith community and those young adults, especially with his recent focus of trying to help his young people make a difference in the world, hence the theme of catalyst and catalytic leadership. Did I mention that he's been doing this for thirteen years? Maybe some of us need to be interviewing him...

Notes - Bay Area Missions Kickoff

Fabulous time with the missions people at Bay Area Comm Church on Saturday. Always appreciate Casely and his team and the way they prepare their teams for mission.

My rough talk was about the big changes in missions happening right now and three big ones that we should think about during our experiences this summer. Here are my slides - as always, steal what you want.

Friday Burn

::: RIP Howard Hendricks, the Prof at Dallas Theological Seminary for 60 years
*Observation, Interpretation, Application.
*Leaders are readers, and readers are leaders.
The measure of you as a leader is not what you do, but what others do because of what you do.
Link
And... my pastor Mark Norman was hugely influenced by the Prof. So all you GRACE people... you are too.
* - I've used these phrases a ton of times but didn't realize where they came from until yesterday.


::: Twitter Languages Mapped in NYC
Link


::: When Culture Turns into Policy
Link
But I disagree with the last bullet, "Culture simply happens—it isn't created."


::: "If what I do has no consequences it doesn't make me free. It makes me meaningless." -Dick Foth @NCC

Photo: trash can, shopping mall in Londrina, Brasil

Team Training Tools - Service Project

Take your team to do some kind of community service project. You'll learn about each other, what it is like to work together and how to communicate. You will probably even have a lot of fun and the experience will probably normalize your team a bit. [That may feel bad but it is good.]

Happiest

Happy 40-something today to my wife Deanna love of my life.

It's been a difficult few years with your health but you continue to inspire us all with your resolve to do the right things even when they are difficult and unpleasant. You give us all hope - hope that we too can persevere when the road is bleak.

You love your family well and we are blessed for it. Your mark on the future is bright as you help launch your children, continue to be patron for the next generation and keep me grounded in some sort of reality ;-).

Here's to a fabulous next 40-something year. LOVE

Pump It Up

The insulin pump - after a long wait - is here.

Connecting the dots

Bay Area Community Church is an church we love to work with - they have a high value getting their people involved in global missions. Trevin, one of our Ember guides, recently took a part time job there and he's serving as a point person for a short term training thing we are going to do there. And their missions pastor is one of the best around, with the unique perspective of a man raised in Africa serving in suburbia on the East Coast.
Because...
I was sent a job opening at Bay Area and passed it on to Trevin.
Because...
In April 2011, I ran a short workshop talking about mission trips, how to build teams and how they change us. It was my first time working with Casely, missions pastor at Bay Area.
Because...
I met LeilaB, who introduced me to Casely, missions pastor at Bay Area Community Church. Leila, at that time, was working as Casely's executive assistant.
Because...
I attended a dinner at Dave Shive's house with a bunch of young 20 something adults where the main conversation topic was old school churches, global missions and the emerging generation. Dave is a well known missions guy around DC and Baltimore, teaching at Washington Bible College for years as well as a Perspectives instructor, also for many years.
Because...
Dave and I met at the Advancing Churches in Missions conference in November 2010. It was one of the last formal gatherings the organization would host.
Because...
I was invited to give a workshop at the ACMC conference in November of 2010, the day after I held the very first board of directors meeting for Ember. Lots of energy that weekend.
Because...
In the summer of 2010, I got an invitation on LinkedIn from Joe Steinitz, who was well connected in the global missions arena around the Baltimore/DC area. We had lots of mutual friends and had met here and there on a few occasions.

Seth Godin is right - we have moved from the industrial economy to the connection economy. Don't miss that.

[This post inspired by this post.]

Friday Burn

::: The cost of living around the world
Tokyo is number one.
Link
Related - What is Middle Class in Manhattan.


::: Some people in Hong Kong live in cages
Link


::: Top 10 reasons why our kids leave church
Link via Amy


::: Disappearing Middle Class Neighborhoods in Baltimore
Link


::: Always take the chicken. (Advice after flying 1,000,000 miles of global trips) @RickWarren

Not All Suburban Kids Belong with the Poor

There is this unspoken belief nowadays that to really follow Jesus, you must sell everything and move in to live with the poor. To be a real missionary, to make a real impact, to really live your faith, you should give up everything suburban, move to a rundown part of a global city and live in an abandoned building. Now don't get me wrong, there are elements of this that are true and right - incarnation, sacrifice, community, and serving others because of the One who served us. But it's not unilaterally the best for everyone. Following Jesus is much more contextual than that and this concept is dangerous when applied to everyone.

Let me tell you about a few high school boys I met last month. There is John, who is building an ATV for his senior project. Once it is built, he will program it to autonomously parallel park itself. Then there is Paul, who has three years of real experience with graphic design and 3d motion graphics, which he learned pretty much on his own. And then there is George, who was, at one time, the fastest high school senior in the nation when it came to running the mile and has a lot of interest in civil engineering. I know I talk about potential of the emerging generation all the time, but even this was a little crazy. I would bet that any of these three boys, all who have a vibrant and dynamic faith, along with all kinds of suburban young people that you and I both know, could do a myriad of things with their future. Have semi-normal successful careers, invent something amazing, invest their time, talents and money in something incredible that could benefit hundreds or thousands of people or more. You get the drift - when someone has this kind of potential, you can't predict their path. You just know it could be good.

To tell every suburban kid like this that the only way to really be in God's will is to trade all that specific and specialized talent to minister to the poor - that is plain irresponsible. Instead, we've got to help them think through vocation and calling, potential and stewardship, and living missional lives while being given much.

GRACE student missions kick off

Fun to be a part of GRACE's student missions kick off this past weekend. [Disclosure: my family and I attend Grace, they are one of Ember's clients, and I serve as an adviser to the missions director.] Like I've said before - when learning from an org like this, keep in mind that they are very mature. Operating at this level requires doing these kinds of things for years and years and learning the whole time. So keep that in mind - like maybe don't use them as a baseline.

This weekend was a mandatory parents meeting, where their team outlined the opportunities, some of the strategy and connected interested parents with point people. They also gave out this great handout as well as a calendar of everything student missions related for the next 8 months.

Lots of bold thinking with this crew. That's part of the fun of it.

Team Training Tools - Assessments

Take your team through some kind of personality or character or decision making assessment. You know our favorites - the Myers Briggs type indicator and StrengthsFinder. The goal is two fold - to know yourself better and to communicate at a faster, deeper level with the rest of your team.

Focus, Locations and Fires

Jesus and his disciples worked on multiple fronts at one time. They did not settle down and focus on one location. Everywhere he and his disciples went they lit fires that would spread beyond their direct control and influence. Everything Jesus did on mission was reproducible and sustainable. Moving on meant new disciples had to take responsibility to reach their community.

- Steve Addison, What Jesus Started

Friday Burn

::: Debriefing Short Term Teams
Some good stuff from Larry McCrary and The Upstream Collective
Link


::: How Snapchat Took Over Yale
Link
Here's the secret sauce to Snapchat's viral growth: its group messaging functionality. When a user sends a snap to multiple friends, the recipients receive a snap indistinguishable from an individualized message. In effect, mass snaps feel personalized. This is the holy grail of messaging platforms: evoking strong emotion with minimal friction.


::: The 10 Easiest Foreign Languages to Learn
Link

Photo: Mid day decompression, Coney Island, NY, Jan 2013.

What We are Working On

+ 2 short term mission team prep sessions for some great local churches, spring
+ helping place a college student with one of our trusted partners, summer
+ gearing up guide(s) to help facilitate a team from Grace to Amadeo, summer
+ team of interns and guides to travel to Europe, summer
+ speaking over skype to a church ministry about catalytic leadership, spring
+ hosting two college teams for a local service leadership day with STC Baltimore
+ connecting like minded missional leaders whenever we can
+ systems and processes to support this with as little structure as needed

If this sounds busy, it is, like every 'missions' person every spring. But behind all of this, we are dreaming of how the leaders we work with are going to mark human history. That's the developer and the futuristic.

What about you?

Notes - Oscar Muriu at GRACE

Pastor Oscar Murui, lead pastor at Nairobi Chapel, spoke at Grace this past weekend. Here's some rough notes and I've added some comments that you might be interested in at the bottom.

Nairobi Chapel -
church planting vision - 300 church plants by 2020
200 in kenya
60 in african capital cities
30 outside the african continent including europe

epicenter of christianity used to be europe, and used to be the us

seismic changes
1 - global south
75% of all christians now live in underdeveloped countries
epicenter is now in africa [timbuktu]
23,000 new christians a day in africa
6,000 a day leave the church in america and europe
New Shape of World Christianity - Mark Noll
more people on sunday in church in china than in all of europe

generosity of american and europe to send missionaries to the developing world
impact of missions in s hemp

2 - maturity of churches in south hemp
go back to europe to evangelize
2005 - more missionaries being sent in global south than north
please recognize the maturity of these churches
see them as partners
not young fledgling ministries anymore
true partnerships need equal maturity *

partnerships
south - familial - marriage for life, independent become same identity
north - business - goals, time limited, achiever oriented
bible - fellowship - koninia - I Cor 12

1 - the goal of the church is interdependence
body
each part depends on each other
when something does its own thing, its called cancer

2 - missions today must build in reciprocity
give and receive
"if it works in the west, export it to the rest"
work hard to be generous to receive
dependency - i have nothing to give

3 - mutual respect and humility
pituatary gland
smallest organ but does something unique and great
in gods economy, the smallest churches have something to learn from

1 - What he said about partnerships was powerful but I appreciated what he said about maturity the most. Partnerships should take into consideration how mature each organization is and whether they are at the same maturity level.
2 - It can be a very tricky ordeal for someone who grew up in the developing world to talk to suburban Americans about missions. It requires someone who is extremely thoughtful, wise and culturally adept. Oscar is all of that and more.
3 - Deanna and I have thought about reverse missions for many years. I've only met a handful of people that have the ability to host teams at an expert skill level. In our circles, that is the next big accomplishment. [If you seriously want to try this, get in touch. But after this summer is over...]

Related: 10 Mins with Pastor Oscar, Center of Christianity [more recent article]

Team Training Tools - The Texts

The Short Term Missions Workbook, the book on the left, is a book we've used for many years and many teams. We just came across Deep Justice Journeys Student Journal, the book on the right, and it's impressive as well. Purchase one or the other and skim it and then walk your team through some of the chapters and exercises. Either one of them will help your team. In fact, if you buy either and don't like them, we will buy your copy from you.

Friday Burn

::: The 2013 Gates Letter - this week's must read
Combining global poverty, the MDGs, education, engineering, technology, medicine, public health and policy and a myriad of other disciplines. Whatever tangible skill you want to study, missions has a place for it.
Link


::: The Ambivert
Ambiverts, a term coined by social scientists in the 1920s, are people who are neither extremely introverted nor extremely extroverted.
Link


::: For 40 years, this Russian family was cut off from all human contact
Link


::: Predicting the Future, and the odds of it
Link

::: @lensweet - In the subtitles of a Chinese Star Wars dvd, "Jedi Council" was translated as "Presbyterian Church" (from "Found in Translation")

::: @ajsherrill - We once inhabited a society of believers tempted by doubt. Now we inhabit a society of doubters tempted by belief. #EvangelismRevisited

Growing Up Strengths

As a family, we attended a gathering last weekend where the whole focus was introducing everyone to StrengthsFinder. We talk a lot about the assessment around here so it's always fun to see people understand the concepts. But for the first time, I saw someone read through the book and try to figure out which were their top 5 talents and pretty much get it right. And it was our daughter Em.

And that's the thing about them. Like Amy had everyone recite at the beginning, "Not everyone thinks like me...", it's the uniqueness of each person, the talent in all of us, the phrases in some of the descriptions will resonate and be generative. They will either ring true or not even be close.

And hey, you might save yourself $10 on the actual test. [But it's worth taking for real...]

Missional Imagination + Tangible Skills

I had lunch the other day with a small group of people discussing out of the box mission opportunities in an East Asia context. It was very much a 'missional imagination' [Alan Hirsch's term] session and you know I love that kind of stuff. We talked about stuff like:
- the need for demographic and ethnographic research in the area
- people starting some kind of business startup as a platform for mission
- helps people get to know the community while having a legitimate presence and good reputatio
- someone interested in international business but still very missions minded
- job creation is vital
- every government in the world is in favor of positive localized grassroots economic engines
- having legitimate skills as a missionary

The last point is important and gets more important as time goes on - we tell students that all the time. The missionary of the future has tangible skills. Get a degree that can get you a job and there will be a place for it in global missions.

If this kind of stuff interests you and you are under the age of 25, get in touch.

Team Training Tools - Luggage

Have a packing party - pack your bags together. For extra "bonding," walk around suburbia with your packed bags.

Not Lost In Translation

A few weekends ago, our older daughter Kt found herself talking with some people who didn't speak a lick of English. This was in Coney Island, NY, when she was serving with a team of students and most of the people they talked to either spoke Russian or Chinese. Their goal that day was to ask people if they needed basic supplies - food, water, space heaters, and blankets. Since she had no idea what these people were saying, she did what everyone else would think to do. She whipped our her iPhone and started using Google Translate.

Actually, for those of us over the age of 30, we probably wouldn't think of doing that. Instead, we would have walked off disappointed and/or frustrated about the lack of connection and our inability to help. Digital natives think about technology very differently. After all, what's the worst that could happen.

For all the talk about Snapchat and how our kids don't have the ability to carry on conversations and how Twitter makes us shallow thinkers, there is an upside. A few minutes later, a little Chinese lady shows up at the church a few blocks away looking for two of those free heaters.

Friday Burn

::: People Groups in NYC
A new dedicated site to help learn info about people groups in NYC.
Link


::: How Driverless Cars Will Change Culture
I agree with this - American culture will be vastly different because of autonomous cars.
Link


::: If You Are Serious About Ideas, Get Serious About Blogging
Link


::: Your talent has to become a skill so other people can learn it. - @Mike_Breen

Photo: ARotolo, guiding. NYC, January 2013.

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.

Ember NYC

New York City, as you must know, is an amazing backdrop when helping high school students understand the way the world really looks. Being in NYC this weekend with a group of high school guys did not disappoint. Ember was asked to facilitate a weekend service experience for a church youth ministry group of 13 high school seniors and their leaders. We've worked with their leader, GM, for many years and consider it a privilege to be entrusted with a weekend with their students. Below are some details about what we did and what we hoped the students would learn. Long post - as always feel free to steal what you want. If you feel guilty, you can make a donation ;-)

: Coney Island Gospel Assembly
The initial request from the leaders of these boys were to serve with something to do with Hurricane Sandy relief. CIGA has found themselves at the epicenter of the relief work and there are still lots of needs right around the area. This element included going door to door around the neighborhood of the church to assess people's needs - CIGA had tons of food boxes, bottled water, heaters, and blankets to give to people that needed it. Our group broke up into teams and asked people. We then took the lists back to the church and got to deliver these items. Context and culture were focus points for the afternoon not only because of the disaster relief situation but because Coney Island has a huge Russian and Chinese immigrant population.

If you've followed how Ember has learned about service projects the past few years, you know that we are really careful about charity being toxic. I'm overjoyed about our experience on Saturday because student mission teams are seldom involved in a needs assessment process. Mission teams almost never ask the community what they really need and if they do, they are almost never in a position to help meet those needs. We were part of both, which was a huge privilege.

: Manhattan
Saturday afternoon and evening was spent doing some tourist things including visiting Grand Central Station, Times Square and the 9/11 Memorial. Again our central focus was context and culture - how many people from different countries can you talk to and identify any cultural icons, things that are important to this culture and therefore inform you about the people here.

: Bronxville Community Church
Since our hosts were involved in a church plant, that's what we did for church on Sunday. Bronxville Community Church has been in existence for about 2 years, meeting in a movie theater in the center of the village of Bronxville. Bronxville is a highly affluent community, about 45 minutes north of Manhattan. The lead pastor and planter was a bond trader before he was called into vocational ministry. Our boys were from a mega church, meaning that we made the point that seeing different expressions of Church is a good thing. We could have gone on about unreached cities in the United States, how this lead pastor is able to contextualize because he used to work on Wall Street, or how church planting is so difficult in New England.

: A House on Beekman
Sunday afternoon, we visited A House on Beekman, which can best be described as a group of friends that read the Bible, got convicted about how they were caring for the poor, moved into the South Bronx [the poorest neighborhood in NYC], and have a long term dream about complete renewal in this community. They started by just trying to 'be good humans and neighbors.' Five years later, they run an after school tutoring program, youth discipleship and a Mom and Me program, where they teach moms how to be parents. They also run a summer camp for 4 weeks each summer, just trying to serve families and their kids. Lots we could have talked about here, including the mission and incarnation, gentrification, sustainable and holistic community development, and the dynamic of living with the poor and being from the suburbs. Instead, we sent them for a prayer walk around the neighborhood, where 'everyone would know they were here to see Sara...'

: Hosts and Guides
We had some amazing hosts - two families that opened up their homes to our team. Both of the dads work in corporate America in Manhattan, love and pastor their families well, and have taught their children to serve the Church. Easily some of the most missional people I have ever met. And you know that our guides did some amazing work as well. ARotolo and DK both did amazing work helping lead, guide and serving this team.

A beautiful weekend. In 500 years, you and I might see how some of these high school boys marked human history.

More photos here.

Friday Burn

::: Lead and Violent Crime
Long read on the very interesting possible association between lead and violent crime. I thought the following paragraph was the most interesting:
Karl Smith, a professor of public economics and government at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, has a good rule of thumb for categorizing epidemics: If it spreads along lines of communication, he says, the cause is information. Think Bieber Fever. If it travels along major transportation routes, the cause is microbial. Think influenza. If it spreads out like a fan, the cause is an insect. Think malaria. But if it's everywhere, all at once—as both the rise of crime in the '60s and '70s and the fall of crime in the '90s seemed to be—the cause is a molecule.
Link


::: 7 Thoughts from a Former Pastor
Too few people care about the mental and emotional health of pastors.
Pastors who advocate innovation and new models of ministry are very lonely.
...churches and senior pastors have no idea how to empower and unleash the businessmen and women of their churches.
Link


::: Decoding culture - San Francisco
Great example of decoding culture.
Link

::: @LeadershipTips - People don't resist change, they resist being changed. ~ Peter Senge

::: @tonybkim - To be outstanding – get comfortable with being uncomfortable. -ALRIK KOUDENBURG

Photo: Ember core curriculum, whiteboard style

Thanks for praying for Ember NYC

In about 24 hours, an Ember team will be en route to one of our favorite global cities - New York City. If you are the praying type, here's some items that we would love for you to be thinking about and thanks in advance for covering the weekend in prayer.

+ Safety for our guide team and the student team we are serving with.
+ That the small acts of service we are involved with would tangibly benefit people.
+ That the students this weekend would internalize some concepts of urbanization, cultural distance, poverty, cultural icons and how those interplay with the Gospel.
+ That our Ember team is highly catalytic for these students and the communities, friends and families that they are in.

Please Plan to Prepare

The research is true - training is an integral part of making it in missions. This summer, whether you are part of, or leading a team, you should ask, "What is the plan to help my team prepare?" Be wary if there aren't any resources allocated to this - there should be time or money or energy given to helping your team get good.

You will do yourself and your team some good, if you simply jot down goals, expectations and 'how we are successful.' And remember that you are the only one, ultimately, responsible for your own growth and development.

Ember's got lots of experience with teams - we would love to help you be a success.

Team Training Tools - Ethnic Meals

Eat at an ethnic restaurant together. Preferably, an ethnicity you will be visiting.

Photo: Cameroonian food, Wheaton MD, Spring 2006.

Upcoming - NYC

An Ember team will be in NYC this coming weekend working with a team of high school students. We are thrilled for the opportunity which is first centered around helping out in Coney Island with some Hurricane Sandy relief. The rest of the weekend builds off that incorporating pieces of our core curriculum.

NYC forms an amazing backdrop for global leadership like most global cities with their array of cultures, economic strata and varied demographics all mixed in close proximity. It's a great environment for the stuff we love high school kids to get: culture, context, icons and how missions may look untraditional.

Ember was invited to facilitate this weekend by a leader we've worked with a few times. Like G we know that if you can show a high school kid the way the world really looks, like when they get exposed to and understand a bit about concepts like: poverty, economic systems, cultures, urbanization, for instance - they will maybe make significant choices to impact the world through what they study in college and their vocational choice.

Thanks for praying for safety while we travel, our guides for their leadership and for the boys as they learn about a world that is longing for someone to impact it. If you have a team interested in this kind of weekend global leadership immersion get in touch.

Friday Burn

::: The Where-to-be-Born 2013 index.
Hint - the US was not in the top 15.
Link


::: Urbana 12's Launch Lab
Loved reading the comments on some out of the box thinking.
Link


::: The Death of the Mall and the Future of Church Buildings
"only college football stadiums are utilized less than church facilities."
Link

Photo: Ember guides on site visiting a student team we helped train. DC, July 2011.

Happy 12th to Em

Happy 12th birthday to our Em. This year, you've grown up a lot, including a second year at sleep away summer camp, grieving the loss of your puppy Phoebe, and starting middle school.

My favorite time with you this year was driving to WV to see that tiger, the weekend right after you started a major milestone - middle school.

Through it all, you continue to be kind, empathetic towards those that are less fortunate all without losing a wit that can only be attributed to a God that also has a sense of humor. Mommy and I are very proud to be your parents and we are excitedly expectant at how God is going to use the adventures of your life.

LOVE

Photo: Times Square, Nov 2012.

Team Training Tools - Blind Volleyball

Blind volleyball - playing the game of volleyball while not being able to see the ball quite all the time.

Photo: Mozi team, Harrisonburg, VA, April 2011.

Some Sons of Sheng

Loved hanging with these young men - they are like the sons that we never had, especially when they eat all those cheetos. [They were interns in 2010]

Some topics from our conversation of catching up:
Auto-ethnography, Christology and different realities, college campus ministry leadership, God speaking through dreams and visions, how to help high school students ask the right questions from missionaries, church planters and kingdom starters.

Both of these guys have some kind of career goals in cross cultural ministry - perhaps vocationally. This summer, John is probably headed back to Mozi and Andrew probably back to Kenya. Andrew is helping us with a little project later this month.

These guys are great examples of what can happen with Ember interns - suburban students learn about the realities of our global world, they get some real leadership experience, they make some decisions to structure their life around those goals. And then they go and do it. Then they come home and catch us up. And they do it again. [And they come back and help Ember when they can.]

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.

2012 in cities

1. Fairfield, CT, USA
2. Cambridge, MD, USA
3. Newport, RI, USA
4. Brussels, Belgium, Europe
5. Leiden, The Netherlands, Europe
6. Bielefeld, Germany, Europe
7. Queen Creek, AZ, USA
8. Winchester, VA, USA
9. Orlando, FL, USA
10. Rehoboth Beach, DE, USA

Pretty good year, because it was over 10 and at least once out of the country.

Here's the map.

[Related: 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005.]

2012 in books

The Advantage [notes]
I Will Teach You to be Rich [notes]
Flickering Pixels [notes]
You Lost Me [notes]
Deep and Wide [notes]
Protégé
Missional Moves
Multiplying Missional Leaders
Organizational Genius [notes]

I'm sure there is more in here, but it seems like it was a light year for reading.

[Related: 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006 in books]

2012 in posts

A quick look back at some favorite posts in 2012.

Ember Darley Park
Perspectives and Don Richardson
Missionary Kids on Mission
Jello Nite 2012
Belgium Reflections
AZ 2012 Wrap Up
Ember End of Summer
Ember Pen Lucy
Transition to High School and I Should Apolgize
Ember Exists For

[Related: 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006 in posts]

1-5

Happy 15th birthday to our Katie. We are so proud to be your parents and you continue to amaze us with your dreams, passions and how you structure your life to serve those around you.

Probably one of the best commentaries on your life is what one of your friends from school told me recently : "When I'm around her, I feel bad, because she's like the best person I know. She gets good grades, she's so kind and friendly and she always goes out of her way to help people."

Love - DAD

Friday Burn

::: The Global Religious Landscape
Roughly one in six people around the globe have no religious affiliation at all.
Link via Alex McManus


::: Evolution of the earth's economic center of gravity
See the first chart
Link


::: Why do we wait to train leaders
On average, corporate managers first get leadership training 10 years after they begin supervising people
Link

Photo: NYC, Jan 2008. Emilie [intern 2006], me, Tricia [intern 2008]

Great Christmas Gifts for Your Emerging Global Leader

If you are looking for some last minute gifts for the emerging global student leader in your life, here are a few suggestions. What, you still have 5 days...

:: A copy of Operation World. The best guide to understand spiritual movements on a per geopolitical country basis. You can buy it new, but not in your typical Christian bookstore [who shops at those anyway.] You can give an old copy too, but since these things have info that changes with time, well, you know.

:: A headlamp. So that they can do stuff in the dark and have their hands free. I know, most people think these are for dorks. But seriously, they are great. I have a Black Diamond Icon head lamp, which has a set of 4 LED bulbs as well as a spotlight and a built in battery meter. [No, its not overkill.]

:: A cheap, small digital camera. One that can be shoved into a pocket and dragged around the world. Better if it has replaceable batteries [versus batteries that must be charged - especially if you take it overseas.] I have a Canon Powershot something or other that I bought off of Craigslist. It does a ton of stuff that I love, including low light, HD video, panoramas, high speed burst and multiple shots on self timer.

:: A micro dry stuff sack. Great to throw your small electronics and wallet in just in case you stuck somewhere outside in torrential rain. Use it on a missions trip or in Harry Potter land in July.

:: A good journal. Moleskin has these cool city-based journals, which include all kinds of reference materials for specific global cities - DC, Paris, London, etc.

The Kinds of Voice Mails We Get

Past Ember interns who call each other 'associates'...

Newtown

My wife grew up in Fairfield, CT, probably 20 minutes down the road from Newtown. Both of her parents were public school teachers, my mother in law most recently teaching [she's now retired] in a town called Trumbull, which was the next town over from Newtown. My brother in law and his family live about 10 minutes from the school where the shootings happened. We've been tracking it like everyone else.

Clive Calver was the president of World Relief, based on Baltimore, from 2001 to 2005, and his family attended GRACE when he wasn't traveling. He since left World Relief to become the senior pastor at Walnut Hill Community Church, in Bethel, CT, down the street from Newtown.

In an area of the country that is certainly un-churched, post-churched or de-churched, Walnut Hill has launched 4 new campuses in the past 2 years. Now that they find themselves at the epicenter of the Sandy Hook shootings, I'd bet some money on Clive and his staff. We're tracking that too.

Sneak Peek

New intern coming on board in January. Our whole Ember staff [board of directors and bi vocational guides] are super excited.

I created the domain and set up the WordPress installation around 4pm one day. This was what was up the next morning.

The next generation won't necessarily wait for you to pave the way for them to impact, lead and influence. That fact is a good thing.

Friday Burn

::: So, you wanna be a missionary.
Classic.
Link
[Related - The Creative Revenue Plan]


::: 2012's Fastest Growing and Shrinking Cities
Interested in learning you some Mandarin?
Link


::: Ping Pong for a cause
I met Diallo in Sept of 2011 at M.
Link


::: Valencia Spain - vision report.
History, Demographics, Culture, Spiritual Climate, Conclusions.
Most of you regular readers would love this.
Link


::: We are equipped to disciple people into our church culture, we are not equipped to teach them how to be a disciple within culture. #Qrenewal - @KeithWaara

::: If we properly understand 'institution' then we realize that the NT Church has always been an institution. #mythoughtsfromQ #Qrenewal - @guywasko

Photo: Missional guides, post-SPACE, pre-Ember. NYC. March 2009.

Recent Practices of the Trade

or maybe not so recent...

- Slant away from curriculum. Steal lots of pieces from lots of places but nothing is ever canned or completely reused. It is always recreated and contextualized.
- Be careful about evening meetings.
- Mark important things in books. Read all the way through the book and then go back through typing in notes.
- Always have an elec copy of your passport in your email
- Always pack a pair of clean underwear in your carry on
- Clarify the win when someone comes on board.
- Decompress with the team right after the project.
- Performance feedback to individuals within 24 hours.
- Catalyst is the primary paradigm
- Steal everything you can. Google chrome allows you to print stuff to a pdf and save it in google drive, all right from your browser. I have a BetterPractices folder for these kinds of docs.
- Make google reader your source for information. Yes you can read blogs with it. You can also create a feed for a search term and subscribe to that. Looking for something on craigslist - click RSS at the bottom and then subscribe to that.
- Been really happy with dreamhost hosting the ember site. Easy to create new domains, like blogs for the interns, and easy to install wordpress for them. If i started over, i would buy a domain, install wordpress on there and blog away.

Book Notes - Organizing Genius

Organizing Genius - The Secrets of Creative Collaboration by Warren Bennis

1. Greatness starts with superb people.

2. Great Groups and great leaders create each other.

3. Every Great Group has a great leader.

4. The leaders of Great Groups love talent and know where to find it.

5. Great Groups are full of talented people who can work together.

6. Great Groups think they are on a mission from God.

7. Every Great Group is an island - but an island with a bridge to the mainland.

8. Great Groups see themselves as winning underdogs.

9. Great Groups always have an enemy.

10. People in Great Groups have blinders on.

11. Great Groups are optimistic, not realistic,

12. In Great Groups, the right person has the right job.

13. The leaders of Great Groups give them what they need and free them from the rest.

14. Great Groups ship.

15. Great work is its own reward.

I read this book because of a tip from Ben Arment. When he says read it, I do it.

Real Ideas

Any idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

- Oscar Wilde
via 23 Quotes to Boost Your Creativity

Ember Internships - 3 Tips for Mentoring

In the past 9 years, I have worked with a select group of students that we have deemed interns. The idea actually came from a high school student, but we loved it so much, it's now one of Ember's core offerings. We've had pretty good luck with most of them, but there have been a few of them that have the very best of intentions, but over the course of time, didn't engage with the process. Here's three things that have made the others successful - maybe this contextualize to your situation when it comes to mentoring the next generation.

1 - Identify the starters and sponges.
There are students that are starting things that have the same affinity as to what you are doing. Like you, they are interested in music, arts, landscape architecture. There are also students that are paying close attention to what you are doing. And I mean, very close attention. Find students in either groups of these and engage them at a deeper level. In our case, not every student is interested in global leadership. We find them at very specific circumstances - a service project is a good example in our case.

2 - Meet them where they are, but stretch them.
They make the commitment to be stretched. But sometimes, between school, sports, youth group activities, volunteer work, and being a part of a family, the internship is the last on the list. We've tried to be more adaptable on our end in terms of scheduling, availability and flexibility, while not losing sight of the end goal: they want to grow. This aspect of scheduling has been one of the most difficult - it is what our students live in today. Personal growth doesn't always depend on being at a specific event. Instead, find ways to foster your goal as a developer while helping them be successful at it.

3 - Have fun with them.
The interns I have worked with have been a blast. They put up with my lame jokes and are able to roll with our very dynamic plans - we never know what will happen for the internship too far in advance and plans are always moving [I kind of like it that way.] But we always have a great time together.

Friday Burn

::: China's Copycat Cities
... a full-scale, no-expense-spared replica of the White House stands outside Hangzhou, while less exacting copies of the U.S. Capitol, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Sydney Opera House can be found in the village of Huaxi in Jiangsu province and elsewhere...
Link via NextDraft


::: Christian Technology Entrepreneurs
Link via rudy


::: What I Wish Someone Told Me About Vision from leaders of Fastest Growing Churches
My favorites:
+ The bigger you get the better your Sunday morning experience is. That draws spectators
+ ... more time Christians spend in church, it seems the farther they move away from God's original intention­­– to reach the lost.
+ I truly believe that the same vision that attacts some also repels others.
Link

::: How to Live with Introverts
Link
In the Sheng house, we call them strong 'I's.

Photo: Ember board of director, spawn, intern. Pen Lucy, Oct 2012.

When It Comes Together

Summer 2008 - Paris France. One team left Hungary earlier that morning. Another team left Washington, DC the night before. Both teams met in a hotel in Paris, saw the sights, had meals together, caught up and prayed for what some of them had done and what others would do. The next morning, the Hungary team would continue on home to DC, while the Cameroon team would begin their adventure finishing the trek from DC to Paris to Yaounde. And there was a brave four that continued from Hungary to Cameroon.

This logistical mishmash was brought to you by yours truly. When I envisioned it months before, I was captivated by the idea of God's people being on the move, a rendezvous of teenage world changers in the city of lights, a synergy and momentum with one team finishing a project well and helping energize another team at their beginning. And the chance for a brave few to live on mission for 3.5 weeks on 2 different continents. And to worship together that one evening half way across the world.

Like Hannibal says, "I love it when a plan comes together."

Constantly On the Move

Matthew records that Jesus' ministry touched 'all' 175 towns and villages of Galilee. To reach them all Jesus could rarely have stayed in one place for more than a few days; he would have been constantly on the move. By the end of his ministry, most of Galilee's 200,000 people would either have met Jesus or have known someone who had.

- Steve Addison, What Jesus Started

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.