Ember Prague Wrap

What an experience. The Lord really provided because it could have been a huge train wreck but instead was an amazing time with a whole group of amazing students. Here's some highlights - this is a long post.

::: The Jones
Loved our time being able to see Andrew and Debbie again - they have both had a huge impact on my perspective of missions, leadership and the emerging generation. Being able to have them share with a group of Camp Juice kids was so great. Love their family. Our students talked about a lot of this for the rest of the week.

::: Cultural scavenger hunt and Bless Day
Two really useful tools in Ember's tool set - the cultural scavenger hunt and Bless Day. The big lesson with the cultural scavenger hunt is how you apply it - what are the observations you made about the culture and how would you interpret those if you were to try to plant the Gospel in that culture? The big lesson with Bless Day, at least for this one, is the idea of missional imagination - what can you imagine you could do with the resources that you have that might move people to the Kingdom?

I alluded to this story in an earlier post too, but on Bless Day, one of the teams ran into a homeless man and asked him if they could buy him lunch. They went to a Czech restaurant and sat down to eat. In the middle of their meal, as they were getting acquainted even with the language barrier, he pulled out his identification card and it turned out to be his birthday. They sang him happy birthday [in English in a Czech restaurant in Prague...] and then later took him out to get his favorite gelato. Beautiful story.

::: The Camp Juice kids
Loved all of these kids really. They were all really good friends before we arrived but they wholeheartedly embraced and loved our team - funny that I had met some of them in 2007 and 2008. In the end, everyone became a community - an interesting mix but a community that loved each other and had some great experiences contributing to something larger than just themselves. Alex McManus is right - cause creates community.

There is something special and unique about this group too - their families are directly involved in the missionary endeavor, most of them leading church plants in cross cultural contexts. They've lived unconventional lives and they show it. They are third culture kids with a pedigree of leadership, risk and adventure. I think Camp Juice has made a turn in ethos and I'm excited to see where that leads this community.

::: The Last Day
Our last day was spent hanging at the hotel and then going to dinner at KFC. After that, the Ember team presented paper plate awards to everyone. If you've been around various camps, you know paper plate awards are kind of goofy and ...campy. The comments back to us about the paper plate awards that we gave out were that they were so thoughtful and fit each person really well and really encouraged the person getting the award. Part of being a catalyst is erupting the good out of the people you know.

Later that night, we had a worship time and took communion together. Our main worship leader was Olivia Rapp, who is a phenomenal worship leader. During Summit, we didn't have a guitar so her and Madi used a ukulele and it was great. For the last worship time, Olivia teamed up with Jacob and Molly and they seriously led us. Communion together was beautiful.

My team was originally going to end the week with paper plate awards but I implored them about what we have seen this community do and become. It was no longer a gathering of missionary kids to have fun - it was now kids who could see a bigger picture about serving their world and closing our time together the right way could be significant. I'm glad we decided to do this - a sense of vision can be catalytic.

::: Financials
Our overall budget was right at $26,000, which was for a team of 9 for 13 days. Most of the expenses were in Prague, and we built in 2 days on the way home being spent in London for debriefing. I almost always build in time for decompression because it is that important. I'm still closing the financials but we will be a bit over in expenses. I'm not worried though - Ember started the summer with a good amount of reserves in our savings and we were prepared to go over a bit. I probably wouldn't do London again in the future - it's a glorious global city but super expensive.

Make no mistake, $26K is a ton of money. We all should be asking ourselves every single summer whether spending this bulk of money in 13 days is the right thing to do. My only other guidance is that we take the long view of answering this question - was it the right thing to do if you ask this 15 years in the future?

::: The Ember team
Loved this team - one of the best teams I've been with. Each person was a ton of fun and went out of their way to care for each other and become a team. When it came to the Camp Juice kids, they engaged them, did their best to become friends [which wasn't hard] and helped grow this gathering into a tribe. I miss each one of them and could have spent one more week with them. Maybe.

I have also added each one of them to an Ember Staff list that I update weekly. On most teams, you have one or two kids that can operate at a Staff level. I'm proud to say that everyone one of these students could be an Ember Guide.

Thanks to many of you for your support for this project and this team.

Photos here.

Friday Burn

::: What We Are Learning About the Teenage Brain

That's because adolescents are literally biologically programmed to push against the status quo that adults have created and imagine a world that could be, and not just learn the world as it is. That’s why we need to see adolescents as the hope for the future.

Link


::: Taylor Swift's On Stage Guests and Increased Hype
Link


::: Jon Stewart - Superboss
Excellent read from Dan

Superbosses are exceptionally adept at developing talent because they share particular character traits and adopt a set of common practices that, taken together, are both rare and extraordinarily effective. They are unusually intense and passionate—eating, sleeping, and breathing their businesses and inspiring others to do the same. They create impossibly high work standards that push protégés to their limits. They are geniuses at motivation, inspiring people to do more than they ever thought possible. Remarkably, they can be intimately involved in the detailed work their people are doing, while at the same time lavish responsibility on inexperienced protégés, taking risks with them that seem foolish to outsiders. They encourage the creation of strong, emotional bonds and loyalties between protégés as well as between protégés and themselves.

Link


::: When filtering good criticism from bad, ask how much it cost the person to give you feedback. @JonAcuff via Dawn

Photo: London, Ember Prague team, July 2015.

Worship at Camp Juice

Worship at Camp Juice - our last gathering at midnight the last night. Three students architected the worship set and when I say architected, I mean they designed the environment to be a powerful gathering with their old and new friends worshipping something bigger than themselves. If you have students that can do this, you should let them.

Candles and glow sticks - we took communion together as a symbol that Jesus wants to change the world in us and with us.

The Best Decompression Exercise

One of the best exercises we make teams work through when decompressing is the exercise to write down a 20 second, 2 minute and 20 minute response to the question, "How was your trip?" [The 20 minute response is just an outline.] People coming home get this question all the time - from friends, family, supporters, leaders. Unfortunately, most people that ask this question only have the attention span for the 20 second answer.

[Also, this was not my original idea. I stole it from a mentor that I had in college.]

Every once in a while, someone will listen for 2 minutes. And once in a blue moon, a leader, foundation, missions org or church missions committee will want to hear the 20 minute response. Walking teams through this exercise sets the expectation that most people only hear the 20 second response and that future missions leaders need to be able to articulate their experience clearly.

If you lead teams, this is highly recommended. If you are involved in missions mobilization, you probably meet with people when they come home. The best thing you can do is to let them talk. For 20, 40, 60, 90 minutes. If you help support student missions, try to pay attention for 2 minutes instead of 20 seconds.

Here's my 20 second answer:
We helped run a little gathering for some students in the city of Prague. Most of these students
are from families that have chosen to live cross culturally intentionally so it is a pretty unique community of kids that know and love each other. We got to do some pretty interesting things with regard to culture and serving in the city of Prague and it went super well. Will be fun to see what happens with this community of students in the future.

Monday Guest

To my right is Nicole Barnes and her husband John. Nicole helped me lead a team in 2006 to Cameroon, which was a fantastic experience, and also helped cultivate a passion for medicine in her. 9 years later, she is living in London with her husband. She shared a bit of her journey with our team tonight as the final evening of our time here in this great city.

Decompression has gone well. Flying home tomorrow.

London

Debriefing and decompression in London because we do it in a neutral location and because this process in your students missions experience is a non-negotiable. If you skip this, you should find another line of work.

We are down a few in this picture - KatieV flew all the way home today to catch a flight for her family vacation. KatieS was resting after being up most of the night for our last night of Camp Juice.

Saturday

Camp Juice takes over the local KFC. Easier to get to than metro in the city again with around 30 people. KFC is huge in Europe so it's a cultural experience.

Paper plate awards to start closing down Camp Juice.

Our new friend Brigitte shares on the main stage in front of the whole conference about Bless Day for Camp Juice. Brigitte is 12 years old.

Worship and communion tonight at 11:30pm. We have tried to be on adolescent-brain time all week.

It has been a fantastic week. Our time departs Prague first thing tomorrow am for debriefing and decompression in London.

Thursday Guest

To my right is Richard Wallace, who is the lead pastor of Mountainview International Church in a suburb of Madrid. Richard is English and his wife is Dutch and they now serve in Spain. This is the kind of person you run into at this kind of gathering. Some of you might remember that Richard and Mountainview hosted Katie and Olivia last year.

Richard's advice for young emerging global student leaders:
+ You should go.
+ You should start.
+ Serving, sharing your faith, and being the kind of person right now where you are that you envision you will be later if you were to move to another location.

Cultural Scavenger Hunt

The checklist for our cultural scavenger hunt. Some of these are specific to Prague - many are not. At a surface level, this is a fabulous tool to help kids have fun and observe specific things about a city or context. Dig deeper by talking about observations of a culture from these tasks and making interpretation about the culture. Go even deeper by talking about what relevance those interpretations have when it comes to the Gospel.

What is the oldest thing you can find
Go up to someone and ask them what the story is about the clock tower
Find the most interesting statue to your group
Recreate the most interesting statue with your group
Find the church that has the thiefs arm
Find a place where there is no cement - all nature
Who can learn the funniest phrase from a Czech person
Who can find the most Trudlo stands - take a picture of each one
Take a group picture with a street performer
Dance with a street performer
Find something from where you live
Find something that you cannot get where you live
Biggest group of pigeons you can find
How many selfies sticks can you count
Take a video of ringing of the clock
Take a picture of everyone's feet around something of cultural significance
Who can find a person that speaks the most languages
See how many group pictures you can take for other people
Find something you can only get in Prague that you can't get anywhere else - non food
See if you can find a free bathroom
Find a flag from a country where no one in your group lives in or is from
Take a picture on the street where all the luxury stores are
Get a menu from a Italian restaurant
Take a picture with a random family - you have to ask not just photobomb it
Get the front page from a Czech newspaper without buying or stealing it
Find the biggest billboard
Take a picture of the most interesting graffiti
Take a picture with a tourist who has the most interesting outfit or facial hair

Friday

Camp Juice went in to Prague again today with what we called "Bless Day," a day where they were in the city to bless people. We didn't know how or what that would look like except that we asked them to consider the Spirit leading them to find someone to bless, we gave them some money, and told them not to do anything illegal or unbiblical. You know, don't get thrown in jail.

It was a beautiful day of students looking out for others intentionally to serve and bless strangers. Some teams used their money to make lunches, some teams bought lunch for people, and one team even had strangers chip in to their bless fund after hearing what they were about. In one case, a team took a homeless person out to lunch only to find out that today was his birthday. Of course, lots more to that story, but most of the experiences were ones that moved these students.

This was an experiment that we weren't sure was going to go great. It did in fact. In a city known for its atheistic perspective and resistance to the Gospel, sending missionary kids to do this was perfect.

More photos here and here.

Dear Praying Friends

Would love your prayers for the following:

1. I have a bit of a head cold and have lost my voice. My kids will be thrilled but at this point most of my job here involves communication. Thanks for praying that it comes back soon.

2. We found out a few days ago that the Arlen family, who two Ember teams served with in Aix in 2013 and 2014, had an awful tragedy. One of their daughters died in a car accident. We loved working with Tenny last summer. Thanks for praying for peace for their family. The Shengs and The Ember Cast are unbelievably sad about this.

Wednesday Guest

To my right is Mike Kurtyka, who is the Europe Operations Coordinator for Christian Associates. In addition to that, he is on staff with Mosaic Glasgow Church. He was the third in a series of special guests that came to share with the Ember team in Prague.

Our conversation included fascinating current topics in global missions such as:
+ The migration of people - his network in Glasgow includes lots of people who just immigrated from a ME country and lots of opportunity to help them learn conversational English.
+ His story of calling, which included helping on the missions board of a church which is where he got a sense for global missions.
+ Don't be afraid to share your faith now as a high school student.

Loved our time with Mike.

Thursday

We journeyed into the city center of Prague today with all of Camp Juice. That would be 34 people - think shuttle bus, metro and walking through the city. So to do that, you break up into groups, and your Ember team leads with such poise, grace and integrity. Beautiful - you would be proud of this team. They killed it today by being warm, inviting, engaging and desiring to have fun and do something significant.

Cultural scavenger hunt was the activity of the day and everyone had a great time exploring the city and having lunch there all while participating in these varied tasks. The deeper value to this was observing and decoding culture more than just at the surface level and our evening discussion proved that everyone got the idea. Not only that, it seemed like everyone had a great time hanging together.

If you are in global missions circles, you know that sometimes missionary kids can be a tough crowd. I'm super proud of our team - 34 people became a temporary fun community having fun together in a global city. What a privilege to watch this.

Tuesday - Guest

On my right is Rita Warren, chairperson for the international board for Christian Associates. Rita was our special guest last night - our second in a series this week of special guests to speak to our Ember team and anyone else who wants to hang.

Rita has been associated with CA for many, many years, and been serving as the board chair for the last season. I invited her to speak because she is a great example of someone who lives missionally, sees her life and family as integral to helping people serve cross culturally and invests their time, resources and passion for the Kingdom. Incidentally, Rita and her husband Michael received the first annual CA Generosity Award last night. Hearing the many people speak about the generosity of their lives was truly inspiring. Her family is also a great example of people involved in very significant roles in global missions but not being front line missionaries. She's impacted thousands of people in numerous countries without moving overseas.

Lots in our session with Rita but a summary of her advice for young global catalysts:
1 - Funding - the funding model is changing. You won't be able to be 100% donor supported in the short future. The Billy Graham association had 50,000 donors pass away.
2 - Travel and see the world. Short term trips are a great way to do this.
3 - Be open to the Spirit leading.

Loved our time with Rita and so appreciative of her hanging with us.

Summit Camp Juice Program

Camp Juice ends for Summit tonight - the first part of the conference. Other families and students show up tomorrow - the general broader conference. We've had a great time with these kids.

We have tried to neither over program or under program and it has worked well. We typically start the day after breakfast with some light worship and a short devotional. Worship had to be adjusted since a guitar didn't arrive so one of the Camp Juice kids had a ukulele and ORapp leading has been fantastic - love the vibe. All of our students have or are going to lead morning devotions - yes your high school kids can lead other high school kids in reflecting from the Scriptures. We've been looking at some of the 'I am' statements from the Gospels.

The rest of our days looked like:
+ Saturday - arrival and intro session.
+ Sunday - traipsing through an outskirt of the city looking for our friend Tall Skinny Kiwi. An interesting walk through Prague.
+ Monday - lunch in city center and a dinner with TSK.
+ Tuesday - some shopping and recon in city center to do some planning for later in the week.

Our team is doing great and pivoting easy with how plans are adjusting. The Camp Juice kids that have hung out with us have been an absolute joy to be around. Thanks for your support for this team.

Monday

Unlike yesterday, due to some miscommunication, today worked much better. We spent lunch in the city center of Prague and then went out to Divoka Sarka to meet up with old friend Andrew Jones. If you've been around this blog for a while, you know that Andrew has had a profound influence on my views of missions. When I learned he was going to be in Prague at the same time as our team, it was a must to try to make connecting work out. It didn't work yesterday but it did today.

Andrew hosted our Camp Juice team out near where they are living now - it's a beautiful space with a few families living in community. While there, he and Debbie shared about their 30 year missions journey, their current calling as global nomads and the conviction they have for living simply while being able to move as God calls them throughout the world. They also cooked us a delicious traditional Czech gulash meal.

Anytime I get to spend with them is always phenomenal and I love being able to facilitate students meeting them face to face.

More photos here and here.

Sunday - Guest

Frustrating day in terms of program - tell you more about that later. But...

Most nights, we invite a special guest to talk to our Ember team and whomever else wants to join. It's one of our distinctives with student missions - we intro students to someone we know who is creative, entrepreneurial and innovative with the future of missions. Tonight was our good friend Teal Rapp, whom we have worked closely with the past 2 summers in Aix. It's always informal and done in interview style.

Teal is the director of recruiting for Christian Associates, and he Teal talked about his calling, his family's personal journey to vocational cross cultural ministry and things like raising support, language, immersion and what he looks for in people interested in serving overseas. This is one of the funest things we do with people that we serve with and should truly be an integral part of your student missions architecture.

Saturday

Team all checked in to hotel or czeched in. Met most of the first group of kids. Intros first meals and getting to know them.

Water park and robes.

Adjustments to plans like you would expect on the first day. Tomoorrow is the famed monastery project.

Sir Tobys

Stayed at Sir Tobys hostel last night which was great. Dinner next door at Kozlovna for less than 10 euros a person and delicious food. A walk around the block to see the neighborhood and a quick planning meeting. I slept 3 hours longer than the boys.

Departing

We are sitting at the gate nice and early. Flying out of BWI is a nice treat as we usually fly from IAD.

We had some visitors come to see us off which was super nice. Ember guides and other guests - so sweet. Sometimes when people start non profits it's hard to continue to stay plugged in to a local church. I love that our Ember guides own this team as their own.

Prague Team Meeting #11

Lots of team meetings with this team. We are as ready as we will be.

Team meeting #11:
- Dinner out at Bistro Bohem, the only Czech restaurant in the DC area [great food by the way.] One of the servers might be on one of our flights.
- Special guests included Eric and Christy and Ember guide Hope.
- A walk around the neighborhood which included walking through Little Ethopia and a little short tour in one of the markets by our own Meklit.

Departure tomorrow. This blog moves into more real time updates so feel free to mute or hide as you wish.

Prague Leader #2

I first met Katie Virostek in the summer of 2013 when she was on a team that The Ember Cast helped facilitate to travel and serve with our dear friend Ben Cloud and Amadeo Church, outside of Phoenix. Katie was a phenomenal member of that team and is one of those emerging global student leaders that we love to work with.

She's got lots of experience with Appalachian Service Project, meaning she knows more about home improvement than me. She also leads with a quiet but solid presence, is willing to sacrifice and be uncomfortable for a bigger purpose and takes joy in doing any job that needs to get done. Katie joined us last summer in Aix and worked with us all year as one of three ProtoGuides.

We are thrilled that she joins us on the Prague team this year, rounding out the third of three leadership roles. Our teams are usually pretty flat when it comes to any hierarchy between team member and team leader, but most teams still do require the talents of some who can project, structure, delegate and release. Her contributions have been vital these past few months as our plans have pivoted multiple times. That will probably continue to happen though - a lot can happen in the 4 days before we leave. And that's not even talking about after we land.

Photo: Katie in the upper right, running the famed Hula Hoop challenge.

Friday Burn

::: A Team of 1

The team is in the field.

Fantastic read from Justin. Link


::: We Don't Trust Drinking Fountains Anymore

By 1920, most municipalities were providing free, chlorinated water. The public health benefits were obvious. Half of the decline in urban deaths between 1900 and 1940 can be attributed to improvements in water quality, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Link


::: Snapchat Streams Mecca
Link

::: When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for everyone telling you you’re nuts. – Larry Ellison

Photo: bake sale. July 2015.

When Adventure Starts

The word adventure has gotten overused. For me, when everything goes wrong - that's when adventure starts.

- Yvon Chouinard

Prague Team Meeting #9

Ninth meeting with our team and no one seems tired of each other yet [except my kids of me] because it's such a fun time with great personalities. We've got some momentum with our program so loose ends are getting tied up.

This meeting included dry runs of the various devotional talks that each team member is giving. Yes, high school kids are speaking in front of other high school kids about their spiritual life. No, I don't think that is very abnormal and you shouldn't either.

We also prepped for a bake sale that we held the next day, which raised a good amount of money. Bake sales are very easy creative revenue activities and are a great venue to have your team talk to strangers about what your team is doing and why.

We also talked about the concept of missional imagination [stolen from Alan Hirsch.] And then we went to see Minions.

Friday Burn

::: Instagrads - This year's high school graduates have spent 4 years on Instagram.

Like the detention hall that brought kids from different social groups together in The Breakfast Club, everyone — the band geeks, the nerds, the football players, the country boys, the artistic kids — is on Instagram.

Link


::: Colorados Push Against Teenage Pregnancies is a Startling Success

If we want to reduce poverty, one of the simplest, fastest and cheapest things we could do would be to make sure that as few people as possible become parents before they actually want to.

Link


::: The Most Useful Foreign Languages an English Speaker Can Learn and Why
Link

Photo: team building with Meklit. May 2015.

Prague Team Meeting #8

If eight team meetings sounds like a lot to you for a short term team, it is. In our case, I'm glad we have so many of these meetings scheduled, and that our trip is actually a few weeks later in the summer, because we are currently finding ourselves in the middle of a second pivot. If you've been around Ember for a while, or cross cultural excursions in general, you know that plan A almost never works out. Instead, it's plan B. Ember moves down the alphabet fast sometimes.

We were originally going to do some traveling for Camp Juice. Logistics for that didn't quite land. Then we moved forward with another plan - using elements of a waterpark. Except I forgot a major detail - we did not have unlimited access to this. This week has been a lot of pivoting including changes in our decompression lodging and two awesome local projects that we had hoped might work out for our students but fell through.

We outlined Plan C tonight. 4 team meetings left, 16 days before departure. Sticking with Plan C would be nice. We also prayed for each Camp Juice student by name - that might be our time best spent.

Seven Years Ago

In 2008, I along with a team of other super talented leaders, took some 28 students to Hungary to serve at an annual conference for a missions organization named Christian Associates. The actual service part of our experience was phenomenal - this team pulled off something that I am still in awe of today, 7 years later. What proved even more amazing was how catalytic that experience was.

- That summer, Trevin met a team from South Africa doing sports outreach. He traveled there in 2010 through some mutual connections and continued to serve in different overseas and local projects since 2008, which gave him great experience and helped pave the way for a job helping run this kind of stuff in a local church. He is en route back home right now from another overseas project returning from helping lead a team for Bay Area Community Church, where he is now the local outreach director.
- That summer, Erin met a bunch of these like minded people with this Christian Associates tribe. Seven years later, she is on associate staff, helping CA with their training and development, using tools like 360 evaluations, the StrengthsFinder assessment and virtual team building platforms.
- That summer, Rachel joined us all the way from Seattle to help us lead this huge team of students. She got connected with Soma Communites all the way in Hungary and it's been a vital part of her extended family as she serves and blesses people in the education field in the Seattle area.
- That summer, Tricia had just graduated from high school, and this was the capstone experience for her interning with me in the area of student missions. This would be her second trip to Hungary as a high school student, and her third trip overseas, the other being to Cameroon. Seven years later, she is living across the country and serving in the medical field and has the heart of adventure.

My team leaves in 18 days to serve at almost the exact same conference, this time helping older students. Of course, my hope is that our program goes off great and that the kids have a blast. But even more, I hope that I can tell these kinds of stories of transformation and adventure and kids growing up to serve even greater causes than themselves - in seven years. Because if it happens in seven, the future has been marked.

Friday Burn

::: Melinda Gates talks with Christianity Today
Poverty, homelessness, vaccines and faith. Fantastic read.
Link


::: How Fast American Changes Its Mind
Link


::: Myanmars First KFC
People in Iceland raved about KFC too.
Link

::: 'Half the fun of the travel is the esthetic of lostness.' – Ray Bradbury via @DavidLivermore

Photo: Ember guides, the Lincoln, DC. May 2015.

The Incredible First 6 Months of 2015

Today is July 1 and the first half of 2015 has been a fantastic season in my life. Not to say it's all roses - we are parenting two teenagers after all. But in the grand scheme of things, it has been pretty great.

I've done more traveling than usual, including a birthday getaway with my wife, taking my older daughter to Iceland and going with my wife to Seattle to officiate the wedding of some dear friends. Our health is good and my mom is doing okay and my day job, once pretty pitiful, is seeing some light. Ember has also had some fantastic engagements including serving with some college kids in Baltimore, a weekend with students in Philly, helping coach some young adult leaders, and architecting a student missions training weekend. And of course Prague is coming up later this month, which is a huge project and with a great team.

The opportunities that have shown themselves this year have been deeply aligned with both my personal passions and giftings as well as competencies of The Ember Cast. I loved each of those Ember projects - they required the best of what we could give and they were incredibly generative for me - they were what we do best. Intention, planning and being open to God's opportunities have made for a great 2015 so far.

Thanks for your support for The Ember Cast in 2015 so far.

Prague Team Meeting #7

Less than 30 days until departure and we are feeling it.

Our team meeting agenda included:
+ An intro to each of our team to Teal Rapp, director of recruiting for Christian Associates. Teal and I originally met in 2007 and have kept a fun working relationship on and off. The last two summers in Aix were part of working with him and he's the one that got us into this interesting missions experience for this summer. Teal is one of the most relational, entrepreneurial people that I know and his role of recruiting and shepherding people into potential cross cultural service fits him like a glove. That is Teal on the TV.
+ Mapping - both in calendars and looking at our physical locations.
+ More logistics planning for our actual 'program.' I can't tell you too much of this but it is a good kind of challenge as we base our plans on core values for our Camp Juice students, like having fun, spending time with each other, some fruits of the Spirit and utilizing our physical layout and structures as best we can.
+ Informally, we also talked about the discipleship square, high invitation-high challenge and the information-imitation-innovation triangle.

Friday Burn

::: The Majority of American Babies are Now Minorities
Link


::: Smart Phone Addicts Make Poor Ministers
Seth Barnes has been posting a series on smart phones, mission teams and whether they should ban smart phones from the World Race. This is a great read in this series.
Link


::: What is the Best Charitable Cause in the World and How Would You Know?
Link

::: An organization doesn't become healthy in a linear, tidy fashion. @patricklencioni

Photo: Sidamo offering - Meklit Summer Special. [Meklit is one of our 2015 Prague team members.]

2015 Creative Revenue Plans

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. Every summer, our teams are 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.

Here is some of the context on how this plan came about - in case you didn't notice, I was super frustrated. Combine that frustration with some of the systemic issues with missions support and the freedom to execute what we imagine with The Ember Cast, and we had the experiment known as the Creative Revenue Plan, which I think is going great.

Like every summer, I'm thrilled to see the plans that students execute. This summer includes pet sitting, lawn mowing, photography and babysitting. Not only that, our whole team was involved in a big missions training event which leveraged our skills, experience and talents, both as our team and Ember as an organization. And one of our guides leading a trip for a local church came up with a painting party for his team.

The future necessitates that missionaries continue to be smart about finances, including how they raise support, how they use their skills to create revenue and the fine balance between the two.

George and CeCe

If you are an emerging global student leader, your life might look like this in 40 years:

+ lived around the world
+ all your kids were born in different places
+ your kids and grand kids are spread across different continents
+ your extended family is a rich tapestry of different cultures
+ your kids are impacting the world for Jesus in various cultures and domains and raising solid kids
+ your grand kids have exponentially multiplied your sense of adventure

We spent lots of time with George and CeCe last week and were so blessed by their ethos and life. What a rich family legacy they have built, with intention, sacrifice and a sense of the mission of God.

#sundetosteed

One of the absolute joys of my life - officiating the wedding of these two yesterday - Jeremiah and Emilie. Emilie was my first student missions intern in 2005 and eventually contributed at the highest level as a leader, helping lead a ton of stuff and make investments that continue to affect the world today. She was the first person that truly modeled the 'emerging global student leader' - a student that was interested in global cultures, loved airports, parents who didn't mind putting them on a plane and a passion for the world that erupted in action.

In that season, her family modeled adventure, risk, and being pioneers. Her parents have also always had the healthy perspective that your kids are only yours for a little bit because the Lord has a greater purpose for them after you have helped them grow.

Godspeed Jeremiah and Emilie - we can't wait to see how you change the course of human history.

Prague Team Meeting #6

Highlights from our team meeting #6:
+ Video teaser production.
+ About 7 hours in DC together, mostly on Capitol Hill.
We visited the Barracks Row campus for National Community Church. Most everyone knows I love this church and we always take the opportunity to visit with student teams if we can. Visiting a different expression of Church is an Ember distinctive. Most of our teams, by nature of our context, have grown up in an affluent, suburban megachurch, and therefore don't always realize what a sociological anomaly they are. This doesn't serve them well if they get older and think that megachurches are the way church is everywhere in the world.
+ We also had them do a short cultural scavenger hunt around Capitol Hill. This was not only a team bonding activity, it was modeling what they will probably have to put together for Camp Juice when we get to Prague.
+ Tiny bit of logistical and programming update. More on that later.

UPDATE: Special guest Shannon Linden also joined us.

Friday Burn

::: When You 'Literally Can't Even' Understand Your Teenager
Link


::: The Transformation of the Mall - think Ethnic
Link


::: Designing the Letter M for the Metro
Link


::: The Three Most Destructive Words in the English Language
Link


::: We all eat from trees we didn’t plant. - John Wimber via Amadeo Church

Photo: Hope, Ember guide, leading a workshop on people of peace. May 2015.

Jello Night 2015

A time honored tradition around our house that ends this year after 6 7 years. The end of an era.

Leading From the Younger

There is a false paradigm of age within lots of leadership contexts. If you are older, people younger than you are expected to give you respect because you are supposed to be smarter, wiser and more experienced. You knew it a long time ago and they don't know it yet. Trust me, I'm not saying we shouldn't learn from those who have gone before us.

If you want to grow your emerging leaders, you will need to revamp that paradigm. Instead, you will have to give them opportunities to exercise authority and responsibility and influence, in some cases, giving your leaders influence over those that are older than them.

When that happens, you'll get some feedback alright. From the emerging leaders, it will be uncomfortable, strange, and full of dissonance. Ember staff give me this feedback regularly. From the smarter, wiser, and more experienced, they will love learning from those younger than them. From the just plain older, well, you should probably just ignore their feedback.

Friday Burn

::: The Coca Cola Leadership Program
Link


::: All Your Clothes are Made by Exploited Workers
I am a huge Patagonia fan and have owned about 7 pieces of Patagonia outerwear since 1988. Great read about the systemic issues surrounding labor trafficking.
Link


::: What Each MBTI Type Does If They Like You
Link

Photo: Ember guides, top of the Lincoln Memorial steps, May 2015.

The Ember Prague 2015 Team

Student Mission Team Training

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

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

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

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

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

More pictures here.

Friday Burn

::: The World Has Gotten a Lot Less Hungry
The total number of undernourished people has fallen by more than 200 million since 1990.
As a percentage of its total population, the developing world has cut undernourishment from 23.3% in 1990 to 12.9% today.
Since 1990 31 more countries have met the UN goal of cutting hunger in half or bringing it under 5% of their populations.
Link


::: Creative Street Posters Show Another Side to Youth Homelessness
Link


::: Lessons Learned From Food Pantry to Food Co-Op
Fantastic read.
Link


::: Made in Ethiopia Now Means Luxury
One of the founders mentioned, Sam Imende, is a friend of a friend.
Link

::: Photo - training with some student mission team leaders - Union Station, Washington DC, April 2012.

Favorite Quotes About Unfiltered Debate

These form the backdrop for a large student missions training engagement this coming weekend. To build the best teams, you must use unfiltered debate as one of your greatest tools.

The key ingredient to building trust is not time. It is courage. - Patrick Lencioni

It's really demeaning to think that, in this deep desire to be liked, you’ve compromised giving clear, unambiguous feedback. - Steve Jobs

In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust...As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge. If the employees fundamentally trust the CEO, the communication will be vastly more efficient than if they don't. Telling things as they are is a critical part of building this trust. - Ben Horowitz

Friday Burn

::: Twitter Opens $3M Tech Skills Center
Link


::: We Have No Idea How to Help Countries Like Nepal Recover from Natural Disasters
Link


::: The Human Trafficking Situation in Europe is Out of Control
Link


::: What City Has More Bookstores Per Capita Than Any Other
Link

::: "Tradition is not to preserve the ashes, but to pass on the flame." - Gustav Mahler via @jr_briggs

Photo: Ember mini ProtoGuide reunion. May 2015.

2015 Mission Support Metrics

For those of you that might be interested in this kind of thing.... A glance at support funding metrics - this year compared to the past two years.

We are at roughly 70% with 8 weeks left to go and been raising funding for 12 weeks so far, meaning that we are a little ahead in terms of support versus time. Creative revenue is at 7% right now, but I'm expecting that percentage to go up as we get closer. We don't usually get CRP funding in hand until closer to departure.

The team has done a great job this year in raising support. I'm not too worried about raising enough support and I don't feel queasy about buying plane tickets anymore. We do still have a lot of work in terms of planning the actual experience.

Prague Mtg #5

Highlights from our team meeting #5:

+ More and more program development, including spiritual content and fun and games brainstorming. We still have a good amount of ways to go on this.
+ Review of one of the conference themes and how it will integrate with what we are doing.
+ We've started an Instagram account to help with future promotion for us - Got_Juice_2015.
+ The Best Idioms from Around the World
+ Pitch Perfect 2 as a team bonding field trip [not my idea but a pretty funny movie...]

Photo: Yes, Jacob is in there twice.

Friday Burn

::: 10 Lessons from a Leader's Legacy
Insightful, especially #4 and #10.
Link


::: The Art of Giving Away Members
Link
And this quote:

When we asked Greear about his path to church leadership, he said, some key older men “held a crown up over my head and grew me into it,” he said.

::: Is Multi-Site the Last Great Idea?
Fantastic read.
Link via Dawn Nicole Baldwin


::: I Traveled Across China Photographing People With Everything They Own
Link

Photo: Youth group staples - note the quantity of matzah. Philly, April 2015.

ProtoGuide to AZ

In 2013, Ember helped facilitate a student team from Grace, our home church, to serve and work with Amadeo Church, in Queen Creek, AZ. Amadeo's lead pastor Ben Cloud was one of my first missions friends that I met on the Internet in 2005 and this team happened to be an amazing collection of all girls.

Two years later, I'm delighted to tell you that one of those team members, Shannon Linden, is going to spend a few months serving with Amadeo in a gap semester, starting this coming September. Shannon graduates from high school in a few weeks and has a heart for service, community impact and church planting. She's also been one of our ProtoGuides this year and we have absolutely loved working with her.

The Ember Cast exist to help these kinds of relationships and experiences flourish. Combine passionate emerging global student leaders with the most adventurous, innovative and creative leaders that we know and you will get why we do what we do - we throw fire.

The Ember Cast Board of Directors, May 2015

We've never had a picture before, so here it is, at our last board meeting, last Friday night.

Board meetings typically look like:
- reviewing the past [this part is mostly done with pictures and me telling some stories]
- looking at the future [usually lists]
- specific issues [this time was mostly about the board - job descriptions, open spots and opportunities for more involvement]
- interesting items to note [our big one this last time was talking about global risk]

Left to right: Leslie, Joyce, Matt - some of the biggest advocates for student missions leadership and living generous, adventure filled lives that reflect someone greater. The future will thank them.

Friday Burn

::: An Atlas of Upward Mobility
Link


::: The Wire Got It Backwards
Link


::: People Stop Listening to New Music at the Age of 33
Link

Photo: baked goods and support letters.

Missional Elders

While the nature and values of the gospel remain the same, their expression should always be changing. Stubbornness to change can lead to methodolatry and make the gospel inaccessible and undesirable to others. God and his mission are often full of surprises, so mission-focused leaders hold plans loosely and continue to ask what he desires.
We cannot respond with the seven deadly words of the church: "We've never done it that way before." We must instead embrace a posture of "Whatever you want of us - and from us - God, we will do." One of the most significant and startling lessons we can learn from church history is that movements of renewal first happen on the fringe, not in the center of expected norms. Can we join him in those surprising places that force us to trust him with ever-deepening levels of faith?
Our role as elders is to seek God and ask him to stoke the coals of kingdom imagination in our own hearts and in the hearts of those in our congregation. Imagine if elders were the ones awakening hearts and minds of people with kingdom vision by saying things like "Imagine if we joined by..." or "What if God called us as a church to.." or "I wonder if God is calling us to step out in the area of..." When guided by the Spirit and rooted in wisdom, this type of kingdom-initiated vision is contagious.
But imagination involves risk and courage, which requires permission to fail - and grace when it happens. If we are afraid of failure, our churches will never pursue new outposts for reaching new people within various cultures and contexts. To be elders committed to expressing God's mission is to lead with courage as we pursue a mission larger than ourselves.

- Eldership and the Mission of God: Equipping Teams for Faithful Church Leadership, JR Briggs and Bob Hyatt.
Fantastic read and really gives a vision of local church elders as agents of mission for their communities. Highly recommended if you are involved in any kind of local church leadership.

Hosting the Ns

In 2006, the Ns hosted a student team that I led to Yaounde Cameroon. They were the most gracious hosts and our role was to help jump start some relationships and student gatherings during our time in their city. In 2008, they hosted another team from our church, this team helping them with a leadership conference they were putting together. Again, the most gracious, humble, and culturally sensitive hosts.

Bad picture, but G is second from the left and W is all the way on the right. [Greg who helped lead in 2006 and 2008 in the middle and Terah who lead in 2008 is second from the right.] It was a pleasure to host them and two of their three kids this past weekend. And, of course, when people like us get together, the 4 day long conversation includes topics like:
+ sending churches and global missions strategies
+ their transition of ministry moving from being hands on youth workers to focusing on organizational dynamics and administration
+ psychometrics and high performance teams
+ the demand of a typical season on furlough
+ life overseas while preparing your teenagers for college in another country

I also had some great conversations with their two boys about growing up overseas, being third culture kids and the kinds of things they would love and hate if they got together with similar kids. This is info we will indirectly use for Prague. Loved our time together.

Friday Burn

::: Where Should You Give to Help Nepal?
Link


::: Production Adoption - Seth on the Diffusion of Innovation Scale
[PS I love this scale]
Link


::: The World's Languages, in 7 maps and charts
Link


::: Movement killer: telling someone with the apostolic gift that he/she cannot use it. @briansanders_

Photo: The Rocky Steps, Philly. April 2015.

Best of Luck Brent

That is Brent Lutz on the left, sitting on a tarp covered recliner with shaving cream all over his face. Our daughter Emily is in the center of the posse of girls on the right. A pie in the face - consider this a middle school send off.

Last Sunday was Brent's last Sunday in his position as middle school pastor at Grace - his family felt a call back to Ohio where they have deep roots. These girls, and our family, have been fortunate enough to have a middle school pastor that loved Jesus and was crazy enough to hang with middle schoolers for 3 years. His impact has been tangible and visceral.

Thanks Brent for investing in the middle schoolers of Howard County and best of luck!

Prague Team - Mtg #4

Served for a morning together at The Samaritan Women, a local human trafficking victim services organization, as a team, or as many as could come. They do a fantastic intro to the whole subject of domestic and local human trafficking and serving on their property is both a great project and gives you a great sense for their mission.

Planning lunch with most of our team where we outlined and put down some structure to the program we are going to execute. We got some juice now.

Friday Burn

::: Why Some People Are So Good at Persisting
Trust me on this - click the link and read it. Nathan is fast becoming one of my favorite writers.
Link


::: The Wirecutter's Travel Guide
Link


::: Dan Sadlier celebrating Hope Church Roosevelt Island's First Year
Some of the Ember team had lunch with Dan in 2011. Super insightful post.
Link

Photo: Community Garden, Salvation Army West Philadelphia. April 2015.

Young Young Adults

Pictured is the leadership team of the young adult ministry at our church - a phenomenal group of young people. I had the privilege of being with them for about 18 hours a few weeks ago for part of their spring leadership retreat. Huge privilege.

During our time together, we watched a few of the videos from the Verge Conference, best described as a gathering of future-centric church leaders. I loved the content of the talks and my role there was to help facilitate discussions with this team. Some of the concepts that we talked about included movement thinking, releasing and ordaining ordinary people to do ministry, and postures and gestures. The other idea that I walked away with was the reminder that vocabulary creates culture - the words that you use and their definitions matter and help define the ethos of your team.

Much has been said about the decline of church involvement among young people and how the American church is in crisis mode. I don't dispute any of that and certainly agree that the future of a movement of Jesus followers will see many challenges. But people like these people - who love each other incredibly through good and bad, who are bound so tightly by a sense of impacting the world for God's glory, and who are willing to break the mold of how we have done it before - yes, I'll hang with them and cheer them on.