SFO

Debbie

Sad news:

It is with great sadness and sorrow that I announce the passing of our beloved sister and fellow warrior Debra Jones. She died June 15th of kidney failure in Gambi Hospital in Bahar Dar, Ethiopia. She was on a journey loving people in ways that always stretched our capacity and blew our imagination. More information to follow.

If you ever traveled with us, went on a cross cultural experience with The Ember Cast or SPACE, been in a conversation over a meal about church planting or leadership or community development or global poverty or emerging global nomads, you were impacted by Andrew and Debbie Jones. Amazing people and we are deeply, deeply saddened by Debbie's passing.

We were fortunate to have them stay with us in 2010 and it was one of the most significant experiences to shape and mold our very suburban kids, helping them see a vision for becoming global people that serve a global God. Last summer, our Ember team, with Camp Juice, spent an afternoon and evening with them and again, walked away with new imagination for what it might look like to move and serve in any context. The world lost someone who truly shaped human destiny.

Photo: Prague, July 2015. Debbie, 3rd from the left.

90:12

College gathering last night. One of the big themes I tried to convey was that this is one of the most amazing times to be alive because there are things happening around the world that have never happened. Oh to be 20 years old right now. Teach us to number our days.

You Should Care About You

In about a week, our family is taking a little adventure overseas - I know, hard to believe. We've been planning this for a while and this trip only works because we travel hacked the airfare, which could be a topic for another post. But I'll be posting about our trip, at least a little bit.

Part of our adventure will also be attending a leadership conference together as a family. You probably know that I've attended lots of conferences with students, mostly leadership and missions and church planting types of gatherings. They've always been fun and we've always had a great time and learned a lot. But we've never done something like this as a family and we are really looking forward to it.

You are the only one that looks out for your growth and development. No one else cares about you becoming a better leader or gaining more competency or growing in your ability to care for others, but you should. Don't neglect your opportunities to get better.

Friday Burn

::: Why Summer Vacation is a $60B Problem
Link


::: McDonald's: you can sneer, but it's the glue that holds communities together
Link via NextDraft


::: This Little Girl Is Making Handbags With Essential Supplies For The Homeless And It’s Remarkable
Link


::: 'A happy family is but an earlier heaven.' - George Bernard Shaw

Photo: Ember guide, KY. May 2016.

The Graduate

Crazy week last week which included graduation, a minor [luckily] car accident right after the ceremony, a trip to the emergency room for the Madre. But everything worked out fine and we are proud of our graduate.

2013-2016 Support Trends

Big picture for 2013-2016 support trends in case you might be interested. Context for this is suburban, affluent, high achieving target culture with most students on these teams fitting into this demographic as well. 10 people on the team and most are well connected to people interested in this kind of stuff, meaning they have little difficulty raising money for a student missions project.

Current stats for the Italy team, as of 5 June:
+ 170 donations.
+ 17 donations electronically - 10%.
+ Rate is $340/day or $2377 a week.
+ One student averaged $60/a day or $420 a week with 37 donors at an average of $100/donation. That is really high and you shouldn't use that for comparison.
+ Average donation - $130.
+ Currently at just over $22K, which is almost 85% of budget, we still have a good few weeks before departure [this is not reflected in the trend chart though].
+ Creative revenue is around 6% which I anticipate will go up in the next few weeks.

If you are raising some support this summer, maybe this gives you a benchmark for some perspective.

Friday Burn

::: Mary Meeker's 2016 Internet Trends
This is always a must read.
Link


::: The amount of money it would take to eliminate extreme poverty is now lower than the amount of money spent on foreign aid every year.
Link via Scott Harrison


::: Study Abroad's Seven Deadly Sins
Link via David Livermore


::: A Beginner's Guide to Ramadan
Link

2016 on the move

Ember tribe on the move this summer:

+ Trevin, Guide - just returned from SE Asia
+ Shannon, former ProtoGuide - just returned from South Africa
+ DK, former ProtoGuide - departing this week to ...
+ Italy team, end of July
+ Rachel - AZ mountains
+ KatieV - Colorado mountains

Loving those airports.

Friday Burn

::: I went to Afghanistan to save the world. The world had other plans.
Link


::: Traveling the World—and Raising Two Kids—in a 2003 Land Rover Defender
Link


::: Meet the Pilot: Smart Earpiece Language Translator
Link via Ember board of director, MPM

::: "To be a disciple means that we deliberately identify ourselves with God's interests in other people." - Oswald Chambers

Photo: Ember decompression. May 2016.

ProtoGuide 2016

MK finished her official ProtoGuide activities and responsibilities last week. We are thrilled at her experience and it was a huge privilege to work with her over these last 4 months. As part of winding down, she's hanging with some of the Ember Board over the next few days.

Here's a quick summary of all the stuff she was involved with:
+ One day a week working with The Well in Curtis Bay, serving in all aspects of the org including the Hope Chest, women's mentoring groups, back office admin tasks and deep diving from the founder and executive director. 'Create something from nothing.'
+ One day a week serving with a local public school and being an ESL aide specifically for refugee students.
+ An afternoon a week meeting with and praying with community pastors and activists.
+ Attending the Common Ground Consultation.
+ Joined a Perspectives class with me.
+ Helping architect our Ember GCC Impact training day.
+ Working on the 24JE team.
+ Gotten to know and interact with some key people here in the DMV missions world.

We have loved having her around for a few months. She'll continue to hang with us this summer since she is part of the Ember Italy team. This has been our privilege though - when a young person like MK shows up to learn about missions, we go all in. Here's our infosheet if you know someone that might be interested.

24JE

For the past few months, Katie and some of her senior friends [and most of the Italy team] have been planning an event called 24JE, which was a 24 hour justice experience for high school students that took place last week. The event was a great success.

24 hours, meals of rice and beans, 9 different speakers interacting about topics such as human trafficking, war and refugees, foster care, homelessness, a service project in Curtis Bay Baltimore and lots of great interaction around these topics.

Put on by students for students. You could do this too.

Friday Burn

::: The World Bank is Eliminating the Term 'Developing Country'
Link


::: What being a flight attendant taught me about human trafficking
Link


::: Suburbs are the New Chinatowns
Link

::: The only ideas that really matter are the ones that get turned into realities. - Erwin McManus

Photo: Meklit, marshmallows, Nat, Katie, spaghetti, team building.

Put Young People Up Front

This is MK, leading a team building exercise for a team of young and older people. It's a good example of Ember's habit of putting young people up front. Most of the students we hang with have the character and competence to lead so not giving them those opportunities would be foolish.

Instead, I get out of the way and let them lead the charge. It requires mutual trust, lots of communication and delegating authority. Believe it or not, it gets easier the more you do it.

This past weekend, our Guides, who were all less than 21 years old, ran team building activities for 6 overseas teams with over 60 people from all age ranges. If you are leading something and are over the age of 40, you should get out of the way. You can't do it all nor should you.

2016 Ember GCC Impact Advance

Details from Ember Advance, this past Saturday. The 'Advance' tagline was stolen many years ago and this type of event is one of my very favorite things to do. We actually combined an existing student missions training engagement with some extended time with the Italy team to make up this year's Ember Advance. I'm thrilled with every outcome from this day.

Very few churches spend a lot of time and energy preparing their short term teams and we had the privilege of helping facilitate this training experience for our home church and their six student teams headed all over the world. This was a follow on piece to a leadership overnight that we had run in January. The concept behind the event is simple - teams spend extended time together before they actually get to the mission field and this year's time was spent on learning some global missions concepts and team building. After the training event, the Italy team did a few more things as a team.

Here are the major elements from this year.
+ GCC Impact Prayer Time - Teams spent a little bit of time praying for the other teams.
+ GCC Impact Mission Roundtable - Ember Guide Tess spoke on Context and Worldview; Tae, new missions pastor at GCC, spoke about spiritual warfare; and I used an illustration about potatoes to talk about dependency and erupting talent. I heard the first two rocked.
+ GCC Impact Team Building Exercises - A 90 minute rotation for 3 blocks of interesting, fun, and purposeful team building activities.
+ GCC Impact Lunch/Ember Debrief - While the GCC teams had lunch and team time together, our team had a fantastic debriefing conversation which will help make these events even better.
+ Italy - StrengthsFinder session - You know how I love this. It's difficult to do this with a team in less than 90 minutes but that makes for a long session.
+ Italy - Field trip to NCC - We visit National Community Church almost every year because I believe they are one of the most innovative churches in America and because it's healthy for our students to see other expressions of Church. Saturday night's message on discipleship by Heather Zempel was easily one of the best messages I have ever heard on the topic.
"Imagine a church that makes Jesus' last command their first concern."
+ Italy - dinner in DC - Talking a little bit about the concept of oikos.

Special thanks to the Ember Italy team for working and serving hard at this event. Beautiful day.

Friday Burn

::: 1,700 years ago, the mismanagement of a migrant crisis cost Rome its empire
Link


::: What My Three Years at Netflix Taught Me About Scaling a Startup
Link via Justin


::: Disagreeing with People from 20 Different Countries
Link


::: All real education is the architecture of the soul. - William Bennett

Photo: May 2006, the very first Mission Advance.

In Real Life Team Training

Ember has one of our biggest engagements coming up this weekend - we are hosting a short term student training event. We've expanded this on our side to be what we know as Ember Advance, so after the training event, our team and special guests will do some more team stuff and a field trip. These types of Mission Advance events are my absolute favorite.

If you are curious as to how and what we do for these training events, we have a limited number of spots for you to come hang with us and see it for yourself. Get in touch if you are interested.

Working - Erupting Talent: An Antidote to Toxic Charity

Working notes for an upcoming workshop. Comments and feedback welcome. Still emerging.

1. Dependency - doing something for someone that they could do for themselves
Do this enough and it becomes toxic - it doesn't help them anymore.
Interact with examples

2. Assets - something that is useful or valuable
It's easy to identify material assets
Not so easy to identify non material assets
Gifting talent skills
Interact with examples

3. Erupt
Discover -
what were you created to do?
SF/MBTI
Potential - high invitation/high challenge
Map - who do you do this with? how are they interconnected?
How - self -> serve -> systems
Missional imagination - the power of imagining

4. You could get really good at this and it would be a big value for missions.
Get good at coaching people with discovery, mapping and walking them from vision through execution.

Friday Burn

::: The Psychology of Packing
Link


::: Death by GPS
Link


::: The World's Shipping Routes
Link

Photo: TH, Ember Guide and EmCrum. HCC Cru. May 2016.

Not Enough Youth Workers Talk About Calling

In my role with Ember, I have had lots of opportunities to give advice to young people about their future - it is always a privilege. Although I'd love to tell them to sell everything and go live in a hut [kidding], talking about calling is usually fun for me and overwhelming for them. Just last month, Dea and I had an evening conversation with an Ember peep about a specific opportunity and the trajectory of his life.

If you have students that ask you for this kind of advice, you should think about the following list of ideas. Study what the Scriptures say about this list. Think about your friends and mentors who are the most passionate and who have the highest caliber of character and how these topics have intertwined with God's call on their lives.

What are the general callings for all Jesus people?
What is the specific calling for you?
What are the gifts, talents and passions that have been forged in your heart?
Does God call you with an audible voice? What are other things God uses to give us direction?
Is there a right and wrong calling?
How granular is calling - marry right person, take the right job, buy the right pair of shoes?
Theology of place - how does God call me to a physical location?

Unfortunately, not many youth workers teach students how to navigate calling. If you have the power to change that, you should, right away.

You Still Have Time to do Team Preparation

The primary cause of failure often is lack of pre-field preparation. The whole episode becomes a colossal waste of time, and a drain on the missionaries. To this we have to add the high cost of teams junketing off to exotic places. But we have to examine our total investment in light of the returns, as well as the problems we create.

- Jim Reapsome, former editor-at-large for Evangelical Missions Quarterly. [Link]

You still have time. Don't waste the opportunity. Your kids, their parents and the people you are serving with are worth the extra time and effort you put in to training them in being a team, navigating culture and serving with passion.

Friday Burn

::: Singapore is Taking the Smart City to a Whole New Level
Now Singapore may soon be known for something else: the most extensive effort to collect data on daily living ever attempted in a city.
Link


::: Millennials Overtake Baby Boomers
Millennials, whom we define as those ages 18-34 in 2015, now number 75.4 million, surpassing the 74.9 million Baby Boomers (ages 51-69). And Generation X (ages 35-50 in 2015) is projected to pass the Boomers in population by 2028.
Link


::: Trinity Grace Church, NYC, celebrates 10 years.
Video

::: The best test of any discipling process is the quantity and quality of leaders it develops. - @dave_rhodes

Photo: Team training - gutterball. May 2012.

Building Impossibilities

Ember is gearing up for a team training engagement and of course, the Italy team was suitable enough to experiment on. The actual team building activity in question was not exactly totally planned out so that made it even funner for this team... sort of. In this case, the actual task might have been close to impossible.

Teams don't always have to have tasks that can be accomplished. They may, in fact, learn more from a task that will never be possible. Pressure and frustration are valuable tools in the right hands and cause creates community [A McManus].

2016 Italy #3

Experimental team building activity
The Journey of a Refugee, Lesvos, Greece [YouTube]
Asset Based Community Development
Telling Your Story
Ember mantras

Friday Burn

::: Recruitment: The Final Desperate Act of a Dying Church

Recruitment is actually a subtraction strategy. It doesn’t add anything to the kingdom. It simply takes from it. It is a strategy that uses the kingdom for its own good rather than contributing to the kingdom.

Link


::: Don't Look Now But Twitter has Momentum with the Youth
Link


::: Instagram is Ruining Vacation
Link

::: Think long because God thinks generationally. @willmancini

Photo: NYC, April 2016.

24 Hour Justice Experience for Students

Most of our 2016 Italy team is helping put together a 24 hour justice experience, specifically for high school students, through our home church, Grace. There will be elements of teaching, worship, and a community service project, all centered around the idea of justice. If you are or know of a high school student that might be interested in something like this, reach out or have them sign up here.

2016 Italy #2

+ Practicing Italian with Tess
+ Support status
+ Ember mantras
+ Worldview:
define, examples, real life examples, where do you see this in the Scriptures.
+ Plausibility Structures
define, examples, how do these play out in the interactions Jesus had.
+ Special guest Lindsey

Friday Burn

::: What Africa Will Look Like in 100 Years.
Link


::: For the Poor, Geography Matters
Link


::: America Has the Fewest 16-Year-Old Drivers Since the 1960s
By the way, this is not true at the Sheng household. Our kids are trying to get out as fast as they can.
Link

::: ‏Be creative. To reach people no one is reaching, we have to do things that no one is doing. @craiggroeschel

Photo: Team leader city movement decompression. Philly, January 2016.

Funding for 2020

In late 2015, I started dreaming about 2016. And if you know the futuristics, it always ends a lot further down the line. Vision usually requires some amount of funding so part of Ember's 2016 strategic plan was for me to try to raise some money as we dreamed now until 2020.

This Spring, I've set a personal goal to try to raise some funding for the next 4 years for The Ember Cast. This funding will go towards some interesting initiatives for our emerging global student leaders. This includes some training, some leadership experiences, support for past Guides and helping fund Guide Grants - projects our Guides dream up.

One benchmark of leadership is the ability to raise support [think nonfinancial] and funding. Every summer, I raise some money for Ember summer teams and I've been happy when we have raised enough, which I think is the right attitude. But this year, I'd like to see just what that upper bound might be.

Although this post isn't a plea for support, if this is your kind of thing, feel free to reach out. If you are a long time reader, you'll probably get a support packet. Design of this funding letter done by Katie, Ember spawn.

CG Brunch

A few of our Ember peeps spent 4 days last week at a thing called the CG Consultation. Our conversation included their learning on topics such as:
- how cultural distance not taken seriously can be a big hindrance.
- insider movements.
- you must be able to reproduce what you do in order for it to move to a movement.
- how important the first follower is [see this TED talk]
- calling demons out of people by name.

Love being able to dig deep into what some of our Ember tribe is learning.

Friday Burn

::: Charity Water Puts Google and VR to Good Use
Link


::: 11 Characteristics of a Spiritual Entrepreneur
I love this post, natch.
Link


::: What is the World's Loneliest City?
Link

Photo: Most of the Italy team at Perspectives. We are having fun even though it doesn't look like it.

Proud Dad Moment

Allow me to be a proud dad for a moment... Katie is a senior in high school and the path to planning next year has been a little bumpy - life with teenagers, whatever. She didn't really want to go to school next year and most of you readers knew about her candidate weekend about a month ago to a school in the Middle East. At the end of last week, we found out that she got accepted along with a very, very generous financial package. All that to say that we are very proud of her, not just for what she has accomplished but because she has paved the way for one of many paths that will help her be everything the Lord wants her to be.

I absolutely love this paragraph from the acceptance letter and if you know Katie, you know how it fits her:

Surrounded by extraordinary students like yourself and working closely with world-class faculty, you will flourish as a scholar and develop the full range of your exceptional talent. In a vibrant city at an emerging crossroads of the world, with unparalleled opportunity for cross-cultural exploration and international study, you will equip yourself for leadership in a global age.

Emerging crossroads of the world, cross cultural exploration, international study, leadership in a global age - sounds like The Ember Cast. For better or worse, that's the kind of children we grew.

Friday Burn

::: D.C. now has more children. Here's where they're living.

Ever since 2011, the increase of children living in the city has outpaced the growth of the adult population.

Link


::: Have We Been Celebrating the Wrong Thing About Toms

TOMS has invested in the futures of thousands of men and women by offering job skills training. They've also initiated health training, including skilled birth attendant training. A company that cares about training and long-term empowerment of those it employs is to be celebrated.

Link


::: Turns out 'post-Christian' Seattle is fertile ground for new church starts.

"Seattle is a site for fresh life,"James explains. "Losing its power takes the church to a place it hasn't been since before Constantine. I think that's really hopeful."

Link

::: The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. - Mother Theresa

Photo: Cultural observation, Ember style. Philly, January 2016.

Perspectives - Lesson 11

I'm teaching Lesson 11 at the Perspectives class next week in Columbia, Merryland and if you've been here a while you know that I think it's one of the best resources for global cross cultural people. If you have never been but want to sit in on a class, you can be one of my guests next week. It's Monday night from 7-9:30 at Bridgeway Community Church. Get in touch if you want to go - I'll have a few other guests too.

Friday Burn

::: What To Do If You're Traveling in a City Struck by a Terror Attack

Stay safe at the hotel until things settle, he says. Aside from offering shelter, and most likely food and an internet connection, hotels offer disoriented travelers an invaluable resource: the front desk. Hotel staff will usually be well equipped to help guests understand the situation on the ground, Hume says.

Link


::: Why Ministry is Harder Than it was a Decade Ago
Link


::: Why I'm Traveling to Easter Island With My Son Today

i’m convinced that parents — especially dads — need to adopt a mindset that quality time only occurs in the midst of quantity time. you can’t really schedule quality time.

Link

::: "When you kill time, remember that it has no resurrection." - A.W. Tozer

Photo: Natalie's 2016 support letter.

La Grand Place

From a few days there in the summer of 2012. Beautiful and strategic city.

2016 Mission Team Preps

It's just about the end of March and if you haven't outlined how you will prepare your summer mission team, it's not too late. But it will be soon. Remember, you aren't building a group of people that travel together, you are building a group of people that trust each other.

Here is what our team preps look like for this coming summer:
1 - A Team Assessment
I've done Myers Briggs for almost every team I have led for the past 13 years. This year, we will probably walk through the StrengthsFinder assessment with our team. No matter which assessment, your team will be better for working out how each individual works with other people.

2 - Our Core Curriculum
We use this list because we believe that just about everyone can gain from learning about global missions concepts at any age, especially middle and high school students.

3 - Field Trips and Guest Speakers
We will use a combination of field trips and guest speakers touching on the topics of culture, context, various expressions of Church, creative revenue and other fun stuff too.

Photo: Tessa's 2016 support letter. As we roll into support raising, our team has a mandate to create beautiful support letters. I'm proud to be showing you some of them in the next few weeks.

Friday Burn

::: My Organization System, Noah Kagan
Link


::: The Second Smart Phone Revolution
Link


::: 15 Observations from a Brit in New York
Link

::: The first step of humility is unhesitating obedience. -Benedict of Nursia

Photo - Ember whiteboarding.

Immersive Learning

So much of how people learn in the workplace today, from 360-degree performance evaluations to mentoring to coaching, has become bureaucratized and impersonal - a far cry from the personal relationship of learning that existed between Verrocchio and a protege such as Leonardo [da Vinci]. In 2003, there were fewer than a half a million structured apprenticeships in the United States: by 2013, cost cutting in organizations had brought that number down to below three hundred thousand. Moreover the best, most competent bosses today generally don't prioritize engaging reports informally in an immersive learning experience. Aiming for more certainty and clarity in their organizations, they promulgate rules and establish bureaucracies that distance them from employees. They also choreograph their days to assure that work gets done, leaving very little unstructured time for instructing or coaching.

- Superbosses by Sydney Finkelstein

2016 Italy Mtg #1

First team meeting:
+ Ember Mantras - why we do what we do
+ People - who we are going to work with
+ Maps - where
+ Pictures - what it sort of looks like
+ Support and Funding - all support letters will look beautiful

We typically do around 8-10 prep trip meetings which might seem like a lot. But it's worth it in many ways.

[Related: Prague #1, 14X #1, 13X #1 2012AZ #1, 2012AZ #3.]

Friday Burn

::: Ingredients for Planning a Great Adventure
Link


::: Why Does America Hate Roundabouts [Except Merryland]
Link


::: 20th Century Architecture in Eritreas Capital
Link


::: "Pack twice the money and half the gear."

Photo: Ember guides, Baltimore, March 2016.

Announcing Ember Italy 2016

In December of 2014, roughly 15 months ago, I received an email from a fellow global missions mobilizer who was starting an initiative in Italy to specifically serve refugees there. We chatted about it here and there and it was one of the items on Ember's dream agenda for 2015. It was a fantastic idea but was never quite the right time. Until now.

Today, I am thrilled to announce the 2016 Ember Italy experience. Our team will travel in late July to assist with this very initiative that my friend SB spoke about 15 months ago. Since that email, the refugee and migration crisis has certainly grown exponentially and I'm excited for this team to be a small part of helping with that. Our primary task will be to serve those who are serving refugees. Other tasks might be to serve other cross cultural workers there, plan and run activities for refugee populations, and ultimately be catalysts for long term workers and their efforts there. Since this effort is fairly new and our team is mostly young, optimistic, idealistic emerging global leaders, we may have the opportunity to do some missional imagination around all of this work as well. As you can imagine, the subject of refugee care includes lots of domains like education, medicine, social work, entrepreneurship, etc. I won't be surprised if our team has some great ideas to help spur on this work.

The current refugee crisis is one of the most compelling and challenging issues for our time and the broader related issue of global urban migration is one of the most significant global phenomenon in all of human history. Like I always say, these are some of the most exciting times in human history because there are things happening right now that have never happened before. I'm excited for our team to serve within this realm and am confident that the lessons we learn this summer will help inform and prepare these global leaders for making a mark on human history.

Thanks in advance for your support for this team.

** Specific travel dates and/or locations are purposely not posted to social media.

Ember Balt 8

In January of 2012, a group of college kids from Salisbury Uni showed up at my house to participate in a discussion about the book Toxic Charity. This gathering was actually planned by one of these kids and she forced me to host it. Not that I wasn't a willing participant - quite the opposite. It was a super discussion and most of what I remember was my suggestion at thinking about idea models [credit to Ben Arment] and how that could be related to charity being non-toxic.

Fast forward about three years and some of these students start a mentoring project where college kids devote at least one evening a week to an elementary or middle school aged child in one of two low income neighborhoods. Most of it gets started by Jake and Wendy going door to door to families they sort of know asking if they might be interested.

This past weekend, four years later, The Ember Cast had the privilege of hosting the Community Mentoring Program for a little service project in Baltimore. The big idea was that providing an experience for these kids who have been served to serve someone else might be a phenomenal time and it was. So impressed with the volunteers with CMP and have loved tracking with them for the past seven years or so.

Special thanks to Erin Preshoot and Serve the City Baltimore for helping connect us with the Believe in Tomorrow house.

Fridays plane

This is Tess, on her flight to southern Europe for a global missions leadership conference. As you can tell, it's been a busy few days of airports with some of our Ember peeps. These are the kinds of people that say, unlike lots of other people, "I just love airports!"

Thanks your support in helping grow these emerging leaders like Tess.

Friday Burn

::: Top 10 Fundraising Fails
Link


::: The World's Most Visited Cities
Link


::: The Visa Restriction Index
Link


::: Hillsong Church, Do Not Colonize San Francisco
Link

::: I would rather die of passion than of boredom. - Vincent van Gogh

Photo: Salisbury Community Mentoring Project, March 2015. We do this again tomorrow.

Wednesdays Plane

We put our older daughter Katie on a plane today - a quick trip for a long weekend to a country on the Arabian Peninsula. She's going to visit a college campus there and we are thrilled about an incredible opportunity for her.

We are proud parents.

It is always difficult to send - your friends, your kids, your spouse, the best leaders in your church. But send we must. The world is waiting.

How About the Bad Guys

The past few years has seen a favorable trend in the nonprofit and church world - the trend of tracking what kind of impact these organizations are making in their communities. Are people being helped, are lives being improved, are we doing good things instead of just existing? Metrics include high school graduation rates, poverty in our communities, healthy marriages and the like. Most are calling it a new kind of scoreboard - instead of tracking giving or attendance or growth, we should count these other kinds of things.

There is another type of score that isn't talked about and that is whether the 'bad guys' in your community look out for you and your people. [You can translate 'bad guys' however you want.] They help your visitors when they get lost. They are friendly to you and your teams. They consider you a friend. They know their community is better because you are there. And if you don't have any bad guys in the community you work in, you'll have to figure that out yourself. But this could be considered a leading indicator. When bad guys start to look out for you and your people, maybe you are on the verge of something.

This is an important indicator. It's subtle, obscure, and hard to measure. Here are some examples of it playing out in real life. 1, 2, 3, 4.

* Special thanks to Leslie B, Ember board of director, for spurring on some of these thoughts.

Friday Burn

::: The US's Dirtiest Organizations
Link


::: 7 Reasons to Speak Without Using Notes
Link


::: Fly KLM and purposely lose something.
Link via j_zimms
Update - apparently this was a public relations exercise and is not true.


::: When they tell me I'm too old to do something, I attempt it immediately. - Pablo Picasso

Photo: The Superstitions.

Finding the Next

Two weeks ago, I sent a flurry of invitations for what I thought would be our big 2016 summer project. And a short week later, we had to cancel it due to circumstances out of our control. Not exactly as we had planned.

Most of the 2015 Prague team came to me with a desire to do something again this summer and that kind of opportunity is thrilling. That team was so good and the characters that make it up are amazing people. So we are pivoting and have landed on a pretty good opportunity - tell you more about that later.

Finding a plan B or C or D can be difficult work. You might not have the interest or the passion or the grit to dig into another option. But before you give up, consider your responsibility and the stewardship of the students that have been placed under your leadership.

The Being Served Who Serve

Eight years ago, a high school student that had traveled around a little bit with us started school at a university on the eastern shore of Merryland. She hit the ground running and within a few weeks, she had gathered a group of students interested in their community just off campus with it's share of interesting issues including poverty, homelessness, child welfare and development. This group of students was not only interested, they acted. Every week they were involved with some kind of community development activity and it was consistent.

In fact, it's been consistent just about this whole eight years. Leaders have graduated, new students have joined and their involvement in community projects has pivoted and been clarified. For the past two years or so, this arc of student involvement has morphed into a mentor program, with college students being big brothers or big sisters with elementary school aged kids in a specific neighborhood. I've loved watching this for the better part of a decade. It proves out lots of questions that students have - can I make an impact while in school, will I have enough time, can I start something like this myself. Yes, yes yes.

This mentorship thing comes to Baltimore in early March as a partnership between The Ember Cast and Serve The City Baltimore for the second time in two years. We'll host a little service project in the city, encourage these amazing student leaders and take lots of notes on how they do it.

Happy Birthday Deanna!

Most of our friends have heard me talk about how amazing 2015 was for me personally and all of it was due to this lady. None of our most significant experiences would have even come close to working out without her support.

It's her pattern of life that's been woven into the DNA of our family - you are blessed to be a blessing to someone else - and she models it better than anyone else.

Happy Birthday Deanna. May this year be an even more incredible year of you multiplying your blessing to others. Love.

Friday Burn

::: Today's Teens _____ Less Than You Did
Link


::: Inside the Mosquito Factory
Link via NextDraft


::: 7 Practices to Make Much Better Team Decisions
Link


::: Great leaders understand there is a difference between being asked a question and being questioned. @AndyStanley

Photo: Rosas Fresh Pizza, Philly, Jan 2016.

The Antidote to Resignation

One of the most poisonous of all Satan’s whispers is simply, "Things will never change." That lie kills expectation, trapping our heart forever in the present. To keep desire alive and flourishing, we must renew our vision for what lies ahead. Things will not always be like this. Jesus has promised to "make all things new." Eye has not seen, ear has not heard all that God has in store for his lovers, which does not mean "we have no clue so don’t even try to imagine," but rather, you cannot outdream God. Desire is kept alive by imagination, the antidote to resignation. We will need imagination, which is to say, we will need hope.

- John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance

ProtoGuides and Founders

MK and I had a little meet and greet with staff at one of the great organizations that will host her for one day a week for the next few months as part of her ProtoGuide experience. I'm thrilled at this partnership working out because I know both parties are going to gain from this. MK is absolutely going to sponge up everything this organization does and why. And they are going to get a passionate young person that loves everyone, serves whenever she can and will work harder than most anyone else at whatever will help the org move forward. Those indeed are pretty big wins. But the bigger win is that MK gets to work alongside someone who started something from nothing.

Some of the common current thinking among church and nonprofit leaders these days is "don't start something new - you should spend your precious and limited time and energy with organizations that already exist." That's great thinking if you are over the age of 40. The Ember Cast, instead, prides itself on resource emerging global student leaders who will do the exact opposite - spend their lives doing something no one is doing to reach people no one is reaching [Craig Groeschel.] To resource these emerging global student leaders, we introduce them to people who have created something from nothing, who have birthed initiatives from the bottom of their soul, who have put a vision on the altar and asked the Lord to either bless it or kill it, who have felt a calling so clearly that every one of their senses point to it, who have sacrificed their lives so that others may live.

Clearly we don't have enough courageous people or people that can lead others or people that can start something from nothing. If our ProtoGuides become more courageous, better leaders or people that can erupt something from God's call on their soul, then we have truly accomplished something. In the meantime, the world awaits.

Friday Burn

::: How to Snapchat Like the Teens
Fascinating article not just about technology but about teenage culture. Must read if you work with students.
Link


::: Over 8B Red Envelops Were Sent Over WeChat During Chinese New Year
Link


::: In the future, church planters will choose to work in the marketplace
Link


::: Reimaging The Bible
Link

Photo: 1st Ember 2016 Staff dinner and meeting.

Spring 2016 - Sending Tess

Today, I'm thrilled to announce that The Ember Cast sends Tess to represent us at a leadership conference hosted by a global church planting and missions organization. Tess will be in Portugal for this over a long weekend in March. This specific process of sending Tess includes her excellent leadership as one of our Guides and some financial investment. We don't just send anyone.

I badly wanted to be involved in this weekend - southern Europe for 4 days talking about leadership among global church planters - what's not to love, but it wasn't going to work out. Instead the very act of skipping it and sending someone else embodies the premier challenge facing churches and nonprofit organizations in the near term: the ability to empower and release the emerging generation while coaching and mentoring them in calling, vocation and leadership.

As an organization and personally as well as as a family, our proudest moments are when we are involved in sending someone to do something that utilizes their gifts, talents and resources. It's the epitome of one of our mantras - We throw fire - and represents our best at being catalytic leaders. Tess is incredible and we look forward to both her investment in this conference as well as a sharpening of her competencies as a global leader.

Summer 2016 - The First Send

I first met Rachel in the fall of 2010 when she was a freshman at a college on the eastern shore of Merryland and was part of a merry band of students involved consistently every week with various community impact organizations. I was impressed by her heart, her grace, and her acting on the right things even after being so new in her faith. And she was uproariously funny.

Today, I'm thrilled to announce our first summer send for The Ember Cast - Ember sends Rachel to Amadeo Church in Queen Creek, AZ. This summer, she will be their staff social worker, helping to integrate and connect various ministries under Amadeo's leadership and resourcing those ministries to serve the Queen Creek community at large.

Rachel is in the middle of getting a graduate degree in social work and her responsibilities this summer will touch multiple social work domains including working with such initiatives like:
a food pantry that serves up to 50,000 meals a year, a pregnancy center, a coffee shop, a homeless outreach, visual and musical art classes as well as physical exercising opportunities like zumba and stretching classes, a suicide support group, a human trafficking relief organization and numerous families within Amadeo that have adopted and/or foster kids. As you can tell, lots of opportunities for a social worker to jump in and help while also quite a playground for someone to dream and forge the future.

Thanks in advance for your support. The Ember Cast exists for people like Rachel.

Friday Burn

::: 3.57 degrees of separation
Link


::: Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes
Link


::: Tiny Houses Giving Seattle's Homeless A Place to Live
Link


::: Vision transfers through people not paper. -@WillMancini

Photo: Ember Staff, Chinatown, Philly. Jan 2016.

ProtoGuide 2016 Reading List

The reading list. If you know other young people that read Hirsch, Tyson, or Addison, I would love to know whom and why. We begin next Monday.

The Positive Trend of January Church Leadership Gatherings

An interesting thing filled up part of my social media feeds these past few weeks - something that I hadn't quite noticed this time in years past. And that interesting thing was church leadership gatherings. More than ever, I noticed lots of churches gathering their leaders together for encouragement, vision and development. Very exciting!

I was involved in this exact thing last weekend with a church outside of Phoenix. My own church had this type of gathering this weekend although I didn't attend it this year and they do it every year at the end of January - I even helped run it in 2011. Two churches I track and look up to had theirs this past weekend. It's a phenomenal thing to see happening and this focus on leadership development was one of the very integral things that drew us to our home church.

If you are a leader in a church [paid or volunteer] but don't get invested in like this every year, you should ask why not. If you are in charge of a church but don't do this kind of thing every year for the people that serve with you, you should change that. Like it or not, you are the one, or should be the one, that defines and shapes how your leaders grow. Leadership development is one of the key things that makes or breaks a faith community.