Steeple to Street - Notes

I made it to the Steeple to Street conference for just Saturday last weekend which was put on by an org called Fresh Expressions US. Obviously interesting to me:
"More and more churches are taking seriously the call to engage with their communities...and many more would like to. But this new mission landscape is going to need new skills of leadership. Bold, risk-taking, creative, discerning leadership. Leaders who will move to the mission edges and foster fresh expressions of church. Leaders who will take on the adaptive challenges within existing churches to catalyze new energy for mission. Leaders who will make room for experiments and risks for the sake of the gospel."

The real reason that I saw this was because Alan and Deb Hirsch, whom I consider mentors from afar, were speaking at the event and I am drawn to the same types of people they like to hang with. Their thinking and writing has informed a lot about how we do student missions leadership and in the summer of 2008, they were so gracious to spend a little time with a student team we were leading. When you know you are responsible for your own development and growth, you'll go out of your way when a mentor is speaking close to where you live.

And a few personal convictions that were part of the flavor of this gathering: there is a limited lifespan left in the church as most of us know it, "all kinds of churches for all kinds of people" and most of us have no idea how to prepare students today to be leaders for the future.

Steeple to Street had a sweet ethos to it - gracious, a posture of learning, and an open hand to let the Lord lead. Lots more young people than a usual church leadership gathering. Mostly white people. Not your standard evangelical stream either - lots more Methodists and Episcopalians than I am used to.

Below are my notes - feel free to skip, skim or borrow with attribution.

+ Plenary - Iosmar Alvarez
People talk about the Holy Spirit like He is a dog or a river. He is a person.
Key to prayer is a clean heart and a clear mind.
Not about quantity, passion, posture.

Questions that we use to release people to do as God leads them:
1 - does it glorify God?
2 - is it ethical and legal?
3 - does it make disciples?
4 - does it expand this church?
5 - is it Biblical?

+ From Equipping the Organized to Organizing the Equipped - Alan Hirsch, Evelyn Sekajipo and Matt Lake
A committee keeps minutes and loses hours.

Hirsch:
Begin with the end in mind
The church has deep muscle memory when it comes to change.
It is the end of the line for the church in default mode.
Movement thinking - the way we think about every believer.
Seed - potential for a forest
Spark - potential for a forest fire
[one of our favorite Ember mantras - In every apple, there is an orchard.]
You must see people as potential movements in the making.
Dunbar's number - most extroverts know 150 people. If they discipled 15% of their network, we would have a movement.
Movement - every person can reproduce the whole movement.
Everyone is in the game
Starfish vs Spider

Movements are DNA based organizations.
- core ideas and values
- low control high accountability
- discipleship culture

Dee Hock - VISA
Decentralized, not headquarters
Chaordic

Picasso - the best way to preserve tradition is not to wear your father's hat but to have children

Centered set vs bounded set
Perhaps there is a forum for both to meet

Movements begin on the fringe but they need pathways of learning

Matt Lake
Easier that we worship the teachings of Jesus rather than the person of Jesus.
We can organize the teachings, but Jesus call is messy
We have flattened Jesus to doctrine.
How do we build cultures to release people:
1 - Everything that talks about org talks about our R&D, apostolic side.
2 - 4 step DNA that we try to build into people:
Connect
Discover
Embrace
Transform

We have organized people so well that they have lost their imaginations about mission.
Church culture - we train people to be good volunteers.
No imagination or dreaming - can't even get to that level.

Everyone is already failing in institutional culture, might as well try it in entrepreneurial culture.
In movement thinking, everyone has been given everything to get the job done.

How do you change culture
1 - Wendy Kopp - TFA - larger purpose and story
2 - my influence as the leader from every dimension possible

Evelyn Sekajipo:
Sometimes do not need to reinvent the wheel - find someone who is already doing what you are interested in and come alongside them
Invite the people you want to serve to the leadership table. We actually sometimes ignore the people we are serving or want to reach.

+ Mission Among the Hard to Reach - Alan and Deb Hirsch
"Microphones were created by misogynists" - Deb

Bounded set vs centered set - social theory
Bounded set - who is in and who is out is very clear
You are in and out based on if you
Believe like us
Behave like us
Belong to us

Clearly we are going for an encounter with Jesus where someone surrenders their life. And there is an element of who we think is in isn't in at the end. Jesus addressed the Pharisees in this same manner - you are good on the outside but your heart is awful. There are indicators to - know you by your fruit.

Centered set - concentric circles surrounded something at the middle - Jesus
Every human is in relation to Jesus somehow. He is calling of all humanity to Him.
Not about closeness, but rather their orientation, pointed to Jesus or not. Our job is to point people to Him.
Mt 28:18 - a discipleship text vs an evangelistic mandate
Pre and post conversion discipleship - disciple someone, teach them to live like Jesus before they actually make the decision
Humanity made in the image of God first and foremost - not terrible sinners in need of redemption [so important see Eldredge on this]

Incarnational Principles
Presence
Passion
Proximity
Powerlessness
Prevenience
Proclamation

Where you stand determines what you see.
3rd places - fertile way of looking at the world.
American - narrow vs extended family
Use your home as mission - house church movement
Pub outreach team - to be on the team you had to be able to say the F-bomb without flinching. Most couldn't do it - subtle way of alienating yourself away from the regulars in the pub.
The 3rd place for most Christians is their church, leaving little room for engaging the world.

Incarnational Contextual questions they have used
Pennies - rich or poor economy, how does money flow
Power - what is the power dynamic
Pain - who is struggling and why, find out what sucks and fix it
Parties - get in the middle of these
People of peace

Context forces you to contextualize
If you just start the same kind of church in your home, you do church badly - think worship band but done poorly. Can you worship somewhere in a public space without repelling people? How can you worship that draws people in?

+ Pioneering Panel
[Two terms the conferences uses a lot:
'pioneer' - the apostolic, entrepreneurial, trying it first, etc.
'Inherited church' - the already existing, more institutional church]

Q - Describe that first moment when you realized God was calling you to be a pioneer and advice around that idea
I started thinking of the term 'church unusual'
Noticing the marginalized
Don't negotiate with the Holy Spirit - obey immediately
Our community had the gift of desperation - term used in Recovery Community

Q - Words for people just a bit behind you in the journey
Do it with teams
Frustration can lead to callousness unless you are careful - sabbath, hobbies
Realize that you are maybe one of the permission givers - speak life into other pioneers

Q - Lonely moments - what keeps you in it?
God's call
I love my city - no one loves Denver more than I do
Doing what we do is not everything about us - have a life. Keep sure that ministry is not everything.

Q - Imagine you are speaking to another pioneer's leadership - what would you say to them?
Lead, follow or get out of the way but mostly get out of the way.
Make sure they know you have their back and come through with it.

IG Team Meeting #3

+ The Myers Briggs Type Indicator
+ Bridges video series
+ Check in for support letters

I use the MBTI religiously with teams - it is a fast forward for relationships and provides great and specific talking points for being a team. As you can see here, half of our team likes to improvise. Well, that should be fun.

Friday Burn

::: Here Come the MegaCities
By 2100, at least 10 cities are predicted to have populations over 50 million.
Link


::: Affordable 3D Printed Houses
Link
Debuted at SXSW, also check out some of the other cool social missions start ups are tackling.


::: Steeple to Street

The Church is rediscovering its identity in mission. More and more churches are taking seriously the call to engage with their communities...and many more would like to. But this new mission landscape is going to need new skills of leadership. Bold, risk-taking, creative, discerning leadership. Leaders who will move to the mission edges and foster fresh expressions of church. Leaders who will take on the adaptive challenges within existing churches to catalyze new energy for mission. Leaders who will make room for experiments and risks for the sake of the gospel.

I'll be at Steeple to Street on Saturday, would love to say hi if you are there.

::: Fortune sides with him who dares. - Virgil

Photo: Mt. Etna, and the 9 passenger van.

Ember March Dinner

Notes from dinner with special guests K and D.

Background:
Took Perspectives in the 1980s. Couldn't travel so started helping coordinate the class. Got involved in a bunch of mobilization stuff at home. Then could travel. Began making friends in the Middle East. Have traveled to a specific region there now 19 times over the past number of years.

Most exciting thing going on with missions these days:
Insider movements
Discipleship Making Movements
Fast growing church right now is in Iran.
Disciple people before they are believers.
Discovery Bible Studies - organic simple way to study the Scriptures.

Advice for young people:
Be FAT
Faithful - faithful in the small leads to being faithful in the big.
Available - you have the most free time right now when you are young. Availability is also related to financial availability - do not incur a lot of debt for college - this directly reduces your availability.
Teachable

Random:
Involved in Partners for Transformation - a group of pastors that have prayed for Baltimore every week for over 10 years. Two incredible nonprofits sprung out of relationships in that group.
Don't make people your projects. They know when they are. Just build bridges of love and love them as friends.
Middle Eastern culture loves to talk about religion. Take advantage of that - don't be scared of it.

Vision, Budget and Cattle

That phrase will echo on my auditory cortex forever: vision beyond your resources.
That phrase has become a mantra at National Community Church and is inspiring us to continue dreaming irrational dreams. We certainly practice sound financial management, count the cost of every vision, and steward every penny in a way that honors God, but we refuse to let our budget determine our vision. That would be poor stewardship because it's based on our limited resources rather than on God's unlimited supply. Too often we butcher our God-given dreams because we forget the simple fact that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. Don't let fear dictate your decisions. Letting your budget determine your vision is backward. Faith is letting your vision determine your budget. And if your vision is God-given, it will most definitely be beyond your ability and beyond your resources. Why? Because then God will get all of the glory! And I promise you this: the God who gives the vision is the same God who makes provision.

- Mark Batterson, Draw the Circle
NCC and PM impressed this upon me in 2013. It is absolutely true and when The Ember Cast dreams of projects, the viability of them are never based solely on the finances.

Friday Burn

::: Dolly Parton Donates 100 Millionth Book to Children in Need
Link


::: A New Generation Redefines What It Means to Be a Missionary
Link via Justin Long


::: Muslim Connect
My friend Shane writes a Muslim Connect, a 300 word, weekly email that I enjoy about how we can trade apathy, anxiousness or anger toward Muslims for biblical love and engagement. It’s super short, very practical and sometimes funny. Sign up here.

::: The invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck. - Paul Virilio

Photo: Highlandtown, Baltimore. March 2018.

2017 In Numbers

1 ProtoGuide for 3 months
1 short term missions team training event : 6 hours of missions team building for 60 people
2 local church based missions conferences : teaching 6 sessions for 120 people
2 student team community impact projects : 12 hours of community impact service learning for 30 students
2 summer teams including 2 team members sent to Poland for 6 weeks and 6 team members to Italy and Poland for 2 weeks
2 Ember monthly dinners involving 13 people
3 missions leadership events : 36 hours of coaching and practical training for around 70 people
4 Perspectives classes teaching - 12 hours of teaching for a total of 75 people

This is pretty informative picture on everything The Ember Cast was involved in last year and I'm super proud of just about all of that work. Thanks to many of you for your portfolio of support, including prayer, financial and moral support.

It is however, very important that we balance that picture with one of our favorite mantras:
"Disciples are made on the road, not in rows." - Kim Hammond

IG Team Meeting #2

+ Icebreakers during the drive from the 25 Best icebreakers ever
+ Serving with a refugee weekend program which included games with kids, futball with high school kids [Sam made numerous goals and was the only girl], English lessons and lunch.
+ Our team knows that in some contexts like this, we will have to be very friendly and make our own fun. These are integral skills for people that are interested in starting things from nothing in different cultural contexts. This day was good practice.

* Missing a few pieces of our team

Friday Burn

::: The Pineapple Fund Has Given $86M to Charities so far
Link


::: These are the World's Most Miserable Economies
Link via Justin Long


::: The Student Activists of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High

Now it’s time for them to change the conversation around education in America, and not just as it relates to guns in the classroom. The effectiveness of these poised, articulate, well-informed, and seemingly preternaturally mature student leaders of Stoneman Douglas has been vaguely attributed to very specific personalities and talents. Indeed, their words and actions have been so staggeringly powerful, they ended up fueling laughable claims about crisis actors, coaching, and fat checks from George Soros. But there is a more fundamental lesson to be learned in the events of this tragedy: These kids aren’t freaks of nature. Their eloquence and poise also represent the absolute vindication of the extracurricular education they receive at Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

Link

::: Romantic love will get you to the mission field but sacrificial love will keep you there. - Deb Hirsch

Photo: Decompression, Union Station DC. Feb 2018.

Training Plans

California, Italy, Maryland, Virginia. It has never been easier to connect.

This is a planning session for the Ember IG team discussing some elements of training. Our local on the ground team requires teams go through some specific training so we are bringing in some other guests for specific cross cultural topics. If you are involved in student summer missions, you should be doing the same kind of planning right now. In fact, you are a little late.

But there is hope. The statistics bear it to be true, teams that prepare, even with the smallest amount, do far better than teams that don't. Reach out if you need some simple suggestions.

IG Team Meeting #1

Sam, Emily, Deanna, TM, Niall, Jolie, Meghan.
[Remote - Shannon, Andrew]

Our first team meeting for the Ember 2018 IG team. Two of our team are remote and there is a possibility of one or two more joining in the next few weeks. Great fun including:
+ Support letter overview - make it not suck.
+ Creative Revenue Plans.
+ Schedule - 15 or so meetings over the next few months including some serving together. Half of our team will be out of the country in late June to early July so we are adjusting that.
+ "The key ingredient to building trust is not time. It is courage. "- Patrick Lencioni
+ Hearing about some dreams for the future [this is a question on our Ember application]

I'm thrilled about this team - they are full of passion and action. I'm excited for us to travel and learn together and to impact someone somehow during this whole project. This team brings a new level of energy to The Ember Cast.

The future requires some of us to start new, adapted, innovative structures for missions - global missions won't bear the friction of the status quo. I'm marking history by telling you that some of this team will be the ones to start these new structures. You heard it here first.

Friday Burn

::: Billy Graham, from one of his grandkids
Best one I read.
Link


::: The Longest Walk on Earth
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::: Recovering from Jet Lag
Link


::: The church in America is overprogrammed and underdiscipled. - Will Mancini


Photo: Ember Guides, SSDC. Feb 2018.

Happy happy Deanna

One of the most difficult years in recent times. But you have been faithful, steadfast, and relentless. Your hope has not wavered and you have been a deep optimist. People know that Jesus walks with you.

Here is to a better year. Happy birthday. Thanks for letting me win at mini golf.

Love

Ember February Staff Dinner

We have started a new experiment this year as part of some Ember staff development: a monthly staff dinner with special guests. The goal of this is to gather our staff to hear from some of the most creative, missionally imaginative and innovative people we know.

This months guest was Trevin Hoekzema, our very first Ember guide way back in the day. He's currently in a pastoral residency program at Bay Area Comm Church, which allows him to get a seminary degree while being mentored by BACC's staff. He's working on the Masters in Global Leadership at Fuller which is the only seminary degree most readers of this blog should look at.

Some highlights of our conversation:
Successes:
Redirected Christmas time efforts to come alongside some local ministries doing better work than previous efforts.
Deep engagement for short term mission leaders and team members.
Organized first ever short term missions one day conference [Edge]

FutureCasting Missions - what is present or future now but something we don't know about:
Discipleship making movements
Discovery Bible Study
Fuller emphasizes spiritual formation more important than knowledge
'Guide on the side not the sage on the stage'
The West will no longer lead the missions movement

Advice for students:
Talk to every missionary you can
Always eat the chicken feet

Left to right:
Terah, boutique houseware artisan entrepreneur
Trevin [sorry for the bad picture]
Emily, Ember spawn
Hailey, Ember 2018-2019 ProtoGuide
Sherrill, almost published author and illustrator
Gary, attorney
Deanna, Ember creative director
Mandy, The Well in Curtis Bay

Ember SSDC

The Ember Cast facilitated a serving-learning-culture experience this past weekend with some students and their leaders from our home church. Great time with a great group. Highlights included a cultural navigation exercise in downtown Silver Spring; serving with A Wider Circle, one of the best local nonprofits dedicated to alleviating poverty in our area; and attending a service at National Community Church in DC.

A few quick observations from our weekend:
+ Downtown Silver Spring has experienced a recent redevelopment effort that has transformed the area. [I worked there for about 3 years before the redevelopment.] The new library is stunning and a community hub. Our suburban kids seldom go to the library where they live, but it was packed when we checked it out.
+ Sometimes when you serve with orgs that are in the business of sorting and redistributing supplies like housewares, clothing or furniture, you sometimes only see the sorting part of that work. A Wider Circle is great because you serve on both sides - the sorting as well as clients coming in to choose what they want to take home. We were told there were 21 clients served the day we were there.
+ Mark Batterson gave a State of the Church talk this weekend and it was one of the most powerful messages I have heard of late. NCC's mantras are so innovative and out of the box and I love attending a service with students who have only seen one expression of Church for most of their lives.

This kind of thing is not too difficult to do with students and the impact of this kind of learning can be incredible. In other words, you could do this with your students too and it would probably have an enormous effect.

Special thanks to Ember guides this weekend, Em and Meghan.

Friday Burn

::: Every One of the World’s Big Economies Is Now Growing
Link


::: The Status of Global Christianity 2018 in the Context from 1900-2050
Link


::: The 25 Most Popular Icebreaker Questions
Link


::: Culture is not a territory to be won, but a resource to be stewarded. - Makoto Fujimura

Photo: Ember guides, The Lincoln. May 2015.

The Kingdom Is Like

This time 10 years ago, I was coming up on my fifth year of helping coordinate student missions at our home church. This included responsibilities for setting up partnerships, building teams, recruiting and training leaders and overseeing budgets. Our budget for that last year was $150K spread over 6 teams of 98 people in total, 3 teams of which were international with one team being gone for 4 weeks. I personally lead a team of 26 to Hungary and managed to meet another team of 18 in Paris and hang together for 2 days. [Logistical suicide - I loved it] And this was all on top of having a day job and a young family. It was a ridiculous, gargantuan amount of work, easily a part time job that took 15-20 hours a week sustained over months. The picture on the left gives you a little insight.

Over that season of five years, there was probably $500K of support, probably close to 400 students and leaders going on over 20 short term experiences. I had spent about a month away from home over the course of one of those years. Don't get me wrong - it was a fantastic, flourishing, lets-go-all-in season of ministry. Our family was uniquely marked for eternity by that season - we would not be who we are without it. I'm overwhelmingly grateful for it.

Contrast this to the last five years: 5 teams of 12 or less, about $135K in total, 10 or so interns over the past 5 years so far, a core list of about 20 Ember Guides.

The Kingdom is like a mustard seed, it is like yeast in flour, it is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls. Bigger is not always better.

Friday Burn

::: How Do We Ensure the SDGs Aren’t Just An Exercise?

After messing around in this field for decades, what I’ve come away with is that the most practical, effective way to end poverty is to create new markets that are scalable and allow people who are poor to be the major players (buyers and sellers). It turns out that multinational corporations are the most skilled at creating new markets and have had the best results.

Link


::: Successful People Start Before They Feel Ready
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::: The World's Fastest Shrinking Countries
Link

::: A church should not simply have a missions department. It should wholly exist to be a mission. - Tim Keller

Photo: Chinatown. Jan 2016.

A Weeknd

From time to time, The Ember Cast is invited to facilitate a culture or service or leadership experience for student groups. We are currently planning one of these experiences for a high school student group. The vision for this one is to integrate ideas of team, cultural navigation, serving in the suburbs and varied expressions of Church. We're excited to engage some students in these concepts that are at the pulse of what we do.

It is never too early for a middle or high school student to learn some of these ideas - how to peel back elements of a culture or what is the best thing I can give my team or what does poverty look like in the suburbs. The barrier to this kind of learning is almost never maturity - students this age are fully capable of getting it. Instead, in today's youth culture, the barrier is availability. The single biggest challenge to students learning these things is their busyness.

Ember's time with students groups like this is a huge honor and privilege. We don't take it for granted and know that there's lots of Kingdom potential in one single weekend.

Friday Burn

::: US Drops In Global Innovation Ranking
Link


::: Facebook Invented a New Unit of Time
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::: Mosquitos Could Remember You for Days
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::: Visiting 6 Continents in Under 58 Hours
Link

::: "A mind that is stretched to a new idea never returns to its original dimension." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Photo: Etna. July 2016.

Announcing Ember 2018 IG

The Ember Cast is thrilled to announce the Ember 2018 IG team for this coming summer. 2018 represents our third summer partnering with a long term team aligned to serve refugees in a port city in southern Italy. This team is one of the most entrepreneurial, creative, and innovative teams we know, and they embody phrases such as: 'make a way or find a way', 'faith is spelled r-i-s-k', and 'everything is an experiment and the Gospel is worth the risk'. Facilitating an experience where high school kids serve with people that have this kind of mindset is one of the unique ministry values, and joys, of The Ember Cast.

Our team will also swing by Greece on the way home to serve and work with a refugee team there, based in one of Greece's most strategic cities. Andrew Jones, a dear friend and one of the most potent global missions catalysts I know, is joining us for both Italy and Greece and helping facilitate this leg of the journey and more. If you know anything about the Tall Skinny Kiwi, you would give your left arm to have your high school kid hang with him for a few weeks.

Thanks in advance for your support for this team.
* Dates and destinations of travel are not posted on social media.

Book Notes - Powerful, Patti McCord

Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility, Patti McCord
Patti McCord helped create the Netflix Culture Guide, one of the most significant documents to come out of Silicon Valley. It's an incredible read on Netflix values and how that translates to employees. Lots of insights in building high performance teams. If you are in any position of leading people, it is well worth the read. The book is an even better deep dive if you have read the Culture Guide.

Here is my radical proposition: a business leader's job is to create great teams that do amazing work on time. That's it. That's the job of management.

The most important thing to understand about transforming a culture, whether that of a team or a whole company, is that it isn't a matter of simply professing a set of values and operating principles. It's a matter of identifying the behaviors that you would like to see become consistent practices and then instilling the discipline of actually doing them. We fully and consistently communicated to everyone at Netflix the behaviors we expected them to be disciplined about, and that started with the executive team and every manager. We were so intent that every single employee understand our philosophy and the behaviors we wanted them to execute on that Reed started writing a PowerPoint about them, which I and many other members of the management team also contributed to. It ultimately became known as the Netflix Culture Deck. You may have read it.

At new employee college, as we started the proceedings, we'd say to the participants, "You will take out of this day what you put into it. If you don't ask questions, you won't get answers." I look back now and realize that this was crucial early stage-setting for the success of the company. It gave people at all levels license to freely ask for clarification, whether about something they were expected to do or about a decision made by management. Not only did this mean they were better informed, but over time it instilled throughout the company a culture of curiosity.

One of the most important insights anyone in business can have is that it's not cruel to tell people the truth respectfully and honestly. To the contrary, being transparent and telling people what they need to hear is the only way to ensure they both trust you and understand you.
The conventional thinking is that if you allow people to be anonymous, they will be more truthful. In my experience, that's not the case. Truthful people are truthful in everything they do. And if you don't know who is giving you feedback, how can you put their comments into the context of the work they're doing, who their manager is, and what kind of employee they are? Perhaps the worst problem with anonymous surveys, though, is that they send the message that it's best to be most honest when people don't know who you are.
In my experience, one of the most important questions business leaders must regularly ask is "Are we limited by the team we have not being the team we should have?"

An essential question is, do you have enough capacity builders? By which I mean people who know how to build a great team.

One reason Reed and I started using the "team not family" metaphor was that as the company kept changing, we saw that nostalgia for the good old scrappy day was a powerful force of resistance.

People's happiness in their work is not about gourmet salads or sleeping pods or foosball tables. True and abiding happiness in work comes from being deeply engaged in solving a problem with talented people you know are also deeply engaged in solving it, and from knowing that the customer loves the product or service you all have worked so hard to make.

But certain fundamentals should be strictly enforced. I set an ironclad rule that if anyone saw a stranger sitting by themselves waiting for an interview, they should stop and say, "Hi, I'm ____. Who are you? Are you here for an interview? Who are you waiting for? Let's take a look at your schedule for today and I'll help you find the next person." I know the message was heard loud and clear because if I was ever late coming to meet with a candidate, and I said, "Sorry, I hope someone talked to you," they'd say, "Six people talked to me."

Our goal was for every single person who came in for an interview to walk away wanting the job, even if we hated them. We wanted them to think, Wow, that was an incredible experience. It was efficient, it was effective, it was on time, the questions were relevant, people were smart, and I was treated with dignity. I would tell people, "Even if this person isn't the right fit, we might love their next-door neighbor."

In my experience, if you focus intently on hiring the best people you can find and pay top dollar, you will almost always find that they make up much more in business growth than the difference in compensation.

One reason that sports team analogy is so helpful in managing people is that everyone readily understands that coaches are letting the rest of the team and the fans down if they don't replace players who aren't producing top performance. Winning games is the only measure of success for sports teams, which is why it's not just players but coaches too who are replace readily on top-performing teams.

In my experience, people sue their former employers because they think they've been treated unfairly. But that's not because they weren't put on an improvement plan. It's generally because they weren't told the truth when they should have been about their performance or their fit. I've found that generally if people are mad enough to sue, there was a point when somebody should have told them, "You know, you're being a jerk! You're making us crazy! We're not going to want you around anymore if you keep treating people like that."

The irony of the PIP being used as a means to avoid being sued is that it actually fans the flames of resentment, all because of the fear of being honest.

People often come up to me after a talk to ask for career guidance. I tell them, "You want to be a lifelong learner; you want to always be acquiring new skills and having new experiences; and that doesn't have to be at the same company. The fact is that sometimes you're hired by a company to do something, and then you do it and it's done. If I hire people to rebuild my garage, when they're done I don't need them to rebuild the back of my house."

I tell managers to use a simple rule when evaluating their teams, which I call an algorithm because engineers love the word, and I love engineers: is what this person loves to do, that they're extraordinarily good at doing, something we need someone to be great at?

Friday Burn

::: Will Cape Town be the First City to Run out of Water?
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::: The 5 Essential Practices Of Leaders Who Multiply Leaders
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::: Left Brain Innovation

Innovation is the Latin translation of the Greek renew. The renewal of all things is the mission of the church (Colossians 1:20). In older church traditions, innovation was pictured as a virtuous cycle of two interconnected flywheels. On the right was social wellbeing. It turned the left wheel of economic prosperity. The right drove the left.

Link

::: "The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see."-GK Chesterton

Photo: Rest in Peace, Bill Shipman. See you in Glory. July 2010.

Ember January Staff Dinner

We have started a new experiment this year as part of some Ember staff development: a monthly staff dinner with special guests. The goal of this is to gather our staff to hear from some of the most creative, missionally imaginative and innovative people we know.

This month's special guest was Erin Preshoot. Erin and I first met when she was the high school admin at Grace Comm and I was helping run Grace's student missions teams. In 2007, Erin joined a team I was helping lead, running a kids program in Hungary for a global missions org during their annual leadership conference. These days, Erin serves as the director of Serve The City Baltimore, as well as the US director for Serve the City. She also splits time working for Communitas, in their training division, helping get new potential cross cultural workers off and running.

Part of this monthly dinner includes inviting previous guests. Conversations that are always fascinating:
Baltimore - very neighborhood centric and sometimes that means turf battles even among social services and nonprofits
STC Baltimore - get people volunteering, help communities and help volunteers
Big serve week - 2nd or 3rd week in July
How overseas missions prepares you for serving locally
Favorite Baltimore orgs:
Second Chance
Movable Feast
The Well
Paul's Place
Baltimore Station
Baltimore Rising - great documentary about the city and current issues.
STC core convictions:
Take care of volunteers
Paint a big picture
Decompression is important
Celebrate
Cities with STC in the US - Baltimore, Newport News, Chesapeake
Erin's advice for young people interested in missions:
1 - Keep asking questions
2 - If you are sure of God's call, then go for it.
Church in the southeast that has a pitch day for potential missional partners to come and pitch to them. Also, this church deemed it important enough that all their missional partners are connected to each other that they planned and funded an international trip for all them to go on and connect.

From left to right:
Deanna
Erin Preshoot - Director of Serve the City Baltimore
Susan - The Samaritan Women
Hailey - student who just started hanging with Ember
Emily - Ember spawn
Meghan - Protoguide
Matt - Ember Board of Director
Bill - The Samaritan Women

Perspectives - Summit Grove

Most readers know that I teach for Perspectives a few times a year, a semester long class about global cultures and missions. It's always fun. Last Friday I taught at one of their intensive classes, meaning all 16 weeks crammed into 5 days. Summit Grove Camp hosted the week and they've been hosting this intensive in early January for at least the past few years. If you enjoy reading some of the stuff I write about on this blog, you would love the Perspectives class - it is one of the most powerful venues for helping people get involved in crossing cultures.

Some observations from last week:
+ The Summit Grove class seems to grow more spiritually potent every year - there is this interesting feeling to it.
+ This year's attendees included people from Minnesota, Texas, North Carolina, Connecticut, a student from Hong Kong studying in DC for the year and a man from Congo, with his two boys.
+ Also an interesting mix of people: church planter, couple in second career doing missionary care, mobilization rep for Serving in Mission, a good number involved in missions strategies with their local churches.
+ The class coordinator showed a great video before my lesson on unreached people groups and the 10/40 window but that also included references to immigrants, refugees and international students. Perspectives was very 10/40 window heavy a few years ago and I'm glad to see the subtle shift to include current global realities.

Registration is open for the Spring - can't recommend this class highly enough.

17!

Dear Em,

Well, you've had quite the year for sure. Mommy and I are thrilled at who you are and are becoming and are so proud to see you become who the Lord meant you to be.

This year has been filled with lots of major milestones, including getting your drivers license, getting a part time job, managing everything that junior year has been, learning in the hospitality academy at school and being involved in some very cool service and leadership opportunities. All of that has been so fun for us to watch and although we've been nervous, you've handled it all with amazing confidence and poise.

Keep pushing into how the Lord is leading you and being in wonder of the great big world and the people in it. And plan to take that dog with you.

Love, DAD

Photo: The Grand Canyon, January 2017.

The App

For many years, I've kept a folder of what I call Better Practices [in missions] and a big portion of the content in there are Mission Trip Applications. There's also other stuff in there, like documents about strategy or promotional material or research reports. But I love reading a good missions trip application.

An application is two sided. Obviously, it is asking about us - the reader wants to get to know us. Past experience, passions, skills, maybe some questions about self awareness. All standard stuff. The best applications, the most thoughtful, intentional and unique ones - they tell you what is really important to the organization. What they value, what they are looking for, what people like us do. If you want to work for a quality organization, consider the types of questions they are really asking and why.

Applying for a job, a team, a leadership program, a trip? Consider what the application is really looking for. Like Vince Antonucci says, "Your assumptions create your crowd."

[We've just published our Ember 2018 application. Some of you might be filling this out pretty soon. It is intentionally the way it is.]

Photo: Prague, 2015.

Friday Burn

::: New Blockchain Project Gives Homeless New Yorkers a Digital Identity
Link


::: The UN Special Rapporteur on Poverty Tours Poverty in America
Link


::: The Studio D 2017 End of Year Report
Always inspiring.
Link

::: We are what they grow beyond. - Yoda.

Photo: Worship, racquetball court. Sopron Hungary, August 2008.

Randoms With Katie

+ Polish Christmas Caroling in Fells Point, a family birthday tradition.
+ Her January term class is called "Children, Youth, and Sustainable Development of the World's Cities." Sounds like something Ember peeps would love. She'll spend a few days in India as part of the class. [See, Mommy and I knew you would enjoy college...]
+ Conversations have included topics like how class structure contributes to different economic infrastructure of countries, the tension between freedom and liberty versus a high quality of life, and how Emirati weddings are contexts for moms to find good grooms for their daughters.
+ Banking for someone like this can be challenging. She had a savings account with a little local bank since she was a little kid and they don't support global nomads very well. We opened an account with Citibank which seems like a good choice with their branches in global cities.
+ Her and Em made us dinner the other night and then made us watch Collateral Beauty.

2017 in Cities

1 - New Freedom, PA, USA
2 - Williamsburg, VA, USA
3 - Queen Creek, AZ, USA
4 - Page, AZ, USA
5 - Sedona, AZ, USA
6 - Ocean City, MD, USA
7 - Fairfield, CT, USA
8 - West River, MD, USA
9 - Yas Island, UAE
10 - Sir Baniyas Island, UAE
11 - Abu Dhabi, UAE
12 - New York City, NY, USA
13 - C*a, Italy
14 - Warsaw, Poland
15 - Narragansett, RI, USA
16 - Prince Frederick, MD, USA
17 - Wildwood, NJ, USA
18 - Cambridge, MD, USA

Good year for travel. Standing goal - leave the US once a year.

2017 in Books

The Culture Map: Decoding How People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done Across Cultures, Meyer
Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity, Duhigg*
The Last Arrow: Save Nothing for the Next Life, McManus
Whisper: How to Hear the Voice of God, Batterson
5Q: Reactivating the Original Intelligence and Capacity of the Body of Christ, Hirsch
What is the Bible: How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything, Bell
Jesus of Arabia: Understanding the Teaching of Christ Through the Culture of the Arabian Gulf, Thompson
Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company, Grove
You are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, Smith
Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead, Bock
Play the Man: Becoming the Man God Created You to Be, Batterson
Own the Moment, Lentz
40 Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World, Buffett

* The best book I read this year. Well worth the read.
All links to the Amazon Smile Foundation supporting The Ember Cast.

20

Dear Katie

Finally, the end of being a teenager LOL. Remember, you are a real adult when you have a mortgage to pay. In the meantime, global gypsy life….

Really though, you have had quite the year. Finishing your first year of Uni, a summer in a foreign global city working with underprivileged kids, starting your second year of Uni. We are immensely proud of you and the person you are becoming.

Keep:
Exploring this large, incredible world that is so beautiful and tragic at the same time.
Being smart about money - give away 10%, save 10% and live on the rest. Money might be a social construct but it's a terrible master and a wonderful tool.
The discipline of connecting your learning in school to how the Lord is leading you to mark human history. Curate your own education with intention and purpose.

Love

Friday Burn

::: Getting Attention

What’s the worst that could happen? Maybe they’d ignore me. Maybe they’d reply that the ideas were terrible. Maybe they’d even fire me. Unlikely, but sure. The most likely result was that I’d be embarrassed.

But I’ve been embarrassing myself for years thanks to my Dad. :)

Link


::: Why are Little Kids in Japan So Independent?

In Japan, small children take the subway and run errands alone, no parent in sight. The reason why has more to do with social trust than self-reliance.

Link


::: The Last of the Iron Lungs

But even though the last wild case of polio in the US was in 1979, it still haunts this country. “A lot of people think of polio as a disease of the past and don’t realize there are people here today that are still suffering the effects of polio.” said Brian Tiburzi, executive director of Post-Polio Health International (PHI), an advocacy group for the estimated 350,000 to 500,000 polio survivors living in the US.

Link


::: For the last 30 years, christians have been creating churches for people who don’t like church. In the next 30, churches must start creating christians for people who don’t like christians. - @davekubiak via @DanSadlier

Photo: Prague subway stop. July 2015.

Holiday Scheming

The holidays are when some of our tribe make the journey home so we catch up when we can. Dinner last night with Wendy, Shannon and Meghan. Wendy is working on a Masters in social work at a school in Texas and Shannon is majoring in social work with two minors in criminal justice and nonprofit management and Meghan is this year's Ember ProtoGuide.

Scheming conversation included:
The current summer 18 possibilities and associated team members and logistics
Foster care/domestic abuse safe house that Wendy is serving with
Drug rehab house that Shannon is serving with
Meghan's college potentials
How I used to tell people to keep my name out of it but no more

We are fortunate to have a front seat view to some of these people learning about the world and serving when and where they can. These visits always bring joy to the season.

Email for Fun and Futures

I know lots of people despise email these days and would rather communicate via text, tweet, Slack, or drawing on napkins. Yeah, you do you. Email is still the killer app.

Below is a list of the best email newsletters I subscribe to. Although most of them make for great reading, I've subscribed to each of them because they have proven to help me understand culture better and therefore an important source to help The Ember Cast better prepare the next generation of missional catalysts.

::: NextDraft
One of the original email newsletters that I've subscribed to for years. Excellent daily coverage.

::: Benedict Evan's newsletter
Benedict Evans is a venture capitalist who works for Andressen Horowitz and publishes a weekly newsletter about technology trends and observations. The Andressen is the guy that invented the modern day internet browser and the Horowitz wrote one of my must-read-favorite books about management and leadership.

::: Future Crunch
"Future Crunch provides intelligent, optimistic thinking about the future. We help people understand what's on the frontiers of science and technology, and what it means for humanity." They are right when they say they are optimistic - this is the kind of global news no one talks about but everyone should read.

::: Thoughts from Terry
Terry Storch is on staff with Lifechurch.tv and was one of the guys behind YouVersion and BabelWithMe, among many other digital Kingdom focused initiatives. Not only are these apps pretty incredible, I won't be surprised if the ecosystem Lifechurch creates empowers a plethora of other interesting initiatives in the near future. Great weekly read on leadership thoughts from Terry and a few of these have been super thought provoking in thinking about marriage and fatherhood.

::: The Weekend Reader
The Weekend Reader is authored by Max Anderson who is a venture partner with Praxis Labs, one of the most interesting faith based accelerators around. Their tag line is 'Advancing Redemptive Entrepreneurship.' I've been following the work of Praxis Labs for a few years now - always inspiring.

::: The Weekend Briefing
Authored by lawyer Kyle Westaway, The Weekend Briefing is a "selection of articles on society & innovation." Kyle was integral to the startup of The Adventure Project, an org I've been following on and off for a few years, and has deep insight into lots of efforts of social entrepreneurs around the world.

::: The Weekly Roundup
The Weekly Roundup is one of the best missions email newsletters - it's a must read if you are interested in global missions. Justin is one of the best living missiologists around and part of his job is detailed research. This is a huge one every Friday including details about global regions, unreached people group profiles, futuristics/technology and startup culture.

::: The Culture Translator
Written specifically for parents of teenagers, a great read that highlights three items each week, with specifics about engaging students on these topics. A little overboard in trying to sell their other resources, but the noise is still worth the content.

If you end up subscribing to some of these, I'd love to hear how you like them. And of course, be intentional about this - if it's just noise, then unsubscribe.

Friday Burn

::: Ten Year Futures
Link via Shane


::: For the Good of Society, Delete your Map App
Link


::: The Future of Vigilante Disaster Relief
Link


::: "Change is made by individuals who stop seeking deniability." - Seth Godin

Photo: Darley Park, March 2012.

Mistletoe and Adolescents

The ancient Druids are said to have taken a special interest in in-between things like mistletoe, which is neither quite a plant nor quite a tree, and mist, which is neither quite rain nor quite air, and dreams, which are neither quite waking nor quite sleep. They believed that in such things as those they were able to glimpse the mystery of two worlds at once.
Adolescents can have the same glimpse by looking in the full-length mirror on back of the bathroom door. The opaque glance and the pimples. The fancy new nakedness they're all dressed up in with no place to go. The eyes full of secrets they have a strong hunch everybody is on to. The shadowed brow. Being not quite a child and not quite a grown-up either is hard work, and they look it. Living in two worlds at once is no picnic.

- Frederick Buechner

Missions Team Training for 2050

What does the world look like in 2050? And how should global leaders prepare for it? I'm not sure anyone can answer those questions but Ember is putting a stake in the ground as an attempt.

We've been outlining a leadership experience as the next iteration of mission team training. Specifically, this means looking at the ideas of vision, culture and teams all within the context of future. It would take place in a global city and last for a full weekend.

Vision - What does the future of missions look like?
Culture - How do I engage the future and teach my team to do so?
Team - How can I prepare my team for the future?

Granted, we know this is not for everyone. There are some people who don't do any training with their short term teams. This is short sighted and neglectful. Objective evidence proves that teams that do even a minimal amount of team building are better prepared for the field.

There are other people that walk their teams through various aspects of training - culture, skills, team building. You are to be commended for preparing your teams well. This is now the expected, the status quo.

There are a few people that will desire to be inspired for making their leadership better, for being better prepared for the future, for getting a glimpse of what opportunities, possibilities and challenges will be. This weekend might be for you.

This is still considered exploratory and emerging but ping if you are interested.

Friday Burn

::: Languages and Learning Difficulty
Link


::: I Made My Shed the Top Rated Restaurant On TripAdvisor
So much for my TripAdvisor reviews.
Link


::: What DC Could Learn from Baltimore about Food Deserts
Link


::: If you want to win this world to Christ, you are going to have to sit in the smoking section. - Neil Cole

Photo: Poland sent team prep in DC.

Lentz on Influence

I was told by a mentor once, "If you want to live the life of the one-percent influencers, you will have to leave ninety-nine percent of things behind." That is a big call. And it's true. But if that one percent is great over good? I'm in.

- Carl Lentz, Own the Moment

Student Missions Strategy - Client Fall 2017

It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.

- Machiavelli
Ember has just finished a season working with one of our valued clients in looking at their student missions strategy. It's been a fantastic experience mostly because the team has been bold in challenging the way things have always been done and I've been inspired by their example of unfiltered debate.

Thinking about student missions strategy today includes execution around: nontoxic charity, the goals and why behind the actual experiences, leadership development and making sure you involve students as one of the primary stakeholders. Change is not easy. This team did it right though and by doing so, has created enthusiastic catalysts as they tweak both old systems and explore new possibilities.

Proud of our work with them. If you need a boost for your student missions strategy, reach out.

Photo: TJ, working through a healthy and helping matrix.

Friday Burn

::: 7 Reasons not to Participate in Operation Christmas Child
Link


::: The Unsung Role that Ordinary Citizens Played in the Great Crime Decline
Link


::: The Most Important Skill for 21st Century Students
Link

::: God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supply. - Hudson Taylor

Photo: City Center Warsaw, July 2017.

Thanksgiving Tradition

I may or may not participate in Black Friday or Cyber Monday or Giving Tuesday. But Thanksgiving means that I process all the yearly giving receipts for The Ember Cast. It is my personal way of reflecting and considering all the people that financially give so that we can do what we do. Just like every year, this habit resets my thinking. You cannot be ungrateful as you write, address and fold that stack of receipts for people that gave their hard earned money.

This year, that stack of letters represents just under 250 donations, around $27K, with over 95% spent directly on student missions projects. The majority of those donations funded our summer Italy team and the summer Poland interns, meaning over 1,400 hours of service, culture and leadership for 10 people in two countries.

That's Thanksgiving in NovEmber.

The Skill of Curation

Curation is a skill that you should get good at. Because it will help you make better leaders.

It's Perspectives teaching season around here because I teach some of the later lessons, mostly lesson 12 which is 4 weeks from the end of the class. Perspectives is still one of the best tools to get people involved in global missions and if you are interested in this kind of stuff, go sign up for a class in the Spring.

On the right in this picture is Pastor D, who helped coordinate a class last week and is a local and global missions pastor. The class was held at his church and most of the students in the class were people from there. I loved what he did near the end of our time - he engaged the class with two very specific, contextual questions about the material and how it related to their church and their global efforts. It could have been a talk show he was moderating. Or a panel discussion. Or a really good dinner party conversation. In essence, he curated a discussion.

In today's tech culture of constant news and noise, if you can help the people you lead concentrate, dig and learn, to converse over a specific topic, to help them uncover wisdom from others in a conversation, you will have achieved a difficult and great feat.

ProtoGuide 17-18

One of our best core competencies is the ProtoGuide Experience, an experience designed for high school seniors where they work with The Ember Cast at a Guide level, participating in as much as they can. This year's ProtoGuide is Meghan B and, although it took a little time, she's getting into the blogging thing. Check it out [scroll down], or even better, follow it from your favorite RSS reader.

I am a firm believer that this is still a unique, niche experience for the emerging global student leader and it's our joy for Ember to offer this kind of experience.

Friday Burn

::: The Most Successful Kids Have Parents Who Do These 9 Things
Link


::: Syrias Students Going to School in a War Zone
Link


::: You Are What You Carry
Link

::: "To BE the church, you're gonna have to stop doin' so much church stuff.” ~Bob Roberts Jr.

Photo: Bilingual bulletin. Oct 2017.

The Well

We have started a new experiment this year as part of some Ember staff development: a monthly staff dinner with special guests. The goal of this is to gather our staff to hear from some of the most creative, missionally imaginative and innovative people we know.
This month's guest was Mandy Memmel [sorry for the bad pic Mandy] and her daughter Jolie. Mandy is the founder and executive director of The Well in Curtis Bay, which originally started as a vehicle for womens mentoring but has flourished into community development for all of Curtis Bay. We've conspired with The Well a few times and have loved it. [here and here and here]

Our conversation was fascinating and included topics such as:
Food desert - grocery stores won't come into Curtis Bay because it isn't profitable.
Social enterprise - The Well is starting to develop a series of micro businesses that will provide a locally sourced product and also employ local women from the area.
High school kids love slime - yeah I don't even know.
Workforce development - The Well has also started some workforce development, meaning they teach local women job skills and employ them.
Gentrification - Port Covington is a huge city development that will impact long term residents of Curtis Bay, possibly raising housing costs and price these residents out of their community.

Mandy is a leader you would follow.

Ember BOD - Nov 2017

Some thoughts and themes from the last Ember Board of Directors meeting, last weekend. Maybe these will help you in the areas of organizational clarity, missions mobilization or working with volunteer teams:

+ Ember direction - Would be helpful to the board to get a feel for this consistently once a month.
+ Re-articulate Ember mission statement. We do a lot of things surrounding our core mission. Good to articulate that again.
+ Expectations for participation - We need to be clearer on the expectations of people that participate in our experiences.
+ We've been exploring the idea of doing some re-imagination with some of our team training competencies. Small discussion on key volunteers who would be engaged around this idea.

Friday Burn

::: Measles Vaccine has Saved more than 20M Lives Since 2000
Link via Future Crunch


::: Saline Soil Rice Experiment a Success
Link


::: Is France Reached?
Link

::: If a leader can't ever be questioned, he's not a leader. He's a bully who just happens to have a job. - @edstetzer via @willmancini

Photo: Sicily. July 2016.

Board Prep

Prepping for the Ember Board of Directors meeting the past few days. Mostly, it's recapping stories from this past year and looking to the future. It also includes some 'business development' and some financial details.

The people on this team are my biggest advocates. And their support catalyzes teams, churches, communities and decades if not centuries. I'm fortunate for their insight and wisdom.

You don't have to run an organization to have one of these. Maybe it's time you gathered a personal board of directors.

Giving Away Money is a Complicated Business

Giving away money is a complicated business, as I appreciate more and more all the time. I have met so many decent, optimistic, generous people who want to make a difference, but they become disillusioned with the difficulty of finding the right fit for their philanthropic interests. Almost by definition, the causes that need the support the most often do not have the infrastructure, management talent, or strategic plan needed to deploy large amounts of capital efficiently. It's tempting to pick projects that are straightforward and "doable." There is nothing diabolical about that. The problem is that those kinds of projects are one-offs. The gains may not be sustainable, and the impact tends to be local or limited. Meanwhile, there are other global organizations that do good work, but they have grown to a size that limits their ability to innovate, and administrative costs and approaches seem to produce produce fewer and fewer returns.

- Forty Chances - Finding Hope in a Hungry World by Howard G. Buffett

Friday Burn

::: As Caterpillar Inc goes, so goes the world's economy.
Link


::: China's Millennials - the World's Most Important Consumer
318 million consumers between the ages of 15-29 - roughly the population of the US.
Link


::: Saudi Arabia becomes first country to grant citizenship to a robot
Link


::: "Can a person maintain a relationship with Jesus apart from the Church?
Possibly.
But their children will not." - @BrianZahnd

Photo: Belpasso, July 2017.

One of the Best Tools to Grow Global Kids

The question I get asked most is something along the lines of: how do we grow kids with a vision for the world? And the best answer is: get them to travel. Traveling breaks down barriers, it gives a new a larger perspective, it promotes divergent thinking. Your plan A almost always fails when you travel, you meet people different from you, you experience new places and sometimes even see old places with new insight. Obviously, we are big fans of dragging your kids around the world.

Travel can be expensive - but not always. In today's global world, traveling across your city is as important as flying overseas somewhere. You can experience lots of culture shifts in your own city. And as people serving a world in need, it's your imperative to care about those that live near you as well as those far off. It is not over here OR over there.

The best tool related to travel is travel hacking. This is what can help make travel very affordable and it's what we have been doing for a few years now. Case in point, a trip to Sydney next year that was purchased solely with points [this trip probably represents over 1 million points we have redeemed since early 2016]. If you are new to this idea, google it. Then get the Chase Sapphire Preferred or Reserve card. Make the minimum spend to get the bonus points. Then use the Chase portal to either exchange points to their travel partners or book travel through the portal.

Going places is the best way to grow global kids.

Summer 1991

1990 Nissan Pathfinder. Shenandoah Springs, Madison, VA. July 1991.

Friday Burn

::: Worldwide Child Labor Plunges
Link


::: Singapore has the Most Powerful Passport in the World
Link


::: Is Estonia a Preview of our Tech Future?
Link


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

Photo: Making missionary speakers. Fairfax, VA. October 2017.

Whisper - Mark Batterson

One of my core convictions is that the church ought to be the most creative place on the planet. I believe there are ways of doing church that no one has thought of yet. And as an author and preacher, I try to say old things in new ways. Those values weren't birthed in a vacuum. They were catalyzed by a wide variety of experiences, one of which was The Toymaker's Dream. And that's the beautiful thing about dreams. You never know when or where or who or how your dream will inspire someone else to pursue his or her dream. Only the Dream Giver knows that. But we'll have a lot of people to thank someday for directly and indirectly inspiring our dreams.

We've been inspired by Pastor Mark and NCC for many years now - long time readers know that. We also try to drop in with some friends there a few times a year since it's so close. NCC has certainly helped us dream and Whisper is a great read for those of you that live willing to try new and interesting things for the Lord.

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

Friday Burn

::: The 12 world leaders under 40
Link


::: Be Ruthless
From Fred Smith, who runs The Gathering, one of the largest events for Christian philanthropists:
Learn enough to get started.
Only work with those who are receptive.
First ideas, then results.
Link


::: The Power of Anti-Goals
Link

::: "I don't need time. What I need is a deadline." - Duke Ellington via Tim Ferris

Photo: Tram, Taormina, Italy. July 2017.

RIP - TP

April 2002.

Random - Missions Pitch

I get a good amount of mission support letters, as you might imagine, and lots of times, there is a request to hear the 'pitch.' I actually like that - I think most people in these circumstances can use more practice for their pitch and I'm always willing to listen when I can. And there are almost always interesting and intriguing items of note in the orbit of the people and projects sending me these, here are some from the latest batch:

+ A church in a rural East Coast area has a vision to start both 10 campuses and 10 independent nonprofits serving specific areas in the community.
+ Distributed missions organization - treats all of their staff like everyone is an entrepreneur. Which I think is atypical.
+ One of the pitches was related to a community agriculture project. The candidate family is moving overseas and has secured an agreement with a local city government for land for a 9 year lease for $1.
+ Funding for one of these candidates is flowing through his own nonprofit, not through the sending agency. The perspective on this was that the agency wanted this person to own his financial network.
+ Most young people skip budgeting for retirement. At their age, time is their friend so skipping it is a big mistake. I know that can sound like a lack of faith. I would argue that it can sound like a lack of brains.
+ I received a very detailed project plan for one of these pitches, which included terms such as schedule performance index, variance at completion and annual yield. It was put together like a business, because, well, if your nonprofit doesn't make any money, it will cease to be a nonprofit.

As always, if you want to know more about these, ping me directly.

Friday Burn

::: Mining Wifi Data on the London Tube
Link


::: Science Says the Most Successful Kids Have Parents Who Do These 9 Things
Link


::: Dad Suggests Arriving at Airport 14 Hours Early
Link


::: 38 Startups Serving the Underserved
Link

::: Bees create hives, ants create colonies, but humans create futures. - Erwin McManus

Photo: London, July 2015.