helping for Katrina

Of course, the news about Katrina is just staggering...  I was poking around neworleans.craiglist.org today and was looking at the list of volunteers.  There are literally hundreds of people volunteering to email, make phone calls, opening their houses, take care of pets, etc.  That is very, very cool.

Update - Leader App 2006

I have two updates to my leader app thinking...
1. I agree to not become romantically involved with another team member or with a recipient of our ministry, postponing our relationship until my service commitment is completed.
I'm going to rewrite this for clarity. The gist is that leaders don't start new relationships with a team member or recipient - the focus on being starting new relationships. Also, I had zero issues with leaders that I had this summer that were in relationships that were on the trips together. ZERO. (There were two couples on two trips, at least that I knew about. Ha.) So this item is not from anything that happened this summer. (In fact, I borrowed this from an application I had in my detailed files.)

2. - I agree to keep clear and accurate financial records for the expenses of my team
Just something to make sure that our leaders know they need to keep some good records about expenses and such. I know that many times, this is the least of my concerns when I'm out with a team, but it really is pretty important.

2 pagers in 30 days

Well...
I just dropped another pager... in the toilet... for the 2nd time in 30 days.
I had a feeling using it as a hacky sack in the stall wasn't such a good idea.

English is...

English is essentially Norse as spoken by a gang of French thugs.
English is essentially a bizarre dialect of Chinese, pronounced entirely in the first tone.
English is essentially the language you speak without moving your mouth.
More here.

What Brasil did to me

I guess I never really wrote about what Brasil did to me.  It was a huge privilege for me to be part of such an experience.  Sure, my passion is leading student teams.  And sure, I've done it for a little while.  But that doesn't mean at all that trips like this one don't make a huge impression on me, because every one of them - seriously - every last one of them, gives me more to observe, a different way to think, and things to improve on.

First, I was forced to increased the level of risk I live with.  The Brasil trip, in combination with my trip to visit and work with PM, forced me to live with a higher tolerance of risk.  Tentative plans, people that we were working with and just plain getting to these localities were mostly up in the air.  But the gist of it was that all of the unknowns were actually *ok*.  It was actually tolerable for me, even more than that, liberating.  Because when details and circumstances are out of your control, you don't bear the responsibility for them anymore.  And even in the midst of no control, you know that Someone has gone before you to pave the way.  Keep in mind that I come from a family that is hugely risk averse.  I'm the only child of a very conservative set of Chinese parents who would rather their only son work his whole life in a very reliable, stable corporate job.  I was brought up in that kind of context.  This summer forced me to just go, even in the midst of many unknowns.

Secondly, it was such a honor to spend time with a GCC family overseas. The Body of Christ literally transcends space and time. What a wild experience to get on a plane and know that someone from GCC would be meeting us on the other end - people that knew many of the same people, and that were impacted by the same community that impacts us. To have a set of guides - physically, culturally and relationally - that knew exactly where we came from was such a tremendous service. Space and time are no matter to hearts that are tied together.

Thirdly, I'm pretty sure SPACE is on the right track.  I spend a lot of time wondering what is wrong with me.  How come I'm not normal.  Why I don't watch a lot of football on TV, why I'm not so enthralled with the corporate ladder, why I'm not like other 35 year old males.  And then, I get to be a part of an experience like this one.  Where a student thinks he ought to learn another language when he gets home.  When a 15 year old leaves his Bible in another country with someone he has only known for 7 days.  Seeing a group of kids fix up a park 5000 miles away, to bless complete strangers they will never meet.  Seeing kids envision that a central core of their future is to bless others because they are blessed.

Three simple things.  God, sometimes I can't believe the life you let me live.

6 months for Into the Mystic

If there is one blog that I read every day, including the comments, it's Into the Mystic.  Every post is captivating, whether its talking about spiritual leadership, engaging culture or the expansion of the Kingdom - it's all great, great stuff.  Alex celebrates 6 months of blogging.

dang - i missed the vmas

Seriously.... I always watch at least part of the MTV Video Music Awards every year.  This year, I totally missed it.  Just as well I suppose.  Last year, I got some funny responses.  Maybe next year.

And to those of you that are reading this - hope your first day of the new school year is awesome!!  May this year be a year where you impact your classmates and your school with the revolution that Jesus started 2000 years ago.

Leader App 2006

One of the great conversations I had this past weekend was talking to a team about next summer and the options for their students. These leaders are really excited about the possibilities. It's cool to be able to help them develop a thinking about something missional during the summer.

A big thing I have been thinking about post-Brasil, and even more this past weekend, is what a huge responsibility these summer team leaders undertake. I'm almost unsure it is even something we should be asking. Its basically saying, would you:
- take some extended time away from your job, using your own vacation time
- take some extended time away from your family
- travel to a new environment, whether its another city, country, culture, etc.
- immerse yourself in some circumstances that you have no idea how things will progress
- work with some people you have probably never worked with, to get something accomplished that you have never done before
- all of the above, while you are a shepherd, counselor, nurse, teacher, coach, mentor, travel agent, etc. for a group of teenagers

Yeah.

With the context of the points above, I mentioned two things to these leaders that I must reserve the right for. First, to reject any potential leader. Second, that any student that goes overseas must go through some pretty hard and fast requirements. I'm pretty sure they understood how opinionated I am about this stuff.

Here is the very rough framework for a mission team leader application I have put together. For those of you that work cross culturally, those of you that send out or lead teams, or those of you that just want to, I would love to hear your comments.

===
Intro
SPACE summer mission team leaders embody the highest level of sacrifice and service. It is no small endeavor to leave the familiar confines of home, travel to unknown environments working with new personalities, while shepherding and caring for a team of high school missionaries on the way to impacting the world for Jesus sake.
Since GCC youth ministries takes this commitment of leadership seriously, the application below is designed for you to seriously contemplate this huge responsibility as well as for the SPACE staff/youth min staff to accurately gauge an applicant's character, experience and potential growth.
Please prayerfully consider your involvement this summer as you fill out the application.
For summer 2006 trips, applications are due by March 1, 2006.

Background/Experience
describe cross cultural experience - how did it change you
describe your student ministry experience, how long, etc.
describe your leadership style - where did you learn this from?
how is God working in your life - what does this mean for your career,
relationships and future ministry
describe the riskiest endeavor you have attempted (but not necessarily been successful)

Character
Evaluate yourself in each of the following areas by circling the number that best correlates:
Flexibility/Adaptability
Ability to get along with others
Respect for Authority
Sensitivity to Others
Positive Attitude
Ability to Work Hard
Sense of responsibility
Servant's Heart and Attitude
Being Firm versus Being Harsh
Tactfulness
Evangelistic/Heart for the Lost
Nurturing/Compassion

References
name
relationship
email
how long have you known them

Statement of Commitment
- I agree to attend all pre trip SPACE Mission Team Leader meetings with other SPACE summer mission team leaders as part of the investment SPACE will make in me as a leader, missionary and disciple of Jesus
- I agree to do my best in the physical, emotional and spiritual leadership of a SPACE mission team
- I agree to do all that I can to raise sufficient prayer and financial support both for myself individually as well as my team
- I agree to participate and lead my team in presummer preparation meetings (some of these will be put together by the SPACE crew team)
- I agree to have at least one post-trip meeting with your team for reentry and debriefing purposes
- I agree to not become romantically involved with another team member or with a recipient of our ministry, postponing our relationship until my service commitment is completed.
- I agree to abide by the standards established by the partners and/or organizations under which I will be serving.
- I agree to abide by all guidelines set forth by Grace Community Church.

Post Leader Retreat 2005

I had a great time on the Leader Retreat last night and today. But it's really nice to be home. I figured out that this calendar year, I will have been away from the fam for about a month doing SPACE and associated trips. That's a little over the top. So last night was the last time I will be away for the rest of the year, as far as I know.

Anyway, I basically got all of my goals done.

My scattered brain notes for the Friday night vision of mission talk:
===
picture share
my job tonight is to change what you care about
you are on the front lines of caring about kids week in and week out
its an awesome responsibility
challenge you to care about the world by caring about your kids
God wants use your kids to impact the world
the church is an unstoppable force
the gates of Hell will not prevail against it
I do what I do because i'm convinced students are a major piece of it
something mystical and magical when we take students to intentionally
serve and impact others
- prepare these kids to do this in their future
- see them live missional lives
- see small groups able to do this on their own
- be strategic about what we are doing - 60% of short terms do harm
- progress them as they get older
complement of community service and summer mission experiences
===

- Started ES on her mentorship. We had a great time talking about ethos, spiritual leadership and dreaming about SPACE.
- Planned SPACE activities for the fall, set all the dates. really good planning session this morning. trying a new nuance for the Nov launch (more later)
- Had a GREAT time talking to CC about her potential thing for India (which is on hold for a while). really great. I signed her up for something in the future, if it happens... (of course, more later)
- Started some very definite plans for the upcoming 10th graders for this summer. the potential for it to happen is pretty good and I'm getting more and more excited as I think about the kids in that class.
- Had a personal retreat with a book, music and a pillow.
- I also gave EmGberg a ride home so that was a lot of fun talking with her. It's nice to spend time with my team from Brasil whenever I can.

UPDATE:
The other significant thing about the retreat, to me, was having everyone hear directly from SM, the senior high pastor and director of youth ministry, right from the start on Friday night.

Here are my rough notes about that session:
===
Fri night
5 reasons with youth ministries break up
1 - division
2 - transition in leadership
3 - not relevant, hokey, not in the students world
we old people are trying to tell them what is cool
4 - harsh environment
unsafe
5 - program got out of the program
they need truth through a consistent loving voice

3 goals for 2005-2006
1 - unified, mutual respect
2 - aggresive about creating a safe place
when we do this, kids blossom
Jesus didn't like wolves
3 - small groups connect
25/27 kids that accepted Christ last year are gone
those other 2 got plugged into dteams
===

Photo: the senior Dteam leaders having a planning meeting in a tree.

another SPACE blog

It's been fun to see some SPACE friends get blogs.  I already posted about LB and FZ.  ES, the 2005-2006 SPACE intern now has one as well.  As part of the internship, her blog will be the primary medium she and I use to jot down thoughts, critique, analysis and other ideas for all the different things she is doing for SPACE.  This is going to be very, very, fun.

Pictures for vision talk - leader retreat 2005

Here are my pictures I'm going to use tonight as part of my talk on the vision of missions... or whatever my talk is supposed to be...
As with all the pictures on here, you should be able to right click for bigger versions of them.

Missions = Tour Guide

"Missions then is less about the transportation of God from one place to another and more about the identification of a God who is already there. It is almost as if being a good missionary means having really good eyesight. Or maybe it means teaching people to use their eyes to see things that have always been there; they just didn't realize it. You see God where others don't. And then you point him out."
- Rob Bell on missions, in Velvet Elvis

So does anyone know where we can get a big trolley car for the summer of 2006?

misc links - thurs

A page to help you with international dialing codes.  With drop downs for where you are and where you are calling.  Also shows time differences.  This would have helped me in Brasil.  Except the payphone instructions were in Portuguese, so maybe it wouldn't have helped.

Sitemeter now has worldmap functionality.  You can see where your recent readers have come from.

PM does his first podcast.

Alex writes, ""Is creating wealth a Christ following value?" With regards to my post of August 16 …Interestingly, although there were a healthy number of comments and contributions, there were very few real practical applications.  But here's the rub: Why did no one mention "giving to the local church" as something practical we can do?"  See more here .

The State of the '03

My day job has taught me many good things.  One of them has been the idea that you should measure what you do.  That way, you know if you have made a difference or not.

I know measuring what you do is not very postmodern.  Measuring what you do is very modern, cerebral and propositional.  Facts and statistics are objective, distant and cold.  But I'm okay with that.  Because as youthworkers, it's important to know whether we are actually making a difference or not.  One metric can be how our students are doing after they have graduated high school and left our ministries for a time.

So I thought I would reflect a little bit on the class of 03.  I was a guys small group leader for 4 years with them, from 1999-2003.  For the 1999 school year, I had a student leader (MG - who is leaving for a year or two for Turkey in a few days.)  My wife came on with the girls in 2001 and stayed until graduation.  We also had a great couple on the team that started in 2000 staying until the end (MK and SK).  And we had another great couple with guys and girls from 2001-2002 (who left being Dteam leaders to go to Australia to start a campus ministry, RP and JP.)  Hmm a bit of a pattern I think.  And also, I NEVER talked about missions the way I do now, until the Spring of 2003, right before these kids graduated.

So... here are some metrics, except I'm not going to talk about overall numbers.  Mostly because its hard to remember, but also because I'm more interested in relative numbers.  Sort of.

June 2003 - Graduation (don't you miss your high school days?)
December 2003 - sent 11 of this class to Urbana Student Missions Conference
summer 2004 - sent 3 on a two week long mission trip to Kazakhstan - 2 from Urbana
summer 2005 - 1 works with Campus Crusade ministry in Wildwood NJ
summer 2005 - 3 help as SPACE mission team leaders - 2 from Urbana
summer 2005 - 4 go on overseas missional trips - 2 from Kstan team, 1 SPACE leader, 1 from Urbana

So overall, at the end of two years, there is a 15 total people (not counting the overlap) that are involved in some kind of cross cultural, intentional, missional experience.  That are living for something more than just themselves.  That are commited to spreading the news of Jesus to the ends of the earth.  That are captivated by the mission God has for them, whether its in another culture or on their campus.

I don't know, in some sense, maybe those facts are a lot less cerebral.  Maybe they will really move you.

Leader Retreat 2005

This coming weekend is our annual Youth Ministry Leader Retreat. It is where we pack up all of our leaders, take them away for a weekend and invest in them. A few major goals for the weekend:
- show the leaders we appreciate them
- give them time to do some significant planning for the school year with their teams (small groups, grade level, program teams)
- time for them to bond with other leaders for community

Here are the specific pieces that I'm looking to get accomplished this weekend:
- communicate the vision for mission as part of the student ministry (part of the Fri night vision talk). I think this probably includes showing (or passing out) some pictures from significant SPACE trips from the past
- start ES on her mentorship (I'm bringing loads of books)
- plan the list of Fall SPACE events including dates
- talk with some of the leaders of the Trinidad team, sort of a debrief, etc.
- really strongly encourage the new 6th and 9th grade D-team leaders to bring their students to SPACE events
- talk to CC about her potential trip to India
- have a personal retreat Sat afternoon - think alone with a lawnchair, Bible, journal, and music

Last year was great because we got to go as a family, but it was a little costly. This year I'm just going and probably only for one night.

Turkey and Uganda

Continuing in the freakish momentum that has somehow been generated at GCC for overseas mission trips, a team going to Uganda for two weeks leaves on Saturday.  It's a team of about 12 (I think) young adults going to serve with AIDS Orphan and Widow something or other. (can't remember it off the top of my head.)  They were part of the send off last Sunday.  It's pretty exciting overall, but what I'm most excited about is that two of the team is from the class of 03, which was the class that me and D were D-team leaders for.  Even more, one of those two, NLind, was one of my SPACE mission team leaders this past summer.  Now, that is very very cool.

One of these days, I will write about the general statistics of the class of 03 and what they do now (slight sidebar - "Its what you *do* that defines you" - from Batman Begins, but is that a Biblical statement?), two years after they have graduated high school.  That's pretty exciting too.
 
Turkey leaves on September 2.  A team of 5 young adults are going to go to grad school there, but also to live there among a Muslim community.  These four guys and one gal are pretty good friends, and embody this cool spirit that desires to live and minister to the unreached, where the need is the greatest.  That's the idea that I think the Church is going to see more of out of that generation.

Very very fun times at GCC.  How many more can we send out?  What other areas of the world can we impact (in the right way of course)?  How many more people to be commmited to being on mission, either somewhere else or in their current places?

Blogger Profile Tags

For those of you that are hosted on blogspot, you probably know that it creates 'tags' based on what you put as your interests in your profile.  I was poking around the other day, and noticed that LB has put an interest called 'cross-cultural trips with Tony Sheng.'  So blogger tags it, and you can see everyone that has that interest.  (If you call THAT an 'interest.'  HA.)  Just for fun, I put it in my profile too.  So there are just two of us.
If you haven't noticed yet, this whole idea of tagging is huge.  Blogger, flickr, technorati, etc.  Building community through shared interests, not just grabbing a bunch of people and putting them in a room together.

First podcast....?

Not really... but you can get the audio from yesterday's Glimpse Sunday

here. (This link will only be valid until Saturday August 27, 2005)

Trinidad team sharing - 3:07
Brasil team sharing - 16:18
Guatemala team sharing - 26:50
Uganda team sendoff - 38:20

If you have ever had a crazy longing to hear what my voice sounds like... here you go.

Mission Team Reports

Our Missions Sunday today had the keyword 'Glimpse.' My friend T ran the whole thing and did such an awesome awesome job, for all 4 services. One of the things I loved was to watch and learn from him as he put together all the elements of the church service. It is so much more than just music, stories and a talk. It takes the mind of an environmentalist - creating and shaping a conducive environment for growth to occur.

One of the historical things mission teams don't do well is telling their story. They either don't get a good chance to, or when they have the chance, it is painfully boring. We have all had our fair share of hearing mission team reports that are really dry and boring. Of course, sharing a once in a lifetime experience in 10 minutes is never an easy task. Today was great because we got to share the stories, everyone listening was our biggest fans (seriously - everyone listening was so in touch, all the laughter, groans and oohs and aahs), and it was a great experience for these students to have to talk about their experience from the stage.

Photo: The Trinidad team on stage, while ES (who is the 2005-2006 SPACE mentoree) shares about her experience.

to the Class of 05

Well this is the last weekend that a lot of our graduating seniors are going to be around.  At least the ones that are going away to college that is.  Its a bittersweet time.  In one sense, its hard to see them leave.  So many of them have become friends instead of just students.  Not just good friends, but partners.  They actually care about the world.  They think that we can shape a generation.  They have this sense that the young people they have invested in will actually make a difference.

On the flip side, its awesome to send them out.  It really is the crux of what we do as youthworkers.  We build kids so that they can go out in the world.  We sit back and relish what they are doing.  We watch as their biggest fans, we cheer as they take Jesus into places and situations that we only once dreamed about.

Class of 05 - go on and amaze us like we know you will.