NW Catalyst

"...and now they're gone"

2011-09-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

"Planes flew into the World Trade Center and now they're gone."

These were the first words Sam said to me when I answered the phone the morning of September 11th, ten years ago. She had gotten to work early that day and quickly heard the news from the East Coast. I remember being skeptical. "What do you mean they're gone? That doesn't make sense." Through sobs, she insisted it was true.

I ran to turn on the TV and spent the next several hours trying to comprehend what had happened (how many lives were lost? I remember calculating there were probably 10,000 dead - miraculously it was much less), what was happening (are there going to be more? how many more hijacked planes are up there?), and what would happen (this kind of thing doesn't go unanswered).

I didn't know anyone that died that day. Personally I was fairly removed from the event, though I had some connections to people that were near (a grade school friend's brother narrowly escaped from the south tower). NYC & DC, 3000 miles away, suddenly felt like they were next door.

Tonight there was a religious channel re-running the memorial service that took place three days later in the National Cathedral. I remember watching it at the time and being very emotional, the rawness of the event having hardly diminished, fighting back tears as the Battle Hymn of the Republic played on the organ to conclude the service.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free

While God is marching on

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

We are all made of stars

2011-09-10T14:04:00.000-07:00

I'm in our regional office right now prepping for the talks I'm giving next weekend at the WSU/UI Fall Retreat. The first talk I'm giving is from John 1:1-5, with the focus on verse 5:

"The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it."

One of the illustrations I'll be using involves talking about the size of the universe. I was doing a little bit of research (finding out that scientists recently tripled the number of stars they think are in the universe) when I came upon this skin-chilling quote:

"It's fun because it gets you thinking about these large numbers," Conroy said. Conroy looked up how many cells are in the average human body – 50 trillion or so – and multiplied that by the 6 billion people on Earth. And he came up with about 300 sextillion.
So the number of stars in the universe "is equal to all the cells in the humans on Earth – a kind of funny coincidence," Conroy said.

Read the whole article here.

Home screen

2011-09-08T21:30:00.001-07:00

This blogger app has home screen potential. In other words, it makes the top 20 apps I use. Or at least that is the aspiration.

What got the boot? iPod app. I blame stage of life.

Is there an app out there that tells you your most frequently accessed apps? Probably, but for now I'm sticking with guessing. I don't need/want to know how often Tower Defender gets opened.

Referrals

2011-09-08T19:59:00.001-07:00

Being on staff means raising financial support. And with this comes asking for referrals.

Today I had a support appointment and got a very encouraging response to my request for referrals. Here is the email my friend sent to two of his friends after our meeting:

A and D,

You guys came to mind today when I met with Darren Holland for lunch. He serves with Campus Crusade as the Director of Operations for the Greater Northwest region. Darren served at Wazzu before moving here last year and shared stories of lives being changed while he was there. I guess that is why you came to mind. His current role allows him to touch lives of students and staff across 7 states through training opportunities and conferences.

As you know, I served with Crusade for 10 years and my parting wasn't easy. Talking with Darren off and on for the past year has been the first experience where I felt compelled to re-engage with this organization.

He will be contacting you directly to see if you would like to hear about his ministry and see if there is any connection to your heart or anyone else you may know. I hope you don't mind that I am passing your email address for him to use in contacting you. And, I hope you feel no obligation to meet with him by this introduction.

--
S

If I ever want to help others know how to write a good referral, I'll send them the outline of this email.

Phone blogging

2011-09-08T19:32:00.001-07:00

I'm writing this from the new blogger app for iOS. Not sure if I'll be doing much serious blogging from my phone, but it's certainly nice to have the option. Or at least an easier option.

The Connect Deck

2011-07-26T12:47:00.000-07:00

"Do you really have something to do the whole time you are at the Tweetdeck?" - a staff friend.

As others may have similar questions, here is what is happening at the staff conference Connect Deck during a typical meeting:

- All six people on the deck have a shared Google Doc open. This is where we paste tweets or texts that come in during the meeting we find noteworthy. Joe, the velvet-voiced mouthpiece for the Connect Deck, draws from these to share with the emcee's during the meeting, highlighting those he might read for the audience.

- For one meeting, we had a group Skype chat going so we could message each other easily. When we didn't (the second session I worked) it made communication more difficult. We could have used the sidebar feature in Docs, but Skype gets your attention a little better. At least it does for me.

- One or two of the people at the desk are logged in to a Google Voice account. This account receives texts during the conference, usually from people that have questions/thoughts and aren't on Twitter. This number sees a lot of texts coming in, especially when the number is posted on the big screen with a response question.

- Just about everyone at the deck has a power user Twitter client open. Tweetdeck seemed to be the favorite (it's what I use), but there are others like Seesmic and Hootsuite that do similar things. My columns during the last session I worked: All Friends (darrenaholland), Mentions (darrenaholland), Search: "Campus Crusade", Search "#csu2011", Search "#cru", Mentions (csu2011), and Direct Messages (csu2011).

- Which reminds me: When I arrived at the Connect Deck the first day, I was given the csu2011 twitter account login (wouldn't you like to know!). This allows us to not just post from this account, but easily monitor mentions/replies/direct messages. (Note: There weren't many DM's.) We try to let the #csu2011 community do most of the posting (they usually beat us to things anyway), but we'll jump in and send out a (re)tweet from the csu2011 account if we want to draw special attention to information or thoughts from other users.

- The person sitting immediately to the left (audience right) of Joe, wears a headset and communicates with the program director. Most of the time this was Brian Barela; I did it on Saturday. When a Connect Desk segment in the program is coming up, or as was the case when I was working, we're trying to figure out what we want people to text in, this channel can be very busy.

- If, given all the above, there was lag time, I found myself doing any number of things: replying to people on twitter that had used "Campus Crusade" in their tweet and had clear misinformation about the name change (directing them to our FAQ's), sitting and listening to the speaker, posting thoughts of my own related to the session on twitter, reading the incoming tweets (they are nearly constant during an especially compelling speaker) and commenting/retweeting.

So there is the science of the Connect Desk. I'll do a follow-up post about my impression of the overall impact social media made at our conference, both for good and for ill.

Any questions? Anything I missed, fellow tweeters? Are you going to have a "Connect Deck" at your next conference? Should we have been paying attention to other communication channels (like Facebook), too?

Hanging out

2011-07-13T12:05:00.000-07:00

I "hung out" last night for about half an hour. Yes, hanging out now has sharp edges to it, thanks to Google+.

It was very lonely for that half hour. Not even my wife and a friend sitting in the same room could help with the despair and isolation as I waited for one of my 26 Google+ contacts to "hang out" with me online. Yes, Chris, it was kind of sad.

I'll "hang out" again. Someday.

MissionHub

2011-07-13T11:45:00.000-07:00

This is inside baseball for those on staff with the US Campus Ministry, but...

Has anyone seen this? I don't know anything about it other than the picture, but whatever it does will likely be an improvement on the old.

Guess I'll find out at CSU like everyone else!

Moving and weight loss

2011-07-13T11:39:00.000-07:00

"He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff - no bread, no bag, no money in their belts - but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics." - Mark 6:8-9

Moving is stressful. Even if it's just down the street.

We just got done changing rental houses a couple weeks ago and have pretty much unpacked everything and settled in. But oh man was that a process. Nothing makes you face the reality of how much stuff you've acquired like getting ready for a move. Well, except the actual move itself. Moving a piano: now there is reality!

I've been watching that reality show "Extreme Makeover - Weight Loss Edition" (confession: because it's on right after "The Bachelorette". Guilty.) on Monday nights. It's like Biggest Loser, but you get to watch the whole weight loss process for one person as they condense a year long weight loss program in to an hour. They still have the annoying "standing on a scale listening to it beep as a bunch of random numbers pop up then BREAK FOR COMMERCIAL and we're back with more beeping and tension filled looks by the weigh-ee before the actual number is revealed and the triumphant music plays" moments, but it's pretty interesting to watch people try to deal with the emotional issues that have led them to get so overweight.

Which is kind of like having too much stuff. In the weeks leading up to our move, I kept thinking about how easy it would be to move if we didn't have all this stuff. While I like having a bed and plates to eat off and a piano that my wife can teach our kids to play and a desk to work at and a trimmer to edge the yard and a TV to watch TV and on and on...it adds up. And in the middle of all the "necessities", a lot of junk creeps in. And all that junk just slows you down.

I think we took five car-fulls of stuff to Goodwill before the move, another one since the move, another one that is ready to go, and another couple loads of stuff we gave to family or friends. On top of this, we sold stuff on eBay and Craigslist (probably around $1k in the last year) and just threw other things away. And yet, our new house is still very amply furnished.

I've started thinking about stuff the way the weight-loss-TV-people think about losing weight: A little each day. If you were to total up all the stuff our family owns, you could qualify it three ways: 1) Total weight of all the items, 2) Total volume of all the items, 3) Total number of all the items. A reduction in any of these numbers is victory for the day. Here is how that plays out:

Papasan chair: We got this from friends a few years ago. It is light, but is really three items my kids can strew around (base, frame, and cushion) and occupies a large volume. One of the first things to go.

36" tube TV: This behemoth probably weighed more than anything we moved outside of the piano. And that includes a fridge. Major victory getting rid of this thing (thanks, Goodwill workers, for helping me unload). Now down to one 27" tube...which is no lightweight. Someday we'll get rid of it and replace it with a modest flat screen that pulls HD and weighs a lot less. Maybe we'll hold out for a TV that you can roll up like a scroll or tape it to your wall. Give it 10 years. Just wait.

Kids toys: You have no idea how these add up. Hand me downs, Happy Meals, birthdays, Christmas...and yet our kids will often choose sticks or a hose or a spoon over any of these toys. I'm not sure which ones we got rid of, but it was nice to ask the kids which ones they wanted to give to other kids. That helped them get behind it. BTW we still have like 1x10^6 army guys and a coterie of Disney princesses.

CD's/DVD's: We sold our 300+ CD collection on Craigslist for $50. I have no regrets (iTunes + Pandora = bye, bye CD's). Huge reduction in both number and weight. With the DVD's, we sold some, gave others away, kept a few of the Disney ones. Streaming is the future. Time to rid ourselves of the relics.

Paper files: Yes, these count. Over the last couple years, we've gone from about five file drawers worth down to about 1.5. I'm hoping to get down to .5 and stay there by the end of the year. This could almost be it's own post as it requires a lot of different tactics to winnow down. Evernote and a good scanner are key, but everything from processing mail to online bill pay are part of this. Huge reduction in "number of items" if you're going by pieces of paper or even file hangers.

Clothes: Sam and I both got real about clothes we actally wear. Good victory on number and volume here.

I could go on and on, but the bottom line is "why do I have this?" If it isn't readily clear...time to go.

After all, I'm not sure the missionary lifestyle is really compatible with being a pack-rat. Our stuff isn't our security and it isn't "us".

Fasting, Support Raising, and Moving

2011-07-12T16:46:00.000-07:00

My friend and co-worker, Matt, has been blogging about his experience fasting. You should check it out.

It has inspired me to try and write about a couple different experiences: One that me and my wife are in right now (support raising) and one we just completed (moving). In both of them, I've been learning some difficult things about my character, some very good things about the character of the Lord, and some very practical things that have helped me in both. Perhaps some of it will be helpful to others.

So get ready for a torrent of posts...or at least more than the 1 post/month rate I've been doing. :)

[BTW - I haven't been on blogger since they re-did their interface. It looks much nicer, and has some neat new features, but I don't ever remember accidentally publishing a post with the old one!]

Suspicious illustrations

2011-06-07T13:11:00.000-07:00

You know when speakers use an illustration that makes you suspiciously wonder "did that really happen?"

I'm in the middle of filling out an application for support from our church, and one of the questions is to "write briefly about significant events in your life that have impacted you spiritually." One of mine involved hearing a talk by Ron Hutchcraft. I thought "why not see what he's up to these days?" So I googled and found his website. One of the headlines is a new blog post titled "watching him drown", a title which has definite parallels with the talk I heard that impacted me ("Rescue the Dying", from Esther 4 - It might be free somewhere, but if so I couldn't readily find it. Here you can find the mp3 for $1.50). An excerpt of that blog post:

"A 911 call alerted first responders that a man was slowly wading out into San Francisco Bay, inching his way to ending his life there. Soon a group of firefighters - along with a crowd of 75 people - were watching as this desperate man went deeper and deeper, occasionally looking back at the shore. They stood there for an hour.

"And they watched him die. Without anyone making a move to help him. I can only imagine this man looking back at those spectators, wondering if anyone cared if he lived or died. And I wonder how life-changing it might have been if someone had been willing to try to save him. It's all just sickening."

Suspicion raised. I couldn't believe that really happened. So I googled it.

And it is real, and it just happened 8 days ago.

The story on the San Jose Mercury News website, titled "The drowning suicide that shook an island", opens...

"Only two people went into the chilly San Francisco Bay waters Monday to help a suicidal Raymond Zack and neither wore a police or firefighter uniform."

Read the rest of the story here. Then read the rest of Hutchcraft's post, titled "Watching Him Drown".

Why team leaders need Skype Premium

2011-04-07T16:43:00.000-07:00

First of all, the cost is $8.99/mo (25% off when you purchase a year's subscription).

For those of us leading teams of less than ten people (in my context of campus ministry this means conference design teams, summer project leadership teams, field ministry coaches, and even local team leaders...to name a few) I think it's worth it. Here is why:

- It allows you to host multi-person video conferences. Only one person needs the premium account and it allows you to host a conference with anywhere from 2-10 video endpoints (though Skype says performance is best at 5 or under).

- Meetings are a lot more engaging when you are talking face to face. For the last several months, the distributed team I am part of has been having a monthly video conference. Each one is two hours, and it's amazing how much more quickly they go by, and how much more locked on I am, when I am seeing people's faces and expressions.

- We've all heard about how much communication is non-verbal. You are actually able to see how people are responding to what is being said, adding a lot of richness to the interactions.

- When you do finally get together face to face, you feel like these are people you know and have logged time with in a way that just doesn't happen with voice calls.

And here are some tips I've gleaned over the last several months:

1. The experience is best when everybody is on their own camera. Looking at a group in a conference room isn't very natural. The people are often too far away to pick up expressions, and much of the time they aren't looking your direction. It actually makes you feel more isolated if you are communicating with a group that is all in a room relating to one another and your vantage point is "looking in".

2. Hotel wi-fi just isn't there yet. Make sure you've got a solid internet connection for best results.

3. Most people aren't updated with the latest Skype. As it says on the Skype website, everyone has to update to version 5 or better in order for it to work. It's really easy but make sure ahead of the call everyone has it done.

4. Be patient. Allow a few minutes in the first part of your meeting for troubleshooting whenever you have a new group or person trying it out. Of course, if you're reading a blog you are tech savvy and probably already know this. :)

Any other tips to add?

Facebook study shows Facebook users like moving fingers while staring at screens

2011-03-29T22:12:00.000-07:00

A fellow staff member is a little bit anti-facebook and sent a link to me the other day. It is about a study finding that adds a tally mark to the "reasons to stay off Facebook" column (summary: Facebook users are narcissists).

Of course, there are a lot of Facebook studies coming out lately. In fact, the study she sited was dated August 2010. But lo and behold, just this month, another study comes out showing Facebook helps your self-esteem.

And then there is this study that just dropped last week: "Most Americans have Facebook, study says"

Here are my predictions for Facebook studies we'll soon be reading about:

"Study shows people more likely to recommend Facebook studies that reinforce their native preferences about Facebook than those that don't."

"Study shows Facebook studies often disproven by future Facebook studies"

"Study shows Facebook study data can be used to prove two opposing viewpoints"

"Study shows Facebook users behave in ways that reflect the culture at large"

"Study shows Facebook would be less polarizing if it were called 'Starbucks'"

Initiative: Take it

2011-03-29T21:29:00.000-07:00

One of our regional opterns (operations interns), Amie, had the following assignment today:

- Pick-up a staff family from the airport and get them to their destination in Portland.

The plan as it stood yesterday was for the family to arrive, pick-up their bags, then call Amie (who would be in the cell phone waiting area) to pick them up at the curb.

Instead, Amie took it upon herself to arrive early, park, and go wait beside the security checkpoint. She stood there with a sign she had made with the family's name and our organizational mark (getting a few snide comments along the way about "Campus Crusade for Christ"), initiating the pick-up at the earliest point possible and demonstrating a fine sense of hospitality.

Perhaps a small thing, but I loved it. From Seth Godin's post yesterday:

Initiative isn't given, you take it

The amazing thing is that unlike taking an apple or a chocolate bar, there's no loss to the rest of us. After you take it, we all benefit.

Ultimate Super Bowl mash-up

2011-02-07T09:55:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's Monday morning, but let's do one more Super Bowl post. Perhaps we can get some clues towards what makes a great event, and great moment, in the process.

There are four elements that make up a great Super Bowl: The national anthem, the commercials, the halftime show, and the last few minutes of the fourth quarter. I've already posted about the commercials, so we'll focus on the other three elements.

I had an idea: What if we took the best national anthem, the best halftime show, and the best game finish and mashed them up all Glee-like? What would we get?

Hint: It doesn't involve Christina, the Black Eyed Peas, or Ben Roethlisberger.

Best National Anthem

This isn't from the Super Bowl (sorry Whitney, yours was good but it was DQ'd for being pre-recorded), but is from just a few weeks ago. Here is what we can learn from the performance of Jim Cornelison:

1. Sing it straight up and you're already halfway to greatness.
2. The national anthem is actually a very masculine song in the right hands (or vocal chords).
3. Perform it in front of a bunch of Bears fans in Chicago. Absolutely electric.
4. Hold that last note and wait for the jets to get there. Boo-ya! Gives me the chills every time.

Best Halftime performance

It's always fun to be watching something and realize at the time you are watching the birth of a defining cultural moment. As soon as those names started to go up you knew this wasn't your typical halftime performance. When The Edge started to tap out the intro to "Streets", it became transcendant.

For such a redemptive moment, it is interesting that three and a half years later this same venue would be the setting for another of the decades defining stories.

Best Fourth Quarter

That's pretty low quality video, but I don't think the NFL likes their good stuff on YouTube.

Two words: Helmet Catch. Again, one of those moments you immediately knew was bound for greatness.

So those are my fave moments. What are yours?

"This is what we do" - Best of the Super Bowl commercials

2011-02-06T23:39:00.000-08:00

While a departure from my normal content, how can you not write about pop culture on Super Bowl Sunday?

It's very tempting to go with the snark and run through all the ads that weren't worth $.03, let alone $3,000,000. But we're going to try and keep it mostly positive around here. Mostly. Let me just get a few things off my chest and then we'll move from good to better to best.

Bad:

First, Doritos. I will still eat your chips, but your Super Bowl ads always annoy me for their lack of creativity and, in this year's case, an added dose of gross awkwardness. Instead, just show me a cool ranch chip close up for 30 seconds and I'm sold.

Second, to everyone that used sex and/or slapstick to sell your products (and you were legion), I say this: you're just blending with the crowd at this point. And where you do stand out, it creates an emotional response that makes me want to be a brand anti-advocate. I'm talking to you, GoDaddy and Pepsi Max. (And yes, as I put on twitter, my wife happened to buy our first ever 12-pack of Pepsi Max while she was at Costco during the first quarter. Ill-timed.)

Okay, that feels better. Let's get to the...

Good:

Transformers movie trailer

I will not see this movie. I repeat: I will not see this movie. The trailer is awesome (I actually like the siren robot horn - adds to the drama), but I've got you figured out, Michael Bay. Your roots are in commercials and you know how it's done. The problem is, you can't film a whole movie like a 30-second commercial (which you do) and have it be good. So I'll watch your movie promo and think "Maybe this time will be different! Maybe the movie will be as good as the trailer." But I know better, Mr. Bay. No Pearl Harbor sneak attack on my wallet (or my senses).

Bridgestone "Reply All"

Both Bridgestone ads were pretty good, but I had read earlier in the day how this one came to be. It's a fascinating article in Fast Company that goes behind the scenes on how ad agencies go "all in" when they are creating a Super Bowl spot.

You've got to love how well the commercial illustrates the impossibility of retracting an email. It's good not just because it's funny, but because it captures our age: digital communication, once you hit send/publish, is out there immediately to laptops, desktops, and mobile phones. My favorite is the guttural yell as he rips the cords out of the server bank. The futility is the funny.

Kind of reminds me of an email I got back in 2005. Moving right along...

Volkswagon Black Beetle

I wouldn't say CGI Beetles are the best way to get me excited about your product, but this spot had just enough going for it to make my list. First, I like the song (though not so much the cover they used). Second, the two stripes on the Beetle left little doubt where we were headed. Or so I thought. Here is what I think made this ad stand out:

That shot alone was enough to get me excited. Something tells me they are going to get rid of the flower holder as a major selling point in the new Beetle.

CarMax "Kid in a candy store"

It moves quickly and expects the viewer to keep up. Plus, I probably like word play a little more than the average person. You can see people quoting this one in the days ahead. "I feel like a hippie in a drum circle!"

Better:

Kia Optima "One Epic Ride"

I caught on to the "bigger and better" thing they had going on when Poseidon showed up, but this got really interesting when it kept going after the aliens grabbed the car. Really, where do you go from there? I thought "wait, are they going to have God show up and grab this car?" Well, not quite. Just the Mayans using one of their time-traveling, car-summoning wormholes.

Considering the idolatry going on in this ad, I'm kind of glad God didn't get involved. And I don't really see him driving a Kia.

Volkswagon "The Force"

Okay, full disclosure: I have a five year-old son that I could picture doing most of the stuff our mini-DV (Darth Vader) does in this ad. Those clever VW ad wizards know their target audience, and it's a slightly more affluent version of myself.

When I was right around my sons age, I had a Star Wars themed birthday party. Unbeknownst to me, my uncle's friend had a full blown DV costume, showing up at my party and simultaneously frightening and delighting all in attendance. My parents got a great pic of Darth holding me up over his head, but I'll have to dig that one out another time. In any case, more bonus points for nostalgia.

Love that they got permission to use "The Imperial March".

Best

Chrysler "Imported from Detroit"

I liked it when I saw it live, but loved it when I re-watched with my full attention. So many elements masterfully woven together: The Detroit setting, the cinematic stylings, the phenomenal ad copy ("it's the hottest fires that make the hardest steel"), the visual narrative that begins with factories and skyscrapers but evolves into the human story, the emergence of "Lose Yourself" at the same moment the story shifts to the car, the look of (dare I say?) steely determination on the faces of everyone you see...I could go on. This was more a movie trailer than a commercial; it draws you in to a larger story that goes way beyond the Chrysler 200. As Chris Brogan tweeted, this was the first car ad that wasn't about a car. I think that is a good thing.

"This is the Motor City, and this is what we do" - Eminem, with the only words spoken directly to the camera.

As the car drives off onto the streets of Detroit and the video fades to black, the following appears one word at a time:

Maybe it is because this article was fresh in my mind, but the wording and visual styling made me think there was a nod to Apple on this one. Presentation, Emotion, and ~~California~~ Detroit. It certainly has the three components.

One final note: Who came up with such a great ad? Well, it did kind of feel like a Nike ad, didn't it? None other than Portland-based Weiden+Kennedy, known almost equally now for their work on Old Spice.

So are TV commercials the contemporary art form that shapes our culture more than any other? Some say so...and I'm inclined to agree. Knowing why they speak to us is an opportunity to see into the soul of our culture, understanding that the stories they tell are the ones we, as carriers of the ultimate narrative, will be working to replace. Or redeem.

You must banish from your mind the naive but commonplace notion that commercials are about products. They are about products in the same sense that the story of Jonah is about the anatomy of whales. — Neil Postman

Peace, hope, and love

2011-02-05T17:57:00.000-08:00

Got a Facebook message on Thursday from a student at WSU:

I have something I would like to ask prayer for. I'm going to be sharing the gospel with a really good buddy of mine [friend's name] (who many of you know). If you could be praying that God would be speaking through me and working in his heart in preparation for our conversation. I believe, as I'm sure most of you do, that prayer is so powerful. God listens to us, and he can open hearts and transform lives. I love [my friend] so much, and I want more than anything for him to know the peace, hope, and love that comes with a relationship with Jesus Christ. Please join with me and keep him in your prayers. I know that God will do a great work in his life. Thank you!

Pardon the cliche, but...this is why I do what I do.

More from "Break all the rules"

2011-02-03T16:16:00.000-08:00

It's not hard to guess why the following paragraph resonated with me...

"The manager role is the 'catalyst' role. As with all catalysts, the manager's function is to speed up the reaction between two substances, thus creating the desired end product. Specifically, the manager creates performance in each employee by speeding up the reaction between the employee's talents and the company's goals, and between the employees talents and the customers' needs. When hundreds of managers play this role well, the company becomes strong, one employee at a time." - First, Break All the Rules

Breaking all the rules - 12 questions

2011-02-02T16:42:00.000-08:00

From the chapter in First Break All the Rules entitled "The Measuring Stick":

"Measuring the strength of a workplace can be simplified to twelve questions. These twelve questions don't capture everything you may want to know about your workplace, but they do capture the most information and the most important information. They measure the core elements needed to attract, focus, and keep the most talented employees."

Initiated by my director, these twelve questions were asked of all US Campus Ministry operations staff, both full-time and intern, at the end of October this last fall (low=1, high=5). The results are below.

(The 14 Greater Northwest respondents are those on my office operations team as well as operational leaders in the field that report to me.)

A few of my thoughts:
- The lowest numbers, relative to the national average, were the first two. This is troubling, but makes sense; we haven't had operations leadership in our region for the last couple years. Hopefully these numbers will improve this spring when we do the survey again, though I suspect number two relates to funding. This may take longer, and more effort, to turn around.
- The lowest number for both our region and the nation was the "best friend at work" question. Why would that be? Is that unique to operations? To Campus Crusade? To non-profits? Or is that the lowest in other industries, too?
- The highest number was the mission/purpose question. Gladly, people in the GNW (and US) feel their job is important.
- This information will get increasingly helpful as we ask these questions again in the future. Patterns and trends will emerge that will help me/us know what we are doing well and what needs attention.
- For the immediate future: I'd love to get question number one quickly up in to the 4-5 range. I want my people to know what is expected of them, both by me and the organization. Not knowing what is expected at work is a recipe for frustration.

What do you think of this info? Have you ever used these questions in your workplace? Any tips/insights you want to give?

Books for an Ops team (Part II)

2011-02-01T14:03:00.000-08:00

Way back in May of 2010, I posted about books I was considering having our Ops team read in the upcoming year. I've since moderately adjusted the list.

The following are currently being read by one person on the team and will be summarized in a 10-20 minute book report to our operations team answering the questions "What did I like? What did I take exception to? How could the concepts/ideas help our Ops team perform better? Our whole region?":

Radical - Platt
Death by Meeting - Lencioni
Jacob and the Prodigal - Bailey
I once was lost - Everts and Schaupp
Drive - Pink
Seven practices of effective ministry - Stanley
Switch - Heath
Linchpin - Godin

What do you think of the list? You read any of these?

Majoring on Majors?

2011-01-31T12:17:00.000-08:00

When I was staff on campus at Washington State, a lot of time went into thinking about what year our students were (Frosh, Soph, etc.) and where they lived on campus. Much less time went into thinking about their academic focus. I think that may have been a missed opportunity.

A sampling of the majors that attended our recent Winter Conference is at right.

How might ministry look different for a business major vs. a nursing major? Outdoor recreation vs a math major?

What about when they get to the workforce?

In thinking about our conference next year, one beneficial tactic might be to get people of like/similar major together. Imagine a room full of business majors. How could they minister to their peers within the department? What skills/talents/strengths do they have that could serve their campus ministry? Could a group of them connect post graduation to help reach a workplace (or even a city)? What would ministry look like in this area of the workforce?

Do you consider majors as you work with students? How could we better incorporate this into how we win, build, and send students?

12 things I've learned while managing a conference Facebook Page

2011-01-13T00:52:00.000-08:00

Third child? Check. Annual Winter Conference? Check. Blog updated? Here we go...

My friend Matt already did a post about how we used Facebook to build engagement and community before, during, and after our regional Winter Conference. Here is our January 10th page stat summary:

And here are twelve things I learned over the last few weeks as I helped manage the page:

1. Giveaways are great for building engagement (again, see Matt's post).

2. It takes time for people to feel comfortable posting on your page. They need to trust you first.

3. It is ten times easier to get someone to "like" a post than to comment. Duh. But if they "like" stuff enough eventually they'll comment.

4. The page administrator is like a host at a party. You need to keep things moving, facilitate conversation, build interest, make introductions, help people feel at ease...but avoid dominating the scene.

5. Take lots of photos and post them quickly. Tag a few people to get people's attention (we had a great team helping on this front).

6. Facebook's default setting for Pages is to have photo tagging turned off for fans. For a student conference, you're going to want to get that turned back on real fast.

7. Tag pages and people in status updates and link to relevant sites as much as possible. This adds a dynamic look and feel to the page and is another way to draw attention to your page from other places.

8. Add related pages to page favorites (screen shot at right). This puts your page in context and relationship with others.

9. Video is always going to be a hit. (Matt did a post about this, too)

10. The conference Facebook page will likely be a strategic tool for building community and promoting ministry opportunities around our region all year.

11. In our Greater Northwest context, Facebook is still the place to be if you want to interact with students.

12. Actively managing a ministry Facebook page is a way to disciple people. By what you link to, highlight, how you relate and interact...it is another way to influence people towards Christ-centered community and mission.

There are many more, but I'll just add this one: It's a lot of fun. :)

If you manage a Facebook page, I'd love to learn from you. Comment with what you've learned or just link to your Facebook page so we can see an example!

"Never pass the buck"

2010-12-08T23:31:00.000-08:00

Over the next couple days I'm going to be communicating out a change related to financial policy with which some of our staff may take issue. This change was initiated by those several levels up from me organizationally, and while I think the change makes sense given the information I have, there is a temptation to distance myself from it in order to engender allegiance from those I lead and work alongside.

The timing then was appropriate, and perhaps providential, for my starting in tonight on the book "First, break all the rules - What the world's greatest managers do differently". In the introduction, an interview with a very successful restaurant manager is recounted in which he shares a few helpful management tips he has picked up during his 15-year career. All of the tips were insightful; one struck a particular chord...

"And especially important: Never pass the buck. Never say, 'I think this is a crazy idea, but corporate insists.' Passing the buck may make your little world easy, but the organism as a whole, sorry, the organization as a whole, will be weakened. So in the long run, you are actually making your life worse."

"Without cause, you're just another civic organization"

2010-11-18T22:04:00.000-08:00

My friend Andy, a fellow operations leader out in Colorado, read about the "Failing Forward" awards I recently posted about. It reminded him of the quote from Erwin McManus below, taken from the blog post "The Cause Driven Church":

The early church existed with a dynamic tension: it was both expanding and consolidating—growing and unifying. The Bible tells us that the first century believers “shared everything in common” and that “the church was being added to day by day.”

This tension is illustrated by two biblical images—the body of Christ and the army of God. The body of Christ is centered on community; the army of God is centered on cause.

Healthy community flows out of a unified cause—not the other way around. Jesus called his disciples and said, “Follow me. I’ll make you fishers of men.” This was not an offer of community. “Follow me and I will give you something worthy of giving your life to” is a statement of cause. But the neat thing is, when they came to the cause, they found community like they never knew could exist.

One danger of the American church is that we often try to offer people community without cause. Without cause, you’re just another civic organization. You don’t have life transformation.

Jesus said, “I have come to the world to seek and to save that which is lost.” The cause of Christ is accomplished by expanding the kingdom of God.

The bold emphasis was mine. Thanks for the tip, Andy.

Organize victory out of mistakes

2010-11-17T06:00:00.000-08:00

As we kicked off our "Failing Forward" awards last week at our Missional Team Leader conference, my friend and co-leader Kevin Kneeshaw shared the following quote:

“Life, like war, is a series of mistakes, and he is not the best Christian nor the best general who makes the fewest false steps. He is the best who wins the most splendid victories by the retrieval of mistakes. Forget mistakes; organize victory out of mistakes.” -- Frederick William Robertson (1816-1853)

PDX Cru and the poetry slam

2010-11-16T19:34:00.000-08:00

My assumption is that if you regularly follow my blog, you follow my friend Matt's, too. If this isn't the case, I'd encourage you to jump on the LTI (Leadership, Technology, Innovation) bandwagon! Matt has some great posts this week (both personal and ministry related) including his most recent where he put up a video highlight reel of an outreach the PDX Cru team did a few weeks ago. You can read more of the details here, but the video below just about stands on it's own. Summary: PSU students were invited to "spit [their] best Jesus poem" in 3 minutes or less.

I got to be there and watch it live. It was awesome. The talent, and honesty, of the entrants blew me away.

Facebook ad campaign and Lake Tahoe Summer Project

2010-11-16T18:53:00.000-08:00

About a month ago I got an email from Facebook saying I had a $50 credit towards an ad campaign. I'm only the administrator for one Fb page (Lake Tahoe Summer Project), so it was pretty easy to decide how to apply the $50 credit. As 2011 Summer Project applications were set to go live on Nov 1st, I decided to see what happened if I ran an ad for the LTSP targeted towards the following group:

- Live in the United States
- Age 18-22 inclusive
- who "like" Campus Crusade for Christ
- who are in college
- who are in the class of 2012, 2013, or 2014
- who are single or in a relationship

This currently works out to 17,320 profiles. I decided to pay per impression (instead of pay per click) and see what happened. The bid was 40 cents/1000 impressions, though it looks like we're getting a better deal than that. The stats so far are below:

Getting 17 clicks for just a little over $5 bucks seems like a good deal (especially $5 free bucks). Have you done anything with Facebook ad campaigns? Seen any results? What do you think about the ad itself (above right)? It's kind of tiny, and you can't see peoples faces, but you definitely see that you'll be on a beach in Lake Tahoe under the mountains and the blue sky with lots of other people, right?

The project group picture is great, but if I had to do it again I might use this photo instead. It was taken at the 2010 LTSP, and you can follow these two distinguished staff members on twitter here and here.

Cheers to Facebook, LTSP, and staff hunt!

Tuesday trip: Ops, Keynote, 100% Sent, and AllCallings.com

2010-11-14T18:42:00.000-08:00

I'm leaving first flight out on Tuesday morning for Indianapolis where I'll visit the home of Keynote, a ministry of Campus Crusade. I'll get to join a meeting between Keynote and our "100% Sent" team to talk especially about AllCallings.com. (AllCallings is an online tool developed to help connect people with similar interests and callings, then activate them in the mission together.) The meet-up is Tuesday night and most of Wednesday, allowing me to arrive home late on Wednesday.

As facilitator of a working group investigating how the operational effort within the US Campus Ministry can help better send our students and faculty, I was invited to go and join this meeting as a representative for USCM operations. I'm looking forward to the time as I'll get to be face to face with some prominent ministry leaders within Campus Crusade and hear what they are thinking as it relates to using digital media, technology, and the internet to accelerate our mission of seeing both "movements everywhere" and "100% Sent". Hopefully, I'll bring something to the table, too. I've got some thoughts as it relates to digital media, and specifically AllCallings, that I look forward to bouncing off those that will be present.

If you are one of my faithful readers readers, and you see this before Tuesday afternoon, post a comment with what you like about AllCallings.com and what you think could be improved. If you've never been to the site, all the better. Take a look around and tell me what your thoughts are as an outsider!

One thing I'm sure of: The potential to connect and equip people of similar kingdom vision is enormous. Whether or not that happens through AllCallings.com, something similar, or entirely different, if we could move this ahead using the technology available we could see some really cool stuff happen in cities and the marketplace (among other places) related to the advancement of the gospel.

La Liberté de l'Interieur

2010-11-14T12:17:00.000-08:00

Here is another video we showed at our Missional Team Leaders conference last week. If you took what we are trying to do in the Campus Ministry and passed it through the medium of a short French film....this might be about what it would look like:

This could not only help launch a spiritual discussion with a non-believer about the nature of reality and our human condition, but could also be a great way to present the heart, and burden, of the Great Commission to believers. The last shot in the film always gives me the chills.

For more, check out the Global Short Fim Network.

Jesus and Revelation: Not what he looked like, but who he is

2010-11-14T12:00:00.000-08:00

Our church just started a series on Revelation a couple weeks ago. The message today was centered around Revelation 1:9-20, where John has a vision of Jesus. Clearly, John had a difficult time describing what he saw as he uses the word "like" seven times (or at least this is the way it translates in the ESV). Only metaphorical language and many similes can approximate the glory of the Son of Man.

Living in our image driven culture and era, it can be easy to fixate on the visual. But the pastor made an important point: It is not about what Jesus looked like, but about who he is. The impressive visual imagery is meant to draw us to a place of worship before the King of Glory.

The picture at left is inspired by Revelation 19. The first time I saw it was driving on I-90 through downtown Spokane. It appears as a large mural on the side of a building just north of the freeway. I've always wondered how many people notice it, and of those, how many know this is a painting of Jesus (though the title "King of Glory" painted above it probably helps). Whether you like the artistic style or not, it certainly captures an aspect of who Jesus is that we normally don't highlight.

Maybe we should.

Mad Men and the glamorous facade

2010-11-12T22:00:00.000-08:00

We finally get to watch the last two episodes of Mad Men tonight (via DVR at my in-laws). Mad Men has been my and Sam's favorite show for a while now, some of the reasons why my wife details here.

I used a clip at our conference earlier this week that demonstrated both the show's elegance and tone of underlying despair. (Without context, the scene lacks some of it's power, but if you're a fan you'll be reminded why "The Wheel" is considered one of the greatest episodes of Mad Men) The first morning at our conference, we had everyone go around the room and introduce themselves with their name, current role, and current favorite TV show (if they had one). Being the emcee, I went last and used the clip to transition to a short talk given by one of my teammates on taking the gospel to the edges of the NW.

What does a campus minister take away from the clip above? Perhaps many things, but I drew attention to the seeming perfection Don Draper had outwardly attained. A talented, attractive, and successful Creative Director on Madison Avenue with a seemingly perfect family was actually in the midst of his world beginning to fall apart.

Whether it's on campus or in the city, there are many like him that we might be reluctant to engage with as gospel messengers. The intimidation level can be high. However, sometimes this intimidating exterior is covering up a very dark and broken inside that is in need of something far deeper and more substantial than alcohol, women, and fame.

Seattle is big (and beautiful when it's not raining)

2010-11-12T16:41:00.000-08:00

We're back in Portland now, having returned from our conference in Seattle yesterday. It's always striking how much bigger and busier Seattle feels than humble little PDX.

Here was a short HD video-pano I took out my hotel room window as the sun was setting over the Olympic mountains. If you look closely, you should be able to see I-5, Lake Union, the Space Needle, downtown Seattle skyline, UW, Husky Stadium, Lake Washington and a floating bridge, and Mt. Rainier.

If you're wondering about the hotel, it's the Hotel Deca in the U-district. It was pretty nice and met our needs well, especially as it was a short walk to the UW campus and right next to "The Ave". A little more expensive than our normal conference venues, but worth it.

The First Follower

2010-11-11T12:00:00.000-08:00

Here is another video we showed at our NW MTL conference earlier this week in Seattle, WA. As ministry leaders, we give a lot of thought to starting and building movements of Christ-followers. This video offered apropos, and humorous, principles:

Perspective cards - A review and an account

2010-11-11T06:30:00.000-08:00

Our MTL's got to go on campus at UW this Tuesday and engage with students by starting spiritual conversations. I tried out a new resource called "Perspective" cards. These were developed by a campus staff seeking to help us better understand the worldview of students we are attempting to influence towards Christ.

(The site explaining more is here, though the resource has been developed and refined quite a bit since this site was put together)

My short review: I really liked using the Perspective cards. I had some initial trepidation about being overly centered on the cards and not paying attention to who I was talking to, but this was quickly overcome. The student I and another staff guy talked to eagerly engaged with the cards and questions once we started in.

If you're wondering about how we struck up the conversation in the first place...

We walked up to a student eating lunch by himself in an on-campus dining center at UW. I crouched down next to him so I wouldn't be literally talking down to him, and had the following exchange:

Me: "Hi, I'm wondering if you could help me. I'm with a Christian club on campus and part of what we like to do is talk with students and find out what they believe about God and spiritual things. I have a new tool I'm trying out that could help with that and I wondered if you would be up for letting me try it out with you?

Student: "Um, maybe. How long do you think it will take?"

Me: "Well, it could be two minutes or 20 minutes, depending on how much time you have."

Student: "Okay, but I'll have to go pretty soon to meet someone for a study group."

Me: "No problem. Just say when. Mind if I sit down and we pull up an extra chair?"

Student: "No, go ahead."

Me: "So what is your name? My name is Darren and this is Jason."

Student: "I'm Tony"

Me: "What year are you, Tony?"

Tony: "A freshman."

Me: "And what are you studying?"

Tony: "Physics"

After we got to know each other a little bit more, I introduced the cards and walked through them, with Jason asking helpful clarifying questions along the way. We had a great conversation spurring off the cards, and by the time Tony had to leave I wanted to be friends with him! He had virtually no church background, describing himself as agnostic, but had given spiritual things a great deal of thought and research. His thoughtful, analytical nature was refreshing to me, and I would love to pick up where we left off someday and share how (and why) I, a former electrical engineering major with plenty of skepticism myself, believe Jesus was and is Lord and Savior.

As Tony was getting up to leave, he thanked us for talking with him and said he appreciated how we listened and dialogued with him (in contrast to some of the other Christians he said he had encountered on campus). While our goal isn't to be thanked, it is our goal to be able to share the gospel message in a manner and context so that it will be heard and not dismissed out of hand. I think the Perspective cards could be a helpful tool towards that end with other students like Tony.

[And Tony, if you ever happen to stumble upon this, l'd enjoy hearing about our conversation from your vantage point. And I'd certainly enjoy continuing our conversation.]

Lt. Ronald Speirs, surrender, and leadership

2010-11-10T23:32:00.000-08:00

I shared this clip from Band of Brothers with our NW Missional Team Leaders this morning. I related it to surrender, how we are called to die to ourselves, and how this dying brings Spirit-filled life in Christ.

Hopefully it's not too much of a stretch to make a connection to the words of the apostle Paul:

"However I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task, the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace."

Failing Forward

2010-11-10T22:59:00.000-08:00

I laughed so hard tonight I was crying.

We ended our Missional Team Leader conference by having our first (annual?) "Failing Forward" awards. MTL's from around the Greater Northwest shared stories of failure in ministry from four different categories: most embarrassing, lowest return on investment, most damaging to the reputation of the organization, and most detrimental to movement morale. We wanted to laugh a lot and end with some fun, but also to celebrate taking risk in getting the gospel to every student and faculty.

There were gag awards for the four categories, but also a small financial bonus towards the overall "most redemptive learning experience". Todd, the winner, learned the hard way that to build community in a movement you don't focus on community, but rather on the mission and vision; the best community often comes as people share ministry experiences together.

The two most painfully funny stories I'll call "Stapled condoms" and "Born for Battle", the latter of which could have swept all four categories if we would have allowed. Next time you see me, just ask. ;)

Leadership lessons from the Nike GPS app

2010-11-09T07:00:00.000-08:00

I went for a run this morning around the U-district here in Seattle, doing a couple miles on the Burke-Gilman Trail. The attached photo captures my route.

I'm still amazed at this technology. I know the Nike GPS app isn't the only app that has these features, but it allows me to head out for a run, get verbal updates through my headphones at intervals I determine (I have it set for every mile) with my pace and distance traveled, and have a nice map of my route when I get done. You can even view your relative pace throughout the run along with a few other cool features.

Is it weird that having this app has single-handedly doubled my desire to run? Some possible reasons for this added motivation:

- I get frequent updates on how I'm doing.
- It allows me to improvise, change my route, and still provide the needed information to hit my (mileage) goals.
- I have clear metrics with which to measure success and compare for improvement or regression.

This app has some natural leadership ability!

Leadership: Directional and Relational

2010-11-08T21:35:00.000-08:00

We heard from Keith Davy this morning on the topic of "Leading Teams in Evangelism". One of the first things he shared was a definition of leadership:

Leaders know where they are going and are able to take others with them.

Working of this definition, Keith made two observations: "...know where they are going" has a directional aspect to it, "able to take others with them" a relational aspect. Leaders need to have both directional strength and relational strength. Or, in the words of Howard Hendricks, a good leader possesses "a compass in the head and a magnet in the heart."

Foursquare brings people together

2010-11-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

If a metric of success in my job as Operations Director is how many Foursquare check-ins and badges my Ops team accumulates, I think I will be in for a banner year.

I'm not sure what will and will not translate to campus ministry with the geo-social phenomenon, but it does seem that just knowing what each other are up to, both during the work day and after hours, has served to connect our team relationally. Plus, battling for mayorships is simultaneously ridiculous and great fun (one of which I'm going to lose to my 4sq protege during my conference in Seattle this week).

If you aren't sure what Foursquare is, the Wall Street Journal has an amusing introduction here.

Missional Team Leaders

2010-11-07T22:41:00.000-08:00

Sam and I are at a conference this week in Seattle for our fellow ministry leaders from around the Northwest. We had dinner tonight at Ivar's overlooking Lake Union towards the Space Needle and downtown. The food was really good (the Foursquare tips made this seem questionable) and the setting was great.

We had a private room for our group of 45 and after dinner we kicked off our week together by sharing stories of God at work on campus around the NW. It was overwhelming: I've heard many of the stories directly or relayed to me previously, but to hear them all at once was pretty special. I want to type them all out, but I'd be up all night and I have to get up and emcee our meeting tomorrow morning at 9 am.

For our leaders to come together like this requires a lot of time and money, as a significant challenge in our region is simply the expansive geography (Bozeman to Seattle, Anchorage to Reno, Portland to Salt Lake). However, times like tonight remind me there is simply no substitute for being face to face with friends and co-laborers. I want to grow up to be like them someday.

(I snapped this picture a few minutes ago back in the hotel lounge)

Facebook pages, video, and event promotion

2010-09-03T13:15:00.000-07:00

Campus Crusade for Christ regional Winter Conferences have been one of my favorite things about being on staff. Lives are changed, hearts are surrendered to the Lord, and momentum is generated heading back to help reach the campus and ultimately the world. But step one is just getting people there.

For a number of years, part of promoting our regional Winter Conference was having someone produce a video that was then burned to DVD and sent out to all our campus leaders. Some people would like the videos, some thought they could be better, some didn't use them. But the bottom line was that video and other media promotion had to happen from "the center out". Everyone depended on a few people to make something good and then make the best of what they got.

As my wife says, that is "so two-thousand late".

Our conference (and most of our regional teams, events, and ministry venues) now have a Facebook page. Think how this changes things:

- We can post a video immediately with almost no distribution cost and have it shared an unlimited number of times.

- If there isn't a good video, you can add your own. With the iPhone 4 (and other new smart-phones), you've got HD video ready to go. Talk to a student that had their life changed at the conference? Record it in their dorm or at the union building and upload it in 720p to the Fb page.

- Want to get others thinking about some aspect of the conference? Write it on the wall and ask for feedback. Better yet, take a short video interviewing a few people about it.

- Make a funny video about some aspect of conference. Post it to the Fb page.

- Want to really go crazy and produce some great, high production value promo video for your campus? Well, why not make one that the whole region could benefit from and post it to the Fb page?

- Want to help build momentum for the conference? Interview people on camera that are going and have them answer why they are excited about it. Then post it to the Fb page.

This is scratching the surface of social media 101. It's time to think and brainstorm under the new paradigm of "everyone a contributor". Of course, this has application that goes far beyond a Winter Conference.

What other ideas are cooking out there to use Facebook, video, and social media to accelerate our mission of turning lost students and faculty into Christ-centered laborers?

Momentum Part II - Worth the extra work

2010-09-02T07:00:00.000-07:00

I'm working at a pace right now that probably can't be sustained over the long term. But like other jobs, Campus Crusade staff means seasons where you hold down the B-button and sprint. The beginning of a school year is certainly one of those times, and even though I'm not primarily on campus in my new role, it feels especially heightened this year.

There are several pretty big projects to move forward right now. Perhaps the most significant, in that it lays a foundation for the rest of the year, is our office reorganization. We need to continue to transform our office in to a place that not only has greater physical capacity, but also an environment that will attract gifted students and staff to come use their leadership and/or operational strengths to build the capacity of our region. This means moving people physically in the office, but also changing how we work, collaborate, and communicate

There are a lot things that could bring this process to a halt, but I keep reminding myself of these three things:

1. Keep things moving forward: Whether big or small, take ground each day. Whether it's building a new cabinet from Ikea or deciding on a regional budget, getting things done is paramount.

2. Manage the fear: As there are no perfect people, there are no perfect offices. We'll have issues, and I'll make mistakes, but the biggest mistake I could make right now is not to make changes.

3. People need to see and believe things are changing...for the better: I have people leading me, and nothing puts wind in my sails like a vision and direction for a better future. As we start to experience some "wins" together, we'll start to feel momentum.

There is something about momentum. You can feel it even if you might not be able to put your finger on it. People are more motivated, enthusiastic, and creative. Isn't it worth the extra effort to generate momentum?

I'm dreaming of a day where our whole region has a collective sense of momentum, as campus movements are growing, lives are being changed, and the gospel is going out from the NW to the ends of the earth.

What about you? Where would you like to get some momentum going?

Momentum Part I - Five things to move every day

2010-09-01T23:55:00.001-07:00

I just read an article called The Art of Momentum: Why Your Ideas Need Speed. It recounts the story of a musician who suffered brain trauma that almost eliminated his short-term memory. But, for some reason, if he begin to play a piano piece, it was like it returned.

As long as his fingers and his mind were in motion, he could play beautifully. Clive’s wife writes, “The momentum of the music carried Clive from bar to bar… He knew exactly where he was because in every phrase there is context implied, by rhythm, key, melody… When the music stopped, Clive fell through to the lost place. But for those moments he was playing he seemed normal.”

I'd been thinking about along similar lines tonight as I was looking over what I had to work on before bed. There are a variety of projects and tasks that need to be moved forward, and each one seems to be in danger of grinding to a halt if I don't move it forward. Not just halting in reality, but in my mind. It seems to be more and more true: if I stay in motion, it's very easy to stay in motion. But when time goes by and the momentum has been lost, it's very hard to get back. Perhaps brain trauma only exaggerates what is already true of us!

The article offers three suggestions to generate momentum, the third one of "work on your project every day" striking me as key. Perhaps we are all inertial beings, but I feel especially so. I have a difficult time stopping once I get started, but an even more difficult time restarting once I've stopped. Accordingly, which project or projects need work every day in order for me to generate, and preserve, momentum?

1. Time with the Lord: I've seen time and again that stringing a few days together generates momentum in my devotional life, and stringing several weeks together brings a freedom and vitality that makes walking in the Spirit a whole lot easier. Miss a few days? Suddenly it's been a couple weeks and I wonder why I feel disconnected from God.

2. Exercise: The more I run, the more I want to run. The more I get to the gym, the more I want to keep pushing ahead and go harder. There were days in college when I was training for road races where to miss a day was an actual fear. I knew that if I missed one, it would be easy to miss another.

3. Support: For my ten years on staff, raising support to fund my/our ministry has been done in bursts that have varying levels of fruitfulness. Ramping up to think about raising support takes time, and often times when the momentum was finally coming, it was time to get back to campus. Is this the right paradigm for me? Could it be that working every day, whether for 5 minutes or a couple hours, might be the better approach?

4. Work (whatever is the most challenging project of the moment): Right now, for me it might just be getting our office reorganization done. We're going from 9 full-time (and several other part-time) to 17 full-time with even more part-times. Making minor changes would be safe and easy, but ultimately would miss the opportunity to capture the momentum of a new year, new people, and new hope. More on that in my next post...

5. This blog: It so quickly goes from "I have too many ideas to get down" to "where do I even think about restarting? None of these post ideas seem like the right one to restart with." Thus, today's post!

Does that seem like to much to think about every day? Maybe. But as the article points out, it is not the duration of time that we give each project, but the frequency. Five minutes every day just might be better than trying to do two hours every other week. Keep pushing things forward and don't allow them to come to a stop.

Individual glory, team effort

2010-08-13T06:00:00.000-07:00

We all remember Michael Phelps winning eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympics. It's a record that will probably never be broken.

Shannon, one of our national leaders, showed us the clip below to remind us that even this greatest of individual accomplishments required an extraordinary team effort along the way:

I got chills watching this again, low resolution and all.

Jet boats and aircraft carriers

2010-08-12T21:18:00.000-07:00

What's the difference between a jet boat and an aircraft carrier? Let's look at the features of each...

Jet boat

- Can go in shallow water or deep

- Can change directions quickly

- Carries a small load

- Requires little maintenance

- Has a low profile

- Crew size from one to ten; relatively simple to operate

- Moderately expensive

- Range of many miles

- Used for tourism, fishing, ferrying, policing, exploration, and racing

Aircraft carrier

- Can only go in oceans and seas

- Changes direction slowly

- Can carry 90 planes and helicopters

- Requires tons of maintenance

- One thousand feet long and over a hundred feet high

- Crew size of 5,000+; highly complex to operate

- Cost: $6 billion

- Range unlimited

- Used to fight enemies and rebuild countries

Last year I was talking to Derek, a ministry leader in the upper midwest. He compared leading a campus ministry team to driving a jet boat: ability to move fast and make adjustments very quickly. This was in contrast to being a regional leader where it feels more like piloting a warship: very slow to turn and requires a lot of people helping out to get things turned around. I remember him finishing the illustration this way: "What it's like to lead our whole ministry? I don't know, probably more like steering an aircraft carrier."

This has stuck with me as I've transitioned in to a regional and national role organizationally. There can be some challenges leading at a higher level within a large organization, complexity being one of the top. However, this complexity arises because of the large number of people and resources going after the goal, in our case helping reach every student and faculty member with the gospel.

There will be days where I'm sure I'll long for the simplicity and nimbleness of the jet boat. But there are some tasks that can only be accomplished by the aircraft carrier. If everybody on board gives their full effort to moving the carrier towards accomplishing those tasks...watch out, world.

New National Director School - meet the students

2010-08-10T21:30:00.000-07:00

I love the people I get to work with on staff.

Earlier tonight I had dinner with the other new National Directors (formerly "Regional Directors"). It was a lot of fun connecting casually before really getting down to business tomorrow. There are only seven of us, so we'll get to know each other pretty well over the next few days. Here is the lineup:

- Matt and Liz: Matt was formerly the Missional Team Leader at University of Missouri. He and Liz just recently moved to Boulder, CO to be the Campus Field Ministry Directors for the Great Plains Region. Matt spoke last summer at our New Missional Team Leader training in Colorado, sharing some of the work God has done in his life. Sometimes we'll hear of crazy testimonies that we'll tell other staff "you've got to hear his/her testimony". His is one of those.

- Sheila has been at Missouri State and is, like Matt, taking on the role of Campus Field Ministry Director for the Great Plains Region (for those of you not familiar, that role typically has a male and female in the role coaching the field staff leaders of the region). She just came off helping lead the San Diego Summer Project.

- Ben is my Operations Director counterpart in the Great Lakes region. He was the Missional Team Leader for the Cleveland Metro ministry before he and his family moved to Indianapolis to join the Great Lakes Leadership Team.

- Tim is in the middle of the biggest transition of all of us. He has been the Missional Team Leader at Northwestern University but is moving out of his native Great Lakes region to take on the Campus Field Ministry Director role for the Red River region in their regional headquarters of Austin, TX. He has a seminary degree from Trinity, and was planning on pursuing a PhD, before this opportunity came up.

- Amy has been the Western US Field Coach for the Impact Movement (Campus Crusade partner ministry to African-Americans) this past year but is now returning to her native city of Portland to be the Ethnic Field Ministry Director for the Greater Northwest. Amy has been based in Orlando for the past year and just finished packing her stuff up to be shipped back to Portland two hours before we had dinner tonight.

- Me, the new Operations Director for the Greater Northwest.

We're all staying across the street from our world headquarters at Wycliffe Bible Translators where they have some nice apartments for us to stay in during our time here. (Best part: they have wifi.)

Really looking forward to learning from and interacting with these other leaders.

[Breaking news: Trae from Bridges (International Student ministry) just started ringing our doorbell at midnight. Fortunately I was still up to let him in. I guess there are eight of us now! Trae is based in Austin and is a Field Ministry Director for Bridges.]

Covey's "Speed of Trust", the Kindle, Facebook, and the GNW

2010-08-10T20:41:00.000-07:00

I bought my first Kindle book today.

During the plane change in Denver today I got a Facebook message inviting me and some of the staff leaders in our region to join a Facebook discussion thread in our Greater Northwest staff Fb group. We would be sharing thoughts and ideas around the idea of building trust with others, with the book "Speed of Trust" by Covey as the framework.

Not having the book and wanting to jump in sooner rather than later, I sprung for the Kindle version (using the iPhone app, not the Kindle hardware). Unfortunately, it didn't download before the friendly Southwest flight attendants asked us to turn off our portable devices. But, it quickly showed up once my phone was on in Orlando. I'm curious to see what the experience is like to read a whole book on my phone. The kindle price of $12.99 is higher than the paperback cost, so there is certainly a premium on convenience.

I'm also curious to see what it is like to have a virtual book discussion with staff from our region. Will people engage? How frequently? Will they have to be prompted to share? Will sharing about building trust...build trust? Is there a better way to do this than via a Facebook discussion thread?

Personal systems update - OmniFocus and Evernote

2010-08-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

As you read this, I'll hopefully be somewhere between Portland and Denver en route to Orlando.

There are few times in my life with as much uninterrupted time as a cross-country flight. While I'll probably need to sleep for some of it (got up at 4 AM), I should have a good chunk to get some work done. Here are two new tools in my workflow since I switched to Mac. I'll probably be using these heavily while in my narrow little workspace.

OmniFocus: I'm still in the 14-day trial period of this Cadillac of task managers, but it's likely I'll be pulling the trigger and paying the $80 (!) when the time comes. It's really slick and helps me to stay on top of all the different projects that are starting to take shape in my new role. Being someone who needs GTD in their life to function professionally, this Mac-only software is elegant and simple but can be as involved and complex as needed. The iPhone app is another $20, so I'll be out $100 by the time it's all through, but nearly all the reviews say it's worth it. From what I've experienced so far, I agree.

Evernote: I've had this one for a while but just figured out how I'm going to use it. I'm still developing my process, but so far I have notebooks for 1. Inbox (for notes on the go that I can categorize later) 2. Groups and meetings (both prep for and notes during) 3. People (that I meet/talk with regularly - again, prep and notes) 4. Projects (thoughts and prep for different projects. When they become tasks they move to OmniFocus.) and 5. Reference (it's a catch all right now, but I'm working on breaking it down to a few simple categories. The tag feature is nice, but so far I'm just using notebooks.

So there you have it. And if you're wondering why I only have six people on my list in the screenshot above...I'm still transferring stuff in. It will be a lot more populated a month from now!

One thing I love about these products: They are in the cloud but also back-up locally (though EN does it better than OF).

What do you think? Do you use these tools? If not, what do you use to manage tasks and notes?

Update: New National Director's training this week

2010-08-09T23:13:00.000-07:00

I'll be in Orlando the rest of this week at a training for those new in their roles as ~~Regional~~ National Director's. (The nomenclature is still new and unfamiliar organizationally. I'm a National Director of Operations that shapes the US Campus Ministry as a whole but focuses within a particular region.) It came on the calendar relatively recently, but I'm looking forward to getting time with our national leadership in the USCM as well as other new regional/national leaders. There will only be eight of us, so probably won't be able to hide in back during meetings. ;)

Hopefully I'll be able to share some of the content and insight from our time during the event via twitter and this blog. The schedule is above.

Anything on here you want me to make sure and take good notes on?

Change: Hard even when it's good

2010-07-19T21:06:00.000-07:00

I just made the switch from PC to Mac.

While I think in the end I think it will be a good move, it is very frustrating right now. Getting everything transferred over and realizing all the systems I had in place that were practically automated on my PC has made this painful. Even the small things like: why does my Mac print the exact same document as my PC on the same printer and yet the Mac version is too dark? I can't figure out this out.

Makes me want to go back to the old way. My HP tablet may have run hotter than the surface of the sun and taken three or four hard restarts to boot up, but at least once it got started...I knew what I was doing. When you're making changes, the comfortable and familiar counts for a lot.

Digital media and the end of college

2010-06-30T14:41:00.000-07:00

A lot of thoughts and inputs converging lately. Here are some of the inputs:

1. Via email - I received an email last week making it clear our national leadership within the USCM understand the future of campus ministry will prominently feature digital media as a tool and platform towards evangelism and discipleship.
2. Via podcast - I listen to a podcast pretty regularly called "This week in Google", which sounds both narrow and nerdy. However, the conversations covered by the three hosts (and one weekly guest) range from the practical (tips on using Google Voice, for example) to the theoretical and futuristic. It is the latter which fascinates me and keeps me listening. I posted about one such topic (how technology allows us to learn from anyone in the world at almost any time) and it's ministry implications on my test blog a few months ago.
3. Via RSS Reader - Seth Godin posted recently about "The coming melt-down in higher education". This flows right out of #2 above. What if the college campus as we know it radically changes...or becomes obsolete?
4. Via News - The level of debt around the world is threatening to radically change financial priorities and realities for the indefinite future, from government all the way down to the individual.

And now for the thoughts:

First, the internet disrupts everything it touches. It has changed the music industry, the porn industry, the movie industry, the retail industry, the news industry, the telecommunication industry, and the travel industry... to name a few. How long until the internet disrupts the college "industry"?

Second, bubbles eventually burst. There is a lot that could be said about the reasons behind the ever-upward ratcheting of college tuition, but it is looking increasingly like there is a college "bubble". There have been tulip bubbles, stock market bubbles, a dot.com bubble, and most recently a housing bubble. Costs can only get so high, and people leveraged so far with debt, before things collapse. And after the collapse and disruption, things may look very different.

What if the internet is the thing that makes the college bubble finally burst? And what will "college ministry" look like in this new world? Is this new reality coming? How long until it gets here? What can we do to prepare?

Ah, if only we knew the future...

Inbox Zero and GTD

2010-06-24T16:52:00.000-07:00

[I had a request to move this post topic up in the queue. Here it is...]

For the longest time, my inbox was an ever growing "to-do" list and emails I held on to lived in an increasingly complex folder hierarchy.

Then I read "Getting Things Done" (GTD). Here is how I do things now:

When I check my email inbox (either on my phone or computer), I immediately either delete the email, respond to it, or move it to another folder.

If it is clearly junk, it gets deleted. If I'm not sure, but don't want to take the time to figure it out, I move it to a folder labeled "action". If I can respond to it quickly (2 minutes-ish), I'll likely do so immediately if I'm able. If it's going to take some time, it goes into action. If I read it and no further action is needed, I move it to a folder labeled "reference".

Those are the only three folders I have for email: inbox, action, and reference.

Many GTD systems have more folders than that. For a while, instead of "action", I had "read/review" and "respond". I found that most of the time, however, it was just an extra layer to toggle between the two folders that really were the same - they required time on my part. For me right now, one "action" folder works best. This could be different depending on the way you use email and what kind of email you get.

The question you most often hear with this system is "what about my folders?!?" One big folder labeled "reference" scares people. It scared me, too. However, what enables you to get rid of folders is the "search" feature found in all modern email clients (Outlook, Gmail, etc.). In over a year of using this system, I have always been able to find the email I was looking for that previously would have been in a complex folder structure. Whether it be the subject, the sender or recipient, or some info within the body of the email, the search function always finds it. This does two things:

1. You no longer have to remember where you filed something

2. You no longer have to think about where you want to file a new item

Time saved on both fronts.

So there is the system. The GTD book addresses why an empty inbox is better even if you have an "action" folder that is full: you don't think about the email that needs response every time you open your inbox, rather you only think about it when you go to your action folder.

The next step is to begin moving items from your action folder (or directly from your inbox) to your calendar or task list. But that is another topic.

The underlying philosophy with email, GTD, and any good productivity system, is always being clear about the next action required. Decide what it is, then do it, delegate it, or defer it.

Now about that "do it" part. This is where the "work" part of "workflow" kicks in...

Any questions?

Upcoming posts for the end of June

2010-06-24T11:55:00.000-07:00

You get out of your blogging rhythm and look what happens. A week goes by with no posts! Time to get back in the saddle and share what's percolating in my mind that will be developed into upcoming posts:

- There is some cool stuff going on organizationally that confirms our leaders at the national level understand the importance of Digital/Social Media. I'll share what I can about that, as well as why I think digital media could radically change the college campus as we know it in the years ahead.
- A podcast interview with a social media consultant (expert?) got my wheels turning about how social media can help us get better at training.
- The breadth and reach of our summer project venues. Plus, some things we could do to increase the number of students we are sending.
- A couple weeks ago I stumbled upon a blogpost by one of our US Campus Ministry national leaders. He shared some interesting thoughts regarding leadership development that are worth attention five years later.
-Getting practical with email. Sharing why, and how, I've become a practitioner of "inbox zero".
- Some campus outreach and evangelism ideas I've had that would blend some past practices with social media.
- Why it's increasingly strategic for our campus staff to have iPhones or similar.
- Using a Winter Conference Facebook page year round to drive regional vision and momentum.
- How to initiate change as a new member on a team. (I'm not sure, but I'm trying to figure it out)
- Thoughts stemming from reading "Celebration of Discipline". Can simplicity and technology coexist?
- Why I want my peers to give me a virtual tour of their offices (btw, I haven't asked them yet). How could the ideas of virtual tours help us in ministry? (Weekly meetings, evangelism, leadership development, discipleship, etc.)

So there are a few. I'll probably go through them mostly in order, and some of them will overlap, but if there's one you want me to bump up in the queue just let me know in the comments.

Hello to the office

2010-06-16T14:52:00.000-07:00

Seth Godin has a post today called "Goodbye to the office". I want to share more thoughts about that in the future (it is questioning the need for offices at all), but it served as a spark to share some thoughts as I transition to our regional office:

Organization: How will we arrange people and space for productivity, collaboration, momentum, efficiency, and community? When there are trade-offs, how will we decide which value wins?

Systems: How can we set things up so our desired outcomes happen as automatically as possible? Everything from having the needed office supplies and ministry resources on hand to making sure our conference planning deadlines are met.

Technology: We've got office technology that is sufficient, but quickly becoming dated. Do we continue on with a physical server or go cloud based? Do we use regional funds to buy computers for our office staff? If so, what kind? Would investing in higher speed internet save us in travel costs (video/web conference) and efficiency? What would make the most sense in helping us serve the field? For communicating and collaborating across our ten national regions?

Communication: How are we going to communicate with each other? With our field staff? Who should be communicating what? How much should we respond to the field (use methods they are comfortable with), and how much should we lead the field (help them get better at embracing new/better communication channels)?

Field support: What are the best things we could do as an operations (and office) team to help our field staff better win, build, and send? What operational issues can we help them with or even take off their plate? What training should we give, and in what format (face to face, online, etc.)?

Environment: How can we create an environment in our office where people want to come in each day? And by environment, I am speaking comprehensively: physical (office decor and feel), emotional (a place that is relationally safe and where friendships flourish), and spiritual (deepening connection with the Lord and the body of believers that is stationed in our office).

Finance: How much money do we have to work with? What investments would provide the most benefit to our field ministries?

Change: Some things will need to change just because of the number of people coming in the office (seven new in the fall joining a current office of nine). But some things might need to change that will be difficult for our current office. How fast do we change? What is the best process? Who needs to be involved in the decisions?

Lots of questions (and that is certainly not a comprehensive list), especially for a guy that hasn't been based in an office since a college summer job.

So back to Godin's post. It is thought-provoking. But I think a well-led regional headquarters can be a very powerful force for accelerating the spread of the gospel to students in the Northwest. The above list is just the foundation. After you take the time to lay a solid foundation, then you really get to start building and seeing results. That's (part of) why I'm saying "hello", rather than "goodbye", to our regional office.

Leading with social media

2010-06-14T21:56:00.000-07:00

"Be a student, not a critic." - Andy Stanley

I heard that quote on a podcast I started listening to last summer, and I've been repeating it to myself ever since.

It's so much easier to be a critic. A student has to learn, engage, feel stupid at times, study, make decisions, ask questions. A critic doesn't need to do anything other than watch and...criticize.

This holds true when it comes to new media technologies. I don't know anyone who has ever said "I love Twitter!" - but isn't actively using it. Similar things can be said about YouTube, Facebook, and most recently, Foursquare.

I think this short (just under ten minutes) interview with Michael Hyatt is compelling because:

- It captures a leader that overcame the inclination to be a critic and instead became a student of a new field/technology

- He is a leader that has seen his influence expand as a direct result of two often misunderstood mediums: Twitter and blogging

- His thoughts resonate as truth: leadership is influence and to influence you must communicate effectively

How Can Christian Leaders Get Started with Social Media? from Michael Hyatt on Vimeo.

I'm certainly new in this arena, but my sense is that Michael is right on.

Who would you like to see start influencing people using social media? Why?

Upgrading your personal systems

2010-06-12T07:00:00.000-07:00

We all have work flows and personal systems we are comfortable with. They may be dated and inefficient but, gosh darn it, that's how we've always done it!

Well, maybe a late spring Saturday morning is a good time to think about upgrading one of your systems.

An example: Do you ever see those drop boxes where people can deposit their utility payments? Why are those still there? The people that use them never update their system.

I'm guilty of it. For some crazy reason, whenever I had a check to deposit at the bank, I would go in and have a teller do the transaction. Something in me didn't trust the ATM to do it right, and perhaps most importantly, I had never used it for a deposit. After my wife made fun of me I realized it was time for a change. The next time I had a check to deposit, I went to the ATM. While I seriously almost put the deposit envelope in the wrong slot (the receipt dispenser - I'm not kidding), I successfully made the deposit and had it show up in our account the next day. Once I'd done it successfully, there was no going back to the old way. That was this year.

Isn't that how it is? We don't want to do something new - even knowing it's better and that everyone else does it - because there might be a little bit of a learning curve. We might look stupid or do it wrong. We might cause more trouble reworking things than we had bargained for (I had visions of trying to pry that envelope out of the wrong slot on the ATM and having the cops show up).

And yet...we might not only save time, but have more fun doing things that were once drudgery.

How you pay bills, manage email, remember information, store/organize stuff in your home or office, get up in the morning - any of these need a rethinking? A reset?

So here is my thought: let's not get complacent with our personal systems. Maybe this will help us keep from getting complacent in other areas of our lives, too.

Have you rebooted any of your personal systems lately?

Update: Campus Crusade at Creation NW news

2010-06-11T22:38:00.000-07:00

I spent some time on the phone today with a staff guy that works on conference and events out of our National Conference Office in Orlando. He's getting ready for New Staff Training kicking off down at Rollins Colllege while he is simultaneously coordinating Campus Crusade being at the NE and NW Creation events. Really fun to talk to operations people that are relational, detail-oriented, visionary, and energetic. Glen is all of those.

As for news...I found out from Glen that several campus movements were launched just from contacts that were made at the Creation events in 2009 - when we weren't nearly as organized as we will be this year. We'll have a six person team at the Creation NW event (5 students and one staff member - me), most of the time interacting with high school and college students that come to our booth (which is going to be pretty cool - Glen has done some great advance work with Creation and thinking through an engaging booth for us to set up). Also, one of the students on our team will speak from the main stage each night for a minute or two, sharing a little about who we are and inviting attendees to come talk to us at our booth. That will be in front of 20,000+ people. Whoever this person turns out to be (I'm working on that now), they'll have to get used to a lot of eyes on them...and having acts like Switchfoot, David Crowder Band, and Tenth Avenue North follow on their heals.

Evangelism - Share what you love, share the gospel

2010-06-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

Is there something you are passionate about? Gifted at? Interested in? Trained well at?

Why not begin to use this to share the gospel with people around you? Steve Douglass, the president of Campus Crusade, is really good at time management. He put together a talk he could do at college campuses to help students "get better grades and have more fun". It opened doors for the gospel while he got to talk about something he was gifted in.

A friend of mine on staff likes art. She entered in to the Portland art scene and started connecting with lots of people that don't have a relationship with God. You think she has more of a platform to share the gospel with this group as a fellow artist...or as a professional Christian worker?

Organize a tribe on your campus or in your city. Go online and connect with like-minded people. Meet up with a group that has shared interests. Offer lessons to those in your neighborhood.

Perhaps you'll soon find evangelism isn't an event, but a way of life.

Staff, are you itching for more "natural mode" evangelism? Might want to think about this as part of your own personal strategic plan. I know I'm starting to.

My context, your context - sharing "across"

2010-06-08T22:28:00.000-07:00

Here are some questions I've asked during my time on staff:

- What do the other Winter Conferences do for their day of outreach?
- How do the other campuses in my region structure their small groups and leadership team?
- What discipleship tools are people using on my staff team?
- How do the other regional offices structure their office space?
- How are other campuses creating a culture of evangelism among their students?
- What are the other teams in my region doing for personal development?
- How are other summer projects connecting with their alumni?
- What do other campuses do for their weekly meeting?

The list could go on and on. What I've come to realize is that I'm always wanting to know what is going on "across" from me. It's often interesting to know what is going on "up" from me, with those leading me organizationally, as well as "down", with those I am coaching and leading. However, it seems the greatest benefit often comes from sharing and collaborating with those in my same place organizationally. Yet, our systems and communication channels seemingly have difficulty carrying information horizontally - between those that are working on the same projects and within the same contexts.

Not that it doesn't happen. It does. We have New Staff training trips, Missional Team Leaders conferences, Regional Director "Verticals", conference guilds, etc. All help facilitate communication and collaboration. And relationships always exist across campuses and regions that lead to ideas being shared.

But what if we could do this in "real-time"? And in a manner that doesn't mean sending group emails and involve lots of "reply-alls" or one-to-one phone calls or (often) expensive face time (travel)? There are lots of software products that could help us do this using the internet, but I remain convinced that, as a campus ministry, Facebook might the best choice to facilitate this process. Our staff are already on it, our students are definitely on it, and the lost people we are trying to reach with the gospel are certainly on there, too. Did you know Facebook is actually designed to do this sort of thing? Fb recently articulated their mission statement:

“Facebook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. The company develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph, the digital mapping of people’s real-world social connections."

The emphases were mine.

So what would it look like? I'm not sure, but hopefully I'll be developing a few test cases in the coming months that I can share.

What about you? Do you feel this need, too? What do you think about Facebook helping us do this?

(Note: No, we can't spend all our time communicating and collaborating. We've got to get our respective jobs done, living and working in our context. But...as my friend Russ writes, we can have a broader impact by tithing our time.)

Event planning: "The right information to the right people at the right time"

2010-06-08T07:00:00.000-07:00

Everyone that does campus ministry does event planning.

Small groups, socials, leadership meetings, retreats, conferences, summer projects...all of them require us to plan for a multiple-person event with a start time, a stop time, and an event between the two. Right?

My fellow Ops director (that I mentioned in my post last Friday) is an experienced event planner. One of the things he said he enjoyed about producing events was getting "the right information to the right people at the right time". I like that.

Having produced and attended a lot of ministry events, combining those three things can be difficult. Ever shown up at an event, found something out, and thought "I wish I would have known that before I got here!"? Me, too. Of course, I've also shown up at events that I planned myself and thought the same thing!

So I've got an event coming up next month that is taking a little planning and coordinating. What needs to be known? By whom? When? Amazing how many details pop out of those three questions. Think about those three the next time you're planning an event.

Winter Conference and March Madness "look-ins"

2010-06-07T18:43:00.000-07:00

The Winter Conference evangelism post from last week got me thinking about another idea for the conference:

What if we did live "look-ins” on other regional conferences as a way to give vision and a sense of scale? There are 10 regional Winter Conferences in addition to the different context conferences (International students, ethnic students, etc.) around the country. Why not have our mc's interact, at times, with those from another conference that runs concurrently? Or just stream the conference sessions online and have one conference occassionaly "look -in" at the other? Technology not for tech’s sake, but to “get the people in the room” that would ideally be there. If we could get the same number of students to meet in the middle of the country for a “mega-conference” we probably would, right? (Explo, KC '83, CM 2007, anyone?). But time and expense of travel is too much. So why not try to merge the best of both worlds…especially now that technology is making it possible? We've done this on a small scale with teams of students that are overseas during the conference, but never with a whole other conference.

And while nothing beats being physically in the same place, there still is power in knowing others are in the same place emotionally. Think of "selection Sunday" in the NCAA tournament. Part of the fun is knowing all these other peope are watching and engaging the same thing. I got to go to WSU basketball selection Sunday a few years ago (2007) when they were projected to be in the tournament for the first time in many years. It was an amazing experience. Partly from the people and energy in the room (500?), but largely from knowing the whole country was watching and that dozens of other schools were all simultaneously waiting for their name to be called. If CBS flashed a picture of the room we were in (a "look-in"), it made everyone go crazy. We felt like a part of the madness when we saw the bigger picture and realized this was going on all over the country.

Here is a clip from the next year (2008). Check out the announcement of the seeding at the 1:25 mark.

So doesn't some of this translate to our conferences? How could it impact some of the things we try to do at our conferences? Could it work? Should it work? Would it be worth the coordination required? Has this already been happening?

Learning - The Power of Operations and Systems

2010-06-04T15:32:00.000-07:00

This morning I was on the phone with my operations counterpart for the Great Plains Region of Campus Crusade. Andy is a veteran leader, both on campus and at the regional level. I'm grateful that we're going to be connecting regularly in the months ahead so that I can learn from him and his experiences.

We talked a little about how we each came to hear God's call to serve in operations leadership. One of his big influences was Eric Swanson. Staff in the USCM have probably encountered something Eric has written at some point , as he is a visionary, strategist, leader, and author. He had a blog post back in 2005 that Andy referred me to as having helped clarify his thinking related to Ops. I think it's worth sharing:

The power of capacity is found in operations even more than strategy. When the right systems are put in place they provide the back end operations that allow multiple strategies and tactics to be more effective. Remember Moses' dilemma in Exodus 18 that he reviews in Numbers 1. He was totally exhausted yet prayed that God would multiply the Israelites a thousand times. It was his Mideanite father-in-law that advised him correctly regarding the selection, training and empowerment of leaders. No amount of talent, drive and hard work can overcome bad operational systems. Bad systems are those where even the best people are reduced to mediocrity. On the other hand good systems allow everybody to function at their maximum capacity and ability. Because Moses was freed up from much of his sun-up to sun-down responsibilities, he had time to do that which he needed to do...write the Pentatuch!

He goes on...

Good systems cause good things to happen even if no one is paying attention to them. If you have automatic withdrawal from your checking account to pay your regularly scheduled bills you understand the power of a good system. Operational systems wedge between your vision of what you want to see happen and what actually is happening. If the behaviors or outcomes are not aligned with the vision, the problem most likely lies in operational systems. Like an iceberg, the behavior is what you see on the surface but what's under the surface is what leaders need to pay attention to. Systems drive behavior. What do I mean?

You can read the rest here. He has two interesting anecdotes about two Campus Crusade leaders, one I had heard, one I had not! (Hint: both have a first name "Steve")

I love the Biblical examples. I also like how he points out that operations systems will enable our behaviors and outcomes to line up with the vision we have: reaching the campus today, the world tomorrow.

What do you think? Have you found operations to be key in achieving your vision? Personally? With your ministry?

Summer Project and YouTube

2010-06-03T22:33:00.000-07:00

I love summer projects.

God did some significant work in my life when I went to San Diego as a student in '97 (and again as staff in '02). I've loved getting to help lead our Lake Tahoe Summer Project in '06 and '08.

This year's LTSP staff team just showed up to prepare for the students that will be arriving in a week and a half. I wish I was there for so many reasons. I guess I'll just have to depend on YouTube for highlights. Here is the first (courtesy of Jason Larsen):

If you've been on LTSP, this certainly qualifies as entertainment. Others, I'm not so sure. :)

If you're on project right now, how could YouTube help you tell your story this summer? Could it help your supporters (and all those that gave to send students) understand the amazing things that happen on project? Show some of the lives that are changed? Involve project alumni in praying for the summer? Help students say "yes" to summer project...in 2011?

Facebook lists - a useful but seldom used feature for campus ministry

2010-06-03T19:22:00.000-07:00

I'm certainly not an expert on Facebook list usage. However, I want to share a few things that I'm starting to do on Facebook that I think can help me (and you) lead, share, and collaborate. As I've said before, I think we in campus ministry have good reasons to be Facebook experts!

First, what do Facebook lists do? And how do you create one? Well, here it is straight from the source:

Friend Lists provide organized groupings of your friends on Facebook. For example, you can create a Friend List for your friends that meet for weekly book club meetings. You can filter your view of each list’s stream of activity separately on the home page. Friend Lists are easy to manage and allow you to send messages and invites to these groups of people all at once.

To create and customize your own Friend Lists, please follow these steps:

Click the "Create New List" that appears beneath the filters on the left side of your home page or your Friends page. Or, click the "Create New List" button from the "All Friends" tab of the Friends page.
Type the title of your list and hit enter.
Add friends to the list by typing their names into the "Add to List" field or selecting them from the list.
Select "Create List" to store your changes.

In addition, if you have more than two Friend Lists, you can easily add or remove friends from lists by using the drop-down menu that appears next to their names on the "All Friends" tab of the Friends page.

A few things I plan on doing with Facebook lists...

- Create lists for different working groups and teams. I've created the "USCM Operations" - for my fellow operations leaders around the country, "GNW RD's" - for those on our regional director team in the Greater Northwest, "MPD - Supporters" - for our ministry partners that give to our ministry and pray for us.
- Update my status to select groups. Not all my friends care if I'm in the office that day, but my office co-workers might. Not all my friends might care about a certain online article I read, but my fellow Ops leaders might. When you update your status, you can click on the little padlock symbol and customize who sees your update.
- Be available for online chat to select groups. Again, there might be times I'll be fine chatting with anyone, but most of the time when I'm on Facebook, I probably only want to make myself available to no one or just a select group. Lists allow you to do this. After you create lists, they will pop up on your chat menu (lower right of facebook screen) and you can toggle them "online" or "offline" individually.
- Keep tabs on status updates and activity from select groups. While I still have my default for "everyone" in my news feed (for now), I can quickly scan updates from relevant groups by hitting "friends" on the left side of the home page, then selecting the list I want to see. A great way to stay in the loop on the people you care most about.
- Send messages to select groups. I didn't even know I could do this until just now when I was reading about Facebook lists. Nice! This might actually be one of the best features. I think I'm going to spend some time updating my lists tonight. :)

If you're still reading and want to get more ideas about how to use Facebook strategically for ministry, there are some great resources at mediaforministry.org.

Do you actively use Facebook lists? Any additions you would recommend to the above list?

Evangelism - Using the internet at Winter Conference?

2010-06-02T16:31:00.000-07:00

I had the chance a few months ago to do some brainstorming with our NW Winter Conference design team about this year's conference (an annual event at the end of December for students, faculty, volunteers, and staff from around our seven state region - here is the facebook fan page for the last one). One of the aspects of the conference we discussed was evangelism. Like other Campus Crusade conferences around the country, we usually spend part of the conference doing outreach in the city. What if, as an aspect of this time, we did something like...

- ...have students initiate a spiritual conversation with a non-Christian friend they've been wanting to talk to from their campus or back home...while at the conference via Facebook?
- ...have students go out in the city and initiate conversations. When they've had a conversation with someone, ask if they (the student) could blog about the conversation they've just had and invite their new friend to check it out and comment. They'd need to have a blog and a leaving piece with the address. Wouldn't you want to know how someone would debrief a conversation they've had with you?
- ......same thing, but find out their name and ask if they could be their friend on Facebook/other. After connecting online, ask a follow up question from the in-person conversation.

There are lots of great resources to anchor/augment the above ideas (Boxes of Love, Soularium, Short Film Outreach, EveryStudent.com, etc.). The thing about the list above is that they all place the event within the context of a larger story and relationship. And while they use the internet, they all involve being face-to-face at some point. Could that translate in to greater things, both at and after the conference?

Any other ideas that could help our students experience the mission, harness the power of the internet...and move people toward the Savior?

Remembering - Part II: Not-so-great moments in risk management history

2010-06-02T14:05:00.000-07:00

This was from a WSU Cru "men's time" overnight camping trip in the spring of 2003:

From WSU Cru in the 2000's

I recently read some Campus Crusade finance training related to risk management that used an almost identical situation to the one above as a case study. Here are the questions it suggested we think about:

What are the possible opportunities to the ministry and the Kingdom by engaging in this activity?
What are the possible liabilities to you personally, as the staff member involved in this event?
What are the possible liabilities to the ministry?
Do the liabilities outweigh the potential to be gained?

I think the answer to that last question could depend on who you are asking.

The case study concluded by recommending a disc golf tournament as an alternative. We had discs at our event, but they were all orange and usually destroyed by shotgun fire. Glad no one got hurt.

Operations Meditations

2010-06-01T12:43:00.000-07:00

Can we still meditate when we are doing busy doing "operations"? I think we must.

Foster's "Celebration of Discipline" is very refreshing. I suspect he is so beloved an author because he does the double duty of being deep and appropriately abstract while also being highly practical and descriptive. A quote from the end of his chapter on "The Discipline of Meditation":

"You must not be discouraged if in the beginning your meditations have little meaning to you. There is some progression in the spiritual life, and it is wise to have some experience with lesser peaks before trying to tackle the Mt. Everest of the soul. So be patient with yourself. Besides, you are learning a discipline for which you have received no training. Nor does our culture encourage you to develop these skills. You will be going against the tide, but take heart; your task is of immense worth."

In the fall, we'll spend a lot of time training our new operations team members how to do their jobs and accomplish the various tasks that will come before them. I'm thinking some training in how to meditate and go deep with the Lord will be training of at least equal value.

Remembering - Part I

2010-06-01T12:06:00.000-07:00

I really enjoy watching all the pictures scroll by from yesterday's post.

However, I realized that I didn't have any pictures of someone placing their faith in Christ. Nor of someone inviting the Holy Spirit to fill them, or laying down an idol and confessing sin. While it's partly because I either wouldn't be packing my camera when these things were happening or didn't feel it appropriate to take a picture at the time, it has much to do with the definite limitations in photography being able to capture spiritual realities. Photos do a great job of illustrating community and the friendships that form when we are on mission together, but often need the thousand words to adequately bring to life the stories and transformations that led to the moment captured on screen - or what followed.

From WSU Cru in the 2000's

This picture was taken in the fall of 2002. We'd gather Tuesdays at noon on top of the WSU library (while it was still warm enough to be outside!) and share prayer concerns and requests, then spend time praying together. As I look at this picture, a couple things jump out to me. A big one is that I see how much our movement of prayer grew at WSU through the years. We always believed prayer would be the foundation necessary to reach the campus, and as our prayer meetings grew, so did our impact on the campus.

The other thing that strikes me is Liz, the girl in the center of the picture. Two years previous, she had come to Christ at WSU through another girl on her soccer team. Four and a half years later, she would loose her life when she was hit by a car. In between, she left a mark that showed others noticed the mark Christ had left on her.

"...we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." - II Corinthians 4:18

WSU Cru in the 2000's

2010-05-31T13:34:00.000-07:00

A walk down memory lane. If you attended WSU Cru between 2002 and 2009, there is a pretty good chance you are found in one of these pictures.

So much to be thankful for from the time these cover.

"Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life." - Deuteronomy 4:9

Jesus didn't need to read "Good to Great"

2010-05-31T09:00:00.000-07:00

In "Good to Great and the Social Sectors", Collins cites the example of a high school science teacher that wanted to change the education system around him...and succeeded:

"First, and most important, you can build a pocket of greatness without executive power, in the middle of an organization. If Roger Briggs can lead his minibus from good to great within the constraints of the public school system, you can do it nearly anywhere. Second, you start by focusing on the First Who principle - do whatever you can to get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people into the right seats. Tenure poses one set of challenges, volunteers and lack of resources another, but the fact remains: greatness flows first and foremost from having the right people in the key seats, not the other way around.

In " The Master Plan of Evangelism", Coleman reveals how Jesus began to change the world:

"His concern was not with programs to reach the multitudes, but with men whom the multitudes would follow. Remarkable as it may seem, Jesus started to gather these men before he ever organized an evangelistic campaign or even preached a sermon in public. Men were to be his method of winning the world to God. The initial objective of Jesus' plan was to enlist men who could bear witness to his life and carry on his work after he returned to the Father."

Indeed, the "who is more important than the "what".

Raising support: From fear to faith to courageous action

2010-05-31T07:00:00.000-07:00

We had a Skype conference call on Friday with our Ops interns to discuss support raising, as all of them (and I) are going to be working this summer on finding people to give financially towards our ministry of helping reach campuses of the NW. As you might imagine, ministry partner development (our preferred term to "fundraising", in part for it's broader scope) can be a challenge. It's my role to help our interns move forward and be pro-active in the process.

This is good, because in coaching them I am coaching myself. There are some friends we have been considering inviting to join our support team for several months, but have been reluctant to ask for a variety of reasons (risk the friendship, know they give to others on staff, etc.). Every worst case scenario had run through my head, despite years of experience telling me that wouldn't be the case.

As I knew I'd be telling our interns to be bold in asking and to trust the Lord for the results, I had to take action myself. Last week I asked these friends to join our team, and tonight I got a Facebook message from saying they want to begin giving towards our ministry. So encouraging.

There is a talk posted online we are all (Ops team for next year) going to listen to called "From fear to faith to courageous action". I'm good at the first one (fear), hit-or-miss on the second (faith), and a total work in progress on the third (courageous action). But what I've found is that not only does faith lead to courageous action, but courageous action can lead to greater faith...and on to more action.This principle certainly isn't confined to raising support.

[Update: For more talks related to Ministry Partner Development, click here. Note this link requires a GCX login.]

Sharing: Facebook groups as a tool for recruiting and building a team

2010-05-30T22:18:00.000-07:00

I'm quickly becoming a fan of using Facebook groups to communicate and collaborate in a variety of situations. Here is a recent example...

One of the first responsibilities in my new role (Director of Operations) began at our regional student conference this past December in Portland: recruit students and recent grads to intern on our Ops team this coming school year. Coming out of the conference, there were 8-10 people (out of nearly 50 that we interviewed) we felt would be strong contributors on an Ops team for the coming year. However, very few of them knew me very well, and even fewer really knew what saying "yes" to an operations internship would look like. The following was a list of issues I needed to address:

- The Ops candidates did not know me, their potential team leader, very well. Additionally, I would not have face-to-face contact with most of them between the conference and when they needed to make a decision about interning.

- They didn't know each other. It would be easy to make the decision "in isolation", that is, to envision the job with unknown people in an unknown place doing an unknown job for an unknown boss.

- Time to connect would be at a premium. Other job responsibilities, developing funding for my personal ministry, selling a house and moving on my end, school, jobs, and ministry on the student's end.

- Many of them would have the same questions. I could just "copy/paste" an email answer, but this would take away the relational aspect and not account for subtle differences in the question or circumstance being addressed..

There may have been others, but those were some that came to mind. Accordingly, a large part of my solution was to invite them to a "closed" Facebook group where everyone being recruited could interact with current members of our regional operations effort. The one thing I quickly realized, however, was that to really foster communication and community, I needed to actively lead the group. Here are some ways I did that:

- Made everyone an officer in the group with a useful and accurate description of their current role. Those I was recruiting were given the office of "Potential GNW Ops intern - 2010/11". Current Ops team members were labeled as accurately as possible.

- Posted liberally on the group wall. I introduced myself, who the different group members were, and asked them all to share a little about themselves. I'd also ops news/information whenever relevant.

- Used the tagging feature. If I wanted to get somebody's attention or ask them to post, I'd tag them in the wall post using the @name feature.

- Would ask people to post questions on the group wall that they had asked me on the phone or via email. I wanted to intentionally drive traffic/attention there and never have to answer a question more than once. I also wanted to let others weigh in and contribute to the conversation.

- I would respond to just about every post or comment. If people felt like they were talking themselves, they wouldn't want to post any more. I had to acknowledge what they wrote and that they were heard. It didn't have to be me providing the answer. In some cases, I might have messaged someone privately and asked them to weigh in if they needed some prodding or had just missed the thread.

There may have been more, but that's a start. I plan on continuing to use this group with our Ops team this coming year to actually get work done. We've started using discussion threads and "events"...and will likely evolve in our practices as our team comes together in person.

I'm also thinking of using groups in a variety of additional contexts on the job that could really cut down on email and phone-calls while simultaneously building community and trust across distance. I'll let you know how that goes. And maybe I'll ask our interns if the group was, in fact, helpful to them in overcoming the issues presented above!

Have you used a Facebook group (or similar) to actually get something done? Any "best practices" you would add to the above list about leading a FB group?

[For a thoughtful related post, see "Answer an email publicly and everyone wins"]

Evangelism - Is "who" more important than "what"?

2010-05-28T11:58:00.000-07:00

One of the foundational principles in "Good to Great", an influential book in the business and non-profit world, is that great companies and organizations succeed not due primarily to their tools, technologies, or strategies, but because they get the right people to work for them. The analogy is to "get the right people on the bus", as the destination will often need to change, but if you have the right people they can adjust, thrive, and lead despite changing circumstances.

Reflecting on the evangelism survey and discussion that I posted about yesterday, I've thought about this principle in relation to evangelism. Is it possible that the tools/technologies in evangelism are secondary to the person using them? Face to face, on the internet, speaking to a large group...the person that is Spirit-filled, full of faith, and tender of heart is going to probably see people respond favorably towards them, and the gospel message, more often than the person who is not. If they are a good communicator all the better. Well trained with a tool? Best yet. But...the tool is simply the final piece to the puzzle.

While our tools have been a great part of our success as a ministry (the Four Spiritual Laws being the most notable example), they are just that: tools. The greater component is the people. If you give me ten people with the qualities mentioned above and turn them loose on a college campus with just a little bit of training, I'm guessing they are going to have far great impact than another group that have the most well thought out, relevant strategies and tools...but lack in character.

As we seek to innovate and adapt our evangelism tools to the culture, I think we would be wise to focus on attracting, and becoming, people that are relational, Spirit led, and faith-filled....and let the development of tools, strategies, and tactics emanate from this foundation.

Learning leading to effectiveness: Two studies (Evangelism, Operations)

2010-05-27T14:16:00.000-07:00

Two studies came to my attention today, one because of my role on a team of operations leaders around the country, the other because of using twitter and Google Reader. Both studies have results/conclusions that are fascinating, encouraging, and challenging...

Study #1 - Brian Barela shared a link on his blog to an evangelism study that the Mid-Atlantic region of Campus Crusade has done. It is long, but certainly worth reading...especially for staff. Here is the purpose of the study:

How can we increase the evangelistic satisfaction and effectiveness of Campus Crusade for Christ staff so that more lost students are presented with the gospel in culturally appropriate, positive ways and more students decide to place their trust in Christ?

I like that objective. One of my favorite parts so far (haven't finished it yet) were the results from a focus group they did with a group of students that were self-identified non-Christians. Their insights are enlightening, and generally match what I have experienced during my time on campus as a student and staff member. I'm looking forward to reading the rest and perhaps adding more thoughts in a future post.

Study #2 - Once a month, Operations leaders from around the US have a web/phone conference. I'm the new guy on the team at this point (15-20 people) so I'm trying to be a learner and figure out where and when to contribute. Today, one of our Operations leaders in Orlando shared the results of an "ethnography study" that was done to...

Gain a perspective on the Campus Crusade field experience so the organization can design systems to meet users’ needs.

Systems are used by field staff and volunteers and encompass things like finance, events, HR, communication, and professional development.

There were some conclusions presented and I would say they all line up with my experience as field staff:

The Campus Crusade ministry leader (staff, volunteer, student) is...

- independent and entrepreneurial when creating solutions

- determined to learn and thrive - and appreciates help from peers

- struggling to keep up with changes in technology

- mobile, and closely connected to constituents - but information is not

- supportive of organizational responsibility - but procedural complexity makes compliance difficult

There are a lot of sub-points and examples under each, along with next steps, but this paints the broad strokes. So encouraging to see, as the "new guy" on the team, that we're thinking about the right things. Figuring out the solutions to problems that were identified will be a large part of our job in the near future.

Summary: I'm looking forward to the challenge and the role I get to play as an Operations leader to translate study #2 into greater impact and effectiveness in areas related to study #1: Jesus known and God glorified on the campuses of the NW, US, and the world.

News: Campus Crusade at Creation NW

2010-05-26T13:55:00.000-07:00

We're working on putting together the details, but it looks like Campus Crusade is going to have a pretty substantial platform at Creation NW. I'm working right now with our national headquarters and some staff and students in our region to get all the logistics nailed down and I'll share more info as I have it.

Bottom line: This Christian music festival is a great venue to connect with incoming and current college students. We can help graduating seniors plug into ministries at their future school, and we can also find current college students that would like to reach their campus for Christ and may want to launch a movement if none exists.

If you're thinking about going, or know someone who is, comment below or contact me via Facebook!

Operations leadership: essential qualities that are difficult to put together

2010-05-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

I was recently thinking about how, as an Operations leader, I need to be a) a shepherd of my team, b) creative/innovative, and c) highly responsible. These three are challenging to put together, as some of the same stuff that makes you a shepherd sometimes keeps you from being responsible, and the qualities and temperament that make you responsible can keep you from being creative and innovative.

One of the burdens of leadership is knowing that the culture you create will be reproduced by those that you are leading. While I have my own personality with it's accordant strengths and weaknesses, I have no doubt been influenced by the leaders I've served under. The same will be true of those I lead. Thus, it's not only important for our team to flourish in all these areas for it's own sake, but also to enable those I lead to reproduce a healthy leadership culture when the time comes.

When I was challenged to take on this new role, one of our ministry's leaders shared that, perhaps the most important thing we can do as leaders is to establish a culture. If I highly value caring for people, I'll produce a culture where people care for each other. If I value excellence and achieving, I'll produce a culture of driven, ambitious people. Perhaps this is why the "who" of leadership is more important than the "what" of leadership.

So I'm challenged by these three areas. I don't always know how to care for people even though I desire to. I have lots of new ideas, but often lack the carry through to do the hard work of creating (this blog is practice). And while I really want to be responsible, my temperament sometimes gets the best of me.

"Who am I, Lord?" Fortunately, the more relevant question is "Who will go with me?"

How I learned to stop worrying and love the Facebook message

2010-05-25T15:10:00.000-07:00

"Why is this person (calling/emailing/texting/chatting/facebook messaging/etc.) me!?!"

Have you ever said something like the above? Here are two possible reasons for the exasperation:

1. You don't want the person to contact you that is trying to contact you, regardless of medium

2. You want the person to contact you, but don't like the communication channel the person has chosen

Let's focus on the second reason.

During my time on staff, I've gotten pretty good at handling email and using it for ministry communication both with students and staff. But over my last couple years on campus, I found that my emails to students were taking longer and longer to get a response. Often, a student would tell me they hadn't heard about some meeting, event, or other key piece of information. "Did you get my email?" I'd ask. A typical answer: "When did you send it? If it was this week, probably not."

"These irresponsible students! Not checking their email every day! Do I need to train them in how the world works?"

Interestingly, at about the same time I started to get more text and facebook messages. My response? Try to push people that contacted me this way towards email, then get frustrated when they wouldn't respond.

Fortunately, a day came where I had an epiphany: email wasn't the best way to reach college students and perhaps I should start embracing some of these annoying new communication channels. So I did. I started texting reminders or to set up appointments. I started responding to and even initiating Facebook messages to individuals and groups. Students would get back to me within hours, minutes, and sometimes seconds. Soon, Facebook messages almost completely replaced email in my communication with students. And then one day it hit me: there are good reasons young people are using these technologies. For many communication needs they are far superior to email. And the problem wasn't irresponsible students, it was the email medium that previously I was stubbornly embracing.

More and more I've seen the value and capability that Facebook brings to campus ministry. It's not only effective, but is used universally by college students. Shouldn't we be experts in speaking their language? And shouldn't we use this language as strategically as possible? In upcoming posts, I want to share some thoughts about how our strategy and tactics can move beyond messages and writing on walls, but also look more broadly at being wise in how we engage with new ideas/technology.

For any potential commenters out there: Have you been challenged by the rate of change in today's communication mediums? Do you see anything taking the place of facebook in the near future?

Books for an Ops team

2010-05-24T12:28:00.000-07:00

As our Operations team begins to form this summer, I've began thinking about ways we can unify our vision and gain momentum before we officially launch in August. Reading the same books related to our job could play a helpful role in this. Here is a reading list that I'm thinking about suggesting to our GNW Ops team to work on this summer:

1. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Lencioni - Great book to help us establish healthy team norms and avoid the 5 dsyfunctions that teams can fall victim to. Was really helpful for our WSU team, and I know other teams in the NW have read it together, too.

2. Next Generation Leader, Stanley - Another book with five main points, this one was referred to me by my friend Matt (see About) as the best of Andy Stanley's books. I was challenged and encouraged when I read it last year and think it's a good fit for our emerging young leaders.

3. Linchpin, Godin - This is the most current of the list. Godin is an innovator and challenger of the status quo. While not writing from a Christian perspective, I think there is much that translates to leading, working, and innovating in ministry. Michael Hyatt, CEO of Christian publisher Thomas Nelson, liked it enough to give copies out to a whole bunch of his employees.

4. StrengthsFinder 2.0, Rath - Combined with the (included) online test to suggest your "top 5" strengths (everything is 5 in publishing, huh?), this book helps people to discover and leverage their strengths. Basic idea: spend more time working out of strength then focusing on weakness. Again, many teams with Campus Crusade, including mine at WSU, went through this together and gained great insight into how to better work as individuals and as a team.

5. Celebration of Discipline, Foster - The first four deal a lot with productivity, leading, being pro-active, getting things done, etc. Topics like prayer, meditation, simplicity, and worship will be a good counter balance to help us stay centered on Christ and rely on the Spirit more than the flesh.

Have you read some of these books? Did you like them? What other books would you suggest for a new team to read together?

[Update: The book we will all engage with the most, both individually and as a team, is the Bible. All other books we read and engage, of any genre, will be sifted and processed through a Biblical framework.]

Coming this week...

2010-05-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

I'll get back to normal (i.e. non-Lost-centric) posts this week. Here are some upcoming topics:

- Books to shape an Operations team culture
- Facebook: Why we should use it more than email, an example of how it can be used to recruit and build a team, and how we can be more strategic about status updates (me included)
- Essential qualities of an operations leader...and how these qualities tend to oppose each other
- An example of how leading change can meet resistance in unforeseen, and comical, ways
- A look back on nearly 10 years at Washington State University

How Lost can help us understand Pentecost

2010-05-23T22:36:00.000-07:00

Two seemingly disparate things going on today: Pentecost and the season finale of Lost. Let's tie these together...

Some time in the last year a friend asked asked me what Pentecost was about in Acts 2. The question wasn't "what happened at Pentecost in Acts 2?", but rather "why did Pentecost draw people to Jerusalem from all over the known world, as recorded in Acts 2"? Why didn't I know the answer to this?

Watching Lost right now, I don't get all the connections because I haven't been immersed in the show through all six seasons. I've caught some here, some there, even seen some out of context re-runs. The people that will feel tonight's finale the most will be those that rooted themselves in the story line, studying the characters and plot development, agonizing to understand the big picture and where the story is going to end. If you watched Lost tonight for the first time, I'm sure it was still entertaining, but if you have trouble understanding why your Lost fanatic friend was crying at critical moments remember this: They know the history.

So here is some history. Pentecost is a harvest festival that commemorates the giving of the ten commandments to Moses on Sinai...50 days after the Passover in Egypt. Salvation came first (Passover and deliverance from Egypt), 50 days later the giving of the law on Sinai when God descended on the mountain (the pattern for the future temple) with fire. Sound like anything? Yes, history surely adds understanding. Here is some more, courtesy of follow the rabbi...

- On Mount Sinai, God's presence was accompanied by fire, smoke, and the sound of thunder (Ex. 19:16-19). God's presence during Pentecost was accompanied by the sound of wind, tongues of fire, and the gift of different languages (Acts 2:1-3).

- When God gave the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai, the people were worshiping the golden calf. About 3,000 people died as punishment for their sins. When Jesus' Spirit was given during Pentecost, the people repented, and about 3,000 people believed and found spiritual life.
- God's presence was symbolized by a cloud and fire, which led the Israelites out of Egypt. Later, God moved his presence into the temple (2 Chron. 5:7-8, 13-14). During Pentecost, God's presence moved from the temple into a new temple, the followers of Jesus (Rom. 8:9).
- Finally, The Torah provided God's teachings for the Old Testament community of people. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit became the Teacher of believers (John 14:26).

There are many more. I'll add one: "And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." - II Corinthians 3:3

Yes, Pentecost is important because it marks when the Holy Spirit was given to the church, when the Spirit of God came to take his Word beyond Israel to the whole world. But without knowing our history, specifically the story of Exodus, we miss the additional depth and power that come from knowing it was a replay, with a grace-filled twist, of a salvation event from 1400 years before.

Watching all the connections get made tonight on Lost, spanning six seasons, I appreciate the knowledge and creativity of the writers. How much more the author and perfecter of our faith, the one who invites us in to The Story, the story that will one day have a grand finale...with a very compelling spin-off.

Chaos, Leadership, Lost

2010-05-22T20:54:00.000-07:00

Six months ago I helped produce a conference for staff ministry leaders in the northwest. For one of the sessions we were going to be talking about some aspects of leadership, so as the MC I decided a fun intro to the topic would be to watch a clip from a TV show that showed a little bit of what it can be like when you're leading: disorienting, lonely, overwhelming, urgent, stressful, perilous, reactive, like trying to prevent airplane wings from falling on people. Well, some things translate better than others. Nevertheless, while leading can be tough going, sometimes we just need to be thankful we're not Jack Shepherd...

It is striking to watch the first seven minutes again, especially as someone who has watched most of the episodes the last six years. There is clearly a spiritual undertone (that may become overt tomorrow night during the series finale) as Mr. Shepherd tries in vain to care for all the people wandering around looking like lost sheep. We'll see if the end of the series points us squarely back to the beginning.

As a footnote, I came to realize that there is a difference between watching Lost at home with my wife and forcing it upon 40 unsuspecting ministry leaders. In the case of the latter, it's good to consider that some may find scenes like this one....disturbing. Especially those with a strong bent towards empathy. Lesson learned: Remember your audience.

Building a team - 3 principles

2010-05-22T10:18:00.000-07:00

One of the first things I had to be about in my new role was to start building an operations team of staff and interns for the upcoming school year (2010-11). Fortunately, we already had three full-time staff that had been functioning valiantly despite not having someone to lead them in any focused way over the last couple years. But, to really think about getting after the three things (clean up messes, change the culture, and increase communication) we had to grow the team and "get more people on the bus". The quickest way to do that, and probably the best strategy in developing long term capacity, was to start recruiting graduating students to intern for a year doing operations.

One of the phrases I heard from Andy Stanley on his leadership podcast a while ago was "Only do what only you can do." In this case, the person best positioned to recruit and build a NW operations team well is clearly the operations director. There will certainly be help needed from others, but no one will be able to give that as much time and focus as the point person for operations leadership in the region.

Here are a few principles I've discovered/had pointed out related to building a team. Assumed is that the people we are recruiting have surrendered their life to Christ and feel called to serve him the rest of their life in some definite or indefinite way. While I am thinking in terms of operations, I think these principles can be exported to broad contexts:

1. People want to be pursued

2. People want to use their gifting/area of strength

3. People want to be on a team

I'll expand more on each of these three in the future, as well as some of the specific actions and technologies I've used to build my team for the upcoming year. While we will certainly not be overstaffed, we're going to have five great interns joining us to use their gifts as part of our NW Operations team!

Would you agree that ministry leaders, regardless of their specific role, should always be building capacity by recruiting others to the mission? Are there any principles you would add to the above list?

New job: 3 areas of focus

2010-05-21T13:41:00.000-07:00

Four months ago I moved in to a new role (Director of Operations - Greater Northwest) with the ministry I work for (Campus Crusade for Christ), a role which for the last two years has been unfilled. As I've gotten a read on the "current reality", it seems there are three main things I need to be about for the next year on the job:

1. Clean up the messes - Last night, my wife and I were running errands while our kids were with the grandparents. As we were out until after the kids bedtime, upon arriving home we quickly put the kids to bed and retired upstairs for the night. What got missed in our evening ritual was cleaning up the kitchen, starting the dishwasher, and making sure everything was ready to go in the morning. Result? This morning we not only had to make breakfast for us and the kids (the usual), we also had to clean up the kitchen from the night before while doing so (not usual). Not a big deal, but it did create more stress to start the day and delayed getting to work this morning.

It's kind of similar with the job. Directing Operations for the region requires plenty, but even just a short period of neglect (which can partly be explained by number 2 below) creates a lot of additional work that needs to be done to even start getting after the main things. It could be financial decisions that need to be revisited, web and technologies that are withering on the vine, people that haven't had a leader to care for them the way they should, or just a lack of clarity in direction for the operations effort in our region.

2. Change the culture - By this, I mean how operations is viewed by staff and students within the northwest. The reason there are messes to clean up is the difficulty in finding people that are a) called to ministry, b) operationally capable/savvy, and c) are willing to focus on leading operationally. Most people that join staff do so to change lives by getting face to face with students and sharing with them from the Word. The word "Operations" seems to connote the opposite of ministry: mechanical, unrelational, distant (as opposed to organic, relational, and intimate). At least it did for me.

Fortunately, I don't think that characterization of operations need be true (though it certainly could). My desire is to help our staff, students, volunteers, and donors connect the dots between operations leadership/effectiveness and lives being changed and ministry capacity being expanded. Operations touches nearly everything we do in ministry (and that goes for churches, too) and has potential for tremendous innovation and impact all the way down to the life-on-life level. If we don't do it well, we'll find ourselves hamstrung, unable to grow to the point where we can realistically give every student a chance to know God through Jesus Christ. More about that in the future.

3. Increase communication - If you've played team sports, you know a warning sign for a team is when they stop communicating. Whether it's a baseball outfielder calling for a fly ball or a basketball defender calling out a screen, when there is great communication the team is going to perform at it's optimum level and be able to respond to emerging circumstances very quickly. Ministry may not be a team sport, but it is certainly a team effort.

While communication is just one area of operations, it seems like it has the most potential to provide huge, immediate wins. Social media/new technologies will certainly play a role here, but it is more philosophical. Few things build trust and a shared vision between people like good communication. And so much of ministry is communication.

In a region that spans seven states and thousands of miles (from Alaska to Nevada), communication is going to be an issue. But you can just as easily not communicate with someone that's your next door neighbor. We need to learn how to communicate professionally in ways that help us all. Sharing and collaboration are buzz words right now, but I think it's for a reason. You can get a lot better at whatever you're doing a lot faster when you are not consistently reinventing the wheel. As a microcosm, I remember being in our staff meetings at WSU and having someone share about something they had been doing in ministry which was really getting results. "Why didn't you say anything?" was my thought. But then I realized: I'd never asked, and for them to volunteer and share could seem boastful. Those are two things we've got to overcome, but when we do cool things can happen. As my friend and operations co-laborer Matt McComas has said, "Get over yourself."

So those are the three things I've put my finger on so far. What do you think? Seem like they are in the ballpark?