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Web wanderings last week.

August 9, 2010 in Innovation, Leadership, Technology with 3 Comments

Just a few items of note from the interwebs last week.

  • Social Networking icon Chris Brogan writes about his interactions with Lifechurch.tv. Authentic insight from a new perspective on internet church.
  • Campus Crusade staff member Tim Casteel wrote a great post about being able to communicate better including a short and powerful clip from Seth Godin on why blogging helps. Can’t tell you how much this post resonates with me, especially as we launch partnerships and mobalize volunteers. The ability to communicate what I do is so critical.

What’s your context?

August 4, 2010 in Leadership with 0 Comments

Just read a fascinating article by LV Hanson on the Church Marketing Sucks blog about Catalyst’s experience in the Northwest. These are my highlights of the things Catalyst has learned about ministry in Northwest:

  • Innovative and trendy branding coupled with a shotgun appeal to the masses is not as effective in the Northwest as they have been in other areas of the country. Relationships reign, and trust is not easily given.
  • A brand will not win influence, a relationship will.
  • People very much identify with authenticity and trust, and that must be the vehicle of biblical truth.
  • We must ask the question of ourselves and our teams, “are you willing to share your life and your message?”

Getting a leading Christian organization’s perspective on our region was extremely helpful.  Identifying the difference is a much needed step toward increasing effectiveness.

The biggest takeaway for me is that a general distrusting culture (non-believers and believers) is a significant barrier for us to overcome as we seek to grow movements and communicate the Gospel. Authenticity must reign in our ministry culture!

What context are you in? If you’re in the Northwest do you agree with these statements?

On my bookshelf (summer edition)

July 28, 2010 in Leadership, Uncategorized with 1 Comment

We’re in Prineville, Oregon this week connecting with some of the families that partner with our ministry. This means limited internet access, so I brought along all the books that I’m working through right now. Here you go…

  • God Space – Doug Pollack This was a freebie at our national staff conference that I’m just getting around to. I think the evangelism principles could be helpful as we launch a ministry in post-Christian Portland. Brian Barela just happened to post an interview by Doug here.
  • Making Ideas Happen – Scott Belsky This is the book of the summer for me. I can’t get enough of the principles in this book, but I’m also wired to eat this stuff up.  I think every operations minded person should read it…scratch that, every person who leads a team should read this.
  • The Speed of Trust – Stephen Covey This is the son of Stephen Covey of 7 habits of highly effective people fame. Staff in our region are about to start discussing this book via a private facebook group, should be fun! So far in the first 30 pages I’ve had multiple aha moments.
  • The Narrows – Michael Connelly Crime thriller fiction scariness.

There you have it! What are you reading this summer?

8 characteristics of a Linchpin or Hustler or whatever

July 7, 2010 in Leadership with 1 Comment

There’s a certain intangible I want to be true of myself and the people on my team. I can’t completely put my finger on it, but for now I call it the ability to be a hustler. Seth Godin calls them linchpins. Whatever the name is here are the characteristic’s I’m thinking about.

  • Sincere desire and motivation to move ahead on tough projects.
  • In all areas not content with the status quo.
  • Constantly evaluating things and dreaming about making them better. “What if…?”
  • Initiates change, relationships, projects, ideas, etc.
  • Works hard, but can rest well.
  • Doesn’t wait to be asked to do something. See’s the opportunity and acts on it…get’s things done.
  • Asks great questions  and constantly learning
  • Energized when discussing how to make vision succeed

Is there a better name for this intangible characteristic? One of the bigger questions in my mind right now is how can the leadership development in our organization foster this? Any thoughts?

P.S. Shana Brennan was my inspiration for this blog post. She demonstrates all of these characteristics to the max. I want to be like her when I grow up.

How are your margins?

May 20, 2010 in Leadership, Uncategorized with 1 Comment

In the midst of moving to a new city, expanding our financial support team and getting ready to launch a new metro ministry, my margins have been thin lately.

Five years ago I would have struggled with the stress of this season of life, but right now I’m doing pretty good because of a few things I’ve learned along the way.

  1. It’s only a season. Things will either calm down naturally or I’ll start weeding some things out soon.
  2. Change and being uncomfortable has an incredible influence on my walk with God. Stepping into the unknown forces my dependence on the Lord. I’m so thankful for that.
  3. I don’t need to control everything. My significance is not found how well I have life under control or how many of our pictures we’ve actually hung on the walls of our new house.

Just some thoughts for you. I hope they’re encouraging wherever you’re at. How have you dealt with thin margins in your life?

Does “not for profit” mean you have an excuse?

April 20, 2010 in Innovation, Leadership with 4 Comments

Do we use our non-profit status to settle for less than excellence in what we do?

Last weekend I was sitting through ten hours of adoption class.  Saturday the instructor, bless her heart, was filling in for someone on vacation and winging it through a powerpoint presentation. It was rough. It was really rough. At one point while fiddling with the computer she made a joke under her breath about being a not-for-profit organization.

Everyone laughed. Including me.

But that got me thinking. The organization I work for is a non-profit organization. I don’t have all the resources I want. Like an old foundation on a house the disease of settling creeps in.

Business as usual creeps in. Settling for mediocre creeps in because we have an excuse.

I don’t want to lead or follow Christ with that perspective. I don’t want to settle.  I don’t want to use my position as full-time self-funded missionary as an excuse to settle for mediocre. I hope you don’t either.

What keeps you for settling for the status-quo?

Photo courtesy of Voxphoto

Top 5 things that keep me from ministry

April 9, 2010 in Leadership with 7 Comments

These are the top 5 things that keep me from life-on-life campus ministry (discipleship and evangelism).

  • Dealing with ministry related financial rules and regulations
  • Conferences/travel
  • Responding to voicemail/email/facebook/twitter
  • Developing ministry funding
  • Planning and logistics for events

These aren’t necessarily bad things right? But they so easily sidetrack me from why I chose my job. Which is to step foot on campus and engage students with the life-changing message of Jesus Christ. Just something I’m thinking about.

What should our perspective be about these things, and how do we deal well with them?

Change

April 7, 2010 in Leadership with 1 Comment

We’re moving today.

Today I’m leaving a place I know, a place I love and the place I’ve lived the longest in my 31 years of life.

Today I’m learning that leading (and following Christ) means embracing change. It means facing unknown. It means being uncomfortable. It’s means a deep dependence on the Lord.

Today is brutal. It’s sad. It’s painful. And it’s exhilirating.

Are you effective or efficient?

April 2, 2010 in Innovation, Leadership with 0 Comments

Here are my favorite thoughts from The 4-hour Work Week. (besides hiring a virtual assistant in India to check my email for me). These are from the chapter on time management. I’m pretty sure I have experience in all of these… and not in a good way. How about you?

  • Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.
  • Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important
  • What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it. Efficiency is still important, but it is  useless unless applied to the right things.
  • Am I being productive or just active?
  • Am I inventing things to do to avoid the important?

Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task (whether important or not) in the most economical manner possible.

- Timothy Ferriss

Learn to share

March 22, 2010 in Leadership with 2 Comments

Some thoughts…coming at’cha.

Lately I’ve been very intrigued by the idea of Leadership 2.0. But there are two barriers that are keeping us from experiencing growth in this across our organization (Campus Crusade for Christ). The first one is developing a culture of learning. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not all bad in this area, but continuous learning and asking invigorating questions must be part of who we are if our capacity for helping to fulfill the great commission is to be fulfilled.

The other area I’ve been thinking about is the idea of sharing. Do we share our ideas, strategies, goals, leadership perspective’s with our co-workers on other teams?

I don’t think so.

I get glimpses of what other team leaders are doing at various regional conferences and random face to face meetings, but for the most part I don’t know what’s going on with their scope and team. I don’t know what they’re trying that’s new and working well (or not well).  I don’t know what resources are influencing them and their team. I don’t know what they’re dreaming about as they seek to bring the message of Christ to students in their scope.

Don’t get me wrong, I know these men and women are busy (I’m one of them), and if we weren’t all followers of Christ they might flip me the bird when I ask them to do a little bit more. But the reality is…everyone has expertise and I want to learn from them. Are there simple ways that you and I could begin to share the wealth of knowledge that exists in our organization? Simple ideas like these or these.

Could learning to share increase organizational effectiveness and empower leaders that wouldn’t otherwise have the chance? I think it’s worth a shot. It might take an extra few minutes to share but imagine the resources that could be available to anyone who is launching/leading a campus movement all over the world.

Where have you seen value in sharing your expertise or learning from someone else who is sharing?

Photo courtesy of Enggul
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