26,500 people around the world die everyday from preventable diseases!

I’ve been reading president of World Vision Richard Stearns book, ‘The Hole in Our Gospel.’ Challenging stuff for sure. What does it mean when Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself”? And who is our neighbor anyway?

Lessons learned so far:

• My life looks at lot like the world around me
• I love comfort
• My heart needs to break for the things that break the Lord’s heart
• It’s not our fault that people are poor, but it is our responsibility to do something about it

All these thoughts bring up questions about our organization. How do we maintain a distinct evangelistic initiative and incorporate the whole Gospel when it’s needed to bring about glimpses of the coming Kingdom? What does infusing these realities into our local movement look like?

Check out extendingthekingdom.org for more insight into CCC’s initiative in this area.

You’ve been around long enough to know that communication is changing in a drastic way. (See Clay Shirky’s video) But still the question lingers, “is it worth my time to figure out how to use social media?”

The honest answer is… I don’t know.  There are to many variables to it…capacity, skill, giftings.

But I do know that Andy Stanley’s quote “To reach people that aren’t being reach, we have to do things that no one else is doing”, resonates in my mind. I’ve heard it said recently that the danger our organization faces is experiencing just enough success to keep doing the same things.

Steve Douglass called the online community the 8th continent.

There’s a ton of questions in my mind like, how do we leverage online applications to boost local movements (especially in cities)? We also need to figure out how to make our DNA  (Win, build, send) play out online. But one thing is certain the people that we’re called to reach are online, what are we going to do to intersect their lives?

Don’t try and do it all at once, bite off a little bit at a time. Here’s where I would start:

• Begin to utilize Facebook more intentionally: Stay in touch with key disciples. Maximize advertising for strategic events on Facebook.

• Start using Twitter. Beginners guide here. Follow the right people and you’ll be inspired and learn.

I think we have to engage in this conversation (and adapt) even if your computer is a “necessary evil”. What’s your perspective on utilizing the internet for ministry?

Yep, that’s right…we do not do ongoing 1 on 1 discipleship at MSU!

Maybe you think that we’re Christian heretics now.

A few years ago we found that at MSU the 1 on 1 discipleship culture we had adopted was limiting our growth at MSU. So we took aim at that “belief” of how discipleship was done and blew it out of the water. Now we maintain a higher number of relationships and we involve a higher number of students in spiritual multiplication earlier in their involvement with our ministry.  The primary avenue of our discipleship now is our small groups and out of that we often gather 2 or 3 at a time to address various issues. It’s not perfect, it’s often messy, but it’s worth it. Oh, and I’d bet you’d be surprised to know that we’re lucky if we have 2 “student leadership” meetings a semester!

Things I’ve learned:

• I do sit down with various students for 1 on 1 appointments every now and then to address certain issues. But not ongoing and certainly not for 1 hour at the same time every week in the same coffee shop.

• I’m kidding myself if I think that everything a student learns about God is found in me.

• Groups of 3 or 4 discussing spiritual growth is way more fun.

• It is awesome-sauce to involve students in spiritual multiplication

What do you think? Am I crazy? What’s the downfalls? What’s the perks?

Lee, Russell,, 1903-, photographer

“Why do some ideas thrive and others die?” (via Made To Stick by the Chip and Dan Heath).

SUCCESS

• Simplicity
• Unexpectedness
• Concreteness
• Credibility
• Emotional
• Stories

Whatever you do avoid the Curse of Knowledge!

Meaning? The more we know the harder it is to make our ideas/teaching/communication meaningful, easily understood and sticky. Not that we ought to dumb down, but in my job as a campus minister I must be striving to communicate Biblical truths, ideas and vision in way that has the best chance of of sticking. I’ve got to get better at this.

This post was accidentally deleted a few days ago and is making it’s reappearance this morning

Three websites?!!! What am I thinking? Here’s what they are and the general purpose of each.

Personal Ministry Site: We use this to update our current and potential ministry donors. It’s an iWeb site so it’s pretty flexible and useful but loads really slow. I’m thinking about developing a wordpress site for this purpose. I use Mobile Me as the host for this site. This has been incredibly helpful in communicating what we do to potential ministry partners.

Weird and humorous blog: This way my original foray into the blogosphere. It’s lasted about 3 or 4 years now. It’s where all my weird wanderings of the interweb show up. Blogspot ruled for a while back in the day.

Leadership, Technology, Innovation blog: You’re looking at it! This blogs niche is ministry peoples. Hopefully it furthers the innovation conversations. The goal is to help other leaders innovate, grow and serve the Lord at a greater capacity wherever they’re at. Self-hosted Worpress site has allowed the most flexability…although it’s taken me a while to learn the basics. Still developing.

This post was accidentally deleted a few days ago and is reappearing this morning!
Image courtesy of Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

• Things – I know it’s expensive, but I got a free copy by telling them I’d tell all my friends about it (good or bad). I love this program. It helps me track projects, tasks, etc. It’s flexible enough that you can make it work for you. Plus there’s an iPhone app that can synch with it….which would be even cooler if I had an iPhone.

• Tweetie – Twitter application. Clean, easy and pretty. Makes Twitter enjoyable. I use the free version.

• iWork - Pages is a hundred times better than Word, Keynote is a million times better than Powerpoint. I’ve had literally no problems converting Office files and I write all our newsletters in Pages and use Keynote as presentation software. It’s amazing! Don’t buy Office anymore.

• Skitch Free screen grabbing software. It’ll take pictures of whatever is on your screen and turn it into whatever format you need it in. Super handy. I use it often to grab various stuff!

Did I miss any killer mac app’s out there?

The other day I was asked by a staff member why I blog? It got me thinking and here’s my initial response to that.

• It sharpens my mind. It challenges my thinking and helps me to communicate what I’m learning
• It gives a behind closed doors look at what I’m thinking about and what we’re doing at MSU
• I’ve been challenged, motivated and inspired by other leaders blogs, perhaps I can do the same for someone out there
• It adds to the spirit of collaboration (especially in light of leveraging technology for the Kingdom)
• It helps me connect with people with similar interests beyond the borders of physical conferences and our region

Maybe blogging is for you too.

The Season of Service effort by thousands of volunteers in the city of Portland continues to make shockwaves. Watch this PBS clip for more. I think it’s innovation at it’s best.

11 things that I want to know:

1. How/why do you use Twitter?
2. What are you reading that’s inspiring you?
3. What do you wish you could use technology for to save time?
4. What are the internet applications that you can’t live without?
5. How do you use Facebook?
6. Who’s blogs do you subscribe to that I should too?
7. How do you decide when a new technology is worth learning?
8. What’s your weekly schedule like and how do you plan for it?
9. How do decide to risk spending time working on new projects?
10. How do you increase your teams innovation capacity?
11. How do you refresh and recharge?

Ok, it’s time for Campus Crusade (and other ministries for that matter) to start thinking more about using video conferencing and webinars.

Skype has changed the way I keep in touch with our staff around the world and we’ve been using free conference calling services for regional meetings for a while. But now it’s time to start utilizing technology, specifically video conferencing for regional meetings and national meetings.

My wife just purchased a $440 airplane ticket to go to a conference at our national headquarters on reviewing staff applications. Could we figure out how to do the same content online? Obviously online meetings won’t ever completely replace face to face meetings, but the potential to cut costs is huge. If Leadership 2.0 is about collaboration and cross communication we need to master this medium.

I haven’t used any of these yet, but I’m starting to do my homework. These video conference services look promising:

• Tokbox: Free online video chat with up to 20 people. You can also send video messages.
• Oovoo: Free two-way video chat and pay per month service. Looks solid but requires some software download…ala Skype.
• gotomeeting.com: Pay per month service. This seems to a popular option in the business world. Screen sharing is available.
• Adobe Connect Now: Free for up to 3 people and then a pay service. Screen sharing and whiteboard service.

Does anyone have any success stories in their use video conferencing? Am I missing a killer service out there?