Leadership, Technology, Innovation | change the campus, change the city, change the world

8 ways to tell you’re entitled

August 12, 2011 in Leadership, Uncategorized with 3 Comments

Entitlement is a team, ministry and faith killer. Have any of these thought reared their ugly head in your life?

I deserve a day off
I deserve a better job/ministry/summer assignment
I’ve worked to hard to do THAT job
I need (i.e. deserve) to have a day of television watching/alone time/golf/whatever
I deserve the American dream house
I’m not getting enough recognition for all my effort
I’m entitled to peace and quiet
I deserve a good night sleep every night

How do you battle entitlement creeping into your life?

Failure and other links

August 9, 2011 in Innovation, Leadership, Technology with 0 Comments

Here’s what I’ve been paying attention to and thinking about this week.

9 Reason why Failure is not Fatal – From the 99% blog that I love! I haven’t watched all the videos yet but they look great.

The Five Ministry Fronts of the City by Tim Keller – Applies to a church but definitely should influence our urban campus ministry.

The Five Posture Toward Ethnic Minority Ministry - Really good article for people that aren’t experienced in ethnic ministry like me. Super helpful for me.

Tim Casteel on how he does ministry at U. of Arkansas – Great idea of creating a document to succently explain your ministry to a new staff or student leader. Makes me want to make one for Portland Metro.

With our tech savvy and urban students I want to put a QR code on our promotional materials that has a link to information and a video from one of our staff welcoming them. How cool would that be? Anybody have any information on this?

Checking out the social media icon wordpress plugin. I might add this to our city website.

I added a landing page to our PDX Cru Facebook page. It welcomes people who are checking out the page for the first time, gives a link to fill out a “Connect with Cru” form as well as some other info. This will be helpful as we advertise on Facebook to connect people early in the term. (I copied a UCF Cru image on this …I’ll eventually make my own)

Have a great week!

Are you a copycat?

August 8, 2011 in Innovation, Leadership with 0 Comments

I like things to be easy. I see a good idea and I immediately want to to install it into my ministry here in Portland. I like to cut and paste. It’s easy. It’s also reassuring, because somewhere out there someone else is doing the same thing I’m doing. If the idea fails I can blame someone else.

Sure there are Biblical principles that translate across time and locations, but straight up copying another ministry….that’s way to safe.

What’s our prayer you say? Simply this, ”Lord, what is it you have for THIS ministry THIS year? Show us your heart for the students of Portland.”

I don’t want to just copy another ministry, too easy and to safe.

There’s gotta be a better way (comment cards)

August 4, 2011 in Technology with 0 Comments

Every staff member I know has walked around campus carrying the literal weight of hundreds of contact cards filled out by willing students interested in hearing more about Jesus. Sometimes they get followed up in a timely manner, other times they sit on the desk in the dorm room waiting for those students to follow them up.

Enter Missionhub.com.

This application debuted at our national staff conference a few weeks ago. It’s a great first step in re-imagining what it could be like tracking contacts. There is an iPhone app available as well.

I’m testing it out right now and our team will most likely use it this fall.

Living off of reputation?

July 19, 2011 in Leadership, Uncategorized with 0 Comments

Am I living off of reputation or character?

I’m at our National Staff Conference right now in Fort Collins. We heard from Francis Chan this morning and he hit it out of the park. I’ve never read any of his books, but I’ve seen a few online clips that were good. Having no expectations paid off as my heart was challenged in a good way.

He taught from this verse in Revelation 3.

These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. ² Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God.

Because I’m in formal ministry how often do I live on my reputation of being out there amongst the cutting edge, hardcore Christians, while at the same time there are parts of my life that are dead or calloused to the Lord?

May I never become entitled, cynical or hard-hearted. I don’t want my life to make sense to the world. I want to be more in love with Jesus.

I’m home!

July 14, 2011 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

We just returned from the Lake Tahoe Summer Project with more than 100 students and staff! It feels good to be home, but it was so fun to watch our students lives change right before our eyes!

Every wonder about the content we talk about and train in while on summer project? Check out our resource page here for a glimpse!

In a few days we’ll head out to our national staff conference, where we’ll get the chance to hear Francis Chan speak and David Crowder bring it. We’ll also get the inside scoop on the new name of Campus Crusade for Christ. Lot’s of blog content coming down the pipeline!

Tech requirements for CCC staff?

April 19, 2011 in Technology with 21 Comments

I’ve already argued that a smart phone should be a required tool for campus minister here and here. The question now is…should there be minimum proficiencies in the ability to use certain technology while on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ? I’m not sure, but I do know that in any other job I couldn’t get away with saying “oh I don’t like computer stuff, I’m not going to use any of those things.” Here’s my top 5 technologies that I think our staff members should be reasonably competent in.

An email client (Mail, Outlook) – Stop logging in online and start managing your email better. Use some Getting Things Done tips.
Dropbox - Synchronize your documents in the cloud! Everyone is using this now, you better get accustomed to it.
Google Doc’s – Again another way to share documents. Instead of attaching a document to an email, send a sharable link. So easy.
Skype – I’ve started using this more and more over the past year. I love the power of it. The ability to type chat, share links all the while using either the conference call or video chat is awesome. Again if you’re not using Skype you’re going to get left behind
RSS (Blog) reader – Everyone should use some sort of Blog RSS subscriber. I use Google Reader and then synch it with my favorite app Reeder!

Is this asking to much? Would you add anything else? Should we require our staff to meet certain requirements in technology? Should we have tests every year and if you don’t pass you get the boot?

My new assistant.

April 12, 2011 in Innovation, Technology with 2 Comments

Meet Fancyhands, my new assistant. At least for the month anyway.

Go ahead laugh it up. I’ve gotten all kinds of fancyhands jokes since I threw down $35 big ones for 1 month and 15 tasks. Then I showed my regional director the task results of finding the total university population and demographic breakdown for our entire 7 state region. Totally worth the money.

I’ve also made them find a Fall Retreat location for me and call individual locations to check dates. Saved me at least a half day and a headache already.

I love my fancyhands.