Miss artistic, stop motion animation, hippy, dog lover girl – Maddy Harlow, can now add another moniker to her creative list of descriptive words. Speech Making Super Star. Keeping it a complete surprise to her or so duped parents, Maddy gave a class speech at her 6th grade promotion ceremony last night.
Check out this clip of her rocking the podium.
Santa Barbra is where the Garden of Eden must have been. If you have not been, I highly suggest you go. I spent three days in April working with our Chi Alpha leaders at UCSB and the entire time I was there I kept asking God, “Tell me again why you don’t want West Coast Chi Alpha headquartered here?”
It is not an exaggeration to say that the size, power and academic influence of the ten University of California schools represent the most powerful educational institution on the planet. We are currently on 7 of the 10 and UCSB is our oldest Chi Alpha chapter in the group. There are some amazing faithful leaders there and I believe we are about to see our best days ever on this campus. Pray for our UCSB ministry and for us to get on the last three UC campuses.
From Santa Barbara I headed into LA to spend 40 activity filled hours on site at Cal Poly Pomona. Lindsay Fudenna our amazing planter is one of my true campus ministry heros. In the last three years she has done the impossible. On a major commuter campus, in a major urban area, with little funding and lots of obstacles she has forged a healthy Chi Alpha group from scratch. Amazing. She is a Commuter Campus Whisperer.
One of her partners in the Chi Alpha-gineeering is the young adult/worship leader at Covina First, Jarrett LeMaster. Jarrett is a creative funnel cloud of music, ministry and fun. He is a part time voice over artist, song writer, producer and comedian and a full time worship pastor, young adult clairvoyant, father and husband. Oh and Jarrett does the best impression of Christopher Walkin reciting the Beatitudes of any human alive. His equally talented spouse Christina and very cute son (6 mo. old) Liam are also two of my favorite humans.
Two Thirds of all California student go to community college and they are growing fast. Here is the New York times take.
Friend-heimer’s: 1. Having no memory of someone you have just friended on facebook. 2. Looking back over you friend list and having no idea who half the people are.
Speed Tw-editoring: The task of taking your 1247 character tweet down to 140 in less than a minute.
Tweeb-briations: Inventing new abbreviation (usually ones that no one else can understand) to shorten your tweet (often uses when speed tweditoring).
Craig-lecting: Collecting junk from Craig’s list just because it was posted in the Free Stuff area.
Faceback: Lower back pain caused by spending too much time hunched over a laptop on facebook.
Dis-rupt-dating: Awkwardly interrupting any conversation, meal, date, meeting and other live social event for the purpose of updating ones status (especially when accompanied by the phrase, “Quick everyone get together so I can take a picture with my phone”).
Inane-survey-ification: The eventual ruin of all social networking sites due to the bad game, meaningless causes (”let’s see if we can get 1 million people on facebook to start a 1 million people on facebook cause”) and stupid surveys being obsessively forwarded by the 2% of its members who have accepted the internet as their Lord and Savior.
Today’s students are very confident. This leadership strength (and often tact lacking weakness) will have a huge impact on when (soon), how (boldly) and who (everyone) they govern as they coalesce as a generation. For a perfect example of this, look at this student confront Condi Rice in a dorm at Stanford.
If you have ever read or heard Alicia you already know that this new book will be amazing. Check out the youtube promo.
I spent this week at a series of business and leadership meetings for members of our denomination. I was again reminded how many great people I work with. I am truly filthy rich in amazing friends and fruitful cohorts.
At the risk of playing favorites, here’s the blog of one of my all time favorite leaders and campus ministry colaborers (Stanford) Glen Davis. His brain is very Jesusy.
Hurdle Two: Workable Funding Models:
“If you build it they will come,” is a cute slogan for mystical baseball movies but the thinking behind this quote has tripped up many a planter. Most business models assume a four to five year window just to get their books in the black. Many planters on the other hand are not even sure what “in the black” means since an undergrad degree in Youth Ministry doesn’t really cover complex business financing.
Planter need specific and in-depth training in choosing and managing a funding model.
There are at least three models, in general, from which to choose:
1. Bi-vocational business model: In this model the team leader (or someone highly invested in the team) possess the skill to run a for profit business at the very same time they are planting. This model works great for a VERY SPECIFIC and unfortunately very small percentage of planters who great at business. If you can preach, plant and be a money entrepreneurs this might be the model for you.
2. Large Gift Start Up: This can also be called The Publisher’s Clearing House Method. The Idea is that someone (Foundation, Denomination or Rich Uncle) shows up on your door step and gives you a large lump to start the ministry.
3. Support Teams. In this model a team of monthly prayer and financial supporters funds the salary, administrative and facility budgets throughout the start up. This is my favorite model becuase the process of meeting with and persuading team members to join the plant has many benefits for planter other than just the financial. This method does require up to date training and on going coaching. Gone are the days of just sending out a mass mailing and getting an instance donor base.
Of course, there are more than three models and combining models can be a big plus.
Hurdle Three: Customized Strategy.
In the sprint to launch planters can be tempted to relegate research, prayer and retraining entirely to a one week period (usually called a “Bootcamp”) some six months to a year before their launch. Knowing a missionfield and customizing specific ministry to meet the needs of that particular piece of earth usually takes more time A type planters want to give. It also often requires leaders to learn new skills from scratch. Veteran leader frequently are resist admiting the don’t know what they are doing. This means the planter must resist the temptation to rely on skills developed in other ministry contexts and admit that they don’t know how to do ministry in this context until they have done the proper scooting of the mission field.
World-class athletes model this learning and adapting behavior weekly. They study each variable of the competition and develop specific tactics for each contest. Failure to employ this same level of customized planning almost always guarantees a gravel-laden nose.
Hurdle Four: Laughter and Prayer.
I used to call this the Coaching Hurdle but after attending three training conferences on coaching and reading six tons of verbage on the subject and then actually coaching planters, I am pretty convinced coaching is not enough. This relationship must go far beyond advice and active listening. Good planters don’t need me to lead them to the right answer. They can usually find better advice using Goggle then I can facilitate in any weekly coaching call. What they can’t in a book, seminar or web page is help with feeling of isolation and spiritual opposition.
Isolation is perhaps the biggest hurdle of all in planting. The only way to overcome it is to have family, not organizational cohorts, in your corner. Having an advocate who cares for you enough to make sure you are laughing and praying on a regular basis can facilitate an amazing amount of hurdle jumping power.
Of course there is far more to planting than assessment, funding, strategy and laughter but in the dizzying array of variables, making sure that we make a clean leap over each of these four obstacles can greatly increase the chances of long term health are real fruit for Christ.
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