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From the category archives:
Leadership
Just to follow up on my last post “Stop donating to Haiti?” which received quite a number of hits – my very general take is to go ahead and exercise your god given wisdom, but don’t let any amount of theorizing stop you from giving when it’s in your heart to do so.
I wanted to dedicate this post to the many Christian organizations that have helped pave the way for the church on issues of justice.
You can argue all you want about administrative costs, or selling-out-to-the-man, or whatever else; but organizations like World Vision, Christian Aid, Compassion, and World Relief have been serving and giving for decades. While much of the church believed that the mandates of these agencies were secondary to the preaching of the gospel, these organizations forged ahead not because it was cool, but because it was right.
Although I’ve never been a huge fan of the ‘Salvation Army‘ name, they’ve managed to transcend the name by their works of charity all over the world. They’ve built a global infrastructure making the gospel tangible to those who are poor and destitute – and now that the rest of the church is beginning to catch on, I think it’s their time to shine.
We owe all of these organizations a great deal. They’ve made it possible for us to mobilize much more rapidly in Haiti today. More importantly, they’ve been in the business of loving and serving people long before heart-wrenching photos were sent out or global emergencies were declared.
Say a prayer of thanks for the work that’s already been done today.
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Continuing yesterday’s post “What have you done for me lately”
Whether you’re a leader, an artist, or an every day working person – after basking in the glow of doing something extraordinary, the inevitable question always starts to cloud over - “How will I ever top this?”
How can you possibly win gold again? How do you surprise her with just the right gift again? How do you create something earth-shattering and timeless all over again?
Ever wonder what happens to one-hit-wonders? When I hear Biz Markie’s ‘just a friend’ or the New Radicals ‘you get what you give’ on the radio, I imagine they probably tried a number of times cranking it out once again. But like many of us do, they probably realized at some point that a large part of their previous success was because they had just the right tune, hook, melody, lyric, and marketing, at just the right time.
Even if you’ve put your 10,000 hours of hard work in, the truth is, most noteworthy accomplishments have an element of the stars aligning just right for the extraordinary to happen.
So why do we often live assuming we can reproduce it all again? Our skills, our hard work, even our passion, doesn’t entitle us to extraordinary outcomes.
There’s no such thing as defending champions. You can only defend something that can be taken away from you. Your past achievements will always be yours no matter what. You’ve made your mark in history; now let’s stop living there.
While there’s some truth to ’success begets success’, it can also cripple you to living in your past ‘glory days’.
Pat yourself on the back, and move on. The world owes you nothing. You owe it to yourself and your God to be utterly faithful to the call you’ve been given this next moment.
What’s extraordinary is when you can live each day putting every ounce of yourself on the line, regardless of the extraordinary.
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A friend was recently commenting on how Eminem sucks now because his latest releases have been garbage and nothing has ever compared to his second album.
While it’s debatable by some whether Eminem’s work is ‘art’, it bothers me when we treat people like products.
What we produce is a part of who we are, but it’s far from the sum total.
It’s a sick world when we’re valued solely by what we’ve accomplished last.
Whatever you do, don’t live for the crowds. They’ll consume, critique, and discard you as soon as you’re not hiting it out of the park again.
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I grabbed a late night bite with Mr. Broken-but-usable JD yesterday. The jerk called me a lone ranger.
About fifteen years ago when I first entered the doors of a church I was called a lone ranger as well.
Trying to not look stupid, I rarely talked to anybody about my spiritual journey. On my own I read through the Bible, the Koran, Buddhist texts, and other philosophical books. I was desperately trying to figure it out on my own. Yes, cue in Celine Dion’s All by myself.
Fast forward to today, and I’m all about community development.
Whether it’s within the church, or in neighborhoods, or even virtually, everything I think and do ties back to connecting people and cultivating community. Problem is, I still lack it on some level.
I meet with lots of folks and I’m involved in many groups, but community still seems elusive to me.
It could be because I have an over-idealized image of what it looks like.
It could be my social tick that causes me to either only lead in group settings or be completely disengaged (which I’ve read is common if you’re an only-child – a term which I thought was ‘lonely-child’ growing up, but that’s another story). Now that I think about it, I’ve seen this in quite a number of ‘ministers’. Passionate when we’re leading, just screwing around in the back when we’re not (my past ten small groups can attest to this on my behalf)
It could be that I just flat out haven’t made the effort.
What do you think?
Is there some neurotic place within me that thinks everyone deserves community but me?
Do I secretly despise people?
Is it because I wear the same jeans multiple times before washing them?
JD fears with all that I do I’m going to crash and burn. Somebody save me.
Photo Credit: Rantes
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I just finished reading the book “Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters“, and had to share it with more people.
I’ve gathered a bunch of men raising daughters to group blog through the book chapter by chapter here in two weeks.
Some awesome missions-oriented guys joining the ride:
Marty Schmidt
Tony Sheng
Sam Radford
Chris Marsden
Alan Liu
JD Heffern
If you’re a dad with a daughter, and interested in joining us, let me know. It should be a really great experience for all.
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Photo by liminalmike
This is my annual call for help with projects I’m working on.
Artists – music, spoken word, drama, dance, visual arts, writing, sculpting, fashion, AV, graphic design, experience design, other random interesting talents, etc.
Leaders – creative folks with a love for the city of Toronto and a passion to see goodness spring up everywhere – visionaries, community developers, event organizers, board directors, etc.
Supporters – planning, logistics, finance, networking, research, ideating, etc.
Coders - we’re looking to expand our team of geeks for social good – below are the specifics we’re hoping for
- Experience with mySQL/PHP web application development
- Abillity to quickly learn and work with 3rd party API’s, collaboration tools, and the latest web technologies
- Familiarity with the Symfony framework, Facebook Clatform/Connect would be an asset
and /or
- UX/UI design experience – ability to translate PSD’s to CSS/HTML
- Work with and create original designs and eye-candy – typography, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.
- jQuery/Javascript/AJAX would be highly valuable
If you or someone you know might be interested – let’s get connected!
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View more Microsoft Word documents from Mark Surman.
I participated in Government 2.0 online last year, but just got around to going through this talk by Mark Surman of Mozilla. He offers a great primer on technology and how the open source movement relates to civic engagement. My favorite insight was towards the end where he states that if people actually thought that the government was listening, they would actually jump aboard and get involved.
I wonder how many people we leave disengaged, because they don’t think we actually care enough to hear them out and do something about what they have to offer?
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