Executing Ideas

From Len Schlesinger at the Willow Creek Association’s Global Leadership Summit:

Here’s a summary:

“Global poverty is unacceptable. Our failure to build logistics system means we produce too much food, and we can’t get it to people who need it. This is unacceptable. Millenials can’t look forward to a better life than their parents’. This is unacceptable. The absence of opportunities for our young people is unacceptable.

Now what am I going to do about it?

Entrepreneurship can go a long way toward providing the kind of world we desire. We need to believe in the future by creating it first. Entrepreneurs are always doing what they want to do. Given your capacity, what kind of step do you want to take?

Entrepreneurs often just launch from “We like each other, and want to work together” with NO IDEA of what they will do.

But what keeps people from doing it? They get caught up in defining what they’re trying to do! They get stuck in the definitions. It is important to start thinking about just what you want to do next. At the end of the day, entrepreneurs just need to act like Indiana Jones! If the future is unknowable, what good is thinking?

So, just take small steps with what you have.

Start with what you care about!

Remember, failure is just an opportunity to start with experience.

And little bets and baby steps are the key.”

Now it sounds a bit squishy to me—not exactly expositional preaching or top shelf lecturing, you know? But what he said resonated a fair bit with me. It helped knowing that Schlesinger is no slouch. Everything he said springs from proper and rigorous research.

We often feel like we need to have some huge, comprehensive vision. But successful entrepreneurs sometimes launch with little more than, “Let’s go do something. We’ll figure it out as we go.”

Do we wrongfully discard our own desires, how God has wired us? How many people feel they should be in vocational ministry and how many simple must be serving that way? We’d be better off with more of the latter. It’s like that Buechner quote: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

And why do we fear failure so much, even when the actual cost of the failure is low? (How’s that pride working out for you?)

Finally, what are the small things we can do today? What’s the mustard seed of faith for today?

Gotta run. But my brain feels like it’s gonna pop.

In Krakow, Poland!

I’m part of a team that is finding ways InterVarsity and World Vision can partner, to do the kind of justice that Jesus was about.

I wrote a post on how I’m thinking about it, titled “But I Do Not Despair.”

http://blog.worldvision.org/christian-witness/but-i-do-not-despair/

Head over and leave a comment.

Photo courtesy of World Vision.

Dear Africa,

It’s been a year since I’ve seen you.  Doughnuts, sledding, an apartment, and wifi have distracted me.  While I’ve settled down, you’ve stayed where you’ve always been.

I miss you.

Your tall straw savannahs, spindly acacia thorns lightening through.  Loud voices between friends in the street.  Generous plates of simple, delicious food from people I don’t know.  Perspective that only arises from the grace of hardship.  Bands of children running to see me putter past on my little isithuthuthu, motorcycle.  Twiggles—two kilo bags of day-glo cheesy corn snacks.  Clambering over rocks on the Indian Ocean and being awoken at 2am to buy fresh rock lobster for a few Rands.  Smiles in the market.  Umlungu.  Mzungu. White man.  Mountains of mangoes.  Impossible hairstyles.  The desolate ridges snaking off below Sani Pass.  Livestock in the road.  A cappella hymns that soar past tin roofs, pierced by whistles and stomping.

Perhaps I could come again soon?  And maybe bring some more friends?

Love,

Adam