Executing Ideas

It’s now about four months since you resolved to:

• get in shape
• read more
• spend more time with your kids
• stop gossiping
• read the Bible this year
• learn to sew

How’s that workin’ out for ya?

If you made a resolution in January, you have almost certainly given it up, forgotten it, and basically remained the same person you were on December 31^st.

Why?

It could be that you didn’t really need to change. Or perhaps you sincerely changed your mind. Or maybe you already accomplished.

Yeah, right.

I can tell you—in one word—why you gave up on those New Year’s resolutions…

February.

In my neck of the woods, February is cold, dark, and desperate. We even made February one day shorter than even the 30-day months. That wasn’t enough, so we trimmed off another day.

February is a grind. You’re inside all the time. If you don’t have Seasonal Affective Disorder, you almost wish you had a diagnosis, some indication of why you want to stick icicles in your eyes. There’s snow and slush and more snow. Everybody bundles up and looks at the ground when they walk.

No one is grilling out.

No one is tossing a Frisbee around.

No one is smiling.

No one is stopping to smell the roses, because they’re under ugly white Styrofoam, like giant upside down coffee cups from church social hour. Oh, and those are covered by snow.

It’s enough to break anyone’s resolve. February is no time to make a change. It’s no time to kick a habit or start a new one. It’s the month to hunker down, to make do, to survive.

But May is a month with potential! The snow’s gone. The days are longer (and getting still longer). The slush and slop has all dried up. Flowers are starting to open. You leave your jacket at home. Baby ducks cross the road in front of you on the way home from work.

So how about some spring resolutions? The time is ripe! Choose what you will change. Make some plans. Tell a friend. Drop some pounds, lift some weights, throw some parties, smell the roses, and give someone a big sloppy kiss.

Now is the time. Tomorrow is Saturday. Most of the country’s going to have a pretty nice day (sorry, Tennessee). So start something good.

Who’s with me?

You have options:

Stuff your stress way down deep and get ulcers.

Meditate on the word “peace” until the knots in your shoulders melt away.

Revert to a preschool state and let ball pits, nap time, and pudding pops calm you down.

Take some hard drugs.

But the absolute worst thing you can do?

Vomit your stress all over a spouse, friend, or coworker. (You will likely ruin their outfit.)

I realized this a couple weeks ago. I was on my way out of the office after a full and frustrating day. I did not get to the things I hoped to accomplish. And as I packed up and walked out, I barfed it all over my friend Dan:

Oh, I have so much to do! I didn’t get anything done today. I had five and a half hours of meetings and three hours of interruptions! I have 75 emails I’ve not read—just from today! I need to have a difficult conversation with somebody in the office tomorrow, and I’m not ready! My boss says I have to report on that big project tomorrow, and I have a cavity to fill! I haven’t been able to exercise in weeks, my car needs new tires, it’s raining today, my kid got yelled at by the bus driver, the paint’s peeling on my house, and we have a houseguest I don’t know arriving tonight and staying through the weekend!

Barf. I threw up the vile bile of stress all over Dan, the innocent bystander. He was now covered in my stinky, orange, chunky…stress.

Did this help Dan? No way. Unless he’s really rotten—“Golly, I’m glad I’m not Adam!”—he’s pulled down by my load. He might even feel pressure to share all the ways he’s stressed, even if he’s not really stressed, just to empathize a bit. Yes, good friends bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2), but I’m not sure this fits the bill.

Did this make me feel better? Not really. It can be helpful just to articulate what’s stressing us out but vomiting it onto someone else doesn’t help. It’s really a selfish move—“Oh, look at me, feel sorry for me, buy me a drink, tell me how I’m such a good victim!” At its best, this is taking mental stock of my life in the presence of someone else. At its worst, it’s trolling for assurance and comfort, while covering others in our mess.

I am stressed today. I have a lot to do. I have a lot of meetings. I am behind. Others are waiting on me. I want to do a good job. There’s not enough time.

But today will be different. Today, I won’t vomit stress on innocent passerby. (Click to tweet this.)

Am I alone in this? Do any of you barf stress on others? (Or get barfed on?)

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak at the University of Buffalo about why human trafficking exists and why Christians care about it.

Take a listen, and let me know what you think.

Click here to listen.

I don’t often repost things from This Ordinary Adventure, the blog I write with my wife. But this one seems like it fits on Executing Ideas, too.

Here it is:

Read the rest…

Last week, I was in some fascinating meetings about how technology might be used to encourage and facilitate living how we ought, according to the Bible. (Read my post on the problems and possibilities of a prayer app.)

Andy Crouch, the author of Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, said something there that intrigued me: “The form is more formative than the content.” He went on to say that the Facebook Like button itself is forming our culture more than the content people are “liking.”

As someone who spends a lot of time thinking and working to put good content up with Like buttons on it, I had to follow up. I asked if he’d written anything more on the “culture making” of social media platforms, or if he’d like to guest post on this for the InterVarsity blog. He replied that he hadn’t, he wouldn’t, and “You should write it.” I really respect Andy Crouch.

Here I am.

Now, I’m not a brain scientist or a software engineer or a theologian. But I am employed to use social media for good, to equip others to do the same, and I think critically about what I do. So I aim here to reflect a bit and start some conversation on this.

So what are the effects of the Facebook Like button?

We share only what is positive, and its corollary, don’t be a downer. This might be overstating it, but there is a clear preference of one over the other.

We’ve all seen friends lament the lack of a “dislike” button. Is it appropriate to click Like on a post about someone finding out they have cancer and that they’re going to fight it? You like the latter but not the former. So, we are subtly pushed to share what will cause others to read, smile, nod, and Like.

Does this keep us from important topics that are difficult? Are those reserved for face-to-face conversations? As more of our relationships are mediated, do we lack the time and physical space to deal with the hard things in our lives? (Click to tweet this.)

We are inordinately focused on others’ opinions, and its corollary, these are the opinions that matter. I think it’s human nature that we want to be liked, and that this even has some positive social norming to it. We may be more desirous of a life that is worth living—that others commend—as a result of the Like button.

But more often than not, we can end up chasing the approval of the crowd, even if the crowd is headed in the wrong direction. Rather than hearing heroic voices, those who are living—and thinking—in exemplary fashion, we are voted up and down by people who may be trying to feel good about their choices. This is why we need to choose our Facebook friends carefully. (Click to tweet this.)

We have an illusion of action and relationship when we use the Like button. (Click to tweet this.) Does it really matter that I’ve liked a friend’s update or the page of an anti-human trafficking organization? I may have an undue sense of accomplishment from the weakest of all responses: clicking a virtual button while sitting on a couch.

A million little actions can build up into something significant. Maybe the publicness of Facebook inherently fights off hypocrisy. But there is certainly a temptation to Like something and then not write a thank you letter to someone or a letter to your public official, right?

Other effects of the Like button come to mind: it’s hard to have respectful disagreements, we may inflate ourselves, we substitute a thousand shallow connections for a few deep ones, we waste time, numbed to the effect of the tool itself.

So, do you think “The medium is the message?” How is this form forming us? Let’s interact in the comments.

“The lazy man does not roast his game, but the diligent man prizes his possessions.” –Proverbs 12:27

After living overseas, including a year in abject poverty in Nicaragua, I struggle with how to deal with money here in the U.S. We have a lot. Others have a little. I don’t like it. I try to be generous. I try to not be greedy.

I’ve never written about stuff before. (Well, I’ve not written much of anything around here lately. This fall’s been active over on the blog for This Ordinary Adventure.)

But this holiday season, as I’ve swung from Thanksgiving into Advent, I’ve heard that song from The Sound of Music:

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things

The proverb I opened with seems to me to indicate we should slow down to appreciate what we have. So sometimes thinking and talking about stuff is how we ensure we’re not caring too much about stuff. (Tweet this.)

So what are my favorite things?

1. The Nields’ All Together Singin’ in the Kitchen first came across our radar when we checked it out for a family vacation last summer. This album is by some professionals but it pulls in their whole family. It’s folksy, it’s smart, and it’s funny. We’ve been singing it around the house to each other throughout this fall. It’s entered our family vocabulary.
2. Tetley British Blend Tea is as good as any that I had in South Africa, but I can buy it here. I think it’sfresher and fruitier than any other mass-produced tea here in the U.S. At $.04/bag, it’s cheap, too.
3. Reading books aloud to our kids is a fun tradition we’ve been doing for almost a decade. It started with But Not the Hippopotamus and other cutesy little board books. Last night there was a murder in our passage of Holes, by Louis Sachar. (We’ve come a long way.)
4. Equate Junior Acetaminophen Tabs have been very helpful this week. Phoebe’s had a high fever, and I saw these, at 1/3 the price of liquid meds. Phoebe’s lovin’ ‘em.
5. Prayer: Does it Make Any Difference by Philip Yancey has been on my morning reading list for the past few months. I’ve been a serious Christian for about 20 years, and prayer is still a confusing thing for me. This book is well-written, thoughtful, and honest, not smarmy.
6. The Born Loomis II Oxford is comfortable, well-made, and I think it’s sorta stylish. (But I’m not the best one to make that call.)
7. Duke Otherwise’s Creepy Crawly Love has recently supplanted The Nields as the most-played album in our family. We met the Duke at a concert a couple weeks ago. His songs are fresh, funny, and smart. I woke up this morning singing about “monster spray” today (yesterday it was “this song is not about bananas”), and I don’t even mind.
8. Hot showers continue to amaze me. Ever since that hard hear with new friends in a remote village in Nicaragua, I say a prayer of thanks every time I step into running water. It’s a miracle, something we find totally commonplace but is the result of a lot of technology, planning, and wealth.
9. Planet Fitness continues to amaze me. They just opened up a few blocks away. I joined for $10/month, no contract. I kept my expectations appropriately low. But it’s large, clean, always open, and has excellent equipment. I am very impressed.

There you have it, stuff that I am noticing, that make life easier or more enjoyable—a few of my favorite things.

What are yours? 

Yesterday, I wrote a post about why we wrote our book. Today, I want to share how I think about self-promotion, about marketing a project that’s very much about my wife and me.

I’ve heard people say…

“I’m just can’t talk about myself like that.”

“I’m afraid of rejection.”

And most damning, “It feels icky.”

I’ve been a writer for six and a half years. (Well, at the start, I said I was a writer, but I had no evidence of that fact for editors.) I started off in motorcycle travel photojournalism, telling stories about traveling across southern Africa when we lived there. I had no name. I had no sponsors. I had no publishing credits. I didn’t even have very much skill. But I am very good at the key to good self-promotion:

I find out what people need and help them. 

You’re an editor of a small magazine in California about on-/off-road motorcycling? I’ll write you a story about my similar experiences in South Africa.

You publish a motorcycling magazine in South Africa? I’ll give your readers a piece on an American’s view of the riding scene, from the inside.

Your magazine covers living with a faith perspective for young adults in the U.S.? I’ll tell you the story of finding out Chrissy was pregnant and how we freaked out.

You are struggling with living out the extreme teachings of Jesus in middle-class America? We’ll tell you about the journey and struggle of re-entry after our years overseas, with insights from friends there, in This Ordinary Adventure.

All along the way, I listen to people, love people, and seek to solve their problems. This is the most natural and effective self-promotion possible.

So when I share one of our columns in Relevant with my Facebook friends, I use a quote that might be challenging or encouraging. When I tweet about my work for Urbana 12, I share student ministry insights from my InterVarsity colleagues and the excellent work of 250+ international missions. organizations. When I speak on campus about our book, I will first find out where students are at, what issues they’re dealing with, and what they need.

Even this post is an example of this commitment. If I wrote a post today called “Why Our Book is Awesome,” no one would read it. But I’m solving your problem of needing to promote your work but feeling uncomfortable about it and so here you are, at the end of the piece, with a little encouragement, maybe a new idea, and a general impression that I’m a happy, helpful guy with an interesting book coming out. See what I did there?

Love people and solve their problems. That’s the key to self-promotion.

And that’s not icky.

Did this post address your misgivings about self-promotion? Why or why not? 

Over the last thirteen years, we’ve lived for a total of nearly a year in a few different chunks at Jubilee Partners, an intentional Christian service community east of Athens, Georgia. We returned there on vacation last week. Each time we go back, we are challenged to live more simply, more passionately, and more thoughtfully. Here are some of the biggest insights…

This is hard. Over the past decade or so, intentional Christian community experienced a bit of a boom, it seems. Shane Claiborne and The Simple Way in Philly made brought a lot of attention on different ways to structure our lives. Jubilee is over thirty years old and is still going strong, making it a grandmother community of sorts in the U.S. But no one who has lived in community for any amount of time keeps the romantic, folksy view of it. It ain’t easy.

You need to talk. Communication matters tremendously. Doing it well requires a lot of commitment, time, and honesty.

Give it up. Intentional community is sort of like marriage. You need to put others’ needs and even preferences above your own. If community members aren’t willing to do this, none of you will last long (and neither will the community).

Systems matter. At Jubilee, there are signs on everything. How to recycle. No guns on the property. How to connect to the internet. No swimming without a staff member. Close the door when you’re on the phone. This can sound a bit draconian. But having good systems in place and submitting to your fellow members make life flow much more smoothly.

You’re not better than anyone else. This was brought home by my friends Don and Carolyn who are two of the founding members of Jubilee. Don said that it’s harder to faithfully follow Christ with a job and salary and mortgage, in a typical North American context. Having a counter-cultural living arrangement (even if it facilitates faithful living) does not make one better than others with different callings.

Pray. At Jubilee, there’s an optional morning prayer time for 30 minutes. You head into the community library (one large room), grab a seat on a couch, and pray in silence for about 25 minutes. Then a leader shares a passage and opens up group prayer aloud. This simple pattern helps us to consider our failings, pray through our worries, and be comfortable being together.

That’s just six things. I think I’ve absorbed a lot more that I can’t even name or notice.

How have you experienced Christian community, both good and bad, intentional and not-so-much?

We’re on vacation. After our years of adventures overseas, we don’t think, “Let’s go to Disney World!” or “We should see Yosemite!” or “Let’s go see the coolest KFC in the nation!”

We say, “Let’s go see people we love!”

Our main destination for our vacation is Jubilee Partners, an intentional Christian community we’ve lived in before, one that’s motivated by their faith to care for refugees, live simply, and welcome people in. (More on this later in the week.) The community is in northern Georgia. We live in Wisconsin. We’re not really into Super 8, so we start asking, “If we drive about 10 hours the first day, we could stay in Nashville. Do we know anybody in Nashville?”

I tick off an old college friend who we’ve not seen in over a decade, someone I met though work a year ago, a writer friend, and colleagues with InterVarsity, only one of whom I’ve met in person. I sent some emails, texts, Twitter DMs, and Facebook messages. They went something like this:

Hey!

We’ll be in Nashville this Saturday night 8/11 and the following Saturday 8/18. We’re just passing through en route to and returning from a vacation in Atlanta and at a place where we volunteered with refugees. Any chance we could stay with you or that you could connect us to folks we could crash with? (It’ll be Chrissy, Phoebe, Zeke, and me.)

Part of our Amazing Days commitment is to avoid hotels and find real people to stay with whenever possible. Thanks for your grace in considering what might be a weird request!

Hoping you’re well,

Adam

After a bit of back and forth, some “Hey, did you get that message I sent?” a little prayer and referrals to a couple friends of friends, we had lined up dinner right when we arrived on Saturday with that old college friend. And we got to know that work contact that I met last year, along with his rad singer/potter wife and kids that Phoebe and Zeke had fun with.

I posted on Facebook on Sunday morning that we were in Nashville and someone we’d met in three years earlier South Africa commented, “We’re here! Let’s hang out!” Thus, our lunch was planned.

On Monday, we spent a few hours hiking Kennesaw Mountain outside of Atlanta and eating a simple lunch with someone we taught with in China and caught up with another set of old college friends with four boys that our kids could romp with.

Tuesday dawns rainy and grey. Today, we will drive across Atlanta (no small feat, I’m learning) to have brunch with a fantastic couple that does beautiful photography and helps persecuted Christians in Pakistan. Then, it’s onward to Jubilee Partners for a few days.

Next weekend, we reverse the process heading back to Athens on Friday night for yet another friend from our days as Badgers at the University of Wisconsin. Saturday will take us back to Nashville to stay with the same family again and hopefully the writer friend, too.

The key to all this hospitality was asking for it.

We had to send the messages, ask the questions, make the awkward re-introductions. If we did not make this effort, we would have been in a motel by ourselves with the cable as our only friend and fast food as our sustenance, rather than real people with real stories and real food.

We did not know these people well. Some we had met once. Some we’d not seen for a very long time. But they are good people. If someone needs a place to stay, they’re eager to help, even if it’s finding space at a neighbor’s place (two of them actually did this for us). They were so generous, so helpful, so hospitable, I felt bad, because we couldn’t accept it all. These acquaintances and old friends were very happy to house and feed us (or they’re very good at hiding their grumpiness).

While overseas, we learned to expect extraordinary hospitality—a family’s last chicken has been killed and cooked up for us on a couple different continents. People here are eager to house and to help, too.

You just need to give them the chance.

How do you cultivate hospitality? Do you ask others for it? Do you try things to welcome others into your home and life?

About a year and a half ago, Jeff Goins called me. We talked about writing, about being freelancers, about our day jobs with InterVarsity and Adventures in Missions. Since then we’ve kept up the way one can now through social media, occasional comments on one another’s blogs, some retweets, and a bit of witty banter.

With our new book (This Ordinary Adventure) coming out in a few weeks, Chrissy and I have been developing a series of posts on other books y’all would like. When I saw Jeff had a book coming out and saw its title, I knew it would be a good candidate. As it’s launching today, it gets to be the first in the series.

Wrecked: When a Broken World Slams into Your Comfortable Life by Jeff Goins

(Jeff’s got some great book launch freebies running for the next day or two, so make sure you click through!)

“This is a book about brave choices, about ordinary people helping beggars and moving to foreign countries. About listening to that still, small voice whispering, ‘Life is not about you.’” So Jeff begins his book, and it’s a very worthwhile read.

Jeff draws upon the wisdom of Mother Teresa, General Patton, Morpheus, Tyler Durden, Yoda, Jason Bourne, Chesterton, William Wallace, Thoreau, C.S. Lewis, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ayn Rand, and Jesus. There’s also a good deal of insight from Jeff’s life lived, his school of hard knocks.

And that’s sort of the point.

We need hard knocks. And a world of hurting people needs us to take them. Jeff casts a very compelling case for us needing to get wrecked, to come to the end of ourselves, to spend ourselves—our lives—on behalf of others. This is life as a Christian—this is life.

“(Kids’) lives are full of reckless abandon, and no one has to tell them so.” I think when Jesus spoke of the need for faith like a child, he was talking less about naïve belief and more about this wholehearted embrace of risk.

Chrissy and I have been talking and thinking for years about life in North America, fearing it (while we were serving in Nicaragua, China, and South Africa) and wrestling with in since we moved back two and a half years ago. Jeff observes correctly, “Something is missing. Something important. Something necessary to making a difference in the world. And most of us are afraid to find out what it is. Because we know. It’s the secret we’re afraid to admit: this will cost us our lives.”

“The process is horrible and ugly and completely gut-wrenching— and at the same time, beautiful. It is real and hard and true. Most of all, it is necessary.”

This resonates with us. This squares with our reflection on the Bible, on our years abroad, of our meager efforts to live for others. As a friend of Jeff’s said, ““When I travel, my problems slide into the context of the rest of the world.” Amen.

“If we are to follow the Jesus who suffered with us and bled for us, we too must suffer. We must hold the dying in our arms. We must shed tears for hungry stomachs, trafficked children, and wandering souls. This is what He wants for us. It’s the reason we are called to lay down our nets and take up our crosses to pursue the Suffering Servant. And it’s the one thing we will avoid at all costs.”

But Jeff and his wife Ashley have stopped avoiding it. They’ve run into it. And their friends have, too. Jeff tells stories of hanging out with people on the streets of Spain and Nashville (which I connected to my similar days in Barcelona and Madison, WI), taking in wounded teens, and touring the country in the real-life grind of a band.

There’s wisdom here, on what you’re living and dying for, when to commit and stay put, when to cut back or move on, and real significance. Wisdom is rare these days. Jeff’s got some that he’s shared well, in a compelling fashion.

Wrecked is perfect for college students and twenty-somethings. This Ordinary Adventure is tilted a smidge older, recent graduates up to our peers in their thirties. I think they actually hang together pretty well as a one-two punch for people starting their first jobs, getting engaged, and trying to start marriage well.

May we each proclaim today, with Jeff, and with people who have lived great lives:

Instead of wanting more, we will strive for less.

Instead of easier, faster, better; we will opt for slow and deliberate.

We will take our time.

We will seek first the needs of others and trust that our own will be provided.

We will discipline ourselves to believe.

We will find our lives by losing it.

We will seek the pearl of great price and sacrifice everything

for it.

We will become less to gain more.

We cannot become who we are without going through pain.

Our year in Nicaragua—without electricity, transportation, or water—certainly wrecked me. I was totally insufficient. I was doubled over by giardia and malaria and a broken ankle, and crushing poverty. But God graciously worked on me there (and since) and even used our efforts to work real good there.

What has wrecked you?