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.

Rev. Dr. Brenda Salter-McNeil at the Willow Creek Association’s Global Leadership Summit:

God convenes God’s people.

Prayer: Thank you for bringing us here. Business leaders, academic leaders. From every sector!

Kingdom come, will be done. Asking you to speak boldly and clearly.

Derek and Brenda in England from Fuller, talking on experience in African American church. Trying to figure out redundant churches. They wanted to learn from the US Black church. Jamaican woman met her, and rather than being overjoyed, she angrily, “Where have you been? Didn’t you know what we were experiencing here? We’re foreign in Jamaica and here in England. Classism isolates us.”

I had no idea. Pastors, academicians, none of us knew enough about what was going on around the world. A defining moment for me about how uninformed I was.

It was a catalytic moment. God used that experience in my life to broaden, my experience to humble me, to expand my worldview.

Catalytic moments are never nice and easy and comfortable. It’s like flying in an airplane, and when those little yellow bags pop down during sudden loss of pressure, we would grab on for dear life! That’s what a catalytic even feels like.

Because words fail, I asked for help from the Willow team to create this video to help you experience a catalytic event. One man forced himself past where others had given up, changing our world forever. He broke the speed of sound! He blew out the windows! In 1947, Capt. Chuck Yeager proved that it was possible. People thought it would make the plane break apart. When the shaking was most intense, he resisted the temptation to pull back and he moved forward.

Most of us have been impacted by economic, demographic and cultural shifts. Who could’ve predicted the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, and through social media?

This next generation of global leaders have grown up with this under their feet. They’re experiencing more ethnic and generational diversity than anyone ever before. They are global by default, and they know it.

How have you responded? Has it shut you down? Has it made you want to retreat? Or like Chuck Yeager has it inspired you to push through to a new kind of leadership?

Those have challenged me for a year.

In Acts chapter one, I realized the initial catalytic burst happened in the beginning of the birth of the church. Acts 1:8—you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses…all around the world!

It went to the Jews, to the Gentiles, to the whole human race. That’s our mission, to be the kind of leaders who lead the Church forward beyond the sound barrier, to the globalness of what God calls us to be.

There’s a movement outward. We have to move past one barrier after another. We must begin in Jerusalem. This represents our home turf, our comfort zone! People laugh at our jokes and understand our language. It’s where people are mostly like us. It seems like any decent leader could make a church work in their Jerusalem. It takes courage to be a catalytic leader in Jerusalem. Gotta face our own bigotry and ethnocentricity.

You can get your “Amen!” in with me. You can practice with me.

We gotta face some stuff in ourselves in Jerusalem. Gotta confront the people who look like us, in our own family, on our local church. Challenge the practices and policies of our churches and systems.

There’s a VP of Finance at a university in Indiana, and she is passionate about intercultural competency. She gets it on her president’s desk. She pressed on a committee that didn’t want to celebrate MLK Day! She takes on Jerusalem.

Now, onto Judea—it represents the place that’s close to home but not quite home. It’s kind of familiar but there are some subcultural difference. We can look alike but have different political views. It’s like denominational differences. Somehow we’re not quite speaking the same language. Ministry in Judea is not easy. It requires cultural translation. It’s like and elderly woman being preyed upon by a lender. She was getting foreclosed on, but the church heard about it. They bought that woman’s home and sold it back to her for $1! That’s the kind of ministry that happens in Judea.

But next, we need to go to Samaria—this represents people who are hostile to us! They are foreign, totally other. It’s the neighborhoods that we just drive by. Like District 6 in Cape Town or the garbage communities in Manila or India, prisons where people are locked away and forgotten. It’s the place of sex trafficking. It’s the place of child soldiers. It’s the place of corporate greed. Somebody profits from this stuff, it’s environmental injustice. That’s what happens in Samaria.

You will be my disciples in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria!

It takes a Chuck Yeager to head into Samaria! You will receive power, not just intellectual power but spiritual power from God! It will really be tested in Samaria.

Gender and class and tradition—you don’t have to talk about it in Jerusalem. You can’t avoid it in Samaria! It’s like my friend who’s a priest on the Southside of Chicago! He was concerned about how advertising was affecting youth in his neighborhood. So he painted over it!

We need catalytic moments! We’ve got to have something that pushes us!

Acts chapter two pushes them past the sound barrier. Pentecost came and suddenly a sound came and filled the house. Tongues of fire rested on each of them and they were filled with the Holy Spirit. Others were amazed and perplexed.

Have you ever been in a prayer meeting and you look over at your brother and he’s on fire! If you catch on fire, someone’s gonna come and watch you burn!

The Church is intended to be a global movement. It’s both amazing and confusing. The Church is supposed to be so utterly and completely countercultural, so others are scratching their heads at how the Church lets their differences go!

What do the catalytic events mean in our day? The Spirit is ready to move just like at Pentecost in Acts 2! Peter interpreted it in 2:17-18. For us, instead of being scared of the rhetoric we’re hearing. Maybe God is doing this so that people who have been isolated from each other have to partner with each other. Maybe just maybe God is moving!

The question is, are you ready? Are you ready to break through your sound barrier? If so, I have some dangerous things for you to do.

You need to pray for a divine mandate. Catalytic events are something we can’t conjure up—God needs to break in. We can do something. God, what things do you want my org to address? What are you calling us to do? The most dangerous prayer you can pray is to take your people to a part of the city where you serve and lead and ask them to walk around, “God break our hearts for what breaks your heart.” Pray it over and over again. Multilingual, multinational—it’s not a good idea. It’s a God idea!

If you still have courage, name your catalytic events. Stop walking by. Stop tsking and saying the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Ask God how the Spirit is moving in this context, in our country. We’re looking for people who are looking at catastrophes and seeing catalytic events. Summon your courage! Interpret for people that God’s not dead! God’s still alive! Jesus said the Father is always working. Our job is to look around and find what God is doing!

After you ask God for a divine mandate, something that doubles you over, something you can’t stand, then look for the catalytic events that are setting you up for success. Mobilize people to go! Faith without works is dead! We’ve got to move outside of our Jerusalem to our Judea. We need our cross-pollination there. Convene people to talk about sexuality—that’s a Judea move. Try to understand their perspective! Talk to some cutters—hear them.

And don’t stop there—push past the sound barrier into Samaria, where we’re culturally, socially not in control. I’m not looking for people to just help. I want people who will go learn. Go find your Mrs Jones like Cory Booker said who will lead you to success. Learn the language of the people. Immerse yourself in the culture, even when you want to run back after checking off the box. Brenda is learning Spanish and asking for God’s help in Spanish.

It’s unacceptable, like Dr Schlesinger said. That’s where God is calling you, even out to the ends of the earth! I pray that like on Pentecost, God would rattle you. I want to know what Pentecost feels like in our life! You may be lost up to this point. But may I submit that this moment may be your catalytic moment? This spark might light a fire under the people you lead, your whole Church.
Breathe on us, Holy Spirit! Let God give you the courage you need to lead past boundaries that have held you back! Come Spirit of the Living God, fall on us, fired up! God, make us the Church, the Global Church, every ethnicity, every cultural.

I wish I had a witness who would stand up and say, “AMEN!”

Dear Nick,

I saw your op-ed that came out last night.

First, I will say something that’s difficult for me to acknowledge:

I am an evangelical.

I try to not use vocabulary that is so squishy, used very differently by different people. I also never really say I’m “saved” to my friends who don’t follow Jesus, and I never use the term “born again.”

I self-describe as a “Christian” because it’s broad and invites further conversation:

“What church do you go to?”

“What denomination are you?”

“What kind of a Christian are you?”

“You mean like Falwell?”

And however the conversation goes, I’m sure to explain my words by telling a bit about what I believe and how I live as a result. I want to make sure I’m not lumped in with the reactionary, myopic, anti-intellectual and immoral “evangelicals” that you mention. (And yes, I know they exist. In fact, having acknowledged my own failures, weaknesses, and need for Jesus, I likely am one of “those” evangelicals on certain days.)

When meeting people, I explain that my wife and I went to live in a mountainous village in Nicaragua—without water or power or transportation—to figure out what Jesus meant when he said, “Blessed are the poor.” We lived there for a year and tried to help. We taught English in China for two years. We got additional degrees in international economic development. We directed a pilot microfinance project in South Africa and taught local church leaders about leadership, intercultural communication, and development.

I am compelled to tell people all this, as it opens a space of respect from the most skeptical people I talk with: “If you’ve done that, you’re probably not ‘reactionary, myopic, anti-intellectual, and immoral.’” I’m one of your “tens of millions of (evangelicals) who have actually become increasingly engaged in issues of global poverty and justice.” You write of John Stott, to whom I’m connected through my work with InterVarsity and Urbana.

We evangelicals give money to some projects that resonate with you. We sacrifice to make good things happen. We “go to the front lines, at home or abroad, in the battles against hunger, malaria, prison rape, obstetric fistula, human trafficking or genocide…some of the bravest people you meet are evangelical Christians (or conservative Catholics, similar in many ways) who truly live their faith.” It’s immensely encouraging to hear from such a public figure that I deeply respect that this has not gone unnoticed. Thank you.

But I’m writing because of the end of your piece:

“Because religious people and secular people alike do fantastic work on humanitarian issues — but they often don’t work together because of mutual suspicions. If we could bridge this ‘God gulf,’ we would make far more progress on the world’s ills.”

Yes, we would. I’m hearing and having conversations daily with people who note the shift in the past fifteen years in the evangelical churches—justice is on the agenda that God has set for himself and therefore for us. More and more of us are seeing our faith to include working on justice issues like you mention. And a lot of us are thrilled to work together with secular people on the issues mentioned above (and others). And like you, we are “sickened” when we are mocked or sidelined because of our faith.

However, we are bound and compelled by our ancient text. We know that some parts are anachronistic, and (truth be told) we might prefer to excise some bits. But our integrity demands that we be obedient to the God of the Bible.

And here’s the rub—Jesus is our king, not all our orthodox doctrines are politically correct, and yes, we want you to believe in and follow Jesus, too. The living God who we have met and know calls us to do the good that you admire and also work toward. But this same Lord calls us to proclaim the truth we have in our ancient text. This is not because we’re mean or bigoted. Rather, that is the logical result of concluding the Bible actually is true and that, crazy though it seems, we believe Jesus was dead and raised to pay a punishment that we will pay if we do not accept his sacrificial love. We need to be able to talk openly about our worldview, even as we collaborate with you on justice efforts. But we promise to listen to yours, too.

If secular people doing good work can be tolerant with our attempts to be faithful to our King, I’m sure the collaboration we both love will increase. The “God gap” will not disappear, but if we can have open and caring dialog, we will be able to do more that both helps others (and honors our God).

Grace, peace, and joy to you,

Adam Jeske

No one doubts the prevalence and therefore the importance of social media generally and also particularly in college culture. A few of my notes, observations, and questions from the World Assembly of the IFES:

1. Data Dangers. Some people are deeply concerned about the security of our data, especially how it’s used by governments and corporations. While most nod a bit, we mostly scoff. In a generation, we may herald their prophetic attempts to get us to see what’s happening.

2. That’s a problem. Social media (@jamesdoc on Twitter called it “immersive media”) can be problematic for some people. It may be that someone has an addictive personality, as one person I chatted with mentioned. Or it may be that such a medium can release internal and social sin in a way that is unique in human history. Or maybe there’s nothing new under the sun.

3. Some students are well ahead of older leaders in their media savvy, management of different relationships and spheres (or acceptance of the impossibility of doing so), and theology of socially mediated relationships. One student pointed out how many more relationships one can begin and even maintain well with Facebook.

4. Social media permit us to put out soft and intriguing invitations to dialog, through quotes, observations, links, and the like. The “weak links” of social media are wide (and yes, often shallow), but they can lead to significant conversations both online and face-to-face.

5. With Skype, Apple FaceTime, and Google+ Hangouts, what does “face-to-face” mean anymore? There’s general agreement that there is great value in actually being in the same physical space, but why exactly? People have flown in from 130 countries for this conference. What is it about being together that makes it worth such a significant investment? Further, we have commented dozens of times how amazing it is to sit with biblical texts in the middle of ten people from ten countries here at the World Assembly, hearing different perspectives brought to bear on it (and being born by it). We can do this every week online if we so choose. That didn’t exist at the last World Assembly in 2007.

6. “We have lost control. And that is good.” @Andy_Shudall said this during his presentation, explaining that it is no longer possible to moderate—let alone manage—any large, long discussion online. The question was raised, with concern, of starting students in discussion online and then not being able to be there, with the result being wrong answers given, hurtful things said, and (in this case) the Bible being misquoted. I found myself explaining the two options in this scenario. First, you don’t facilitate it and make it happen. It either occurs elsewhere and you may not even know about it, or it doesn’t happen at all and you can’t ever deal with whatever would have surfaced. Second, you facilitate it and deal with all the wonkiness that arises. The latter is preferable for the student ministry that IFES does.

7. It’s not so different. Several times in the social media sessions, we found ourselves talking about new scenarios and saying, “But hold on—how is that different than this analog situation?” For example, the conversations and the lack of control is no different than those had after an event by students as they walk back to their dorms and apartments. Technology gives us an illusion and expectation of control, and it scares some people to release that.

8. We value being together more. Andy Moore, acting head of communications for IFES (@lovingmercy on Twitter), opened the plenary session on new media by having us turn to our neighbors and acknowledge how good it is to really be together. By having socially-mediated relationships, the contrast of our incarnate friendships makes us cherish the latter, perhaps.

9. Nothing is private anymore. And maybe that’s a good thing. Someone raised a question about online deception and false identity. I suggested that it’s actually harder to deceive others on Facebook than real life, given the interconnection evident through that medium. (Andy Moore recommended the movie Catfish.)

10. The potential needs our attention. While concerns and questions arose in abundance, I really wanted more careful thought and discussion of the potential of social media in the work of the IFES. Who are our best thinkers on relating well to people on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the rest? What are the bleeding edge students trying and is it working? How do we share insights between Brasil (Portuguese), Hong Kong (Cantonese), and the South Pacific (several languages)?

It’s here and we’re going to be surfing for a while, just barely staying up on an unstable but exciting platform.

Technorati: A69Q8K63BMJA

In Krakow, Poland!

I am small.

But I serve the staff members of InterVarsity/USA who train and develop 35,000 US college students each year. These students learn who Jesus was, what he did, what it means for us, how to share that with others, and how to engage positively with every sector of society. And they send up doing great things in education, business, politics, media, families, the Church, and elsewhere.

But we are small potatoes compared to the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES). The IFES is a group of movements similar to InterVarsity. Based in Oxford, IFES movements serve in all but 16 countries of the world (and that number is decreasing). Between all the sister movements (including InterVarsity in  the US), we serve half a million students, 500,000.

When you consider the global population of six billion (six thousand million, folks), half a million doesn’t sound all that grand. But the 500,000 young leaders that are serving together to offer good news to their fellow students graduate and head out, just like InterVarsity students in the US.

They lead families.

They lead businesses.

They lead universities.

They lead churches.

They lead neighborhoods.

They lead countries.

They lead.

And they lead in the style and model of Jesus, as servants, to increase human flourishing, justice, grace, truth, love, beauty, and joy.

I am en route to the World Assembly of this International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. While I’ve lived and served in Nicaragua, China, and South Africa, my exposure to the IFES is very limited. For the next 10 days, I’ll be hearing stories of these 500,000 students and those that have gone before them, from all around the Earth.

I am small. But I’m happy to be part of something big.

Stay tuned.

Campus Crusade for Christ is dead. Long live Cru!

Or so went the thinking this week, as the organization unveiled their new name that will take effect in 2012.

It’s been a bumpy ride—there have been over 1500 comments on their site (they’ve edited them down) and another 500 on Facebook, including a flurry of threats from donors to pull their funds. Plus, inflammatory media headlines have fanned the flames of fiery discourse. The VP who led the renaming process was interviewed today because of the controversy.

What can we learn from the process, all this hubbub?

1. Input, listening, and buy-in are extremely important. They generated 1600 options for names. They paid top-shelf consultants. They prayed. They surveyed their staff. Names carry personal identification, so messing with them is nothing to trifle with.
2. You can’t satisfy everyone. Despite a very careful process over the course of two years, there’s still a lot of resentment and outrage, despite careful explanations of why they’ve done what they’ve done and that their purposes have not changed.
3. Lots of people don’t understand how to communicate. I was very surprised to see outrage over the change. Cru did their homework and knew that their name was an impediment to the conversations about Jesus they wanted to have and the work they aim to do. The result of their name change will be more of the same work they’ve always done, as it allows more conversations to happen. The first rule of good communications is to know your audience. For Christians, the biblical concept from Paul being all things to all people applies.
4. You need to allow the discussion to happen. Cru has had hundreds of negative comments on their site. They know it’s better to have them there than somewhere else. They are showing themselves to be open, listening, and responsive to all perspectives, even the vitriolic.
5. Controversy can be good. Brian Barela posted today on how their work is not changing and the name change is opening significant interactions with all kinds of people, and more discussion about our dearest values is rarely a bad thing.
6. You need to keep perspective. Given the 25,000 staff that Cru has worldwide, and the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of donors, the number of very squeaky wheels amongst the couple of thousand comments is actually very small. They’re noisy but they are definitely not the majority. People who are upset scream a lot louder than those who are happy.
7. You do what you gotta do. It’s untenable to have “crusade” in an organizational name in this millennium. The organization’s ministry  has expanded (drifted?) from “campus.” So there needed to be a major change. A lot of the frustration and outrage stems from the name not having “Christ” in it. But I know that the people involved are not ashamed of Jesus or their faith, but sensed the best name to accomplish their work as being Cru.

So that’s what it’s called. What are you learning this week?

I need input.

I work in leading communications for InterVarsity, trying to find efficient ways to make good things happen. Sometimes we hit it. Sometimes we whiff.

But in order to have good ideas and to think at my best, I need to be challenged. My colleagues are great. But an occasional deluge of diverse perspectives can kickstart my juices, give me energy, show me shortcuts to answers, and bring clarity to some murky messes.

One month from today, on August 11-12, the Willow Creek Association will host the Global Leadership Summit (GLS), drawing together speakers from within the Church and beyond, with an audience of 7,000 leaders on-site in Chicago and thousands more at satellite locations. Last year, Fast Company ran a story about the GLS. This year, platform speakers include Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, education reformer Michelle Rhee, author/pastor/”cultural architect” Erwin McManus, and author/ business guru Seth Godin. I’ll join five other official bloggers for the event, and I’ll be in Chicago rather than at a satellite location.

But I’m not most excited about the big names on stage.

I’m more stoked to spend two days in the hall, at the dinner table, at the sink in the bathroom, in the lobby of the hotel, and over morning coffee with other leaders and thinkers. These talks unearth commonalities, complimentary skills and experiences, laughs, napkin scribbles, and enough ideas to work on for the next year.

I need input.

And I’m going to share it with you all right here.

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.

I got to speak on campus last week, telling the story of my faith journey around the world. If you’ve ever wondered what makes Adam tick, you need to listen to this. You also have the rare opportunity to hear me swear.  Adam Jeske Speaking at the UW-Whitewater InterVarsity Chapter on April 14, 2011