Early adopters

I was an early adopter for the first time that I know of recently.

I learned something, I think, about early adopters.

They aren't early adopters because of what they will know that others won't.

They are early adopters to find out what the technology can't do.

And, based on my first foray into early adopting, we do it with technology we are confident will grow and develop in a positive direction and take us with it.

I'm not sure if my ministry does that with or for early adopters.

I probably play too much to that nameless, faceless middle of the bell curve. I want everybody to know how much I can do. The fastest way to the easy and right answers.

And I worry abut the laggards. I want everybody to love me.

And not much is happening.

Let me think about who my potential early adopters might be and how I might attract them by showing them what I can't do and then we can work together to learn about it.

Then maybe some stuff will happen.

Turtles in the road

I came across a turtle in the middle of the road. It was along a stretch of road where I had recently seen a magnificent (scary, but magnificent) alligator turtle smashed to bits. It seemed like such a loss to creation that this turtle with this beautiful shell and destined to move so slowly across a busy road might meet the same fate as the smashed up alligator turtle. So I checked the traffic and picked up the turtle and moved him across the road in the direction as best I could tell he was trying to go.

Just, you know, subduing a little bit.

Do you think mission work could be more like that? Innately trying to help people in their struggle to live without recompense or expecting really anything too much to happen on any real scale, much less an eternal one.

Can we leave more to ourselves what God created us to be and leave more to God what is his?

That's what I felt like was happening with the turtle and me.

I wonder if there is a discipleship app for that.

More why, less what

In his TED talk, Simon Sinek proposes that the number one reason people will buy stuff from you is not what you offer, but why. He uses Apple Computers as an example. The Apple Sales pitch isn't:

"We make great computers. They're beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. Want to buy one?"

He says, but rather something more like this:

"Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. We just happen to make great computers. Want to buy one?"

Sinek refers to the Golden Circle as the simple, seemingly secret to spreading ideas and sharing stories.

What comprises the Golden Circle?

Why?
Your purpose, your cause, why should anyone care about what your organization does?

How?
Find an organization to work or volunteer for that we think will do what we want to do.

What?
All the stuff, the events, we do.

Do you suppose that works for us as well?

Ever think about why you expect people to show up to your event or to follow your movement or join your cause?

A) "We're the big church on the corner. We have lots going on. You should come and help us!"

What if we go to the Golden Circle.

We probably have the how handled. The what seems to take care of itself. We can all put events on the calendar like nobody's business.

The why, though.

Do we really understand it?

I'm not sure I can even articulate why I do what I do, or want to do, much less understand why the organization I work for does what it does.

But,

B) "Everything we do, we do to reconcile people to God. We seek together to find ways to honor our physical needs and our abilities and capacities to find ways to meet and express them. We honor community and living our faith and answering our call to be the people of God together by studying together, eating together, and playing together. We offer our abilities and our limitations together by working on service projects so that we can live in the Way God's people have been living for thousands of years. We realize there is a person created in God's image within everyone of us and we struggle together to find that connection to God and to our true selves that has eluded us since almost the very beginning through worship and through building small groups and communities. Want to join us in the journey?"

A or B?

Which one attracted me to the movement?

Why do you ask?

How did that get in there?

I walked into my closet several weeks ago and was surprised--startled actually--to see a graduation robe hanging with my clothes. I wasn't sure why it was there instead of in my high school senior daughter's closet where it belonged, but I didn't say anything. I knew there was some good reason for it.

It didn't take long for me to decide at the time that when my daughter wore it for graduation that in a way it would be my graduation too. And then on to the fact that today will be commencement for so many other people as well.

When you are a graduating senior and you feel like something is coming to an end as you sit in the college field house with the other graduates and then you hear the valedictorian or the key note speaker remind you that this is a beginning not an end: it sounds reasonable.

28 years later when you are looking at your daughter's graduation robe in your closet, it is not quite so easy to think that this is a beginning rather than an end. But surely it represents the beginning of lots of things.

It represents the beginning for the time the math tutor spent with her when she was in fifth grade and more than math she learned how to believe in herself and what she can do.

The sixth grader she spent "tutoring" in math a couple of years ago (even though she herself still isn't strong in math) will be marching today along with her.

It's the beginning of the idea her mom taught her that can't is a bad word and "we don't say that."

The young mom who befriended her at vacation bible school and treated her like a peer instead of a youth helper will be marching today as well as the moms and dads who hired her to baby sit their children and fell in love with her like their children fell in love with her.

The owner of the small business who gave her a part time job will march even though the lesson he unwittingly taught her was to not work for someone who doesn't treat you with respect.

The youth minister whose picture was her computer screen saver for a brief time after he helped her through a difficult transition in her life will begin today.

The church facility staff member who kept asking you about how that girl was doing when she knew her heart was broken after having to relocate in her 7th grade year will have that conferred today.

Today, decisions to be the parent not a friend and give them safe space to fail and Jesus came to show us how to live and love and google it and allowances and time out and I'm proud of you and call me when you get there and I love you and I still love you and I'll love you no matter what begin.

It's hard to imagine that the next ministry team meeting that I slog into or the next mission event that I summon up my strength to "make an appearance at" or the next dinner I choke down with a smile while I hear about my table mate's cataract surgery might actually hang in someone's closet or even march down the aisle one day.

But you never know.

Today, here's to the people who with Pomp and Circumstance seemingly distantly playing in the backgrounds of their lives, live to march and commence and begin in the lives of those they touch in everything they do.

your creative pool

A young long bearded, hard rocking, guitar playing, all out hilarious friend told me recently about how excited he was to attend an upcoming event.

What event I asked.

I'm taking my mom to...

the opera.

pause.

The opera. You're going to the opera?

I never put opera and this man together in the same thought.

Well, I love it because it replenishes my creative pool.

It's a different art form than the one I work in, so I can see if and dig it from a whole different perspective.

I was really stunned and inspired.

To get to understand my art form and to find things outside of my art form that can replenish my creative pool.

Adobe Photoshop Elements, Google Groups, I movie, Blogger, Pandora, Coffee with my leadership coach, Lauds, silent breakfast and conversation with my buddy's spiritual director, the Cobb Symphony Orchestra Chorus, the music of Gabriel Faure, the music they play on NPR when they're not talking, Facebook, making lunch for my daughter, taking a friend to get his spare set of keys after he locked his keys in his truck, loose leaf tea, crocs, i-pad.

I'm not sure which ones are the art I work in and which ones replenish my creative pool (which has for the longest time been at drought levels, but seems to at times, because of the people who love me, now be at flood stage).

But I guess right now, I'm just glad to know I have things like art forms I work in and a creative pool and that I can replenish it.

Much love to the inspirers and the artists within each of us.

Who do your memories belong to?

Alzheimer's disease is considered one of the most dread diseases of all time recently overtaking cancer in a recent poll that I just made up. Anyway, it's a frightening disease. Losing memories is scary. They are the one thing we can feel we can actually control in this day and age and nobody wants to come to terms with the fact that we don't even have that.

Something we can do to take the sting away of having to one day lose that fleeting sense of dignity is to go ahead and start giving our memories away.

If we give them away now, what do we have to be afraid of losing?

Do you hold on closely to your memories?

I'm finding it has to do with wanting to dictate the significance of the things we do together. We have an innate drive it would seem to basically make things "all about me".

I make up preposterous notions about my stuff and what's important not just to me but to you.

And if I don't make some changes pronto. My Alzheimer's years are going to be terrifying.

But with the patience and kindness of a few people who love me (who knows why, really) I'm starting to believe that I can give more and more of my memories away. And then together, we can start to look on the sides of our collective refrigerators and smile a knowing smile and not be so afraid of losing things that aren't really ours anymore.

Power for the new world of ___________________

If you provided power for the new world of what you do, what would that be: the new world?

I ask because I visited a business that claims to be about power for the new world of work.

I was intrigued because I'm interested in what the new world of work is.

I would think that the new world of work has to do with online collaboration.

I'm trying to learn about tools like google groups, base camp, central desktop, ning, and I figured maybe this would be the place to learn about them.

But I learned that the power for the new world of work (according to the organization that claims to provide power for the new world of work) is really about signs, brochures, business cards and mailbox rental.

I was kind of disappointed. I think of those things as what powered the old world of work.

So: what is the power for the new world of ministry?

I think it has something to do with finding out what people want to do and figure out how that fits into what God seems to want to do (as best as we can tell). It's up to us, then, to bring those two together.

But, maybe, the new world of ministry is really just the old world of ministry: trying to get people to do the things we want them to do.

The past of ministry.

Being able to power the new world of work or the new world of ministry has to do with keeping the past of work or the past of ministry in the past. And not keeping the past in the future.

Is there a future in that?