"I greatly dislike Campus Crusade for Christ, and unfortunately my
sister’s experience with them was no better than my own freshman year.
Besides being in-your-face obnoxious and a bit too extreme...they are absolutely
failing in their representation of Christians." --from a blog post I found through my google alerts
ouch.
This person has taken the time to blog their experience. How would you respond if they were from your campus or this was your ministry they were talking about?
I can only see more of this happening in the future as more and more students use blogs or facebook notes to communicate their experiences.
I see posts such as these as great opportunities to extend and shape conversations that previously were impossible to have offline.
How have you engaged the issue of online transparency?
How much of your ministry is in the public view online and to what level are you engaging those who are talking about you or your ministry, both positively and negatively?
photo courtesy of flickr
Keith Davy in relation to evangelistic practices blogged about "Bait & Switch"
Matt McComas blogs a review of the book Derailed outlining some key characteristics that cause leaders to derail.
Keith Seabourn highlights some amazing stories of social media at work.
Steve Lutz wrote an honest post about the realities of support raising which generated a robust discussion.
have you found any great posts recently?
photo courtesy of valerianasolaris
Five Ways to Fail was one of my favorite panels during the Web 2.0 conference in New York.
The panel emphasized how significant risk and failure are to not only one's development as an entrepreneur, but also to starting a business or endeavor.
Ben Huh listed 5 "fails" :
1. Failing to try new methods, techniques, and/or strategies and expecting results to change.
2. Assuming you know everything there is to know/failing to consult with other people. This is often evidenced by a failure to test the strategy or tool with people who would actually use it.
3. Failing to love those who love you; in other words focusing on those who dislike your idea/tool/strategy and spending energy on them instead of those who appreciate/value what you're doing. **I loved this one; since campus ministry is often so personal, it's tempting for me to spend my time on "haters."
4. Failing to add diversity; the panel affirmed that when they were on teams that all thought the same, their product often suffered. One panelist also noted that a diverse team often slows the development process down in a good way, forcing the team to use metrics to make decisions rather than opinions.
5. Failing to get back up after a failure; although this one was the most cliche, the reality of this was affirmed by every single panelist. I personally have grown in this the most the last couple years; and have been grateful that I didn't give up on pursuing some "side" projects that have now turned into my full-time job.
Photo courtesy of Huh's famous "Fail Blog"
"The IDF is deliberately understaffed at senior levels. It means that
there are fewer senior officers to issue commands," says Edward
Luttwak, a military historian.
This comes from a recent Newsweek article on the Israeli military culture and its uncanny ability to foster innovative and entrepreneurial leaders.
Here's my favorite sentence from the article:
"Fewer senior officials means more individual initiative at the lower ranks."
What if leaders at every level of Campus Crusade intentionally became dumber and allowed space for greater initiative with those below? The most common response I have heard from staff who have failed to take initiative in a critical area of ministry---"I'm not trained/experienced in ________"
I would love to see the expert culture break down and sincerely hold those below us accountable for iteration, trial and error, and guerilla/bootstrap methods.
One more gem:
"Israeli soldiers are not defined by rank; they are defined by what they are good at."
The proof of the IDF's methods is in the people it produces--successful entrepreneurs who frequently come up with innovative and creative solutions to problems that have long gone unsolved.
Have you solved a problem creatively in the last three months?
Do you remember the days when decisions were made by a minority of people? When "brainstorming" times were a half-hearted attempt to involve your "team" in the process even though you or someone else had made the decision long before?
Maybe that's the present :) if so I'm sorry.
Hopefully that's the past.
I believe your ministry's future can be more innovative, vibrant and effective by becoming less of a wall and more of a sponge.
"The first thing you would design for is handles (profiles) the user
can invest in"--Clay Shirky, from A Group is Its Own Worst Enemy
Shirky talks about online communities but this design principle applies to building movements. He says a group that lacks a meaningful identity will not last. I wonder how many movements either wither or never get off the ground because the "ideal profile" is not worth investing in.
The "ideal profile" in a Campus Crusade movement is that of the student leader. Some ways a student leader can be "unideal"
Although there are many student leader qualities this one is really the only one that I have seen matter. I see a direct relationship between the quantity and quality of evangelism amongst the student leaders and the health of the overall movement.
Shirky goes on to say this:
"Three, you need barriers to participation... You have to have some cost to either join or participate, if not at the lowest level, then at higher levels. There needs to be some kind of segmentation of capabilities."
If I were to start a movement I would have only one cost to join (for believers):
You do not have to be "good" or "gifted" in evangelism; you do not even have to say anything (assuming you can go with a partner. I have been amazed at how many people this one requirement weeds out (in a good way).
If you had to pick one requirement for your "ideal profile" what would it be?
photo courtesy of danielygo
"If you are voice centric the Droid already is better than the iPhone" --Robert Scoble from a recent blog post
In one glance I realized why the iPhone is not just a cool device but an expression of a new value system--one that focuses more on pull communication than push.
If Scoble is not voice-centric then what is he?
"I’m web and Twitter centric," he goes on to say.
Wow.
So many people tell me that Verizon has better coverage. Honestly I do not care. I do not like talking on the phone in the first place, so people are actually persuading me to keep my iPhone rather than switch when they say this to me.
I do not think that the value of face to face or even personal interaction (like a phone call) will decrease. I do think that more and more people (millenials and below) will make a decision about their technology based more on what they can PULL IN over what they can PUSH OUT.
My three most used apps on my iPhone:
My next three most used apps:
The phone app would come after that. 7th in terms of time spent.
Anyone else out there value pull over push?
photo courtesy of markybon
