Archives For leadership

Repaso: April 12, 2013

April 12, 2013 — Leave a comment

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1. Two global churches
Eastertide is a season of resurrection, of new beginnings, of new life. And as two churches find themselves with new leaders, Timothy Sherratt sees reason for hope:

Both the Roman Catholic Church and the smaller Anglican Communion are global churches. That feature is perhaps an under-appreciated blessing in the Christian community. What it brings into view is the reality of our membership in the Body of Christ. When membership is global, questions of diversity, evangelism and service take shape as present reality, not abstract aspiration. Global neighbors really are neighbors, who read from the same liturgy and share in the body and blood of Christ… Both Pope Francis and Archbishop Welby have, by actions and words, taken a critical stance towards the institutions they now lead. If I read them correctly, their message to the Churches is an Easter message: Institutions matter, but health requires that they be tailored to their mission, taking risks rather than taking refuge.

2. Plumbing the depths
Singer-songwriter Andrew Peterson (@AndrewPeterson) said this about art, work, and community in a recent interview:

Christianity was never meant to be experienced in isolation. It requires community and interaction on an intimate level with human beings. Songwriting or art or work can’t be isolated from any other part of my Christian life—like taking communion. It’s all best experienced in community. And I can’t overstate how much I have been wounded and then healed, how much I’ve experienced God’s pleasure and then God’s discipline, through the community to which I belong. I am not trying to say that you can’t be a great artist and still be a loner; I just don’t want to be one.

3. Socially engaged art
Randy Kennedy writes about an interesting arts and activism trend:

As the commercial art world in America rides a boom unlike any it has ever experienced, another kind of art world growing rapidly in its shadows is beginning to assert itself. And art institutions around the country are grappling with how to bring it within museum walls and make the case that it can be appreciated along with paintings, sculpture and other more tangible works. Known primarily as social practice, its practitioners freely blur the lines among object making, performance, political activism, community organizing, environmentalism and investigative journalism, creating a deeply participatory art that often flourishes outside the gallery and museum system. And in so doing, they push an old question — “Why is it art?” — as close to the breaking point as contemporary art ever has.

4. The right questions
Fieldnotes Magazine shares ten good questions from Max De Pree that leaders should ask:

Leaders have an obligation to ask the right questions on behalf of the organization. One of the advantages of age is that it finally dawns on you that questions are more important than answers. Questions either determine or lead to such things as quality, appropriateness, who should be involved, and what’s right. The leader has a role in initiating and examining and testing questions.

5. Little Man by Little Dragon
Thanks to Tala Strauss (@talastrauss) for tweeting this great video.

[Photo: Roman Catholic devotees hold candles as they line a procession route for an icon of the Virgin Mary outside a Catholic church on Easter Sunday in Quezon City, Philippines on April 7, 2012. (Jay Directo/AFP/Getty Images) via boston.com]

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Repaso: McAllen’s public library; the “evangelical” label; farmers market & tortilla-making bragging rights; following Jesus on Twitter; the power of a community leader

July 13, 2012 — 1 Comment

1. A border town’s impressive public library
I’ll always remember McAllen, Texas as the border town our family crossed into after driving up through Mexico in the summer of ‘95. I was stunned by the wide, smooth highways and the fifty brands of toilet paper in the brightly-lit grocery store. Three months later, on our way back to Guatemala we stopped in McAllen again, and I was struck by what a depressing, run-down place it was. That’s what a summer driving through the U.S. will do to the perspective of a kid who grew up in Latin America. At any rate, McAllen’s Walmart recently closed down, and rather than sitting empty or becoming the home to another generic big box store, the town turned it into the largest single-story library in the country, and it looks amazing.

2. Defending the “evangelical” label
Dr. Rich Mouw, president of Fuller Seminary, discusses why, despite its striking unpopularity in some circles, he insists on using the “evangelical” label to describe himself and what he means by it:

For me evangelical identity points to such things as a firm belief in the supreme authority of the Bible and the unique atoning work of Jesus Christ, as well as to the obligation to work actively in inviting people to enter into a personal relationship with the Savior. And furthermore, it means continuing to plead with others who own the label not to pile onto those important convictions a lot of additional baggage that does not do honor to a label that I continue to love.

3. Farmers market bragging rights
CNN Go ranks the world’s best fresh markets, and the Central Market in Lancaster happily makes the cut at #8:

The United States’ oldest, continuously operated farmer’s market stands in the heart of Amish country in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The historic market has been in operation since the 1730s, and was granted permanent status by King George II in 1742. It remains popular today, and tourists flock here to purchase hand-crafted products and foods made by the local Amish community. While the Pennsylvania Dutch wares might be the biggest draw for out-of-towners, locals appreciate the wide variety of imported goods sold alongside local produce, fresh flowers, just-caught seafood and hearty baked breads.

4. Tortilla-making bragging rights
It’s not every day the New York Times sends a reporter to work on a story about a tortilla-making operation, but lo and behold, the paper recently had an article about Ranch Market, literally just down the street from our apartment in Phoenix. Katie took me there when I was first visiting to try their amazing horchatta, and the place had an instant heart-warming effect. And apparently its tortillas are facilitating world peace:

Tortillas are a Mexican staple of transnational appeal here, bridging divisions carved by Arizona’s tough stance on immigration and reaching far beyond Latin American borders. The factory, at the Ranch Market store on North 16th Street, employs a pair of Iraqi refugees to whom flour tortillas have become a replacement for the flat bread known as khubz. There are also Cubans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans and, of course, Mexicans manning the machines like the rounder, which turns the masa into balls that are then pressed and cooked in 500-degree ovens at a rate of eight dozen disks a minute.

5. Following Jesus on Twitter
RELEVANT has an excerpt from Leonard Sweet’s recent book Viral. Sweet has long chastised Christians who are overly focused on leadership, emphasizing instead that Christians are first of all called to follow, not lead. In this excerpt he argues that Twitter can make us better Jesus-followers:

In Twitter’s ethic of followership, I am constantly reframing reality in ways that are more Jesus—more grace-full, more forgiving, more loving, more humorous—and helping my “followers” to better follow Christ. I am constantly on the prowl for things that could encourage, enrich, inspire. I want my tweeps (people who follow me and whom I follow) either to smile after reading one of my tweets or to shake their heads and sing, “What a Tweep We Have in Jesus.” In my ongoing battle with self-transcendence over self-absorption, Twitter has helped me become more others-focused. The Twitter question of “What are you doing?” has been replaced in my mind with “What is God doing?” and “Where do I see Jesus?” and “What am I paying attention to?” The real question is not “Would Jesus tweet?” but “What would Jesus tweet?”

6. The power of a community leader
While I sympathize with Sweet’s emphasis on followership (and have good reason to be grateful for Twitter as well, by the way), there’s definitely a place for good leadership too. Take John Fetterman. He’s the young, tattooed mayor of Braddock, a small town in western Pennsylvania hit hard by the twin trends of suburbanization and de-industrialization. Originally the home to US Steel, when Fetterman was elected mayor in 2005 — by a margin of a single vote — the town was dying. But his leadership has sparked an inspiring revitalization, captured in this episode of A Day In The Life (HT A View From The Cave). Oh, and his tattoos? On one forearm is a tattoo that reads 15104, Braddock’s zip code. On the other are five dates — representing each of the murders that have occurred in Braddock since he took office.

Repaso is intended as a thought-provoking compilation of news and commentary from the past week related to the intersections of faith, development, justice and peace. As always, I welcome your thoughts on any of the links and ideas in this roundup!

[Photo credit: gawker.com]

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Guest post: David Bronkema on the basis of hope

October 12, 2011 — 1 Comment

Today I’m honored to have a guest post from Dr. David Bronkema, chair of the School of Leadership & Development at Eastern University. I had the privilege of studying under David, and consider him both mentor and friend. Here he reflects on the basis of his hope that Christians of all sorts are waking up to the holistic implications of the gospel.

It is always a treat to return to Honduras.

After having spent five years there in the 1980s, working with a Honduran Christian relief and development organization, the country is near and dear to my heart.  Our Masters in Organizational Leadership in Latin America, with a concentration in International Development, has given me the opportunity to get back there three times over the last year and a half since we launched that program.  Just as we do with our programs out of Africa, we bring students and faculty together, in this case from all over Latin America, for two and a half weeks, delivering the introductions to six courses that will be followed up online for the rest of the year.

Even though a lot has changed in Honduras, the basics remain the same.  The same, familiar “smell” of the country as I walk through the airport terminal.  The breathtaking landscape of steep mountains dotted with pine trees clinging to a bit of thin topsoil, from which subsistence farmers try to eke out a living for their families.  The desperate poverty of the country, traditionally ranked second or third poorest in the Western Hemisphere, after Haiti and Nicaragua.  And, the hope that fills one’s heart in talking, sharing, studying, teaching, learning, and praying with our brothers and sisters from Honduras and the rest of Latin America.

This hope I feel is rooted in the deep commitment of those students, and the students that God sends our way from the United States, Africa, and around the world, to follow His calling in their lives wherever that may take them.   And, for me, it has been bolstered over these last years since I joined Eastern by seeing how the evangelical movement is reawakening to the importance of being obedient in the areas of tackling poverty and working for justice.  “I’m here because I feel like I’ve missed something central to the Gospel,” shared one of our students in Honduras, a leading pastor in the evangelical movement in that country.  This is a sentiment that in the 1980s in Honduras would have led any pastor to have run the risk of being labeled a “liberal” or a “communist” by fellow evangelicals, with their commitment to Christ being serious questioned.

It is a true blessing to be working at Eastern University where we are called to help students work through how to prayerfully combine evangelism and social action.  Unfortunately, holding fast to the centrality of verbally sharing the saving message of Jesus Christ; being obedient to His call to tackle poverty and work for justice; and deepening our relationship with Him and our own processes of becoming more like Him in word, thought, and deed, is not an easy one either at a personal or organizational level.  Christian agencies and organizations fall prey to the secularizing tendencies of the world by going for “easier” sources of funding or a host of other pressures which drive them to drop the proclamation of Jesus as Lord.  They also fall into the temptation of not prayerfully examining the call to go beyond just relief and engage in advocacy and development work.  And, in both cases, keeping the Bible and prayer front and center as the lens through which to inform, critique, and nourish one’s actions tends to fall by the wayside as we struggle to get all things on our plates done quickly.

“How can we not share Jesus Christ?,” asked one of our development students in class recently, trying to make sense of why self-labeled Christian development agencies struggle with this issue. “Why is it even an issue that you would combine both?,” asked a person in one of our Adult Sunday school sessions two weeks ago in the “conservative,” evangelical church of which we are blessed to be a part, and in which a decade ago the “social” aspect would have been absent.

Indeed.  As I listened to our Christian brothers and sisters from the South go around and share about themselves in the classroom in Honduras, I was struck once again by how God works so amazingly in both areas, and the blessing of hearing the testimonies to that effect.  “I come from a family of [more than 10 children]…” shared at least four or five.  “I come from the rural area, from a family that had nothing…” shared at least another as many.  And, here they were, having overcome all kinds of obstacles that most of us can only imagine, in a Masters program, having graduated from college, leading organizations like World Vision and Plan International, pastoring churches and leading the administration of different denominations, and heading up management consulting companies.  And, all driven by the commitment to let people know about Christ, the source of their hope, and to be more effective in their social and spiritual outreach.

The challenges of this world are tough.  As we talked and shared in the classroom in Honduras about how to engage in biblically based development program planning and fundraising, in the rest of the country the legacies of the coup of last year continued to play out.  Torture, assassinations, and disappearances perpetuated by a lethal mix of corrupt government, military, rich businesspeople with their private bands of thugs, and drug traffickers geared towards protecting their own are rapidly becoming the norm, even as the poverty of that country continues to rage on.  The hopelessness, frustration, and fear of my friends involved in politics and business is palpable.

But, as Christians, our hope in Christ is great.  We live in a fallen world, one in which we are called to be yeast.  And, I feel incredibly blessed to be part of a group of students, staff, faculty, alumni, and brothers and sisters all over the world who feel called by Christ to act in this fallen word, prayerfully discerning where God would lead them and building up more and more tools with which to do so effectively and faithfully.

If you’re interested in learning more about Eastern’s international development programs, feel free to ask me or explore the program on Eastern’s site.

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Repaso: Remembering Rich Mullins, FoxNews & Lady Gaga in Lancaster, Jewish-evangelical cooperation, Latin American trends, and more

September 23, 2011 — 2 Comments

Last week’s Repaso was a day late and a little on the light side, but I think I’ve made up for it here. This week, a dizzying array of cool stuff. Ten items, in fact. Please enjoy, and comment with any thoughts.

1. Remembering Rich Mullins
Veteran Christian singer-songwriter Andrew Peterson has a reflection for The Rabbit Room about the late great Rich Mullins, who passed away 14 years ago this week. Rich’s record A Liturgy, A Legacy, and a Raggamuffin Band is in my all-time top five albums. It is sheer magic.

We rounded the bend at sunset and there before us stood those craggy Tetons, all gray stone with white snow tucked into the fissures. The clouds were gold with sunlight and long, misty fingers of rain dangled from them, caressing the peaks and the aspen- and fir-covered shoulders of the range. Who else but Rich Mullins could write music that would adequately suit a scene like that? I demanded the iPod, selected A Liturgy, a Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band, and we drove the next forty-five minutes without speaking. We weren’t speaking because we were being spoken to.

2. Eugene Peterson interview in Leadership Journal
Katie is reading Eugene Peterson’s new memoir The Pastor, and I’m getting more and more excited to read it too with each little excerpt she reads to me. In this interview I was reminded of so many of the reasons I love Peterson. For example, this:

My task as pastor was to show how the Bible got lived. Of course it’s important to show that the Bible is true, but we have theologians and apologists for that. I just accepted the fact it was true and didn’t bother much about that. I needed to be a witness to people in my congregation that everything in the Bible is livable and to try to avoid abstractions about big truths, big doctrines. I wanted to know how these ideas got lived in the immediate circumstances of people’s lives at work, in the town, and in the family. The role of the pastor is to embody the gospel. And of course to get it embodied, which you can only do with individuals, not in the abstract. And so that’s why, for me, a small congregation was so essential. It enabled me to know the people I was preaching to, teaching, and praying with.

3. FoxNews visits Lancaster
If we needed any “fair and balanced” convincing that Lancaster really is a hip destination (if Lady Gaga’s visit didn’t do it for you), here you go! My roommate’s mom even gets a shout-out for good measure.

It’s a Saturday afternoon in the Prince Street Cafe, a coffee-and-sandwich spot in Lancaster, Pa. A couple in their 20s canoodle on a plush leather couch by the fireplace. A 30-something in thick, black-framed glasses punches away on a laptop between bites of a green salad topped with quinoa, and a college-age girl with a brunette pixie doodles in her sketchpad. It comes as a bit of a surprise, then, when you wander upstairs to artist Julia Swartz’s gallery and find a series of portraits depicting local Amish men-straw hats, serious-looking black suits, and all. Here at the Prince Street Cafe, it’s easy to forget you’re in Amish Country.

4. Plastic school in Guatemala
I blogged about this school in Guatemala built using discarded bottles back in April, and this is a cool update from GOOD:

A plastic school might sound like it’s better suited for Barbies than for people, but the technology—developed by the Guatemalan nonprofit Pura Vida—is actually quite clever and allows for schools to be built for less than $10,000. The plastic bottles are stuffed with trash, tucked between supportive chicken wire, and coated in layers of concrete to form walls between the framing. The bottles make up the insulation, while more structurally sound materials like wood posts are used for the framing.

5. A Jewish view on evangelicals
USA Today has an op-ed by Mark I. Pinsky on “the truth” about evangelicals:

If, as Jews, we replace the old caricature of hayseed fundamentalist mobs carrying torches and pitchforks with one of dark conspirators trying to worm their way back into political power at the highest levels, we run the risk of accusing them of doing to others what we are doing to them: demonizing. We didn’t like it when people said we had horns and tails, ate the blood of Christian children and poisoned the wells of Europe with plague, much less conspired to rule the world through our Protocols. “Evangelicals in the main want the same kind of common-sense solutions and moral integrity as other Americans,” [Rev. Joel] Hunter says. “We do not want to use political means for our faith’s advancement; we just want to vote our values and leave it at that.”

6. Entrepreneurs more likely to pray
A few of my friends working at the intersections of business and faith tweeted or shared this story. Interesting findings:

Entrepreneurs behave just like most Americans when it comes to religion — but with one spiritual twist. They’re significantly more likely to pray several times a day or to meditate, says sociologist Kevin Dougherty, a co-author of the Baylor Religion Survey. The survey can’t answer whether prayerful, peaceful folks are more likely to take a business risk or whether the stress of a start-up drives folks to their knees or to the lotus position, Dougherty says.

7. Nicaragua and the Ortega family
One of my favorite places to go for news and commentary on Latin America is the Central American Politics Blog by Mike, a professor at the University of Scranton right here in Pennsylvania. He shared this video from Univision about how Daniel Ortega’s family and the Sandinista party have taken control of the Nicaraguan media, and by extension, have ensured they will be in control after November’s elections and for the foreseeable future.

8. Social networks in Latin America
Stephanie Garlow, who runs GlobalPost’s Latin America blog, has some interesting info on social media popularity in the region:

There’s a whole wide world of social networks out there, and Latin America isn’t missing out on the party.
More than 95 percent of internet users in Latin America now use social networks, up 16 percent from a year ago, according to a study by internet analysts comScore.

9. Jewish support for immigration reform
M. Daniel Carroll R., a Guatemalan-American professor of Old Testament at Denver Seminary and author of the important book Christians at the Border, has a blog post on the increasing participation of the Jewish community in working for immigration reform and their reasons for involvement:

As I have spoken to these Jews about their reasons for joining the “cause,” two primary reasons have been given me. One is that their own history for many centuries as a people has been one of migration and persecution, so it is fitting that they come alongside of other immigrants. Second, they have a long experience with discrimination, caricatures, and hate speech, and they are seeing that phenomena surface now against immigrants. They feel that they cannot defend their own rights if they do not speak out for others, who are experiencing the same thing.

10. Andy Kristian’s micro-finance video
I’m meeting with my friend Andy this morning to discuss a cool project he’s working on. This is some rough (but beautiful!) footage he put together during a recent trip to Northern Uganda. Can’t wait to see the finished product.

Short video on Micro-finance from andy kristian on Vimeo.

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Beyond Charity: Becoming an urban servant (part 5/5)

April 18, 2011 — Leave a comment

There’s a lot more that could be said about John Perkins, this book, and Christian community development in general. As I said at the beginning of the series, this is only scratching the surface. But I’m going to wrap things up for now with Perkins’ thoughts on what it takes to become an urban servant. He emphasizes that Christian change agents are constantly being changed while they seek to change the cycles that keep people poor. If we are to have anything to offer, we need to continually be in a posture to receive what we lack both from God and from others, even (or especially) those we intend to serve. Becoming an urban servant, he says, is a form of conversion. It can be painful, but it’s necessary. Here are five lessons we will need to learn:

1. Learn the importance of trusting relationships with people from the community. As long as we think in terms of insiders and outsiders, any sort of partnership for community development will be very difficult. Trust can only be established over time, and it will require patience, humility, and flexibility especially on the part of the outsiders or transplants, but when relationships are strengthened on the basis of mutual trust and respect, much will be possible.

2. Learn the need to support godly local leadership and to contribute to its further development. If you’re willing to take the time to build trusting relationships, you’ll be well positioned to get out of the way once you’ve done your part with local leaders empowered to carry on the work. If an outsider insists on a long-term hands-on approach, it cripples the potential for local men and women to improve their community for themselves.

3. Learn to use our gifts in a servant role. One of the troubling side effects of the church’s obsession with books and conferences and church classes about leadership, is the idea that real ministry is done by CEO-types, rather than shepherds and servants. Poor inner city neighborhoods don’t need people who have memorized the latest 21 secrets of a highly effective corporate executive. Servants, on the other hand, can always be put to use and are the sorts of leaders urban communities most need.

4. Learn to see the ways the gospel is alive among the poor, taking on forms that seem foreign because of our own limited exposure. Just as prevailing evangelical ministry tools don’t always do much to equip people for the harsh realities of inner cities, the songs we sing and the Scriptures we read tend to take on a whole new meaning when the stakes are raised, as they are for many of the urban poor. We don’t need to throw out our commentaries and podcasts, but we don’t necessarily need to share them with those in inner cities either. They have a lot to teach us about who God is and what Scripture means in the face of deep need.

5. Come as learners of urban society. A final thing we’ll need to learn is to see underdeveloped urban neighborhoods with new eyes, and this is best done by people who genuinely want to get to know a place, its people, its history, its music, its food, its ethos, its joys, and its sorrows.

Fixing inner cities is not our job. Rather, our role is that of a servant. Perkins concludes: “Serving is not a means to an end; service itself is the high, dignified calling to which the gospel aspires and to which men and women captured by the gospel aspire.”

To close out the series, and in the spirit of this final post, I can’t think of a better way to wrap things up than with this (slightly modified) Franciscan benediction, which has come to mean a lot to me and to many over the years:

May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our hearts.

May God bless us with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that we may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war, so that we may reach out, join hands, and together turn pain into joy.

And may God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world, so that by God’s grace and for his glory we can do what others claim cannot be done.

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