• Keep it simple

    Discipleship – One of the most straight-forward concepts in Christianity. Instead of keeping it simple we turn it into a complicated mess. How hard is it? A person comes to you and wants to grow in their relationship with Jesus. Cool, tell them to find a Bible, read the book of John, and lets meet in 3 days. In the process of trying to make it easy (with a process) we make it hard.

    Bible study – Another straight-forward concept. To lead a Bible study you need a couple of people, a Bible, and maybe a notebook. Pick a starting point, any starting point, read a section and ask the text… who, what, how, when, where, and why? In the process of trying to make it easy (with tools) we make it hard.

    Community – We are hard-wired to form community in our DNA. It couldn’t get more simple than following your instincts. Share life with some friends, be open to making new friends, and take care of one anothers needs. The only thing hard about it should be the relational stuff. You don’t need a pastor to teach you how to do this, or a program at church, or anything else. You just need to do it.

    Sometimes I wonder why we make things so dang complicated?

    I know one reason: Making simple things complicated keeps people busy/employed/powerful/empowered.

    When in doubt– keep it simple. 

  • Radically Local

    Photo by Doc Searls via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    I don’t drive my car very often.

    We are a one car family and I choose to take the trolley to work most days. I’ve learned to love the slowness of riding my bike and taking public transportation.

    When I do drive it tends to be with the five of us crammed into our Passat. A fun and usually noisy experience that I’ve learned to adore.

    But, the other day was different and found myself in the car alone. And I did something even more rare… I turned on the radio and surfed some channels.

    I found a local station that just plays local bands. Their commericals said something like this, “Sure, we could be like everyone else and copycat the LA stations. But we’re local. We’re San Diego. We favor local music over commercial hits.”

    It was cool. Fresh even. And something deep in me resonated with the knowledge that I was hearing music on the radio you wouldn’t hear on the radio anywhere else.

    Radically Local

    All of this is a movement towards local. Farmers markets have become popular across the country– a celebration of locally grown foods. Food trucks are all the rage– cooking up local eats in a way that is both local and mobile. Local food chains are a growing market. Local festivals are as strong as ever.

    In the past 3-4 years people have grown a taste for all things local. And increasingly people are radically local and radically loyal to locals.

    It is a pendulum swing against the rapid nationalization of the past decade. You could get a Chicago style pizza in LA. You could get buttered grits in Seattle. You could get a Krispie Kreme donut at any gas station in North America.

    And for a time I think people thought that was novel and cool. But people tired of this trend quickly. It was awesome that in the same restaurant they could chose between a Texas steak, a Pad Thai, or Kansas rub BBQ ribs until they woke up to the realization that while novel, it wasn’t authentic. People began to realize that convenience was coming at the cost of destroying what made their community interesting.

    And the pendulum has swung the other way.

    People’s preference now shifting towards local. And people are getting radical about local. It starts with food and music. But it won’t stop there.

    God’s call to become radically local

    I have an assumption that God is smarter than I am. He isn’t surprised by the street I live on or who my neighbors are. I’d like to think that God has you right where He wants you for His purposes. When Jesus was asked what the Greatest Commandment was Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.”

    We aren’t called to hide from our neighbors. Or pretend they don’t exist. Or justify that since our neighbors are weird or jerks or old or drunks that they aren’t the neighbors we are supposed to love.

    That’s radically local. It’s too easy to focus on what we do at church or what we do when we are leading teams or what we do when people notice or even what we do to serve the greater community as “loving our neighbors.”

    Loving your neighbor is often private, small, and even simple.

    Simple, minor, radical local— love.

  • All Culture is God’s Culture

    See Nicholas Kristof’s post at his New York Times blog which spurred on these thoughts, John Stott and Christian Evangelicals.

    Feedback? If what I’m saying is true, how would this impact how you do ministry in and through your church?

  • Today’s harvest

    20110731-103727.jpg
    This is what we are getting daily in mid-July. Too bad we lost our beans earlier this summer.

  • How do you like them tomatoes?

    20110730-090236.jpg

    We are getting about 25-30 red tomatoes this size per week right now. This has Kristen making lots of bruchetta and salads and anything else with tomatoes. We love it!

  • Adam’s 5 Rules for People I Do Life With

    Doug Fields recently posted this picture after his trip Kenya, to visit his son Cody, who took some time off from college to serve in a ministry there.

    These are the rules of some street kids who self-govern their community.

    Doug closed the post by asking, “What guidelines would best enhance your closest relationships?”

    I chewed on that question for a whole day. I could quickly come up with 1-2 but 5 just weren’t coming together. During this mornings jog I finally settled on these 5.

    Adam’s 5 Rules for People I Do Life With

    1. Tell each other the honest truth – We all have enough people in our lives who blow smoke.
    2. Show up – In one another lives, in our prayers, and in our home.
    3. God’s Word is true – It’s radical, scary, and comforting. But most importantly it’s true.
    4. You’ve got to listen – We will make space to hear you, really hear you.
    5. Call each other out – Real friends help each other grow.

    What are yours?

  • The Power of Poop

    Working together, we firmly believe that reinventing a long-lasting, safe, and sustainable answer to the world’s sanitation needs is not just necessary, but within reach.

    Sylvia Matthew Burwell, President of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [link]

    Re-thinking poop. Turning poop into power and fertilizer. Turning waste into opportunity.

    I like it.

    A lot.

    Safe to make a guess for where the genesis of this idea happened, right?

    Most of us never thought of the toilet as a place for innovation to occur. Something so simple that could make such a huge difference to the plumbing-less. Who knows? Maybe that technology will flow back to the States in a decade or two?

    Kudos to the Gates Foundation. It’s a great idea that I think could make a huge impact on world health.

    What’s the lesson for us? How we got here is not how we get out of here. 

    ht to Fast Company

  • How we got here is not how we get out of here

    In 1995, I got a job running some machinery on nights and weekends for a large health care company. I was a college student and it was a perfect job for me.

    • It was boring and I could do my homework. 
    • I had free reign to the 29th floor of a Chicago skyscraper until 6:00 AM. 
    • It paid $15.00 per hour, as many hours as I wanted to work.

    The people who trained me were meticulous is telling me “this is how things are done.” In truth, their system took a fairly simple task and made it really complicated. They spent most of their day waiting for something to load onto the computer or setting up the machinery.

    And when I’d point out that if you did things in a different order, the whole process ran a lot faster, I was sharply told, “Don’t mess with the order. This is how we were trained to do it. This is how things are done.”

    And I did. Until they left. And then I did things my own way.

    This went on for months. The day staff would do 10% of the work and in 5-6 hours I’d come in and knock out the other 90% using my own techniques. And the day staff started to hate me. They’d leave me “encouraging notes” all the time about how I was making them look bad.

    One night, about 10 o’clock, the door of my room swung open unexpectedly. I was blasting the Newsboys, reading Hodge’s Systematic Theology, and the machine was running like a champ even though I was barely looking at it. To my horror I had missed that my bosses, bosses, bosses, boss– the VP of the department– had stayed really late to work. As she had heard my music and wanted to say goodbye before she left.

    I stood up suddenly, convinced I was about to be fired for breaking like 6 rules.

    “Adam, I want to ask you some questions!” Crap. Dangit. How did I let this happen?

    It turns out that she had actually left at five and come back just to see me. She explained to me that she heard in a meeting that I was somehow doing more, cheaper, and faster than other employees who had 10 years experience on me. And no one knew why… so she had come to figure it out.

    By the time I was done explaining my process to her she had two questions for me:

    1. Could I teach other people how to do this?
    2. How soon could I start as the supervisor of that area?
    That’s when I learned that “this is how things are done” wasn’t going to work for me as an adult.

    “This is how things are done.“

    As an idea guy, there are rarely more offensive words spoken.

    In my mind, there are lots of ways to do everything and the way that you’ve always done them has lead you to the results that you know. So, if you have the absolute best results/product/organization on the planet, and it can’t possibly get any better than it is, yes… I suppose this is how you do it.

    But for everything else– This is how you do it to get the results you already have. 

    • This is our service order
    • This is our product cycle
    • This is our traditional calendar
    • This is our fundraiser
    • On and on

    “This is how things are done” is fools gold. Because of the law of diminishing returns, “this is how things are done” will only lead you into doing less, earning less, and reaching less– instead of more.

    What’s interesting about being around people who believe in this? They think that it leads to greater efficiency and better results. And when results aren’t what they’d hoped they would be it’s not the system that is broken, it’s that you didn’t do things the right way, in the right order, or with the right people.

    You see, “this is how we do things” works. At least it does for  them. “This is how things are done” is comfortable, predictable, and easy.

    But as a long-term strategy? It only leads to failure. Long term, systemic failure.

    Sadly, because the law of diminishing returns is gradual you don’t even recognize that your systems are, like the frog in the pot, killing you.

    Until one day you wake up and realize:

    • My church is way smaller than it used to be even though we’re working harder.
    • Kids aren’t coming to my retreats anymore even though I’m promoting it like crazy.
    • I’m selling fewer cars than I need to in order to survive and prices have never been better.
    • I’m making far fewer widgets than I need to be in order to make a profit.
    • I can’t make payroll, much less a profit.

    What’s the solution?

    Start some new mantras. “How can we do more with less?”

    Create a culture that rewards soft innovation.

    Ask your frontline workers.

    Reward your frontliners and they’ll keep you on the bleeding edge.

    REVOLT: The systems that got you here will not be the systems that lead you where you want to go.

  • David’s Secret Weapon

    This makes me giggle.

    You can vote for this to become a t-shirt at Threadless.

    ht to Likecool

     

  • Consistency

    It’s been a few months now. Three or four days per week I climb out of bed a little earlier, put on my fancy running shoes, grab the leash, and go jogging with Stoney. (Our 8 year old yellow lab)

    The first month or so was mostly trotting, gasping for air, and just trying to make it around the route without puking. Literally, I pushed myself too hard one morning and had to stop and sit in the grass because I almost lost it. Another morning I pushed myself too far and came home and dry heaved.

    It hasn’t been pretty. It still isn’t pretty. And it will still be a long time until it is pretty. (If it ever gets pretty.)

    The goal was never really weight loss. It’s always been to feel better. I didn’t like climbing 3 flights of stairs and being out of breath. Or feeling too tired to want to play at the park with my kids.

    But weight loss has been part of the process, and part of the process I like. I suppose I’ve lost a few pounds. But I have a lot more to lose before I’m willing to brag about it.

    No Short Cuts. No Yo Yo’s.

    One of the weird things this journey has been the clash of my strategy versus the popular strategies out there.

    People want quick results so they do crazy things. Everyone has a favorite extreme exercise. Or a diet. Or a killer chemical combo. Those are all short-term methods that they use to take off 15 pounds quick. (I always wonder what method they use to put it back on?)

    That’s what I’m trying to avoid. I’m trying to focus not on the weight but on the habits that lead my body to feel that way. I don’t need a gym membership or a dietician or anything else but new habits. If I can go for 3-4 jogs per week, 3-4 bike rides, and eat more veggies than cheese, I’ll be just fine.

    I don’t need a short-term fix. I need new habits.

    Ultimately, I want slow and consistent improvement. Heck, I’ll just take slow and consistent without much improvement.

    But a little is nice, too.