• The power of story

    I’m spending the next week on the road for work, capturing stories from youth workers in their context.

    Here’s Ryan’s story.

    I first heard about Ryan’s story last year. We met for lunch and than later at NYWC. I love that his story is just like real life, full of ups and downs. Full of moments of questioning and assurances.

    His story is pretty much the way God rolls. When I spent time with Ryan and Ashley last week I couldn’t help but think… “God has them right where He needs them.”

    In God’s wisdom, He likes it when his people are completely dependent on Him.

  • Plethora

    Plethora is really the only word I have to describe my life right now.

    There are so many things going on, so many amazing opportunities, and so many more things I wish I had time to do. Here’s a glimpse into the madness…

    • NYWC has taken over my work life! Because of the changes we got a late start to planning this year’s convention… but we have a big deadline coming up and every intention of nailing it. So it’s crunch time for the website, the brochure, the video, and a whole lot more. I’m way more involved in all of that than I ever have been.  Which is fantastic and crazy to think about at the same time.
    • PlanetWisdom and the Canadian convention are also about to ramp up their stuff for next year. Yowsers! That’s a lot of websites.
    • I’ve got a couple McLane Creative projects right at the launching point. In the midst of that God is brining me a big vision to expand these side jobs from 1-2 projects per month to 5-6. I have to make a strategic decision about how to either grow or contract this part of my life soon. And that decision is stressing me out.
    • Next week I hit the road. It’s kind of related to NYWC but it’s really a trip where Shawn and I hope to meet-up with and encourage as many youth workers as we can. I’m not a natural detail person. So nailing down all of the meet-up locations, places to sleep, travel plans, and stuff like that has been a bit nutty! We still don’t have a place to sleep in Redding, CA. God… provide!
    • I’m in full-on recruiting mode for the Haiti trip this July. The team will be 20 people and we have 6 confirmed. There are a bunch of folks still praying about it, trying to move dates around, stuff like that. That’s a joy in my life… but there’s a lot of details, too. (We still have room if you are interested.)
    • Kristen and I just booked a beach house for June. Besides a weeks vacation by the ocean, we’ll be hosting a 13th wedding anniversary BBQ and a snarky renewal of vows. It feels good to have a signed contract and deposit in for that. But we still have a ton of planning to do.
    • I’ve got a series of articles to write about social media in ministry. I wish I could do more of this, but I’ve had to say no to some things recently because I’m over-committed.
    • I’m kicking around a book proposal. I’ve had an outline and some starter chapters for a while. I need to decide to go forward or to trash it soon.
    • Some people from our church (not our church, per se) are starting a charter high school in City Heights. I’m trying to gauge what my involvement with that will be. I have a passion for public school education so this something I care a ton about. And, of course, this would be the school Megan and Paul would eventually go to.
    • God’s moving some spiritual mountains in our midst within the high school group, I.O.B. and within our small group. I feel like I just get to witness that stuff and my heart longs to be more intimately involved.
    • In just a few week’s Lisa moves into our house for the summer. She’s graduating from college and.. well… the job prospects in California are actually much better than in Michigan. So, she’s coming to live with us, be our summer nanny, volunteer with some stuff, and hopefully get a clear vision for what the next step is in her life after college. Kristen and I take a long-range view of discipleship and this is definitely part of that. Can’t wait for her to get here.

    I wish that were it. But I know there are lots of other things going on which I just label, “the plethora.”

  • Nike’s Air Secret

    This explains so much.

  • How to add the Facebook “like” button to the Thesis WordPress theme

    Earlier this week I started noticing the Facebook “like” button popping up on some of my favorite sites. And then, my co-worker Jonathan installed it on our site at work.

    When I saw that… I knew I had to have it on my blog. Plus I knew I had to master it for some of my McLane Creative clients.

    It took some fiddling around but here is how I’ve gotten it to work. Follow these steps and you can set it up in about 10 minutes.

    Please note: These instructions are for the Thesis theme for WordPress. If you’re looking for a completely customized WordPress theme you can build yourself, I recommend purchasing Thesis.

    Step 1: Download and install the free Thesis OpenHook plugin.

    Step 2: After activating the plugin, go to the settings link for Thesis OpenHook. On my blog it looks like “/wp-admin/themes.php?page=thesis-openhook/options.php”

    Step 3: Scroll down to the hook you’d like to install the code at. I’m using “after post.” But here’s a list of all the hooks and what they are.

    Step 4: Paste the following code into the hook you’d like use.

    Step 5: Click the checkbox “Execute PHP on this hook.” This is important, you will get an error if you don’t click this checkbox!

    Step 6: Press the “Little save button.”

    Step 7: Like and retweet this post, telling everyone what a swell guy I am.

    Bonus:As you can see I’ve also added a couple Tweetmeme buttons to the same location. You can download my code for that, just put your Twitter name in the [twitter_user_name] spot and you’re good to go.

    Click here to download –> [download id=”6″]

  • Your story matters

    My drive plan for next week

    Next week, I’m hitting the road and driving from San Jose to just north of Seattle. I guess there are 3 over-arching reasons I’m doing this. Two are a bit secondary and perhaps selfish, which the third is really the justification for everything else.

    1. I love a good road trip. There is something almost magical about driving across our country. If you’ve never done a multi-day drive you won’t understand that statement. My first was “Golf across America” in 2002. My last one was “Travels with Stoney” in 2008. This trip needs a name.
    2. YS is still alive. It’s not that you, my kind reader, doesn’t know that. It’s that a lot of people have an open question… “What’s going on with YS?” And this trip is aimed at answering that question. (This is what’s known as “the business justification.“) Plus, even before all of the changes, I kept begging for this because I knew there was a need to get our staff on the ground talking with youth workers out of the office.
    3. Your story matters. My first two road trips were about my story. (Travels with Stoney was a little more about our families story and our hope for a fresh start.) This trip is about the stories of youth workers. My work has put me in contact with innumerous youth workers… and collectively we have a story to tell. My premise is that as I drive and host these meet-ups I’ll hear (and capture) stories from youth workers which the community will really resonate with.

    What’s fascinating about going out to discover youth workers stories is… it’s all about discovery. I’ve got a rough sketch of who I’m going to meet, but I really don’t have a clue where this is going to go. And what makes a road trip so fun for this format of story discovery is that I probably won’t really get a thread through all of the stories until I’m done. Since I’m telling stories as I go, there’s even a great chance that you will see the thread before I will.

    Another fascinating element to telling people’s stories, one that I’m just learning to appreciate, is that power of telling a persons story to the person whose story is being told. It’s one thing to tell your own story. But it’s an entirely different thing to have someone come into your life and then to other people about you. As I’ve been scheduling my meet-ups and talking to people, I hear them question, “you want to tell my story?”

    You are story worthy.

    Your story is interesting.

    Your story is helpful to you.

    Your story is helpful to others.

    As a child of the King bought at a price, your story has unlimited value.

    “you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” 1 Corinthians 6:20

  • Go to Port-au-Prince with me


    OK, dear blog reader. It’s time you and I do something to change the world together.

    Back in February I shared my trip to Port-au-Prince with you. You saw my joys, sorrows, giggles, and heart-longings. And since that trip I’ve had a strong, STRONG desire to go back. Opportunities have come and gone with the circumstances never quite right.

    This is right. This exactly fulfills the vision I had for this trip as our van lumbered out of Port-au-Prince for the day-long drive back to the Dominican Republic to return home in February.

    Some details:

    • July 19-25, 2010
    • Cost is $390 + travel to Port-au-Prince (seems like the flight is about $800 from San Diego, maybe more or less where you live.)
    • The maximum size of the team is 20. I’d like to know who is going by mid-May.
    • The team is open to anyone 21+… whether you know me from church, my work at Youth Specialties, or are a blog reader.
    • This is an adult trip– which means we’ll be a team when we’re together, but it’s not quite the same as a youth group trip!
    • Just like my first trip, this is being put together by Adventures in Missions. I know the team there and some of the people we’ll be working alongside.
    • Kristen is going with me. Though it’s not a “couples” trip this may be an amazing opportunity for a ministry couple to go and do ministry together.
    • Ideally, you have a heart for serving the Haitian church and have been praying for God to open an opportunity for you to go.
    • If you are thinking of leading a team in 2011 and want to go on a preview trip, this is perfect for that.
    • I don’t know 1000% what we’ll be doing every day of our trip. (That will become more clear later) At this point I can only guarantee you that we’ll be doing some type of earthquake relief and working through a local Haitian pastor.

    How do you get involved? Shoot me an e-mail, mclanea@gmail.com.

    Again, because of the nature of the team this trip is limited to only 20 team members. So if you are interested, it’d be good to contact me right away.

  • The $500 cat toy

    I’m an Apple addict who hasn’t fully appreciated the iPad. Now I finally get it. It’s Apple’s play into the pet owners market.

  • Inspiration: Street Art

    This stuff fascinates me. I love the mystery of public reactions. I love surprise and wonder. I love the feeling of “why didn’t I think of that?“

  • Lessons from the bench

    For the last two years I’ve been riding the pine at church. This time has taught me a lot about what it means to be in church leadership.

    From age 16 until 31 I had always aspired to be an up front leader at church. I like being visible. I love speaking, teaching, and preaching. I truly enjoy the grind of regularly doing those things as my vocation.

    Over the past two years I’ve gone from being the person everyone on our church campus knew to being a relative nobody. In athletic terms, I went from being a starter to being a player who sits the bench.

    And just like in athletics, when you put a starter on the bench, the Coach always does it so the starter can learn.

    Here are 5 things I’ve learned from riding the bench at church:

    1. Every attendee gets something different out of a Sunday morning, you can’t control the takeaway or topic one bit. I can’t believe I ever thought I could control that.
    2. The more a church offers the less people are involved in their community. Growing a church by doing less doesn’t make logical sense, but its 100% true.
    3. Never assume people know what a term is or who an author/speaker is that you reference. People in church leadership live in a different world, with different heroes, than the rest of the congregation.
    4. Visibly valuing people is really important. This manifests itself in a lot of different ways. But it demonstrates the church leaderships character in what they put up front.
    5. People in the pews care way more about the staff and their families than I ever imagined. It’s not creepy, it’s not some American idol worship, it’s actually quite sweet.

    If you’ve gone from church staff to church attendee, what are some things you’ve learned through that process that could help people in church leadership?

  • Stick it to the Man

    I want to see church culture change. I know that if we’d just apply what we believe the church would be the most attractive option on the planet.

    And I also know that in order to change the leadership culture within a church you have to do three things.

    1. You have to play along to gain access to the people who can change things.
    2. You have to gently prod leadership with ideas that are approachable.
    3. And sometimes you need to show them your middle finger and just plain stick it to the leaders by giving them glimpses of your vision for reform.

    Here are some examples of moments in history when visionaries have extended the middle finger (mostly figuratively) to the man and changed the culture forever.

    • 56 men signed the Declaration of Independence and told King George, “Come and get me, punk.“
    • William Wallace lead a band of warriors against King Edward in a fight for independence for Scotland. “I’m not your slave, I’d rather die than serve you. Here, look at my butt.“
    • On December 1st, 1955 Rosa Parks sat down in the front of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. “What are you going to do about it?”
    • George Whitefield lead massive outdoor revivals in staunch opposition to the established church and local laws which required permits to preach. Much of the American evangelical church was born from his disobedience. “We are going to meet outside, where the people are… you know, just like Jesus did. You OK with that, sucker?“
    • Martin Luther recognized he could barely move the needle an inch in his lifetime if he worked within the rules of Rome. So he wrote some things down and made his own appointment with the Pope Leo. “You’ll be changing one way or the other, Mr. Fancy Hat.“
    • Instead of ignoring the Pharisees and their muttering, Jesus teaches his band of cultural losers that they should go out and try to reach Pharisees. “Sometimes you stick it to the man by going out and loving the man while sticking it to him.”

    What’s the problem with this?

    • A lot of us are the man.
    • In nearly all of those situations, the established religious leaders were on the wrong side of history. Oops.
    • We stand in a long time of people who realize… awful hard to stick it to ourselves.

    The reason I’m saying this is to remind people like myself that we are, oftentimes, the biggest agents against change. We have our ways. We have our culture. We look at prominence and degrees. As the established religious leaders we give a million excuses why the pains in the neck are wrong and we are right.

    World changing men and women come into our lives, observe our behavior and practices, and give us the middle finger.

    The lesson from the examples above is simple: When people come to you to give you the middle finger of no-more-fellowship… you need to listen to them. You need to give them the opportunity to be heard.

    They may be right and you may be wrong.

    You need to look at those people with sober judgment.

    Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. – Apostle Paul, Romans 12:2