• McLane Creative Celebrates its 25th Loan

    At McLane Creative I make a simple promise: You invest in us and we invest in someone else. 

    For every new client I take on I make a small loan to help a woman with her business around the world. This morning I made our 25th loan, helping a newly married woman in Mozambique buy more products to sell in her shop.

    What’s Kiva?

    Kiva is a non-profit organization which helps connect you to those in need of a microloan. They work with NGOs around the world, providing oversight and accountability, and help people like me make investments in small businesses all over the developing world.

    In other words, they make high risk small business loans to people a traditional bank wouldn’t consider. These loans help participants grow their businesses and gain financial independence. They treat their clients with respect and help them avoid the pitfalls of loan sharks.

    It’s a loan, not a donation. The NGO charges a competitive interest rate far below the rates of street loans or loan sharks, handle the day-to-day operations, and for their efforts they keep the interest while I’m repaid the principle of my loan according to a schedule. I’ve been making loans to Kiva since 2007 and have only had 1 loan default. It’s not that risky. And you can even withdraw your money after your loan has been repaid. 

    Why Do I Only Invest in Women?

    One take away from the book The Blue Sweater was that women in developing nations invest the profits of their business directly into their family at a higher rate than their male counterparts. So that means that when I help a woman with her business, she will in turn invest the profits of her business into her home, her children, their education and health care.

    How can you get involved?

    I can think of 3 ways you could get involved with Kiva today.

    1.  Make a small, monthly investment personally or as a family. This is how I got started. I picked 1 person to invest $25 in and then waited for updates. Once we saw that Kiva was for real I made more investments.
    2. Give Kiva as a gift. We’ve given Kiva loans to our kids as Christmas presents. It’s fun for them to pick out someone to invest in, print out their picture, and wait for repayment.
    3. Create a team for your business. When you create a team you can set team goals and stuff like that. Even though Team McLane Creative is really just one member of the team, I like keeping track of it separately from my other loans. (They are funded from my business accounts, too.)

    Your Invitation

    As I was writing this post I discovered that Kiva is doing a special deal right now. If you create an account, Kiva will credit your account $25 for your first loan. And if you use my invite link I’ll get $25, too. 

    So for the low, low price of $0 we can invest $50 in a small business. Simple, right? 

    Here’s the link to take advantage of that right now.

  • San Diego via Timelapse

    Oh baby, this captures so much of what makes San Diego a beautiful place to live.

    I can’t wait for my little rail kit rail & dolly kit to arrive so I can start learning how to shoot these kinds of time-lapse shots.

  • Football thoughts – First Edition

    I watched way too much football yesterday. 

    My two teams, Notre Dame and San Diego State, bookended the college football schedule. My alarm went off at 5:30 AM to start making breakfast for a 6:00 AM kickoff for the Irish. And San Diego State took on Washington with a kickoff at 7:30 PM.

    My friend Paul came over for the ND game. We had fun making an Irish-inspired breakfast. I bought a few Guinness for the occasion and let me tell ya, I don’t really like Guinness, but they are especially tough to drink at 6:00 AM. I think we each took a couple of sips and that was as much of Ireland as we needed.

    Here are some thoughts on the college football season, in random order:

    • Notre Dame is better than I thought. I know Navy is very weak and Notre Dame is supposed to steam roll them. But the Irish were pretty sharp. They could do what they wanted on all sides of the ball and showed a lot more depth than in previous years. I think we’ve found a quarterback in Golson, he ran the offense well and got a lot of players involved. With a few veteran players coming back from suspensions I suspect they will roll Purdue next week and set up a challenging Michigan State & Michigan back-to-back match-up in a few weekends. Oh, and wasn’t it cool to play that game in Dublin? 35,000 North Americans came bringing $125,000,000 into the country in tourism dollars. A lot of people think Notre Dame gets unfair special treatment. Well… how many schools can get 35,000 fans to fly to another country for an opening game? Not very many colleges can get 35,000 to a bowl game! That’s why the Irish get special treatment. They are special.
    • San Diego State was about what I thought they’d be. We lost a lot of talent to the NFL and graduation and we looked very young. I’ve always liked Walter Kazee and was happy to see him get some big runs. Ryan Katz was OK, he played scared in the first half and then woke up in the second. I’ve never seen a player take so many slides… and for a young man who likes to slide I’d encourage him to take 1-2 more steps before sliding the rest of the season so he can slide us to first down instead of 3 and 2. I wrote earlier this fall about the introduction of Rockyball. We didn’t punt when we had the ball inside the 50, never kicked a field goal, and never kicked a PAT. Rockyball got an F yesterday because none of it panned out. But if it had we’d be celebrating a victory over a Pac-12 team.
    • Penn State. I don’t think Penn State should be playing football for the next 4-5 years. But since they did a deal with the NCAA and saved football… I’ll just be forced to hope they lose a lot. If you watched the game you saw Penn State give up. Ohio (not Ohio State, mind you) man-handled the offensive and defensive line in the second half. The commentators tried to spin it as the PSU players were overly emotional at the beginning of the game and just ran out of gas. I think, what we saw, was the team flat out giving up. For months they’ve tried to hold it together and pretend that what happened had nothing to do with them… and it was almost like you could see it hit them during the physical exhaustion of the game. With all of their best players heading for other programs they just couldn’t compete against a MAC team. And the realization of that has big implications in the Big 10. By the time the game came to its merciful conclusion you had to wonder how many players from Penn State were thinking, “I should have transferred.” They should have. All of them. And just for the record… with yesterdays loss they continued a 14 year losing streak. 
    • Alabama vs. Michigan. I’ve got to give Michigan credit, I didn’t think they’d have an offensive touchdown and they did. Alabama is, by far, the best team in football. What we saw yesterday was an exhibition of just how good they are. I think they’d give a bunch of lower level NFL teams fits. (They’d be #2 or #3 in the AFC East) Alabama’s defense exposed the single dimension, Denard Robinson-focused, offense. Michigan entered the game #8 and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them drop into the 20s. Someone even gave them a #1 ranking… yeah, those days are over. All future opponents saw how Alabama did it and will use that as the roadmap, which spells trouble in Hoke-ville. All of Robinson’s Heisman dreams went out the window yesterday. It was kind of sad to see. He’s make a great NFL tailback, though.
    • Here’s to the wussy schedules. Some of the match-ups this weekend have been horrid. None so bad as Oklahoma State vs. Savannah State. 84-0 and the Savannah State coach said “it could have been a lot worse.” (North Carolina vs. Elon was a close second.) Almost as interesting, though, were how many of these mid-majors and mini-majors hung in there. Northern Iowa almost beat Wisconsin. NIU came up just short against Iowa. Arizona needed overtime to beat Toledo. Bowling Green played toe-to-toe with Florida for 3 quarters. Arkansas State outscored Oregon 24-7 in the second half. And San Jose State almost held on to beat Stanford.
    • Mountain West report. Outside of Nevada beating Cal, the Mountain West underachieved against non-conference opponents. That’ll hurt us down the road. We needed SDSU to beat Washington and Boise State to beat Michigan State. I think this is a weak year for the conference, but I expect Boise State, Nevada, and SDSU to be the top 3 teams at the end of the year. (Which leaves SDSU out of a bowl for the last time before joining the Big East.)

  • The problem with being cutting edge

    If you’re at the cutting edge, then you’re going to bleed.

    ~ Nancy Andreasen

    I guess they don’t call it the bleeding edge for nothing.

    Here’s my thought about the dangers of being cutting edge…

    • The biggest growth happens for those people and organizations willing to take risks.
    • I’d rather be innovative than a copycat.
    • I’d rather look forward to what can be than hold onto what used to be.
    • I’d risk getting hurt by being cutting edge than get hurt by being too slow to respond.
    • I think leaders take people where they wouldn’t go alone, regardless of risk.
    • I think a little bleeding isn’t fatal.
    • I’d rather be the guy with scars telling the stories than be the guy without scars regretting being careful.

    I’m wired to not see the downside in being “cutting edge.” I only see upside.

    What are some risks you are taking right now that might make you bleed a little? 

  • The positive impact of negative feedback

    You are probably a creative.

    If your principle source of income is the result of stuff that comes out of your brain more than work that you do with your body, you’re a creative.

    I work with a lot of creatives. Designers, writers, speakers, filmmakers, marketing geeks, thinkers, tinkerers, teachers, pastors… and everything in between. These are people who depend on what comes out of their brain on a daily basis.

    Likewise, I spend a lot of my time needing to not only understand how I think but also those who think mostly with the right hemisphere of their brain.

    In short, I want to know how to get the best creative output from my creative efforts. And, tactically, I need to know how to get the very best out of my creative friends.

    The Lie about Negativity

    Our society has bought into positivism. I think of it as the Oprah-fication of America.

    I recently saw an appeal from a dad looking for a basketball league for his son which actually kept score. In lots of children’s sports leagues every child is told they are a winner just for trying and every kid is a given a trophy at the end of the year. They are fed a lie that it’s OK to be mediocre, that everyone is a winner, that keeping score isn’t helpful, and that the point of sports is exercise and not the pursuit of victory.

    What a load of crap. That’s not how life works and that’s not what makes sports great. We are flat out lying to those children in a false belief that we need to positively reaffirm every effort. Some kids should quit basketball at a young age because they suck at it. They should move on to something else instead of being handed a trophy simply for trying. It’s actually cruel to reward someone for doing poorly because you are telling them they are better than they are.

    Adults do the same thing. Millions of people believe that if they just looked at the positive side of things and denied the impact of incompetence or incapability or just a flat out lack of talent, that they should always go for what they are dreaming about and it will come true.

    The education bubble is built on this lie. Every student should not go to college. But there is an entire industry of people lying to students and telling them that every child should go to college. Universities rake in billions of dollars in student loans every year as a direct result of this lie.

    The truth about negative feedback

    I’ve been reflecting on the research of Nancy Andreasen, a University of Iowa neuroscientist, who has researched the role of negativity in creatives. One powerful insight, and one that really helped me, was an experiment conducted to show the positive impact on the output of creatives given negative feedback. (Discovered this in this book by Wired contributor Jonah Lehrer.)

    In one experiment a group of subjects was asked to first make a presentation about their career ambitions and then, after receiving feedback from a group of students, create a collage about their career choice. The students were asked to give some subjects positive feedback and others were told to seem disinterested, display negative body language, and verbally give negative feedback.

    Interestingly, those subjects given negative feedback in the first step created much better collages in the second step than those who got positive feedback initially. The negative feedback made some subjects work far harder to produce a far better end product.

    That’s exactly true in my work as and with creatives. This is why we consistently seek out peer review of our work. That’s why we suffer through a self-editorial and formal editorial process. And that’s why I rarely accept a first effort.

    Again, lets give up being nice for the sake of being kind.

    What do you think? Is receiving negative feedback making you better?

  • Come Dream with Us in Atlanta

    The season of youth ministry, from 2007 – 2012, has been an extremely difficult time for those in vocational youth ministry. There have been a couple of major forces at play which have left our tribe discouraged, shell-shocked, and struggling to dream about what’s next for their ministry.

    • Going into the recession there was a lot of re-thinking of youth ministry going on, both from those who were in youth ministry and [more importantly] those who were making decisions about continuing to fund it. As thousands learned… this meant that many churches were ready to pull the plug and try something else.
    • Many churches were unprepared to handle the economic downturn. They had expanded their budgets during good times and been slow to respond when the recession hit. I can’t tell you how many youth workers got sucker punched by a budget cut that included their salary and their ministry. Too many wonderful youth workers are left sitting on the sidelines and asking God, “Um, what happened?”

    If you’ve made it. If you’re still in this thing. And if you know in your gut that God has called you to youth ministry (even if you don’t have a job in a church anymore) than you are probably like Marko and I… ready for the next season to begin.

    Dreamers Wanted

    We are hopeful. We believe that the best days of youth ministry are yet ahead. And we think it’s time to come together and dream, celebrate, get refreshed, ideate, and ask God to reveal to us what this next season of youth ministry should look like for each of us.

    We don’t pretend to have all the answers. In fact, we’re more convinced than ever that there isn’t “an answer” but instead “many answers” to leadership in this new season.

    The Summit is a celebration of this hopefulness.

    We’re bringing together 18 presenters– all high quality leaders, some of whom you know and some of whom you don’t know, and asking them to present a series of short 15 minute-ish talks as we look at where we’ve been as a tribe, where we are at today, and what’s possible in this amazing life calling.

    But it’s not just talking heads. There will be time to interact with people like you. There will be time to interact with the presenters. And there will be time to interact with the Holy Spirit as you get out of your normal routine and ask God to help you dream new dreams about your ministry.

    Why Am I Talking About This?

    The Summit is on my mind a lot right now because our early bird deadline for registration is this Friday at midnight. Since we announced it in the Spring we’ve heard from lots and lots of people that they love it and want to be a part of it. Well… it’s time to be a part of it!

    We’ve got some great incentives for you to register by Friday.

    • Registration prices go up by $20 on Saturday, so you save money by registering early.
    • You’re automatically entered to win an iPad from The Youth Culture Report. (This is a different contest than the one on our Facebook page.)
    • You’ll get MP3’s of all the presentations for free after The Summit.

    Yes, I’m asking you to attend. Yes, I may be asking you to rearrange your schedule a little. Yes, I might be asking you to spend money you hadn’t planned on spending.

    Yes to all of that. And thank you.

  • Developing New Skills

    “Um, I went to Bible College. I have a degree in youth ministry.”

    I find myself saying that a lot when I’m frustrated. Sometimes when things aren’t going well on a project I suddenly feel way, WAY outside of my training.

    • I’m not an event planner! Right now I’m in full-on event mode, deep into producing Open Seattle and The Summit. (Less so the Middle School Ministry Campference.)
    • I’m not a video producer! But I’ve put together a bagillion videos lately for various Cartel things.
    • I don’t have a design degree. But, of course, I’m doing tons of work in Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Final Cut, etc.
    • I am not a programmer. But I’m spending a lot of time coding in php, developing WordPress themes and even trying my hand at plugins.
    • I’m not an accountant. But being a small business owner is forcing me to do things that I just pray don’t get me in trouble with the IRS.

    The list goes on and on.

    And the opposite is also true.

    • I pretty much took the summer off from youth group, I can’t think of the last time I did that and it felt really, really weird.
    • I rarely teach up front anymore, something 5 years ago I would have told you was one of my best skills.
    • While I wrote a curriculum earlier this year, I used to write 2-3 lessons per week.
    Of course, I’m using so many of the skills I’ve acquired over the years. I don’t look at it as replacing skills, more like adding to them.

    I guess the point is that I can’t get caught up on relying on the skills I already have to get to the dreams I have for tomorrow. The skills I have already will only  take me where I am today. To get to where I need to go I need to learn more.

    What are new skills you are learning to achieve your dreams? 

  • Be Kind, Not Nice

    I think Christians are too nice.

    Go to church, any church, and everyone is nice. Big smiles and hand shakes for everyone. Some churches hug a lot. Perfect strangers hugging. Lots of perfect strangers hugging.

    They kind of mash all of the fruits of the Spirit into one thing… being nice.

    But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

    Galatians 5:22-23

    I think many Christians confuse nice with kindness.

    • Kindness speaks the truth even if it hurts a lot, nice just lets you keep living a lie in hopes you’ll figure it out.
    • Kindness sits you down and listens to your pain, nice adds you to the prayer list or gives an empathetic response with no follow-up.
    • Kindness invests in a young leader for the long haul, nice smiles as you fail.
    • Kindness invites you over for dinner, nice says, “Good to see you.”
    • Kindness tells you when your idea sucks, nice wishes you well without believing in you.
    • Kindness gives you space to grow, nice expects you to gloss over the yucky parts.

    This list could go on for a while but the point is clear: Nice isn’t a biblical virtue, kindness is.

    When I describe a neighbor as “nice” it really means that I don’t know them all that well. “Oh, they’re nice…” That means they smile and say hello as I walk by with my dog. Or that means that they turn their light on at Halloween.

    I’ve found that my best friends aren’t always nice, but they are kind to me. They tell me the truth no matter what. They listen when I’m hurting. They invest in me beyond what I can do for them. They make time for me. They tell me when my ideas suck instead of letting me fail. They expect me to grow and give room/time for that to happen.

    But people in my life who I’m just nice with? Yeah, none of that is consistently true.

    As I reread the Gospels this summer I was overcome by this reality: Jesus wasn’t all that nice, but he was deeply kind.

    There’s a difference. Nice rips a whole in the Gospel and backfills it with religious jargon and feel good sand. Kindness stops you in your tracks, bandages your wounds, heals your dysfunction, pisses you off with its truth, confronts the lies of those in charge, and charges forward towards a new Kingdom reality.

    Oh, that we would be a people of kindness!

    Prayer: Lord, make us Christ followers who are kind. Help us forsake the nice for the full power of the Gospel in our lives, families, and ministries. Amen. 

  • Power in a Social World

    Spontaneous tweeting is the “antithesis” of political conventions, says Dan Schnur, who was communications director for John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign. “Conventions are about singing from the same hymnbook. Twitter means everybody has their own song.”

    Twitter rewrites the script for political contentions, Martha T. Moore, USA Today – August 22nd, 2012

    The quote above shows just how much the man quoted doesn’t understand what has happened in the world in the past 5-6 years. 

    It used to be that you could script a political convention, large scale event like the Olympics, or even a news event and control the message relatively simply. We used to talk about how politicians were able to spin stories with press conferences or package their candidate with ads. Michael J. Fox starred in a show called Spin City, the very premise of which feels dated now. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert make millions of dollars pointing out the inaccuracies of news items that have been spun from the truth.

    Today, power has shifted away from those traditional mediums. Today, power truly belongs to the people. Position and influence are really two different things in this new, flat world.

    Don’t believe me? Remember the Arab Spring? Yeah, Twitter was the catalyst for those revolutions which lead to regime change in several countries.

    Here’s a news flash for those “in power.” More often than not the person with the microphone is in the least powerful position in the room. (Traditionally, they had the most power.) While they are speaking there is an entirely different conversation going on via Twitter about the speakers credibility, the veracity of their talk, and whether or not their words even matter. While they are the ones saying the words they have zero control over how its received.

    Someone can walk off the platform thinking they’ve nailed it only to learn that they made a mistake that costs them big time. Or they can feel like it’s a dud and see it take off on YouTube. In either case, the person in a traditional position of power (the speaker) is now the least powerful person in the room because the platform is vulnerable. A guy like me, watching on TV, can make snide remark that gets retweeted and refashioned 10,000 times before he steps off the platform. That’s just the way it goes now. 

    What does this have to do with me as a local leader?

    Social media has changed a lot for big, national leaders. But I don’t think it’s dramatically altered things at the local level. There just isn’t the same volume so the impact of social media on your leadership is way smaller.

    If anything, just know that the text, twitter, Facebook conversation that happens about you and your leadership is completely beyond your control. It’s a whole new level of vulnerability that can be overcome by simply being authentically you.

  • Lead by Enabling

    Did you catch the Do Something Awards on VH1 last night? Wow. Wow! WOWowow! It was an explosion of fun, music, and celebration of teenagers who… are doing stuff in their communities.

    I’m relatively new to discovering DoSomething.org but the idea behind their organization is pretty simple. They help teenagers do stuff in their community. Here’s how they describe their mission:

    We love teens. They are creative, active, wired…and frustrated that our world is so messed up. DoSomething.org harnesses that awesome energy and unleashes it on causes teens care about. Almost every week, we launch a new national campaign. The call to action is always something that has a real impact and doesn’t require money, an adult, or a car. With a goal of 5 million active members by 2015, DoSomething.org is one of the largest organizations in the US for teens and social change.

    As a youth worker and person who thinks about new ways of ministering to youth all the time, I deeply resonate with that.

    They have made their job relatively simple. They encourage teenagers to do stuff without defining what “stuff” should be very much. This empowers their creativity and supports their capabilities. And they get out of the way. Then, for those who need a little more help, they set up national campaigns.

    What’s the role of adults? They tee things up and get out of the way!

    It’s power is clear. While not a religious organization or “youth ministry” in just a few short years, with a relatively small budget, they have activated millions of teenagers around the country… and their award show is broadcast nationally on VH1 packed full of celebrities celebrating the difference these teens are making. There’s power in their enabling methodology! 

    I’m really intriged by this model. Which is part of the reason Marko & I invited Naomi Hirabayashi to come and speak at The Summit. We have a lot to learn about not only massive impact, but also a model of leadership that gets out of the way. It’s so foreign to youth ministry and yet all Gospel-y and youth ministry-y at the same time. It reminds me so much of Jesus sending out his disciples into the villages. (Luke 10)

    As I watched their award show last night I loved that none of their “old people” appeared on stage. Their award show wasn’t a showcase of them, it was a showcase of their model of enabling and getting out of the way. They didn’t try to MC it, they didn’t accept any accolades. They just worked to put it on and got out of the way.

    Questions: What would your ministry look like if your primary job was to tee things up and get out of the way? Could you lead a microphone-less/platform-less ministry? 

    photo credit: Mark Davis/WireImage