Author: Glen

Reaching Leaders

I was blown away by this article from The Origins Project newsletter (Emerging Leaders part 1). I believe it was written by Alex McManus, but I’m not altogether certain of that.

Alexander Hamilton was 19 years old when George Washington appointed him as an aid. Impressive enough, except when compared to the fact that at 14, Hamilton set the rules for the sea-faring captains who traded with his employers on St. Croix Island.

In 1381, Richard II walked onto a field and faced off against Wat Tyler and his mob. Later that same day, after fourteen year old Richard 11 had Wat Tyler beheaded, the young king addressed the mob of peasants with enough sensibility to calm and end Wat Tyler’s Peasant Rebellion.

Few of us are aware of the way history and culture ‑not to mention our personal age — influence our feelings about youthfulness and leadership. In order to create an ethos conducive to including emerging leaders, we’ll need to ask ourselves the question, “At what age does someone have capacity to lead?”

Recently I spoke on a University campus and was startled at the youthfulness of the student body. This happens to me every year. In truth, the students are the same age undergraduates have always been. I’m just one year older. Every year, as our church leaders age, the young look younger. The corresponding danger is that we may overlook many of our ablest leaders.

History is sprinkled with tales of the exploits, achievements and leadership of young adults, even teenagers. Columbus and all the explorers of the new world relied on hard working teens to man their crews. Think about this: Middle school age children setting off on adventures that many adults would lack the courage to undertake. In times past, teenagers could lead armies in battle and young pages could be made knights as early as age 12.

Contrast this to the head deacon who said of his new “young” pastor, “We’re letting him stretch his wings a little.” Many emerging leaders won’t stretch their wings within a cage of past accomplishments and existing institutions. Emerging leadership will go where it can fly. One question we must ask ourselves is, do we really want young leaders? Or are we only looking for someone to serve in and manage a program we’ve created.

A tip of the hat to Jordan Cooper for finding this.

I keep describing the students at Stanford as “future leaders.” I ought to know better, but I sometimes nail them into a box that I ought to be ripping apart on their behalf.

I will say one thing though–while some students are ready to lead something major from the moment they set foot on campus, others aren’t ready even years after graduation (this isn’t just at Stanford, this is everywhere I’ve been). I guess a huge part of my job ought to be figuring out which tendency a given student has…

And The Moral of the Story Is

THE eminent Russian physicist Andrei Linde once found himself on a long flight seated beside a businessman nose-deep in A Brief History of Time.

Without having been introduced and before the usual small talk, they struck up a conversation about it.

What do you think of it? Linde asked.

Fascinating, said the businessman. I cant put it down.

Oh, thats interesting, the scientist replied. I found it quite heavy going in places and didnt fully understand some parts.

At which point the businessman closed the book on his lap, leaned across with a compassionate smile, and said, Let me explain.…

Stories like this keep me from saying everything I think…

source (the above excerpt is actually a conflation of two sources, the first was from Sunday On Scotland, but I can’t find a link that works. Anyway, their opening sentence was much better than the second source I found so I kept it)

Stanford Goes Open-Source With Sakai

I thought this was kind of cool: Stanford is one of the four key universities sponsoring a new open source course management system (the other three are MIT, University of Michigan, and Indiana University). The new project is called Sakai and Stanford’s version will go live on campus in 2005.

Relevant Network Strikes Again

I’ve just received my third installment of resources from Relevant Network. I reviewed my first box, meant to review my second but got a little bit busy, and now want to tell you what came in my third (and also allude to the second when appropriate).

In both the second and third boxes I received 5 copies of the most recent issue of Relevant Magazine. Nice for handouts to students–I gave away the last ones and I’ll give these away as well.

In both of the last two boxes I received the little magazinelet Relevant Leader, which seems to be developing into something a little more than the annotated resource review it was in the first box.

As in the previous two boxes I received a good mix of books and CDs.

The CDs include:

The books are:

My criticism of the first box (that it contained almost no ministry resources) has been tended to, incidentally. The last box, for instance, contained a Highway Video DVD and a Blueprints CD from Crave Resources. I wasn’t as impressed with the Blueprints CD as I wanted to be, by the way.

This box carries on the resource trend with a DVD called That’s My King from Vertical Sky Productions. There is also a journaly kind of Bible-study thing to accompany the Miles to Cross book.

All in all, I still think Relevant Network is the best bang for buck any ministry to collegians or twentysomethings is likely to run across.

College Folk and The Assemblies of God

This from the head of Chi Alpha: According to the 2003 ACMR Report AG churches report there are 245,912 adherents that are 18–24 years old that attend our church. This represents 9% of all AG adherents.

By way of comparison, 18–24 year olds comprise 14% of the California state population (I was unable to quickly find the equivalent national statistic).

A Quick Trip East

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, but I kept getting distracted…

Having found my wedding ring I hopped a plane to Baltimore to serve in Jerry’s wedding.

I met Jerry back in college, when he had really long hair. He’s gone on to get his Ph.D. in statistics and now works for the Census Bureau. He now has much shorter hair.

Anyway, I flew in to Baltimore (arriving at some ungodly hour), tried to check into the wrong hotel, and finally got settled in sometime around 2 or 3 AM, if I remember correctly. It’s all a bit of a blur.

The next morning I visited the Edgar Allen Poe house, which was in the hood (this was somewhat fitting, as Poe wrote disturbing fiction and I was greatly disturbed after having had several people ask me if I was sure I wanted to be walking down the street). Interestingly enough, even I had to duck to get up the stairs. Poe must have been one short (or limber) dude.

After that I had the best crab cake I’ve ever had in my life at Faidley Seafood.

Then I headed down to DC. I looked at tons of historical and inspirational buildings/monuments/memorials. By far the coolest was the Library of Congress. No, really. If you’ve never gone on the guided tour you have to go and check out the reading room. It’s astounding!

Added to my before-I-die list: do research in the Library of Congress (anyone can do it, you just need to make time in your schedule).

By fortunate happenstance, Siew Ying (one of our Chi Alpha students) was in D.C. at the same time I was, so we got to hang out together for a bit.

I also had a chance to meet with Mark Batterson, pastor of National Community Church. He’s one of the most interesting and well-read pastors I’ve ever met (which is saying something). Props to Scott Aughtmon for hooking me up with the meeting!

Anyway, I headed down to Waldorf, MD to connect with Jerry and Elvira (his bride-to-be). I helped Jerry, Elvira, their familes, and Tina (the maid of honor) do some decorating for the reception. I also relearned how to tie a slipknot, which was an unexpected bonus.

The highlight for me was meeting Jerry’s friends (especially my fellow servers Daniel, Tina, and Bethany). Bethany put some photos online, so if you’d like to see me in a tux this is your big chance!

Incidentally, I have to take full responsibility for this shot of Bethany planting her face in the cake. Drunk people are so much fun to be around–they’ll do anything!

Side note: the reception was pretty fun, but I was reminded of how silly the Assemblies of God can look to some people. People were fine with me not drinking, but the whole not dancing thing was hard for them to wrap their brains around. For the record, I think our policy is a bit quirky (and not in an endearing way).

On a related note, I enjoyed meeting the ECLA pastor who was conducting the ceremony. Nice guy. He and I are light-years apart theologically, but I really enjoyed chatting with him.

Anyway, the wedding went off without a hitch (except the hitch that’s the point of the whole thing), and good times were had by all. I did make one faux pas, I didn’t realize that Elvira wasn’t changing her last name to Maples and said something like “How does it feel to be Mrs. Elvira Maples?” Oh well, worse mistakes have been made.

Before flying out I got to swing by D.C. again, visit the Daedalus Books Warehouse, and eat some more crab cakes in Baltimore.

Special thanks to Jerry for inviting me to share in his wedding, to Elvira for marrying Jerry, to Daniel for letting me stay with him, to Tina for doing such a great job with the decorations, and to Bethany for being such an entertaining person (even moreso when she’s sober). And a big thanks to Paula for letting me gallavant around the East coast like that.

Oh, while traveling I saw both Dodgeball and Harry Potter 3. They were both much better than I thought they would be.