I really like the fake church sign in this article from Lark News. Thanks to Church Marketing Sucks for noticing the story.
Agenda for next Advisory Leadership Team meeting
As promised, here’s the agenda for Chi Alpha’s upcoming Advisory Leadership Team meeting.
Agenda:
1. Review XA 2010 Implementation Team Work
- Organizational chart and definitions
- Executive Leadership Team, membership and duration, frequency of meetings
- Area Director position and area maps
- Task group goals summarized
- Added Non traditional, church led and student led task group
- Identified International Student Ministry Work Group and District Resource Team as similar to task groups to report activity and goals.
2. Calendar
- The World Mission Summit
- DXAR Conference
- Campus Ministers Conference
3. Community of mission statement
4. Missionary furlough survey
5. Campus Ministers Conference
- Larry Crabb
- Patrick Lencioni
6. Suggestions for Department Directors
- Student Ministries/ or Student Missions- E. Scott Martin
- International Student Ministry – Jerry Gibson
- Student Mobilization –
- Campus evangelism –
- Personnel – Bob Marks
- Training and Resource
- Communications
At this point I don’t have much info beyond that. I assume the names for CMC are potential speakers.
As you will note, we’ve created several new departments and so we need to recruit people to those roles. Suggestions are welcome. You can email me, call me, or leave a comment on the blog (just remember that comments can be read by everyone). I’m there to represent folks on the field, and I can do that more effectively if some folks on the field let me know their perspective on things. 🙂
Our Staff Reading Selections
These are the books our ministry team selected for our reading group.
We’re starting with the Nicomachean Ethics first. Paula and I spent some time looking at different translations (like the Bible, you can get Aristostle in King James through CEV flavoring). We settled on Terence Irwin’s translation as the most readable.
Encouraging Email From A Student
I just got a wonderfully encouraging email:
I haven’t been to a chi alpha meeting since that one time at the ‘obey your parents’ sermon, but I check out the mp3s every now and then and I think your sermons are great. I’d like to be more descriptive than that, but I’m fairly brain-dead tonight (can you say sleepdep?). Anyways, a big thanks to whoever does the recording and website work…I’m LOVING the google videos!
The potential hairstyle pictures were…great. More than great…really great. Maybe I should go to bed. I’ll try (harder) to actually come to a meeting before the quarter runs out!
Occasionally I wonder whether any students ever really listen to the stuff we put online. I guess they do.
It’s amazing how a little thing like that can totally make my day.
Mess With Glen’s Head
You now have a chance to mess with Glen’s head. That’s right–you get to pick my next hairstyle.
Why? I have a dilemma: I am balding yet not bald. I don’t know what to do.
Almost anything (emphasis on almost) will be considered.
Assuming there’s no evidence of vote fraud (always a peril on the internet), I commit to giving the winning hairstyle a sincere try.
So what are you waiting for? Mess with my head!
Einstein Endorsement
Courtesy of the cool Einstein dynamic chalkboard generator.
Dialectic
One of my students (stage name Dialectic) just released a rap album. You can preview it at MySpace. Or as we hip-hoppers like to call it, MySchizzle.
How Not To Be Holy
I just read a great little meditation on holiness called Whack-a-mole and Sin Management in Leadership Journal. When I checked to see if it was online I discovered that the author has a blog.
Staff Reading Cohort
Our staff team is going to begin a reading program together. We’re picking our books now, and I thought some of you might be interested in the guidelines we’re using. I sort of made these up and modified them based on the feedback I received.
Frequency
Let’s start off with a book every two months. This will give us plenty of time to pursue our own reading without shortchanging our staff reads. We can always adjust the time later if we need to.Selection
We make our list up two full cycles in advance (one whole year). We each get to propose 4 books, and then we each rank the resulting list of 12. We tally the votes using an internet script (Condorcet method for any voting geeks out there). The top six books win. We’ll decide the order in which the winners will be read informally, trying to alternate older books with newer books.Guidelines
- We have to propose books that we have not read yet. Don’t pick something you loved and think it will be good for everyone else. The point of this exercise is personal growth.
- Having said that, it’s okay if someone else proposes a book that you have already read and the team selects it. In that case, you don’t have to reread it–skimming will do.
- Don’t try to impress anyone. No need to pick academic philosophy or anything like that–unless you really want to read it.
- Let’s try to alternate between new books and books older than we are. This isn’t a rigid rule, but an aspiration.
- Freshness is good when we’re talking about something based on research, and age is good when we’re talking about something based on reflection. If you want us to think about science or culture get a new book. If you want us to think about God or life get an older book. Unless you really don’t want to–these are guidelines and not rules. 😉
- The books can be about anything, but let’s keep fiction to a minimum.
- Nothing over 500 pages without first clearing it with everyone else.
- Nothing over $30 without clearing it first with everyone else.
- If you want, you can propose multiple short books as a single recommendation (less than 200 pages total).
After Reading
Following the reading of the book, by a specified deadline, the chooser will compose a few (3–5) questions for group discussion either in person, over the phone or online.
Anyway, it’s not too elegant but it looks as though it will serve us well. We’ve each made our suggestions and here’s the list we’re going to be voting on:
- The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
- Prayer by George Buttrick
- Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great by Jim Collins
- College of the Overwhelmed: The Campus Mental Health Crisis and What to Do About It by Richard D. Kadison and Theresa Foy DiGeronimo
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
- Creative Ministry by Henri Nouwen
- In the Name of Jesus by Henri Nouwen
- Pensees by Blaise Pascal
- Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading by Eugene Peterson
- Spurgeon’s Lectures to My Students by Charles Spurgeon
- The Other Six Days: Vocation, Work, and Ministry in Biblical Perspective by R. Paul Stevens
- Margin by Richard Swenson
Once we have the results I’ll let you know what we wind up reading.
Dana’s Disconcerting Insight
Two days ago as Dana was helping me wash dishes, she blurted out “Robi have penis.”
I paused mid-scrub. “Really?”
Robi is our two-year-old neighbor and Dana’s favorite playmate. They see one another quite a bit, but evidently they have also seen quite a bit of each other. As I was contemplating this development, Dana expounded on her original thesis.
“Yes. Change diaper, Robi have penis.”
“Robi got his diaper changed and you saw that he had a penis?”
“Yes. Penis in diaper.”
“That was very perceptive of you, Dana.”
She smiled widely and continued to help me washing dishes.
I choose not to be disturbed that my two-year-old daughter was thinking about the fascinating anatomical differences between men and women on Valentine’s day.