Learnings @ Leadership Network

Human Trafficking: What Are Churches Doing?

I just heard about a church that has a vision to establish an orphanage specifically for children coming out of human trafficking situations. The idea is to create a place for them to go to. The desire is to aid in rehabilitating these kids, all the while showing them the love of Jesus Christ.
 
The facility will be in Dallas, Texas. Most of us would have expected it to be in Africa or southeast Asia! Sadly, the U.S. State Department estimates that 14,500 to 17,500 of the 900,000 people being trafficked transnationally each year (some as young as 5 years old) are brought into the United States.

Do you know about other churches in North America that are likewise working to impact the perpetrators or assist the victims of human trafficking?

UPDATE ADDED JULY 2010: See this excellent article by Amy Sherman on what churches are doing to combat sex trafficking.

Warren Bird, Ph.D., is Research Director at Leadership Network, and co-author of 19 books on various aspects of church health and innovation.

lessons from a hurricane

Just this week I met in Dallas with community teams that are a part of our Missional Renaissance Leadership Community.  It was terrific as usual.  The MRLC helps teams of church and community leaders accelerate their missional engagement.

One of our church and community teams is from Nassau Bay, the Houston area, led by Greg Finke, lead pastor of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church there.  This area took a direct hit from Ike back in August.  I haven't seen Greg since then, although we had communicated.  He made two observations that I think are fabulous.

One, he said, they discovered that neighbor is a verb.  Ponder that.

Second, he said that the evacuation of their building and shut down of the community and church for several weeks led them to the discovery that the pastors were pastoring programs, not people.  "So," he said, "we made a decision to go out and hang out with people and see what happens."  The result is a renewed focus on what ministry is about.

Along with the other members of the MRLC, Gloria Dei is figuring out what it means to move from a program-driven agenda to a people-development agenda.  This is the heart of what it means to go missional.

Why You Should Redshirt Your Kindergardner

I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, Outliers. The book is well-researched, and like his earlier best-sellers, The Tipping Point and Blink, well-written and counterintuitive. Gladwell’s premise that it matters greatly where and when we grew up—that all successful people “are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot” (p. 19). (For an informative inerview click on http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/videos.html?id=948190555)

Gladwell uses a number of examples to demonstrate his point and illuminate his thesis. The first hidden advantage is the month in which you were born—not in an astrological sense but… well, let me explain. Let’s start where Gladwell starts…with hockey players. Gladwell reproduces a roster of Canadian elite hockey players—playing just below the NHL level. Interestingly the majority of them were born in the first three months of the year. The research continued to show that in Canadian elite program “40 percent of the players will have been born between January and March, 30 percent between April and June, 20 percent between July and September, and 10 percent between October and December” (p. 23). How is this possible? From pee-wee league and forward, players are grouped by their birthdates in the calendar year. So, say on January 1 the six-year old’s team will have players who just turned six (January 1 birthdays) to those who won’t turn 6 until 364 days later. The maturity difference is huge. So when the all-star teams are chosen, those mature players are chosen while the younger players (who may have every bit as much natural talent) are left behind. It is on the elite teams the chosen players get extra workouts, better coaching, more playing time and separate even further from the pack. The same thing happens every succeeding year with the accumulative advantage being huge. One can almost say with near absolute certainty, if you want to play elite hockey in Canada or get into the NHL it is better to be born in January than December. Gladwell uses a similar argument for how European soccer is organized. Of the 21 players on the Czechoslovakian National Junior soccer team, 15 were born in the first 3 months of the year. It doesn’t stop with sports. This principle also applies to academics. “They found that among fourth graders, the oldest children scored somewhere between four and twelve points better than the youngest children. …It means if you take two intellectually equivalent fourth graders with birthdays at opposite ends of the cutoff date, the older student could score in the eightieth percentile, while the younger one could score in the sixty-eight percentile. That’s the difference between qualifying for a gifted program or not (p. 28). Now for the conclusion: “The small initial advantage that the child born in the early part of the year has over the child born at the end of the year persists. It locks children into patterns of achievement and underachievement, encouragement and discouragement, that stretch on and on for years” (p. 28).

            This past weekend I was at the Cal-Stanford game and hung out some with an old football and rugby teammate from Cal—Blaine Warhurst. Blaine is very bright–a successful businessman who owns a number of apartment complexes in the Bay area—married to his college sweetheart with beautiful kids. In his prime Blaine was an incredible athlete, not only starting as linebacker for Cal (Chuck Muncie, Steve Bartkowski, Bob Swenson era) in football but also enjoying a 20 year career in rugby with many “caps” playing for the U.S. National Team. At 57 years old Blaine could still pass for 40. He has the same brashness, confidence and athleticism that I remember he had as a college freshman. He also repeated Kindergarten. Looking through Gladwell’s lenses, this explains a lot about the accumulative advantages of Blaine’s life. “I used to get in a lot of fights in elementary school. I could beat everyone in my grade and the grade above me so I had to fight kids two grades up.” (Remember this was the era where school fights were rather common—one well-connected punch and it was over with combatants often becoming best friends afterwards). Make no mistake, Blaine was a great athlete but how big of an accumulative advantage did Blaine have by being the oldest, most mature, who consistently won and was given special attention and coaching because of his exceptional abilities? Personally I think Blaine would still be very successful but it is something to think about.

Leadership Learnings from Blogging Leaders

Will Mancini mentions this newly released free e-book titled, "Leadership Learning from Bloggers" (PDF). The e-book, aggregated by Exponential Network, has over 250 pages of leadership learnings from over 20 national bloggers. The introduction describes how the e-book was put together.

Leadership Learnings from Bloggers grew out of a desire to provide insights to church planters from more experienced leaders. As we compiled the resource it became clear that the collective insights were applicable to any leader and not just church planters. So the work was split into two projects. This first resource is leadership learnings applicable to any leader. A supplemental resource is also being compiled with unique content for church planters.

Selected contributors are:

• Ben Arment http://www.benarment.com/
• Mark Batterson http://evotional.com/
• Chris Elrod http://pastorelrod.wordpress.com/
• Dave Ferguson http://www.daveferguson.typepad.com/
• Mike Foster http://www.deadlyviper.org/blog/
• Seth Godin http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
• Craig Groeschel http://swerve.lifechurch.tv/
• Alan Hirsch http://www.theforgottenways.org/
• Scott Hodge http://scotthodge.typepad.com/
• Michael Hyatt http://michaelhyatt.com/
• Gary Lamb http://www.garylamb.org/
• Brad Lomenick http://bradlomenick.com/
• Shawn Lovejoy http://shawnlovejoy.typepad.com/
• Will Mancini http://clarityevangelist.typepad.com/will_mancini/
• Tony Morgan http://tonymorganlive.com/
• Perry Noble http://www.perrynoble.com/
• Bob Roberts, Jr. http://www.glocal.net/blog/
• Ed Stetzer http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/
• Tim Stevens http://www.leadingsmart.com/leadingsmart/
• Tullian Tchividjian http://www.newcitypres.com/blog/
• Jud Wilhite http://www.deadlyviper.org/blog/
• Jared Wilson http://gospeldrivenchurch.blogspot.com/

This e-book is a a multi-part project, so there'll be more insights and goodies coming down the pipeline. We like the name of the first e-book too.

// DJ Chuang is a Director at Leadership Network, launching digital initiatives, and connecting multi-site churches and Asian American pastors.

Will Mancini mentions this newly released free e-book titled, "Leadership Learning from Bloggers" (PDF). The e-book, aggregated by Exponential Network, has over 250 pages of leadership learnings from over 20 national bloggers. The introduction describes how the e-book was put together.

Leadership Learnings from Bloggers grew out of a desire to provide insights to church planters from more experienced leaders. As we compiled the resource it became clear that the collective insights were applicable to any leader and not just church planters. So the work was split into two projects. This first resource is leadership learnings applicable to any leader. A supplemental resource is also being compiled with unique content for church planters.

Selected contributors are:

• Ben Arment http://www.benarment.com/
• Mark Batterson http://evotional.com/
• Chris Elrod http://pastorelrod.wordpress.com/
• Dave Ferguson http://www.daveferguson.typepad.com/
• Mike Foster http://www.deadlyviper.org/blog/
• Seth Godin http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
• Craig Groeschel http://swerve.lifechurch.tv/
• Alan Hirsch http://www.theforgottenways.org/
• Scott Hodge http://scotthodge.typepad.com/
• Michael Hyatt http://michaelhyatt.com/
• Gary Lamb http://www.garylamb.org/
• Brad Lomenick http://bradlomenick.com/
• Shawn Lovejoy http://shawnlovejoy.typepad.com/
• Will Mancini http://clarityevangelist.typepad.com/will_mancini/
• Tony Morgan http://tonymorganlive.com/
• Perry Noble http://www.perrynoble.com/
• Bob Roberts, Jr. http://www.glocal.net/blog/
• Ed Stetzer http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/
• Tim Stevens http://www.leadingsmart.com/leadingsmart/
• Tullian Tchividjian http://www.newcitypres.com/blog/
• Jud Wilhite http://www.deadlyviper.org/blog/
• Jared Wilson http://gospeldrivenchurch.blogspot.com/

This e-book is a a multi-part project, so there'll be more insights and goodies coming down the pipeline. We like the name of the first e-book too.

// DJ Chuang is a Director at Leadership Network, launching digital initiatives, and connecting multi-site churches and Asian American pastors.

Unite! Atlanta

Last month I had the privilege of helping facilitate a gathering of churches in Atlanta that are a part of Unite! Atlanta (http://www.uniteus.org/pages/). Unite! is a network of churches led by pastors and church leaders with the primary goal of being used of God to bring about transformation throughout the city of Atlanta and the hope of Christ through their unified acts of kindness, service, compassion and love.

Chip Sweney, the Metro Outreach Director at Perimeter Presbyterian Church in Duluth, Georga, pulled this group together for four gatherings over a two year period to grapple with the hard issues of city transformation. The theme of this particular gathering was racial reconciliation. The host church for the gathering was Providence Missionary Baptist Church. Dr. Gerald Durley is the Senior Pastor of Providence. As a young man he marched with Martin Luther King.

Dr. Durley is a life-long friend of Andrew Young (pictured above), former U.S. Congressman, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and former Governor of Atlanta. The first day of this two-day gathering was January 15th, the 80th birthday of Martin Luther King. As we were about to begin the meetings I noticed a distinguished looking man dressed in a blue suit and wearing a bow tie. To everybody's surprise, Andrew Young, who lives three blocks from the church, dropped in for a visit. 

We had the privilege of hearing from him for about 45 minutes. After he spoke we were able to hear from Dr. Durley, and Dr. J. Allen Milner, who was also a contemporary of MLK's, and for the past several years has impacted the homeless in Atlanta through Odyssey III.

Those 25-30 of us in attendance were pinching ourselves to believe where we were and who we were with on Martin Luther's 80th birthday, less than one week from the Inauguration of the first ever African American President of the United States.

That was an incredible experience. During one of the sessions at the Gathering, Chip shared "Vision 2020", which lays out some of the specific goals of Unite!, including some of the metrics. I was amazed at the enormity of their vision and by the fact that they are tackling some major issues of social justice. Here are the metrics that they have come up with:

Family

• Current Situation: Divorce Rate is 43%
• 2020 Goal: Reduce Divorce Rate by 30%/Decrease out of wedlock birth rate by 50%

Justice

• Current Situation: Approx. 250 girls per month prostituted (Actual numbers are probably much higher)
• 2020 Goal: All children are safe, None are sold into sex slavery

Education

• Current Situation: 70% graduation rate in Public Schools, only 69% of 3rd Graders are at grade level
• Goal: 90% graduation rate from high schools, 95% or 3rd graders at grade level

Poverty

• Current Situation: 40% of students receive free and reduced rate lunches
• Goal: 20% of students receive free and reduced rate lunches

(Pictured above are Dr. Gerald Durley and Chip Sweney)

What is most impressive about these goals is they aren't just trying to alleviate individual suffering among hurting people in their city, but they are actually attempting to overhaul broken systems that create large scale suffering in their city.

"He has told you O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you...but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." Micah 6:8

Learnings from Innovation3 Gathering

The Innovation3 Gathering last week was an incredible time of learning through conversations and content. A significant portion of the content was shared online with the world via blogs, twitters, and live-streamed video. These are selected links to the many blog posts:

• Tony Morgan scribed the 4 main sessions [1 Risk & Failure, 2 Shaping the Culture, 3 The Dangerous Church in 2020, 4 Missional Community], line-by-line, play-by-play, using ScribbleLive
• Rhett Smith live-blogged the first day and main session 4 on Missional Community play-by-play using CoverItLive
• Charles Lee blogged breakouts for Externally Focused Ministries and Global Ministry Initiative along with his reflections
• Kent Shaffer has beautifully outlined notes from main session talks by John Bishop, Bob Roberts, Nancy Ortberg, Ed Stetzer, Matt Chandler, John Jenkins, Dave Gibbons, Mark Driscoll on Risk , Driscoll on Multi-Sites, Craig Groeschel, Stacy Spencer, Tim Keller
• Scott McClellan (Collide Magazine) blogged notes from breakouts Chris Seay on Teaching Through Story and Branding your Church (Dawn Nicole Baldwin)
• Scott Williams blogged notes from 2 main sessions: Risk & Failure and Dangerous Church
• Zac Smith's Notes from main session speakers and breakouts including the technology, blogging, and social networking breakout
• Ed Stetzer posted his raw notes in entirety at his own blog, and got Bob Roberts to share notes from his talk too
• Day 1 thoughts from Jason Curlee, from Ariel Martinez, from Dawn Nicole Baldwin, from Mary Beth Stockdale, Noel Heikkinen
• Lots of other blog posts about Innovation3 (via Google Blog Search) and conversations still going on via Twitter hashtag #i3 -- did you know #i3 made it on the home page of search.twitter.com as a top trending topic on 1/27/09
• BONUS: Leadership Network's Dave Travis (Managing Director) writes about the rationale behind one-time conferences, and Linda Stanley (one of the lead organizers) shares her hope for the future of the church on the morning after Innovation3.
• cf. Christian Post's article, "Leadership Network Marks 25th Year with One-Time Ministry Conference"

Plus, other insightful comments about Innovation3: