Behind the Scenes - End of January Edition

Not to worry, not going to cover all the news from January, just this week’s news.

+As promised we have a major staff announcement for you. We have just announced a new team member, Dean Niewolny as Managing Director of our Halftime Initiative. Dean comes from the business world in Chicago but for all you cheeseheads, he is a Wisconsin native. He starts in about a month.

+ While we didn’t have any “live” events in Dallas this week we had lots of meetings literally around the world among our staff.  A few of us connected with Gerald Sharon and David Chrzan of the Saddleback Leadership Team while they were in Dallas, and a few more of us connected with some leaders of the Kern Family Foundation while they were in Dallas. I also got to see Jay Hein, formerly the White House Office of Faith Based Initiatives Director and now President of the Sagamore Institute as well as Byron Johnson of Baylor University this week. It is good to see old friends.

+ I didn’t catch all of it but Dave Ferguson of Community Christian Church was on The SHOW this week. You can watch the reruns in the archive. Dave’s brother and cofounder of Community Christian, Jon, is one of our speakers at the upcoming Aha! conference.

+ Our Leadership Network Advance team meets regularly to plan future issues and review past issues. That publication chugs along. Every two weeks it delivers fresh articles to your email box. Well, you and 30,000 other people. If you don’t subscribe, you should. It’s FREE. http://leadnet.org/Resources_Advance.asp

Plus there is a redesign coming soon to reflect our new logos, colors and other new features.

+ I mentioned the Aha! conference above. Todd Rhoades tells me that announcement is early next week with all the speakers and ways to register. Like THE NINES last year, the basic conference is FREE and is a no travel, online event. Aha! Fresh Voices, New Ideas is March 3!

+ Speaking of conferences I know some of our staff is down at Verge next week in Austin, Texas. The Saddleback Guys told me that Radicalis is looking strong. Also our Recoveryconference2010.com registration for later in February is growing.

+ I was listening to the weather this morning on the radio and it was predicting snow and ice for Oklahoma environs. Just like a year ago when our Innovation3 conference and our big 25 anniversary party had some hiccups due to ice. One year ago this week!

+ I got a call a week or so ago from a Dallas Morning News reporter about something Bob Roberts was doing at Northwoods Church with a Muslim Iman and rabbi. Did I want to comment? “Sounds like what Bob does all around the world” I told the reporter. The story is here.  After that Ed Stetzer had an interesting conversation, very civil, on his blog about the story including a full interview with Bob about the story. Check it out here. Some good comments pro and con. If anyone cares, I’m pro here.

+ And my friends over at Leadership Journal have posted an update version of my speech/blog posts on What is Changing and What is Not over on their site . http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/currenttrendscolumns/culturewatch/whatschangingwhatsnot.html

Thanks to Marian for the great edits.

+ Some great posts at the Leadership Network learnings blog featuring some video interviews with Mac Lake, Kevin Penry, the best of Leadership Network’s concept papers of 2009 and more. So check it out.

 

 Dave Travis

Managing Director

Leadership Network