June 2009

June 30, 2009

Future wildcards: are these good ideas?

If you had a pair of glasses that contained a computer always connected wirelessly to the Internet and projected a 4-foot monitor in front of your eyes that that only you could see, would your spouse think it was a great idea? Would a cow that makes penicillin instead of milk be a good idea? If you had a box that could make anything you wanted out of dirt and water, how much dirt would still be in your back yard? If your car ran entirely on hydrogen, would you care about the poverty of countries that once exported oil [...]

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June 21, 2009

A reflection on 5 Great Commission myths

Matthew 28:18-20, And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” The passage above is commonly known as “The Great Commission”. Jesus spoke these words to his followers before ascending back to heaven to be with the Father. His followers were left [...]

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June 12, 2009

Should the church be a swarm?

I’ve studied organic movements and particularly swarms for the past decade. I’ve come to believe this organizational format is one of the best for apostolic bands. But is it the best for the church? Should the church be a swarm? At this time, I believe the answer is: “no.” This is why. There are two different kinds of organizations in the world: those that are highly centralized and hierarchical, and those that are highly decentralized and flat. (There are also those organizations that are mixtures of the two, but we’ll leave that out of this discussion.) Neither of these kinds [...]

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June 10, 2009

Swarm Case Study: NPR

Why NPR is the Future of Mainstream Media: NPR localizes: “a culture incredibly devoted to local coverage” crowdsources content: “creates content from member stations” uses standards-based outlets: twitter, web, downloadable podcasts encourages reuse: “the radio organization released a content API that allows developers to remix/reuse any content created by the network” Visit

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June 8, 2009

Swarming & SC Strategy

Swarming – the launch of purposeful, highly relational, sustainable, improving & innovating, open-source, rapidly-multiplying groups (!) – can be viewed as a key complement to typical SC strategy, not as a competitor. In fact, most “SC teams” are often swarms in their own right (they just don’t use that terminology). The Strategy Coordinator model has been used by a number of agencies. See here for a good description. Training is offered by the International Mission Board and YWAM, among others. SCs typically are involved in: research on their target group, advocacy/mobilization, specific ministries, building unity, and leadership. The “swarming” model [...]

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June 8, 2009

A five-minute guide to building a swarm

What does it take to build a swarm? This isn’t “rocket science.” It’s being done every day. Here’s a short “five-minute” guide to doing it. Phase 1: 1. Establish an initial personal plausible promise. Do this first, for yourself, not in connection to anyone else. This is your personal goal: what you feel called to do. This is the “attracting center” that will help your swarm build. (The actual swarm’s Plausible Promise may be slightly different as it will probably be the sum total of the PP’s of everyone involved.) 2. Determine your shared values. The PP is what you want to do; the [...]

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June 7, 2009

How to present your plausible promise

Garr Reynolds (Presentation Zen) has a great post up highlighting a new Youtube presentation on “The New Urbanism.” The presentation itself has to do with how urban sprawl affects the world’s carbon footprint, and how we might redesign it. The video itself is not really the point, however. The style of the video is, and you can do the same thing for missions presentations. The video is comprised of a number of photos overlaid with text and a nice musical track. To do much the same thing for missions, you would need: Photos of your unreached people group and their [...]

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June 3, 2009

Analysis: reaching World A & B peoples in World B countries

The emphasis of Momentum is on reaching the unreached. To achieve that goal, however, we need to be well aware of where the unreached live. We need to keep a strong, unwavering eye on them. And the fact is, the “unreached” do not typically live in large numbers in the most-restricted places, but in fact in the more open places. To illustrate this, consider the World A/B/C schema tracked by the World Christian Database and applied to individuals, groups and countries: it applies to individuals (based on whether the person has been evangelized and whether they are a Christian—a single individual [...]

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June 2, 2009

Christianity on the cheap

Every weekend, in any given city, you find yard sales. Somebody has decided they have too much “stuff.” Perhaps they are moving and don’t want to box it all up. Perhaps they need to make way for newer stuff. For whatever reason, the pattern is the same. Go down to city hall and for a small fee buy a license, then run an advertisement in the local newspaper’s classified section, and on the day of the yard sale, put up posters at nearby corners, set out some tables, cover them over with “stuff” and wait for people to come by. [...]

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June 1, 2009

Metrics of Missions: measuring Faithfulness and Fruitfulness

for The Mission Exchange Every year, researchers attached to thousands of denominations ask millions of Christians to provide several bits of information about their ministries. The data is aggregated and in turn collected, analyzed, and interpreted by other researchers, and published in the form of books like Annuario Pontifico, the Mission Handbook, Operation World, and the World Christian Encyclopedia. This effort – which consumes millions of hours and dollars – is to measure our missionary effort to insure we are both faithful to the Great Commission and fruitful in our efforts. FAITHFULNESS When I think of faith, I often think [...]

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