Analysis

March 24, 2010

North Korea: more bad news

North Koreans fear another famine amid economic crisis (LA Times). Analysts in the region feel the nation is on a “countdown to collapse,” lurching from crisis to crisis, and supposedly Kim Jong-il has a life expectancy of less than three years.

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March 24, 2010

Slums in crisis

A new paper by the Humanitarian Futures Programme, Urban Catastrophes, explores how a lack of clean water and sanitation in burgeoning slums could trigger a complex series of humanitarian crises.

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March 24, 2010

India: teaching on giving needed?

India’s wealthy class uncharitable, study shows. The number of wealthy Indians is rising, but the level of philanthropy is not. Indian missions and churches will suffer until it does.

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March 24, 2010

Why design your own programs when so much is out there for free?

It is true that a big part of swarming is using free and openly-available tools. And there are many leadership development curriculum available for free, particularly to those in non-Western countries. What’s more, there are often ministries with the funding to come and teach you how to implement the program, or even implement it for [...]

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March 23, 2010

The future of Islam

How Muslims are forging a “21st century” Islam. In Christian Science Monitor.

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March 23, 2010

Evaluating USA conservative Christians by the Bible

The Huffington Post has posted a 2-part critique of conservative Christians in America by Richard Hughes of Messiah College. This is a measured, thoughtful article that really digs into why many Americans think the way they do, and why many conservative Christians have gone very far from Biblical perspectives. Great point of comparing what conservative [...]

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March 23, 2010

Preparing for wild cards: a tale of 2 quakes

Transparency: Comparing the Chile and Haiti Earthquakes examines the impact of the Chile and Haiti earthquakes. Chile was higher on the Richter scale, but loss of life was worse in Haiti: because Chile, which has experienced quakes, was prepared, and Haiti was not. One aspect of continuous improvement in swarmish organizations is preparation for wildcards–things [...]

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March 22, 2010

Machine Translation will miss a lot of languages

Eddie Arthur (Wycliffe UK) makes an excellent point: although machine translation will be great for the top languages in the world, the minority languages will likely be left out. And the “digital divide” will grow even larger.

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March 22, 2010

The need for toilets

Lack of access to sanitation–read, toilets–is a critical issue of health. “Open defecation” is on the decline but 1.1 billion still practice it, leading to the spread of disease from polluted water. In New York Times. (Although the percentage of the world doing this declined, constant population growth means the absolute number has grown.) The [...]

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March 22, 2010

China: wives of homosexual men

In China, 90% of homosexual men are married. Perhaps 25 million women “are trapped in loveless and often miserable marriages [to homosexual men],” writes the Economist in an that looks at the phenomenon and its social cost in depth.

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March 22, 2010

Immigrants in Israel

People groups: There are some 20,000 immigrants in Israel, many asylum-seekers from the African nations of Eritrea and Sudan. In Christian Science Monitor.

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March 22, 2010

Childbirth: a deadly task in some places

1 in 8 Afghan women die in childbirth: yet 80% of these deaths are preventable. Rural communities lack to most basic health facilities. Christian missions once built hospitals all over Africa and Asia. We need a simple, easily created health clinic. Yet even how to sustain this is a challenge. In MSNBC.

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March 7, 2010

Women: hungry food-makers

The World Food Program reports the majority of chronically hungry in the world are women, but they produce 50% of world’s food: http://bit.ly/ajoI9N

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February 22, 2010

The difference between an Impossible Goal and a Plausible Promise

In http://bit.ly/cvpSXq, the writer considers how Google believes in setting “impossible” goals each quarter and striving to reach them. “65% of the impossible is better than 100% of the ordinary.” This approach is very similar to the idea of a “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” (BHAG). We’ve written here before about the idea of the Plausible Promise: [...]

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February 18, 2010

The Power of Zero: a compelling vision

I wasn’t at TED this year (obviously) but apparently Bill Gates gave an incredible speech. It was reviewed here. I found this review of the speech (I’m looking forward to seeing it on ted.com) to be fascinating on several levels which apply to swarms, leader development, debates, plausible promises… Here are some brief notes. 1. [...]

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January 13, 2010

Missionaries killed in Haiti disaster are not martyrs.

Lest anyone think they are, the general definition of a martyr that I use – and probably most would agree with this – is: A believer in Christ killed prematurely as a result of human hostility in a situation of witness {and some here add, “as a result of their faith.”} The bit in brackets [...]

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January 13, 2010

Haiti vs. Aceh: an instructive illustration of “hiddenness.”

Today, there is an enormous amount of Twitter traffic representing the enormous amount happening on behalf of Haiti. This small, poor island country suffered a devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake with thousands – perhaps tens of thousands – killed. I am all for work on behalf of Haiti. Yes, we should bless this little nation. Jesus loves [...]

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December 12, 2009

How the Taliban use Luke 10 to control villages in Afghanistan

In “On War #325: How the Taliban Take a Village,” William S. Lind and Mark Sexton explore the current methods used by the Taliban to gain control of an area in Afghanistan. The analysis is interesting because it reflects a successful pattern similar to church-planting movement theory revolving around Luke 10 and the “person of [...]

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October 30, 2009

Are 32,000 workers needed to finish the task?

I love the folks at the US Center for World Mission. Some of them, well known to me, are good friends. Some I’ve only known through the Internet. Their influence and ability to communicate the need of missions, and their focus on frontier mission, is incredible. At the same time, I have to say I [...]

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October 26, 2009

The law of Dunbar’s Number

Seth Godin writes Dunbar’s Number isn’t just a number, it’s the law. I generally agree with him, and this is something that impacts swarms, micro-missions, churches, and all organizations. I have several hundred “friends” on Facebook. But in fact, as we all know, there are different levels of friendship, represented largely by different amounts of time [...]

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