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Verge 2014 Notes – Redeemed for Incarnational Justice

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At the end of this, my brain was mush. I think it was more the fact that they had the band come out, sing worship songs and have a prayer time and then surprise us with another 30 minute speaker when it was supposed to be over that wore me out. Knowing how to pace yourself at these conferences is the difference between getting something out of it and just wanting to get out. I dismissed the guys at the mission as soon as Michael Frost was done talking, even though Verge still went on for unknown amounts of time.

That might also be the webcast aspect of it. It might be amazing in that room full of people worshipping and singing and getting on their knees praying, but as people watching it from home it’s different.

As I look over my notes, I notice the impact of having 5 speakers go “just a little bit over”on their time. I learned this the hard way once. Whenever people give you a chance to speak, it is your responsibility, as the one serving your audience, to not go over the time they’ve given you.

I look forward to the excerpts being posted on Youtube in the coming months.

WCAGLS Session 9: Vijay Govindarajan: Innovation

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Session 9: Vijay Govindarajan: Innovation

Innovation is reacting to change.

How many things you are doing today go in box one?

  1. Manage the Present. (efficiency)
  2. Selectively forget the past
  3. Shape the future

How do you do innovation and efficiency all at the same time? That's what counts.

Continuously improving the quality of what we do today is still limited.

High Jumpers

The scissor jump can only get you up 4 feet.
The western roll took people to 5 feet.
The straddle
Then Fosbury flop took people up to 9 feet!

We have to improve the quality of the scissor jump while we discover the fosbury flop.

The innovation is a virus to ongoing operations. Status quo takes over the dominant logic. If it is working, do it!

If dominant logic is left unchecked, you'll grow old while new stuff is birthed all around you.

Creativity is the idea. Innovation is applying that creativity economically.

Idea + Leader + Team + Plan = Innovation

since 99% of it is execution, that is where this guy is focusing his work. People don't need help coming up with ideas, or help with creativity. How do we make this stuff happen!?

Innovation leaders are not subversives. Sometimes they think their job is to break all the rules and do something bold and crazy. They act like Steve Jobs.

"Harness the great capabilites of the performance engine."
I don't know what that means, but it sounds great.

"you can't just turn scissors into a flosbury flop" (Context is everything on that quote! But it's right on. )

New Wineskins!

Some of the stuff he is talking about gets back to my idea that some churches need to just shut down and close for 3 months and then reopen from scratch.

If you want NYTimes digital to happen, you can't use your print newspaper team. You use different metrics, you use different culture. It's ok to keep them in the same building and link them to the existing team, but much of the team is going to have to be different.

No silicone valley startup can come up with 100 years of digital archives. NYTimes has that! Interract! Work together!

You have to have some shared, amphibious staff working on your breakthrough innovation.

The scissors pays for the development of the flosbury flop. At some point the flosbury flop is going to be the old thing, the performance engine that will fuel the next thing.

Be distinct and separate with your tasks. Don't measure new innovations the way you measured your old reliable stuff.

The team is fighting Organizational Memory. Remember your critical assets, use your history, but do something you've never done before.

Conflicts are healthy if you know how to manage them. That's where your history helps out your innovators.

zero based planning and organizing

  1. Your current business is linear. Reacting to present markets. Signals are clear pointing us in various directions.
  2. (He didn't say anything about this.)
  3. You are betting on the future. You are predicting and learning to resolve unknowns. There are weak signals of where the future is going, so you test, spend a little, and learn a lot.

I wonder what Seth Godin would say about this guy's stuff. Some of this sounds like stuff in The Dip by Seth Godin.

Your team 3 should be evaluated on their ability to learn, apply the knowledge they gain from failures. Can they conduct low-cost experiments and then learn a whole bunch?

Reverse-Innovation
in the past, 3rd world folks invented stuff in the USA and then sold them in the 3rd world. In the future, he says 3rd world will invent 3rd world solutions, and the people in the 1st world will want it.

"Rich people might be interested in learning what these poor people are doing."

"Some say innovation is value for money. I say that innovation is value for many."
"Innovation is a lot more, for a lot less, for a lot of people."

Income inequality has reached alarming proportions. We work hard at producing products for the rich. That's the source of income inequality. What would happen if we innovated products for the poor? Products are already MADE by the poor, what if they are meant to be consumed by and help the poor.

[he just said he discovered "the secret sauce of innovation"]

The US lives in Box 3 thinking. As a culture we look to the future and try to create it.

I'm curious how much we do that anymore. I'm thinking with immigration hate, if we've killed the american dream.

the guy came to america with $11. he spent $6 on a candy bar because he figured there isn't much difference between just having 5 or 11, but at least he'd have a candy bar.

Accepting ideas from any part of the world is a strength of America, he says. I'm not totally sure that is still true!

I wish it were!

Let's make is so!

Innovation by the poor, with the poor, for the poor!

Global Leadership Summit 2011, Part 3: Brenda Salter McNeil

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Cory Booker

Next up at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit was Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey. He told a lot of stories and I didn’t take many notes. The stores were great though, and I wish I would have made a reminder of each of them. I found myself judging him at first like a wishy-washy male Oprah, but then I realized I was short-changing him, so I loosened up. He was a great speaker after that! 🙂

It was pretty interesting that a lot of what he focused on was humility and action. That was the message of a lot of speakers, or at least it came up over and over again in every speech. His story in which a lady told him to “Just DO SUMTHIN!” came up over and over again from other speakers, so I’d better give him credit for that here. You should try to hear him speak if you get a chance.

Brenda Salter McNeil

McNeil was a pretty fiery speaker and had a lot of good stuff.

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She was talking about changing generations. It’s true, older people I know are still surprised when the call and get a “foreigner” on the phone, but I’m usually surprised when I get someone that “doesn’t have an accent.” (You really need to say that with a Southern Indiana accent for it to sound right.)

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The Gospel is cross-cultural and cross-economical and cross EVERYTHING!

As far as Acts 1:8 goes, I know it says Blog Idea here, but I can’t write about that in this spot. I’ll save that for another day.

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Our modern Samaria is where everything horrible and rotten happens. She said it’s that part of town that you drive into and check to see if your doors are locked. It was off limits to Jews, which is so radical about Jesus taking the disciples through there. You can read more about that elsewhere. Her challenge to us was to not be afraid to go to those places. When you make disciples in your own culture, you don’t have to figure out a lot of messy details. When you go among people that are so radically off from you culturally, it takes a lot of work to figure out what discipleship looks like in their culture. (personally I’m still trying to figure this out in American culture!)

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These Dangerous Action Items are great. #1, get a Divine Mandate. When God has called you to something, you will be unstoppable. If you are just doing stuff to do stuff, it will come to nothing!

She told us to get down on our knees and pray for a mandate. Pray for a calling from God.

One way I’ve done this in the past (actually to find the two last houses we’ve lived in that weren’t just temp housing) was to walk through a neighborhood praying

God, bless this neighborhood. Bring Your Kingdom into this neighborhood! And if you want me to be a part of that, here I am! Plant me where you want to use me!

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Don’t look around and complain about what is going on in your neighborhood. Ask God how He is going to open up a can of Romans 8:28 in that situation?
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This part was great. In Acts, on the day of Pentecost, they had a prayer meeting and people started catching on fire! Have you ever had a prayer meeting where you thought people were going to start catching on fire?!

When you have your mandate, and you see what is going on around you, gather others and help them repeat the same process you just went through. Once you have a group of people with a shared calling, you can act and do something.

This was a great moment and I think I would have done well to just go and pray for a bit, or have all of us pray for a bit, but conferences are what they are, and when McNeil was done they launched some cheesy video advertising something. That didn’t kill everything, but it did make me want to go to a Pentecostal church some Sunday, where they worry more about listening to the Holy Spirit than keeping to their schedule.

Here is the tweet I sent out after that.

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Living by the Pattern of Pilate in 2010

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The perspective of Pilate being blackmailed by the Jewish leaders sheds a lot of light on this section for me. It is so crazy that he would have Jesus flogged and pretty much give the Roman soldiers license to do whatever

Pilate had Jesus scourged in hopes that a scourging would be enough to make the Jews happy.

He felt that he might avoid having to give the veredict of the cross by giving the verdict of scourging. Once again, that is what no one can do. No one cancompromise with Jesus; no one can serve two masters. We are either for Jesus or against Him. “ – William Barclay, commentary on John v. 2, p. 281

A lot of people think they can torture Jesus or His credibility or His BODY and that will be enough, but at some point everyone is forced to make a LIFE AND DEATH decision about what to do with Jesus. Just like Pilate had Jesus flogged, I know many people that will complain about churches or hypocrite Christians so that they will never have to come do a deep, inner, personal, self-realized conviction about Jesus.

Pilate presented a bloodied and unrecognizable Jesus to the crowd and said, “I find no fault in this man!” WHAT‽

Many times people like to talk about an issue, like Pilate talks here about what kind of King Jesus is, and then stop and think that is enough. I’m just going to talk about conservatism in government, right to life, eating healthy, or leadership, and that is going to convey my faith and my relationship with Christ. All of those things might be a part of the conversation, but they are not the point.

Remember the others that wanted to talk to Jesus about such things:

The woman at the well wanted to talk worship locations and what will happen when the Messiah comes.

The rich young ruler wanted to talk about which law was the most important.

The lawyer wanted to know who his neighbor was.

Zebedee’s wife wanted to know seating arrangements.

The Pharisees and Zealots wanted to know where their taxes should go.

The demons wanted to know where He was going to throw them.

Jesus ALWAYS brought it back to HIMSELF.

Even with hair and teeth missing, bruised and hurt beyond what most of us will ever experience, His conversation was all about Pilate, Jesus, and the Father.

Ă‚

May we throw away our methodical outlines to better living and financial plans and run after Jesus, and encourage everyone else to do the same.

Postcard from Cashland

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So we just got a postcard in the mail for the previous residents of our house. It should be noted that our house was a foreclosure and we bought it from the bank.

The postcard is from CASHLAND, a paycheck loan place in town. It says “Because we have missed seeing you for a while, we are making a special offer that we hope you’ll find atractive. Right now, you may be eligible to get a loan for up to 21 days.

21 days. That means it covers 2 pay periods. So you could go in there on a Monday (after using up your paycheck from friday) and then get a loan. In 2 weeks, when you got paid, you could pay it back, or wait 3 WEEKS to pay it back, and ‘accidentally’ blow your next paycheck!

All of that is Class A disturbing and worrisome. But that’s not the worst part.

At the bottom of the postcard is the fine print.

It lists the interest rates they are able to charge in each state.

First make a note of this:
In Kentucky, 16% of the people live at the poverty rate and in Indiana 11 % of the people do. Only 3 states have higher than 17%, to put that in perspective. Ok here we go.

You can borrow $500 in Indiana at 382% interest. That’s right, You pay $344 and they give you $300. If that is confusing, I’m sorry, but that’s the example on the card. (maybe it’s some intentional confusion!)

But that’s just for Hoosiers. Kentuckians are poorer, and there are more poor people in Kentucky. The limit in Kentucky is lower, only $425. That should help keep people from getting into trouble. HOLD ON! The interest rate in Kentucky? 458%  Their example is that you can get $300 for $352.75.

As I read this I think about taking advantage of the poor, the fatherless and the widow. Who are the most desperate in our community? Who are the people that are going to these places? I know some people would have low mercy for the people that are foolish w/ their money and drink up their paychecks or whatever, but I just wonder how many people that visit CASHLAND would desire some lifestyle help, instead of just a check?

CASHLAND is a business and as a business needs to stay in business. What if we had a SERVICE that would help in this way, but not exploit the poor? What if we gave grocery certificate loans at 5% interest, or actually gave out the groceries? I guess the breakdown would be if the person wrote the check and you cashed it, the bank would then oppress them with a insufficient funds fee.

I’m not sure about the solution to this, but I know the solution is sitting in the Church.