Starbucks on Christmas Eve morning

Starbucks right next to Gonzaga’s campus in Spokane. Jody and I drink coffee getting ready to drive to Prineville for Christmas. We noticed a guy with a perfectly manicured feathered, blonde mullet hair, talking to a large guy with blue-collar work clothes and a hard hat on over coffee.

As the hard hat guy stands up and leaves he turns to his mullet friend and says, “I’ll call you in January and we’ll do yoga.”

Dec 23rd
For those of you who’ve experienced flying Southwest. Everyone is assigned a boarding letter, either A, B or C. Everyone jockies for position at the gate area in the assigned lines.

Us: Standing in ‘B’ line, relatively close to the front as ‘A’ line is heading down the gate ramp.

Blonde mid 30’s lady: As she passes us while walking in line A to the friends she made in line, “I feel bad passing all these people, why do we get to go first?”

Guy friend in line with her: “because we’re in loading group ‘A’”

Lady after looking at her boarding pass and realizing she is in group ‘C’: “ohhh shooot”

Same lady after looking over at the long lines ‘B’ and ‘C’: “ohhh sh@#!”

Grandma

Aaahhh…San Diego. 68 degree weather is quite the change from -3 it was in Bozeman last night. The bummer in all of this is that the reason I’m here is that my Grandma Gwen passed away last Saturday. Sad that I never again get to enjoy the engaging personality that was my Grandma.

Thus I sit in a hotel with my wife, sister and Mom. Jody and I are t-i-r-e-d. We just want a couple of easy weeks with no major news. I’m tired of answering the phone and getting bad news. I’m happy to be here with my family though.

Please pray for my family, especially for my Mom as she grieves and takes care of most of the arrangements. Pray too that we can get to Prineville for Christmas. Thanks for all your prayers. We love you all very much.

catching up

These are a couple of posts from my time in San Diego for my Grandma's funeral.

Staff meeting today!

I'm sitting in staff meeting for our marathon evaluation meetings. Here's a picture of a moose I saw the other day. Check out the updates on our ministry site for a sweet moose video. Look under Interesting sites on the right of this page.

ohhhh my goodness!

I just went crazy in my living room. My poor wife...I'm not sure how she puts up with me. The Gonzaga-Oklahoma State game was on CBS today. Adam Morrison banked in a three with 2 seconds left. Thus the crazieness in my living room... I wonder what our neighboring condo's think?

Svakistudent.com

This is a fun statistic I just found...especially since Jody and I lead a summer project in Rijeka, Croatia last summer and publicized this website alot.

According to Rob Williams (Campus Crusade tech guy)... Last week we discovered that our Croatian evangelistic site, www.svakistudent.com has been seeing about 44 people each month indicate a decision to receive Jesus while reading the site! In September the number was 79!

Picture of Katie

Many of you heard of our dear friend Katie Walsh who passed away unexpectedly on Saturday. She served with Campus Crusade at the University of Montana. Jody and I dug through our old summer project pictures tonight. We found some of the Echo project that Jody and I were on with Katie. Here is one...

Leadership training

This how we build community amongst our leaders. That's one of our staff on the left.

sleepy time for Bob

Being my boss makes Bob tired

Big word....Prevenience

Dear Church,
The concept of "prevenience" was at the foundation of Jesus' ministry. ("Prevenience": referring to that which goes before or precedes)

He said, "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does." (Jn. 5:19)

"... I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me." (Jn. 8:28)
"For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it." (Jn. 12:49)

Jesus, the very Son of God, did nothing (zero/nada) on his own initiative. He spoke nothing on His own initiative. The Father initiated, Jesus responded. Jesus believed that His Father was prevenient. Every healing, every miracle, every teaching was initiated by the Father and carried out by Jesus.

His entire plan consisted of this:

1. See what the Father is doing and do that.
2. Hear what the Father is saying and say that.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

He is no longer the passive "honored guest" for whom we perform.
He is "the Master of ceremonies".

He runs the show. He sets the agenda.
And, that changes everything.
John White-Dawn Ministries

Good ol' fashioned Montana winter!

Here is the view from our office/second bedroom. I love winter!

Game of the week...perhaps season?

It took three overtimes to decide the contest between Gonzaga and Michigan St.(picked by many to compete for the national championship). If you missed this game you missed one of the best games I've ever seen. Gonzaga prevailed 109-106. Adam Morrison (product of Mead High in Spokane) scored 43 points

Leaders Tip: Living for the Mission

Take a moment to reflect on these to see if the Holy Spirit does some work on your heart and mind. These thoughts are straight from Steve Van Diest

Characteristics on Missional Living

• You are willing to leave something behind (see Abram in Genesis)
• You are compelled by a vision of God’s promised future (Genesis 12)
• You realize that the journey is bigger than their lifetime (Heb 11)
  

The thing that struck me the most is what are Detours of Living for the Mission.

1. The “Demas Danger:” See 2 Tim 4:10 – Loving the things of the world.

2. The “Good Old Days” Syndrome: Mindset that it was better back then or this way.

3. The “Dead End of Disappointment:” We lose hope b/c of trials.

What is keeping you from living for the mission of Christ? Where you do fall most? Do a quick evaluation to see if your heart is matching the missional living that God has called us to or if you’re getting off track.

Game 1 of the regular season!

Tonight Gonzaga mens basketball team held off stubborn Idaho 69-60 while extending its home winning streak to 26, the longest in the nation. J.P. Batista(right) led the Zags with 23 points.

Ownership revisited

For some reason this idea of student ownership has been on my mind since last weekend. Not just student ownership, but the quick turnaround of students doing ministry, ie. students coming to faith and 3 days later sharing there faith.

So isn't it ironic that I met with Alex today. He is a freshman who placed his trust in Christ roughly a month and half ago. He met me at a coffee shop on the edge of campus with the idea of a major outreach. His almost exact words were, "I've never done anything like this, but more and more I feel like God is in this and I want to go big or go home." So not only is a freshmen (A FRESHMEN!) saying this to me, but his outreach idea is meant to build bridges in a compassionate, humble way to people that would never check out 'Real Life,' our weekly meeting. I'll explain more later. I'm really kind of blown away.

So my challenge is to coach him without stiffling student ownership. I've literally told him that this is his baby. I given him some helpful hints and set him up with a bit of organization for a outreach team and prayed with him. But this is his brainchild and I want him to deeply own it. I want him to own it in a way that he is on his knees, petitioning the Lord for wisdom, strength, and for the Spirit to direct him. I want him to link arms with others and be deeply dependent on the Lord.

More than ever I believe that if students have that experience of stepping out of the boat (props to John Ortberg) and trusting the Lord for something way bigger that themselves, it will shape them forever and have lasting impact in our local ministry, in recruiting for staff, and in how people are involved in ministry wherever they are at.

Ownership

We shortchange our student leaders when we deprive them of opportunities to lead. As I heard it said recently, we have 18 and 19 year olds leading troops of young men into battle in Iraq, but we can't trust them to lead a spiritual movement?

Movement drift v. Growth

The drift from growth to plateau, from vitality to decline is a subtle but significant one.
At its heart is “the failure of success“—a desire to protect what we have achieved rather than to pursue mission.Here are the consequences for each of the characteristics of dynamic movements.

1. White hot faith - Members of plateaued movements prefer security, social acceptance and prosperity to radical dependence on God. They seek a tamer, more rationalized expression of their faith and begin to interpret the movement’s mission in this-worldly rather than other-worldly terms.

2. Commitment to a cause - Movements emerge because of high levels of dissatisfaction with the status quo. They plateau when members lose their sense of urgency about the need for radical change in the light of a kingdom vision. Plateaued movements increasingly see their mission as protecting what they have gained rather than transforming the world. Discipline becomes lax as members seek a lower level of tension with the surrounding culture.

3. Contagious relationships - There is an increasing reliance on paid professionals to spread the faith and a decreasing reliance on ordinary members and new believers who reach out to their networks of relationships.

4. Rapid mobilization - Religious professionals replace volunteers and the primary workforce. Their role becomes caring for a settled congregation within parish boundaries rather than pioneering new mission among unreached people. The predominant model of church is that of the settled congregation at the expense of the mobile missionary band.

5. Adaptive methods - The environment becomes more formal and complex. Once successful methods become institutionalized. Dissent and diversity are discouraged. Doing things right becomes more important than doing the right things.There may be some exceptions to the tendency to drift towards Plateau and Decline. I just haven’t come across any.

Posted in Movement Building, Marks of a Movement

Community!

Excerpt from Eric Swanson's blog. ericswanson.blogspot.com

This morning John Ortberg was the plenary speaker at the National Outreach Convention in San Diego. He spoke on what kind of person God uses to change communities. Great message with some very powerful insights. Citing a Harvard study, that we were assured was Harvard as in the University, 7000 people were tracked over 9 years. Those who were not in community were 3X as more likely to die prematurely as those who were in community. In fact, people who smoke and drink and over-eat, who were in community, had a better life expectancy than those with better health habits but were out of community. "Better to eat Twinkies with friends than broccoli alone."

Gonzaga basketball about ready to start

Just so everyone know...I'm a rabid Gonzaga basketball fan and here's the good news for the upcoming season from gozags.com

"Gonzaga received its highest preseason ranking ever, checking in at No. 7."

Go Zags!

Dinner with Steve Douglass' grandchild

Well technically the child is not born yet. Jody and I had dinner last night with Steve's daughter and son-in-law, Nick and Debbie. They are the sweetest couple ever...I'm not just saying that because Steve is the president of the organization. Although they claimed to be spies from Orlando.

The dinner was our annual Fellowship dinner fundraiser. It's the one fundraiser we do that provides for all the campus ministry expenses. God provided last night and we saw about 35K dollars pledged.

Conversation with Steve Douglass

This is an excerpt from Shane Dieke's blog, movementseverywhererant.blogspot.com.

Yesterday I had the privilege of spending some time with Steve Douglass - el presidente of Campus Crusade for Christ. Steve spent some time with our national leadership team.One of the questions we asked Steve (I think it was Sam Osterloh) was, "In the history of Crusade, what was the best year of the campus ministry (best meaning missional / exciting / effective)? " Of course Steve answered . . . . it is still in our future - the best is yet to come.But as we pushed him, he nailed it down to 1967-1970. Here are the six things he said were true of this dynamic period.

Expectant: There was an expectation of God working. You could feel the electricity in the air - nothing was too big for God to accomplish - and we expected him to do so.

Simple: The tools were simple, well taught and used effectively. You quickly learned and then were expected (even called) to action and reproduction. You went to campus and you knew exactly what was expected and what you needed to do.

Consistent: Everyone was on the same page. Simple, transferable and universally used.
H.S.: "We talked about the work of the Holy Spirit much more than we do today." Everythings was about the movement of the Spirit - conversations flowed from what the Spirit was doing. (so much so that many people thought we were a charasmatic group).

Student Ownership: "I owned it - and so did my roomates. Not that we did it perfectly, but we deeply owned it and were allowed to run."

Quick Turn Around: After someone trusted Christ they were out sharing the next day. You could become a new believer and be teaching basic lessons in less than three weeks.

Interestingly, Steve said that maybe only 30% of the whole of Crusade was operating at this high octain (he was gueussing and speculating), but it was enough to dirve a huge level of work, excitement and resources for the Great Commission.

As I look at thoses six . . . . well, it does not seem that complex. Again, Steve was answering off the top of his head, so I am not sure he would identify this as THE SIX THINGS - but it is telling to see the organic nature of movement in this simple list.

rainy day

Hey everyone, this is a first try at a blog