“Faith-full” imagination

Faith sets the imagination to work.

Lively faith can envision numerous ways in which God can work. And there is nothing wrong with that as long as we realize that God is not restricted  to our range of possabilities and methods.

What if all of us let our imaginations run riot in regard to the adequacy and suffiency of God?

Sadly in the Christian church culture imagination often brings up connatations of falsehood and fancy. But this isn’t true of “faith-full” imagination. You might even say that faith needs imagination to pull out all the stops if it’s to begin to grasp the grandeour, majesty and ability of God. “Faith-full” imagination doesn’t falsify God it finds him!

We have a desperate need for imaginative faith.

Am I leading with “faith-full” imagination of what God could do in our midst? Am I dreaming of what the future could look like in light of an all-powerful God?

(Thoughts originate from Davis’s commentary on I Samuel…specifically I Sam 26)

Can Social Media change the world?

Some of you have seen this, but it’s a great summary of the tech change we’re experience right now. The question is, how can we as full-time Christian workers use this new technological landscape to help fulfill the Great Comission?

Leadership Summit Thought #4 – Outrun Change

The pace of change has gone hypercritical. Maybe you’re experiencing sucess now in your organization, but are you changing as fast as the world around you? Gary Hamel shared these thoughts at the Leadership Summit on how to outrun change

1. Overcome temptation to take refuge in denial - Face the facts! Humility is a survival method. Stop living in self-dillusion, thinking things are going better than they are.
2. Generate more strategic options – don’t cling to the familiar to tight…besides change is more exciting than the status quo.
3. Invite radical idea - We need new ideas that challenge the orthodox. Look at everything your organization does…how long has it been going on? When was the last time we did something different.
4. Build an organization that doesn’t need super human leaders – Long gone is the need for a top heavy organizations that are dependent on one super-dynamic leader. Allow freedom of innovation from everyone. Our job as leaders now is to mobilize, connect and support this generation of contributors.

The good news is that unexpected change brings unexpected opportunities to interact with our culture about the life-changing message of Jesus Christ. Hamel puts it like this,  “Stop being a prisoner of precedent and a custodian of culture.” Maybe the Christian culture should be leading innovation instead of trying to catch up to it.

How to convince yourself or someone else to Twitter

…or maybe I need to justify why this full-time campus minister uses Twitter

• First of all I watched this to figure out what I was getting myself into. This helped me begin the process of understanding what Twitter is capable of.
• Tons of other full-time Christian workers use Twitter  including: Andy Stanley (Northpoint Church), Mark Driscoll (Mars Hill),  John Piper, and Steve Douglass (Campus Crusade President).
• According to Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson books it puts a human face on the organization, or in other words; it builds credibility… which, is increasingly hard to do in our culture.
• Lastly, it’s been incredibly helpful in staying in tune with what’s going on in the Christian leadership landscape.  All you have to do is follow the right people and you get all kinds of helpful info. Right now my favorites are John Saddington/Church Crunch for tech info, and Catalyst for leadership thoughts. It has also allowed me to connect with other Campus Crusade staff members around the world which has spurred innovation thoughts in me.

When I first heard about Twitter, I thought it sounded pretty lame. I gave it a shot for a few days and I’ve grown to appreciate it. You can live without it for sure, but it’s kind of fun.

Don’t worry about connecting Twitter to Facebook, or third party applications Tweetdeck, or Tweetie just yet. Just get the hang of Twitter first.