Outrageous Possibilities

What do corporate boardrooms, strategic plans, transcontinental shipping networks, an ancient wall and prayer all have in common?  Find out by eavesdropping on "Practical Vision and Listening Prayer: A Conversation With Ted Kallman." HERE

Wisdom and Beans and Hearing from God

I love what I do.  I get to engage in fascinating conversations with all sorts of interesting people.  Some of them even pay me decent money to make brutally honest observations and ask the kinds of stubbornly probing questions that used to get me fired.

Then there’s the coffee.  Given the nature of what I do, it makes no sense for me pay for office space just so I have a place to host face to face meetings.  There are simply too many great indie coffee shops around. Unique surroundings. Decidedly lacking in straight lines and generic corporate chic. Disarming. And convenient for the people with whom I'm meeting.  Most of my professional and social encounters take place in coffee shops.  As a result, I consume an inordinate amount of coffee.  Mind you, it's good coffee. Choice suppliers. Black. High test. No additives.  In my world, decaf is an abhorrent waste of good beans and usually a dreadful waste of the barista’s talent.

I had coffee this morning with friend who is a former corporate executive and is now an author, consultant, strategist and advisor to universities, corporations, and regional and national governmental leaders. Although he would probably argue the fact, he is one of the key innovators and influencers in his field.  Most people have never heard of him, precisely because he is a gifted network builder and an accomplished servant leader.

As we savored our dark roast, we talked about the waves of innovation that have swept over the world in recent decades, shifting the way in which people across the globe do almost everything.  We talked about the emerging demand for radically different skill sets in virtually every field,  and about the need to think and act quickly, intuitively, and creatively in order to keep up, especially in a business and economic environment that is changing at an exponential rate and with near blinding speed.

And we talked about the role that our faith perspectives have on our work.  On the details and processes.  

My friend is a person of influence. Anyone who meets him quickly discovers that he has a contagious passion for what he does.  He is also a person whose deep Christian faith and practical biblical wisdom form and inform everything about him.  He doesn’t hide his faith from those in his spheres of influence, but he doesn’t insist that they understand “Christianeze” either.  He speaks practical truth in their language and leads with action.  And value. And results. 

When I asked him about how he saw God influencing his professional activities, beyond principles and best practices, he smiled.  “Sometimes I see it in discovering principles and best practices,” he said. “And then there are times when I’m talking with a business owner or writing or searching for an application or a solution to a particular problem. In any case, I can have a sudden ‘Ah Hah’ moment.  The answer is there, and I know it…and I know that it’s God.” 

 

Is it possible that our friends, our families, our jobs and our communities could be blessed and transformed by the involvement and insight of people who are actually listening and hearing from the God who designed their world? 

Some key questions have come up in response to our Marketplace Kingdom podcast and conference call conversations… having to do with actually hearing from God today.  We’ve talked a lot about intimacy with God being the starting point for understanding how to live as Christians in the midst of our vocations and relationships in the broader community. While we acknowledge that Jesus is Lord, and believe that He wants to extend his lordship in realistic ways into all the various areas of our lives and activities, many still wonder what that looks like in the details of 2016.  

Does the God of the Universe really have a specific design for individual human lives?  Our lives?  How do we listen for His voice and the Holy Spirit’s direction as it pertains to our particular situations? 

 

With these questions in mind, we have released a bonus episode, “Seeing and Hearing from God”,   the keynote address from a Western Michigan regional prayer leaders’ conference involving participants from a wide variety of backgrounds and professions and representing some twenty six churches and nineteen different denominations.  This is a fast paced, entertaining and practical biblical teaching and it’s our gift to you.  We hope you’re encouraged.  And we hope you share it with a friend.  Then get together and talk about it.  Over coffee.  And tip your barista!

Download Here

A Three Minute Guide to Spreading Your Crazy Idea

You’ve got an idea. An innovation. An epiphany. It’s pretty amazing, if you do say so yourself. But when you try to explain it to a couple of your friends, they just stare blankly. Or worse, they immediately begin listing off all the reasons it won’t work.

So where did things go wrong?  Is your idea really that terrible? Was your explanation inadequate? Do you need to upgrade your class of friends? Assuming that you’ve already examined all three of these possibilities, there is a probable fourth issue. You began by trying to explain your idea.

You began by talking about it. You didn’t demonstrate it. As long as your epiphanous innovation languishes in the field of dreams, it goes nowhere. Even for you. Unless you’re ready to show what it looks like in action, you have no convincing skin in the game.   You can speak articulately and argue convincingly, but where’s the risk? Really.

Derek Sivers founded CD Baby by accident. He was simply an indie musician who wanted to market his catalog. He was chasing his passion and a few of his friends and fellow musicians asked if he could help them do the same. He didn’t set out to revolutionize the way people access artists and their music. He was just stubborn enough to believe that indie artists could connect directly with their potential audience. In the face of the music industry giants and their distribution monopoly, he had a crazy idea. Change the rules. It turned out to be a $22 million crazy idea.

Why did it work? He didn’t begin by talking about it. He began by doing it. And providing the opportunity for it to catch on.

You may have an astounding, game changing idea. How much do you really believe in it? How crazy are you? Crazy enough?

An Early Christmas Rant

I don’t rant and ramble online very often.  Come to think of it, I don’t believe I rant or ramble very often at all, though my kids might disagree.  You’ll have to check with them.

I’m not anti-Christmas, but for crying out loud, it’s still a week before Thanksgiving.  I don’t usually buy a tree until almost a month from now.  And I certainly don’t engage in the annual ritual of commercial holiday-themed rioting and pillaging ironically known as Black Friday.  I’ve actually wondered how many little plastic versions of the baby Jesus are trampled at Target and Walmart every November.

I still insist on saying Christmas and not “the holidays”, unless I’m referring to the period from mid-November through January 2.  Christmas is the pinnacle.  Other people might have other holidays occurring this time of year.  Hanukkah for example.  That one’s actually pretty interesting. Or my son-in-law’s birthday.  But those aren’t my main focus, and they don’t define or anchor the season for me.

For the record, I love Christmas. I’ve always loved Christmas. But it’s getting harder to do so.  Every year is tainted by a shrill new season of  competing “our rights are being violated and we are outraged” shows.  The War on Christmas versus The Evil Domineering Christians. 

Meanwhile, I’m subjected to a constant barrage of Christmas and Holiday themed advertising carefully designed to make me believe that the true significance of the season will be lost if I don’t buy this trinket or take advantage of that carefully timed new and improved product rollout.   If I really love my family, how could I not buy them the opportunity to be as happy as those happy people on the screen?  What kind of Scrooge would do that?

Even the US government gauges the economic health of the nation by the amount of spending that takes place in the last 45 days of the year.

It’s hard not to get sucked in.  The decorations.  The colors.  The lights.  The music.  All combine to create an atmosphere that is magical.  And it works.  It makes us feel.  Most of it isn’t actually about Jesus, but I shouldn’t be surprised by that.  Not in our generic culture.  But is it all really about being festive and loving and spreading good will?  Nice generic sentiments. Or is it about the money?

When I hear people talk about putting Christ back in Christmas, I sometimes wonder what that would look like.  I wonder what the marketplace in the temple’s outer court must have looked like around festival time, packed with travelers and colorfully decorated for the holiday celebration just before Jesus stormed in and cleared it of merchants and bankers.

And then I wonder why those who follow Jesus today would be crying offense because the merchants and bankers in our marketplaces aren’t trying to use His Name to sell their festival offerings. So…I decided to post an open letter to Joshua Feuerstein, the guy with the anti-Starbucks coffee cup video.

Dear Guy With the Anti-Starbuck’s Coffee Cup Video:

I don’t expect that you’ll see this post or that you’ll care if you do.  But since you’ve gone public with your rant and hold yourself out as a representative of conservative Christianity engaging in the public square, I believe you need to be publicly challenged.  I am a conservative Christian. Jesus Christ is my Lord and I am not ashamed to own that.  My relationship with Him is the central defining fact of my life.  Living faithfully and engaging thoughtfully is important to me.  And you do not represent me.   You and your approach are not representative of my faith or that of most of my Christian friends, or the way in which we believe God would have us to interact with people who are not yet Christians.

OK. So your video has garnered multiple millions of hits and shares on YouTube and Facebook. The same can be said about Talking Dogs, Sneezing Baby Pandas, and an Annoying Orange. That does not make it legitimate evangelism.  Attention and influence are not the same thing.

You posted a follow-up saying you were feeling discouraged by the negative blowback you’ve received.  Maybe that’s good thing.  Some of your videos show a person who truly cares and wants to bring help and healing to a hurting world.  But others have more in common with secular shock-trolls than with the Spirit of Christ.  I mean, I’m all for the second amendment, but I don’t think that has anything to do with Christmas.  And I don’t think anyone is going to come to Christ or find the real Reason for the Season based on the fact that some guy just flashed a Jesus cup and a pistol at them.   

Instead of forcing a barista to write Merry Christmas on a paper coffee container, perhaps your time would be better spent in leaving a generous tip, then quietly sharing a cup of coffee with that barista, listening to his or her heart and demonstrating the love and grace that Jesus wants people to experience.  

I love Jesus and I love Christmas.  No one can take that away from me.  This is a special, festive time of year, when I and my family celebrate the Gift of God.  We celebrate that God became flesh and moved into the neighborhood and brought Life and Light to the world, giving Himself so that peace and good  will and redemption would be truly possible.  We celebrate the Christ child who came and lived and became the Lamb of God and King of Kings.

And we decorate and give gifts and eat. And cherish one another. 

I’d just like to encourage you to do the same…and forget about the cup.

A Tribal Supper With Seth Godin

I had supper with Seth Godin last night.  Well...OK...He was on TEDTalks and I was in my living room, but we were both there and I was eating supper.  I like Seth.  He disrupts my thinking and I'm perversely drawn to disruptive people.

We all need our thinking disrupted from time to time. Whether we're entrepreneurs embarking on a new dream project, activists working to move a mountain in our little corner of reality, stealth change agents embedded in a huge organization, or ordinary people just trying to be excellent in world bent on mediocrity, it's a sure bet we can't get the job done alone. Nor should we try.  If we want our product or idea to spread, we need to connect with people who speak a common language and share a common passion.

Ideas don't go viral because they reached the largest number of individuals possible.  They go viral because they reach the right communities.  The rest are a waste of time.  For the most part, generic idea sellers would find me to be a waste of time if they were paying attention. I screen my calls, go directly from my mailbox to the trashcan (physically and digitally), and whenever possible restrict my binge-watching to Netflix because they don't have ads.  I can't remember the last time I bought something or changed my mind because of an ad.  Or a Facebook meme.  Most Americans have become experts at the art of not listening.

We need to stop trying to "market" our ideas to the greatest number of people and really connect with the people who are as crazy as we are.  We want our audience to stop being an audience and start being collaborators.  To feel the same passion that we do.  And then engage. But information doesn't produce passion.  Passion does!  And the only way to ignite passion is to be authentic.  Then give permission to your "tribe" to catch fire!

Fool's Paradise

(excerpted from the novel in development, entitled Haggis on a Biscuit)

“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls”

--Paul Simon, New York 1965

            It’s my birthday today.  April 1^st.  My family is planning to surprise me with a cake tonight.  We’ll probably play pictionary.  Then my son will destroy me at Need for Speed Six. 

            I don’t show my years, but sometimes I feel them.  To me, that’s one of the most loathsome aspects of middle age.   Whatever I am, the me that faithfully wills this body to get up and face the world every morning, is not interested in facts.  Come what may, it remains indisputably convinced that it’s still seventeen, or maybe twenty-two.  Yet little things have begun to occur.   Nothing radical.  But unsettling.  There’s no longer any distance at which I can hold a phonebook or a newspaper and read it clearly.  (I think my arms have grown shorter.)    Hair has begun to appear in discomfiting locations.  And it’s not mine; it lacks pigment.  My wives don’t yell at me anymore…as much.  Their concerted program of domestication may finally be paying some small dividends.  Last Christmas, I noticed a two year old cuddled in my lap.  She looked like one of mine, but then she called me ‘Grampa.’

            I’ll admit it.  I’m not ten feet tall and bullet-proof anymore.  I duck a lot quicker than I used to though.  And more often.

            Fifty-something probably wouldn’t be so bad if I weren’t expected to get along with fifty-some year old people.  Proctologists and portfolios and death benefits and condos in Alabama are not the stuff of polite dinner conversation.  Male or female, those who talk about aging with dignity should be promptly and summarily shown the door with a well aimed kick.  I will not go out gracefully.  When the grim reaper calls my name again, I plan to ignore the bum. Or spit in his eye.  I’m busy.  If he wants to be foolishly persistent, he’ll have to win the best two out of three falls and I’ve already won the first two.  I fight dirty.  No, when and if my time’s ever finally up, that old boy’s going to need to ambush me, with reinforcements, and drag me off kicking and screaming every centimeter of the way. 

            I am feeling better now that the stitches are out and the voices have stopped. There is nothing like sun and salt air and the sound of waves to smooth down the frangled edges of your last remaining nerve.  It’s like a return to the womb…except for the sun and the air and the absence of a womb.  I’ve been smoothing frangles for about four weeks now. Spending some of the bonus money from my last project. The Republic of Ocracoke has been a great place to do that.  Off season.  Fifty miles from the nearest anything. Great food. Layed-back locals. 

            Back in the world, too many otherwise harmless people run their mouths just to hear the noise they make and give their brains something simple to do while they’re breathing.  If they were actually thinking, would they be asking a lot of irrelevant questions about things that are none of their business?  Like “What do you do?  Who do you work for?  How do you get paid?”  Even if they really cared, how do you explain that you were issued sealed orders and when you opened them all the pages were blank?  I’ve found if I mention something about selling insurance they usually shut up.  If they won’t, I end up selling them some. I keep licenses current under two names just in case.  But I don’t want to go through the effort, so I like it here. 

            I guided The White Rabbit back into harbor about twenty minutes ago.  We left the marina at 6:30 this morning with a private charter group hoping for sea bass or mackerel or mahi mahi. The Gulf Stream was almost like glass when we got there, and I gave them a full three hours. They weren’t disappointed.  We were back in our slip by 11:45.  I just finished hosing down the decks.  Kristiaan and Jo and Jo are over at the Clipper picking up some shrimp and Carta Blanca and sodas.

            We didn’t have our last real house long enough get attached to it.  We’ll probably settle into another one sooner or later, but for now living on boat isn’t bad at all.  “The Bunny” is a 66’ Meridian Pilothouse with some very special features. 

            I love gadgets that do what they’re supposed to do.  I love them even more when they exceed my expectations.  Take this thing for example.  Proto Issue multi-platform MobileMac G7.  Proprietary onboard 1.5 tbps secure wireless e-wave satellite uplink. Planetary GPS.  NytroQuadCore sealed cryogenic processor complex with 3.3 Petabytes of photopolymeric crystal cluster multidimensional holographic data storage and 166 Terabytes of RAM.  Power source is a combination of microphotovoltaics and a crystal polyether-ionic capaci-wafer.  Don’t ask.  I have no idea.  I don’t even know how to charge it.  Haven’t needed to in seven months.  I think it involves sorcery.  The whole tamale weighs less than 1.5 kilos including the military grade titanium faraday shell.  The price tag—if I could buy it—would be several times that of my last car. (And I drove a nice car, until some Guatemalans blew it up.)  The Mac was a gift.  From Alice.  My guess is she stole it.  She’s like that.

            It’s a very handy toy though; so I don’t let my conscience bother me too much.  I just think of it as part of a severance package from one of former employers.  I’m sure they haven’t missed it.  They’ve been a little busy sifting through what’s left of their headquarters.  That’s right.  Same Guatemalans.  My car was in the parking garage when the bomb went off.  It was an annoying day.

            I have been diligently trying to avoid anything that smells of real work, but it won’t go away.  It keeps scratching at the back door and howling.  True, this field journal does need some cleaning up.  It may be of value to someone. Sometime. Besides which Budd—my current therapist—insists that my verbal debriefing was significantly less than linear and strongly recommends written reflection to facilitate detailed inner accounting and cathartic release.  I think she may be a closet kabbalist.  I quoted Dr. Richard Ames at her.  I told her that writing, once begun, almost invariably becomes an irreversible addiction and a fundamentally sociopathic undertaking. A disease.  She didn’t care.  She told my wives to humor me and expect an outbreak at any time. To leave me alone and avoid eye contact when it occurred.   Just guide me to a quiet corner and push food at me with a broom handle.

            Personally, I think there are perfectly understandable reasons why my report was “significantly less than linear.”  There just might be some things I don’t want to dig through. Why else would I pack up my family and disappear? But I’ll play along.  Maybe it will help…a little.  Then again…

            Lunch is here.  I’ll write more later.  Jo’s smiling and she’s got a broom.  I’m afraid she’ll spill my beer.                   

A Little Help

I realize that some of my readers might not consider themselves Christians in any sense. If you are among those, please feel free to politely ignore this post.

I'm working with an emerging ministry that is in the process of adjusting several aspects of it's vision and outreach strategy. I'm hoping you can take a moment to help me out by answering four quick questions..

During a recent conversation, a friend referred to himself and his family as being part of the Christian diaspora (a term that was used to describe the Jews scattered across the globe). By this, he meant that they were part of a growing group of people who have become disillusioned with participation in an institutional expression of "church". Some are still attending somewhere or other, while others have decided to take an extended break from "church". Still others have given up on the institution altogether and have opted for a house church approach, worship and pray together just as a family, or are doing nothing.

So here are the questions: 
Are you part of this Christian Diaspora? 
 Do you fit into any of these categories? 
Which one? 
Why?

I'm posting this to Facebook  as well, hoping that as many of my friends as possible will respond. In addition, I would ask that you consider posting this to your own wall or blog and direct responses back to me. Anyone who wants to answer privately can do so by email to christiansandotheraliens@gmail.com. Thank you.