Behind the Scenes - Prayer for Haiti edition

A lot can change in an instant.

The news of the week is grim for our brothers and sisters around Port au Prince in Haiti. While encouraging to hear news of some projects outside the city in Haiti were unaffected by the earthquakes, they will be impacted as the infrastructure has radically changed in that country.

There was high loss of life and other casualties.

We are in the window when mass care operations are most needed. The best in class organizations such as World Vision, Compassion, Red Cross and many other good ones take the lead. The follow up rebuilding, longer term infrastructure and other projects will need sustained engagement that many churches will provide.

I know many of our client churches have projects in Haiti and have heard scattered reports of responses. I would be interested in learning IF your church has a long time partner or other project in Haiti. Please send that along to me via email here.

And let us pray for the pastors in Haiti that are serving their congregations and others during this time. Sadly, it has been reported that the Archbishop of Port au Prince died during the earthquake. Let us pray for all those that survived as well as those that are going into the area now to serve.

In other behind the scenes news since my last report:

+ Warren Bird, our able research director, is on vacation this week. Last time he did that we made a lot of staff changes so I thought he had learned his lesson but he is very disciplined when taking vacation time. But he did drop me an email to say that the “lean staffing” survey now has over 500 responses. If you still haven’t done it, find it here:  http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB22A2DVD9UC9)

+ I got to peek in at THE SHOW this week with Jorge Acevedo, Teresa McBean, Matt Russell and our own Liz Swanson. They were sharing about various types of recovery ministry around the country. We had a good crowd and lots of good questions. You can find the archive here.

Next week we have Matt Carter from Austin Stone Churchspeaking on Missional Communities. At least I think we do. Check it out at 4 PM Eastern on Tuesday. Here’s the link.

+ Todd Rhoades and really the whole team do a good job with this way of sharing with lots of leaders across the country with this technology.

+ Speaking of technology we had our first “The Spotlight” webinar kick off the New Year. Over 200 engaged in the live discussion, this month on “Starting and Sustaining a Healthy Recovery Ministry.” Look for another great interactive webinar next month on February 10^th. It’s free by the way.(Kudos to Producer Stephanie Plagens on that one)

I am going to do some shout outs here for some interesting news and blog posts I have read over the past week. I am sure there are many more but these caught my eye:

+  Mac Lake http://bit.ly/5YPCYA - Bringing the next generation leaders your organization 

+ I liked Will Mancini’s post on Simple Strategy here:http://www.willmancini.com/2010/01/simple-strategy-stop-creating-decision-paralysis-for-discipleship.html

+ I thought that William’s photo of a reserved parking space was hilarious here: http://williamvanderbloemen.com/2010/01/a-reservation-for-the-unwelcome/

+ I loved seeing Shawn Lovejoy’s video about the tenth anniversary of Mountain Lake Church here:http://shawnlovejoy.typepad.com/shawn_lovejoy/2010/01/tenacity-a-walk-down-memory-lane.html

(Shawn is one of the guys behind the scenes at the churchplanters.com conference)

+ Plus my friend Matt Evans of Dalton, Georgia (one of our Next Gen Alumni) reports they are getting closer to adoption proceedings.http://mattevans.cc/our-adoption-its-a-boy-x-2/

+ Christianity Today had a story about Organic Churches herehttp://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/januaryweb-only/11-41.0.html that has generated some good discussions.

Neil Cole responded here: http://cole-slaw.blogspot.com/2010/01/long-live-oc-response.html

Frank Viola here:http://frankviola.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/why-organic-church-is-not-exactly-a-movement-christianity-today-article/

Andrew Jones also had some helpful movement comments here:http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/tallskinnykiwi/2010/01/how-to-spot-a-church-movement.html

All these guys are friends and have some good insights.

I know Leadership Network is often pegged as being exclusively for megachurches, but we actually like all kinds of churches. And the article for CT cites a number of people that we work with regularly including Neil, Bob Roberts, Alan Hirsch and the like.

Neil, Alan, Bob Roberts made appearances on THE NINES. Frank is going to speak at Aha! in March.

+ And to point to one more blog post – I thought Eddy Hall nailed it in this article http://www.living-stones.com/articles/poor.htm - Do the poor feel welcomed at your church?

While I don’t get to read all the things sent to me, if you have one of note, send it along. Click here to email.

+ Finally, and this is for real insiders, can you believe it has been a year since Innovation3? And our 25^th anniversary banquet? This time last year we were all going nuts in preparation!

Til next time. And send me news if you have some!!

Dave Travis

Managing Director

Leadership Network