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I was reading Matt Chandler’s new blog today and a post he wrote titled “Inspirations.” (I’ve got to tell you, if there’s one guy I’d like to meet before I die, it’s Chandler…and his blog is as good as his sermons!) His basic question is, what inspires you?

Here are a few excerpts:

“…those moments where our souls are stimulated to a high level of feeling, thinking and doing.”

“What is it that inspires me? Who is it? What stirs my affection…for my wife? For my children? For life in general?”

“Several years ago I started applying this line of thought to my relationship with Christ. Instead of asking myself what inspired me to be a good man (what’s that anyway?) I started asking what stirs my affections for Christ. What, when I’m doing it, when I’m around it or dwelling on it creates in me a greater hunger for, passion for and worship of Christ and His mission?”

“What inspires you? Better yet, what stirs your affections for Christ, truth and holiness? If we can fill our lives with the things that stir our affections and avoid and flee those things that rob us of inspiration, we have a better shot at dwelling deeply. What and who inspires you? Stirs you? What presses you into holy places? What robs you of joy and vitality? What robs you of your affection for Christ and holiness?”

Here’s my list of 7 things that inspire me (in no particular order):

1. Early mornings on my front porch, hot coffee in hand

2. Late afternoons on my front porch, icy Diet Coke in hand

3. Matt Chandler sermons (of course!)

4. Anything written by Paul

5. My favorite music at the time (right now it’s anything by Coldplay, Hillsong United, or Brooke Fraser)

6. Hours of “free time” spent with a good book or just a pen and paper at a local coffee shop

7. A deep conversation with my wife or a friend about missions, ministry philosophy, or God’s plan to reach the world

And 7 things that rob me of inspiration:

1. Too much TV

2. Idle time wasted online

3. Getting up late

4. Traffic

5. Red tape

6. Glass-half-empty-people

7. Laziness

What’s on your list of inspiring or inspiration-robbing things, activities, or people?

I just discovered that my favorite podcast pastor has a new blog (thank you Google Alerts!). It’s called “Dwell Deep.” But please, for everyone’s sake, don’t make any “King James only” comments on the blog. We want Chandler to stick around in the blogesphere for awhile!

One part of my job as a missionary that I really enjoy is strategizing.

How can we more effectively serve in the areas where God is leading us? How do we expand our reach? How do we use our resources wisely (especially our most precious one…us, the workers!)? What do we change? Add? Drop?

I love it all.

Brainstorming. Doing process evals. Team building exercises. War gaming. Well, maybe not war gaming for a ministry, but you get the point.

Thinking about ministry strategy gets my blood pumping.

So you can imagine my excitement today when I asked our director if I could plan the agenda for the 3-day 2009 strategy meeting for our ministry in Nicaragua…and he said, “Yes, please!”

I’ve never actually “driven” or planned a 3-day strategy session before (I’ve only contributed some small part…and that was for a business, not a ministry), so if you have any ideas or suggestions, I’m all ears! But I’m pumped about the opportunity and can’t wait to spend the better part of tomorrow afternoon in a coffee shop — just me, a notebook, and a pen — strategizing about strategizing.

I don’t usually cut and paste posts from my other blog, but I had to make an exception with this one. I just got back from a short-term mission trip with a youth team from Emmanuel Fellowship. We served in the town of Diriamba, Nicaragua. Well, throughout the week there was a prank war between the guys and girls (I swear, I had nothing to do with it!). I’m happy to say, the guys got the last laugh. Really, we all shared lots of laughs — watching the prank video (below), playing games, and just acting like buffoons. “A Day With Gumby” has a shocking, surprise ending, so be sure to watch it all the way through…

1. Pride

(And now 14 more ways to say “pride”…)

2. Allowing busyness or disinterest to prevent you from learning anything about the host country or culture before the trip

3. Believing that the American way is the “best way” or the “only way”

4. Being critical of local customs, beliefs, or traditions

5. Being inflexible when (not if) challenges, changes, discomfort, delays, miscommunication, or misinterpretations arise

6. Refusing to listen to or learn from the people in the host church or host country

7. Refusing to step out of your comfort zone

8. Having an English-only mentality

9. Having the attitude of a “savior” instead of that of a servant

10. Focusing on “me” (how tired I am, how uncomfortable I am, how great I am for coming to this poor country) and not on prayer or serving others

11. Spending more time talking to your teammates than people from the host country

12. Spending more time “playing” than praying (that’s praying individually, with the mission team as a whole, or with locals)

13. Eliminating time for the team to share what God is teaching them, replacing it with planning, preparation, free time, or sleep

14. Eliminating personal time with God, replacing it with anything else

15. Losing focus, forgetting the purpose of the mission: serving

What’s the take-away from this list? Watch your attitude. Recognize pride and eliminate it. On your next short-term mission trip, go as a humble servant.

I found a blog post from a few months ago titled “Christian Missionaries Convert to New Media” on the Digital @ Leadership Network blog. Since this is one of the concepts I love to talk about — or scribble ideas about on napkins — here’s a snippet from the blog entry followed by my thoughts:

No doubt you’ve spent enough time online to have discovered some of the great examples of missionaries who are using the new media for ministry purposes. In fact, as globalization crosses the digital divide, more and more missionaries will migrate online.

Today’s missionaries are using blogs, Facebook, Shutterfly and other social media to extend their connectedness, reward their supporters and create archived memories of their unique adventures. Whether missionaries are serving on short term teams or serving in long term posts, they need no longer be disconnected from their points of origin, hometowns, partners, sending churches, extended families, etc. In fact, if they have internet access, there’s virtually (no pun intended) no reason they can’t be very connected.

My thoughts:

1. As a missionary who’s been using various social media tools for three years now, I can attest to the growing number of missionaries using blogs, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc. to stay connected with supporters and cast vision for their ministries. It’s a growing trend. And it’s to the benefit of the missionaries in the field and their families, supporters, and sending churches at home.

2. In the blog entry on Digital @ Leadership Network, the author goes on to list some of his favorite missionary blogs. A few of my favorites are below. But first, here’s the most comprehensive list of missionary bloggers I know of: Missionary-Blogs.

3. Now, some of my favorite missionary blogs:
Costa Rica Medical Missions
More of You, Less of Me
The Greene Family
Eoff Edventures
Alan and Beth in Nicaragua
Dana’s Avenue
Jonathan’s McBlog
CAREY’N ON

And two to watch for soon:
My CFCI Mission Trip
Urban Plunge

What are some of your favorite missionary blogs (and why)? What are some creative ways missionaries can use social media to stay connected…and reach the world for Christ?

I’m a few weeks behind…and I don’t have the time required to write a good blog entry on this (don’t you hate it when life and work get in the way of blogging?)…but I wanted to link to a sermon podcast from Matt Chandler at The Village Church from May 18, 2008. The sermon is called “Conviction of the Unseen.” If you’ve ever struggled with the concept and application of faith — whether you’re a Christian or not (i.e. everyone!) — you should listen to this message. Great stuff, as always, from my Virtual Senior Pastor. Like I said, I don’t have time to do a write-up, so you’ll just have to listen yourself!

A lot of my friends are diving in to the blogesphere for the first time. I’ve been called in as a consultant (the world’s cheapest) on a few occasions, so I’ve decided to write down my suggestions for all of the brand new bloggers. Here are 25 Tips for the New Kid with the Blog:

1. Be yourself.

2. Be transparent.

3. Be interesting.

4. Talk. Don’t preach.

5. Offer your opinions and share what you’re learning.

6. Figure out who you are writing for — your friends, people in your line of work or with interest in a particular hobby. Think about that person or persons as you write. If the entry you’re writing doesn’t speak to the target audience you’ve chosen, don’t hit “Publish.” (And remember that the person you’re writing for could be yourself.)

7. Write about issues you know and care about.

8. Write well. Improve over time.

9. Read the comments to your entries. Listen. Learn from others’ perspectives.

10. Sharpen your thoughts and ideas. Challenge your beliefs. Grow.

11. Some bloggers stick to a particular topic. Others cover a range of subjects, including personal ones. There’s no “one right way.” But decide early if you’re going to stay focused on a particular subject area or make your blog more of a “stream of consciousness” journal. Choose a format that works for you. But never stray on rules one through ten in the process. These are the Ten Commandments of Blogging.

12. Also remember the Five B’s of Blogging (Be Brief, Baby, Be Brief). And I’m violating this rule terribly in this post.

13. Post regularly: once a week, once a day, or more.

14. Post in advance. Many blog platforms allow you to write a post and have it published at a later time. This is a helpful feature for covering the dry spells of “Blogger’s Block” when times are good and the ideas are flowing.

15. Create conversations. Allow comments and make sharing easy (include a “forward” or “share” option for people to distribute your content through email and on sites such as Digg, Facebook, and Twitter). In creating conversations the goal is to create a community — a group of people who come to your blog to read and discuss what you have to say.

16. Read what others are saying (preferably in a feed reader) and comment on other blogs.

17. Make it easy to follow your blog. Include RSS subscription links for various feed readers and email.

18. Pictures are worth 1,000 words. (I recommend Flickr.)

19. Videos are worth as much or more. (Have you heard of a site called YouTube?)

20. Track your numbers (I use Google Analytics and FeedBurner). Figure out what works. Which entries garner the most hits or click-throughs? Pay attention to the numbers, but don’t write for them. Write for your audience. And write for you.

21. Speaking of numbers, learn about search engine optimization and apply its principles. Your content is important and it deserves to be seen. Apply the techniques for making your blog more accessible in search engines (by the way, the two best ways to do this are to write well and to give your blog entry a descriptive title — hardly rocket science). Call this guy if you want professional help.

22. Choose a blog platform that matches your interest and investment level. Blogger is the economy car. TypePad is the Camry. WordPress is the Cadillac.

23. Blogging saves money but costs time. Being a good blogger takes time. Research what you write about, check and recheck your facts.

24. Have fun.

25. If you’re still on the fence about starting a blog, just go for it!

Note: these tips were inspired by Tiffany, Rheagan, Mary, Carey, Michaella, Sara, Fabricio and Claudia, with ideas and help along the way from Matt, Bill, Tony, Tim, Robert and Shel, and others.

This post falls into the “dusting off old notes and found something interesting” category. I scribbled some pointers from a podcast called the One-Minute How-To that I listened to several months ago. The specific episode is called “How to Manage Projects Like a Rock Star,” contributed by Chris Brogan.

This is a good refresher for me as my role in ministry moves from “support staff” to “project manager.” I absolutely love creating systems, improving efficiency, and getting stuff done — so this list from Chris Brogan really gets the blood pumping for me. His pointers are listed below in bold with my thoughts in italics.

Focus on the people. This is so true, but I’m so bad at this! I’m a Type “D” to the max.

“From what to what by when.” This really describes how I think. But I’ve found that this doesn’t always translate in other cultures, specifically in Latin America. I’m still a big believer in this concept, but with a splash of cultural sensitivity thrown in.

Make the people on the team the leaders. I call this the AOL principle…and I plead the Fifth on what AOL stands for. If you “own it,” you’ll care more about the results. You’ll dive in. You’ll get creative. You’ll fight for results. And this is absolutely Rule #1 as far as I’m concerned on becoming a good leader. Empower other leaders!

You are the road-block breaker, they are the leaders. As I was saying…

Keep a list and tie it to a weekly meeting. Very important. I’m fanatical about lists. I’m not crazy about meetings. Necessary evils. Meetings without items to check off are unnecessary evils.

No surprises EVER at the weekly meeting. Check on statuses continuously; the meeting is just one person speaking and everyone else nodding in agreement. Our ministry is so not there on this point, but my goal is to get us there. Ninety-nine percent of project meetings should not last more than 30 minutes. If everyone is on the same page going into the meeting, it will be short and sweet…and productive.

Review the list often with the team. It’s all about good communication.

When you’re done, celebrate. “Here, here!” to that.

I happen to know some awesome project managers from my days in the software business. To you or any other readers, what am I missing from this list? What should I add, remove, or change so that disorganization and/or team dysfunction don’t eat my lunch?

I just discovered a nifty new feature in YouTube called YouTube Annotations. Do you remember VH1 Pop-Up Video? YouTube Annotations is like that, only it’s interactive. And even geekier. [But of course it's "cool" to guys like me.] Here’s a write-up on the new toy from YouTube:

Video Annotations are a new way for you to add interactive commentary to your videos! Use them to:

* Add background information about the video.

* Create stories with multiple possibilities (viewers click to choose the next scene)

* Link to related YouTube videos, channels, or search results from within a video

* All of the above!

You control what the annotations say, where they appear on the video, and when they appear and disappear.

Here are a few examples of YouTube Annotations in use:

Magic Card Trick
Jumping out of planes: My 22nd Time
Interactive Shell Game

Of course, I had to try this out for myself, so I created a video for my “Missions Minded” website — and added a few annotations. Unfortunately, the feature does not work on embedded video, so you have to go to the link on YouTube. You can watch my video here.

My thoughts on YouTube Annotations:

- It’s very easy to use

- It’s a great way to connect viewers with other YouTube videos of your choosing

- You have the ability to engage your audience with it

- The idea of having a “choose your own adventure” video series is really neat-o

- It’s fun!

What do you think of YouTube Annotations? How can churches, ministries, and missionaries best use this technology to promote their visions, ideas, and work?