Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Our Blog Has Moved....
With the launch of our new website a few weeks ago, our blog is now integrated into our site. We're excited about our new site and we encourage you to check it out! See our new website or go directly to our blog.
Friday, February 8, 2013
Groundhog's Day
Did you know? That in addition to being the humble SALI assistant / SALI teacher / ESL coordinator here in the great land of LINC North Texas, I am also a full time grad student at the University of Dallas. Our mascot is the Groundhogs (yes, I'm for real), and yes, we do go crazy for Groundhog's Day - the one day of the year that all the serious students at UD get a chance to cut back and relax. What's more, on that day of celebrating giant rodents and their shadows, there is the compulsory screening and re-screening of the movie, Groundhog Day with Bill Murray.
If you've never seen this film, your'e in for a treat. It's the story of Frank Conner, a malcontent-ed weatherman from a big city news station who is sent to Punxsutawny, PA to cover the emergence of the hollowed hog only to find that the next morning is a repeat of the day before. Frank seems doomed to re-live the same day over and over until he finally gets it right (learning to speak French, play jazz piano, and fall in love). Ultimately, it's a good tale of getting a do-over on the events of life - especially when you have a love of time to kill.
But when I think of the ability to re-do everything in life, I also think of all the things you would forfeit: the errors we've made that have taught us valuable lessons, given us chance encounters, and ultimately helped to define who we are. This Groundhog's day, I'm making it a time to be grateful - grateful for mistakes and errors that have made life richer and helped to make me the person I am. As for the unknown future and worrying about mis-steps, I'll give all of that to God and let him direct my path.
Brandon
If you've never seen this film, your'e in for a treat. It's the story of Frank Conner, a malcontent-ed weatherman from a big city news station who is sent to Punxsutawny, PA to cover the emergence of the hollowed hog only to find that the next morning is a repeat of the day before. Frank seems doomed to re-live the same day over and over until he finally gets it right (learning to speak French, play jazz piano, and fall in love). Ultimately, it's a good tale of getting a do-over on the events of life - especially when you have a love of time to kill.
But when I think of the ability to re-do everything in life, I also think of all the things you would forfeit: the errors we've made that have taught us valuable lessons, given us chance encounters, and ultimately helped to define who we are. This Groundhog's day, I'm making it a time to be grateful - grateful for mistakes and errors that have made life richer and helped to make me the person I am. As for the unknown future and worrying about mis-steps, I'll give all of that to God and let him direct my path.
Brandon
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Stop, Collaborate and Listen!
Partnership is the spice of life for nonprofit organizations, churches, and ministries. It's a messy and challenging process, full of unmet expectations, overtime, and sleepless nights. It's also the only way forward. If the task were completely isolated and predictable, we would have no need of partnerships. We could all blissfully manage our own selves toward our simple goals. However, God's mission is far from isolated, simple, or predictable. Matthew 24:14 - the Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached to the entire world! With the population growing by some 200,000 every day, that's a tall order since the Joshua Project reports that 42% of the 7 billion people on earth are unreached.
God's mission is unattainable without unity of mission. This doesn't mean that everyone has to join to form one supermission, or that we should just forget about all our differences. It may mean that we need to think more openly about with whom we will partner. It definitely means that we have to collaborate. It's too big for us to be competing with each other, starting our own replica ministries of other successful ones. And it's too big for us to hold tightly to our own successes and not share them. Successful collaboration requires broadening our scope from ourselves to God. It's about God's mission, not our own. We have to listen to Him, to what He is doing, and then relentlessly pursue it. Then we partner with others who are headed the same direction.
At LINC NT, nearly everything we do is through collaboration. We partner with many churches at a variety of levels. We also partner with secular organizations such as local schools, school districts, and a national school program. These partnerships allow us to do our ministry. Plus, we are currently pursuing a partnership with a national Christian ministry to do one of their programs here in our city. Just like the Body of Christ, everybody has their own function and own strengths. Nobody is great at everything. Recognizing that, we can transform communities. People are surprised when they hear how small our staff is because we do so much. On our own, we would accomplish very little. Through collaboration, we can change the world, starting right here in North Texas.
God's mission is unattainable without unity of mission. This doesn't mean that everyone has to join to form one supermission, or that we should just forget about all our differences. It may mean that we need to think more openly about with whom we will partner. It definitely means that we have to collaborate. It's too big for us to be competing with each other, starting our own replica ministries of other successful ones. And it's too big for us to hold tightly to our own successes and not share them. Successful collaboration requires broadening our scope from ourselves to God. It's about God's mission, not our own. We have to listen to Him, to what He is doing, and then relentlessly pursue it. Then we partner with others who are headed the same direction.
At LINC NT, nearly everything we do is through collaboration. We partner with many churches at a variety of levels. We also partner with secular organizations such as local schools, school districts, and a national school program. These partnerships allow us to do our ministry. Plus, we are currently pursuing a partnership with a national Christian ministry to do one of their programs here in our city. Just like the Body of Christ, everybody has their own function and own strengths. Nobody is great at everything. Recognizing that, we can transform communities. People are surprised when they hear how small our staff is because we do so much. On our own, we would accomplish very little. Through collaboration, we can change the world, starting right here in North Texas.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)