The frontier of community leadership

As part of the famine village in Blackwood SA we have local businesses supporting our 40 hour famine fundraising this weekend. Each business runs their own expression of a party with a purpose from having staff gatherings to getting their customers involved. The most consistent and creative business for the 3rd year running has been Bank SA Blackwood. Read the pervious post or related tags to find out why we started the famine village and party with a purpose.

Branch manager, Irena was the first to get on board when I floated the concept with her in 2009. Her heart and passion for being involved in a community event and raising money and awareness for a good cause has positively infected her staff and customers. In the first year I helped her with some ideas and to set up a 40 hour famine display. This year the Bank SA staff have gone all out and I didn’t have to provide anything except encouragement.

Verity, Daniel & I with Irena and Sarah from Bank SA Blackwood at their 40 hour famine party with a purpose

My wife Verity and I dropped in this morning with our son Daniel to support Bank SA’s morning tea party (which runs all day) I was amazed at the atmosphere Irena and her staff had created. She made sure one staff member was at the door greeting people as they came in and directed them to the 40 hour famine display, the morning tea, offered them a tea or coffee and invited them to sit down, learn about the 40 hour famine and make a donation.

The atmosphere was fantastic with lots of food the staff had made laid out on a table surrounded by couches. Verity and I sat and talked with people but not just about the 40 hour famine. It was a fantastic opportunity for community pastoral care as people shared their stories and struggles. We felt like the community chaplains.

Bank SA had 40 hour famine donation boxes on the table and at the tellers. They had a fantastic display board talking about the global food crisis and how money from the 40 hour famine will help. Next to that board they had set up another display for Verity’s CD ‘Advocate’ that she launched last year. They had a CD player playing her CD in the branch throughout the day because they are songs of justice and awareness. They were even selling her CD!

This is a corporate business who has gone above and beyond the call. Some other corporates I visit in Blackwood shrug me off saying that as a corporation they are already committed to a charity. Bank SA, are also committed to other things, but the Blackwood branch, to their credit, have made room to be part of a community initiative. They have caught the vision that it’s not just about ticking the box and not just about charity, it’s about community and participating in something together.

Other corporate businesses in Blackwood supporting the 40 hour famine are Bendigo Bank, Flight Centre, Raine & Horne &  Commonwealth Bank. Some smaller businesses in Blackwood supporting the 40 hour famine this weekend are Foods from the Edge, Blackwood Fitness Centre, Belair Hotel & Blackwood landscaping. There have also been a number of schools and churches hosting events, running education programs and fundraising initiatives. Our community target is $100,000 and from what I’ve heard so far we are well on the way.

Tune into 891 ABC Radio at 6:50 tomorrow morning to hear me speak more about the famine village concept.

Shalom Mark

P.S. If you click on the link above for Verity Skye’s CD we’ll be donating some money from CD’s sold this weekend to the 40 hour famine

A silent tsunami we can stop

A couple of weeks ago a friend and colleague posted a facebook note responding to the growing crisis in East Africa. Adam challenged his 632 facebook friends to respond by giving at least $20 each. He figured if people used social media and the resources they have available in a simple way such as this he could raise over $12,500. I was the only one to respond to Adam’s note suggesting I would call on my 786 facebook friends to do the same. I gave my $20 to a ‘Horn of Africa’ appeal that Sunday.

It’s this kind of optimism that caused Adam and I to start the ‘Blackwood famine village’ back in 2009 and then ‘party with a purpose‘ in 2010 to support the 40 hour famine. Our aim was to educate and recruit. Both concepts took off well in their pilot year but this year both are struggling for momentum. We went from raising $63K in 2009 to $78K in 2010 as a community helping to feed hundreds of starving children for an entire year. I worry this year that we won’t get close to our previous targets.

We have some valid concerns in our communities in Australia, so many I can’t count. Yet to put it in perspective we are still incredibly blessed in Australia. We have seen our fair share of tragedies and when we do, we respond. I was a chaplain in the aftermath of the Vic bushfires and I saw how Australia rallied around affected communities. My sister and her family are living in Toowoomba experiencing the same Aussie spirit helping their neighbours recover from floods.

In the case of East Africa we haven’t seen images of a wave washing cities away or rumble from an earthquake but I have been hearing reports of more than 13 million people displaced. Directly affected countries include Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, Sudan. We know how hard the 10 year drought was in Australia, they’re experiencing a 60 year drought! It’s the tsunami we don’t see.

Our friend and mentor for famine village, World Vision CEO Tim Costello, is with World Vision on the border of Kenya and Somalia at the moment. He has witnessed a refugee camp built for 90,000 people currently housing 400,000. He says there is at least 1000 more arriving everyday waiting outside the camp and they still don’t have access to food or clean water. Tim spoke at our party with a purpose launch event in Blackwood a couple of weeks ago and he spoke about Australians becoming inward looking because of the global financial crisis and other global external pressures that cause us to retreat, look inward and only look out for ourselves. He encouraged us that what we are doing in Blackwood is reminding our community that together we can make a difference. Our famine concept not only encourages us to give generously to save lives but we build one another up. Our community issues become a shared load, we rise above our own problems and we gain some perspective and realize that 13 million starving people is an unacceptable number.

What really blows me away is we actually do have the resources in our world to alleviate this crisis significantly. What I struggle with is we don’t all seem to have the will or the same optimism as my friend Adam. We need to transform our doubt into the belief that we can join with Tim and the World Vision team and many other fantastic organizations doing their bit to make a dramatic change. The UN are asking for $2.2 billion to alleviate the crisis. That’s about $2 from every facebook user. We may think the problem is too big but if everyone did their little bit we could send Africa a message about how compassionate the world really is toward their plight.

This year the 40 hour famine in Australia is focusing attention on East Timor being our closest neighbouring country. 1 million children face starvation there. However with the growing crisis in Africa I have just received word that 40 hour famine money will also be directed to places such as the refugee camp on the border of Kenya and Somalia.

Please, please help me raise money for the 40 hour famine and consider sponsoring me at Mark’s 40 hour famine donation page Let’s stop this tsunami!

Please also consider giving to organizations meeting the crisis head on in Africa. There are many so I am just going to name the ones I’ve been following and giving to.

World Vision Aus

Global Mission Partners

Shalom

Mark

Frontier Leadership?

I attended a national conference titled ‘Frontier Leadership’ earlier this year. With good intentions the title inspires us to seek new ways and new ideas of pioneering new initiatives for the future. I fear ‘Frontier Leadership’ has become yet another cool catch phrase like ‘Fresh Expressions’, ‘Emerging Church’, ‘Future Directions’ and the like.

I have been part of these conversations actively for around 7 or 8 years as a Christian minister working with Churches of Christ. While I wrestle with all the realities and challenges that face the Church in the 21st century, I’m not convinced that the mainstream churches are coming up with anything radically new to inspire younger leaders for Christ’s mission to a radically different world to the one we constructed our churches for.

I am a minister of a church that has been established for 95 years, I fit into the category of traditional ministry within a traditional church model. I’m not sure that our church would fit into any of the titles I’ve stated above but I live with the belief that the Spirit of God who actively moves among us can create new things from the old, can bring forth new inspirations and stir in the hearts of the faithful people of God. Whether we are ‘emerging churches’ with cool names or traditional congregations established for a long period of time we must live with the belief that through available and faithful people God can create something new and use us to usher His kingdom into the 21st century. All is not lost, the church is not dead or dying, God is refining and reshaping for something new.

I have begun addressing some of these challenges through my Masters studies and my ministry with Blackwood Church of Christ. I have attended numerous conferences and participated in even more conversations and I’ve come up with a theory – although not all conferences I’ve been to support this. The theory is; there is no one solution, there is no big idea, no program, no 10 steps or 12 steps for that matter. There is no one answer to the challenge we face.

Frontier Leadership is this: being available to the pioneering Spirit of God who moves among us and goes before us. We seem to forget that God’s done this before. This is not the first time human beings have come to the point of realizing we don’t have the answer or the map to give us directions into some promised future. Our answer in the past, which worked for a while, is to look to the guru with the answer. That guru leader provides the vision, inspiration and way forward. The risk in looking to this as Frontier Leadership is that we suppress the grassroots movements of the people of God, we neglect the priesthood of all believers and we make idols out of the guru leader listening to the voice of the leader over the stirring of the Spirit.

Yes the old constructs are being deconstructed and maybe for our own good. What I’m seeing beginning to emerge is the imagination of the people of God once again daring to go to the margins and provide leadership in places the church has been absent from. But here’s the critical realization. There is no one big thing! There’s lots of little things each one of us can do and do well. When we engage God’s mission to the world with the conviction of the Holy Spirit we see Christ’s promise come to life, we can achieve immeasurably more than we can imagine.

Watch this space because I want to start telling the stories that are emerging in and around my ministry context. Stories of grassroots movements, the small yet meaningful ways people are engaging God’s mission to the world; the stories of what I think are modelling frontier leadership.

Shalom, Mark