tony sheng

The Longest Travel Day of My Life

From the SPACE archives....

Even longer than the time we flew into Orlando after being delayed for seven hours and then I called the wrong hotel shuttle to pick us up...

Cam team - bring some good books!!

The Impulse

The impulse to go is latent within all of us. The Gospel moves - it moves from culture to culture, to localities, from people to people. It is what Alan Hirsch calls the "missional-incarnational impulse." This urge to see lives changed, to be a part of something bigger, to mark human history is already there - it is there from the moment when Jesus captures our lives.

The challenge is not to coordinate, organize or manage. The challenge is to unleash, empower and catalyze the impulse into action into transformation.

SPACE European Offices

This summer...
Vienna City Hostel, Vienna, Austria
Hotel Fagus, Sopron, Hungary
All Seasons Paris Gare de l'Est

NOLA 2008 Departs

NOLA 2008 departed this morning. This is a shot of the team praying - students and leaders in the middle and adults surrounding them.

This team is a lot of fun to be involved in - they have some of the most energetic and passionate students and a strong leader team. One of the most impressive things about them is their DNA of reproduction - which must ultimately be attributed to MPM.

Matt is serving his third Dteam [our high school small groups] - that means that this is his 11th year of serving students at Grace [his kids are going into their junior year.] Dteams meet every week - if you do the math, that is around 1,600 Wednesday nights spent with teenagers [excluding summer time breaks.] Impressive enough alright.

But take a look at the pattern of reproduction. His first Dteam that graduated in 2002 brought back 4 current leaders, not to mention other students-turned-leaders in the area of worship, speaking, etc. His second Dteam that graduated in 2006 brought back 3, at least right now. The important score is not about how many followers there are.

Meet Hungary Leader - Deanna

And of course, last in the team of adult leaders but certainly not least, is my wife Deanna. A consummate behind-the-scenes servant, D is hugely strong in responsibility and belief. Her belief is that this team is going to make a profound difference in the level of encouragement, blessing and fun that the staff of CA is going to have because of our involvement.

She also believes that joyful, well-adjusted and well-bonded teams are much more effective on the field. And of course, she believes that Jesus came to make us different people. The long term translation is an indirect impact to the spiritual climate of Europe. For CA teams, that means that if they trust the kids program, they can concentrate on the work of leadership development, cultural engagement and growing high impact teams. For SPACE, it means D does all she can to prepare teams, ranging from food prep to artistic posters to manic coverage schedules in Excel. When a task needs to get done, she feels an emotional attachment to completing them. And they get completed.

Leading a team that your family is on isn't trivial – it requires sensitivity, balance and boundaries. Deanna is the perfect compliment as we engage our kids for the future, knowing that this experience marks them for a lifetime.

Meet other 2008 Hungary leaders:
Erin
Keely
Kevin
Emilie
Leslie
Rachel

June 26 Video

Block Party Connections

Some seemingly random connections from the block party that we helped out with as a part of Mission Advance.

That is a block party trailer, sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention. It stores all kinds of stuff on the inside for throwing a community block party, like grills, a snow cone maker, a popcorn machine, etc. This particular trailer is stored in Sterling, VA, specifically for the Maryland, DC and Virginia region. If you think you are interested in renting this, let me or Colleen know and we can put you in touch with Matt. Maybe we should put together a SPACE trailer - you know, firecrackers, bottle rockets, and copies of Operation World. Alright, maybe not...

I met Tally for the first time on Saturday - I had skimmed his blog here and there before but never followed too closely. Tally is a church planter currently in Norfolk, but actually grew up in Baltimore and went to high school in Howard County. Fun to connect.

Tucker brought a cool group of kids from Bethlehem to serve at the Block Party. They did such a great job - snow cones, popcorn, lemonade, and ice water for everyone the whole day. And you could tell they loved it and had a blast while doing it.

Hungary Program

Our program for Hungary is getting some substance - it's a ton of fun to see it get some substance from the idea stage. Even more fun is seeing all of it come from our students and hardly any of it come from me. Not that I know what I'm doing with kids in the first place, because I don't.

I know I've told you a lot about this team - they are really great. This won't be the last time many of these guys and gals create something out of nothing.

Tuesday RocketFuel

::: I pledged her a strength I didn't yet have...
Link


::: "It is my certificate," she said, like some perverse badge of distinction. Now she would go and use it to vote again for change.
Link
[Too bad it looks like she won't get the opportunity in the short term.]

::: Seth Godin on conferences
This is exactly what Alex McManus did with Humana2.08.

Mission Advance 2008

Mission Advance was again this year an awesome experience. Long time readers will know that it is an experience architected on movement [because the Gospel moves], teams [we do it together] and risk [because we don't always know for sure]. It's a weekend that includes elements such as team building activities, a community impact project, and workshops from experienced practitioners in global missions. We were wildly successful again this year - kids were saying that this year was better than ever. From a leadership perspective, we brought in the right people to run elements aligned with their talents, experience and gifting.

This list of people includes:
- VK : a SPACE mom, who brought in a whole group of adults to take care of all of our food needs. This entailed snacks, drinks, lunches that could be eaten on the go, and an awesome taco dinner.
- MPM and AWolf : who ran our Friday night element, including a lot of time praying both individually and praying for teams and some really fantastic worship. One of my favorite memories from this weekend will be holding Em in my arms, worshiping together with this song - one of those dad moments.
- AmyM : one of the masters at building activities that help teams grow and learn about real life. This year, she took the idea of "moving forward in ambiguous and dynamic situations" and ran with it. WOW moment for me - I thought [to myself luckily] one of the activities was totally unprepared and too on-the-fly. Little did I know, that was the exact point.
- ColleenS : Our host at Charm City Church, we served by hanging out at their annual Block Party, mostly helping with crafts and kids activities.
- Karen Michener, P&SWatson, LeslieB : all who ran interactive workshops based on their missions experience and background. These are people that are doing it, not just talking about it. I just wish that I could have heard them all.

A few things that really struck me from this weekend:
- We all should be experience artisans. Not my idea, but his. And I think he would agree that it was really His. We can all create experiences from the perspective of designers and artists, not administrators and managers.
- We've got latent talents in our community that are untapped.
- Favorite new moment - anointing. [And no, not my original idea either.]
- SPACE is serving some phenomenal students. But you and I already knew that.

Photos: Pre-team building, K and a friend at the block party, VK anointing and praying over TriciaB.

More pictures here.

[Related: Mission Advance 2006 and 2007.]

Meet Hungary Leader - ErinOB

Erin serves vocationally in the GCC student ministry office where she is the high school administrator. If you've been around students for long, you can picture the chaos - sunday morning services with music, teaching, welcoming new people; any kind of nonsunday outreach evenings [every other Friday during the year, much more informal Thursdays during the summer]; facilities management [hey who used my amp last?]; two retreats a year [where are we going, how come the buses smell so bad?]; and the drama that sometimes is part of hanging with students. Not to mention, she is SPACE's inside connection to the church office. This kind of chaos might drive others crazy, but Erin is a adaptable arranger, and therefore loves it and excels in this kind of environment - fast moving and lots of disparate parts as we move towards the goal of preparing students for any culture and any locality.

Erin has had tons of different student ministry experience - before GCC, she was on staff with Young Life. She also came through CpR as a high schooler. She's definitely got a heart for Europe and those that don't know yet. Erin is also our one leader that is doing two trips back to back - Hungary, a tiny break in France and on to Cameroon. What a crazy idea...

Meet other 2008 Hungary leaders:
Keely
Kevin
Emilie
Leslie
Rachel

2008 England Team - R3 Festival

Here is the promo video for the music festival that our 2008 England team is going to be involved in this summer. Looks way cool doesn't it - makes me want to go along. Assisting with this music festival in the city of Manchester is the short view. The long view includes the team:
- catalyzing movement and energy for a church plant.
- understanding ministry in an urban, multi-pluralistic context.
- serving with a local, indigenous team run by nephew of our team leader JBourque.
- the leadership farm also includes JKemper [2006Baltimore], RHossick [2006LA], JMoy [2007NYC], LynnB [2007NYC]. MMcKee, who rounds out this leader team, is a new leader to SPACE this summer

Praying

KevinGN and LeslieB hosted a short prayer and worship time yesterday evening. Loved it - outside with gorgeous weather, some music and kids speaking honestly to God about how excited they are for this summer and how much we want our faith to grow.

Part of it was just to create an environment where we could pray together as teams. Another important part was to give those two an opportunity to lead within their areas of passion and talents.

Tell you more later about the prayer experiment D and I have found ourselves in.

Tuesday RocketFuel

::: ESunde in Ghana
For those of you keeping score at home, ESunde has arrived in Nalerigu, Ghana.


::: Ideas Into Reality
Brad Lomenick - head of Catalyst - outlines how they turn ideas into reality.

1. Create
2. Criticize
3. Optimize
4. Validate
5. Execute

Two things stuck out to me:
1 - Create - the language of "yes and" not "but or" in the brainstorm phase. Saying "yes and" is much more empowering - not to mention scary and exhilarating.
2 - Execution - "if it has gone through the entire process and made it to this point, the idea deserves the attention and focus to make sure it happens." To me, the execution phase is the most difficult and I think SPACE can get a lot better at it.


::: Church Planting in Sopron
Link
[Hungary team - check it out yo.]

SPACE currents

Lots of fun happenings at the international office of late:

- LesileB moved in a few weeks ago and we've had a lot of fun hearing about her DTS as well as doing some planning for Hungary. We have a story from Leslie every night for dinner and each night our girls look more forward to it. She's also helping run the first SPACE prayer gathering with KevinGN this Tuesday. I'm really looking forward to that.
- We are getting ready for Mission Advance this week. One of our awesome parents has taken the point on the food - now I feel like I don't have much to do. Actually, I have some scheduling, leader investment and big picture stuff to do, but it all seems quite manageable at this point. I'm sure that will change on Thursday. HA.
- We welcomed Dave and Britt last night, originally from Louisiana, en route from Aix-en-Provence, France, where they served with our mutual friend Megan. While Britt is doing some training for her Teach for America stint [we haven't met her yet], Dave is hanging at our house while looking to get settled in Baltimore. Not only are they good friends with our CA friends, Dave spent 9 months living in Cameroon, 6 weeks of that in Yaounde. Interesting similarity huh?
- Lots of energy in our house - fun for the extrovert [me], a tad exhausting for the introvert [D].
- Swim team - tool of the devil or just plain fun? It's been really good for our two kids, daughters of probably the most non-competitive people alive. Although it's ridiculously early for Shengs [yeah yeah, probably normal time for you], it's been fun to see our kids have that sense of accomplishment after you are crazy nervous about doing something uncomfortable while trying your best.
- Had a fun Father's Day which included EllyK's graduation party, watching the first Raiders of the Lost Ark and the fam got me a Germany soccer jersey.