I have been having a great time watching my son Noah become a swimmer. When we took him to his first lesson in June he was scared of the water and wouldn’t put his face in if his life depended on it. He was really scared.

Just last week as he was kicking up and down the pool with flippers on, turning onto his back, and then onto his face every three seconds. A mom turned to me and said, “how old is your son? He is really good!” I told her he was three and she gasped in disappointment and said, “Gosh, I don’t know if my son can ever be that good.”

I assured her it is possible, just keep coming. A few months ago my boy was kicking and screaming, and now…he is kicking his way through the pool.

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How we see our plot of ground makes all the difference

Tracey Gee is going to start blogging with us every month and I am really excited about that. She is becoming an expert at building chapters and training. She is part of the National Chapter Building Initiative with InterVarsity and helps train and lead staff and students into more growth and reach of students on campus. But she is also leading a planting effort in Los Angeles as well now. She is a great example of both a planter and builder!

In John 4, Jesus tells his disciples to lift up their eyes to see a field ripe for harvest.  For years, I have preached that word to students and encouraged them to see their friends and their whole campus as ripe for harvest.  I want them to believe that God is bigger than their limits and to widen their perspective.  “Don’t miss the bigger picture of what God wants to do” is what I have said.  Little did I know that I was more like the disciples than I thought and Jesus wanted to speak to me about that.

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We were nominated as a top blog on Verge, a blog dedicated to accelerating movements of the gospel. It’s pretty cool that someone put us up there and now we can vote!

If our blog makes it into the top five, then anyone who voted gets a free digital pass to their conference.

So there are two reasons you should vote:

1) You can get a digital pass to the conference

2) You can help others find our blog by getting it towards the top (The only reason I knew we had been nominated is that I was getting a ton of incoming links from Verge…people were checking us out)

From Verge:

*The list will close on September 4th at 11:59PM. At that time, the Top 5 websites will be tallied. Whoever nominated the Top 5 sites will receive a Verge 2013 Digital Access Pass worth $129! 

VOTE HERE

By Jon Hietbrink

We can’t lead movements the same way we lead organizations.

Many organizations run like machines–they thrive on alignment, order, discipline, and consistency, but movements are like organisms–they feed on change, complexity, empowerment, and freedom. Mechanical organizations can be directed by insightful strategic planning, consistent management and disciplined execution, but it’s debatable whether organic movements can be led at all–like a swelling ocean wave, movements are something we catch, not something we create. So the question becomes, “How do we lead in such a way that we’ll be ready to catch the wave when it comes?”

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