theLAB

Yup, John is set up to Twitter. Now if John can get there everyone can. I hope we have some fun with this, and at the same time enhance excellent communication on our team as well as nurture good relationships. I like the way Common Craft says it in the video posted earlier, life happens between our connections and now we can keep up with each other 140 characters at a time or something close to that.

I will be away for two weeks. My family and I will fly out earlier Saturday morning to Sacramento, California. We will honor my friend who has been the pastor of our church for 30 years (Fair Oaks Presbyterian Church). We will also get a change to connect with some of our partners who extend their ministries through ours. We are looking forward to this time.

On Monday, September 8th I fly down to Los Angeles to meet up with the Operations RD’s for our Vertical Meetings. Lisa will return with the kids on September 9th and when Verticals are over I will return on the 12th. I know you have heard that I am backed up on email (it is true), but I make an effort to read yours first so if you should need to connect with me you can do so. Of course I am using Twitter and I will use Instant Messaging as well as much as I can while I am at my computer. Oh and my phone, that will be with me as well.

Be sure to help Justin, Jonathan and Trent find there way around as they settle into work with us. Remember all of us had to figure out mail, the phone, printing, and computer everything when we first reported to our offices. So ask them how they are doing with those things. Trent will be engaging with HRIS (Todd and Paul Alexander will initiate him tomorrow morning) while Jonathan will begin to engage with Campus Ministry communications. Jonathan will meet with Paul and probably Ruth to begin to survey this area of need. Justin will be learning the Monkey workflow hoping that his computer arrives soon. Doug will continue to focus on MPD, but will also be looking at our workflow with an eye on how to communicate it so we really do know how we get stuff done, and others will know how to engage with us as well.

I don’t want this to get too long so I will close now. I wanted you to be aware of my travels and to again welcome our new team members. Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter, you know John will!

No doubt you are hearing that Lake Hart will close tomorrow due to the pending storm. We are being advised to stay at home. In light of this we will cancel our team meeting tomorrow. Our next planned meeting will be August 26th. We are planning to celebrate birthdays, new team members arriving and honoring those who have served with us for 10 and 15 years. Yvonne has impressed us in the past with her choice of cakes and I trust will continue to do this again.

We enjoyed our first team gathering since late spring. We decide to do a soft launch of our new year as many of our teammates were still out and about. However, Tuesday August 26 we will officially launch the New Year. Yvonne will select some delicious cakes to celebrate some birthdays (mine included this time), so you don’t want to miss it.

There is still so much going on regarding the work of this team. Several of our staff were flown in from around the country to be trained in our new CRS version 2.0 system. Todd sent this message out to some of those involved. I thought you would be encouraged to read it. Todd writes,

Although we had a few small bumps along the way, the CRS training went well.  Matt was quick to put out the fires (I’m not sure how he was able to concentrate on the Oracle training classes at the same time).

We got a fair amount of positive comments, especially the look and feel.  Thanks Jeff!   I think people will have a better sense of the new or improved functionality as they use it on real conferences.

The big news is that our officially announced roll-out date is Wednesday the 20th of August!

Other big news is that Justin Kamiyama is at 95% of raising all his support. Doug and Lori Dawe will be joining our team, and at the end of this month we will be welcoming Trent Murray and Jonathan Beautfort to our team. Both of these guys will be part of Lake Hart STINT.

Twitter is gaining greater use on our team. Tina had a good idea to create a team twitter identity to quickly send out quick tweets for all team members to get. For those of you already setup on Twitter, search on Wearethelab and choose to follow. If you have not set yourself up yet please try it out (go to twitter.com). We are experimenting how this might contribute to greater “teamness”. Everyone that participates gets an iPhone. No, not really, just messing with you.

That is all for now.

P.S. By the way the Twitter movie is working once again. Watch it to learn more about Twitter.

Tina Hood introduced me to Twittering. She showed me how Women of Faith team members message throughout the day and it impressed me that this very dispersed group maintains cohesive connections through these 160 character mini blogs. I think I have read that someone coined the term that twittering is micro blogging. That is a pretty good term.

Tina and I talked about twittering at length and wondered if we might use this on our team to draw us in a bit more especially during the summer period when many of us are away on assignments, working on mpd, vacations, etc. We have talked it up some on our team, and several of us have tried it on for size. It does seem to deliver a more connected experience.

Join us on this experiment. Set up an account on Twitter.com, and then see what team members you can find and “follow” us.

(hint Tina, Anna, Jeff, Greg, Mark and me are some that are already on Twitter)

P.S. It seems like a field team would really benefit from this kind of connection as they move through their days and weeks.

UPDATE: (08/13/08) We now have a team Twitter account. You can follow us at wearethelab.

Some observations I made from Acts 6 about operational ministry:

• Operational ministry is essential and necessary for the continued fruitfulness of apostolic ministry.
• The qualifications of those chosen were very similar to that of the apostles. Those is operational ministry are just as qualified as those doing field ministry.
• Both apostolic and operational ministry require the person to be full of the Spirit.
• Each had a place of service that was vital to fulfilling the Great Commission.
• The appointment of those to operational ministry led to greater fruitfulness of the ministry in Jerusalem.
• Doing operational ministry did not prevent Stephen from having a more direct ministry.
• The first recorded martyr was involved in operational ministry.
• After the church is scattered, it is Phillip who is recorded to have a powerful ministry. He seized the opportunities to follow Jesus’ command to go to Samaria and beyond. Phillip was one of those chosen for operational ministry.