Are you M-Ready?

A great look at what generation M is doing to marketing…. really good stuff

http://www.fastcompany.com/1742592/are-you-m-ready

Strength Finder

According to the Strength Finder assessment my five top strengths are:

Futuristic - one who has a keen sense of using an eye towards the future to drive today's success

Belief - one who strives to find some ultimate meaning behind everything they do

Activator - one who acts to start things in motion

Empathy - one who is especially in tune with the emotions of others

Developer - one who sees the untapped potential in others

I can see most of these playing out in my current postion at Youth Forum. The one that was most surprising to me to see pop-up was activator. After reflection, I can see this one being  my top strength. The description in Strengths Finder 2.0 of an activator being someone who wants to take act immediately as soon as  a decision is made and that fits me to a T. I'm most productive and inspired in the immediate moments after camp program meetings, coffee gatherings with youth ministers, and executive committee sessions. I believe that this is part of the reason why I enjoy meetings more then most. After a session is done, I feel the urge to take action on what was concluded immediately after. Often the longer I wait, the less enthusiasm or gusto I feel towards a project.


Having futuristic pop-up as a strength was great, because I'm sure that if Walt Disney had to take the assessment,  he would also have had that strength. It's nice to have something in common with one of the giants of industry you aspire after. Also, it's something that I see play out day in and day out in providing leadership to Youth Forum. 

Belief I think is very connected to vision. Having both makes a lot of sense to me, as belief is what shapes vision and gives it reason, purpose and meaning. The strength of belief helps answer the question: Why is it important that you want something to look or be a certain way?  Anyone who has heard me ramble on camp philosophy or theology of an environment for even a short time knows that in my opinion the vision of the way things should be done need to be stemmed from an ideal. Really,  I believe is that the future is just a chance to better live out ideals. As far as empathy and developer, these are strengths I can see in myself for sure, but not as strong as the other three. Also, if I were taking a personal inventory, I would of picked a few others higher then them. However, maybe I'm more altruistic then I think I am. Which would be a bit poetic. 


I was very surprised that adaptability did not show up higher, as I feel one of my greatest gifts is solving problems quickly in crisis. When a leader is needed, and decisions need to be made, I step up and can handle the pressure. This was not well reflected in the assessment. 


Colleges and friends do you see these strengths in me? What are your strengths? 

How to take over to world

I'm going to try doing this once a day.

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/20-minute-plan/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+chrisbrogandotcom+%28%5Bchrisbrogan.com%5D%29

Current Reading List

My current reading list

Streams in the Desert by LB Cowman. A daily devotional book given to me by Darby. Great insight and reflection on scripture.

The Word For Every Day by Alvin N. Rogness. Another daily devotional book given to me by Darby. Just started this one.

Getting Fired For The Glory of God collected words of Mike Yaconelli. Very interesting articles Yaconelli wrote for Youth Worker Journal on
 making sure that we never put our jobs higher then the calling of Jesus

When Kumbaya Is Not Enough: A practical Theology for Youth Ministry by Dean Borgman. A detailed text on theology in a youth ministry context and reminder that one of the primary tasks of youth ministry is to be a theologians.


The Bible: Common English Translation and Phillips Translation. Working thought the book of Acts. The book is has a major transitional motif. Jews to both gentiles and Jews. Jesus to the Holy Spirit.

Eyes on the Horizan

Today was a day of plan hatching, of scheming, of plotting. I love days like this. Days where the future is on our mind. I think half of the fun of being in the event business for me is the dreaming of what something could be or could look like. Anticipation is key.

In the morning, I was up at camp friendship; the possible home of a new winter retreat we're designing at Youth Forum Labs for winter of 2012. It was great seeing their facility and starting to think about next winter.

This afternoon was spent with one of my former professor and a fellow youth ministry alum planning a Bethel Alumni Youth Ministry group for the fall. The community we're talking about starting would be kick'n to be apart of.

Tonight I played some really great laser tag games with a new church that a Youth Ministry connection just started working at. In the midsts of the cosmic battle zone, we planned a few future events with his church and even better... we planned to get coffe to get to catch up.

Then on the way home one of my volunteers and I hashed out a possible prom themed dance for the spring... just for fun!

This admits text messages and emails planning camp elements for this summer, meetings for next week, and plans for tomorrow.

When we prayed today for BAYM, a prayer was risen that this be within God's plans and not just our own. This is a constant prayer of those of us who plan and needs to be something repeated often so we don't loose sight of the one who is in charge.