my twenty year internship.

Twenty years ago, I thought I wanted a career in higher education administration. I had been a professor for several years and had added some administrative responsibilities to my teaching load. Most people in higher ed love the research or the teaching and abhor the administrative part. I tolerated it well.

One spring day twenty years ago this year, I noticed a competitive program that would allow you to work as an intern for a year in an institution other than your own. It was a way to try out the idea without being trapped. I knew our president a bit, having gotten to know him during coffee breaks while he spent a semester sabbatical on campus, long before he was our president.  So I asked him one day if he would think about recommending me for the program, if he thought I had what it took to be an administrator.

I think it was about a month later that he stopped by my office and asked me to come to his. Rather than replacing the VP for Development who was leaving, he was considering expanding the office of president to include development and wondered if I would consider becoming the Assistant to the President, helping him with admissions, alumni, development, and other activities relating to the capital campaign we were starting. He said that rather than sending me somewhere else, he’d like to help me learn by helping him.

We were a small college, but it was a exhilarating thought. After talking with Nancy, I said yes. We had to wait for the board to approve the concept. They did, and I worked with Don for two years.

It was a challenging time. After about a year, we realized that the institution was not large enough to continue as it was. There was a lot of discussion and research and study. Finally, we merged with/were acquired by another college. Rather than everyone losing jobs by closing or many people losing jobs in a desperate restructuring, only a handful of us lost jobs (including Don and I).

It was a spectacularly misunderstood and heroic decision on his part. Nearly two decades later, people don’t know the cost for him.

He went back to being a pastor. I moved on in higher education. In each of my next two jobs, Don’s recommendation was instrumental. Then I moved out of higher ed and into being an administrative pastor. Again, because he knew me and the new role, his word was helpful, both to me and my prospective employer.

Don pastored for several years and then retired. After he retired he traveled to other countries, teaching in seminaries, preparing the next generation. He and Carolyn were at the church where I was on staff for part of this time. We said hi, we had a handful of conversations.

Two years ago, I began conversations that brought me to my current position as executive pastor. Of course Don was contacted. Of course he was supported. And intriguingly, he had been the pastor at the church we are part of now forty years ago.

Today was the memorial service for Don Gerig, who died a couple days ago. I looked around the room at the faces I knew, faces from the last 20 years of my life, from places where Don and I crossed paths. I remembered that I am about the age Don was when he heard of my interest in administration and took a chance with me.

So I’m thinking carefully tonight.

• Am I listening to people in their thirties, looking for interests,  making connections, providing opportunities (more than offering advice)?
• Am I staying in touch with people I’ve mentored, helping them across time?
• Am I mentoring anyone?
• Am I ready to spend the next twenty years encouraging, touching, growing, laughing?
• Am I risking my reputation, my job, on people, betting everything I have that I can help them grow (like Don did with me)?

I’m late in writing this, of course. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t clearly and simply tell him how much of my path his words and acts shaped. I should have. I’m pretty sure that he would forgive me, as long as I learn from that, and that I spend the next twenty years completing this internship.

An internship in helping people grow.

You should recruit this kid for your Chicago business

I know. He looks kind of blurry. And it’s a mess around him. But it’s my desk, not his. And it’s my camera not his.

He’s addressing hold-the-date invitations for his wedding in June. He’ll finish college in May, with a degree in English and Literature with a minor in journalism. He and Allie will live at Loyola where she’s in grad school.

He loves his fiance and and his mom and his dog Shiloh and pie nd his sister and his dad and his God, though not in that order.  He writes freelance newspaper articles and sells soccer shoes and used to want to be a farmer. He also loved to watch the garbage truck and the guys installing high pressure gas lines in front of the house. He will answer to Andrew or Drew or sometimes Walt, but never to Andy.

He is very articulate, though when he was much younger, Meryl, the name of his neighbor, came out Mull-ull. He has been involved on Niketalk for way too long. He played the trumpet. He played in mud in the back yard. He took a bus to kindergarten. His parents both cried more than he did that morning.

He is fluent in text and twitter and facebook, having deleted accounts in the latter two more than once. He texts his mother and gets frustrated when she uses LOL and other texting shortcuts.  (As recently as last night, he did, however at his dad.)

I have no idea what he can do for you, business person. I seldom actually see him work, though I know he does.

I can tell you this, however. He has completely changed my life, since I held him that morning 23 years ago today and somehow stammered out, “welcome, Andrew Thomas Swanson.”

I’m sure he could make a difference for you.

Happy Birthday Andrew.

Non-skaters can’t slide by.

It happens every two years. I watch the Olympics and think, “I wonder what it would be like to be that focused on anything?”

I’m not an athlete. I don’t pretend to be. I look the other way during part of the ski jumping because I’m afraid of heights. I get dizzy just watching skaters. And the thought on anything on a sled reminds me of the time I rode through oak branches.

But I still watch and I cheer and I think about focus and I forget for another two years.

It is too distant from me.

The other day I was thinking about the amount of advertising that we watch, inviting us to buy products that will fix our lives, make us popular, help us breathe as well as Olympic athletes with colds. And then I started thinking about what I do know how to do.

I am, I would guess, as intelligent as most ad executives, as capable with words as most ad copywriters.

So do I spend as much energy listening to people I care about and offering answers that matter to questions that are important as Coke or DayQuil or Rose City Motors spend selling pop or medicine or cars?

I do focus sometimes, for short bursts. And when I do, you can tell. So can I. But most often, I don’t. Most people don’t.

I’m not suggesting that we need a new advertising campaign for Jesus. Bumper stickers like “He’s the real thing” or “God’s Gym” or “Jesus died for MYSPACE in heaven” cover that quite well.

But what if I spent the next hour thinking carefully about one question from one person and then answering it well and honestly? Just one question. With every element of focus I can bring.

And then did it again. And then did it again.

It won’t be the Olympics. It won’t be audiences of millions. But it is in my sport. And it uses how I’m built.  And it will be life-transforming. At least for me.

And what about you? Forget the skates. What is the thing you do best?

For the next hour.

Sometimes Hope is off stage

We went to see our daughter Hope last weekend. She was in a musical. “Jane Eyre” – the musical.

It was much better than I anticipated. Not because of a concern about the performers, mind you. But a musical about Jane Eyre?

For all the wonderfulness of the production, however, we had terrible seats. We couldn’t see Hope at all.

No matter how we strained our eyes, leaned from side to side, we couldn’t even get a glimpse of Hope.

So we sat back to watch the show.

One scene had Jane and Mr Rochester, in separate rooms, in separate beds. They walked on stage, carrying candles.

There was another scene in which Rochester’s daughter came skipping in from the back of the auditorium,  out of the darkness on the the stage.

But we never saw Hope.

It could have been a disappointing night. Except that we knew something that no one else knew.

Hope was working backstage.

She was handling props stage right. When the blanket was quickly at hand for Young Jane and Helen, Hope had it ready. When Jane and Rochester needed candles to light their paths to their rooms, Hope lit the candles. When Adele came from the back of the room, Hope opened the door.

When things on stage look darkest or smoothest or impossible, the solution is often not visible.

But wait.

Hope is often working off stage, lighting candles, opening doors.

Seth Godin said I had to ship. So I am.

In Linchpin, Seth Godin talks about the importance of shipping. The only product that matters is the one that gets out the door.

I set as one of my three words this year the word product. I wanted to get projects out the door, to have them ship.

Yesterday, I got two done. One was for work. A booklet for a campaign.

The other one is available on this site.

Making disciples is an 11-page ebook about, well. making disciples.

The most obvious connection to the word “disciple”, probably, is to the 12 followers of Jesus. So I looked at 10 principles that I find in how Jesus works to form his 12 followers.

For the most part, it hasn’t appeared here. (One exception is my Fans and Disciples post.)

I would be grateful if you would check it out. Let me know what you think.

Making disciples

Jason Falls is picking on me

Some people write newspaper articles. Some people write essays.

Newspaper articles have 85% of the story in the first paragraph.  If an editor has to cut paragraphs, the bulk of the story is intact.

Essays have 85% of the story spread through roughly 85% of the paragraphs, leaving the remaining 15%, including the point of the essay, for the rest of the paragraphs. Frequently, the point is contained in a pithy statement in the last line, forcing a reader to get to the end, pick up the key, and reread the essay saying “Ah!” and “Now I get it” and “How thoughtfully clever.”

Newspaper articles are written for skimmers and for deductive people.

Essays are written for readers and for inductive people, people who are willing to live long through an experience and then, afterward, say, now I understand.

I write essays.

That’s a perfectly acceptable thing, I think.

And now Jason Falls comes along and picks on me.

“Write good headlines,” he said yesterday.

But that would give away too much of the essay, I reply. It would ruin the clever surprise. I want people to read to the end to understand the story.

But Jason said, “I … subscribe to 350 other blogs and make efficient use of my time by skimming headlines looking for an inviting post.”

And suddenly I realized that he is right.

If I write enigmatic headlines, forcing busy people to read all the way to the end of the essay to get the point, I will keep people from even starting the essay.  If I write generic headlines, I keep my friends from being able to get their friends to read what I write.

As I thought about Jason’s point, I realized that my “8 ways” posts get attention. In fact, of my top ten posts, six of them are “8 ways” posts. Not just because they are list posts, I don’t think, but because I tell you in the headline what is in the post. (Like 8 ways to encourage a friend.)

Ironically, those are some of my best posts. The title reflects clarity in the posts as well.

So I think I’m going to try what Jason says: Take the time to actually craft a headline that might catch a reader’s attention and give a reason to read.

I’m guessing that this one catches his.

Point to the destination – Switch chapter 4

The hardest kind of money to raise is spent money.

When you are raising money to build a building, to start a program, you can sell the potential. You can show drawings. Many people love to be around for the beginning of a project.

But after the building is built, raising money to pay off the mortgage? That’s hard work.

“It’s just a building.”
“Why should new people help?”
“You got yourself into this.”
“Why didn’t you wait til you had the money?”

What’s cool about a bank loan? What do you show?

You give people a destination postcard.

That’s what Chip Heath and Dan Heath suggest in the fourth chapter of Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. (I’m blogging through conversations about this book whihc is being released February 16. Here’s my post on chapter two: finding bright spots and three: Script the Critical Moves)

A destination postcard is a vivid picture from the nearterm future that shows what could be possible. (Switch, p 76)

While you are thinking about that, I should review a bit.

The Heaths are talking about how to change things. They are talking about how to get people involved in change. Like many people addressing persuasion and motivation, they talk about head and heart. But Chip and Dan don’t just talk about persuaders using logic and emotion. They point out that people are constantly using their heads and hearts, and that the challenge of a change program is to give their reasoning and give their feeling something to work with.

Now, back to the postcard.

If you are raising money to pay off a mortgage, one way to give people  “a picture of a future that hard work can make possible” is to give them pictures of what could be done with the money that is going to the mortgage.

I’m part of a church, working on just such a project. In our case, the $10,533 is part of our operating budget. We could cut our budget when the note is paid. Or we could look at what that kind of money could accomplish.

For example, you could point out that that money could send fifty kids and sponsors to camp. You could point out that it could buy a freezer and stock it well for a year at a local foodbank. You could point out that it could buy thousands of pounds of diapers.

And that would be what you could do with just three months of that money.

And then people can start thinking, not about whether to raise the money, but how to raise the money. See the head-related shift? They were thinking about whether this project should be done, how much it would cost them. Now, if they can see where they could go, they can start calculating how much interest could be saved…and put toward similar projects. Like building an entire church in another part of the world.

(One point that the Heaths make: don’t start with the amount of interest. Let people figure that out themselves. Start with the picture, the vision, the “here’s where we could be.”)

If you are working on a change project right now, whether for yourself or your family or your small business or your blog, here’s how to get minds engaged.

Find bright spots, things that are working. Don’t worry about the all the things that aren’t working.

Script critical moves, the simplest actions will pass on the core elements of the bright spots.

Point to the destination.

—–

Here’s the first chapter of Switch.

Here’s a related post on the communication part of our campaign.

—-

Disclaimer:

Above and following is an affiliate link for the book. If you order it, I’ll get a little money (but it won’t cost you extra.)  Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.

I also need to tell you that the copy I have is an advance copy I was sent because I requested it. I requested it because I was a fan of their previous book, Made to Stick. However, I will be buying my own copy when the book comes out tomorrow. (And a handful of copies for other people.)

Fix the barn roof

We were eating supper with Nancy’s parents. It was the even of their 60th wedding anniversary. The three of them (Tom, Marion, and Nancy) were talking of places they’ve lived, people they’ve known, farms that have grown (and some that have gone).

More than once, Nancy’s dad said, “If only they would have fixed the barn roof.“

Living on the edge of farm country, I see barns everyday as I drive to work. Some look great. Some look broken.

Broken barns are wonderful for photographers, with rich textures. They are melancholy. They speak of passion and productivity that once was and is no more. Old barns were built without power tools, without wood preservatives. In the barn my great-grandfather built, there weren’t even nails. It was held together with pegs he carved by hand.

Sometimes barns are destroyed by storm, by fire, by earthquake. Sometimes they are torn apart, reused.  Most barns, however, die of neglect more than disaster. They die of unrepaired roofs.

Because barns are full of dry things, water is deadly.

Hay is stacked in the mow, ready to feed the animals for the winter.  Straw is pile somewhere as well, bedding for animals (and at least once for a Baby).

Water dripping into hay and straw feeds mold, feeds rot.

Pulleys and gears and chains and hooks run the length of the barn. They allow movement of food and manure.

Water dripping into the steel infrastructure starts rust.

Beams, stripped of bark, shaped, unsealed, hold the structure up, give the building safety and shape.

Water dripping into paper-dry wood, soaks in, starts rot and decay.

Equipment is stored inside, safe from the elements, ready for seasonal use.

Water dripping onto leather and steel, into gears and motors, caught in folds and valleys and boxes, sits. And eats.

None of this destruction is as obvious as a tornado, as tragic as a fire. It happens in decades rather than days.

And it is always preventable. If you fix the barn roof.

Of course, farmers aren’t roofers. Their focus is on the ground or the sky, not the building in between. But being so focused on what seems productive and taking for granted the structure that makes it possible is eventually deadly.

Tom Kies has farmed his whole life. His whole life. When an old farmer says to fix the roof, it makes sense.

Most of us don’t have barns.

But we do have leaks. We have time leaks. We have attention leaks. We have energy leaks. And there are little gaps through which time escapes, stress seeps in.

In your marriage. In your job. In your passionate avocation. In your friendships.

What are the strong but dry beams that support everything but are surprisingly fragile?

What are the seams that could benefit from a few hours of patching?

For Valentine’s Day, for Lent, for your family and friends and faith and future…fix the barn roof.

help people see how their help can help.

$1,276,144.44

That’s how much our church owes the bank.

It’s a mortgage. We doubled the size of our building a few years back, with classrooms and offices and youth space and a gym. The people here did a great job of seeing what they needed and planning it and raising funds.

But this isn’t a story about the building. It’s a story about the number.

We are in the middle of a capital campaign. On the first Sunday of the campaign we wanted to tell the story clearly and simply. We wanted to tell the amount.

In early drafts, we talked about the fact that we had said $1.3 million in one place and $1.2 million in another. As we started to decide which it was, we agreed that the best thing to do–the simplest line to draw in the sand–was the loan balance as of the Friday before.

$1,276,144.44

And so we showed that number on the screen, read it a couple of times. It’s a long number to read.

It’s also a very powerful number to show to a group of people who are all ages and socioeconomic levels. I didn’t understand how powerful until I watched the video.

Sitting still, listening to my own voice, I realized that if we had said that we were raising $1.3 million, most people watching would have struggled a bit with how much they could give, how much their little bit would matter.

As soon as we needed $144.44, everyone could see that they could help with at least forty-four cents. Everyone. Even the person with only two quarters in their pocket.

When you have a big project, see if there’s a way to simply describe it so anyone could say, “my little bit matters.”

——

If you are curious, here’s the video.

i am not a social media guru

A couple weeks back, Fort Wayne had its first Social Media Breakfast. Brad Ward and Howard Kang from Bluefuego came to town to talk about “what’s next with the social web.”

About 100 people showed up. Brad and Howard did a good job. They even helped me understand a couple things.

I don’t say that to be arrogant. It’s just that I have tried lots of things and read lots of things and talked with lots of people involved in social media. In fact, I’ve realized that I talk regularly with some of the brightest and most experienced people in social media (including some social media gurus).

When the floor was opened for conversation, the first guy to speak didn’t have a question. He pitched the value of networking, talked about how much leverage social media people can have by getting involved in networking groups, and offered his business card. After that, people had real questions. I realized that I knew most of the answers, had played with most of the social networking platforms being identified. I wanted to say, “here’s why you would use that. Here’s what you could say that way. Don’t go there.”

However.

Even as I was thinking through those things, I thought, “Why do I really want to get into those conversations?”

Like many people who have used social media tools, I have built experience that could be helpful to other people. I have ideas of what may work and not work for a variety of organizations. In fact, I could probably help nonprofits in particular. In fact, I have one such group asking me to be part of a marketing committee.

But I am not a social media guru.

I’m not talking about the self-identified kind, the person who is selling themselves by proclaiming their expertise while not using technology. No, I’m talking about people who have made a discipline of knowing how to use social media effectively regardless of the message. I love them. I read them. But I’m not one of them.

When it comes to social media, I’m a social media chaplain. When I’m doing what I love to do, social media is a tool, not a subject. It’s the method, not the goal.

People. God. Confusion. Clarification. That’s what I’m about.

Or what I ought to be about.

Trouble is, it’s fun to be a guru. It’s fun to get caught up in the conversations about the means of communication. And I do like communication conversations. I love saying, “what if you tried that. If you shot it this way, and then said this…” You can help people be effective that way. You can impress people that way.

You can get distracted that way.

This is where the last sentence goes, the catchy phrasing that ties the pieces together. But there isn’t one yet. Social media the method and social media the goal are easy to confuse. And depending on your calling, there isn’t one right order.

I still working to remember mine.

Of course, so are you.