Posts Tagged: charles t lee

church planting / church relevance / multi-cultural / multi-cultural church / people / the idea camp — No Comments
12
Mar 09

Creativity: The Monkey And The Fish and the church

monkey-fish-parableFor my participation in the Dave Gibbons’ blog tour last week, I was given a copy of Dave’s new book The Monkey And The Fish: Liquid Leadership For A Third-Culture Church. Third-culture and the whole premise behind how Pastor Gibbons explains it has really spoken to me. I feel as if even though I feel more American than Japanese (in a cultural context), some aspects of engaging in various cultures connects with something in my inner being. At the heart of my soul I feel a kind of oneness with everyone. It’s as if I’m cross-cultural and multi-generational.

So, I eagerly sat down to read the book last night and felt a little disappointed. I wasn’t particularly fond of the writing style and felt as if Dave shared too many different voices in this book. Funny thing happens when I approach things like this with my own set of expectations. God always seems to hit me upside-the-head and show me the error of my ways. The more I read, the more it exposed questions I had. The more I wondered if the church is ready for this kind of culture shift. Finally, I realized what I believe the blessing of The Monkey And The Fish is going to be. I will be using it as a catalyst to facilitate conversation and deep thought within our core group of Revolution Church Sacramento as we prepare to gather for the first time tomorrow night. A lot of things I had thought of, but probably couldn’t quite express verbally or as concisely are presented in every chapter of Dave’s book. This is going to be a great tool that can be used to help us find our mission and do our part to embrace the third-culture concepts in a way that not only speaks to each of us in the church, but also causes us to be relevant to our community. As my friend Charles T Lee commented in an online chat last night, “The Idea Camp will never end.” How true (possibly prophetic) that statement really was!

My analytical, orderly mind saw randomness and too much input from other people in this book, but my creative aspect caused me to wonder “what if?” and to just listen and hear others speak to this and let Dave’s thoughts speak to them…to let Dave’s thoughts speak to me. Tomorrow is going to be a good night…a memorable night…a historic step forward for our community. I can’t wait!

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the idea camp — 2 Comments
4
Mar 09

The Idea Camp: Post-camp thoughts…art of networking

One of the things I wanted to do at The Idea Camp was to get some ideas on networking. I’ve done a lot of networking in the past for gaining business clients, but never really networked much to gain resources. As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, I am not much of a social person. In fact, I’m pretty introverted normally. So, The Idea Camp was a place I could push my limits a bit.

DJ Chuang has really helped me gain an understanding on networking. He is more than a follower on twitter or a friend on facebook, but he truly gets how to build relationships. Obviously Charles T. Lee gets networking as well since in his interview with me he revealed that he knew most of the facilitators prior to hosting The Idea Camp.

Anyone can jump on twitter and just follow thousands of people and get reciprocal followers and look like they have a lot of influence, but that really isn’t networking. It’s more like broadcasting.

What sets DJ & Charles apart from the crowd? It’s their willingness to listen and then try to help others network as well. It’s their interest in the individual that matters. I remember once how DJ Chuang first came into my life through following my youtube channel. Then, by my following his blog I sent him an email which then turned into a phone call, which then turned into a tweetup at The Idea Camp, which then became a bond between us. I consider DJ a friend now. With Charles, I remember tweeting about how I really wanted to get to The Idea Camp, but wasn’t sure I could get coverage for an event that was happening that Friday night which I led every month, nor was I sure I could afford the travel. Every time Charles would just tweet back, “Just commit to come down. You won’t be disappointed.” Honestly, I don’t think anyone would have missed me if I had not gone to The Idea Camp. However, Charles made me feel like I was important. He cared about me and my presence. Now that I know Charles a little more, I am compelled to stay in touch just so I can see how I can help him with his causes and ministry and continue learning from him and reciprocating the love any way possible.

In the end, the art of networking isn’t about the network, but it is about you. What are you trying to gain from networking and how do you choose who to network with? Having 123,830 twitter followers does not make you a networker, it generally you a twitter whore. Better to have 50 people in a sphere of influence where community and lasting relationships are developed then to be the rockstar of the twitter community. Do you care about relationships, or just how many people know who you are?

Thanks to DJ Chuang and Charles T. Lee, I feel blessed and priviledged to sense their caring and kindness to a nobody like me that at one time felt lost in the world of networking, but now feel like I have learned how to do it properly and responsibly. The Idea Camp made this a reality for me.

How do you network and why? Would appreciate your comments.

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3
Mar 09

The Idea Camp: Post-camp thoughts…Q&A with Charles Lee

charles-leeAfter experiencing all there was at The Idea Camp, I realized that Charles Lee was everywhere. He seemed to have a million responsibilities, yet was always at peace with how things were going, fully focused and prepared. Remembering how things seemed to come together for this event so quickly, I wanted to pick Charles’ brain and see if he’d share his thoughts on the process and the future of The Idea Camp. Just who is this superman and what caused him to faithfully see this event through? Charles was so gracious to reply and I am honored to be able to share his thoughts with you in a Q&A session:

Q: What was the impetus that got you to take action for creating The Idea Camp?

It was birthed out of a season of reading about the cultural shifts towards open-sourcing and crowd-sourcing. The basic premise was that the “crowd” is usually wiser, faster, and more innovative than structured leadership, especially in light of the growth of the internet. I began to think what these ideas would mean for people, businesses, organizations, and even the Church. In addition to these areas of impact, I began to consider the conference world; a world I had spent some time in as an organizer (both small and large).

I threw some of my inclinations about how conferences could possibly change to a handful of friends in that world. They had very little idea as to what I was up to, but they gave me great advice about the possibilities. During one of these meet ups, DJ Chuang turned me onto the notion of “unconferences” (i.e., self-organizing and self-run conferences where participants led the way). This is where my “hybrid” concept came in. I took the notion of an unconference and adpated it into our current format of conferences to create a unique experience called the Idea Camp. I then added elements that were eco-friendly (no printing), reproducible in format, technologically up-to-date, relationally-based, and simple to understand.

Q: How long was it from the point of being an idea to becoming a reality on February 27th & 28th?

The idea was birth about 6 months prior, but the actual web-based movement really didn’t kick off until November ’08.

Q: Did you have personal relationships with all of the speakers/facilitators beforehand? If not, how difficult was it to approach someone new with the idea and get them to commit to participate?

I had personal relationships with most of the speakers/facilitators beforehand (probably over 80%). There were some that signed on through friendships, but the majority were people I knew would do a great job given our past experiences together. In other words, it was not difficult at all to have people jump on board. Quite honestly, I was so humbled by the fact that many of them initiated involvement when they heard about it.

Q: If you were to do The Idea Camp all over again, would you change anything in the process?

I think I finally know what kind of individuals are needed to run an Idea Camp (if there is to be another one). For this first one, we really didn’t know which elements would work. Fortunately, most of our concepts did work out well (Big relief!). The beauty of this kind of gathering is that everyone, including speakers/facilitators, wanted to help with whatever needed to take place. I think the clarity of vision elevated people’s involvement at all levels.

Possible things to change:

(1) Create the role of an Idea Camp consultant to help individual participants with their ideas on a one-to-one level.
(2) Consider developing workshops based on levels of experience. I heard some people were lost or bored because the workshops were not necessarily proficiency-based.
(3) Create more pre-camp meetups on line or in person to facilitate conversations leading up to the Camp.

There are a few more, but I don’t want to give it all away :) (Ideas are brewing…)

Q: What do you hope others would take away from their time at The Idea Camp?

My primary hope was for people to walk with practical tools and relationships with people in order to move a little closer to implementing their God-given dreams/ideas. I wanted the participated to feel like they actually participated in helping someone else along in their own life journey. Also, I desired people to think “Kingdom” before self or even their local church, organization, or business. If we take time to invest in others, the outcome will be far greater than what we could do on our own.

Q: What is next for you?

I have a church to pastor (New Hope) and a non-profit organization (JustOne) to help run. I am also working on several grassroots movements (The Freeze Project, One Voice to End Slavery, etc.) that hope to bring practical change and relief to those affected by the injustices poverty and slavery. In addition, I am working on writing a book about compassionate justice with practical insights into caring for the world.

Q: How can we be praying for you?

Please pray that God will keep me focused on things that matter most to him. I want to embrace fully the world that God so loves. My hope is not to become the next big pastor, activist, or conference-maker. I would rather see all of us move together in his name.

Hoping that you’ll be sure to thank Charles for all that he did to make The Idea Camp a reality and for his selfless service for our benefit. You can find him on twitter: @charlestlee & @theideacamp; The Idea Camp website: theideacamp.ning.com or via facebook: www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=41051955597. Let’s keep him in our prayers as well.

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