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10 Brilliant videos on the Art of Hosting

October 6, 2013 By Art of Hosting 3 Comments

Over the past few years Jerry Nagel and a group of practitioners in Minnesota have been working deeply with the Art of Hosting in the state.  The Bush Foundation, who has supported a lot of this work, helped create 10 fantastic videos on the Art of Hosting and some of the methods of the process.  You could look through these and get a great foundation in what it’s all about.  Enjoy!

1.  Art of Hosting – introduction:  https://vimeo.com/72614471

2. AOH Community Conversations for the common good: https://vimeo.com/40679035

3. AOH Four-fold Practice: https://vimeo.com/69785461

4. AOH Harvesting: https://vimeo.com/69785465

5. AOH Collective Story Harvest: https://vimeo.com/69798732

6. AOH Chaordic Path: https://vimeo.com/69785462

7. AOH Chaordic Stepping Stones: https://vimeo.com/69798731

8. AOH Circle Process: https://vimeo.com/69785464

9. AOH Open Space: https://vimeo.com/69798729

10.   AOH ProAction Cafe: https://vimeo.com/69798730

 

 

Autopsy of a Deceased Church

October 4, 2013 By Organization

I have been working a lot with churches over the past few years.  One of the things that is interesting about working with mainline churches is that they are a little ahead of the curve in terms of the change of social institutions.  What they are experiencing now is similar to what we might experience in the next decade or so with other social institutions like education and health, the non-profit sector and the way we organize community.  There is a massive shift underway.

Thom Rainer gives a list of 11 ways you can tell a church is dying – and this would apply to many other kinds of organizations too.  The questions becomes, not how do we save it, but what is the next shape?

 

1. The church refused to look like the community. The community began a transition toward a lower socioeconomic class thirty years ago, but the church members had no desire to reach the new residents. The congregation thus became an island of middle-class members in a sea of lower-class residents.

2. The church had no community-focused ministries.   This part of the autopsy may seem to be stating the obvious, but I wanted to be certain. My friend affirmed my suspicions. There was no attempt to reach the community.

3. Members became more focused on memorials. Do not hear my statement as a criticism of memorials. Indeed, I recently funded a memorial in memory of my late grandson. The memorials at the church were chairs, tables, rooms, and other places where a neat plaque could be placed. The point is that the memorials became an obsession at the church. More and more emphasis was placed on the past.

4. The percentage of the budget for members’ needs kept increasing. At the church’s death, the percentage was over 98 percent.

5. There were no evangelistic emphases. When a church loses its passion to reach the lost, the congregation begins to die.

6. The members had more and more arguments about what they wanted. As the church continued to decline toward death, the inward focus of the members turned caustic. Arguments were more frequent; business meetings became more acrimonious.

7. With few exceptions, pastoral tenure grew shorter and shorter. The church had seven pastors in its final ten years. The last three pastors were bi-vocational. All of the seven pastors left discouraged.

8. The church rarely prayed together. In its last eight years, the only time of corporate prayer was a three-minute period in the Sunday worship service. Prayers were always limited to members, their friends and families, and their physical needs.

9. The church had no clarity as to why it existed. There was no vision, no mission, and no purpose.

10. The members idolized another era. All of the active members were over the age of 67 the last six years of the church. And they all remembered fondly, to the point of idolatry, was the era of the 1970s. They saw their future to be returning to the past.

11. The facilities continued to deteriorate. It wasn’t really a financial issue. Instead, the members failed to see the continuous deterioration of the church building. Simple stated, they no longer had “outsider eyes.”

via Autopsy of a Deceased Church: 11 Things I Learned.

My heart is with you, my American friends

October 2, 2013 By Uncategorized 2 Comments

Although I have worked for years in the United States including in and around health issues, I have never fully understood the ways in which Americans pay for their health care, or why their insurance company-based system is so important to them.  This article explains how complicated it is to choose a medical plan and how expensive it is not to have one.  And fundamentally this doesn’t change under Obama’s new plan.  The premium this family pays, even now under the plan they want to keep, are more than twice what I pay for a family of four in a public health care system in Canada, and because we make more than $30,000 a year we are in the highest bracket in BC.  We pay $133.00 a month and here’s what we get.  There is no deductible.  It’s basic, and extended medical plans obviously offer more benefits like dental and eye care, pharmacy and ambulance services (Great West Life’s mid-range plan is close to $400 a month).  But with this basic coverage, my son has been in the emergency room twice in the past year with “12 year old testosterone accidents” – broken and suspected broken limbs – and we have incurred no costs other than paying a small fee for ambulance transport.  If I wanted the same extended coverage as this family, I’d probably end up paying the same or more (and the deductibles would be WAAAAAY less), but if I don’t want to deal with an insurance company – and believe me, I don’t – then I don’t have to.  My basics are covered and I have peace of mind.  If I work for an employer, I just sign on with their extended plan.  No problems.

Many Americans object to being “forced” to pay insurance premiums.  How would you feel if you had the thought that paying premiums to the state for accessible health care was actually a peace of mind situation rather than the actions of an overzealous government seeking to limit your freedoms?  This is all a matter of perspective and while I know millions of Americans share the view that I have about publicly funded health care, millions still do not and neither of course do the insurance companies who make their money by charging premiums and minimizing coverage.  And now, in Washington, their political lap dogs are doing their dirty work and frankly it hurts the creative and entrepreneurial spirit of Americans who would rather be doing their own thing in the world than tying themselves to wage slavery for the benefit of a cheaper health plan.

Public health care is not perfect but it is brilliant.  In Canada, we have very little stress about these issues compared to our southern cousins.  Every American I know – and I know hundreds – worries about their health care insurance.  In Canada we only worry about it when we have a wait for a service or a bad experience in the hospital, or we have a cranky complaining day.  The rest of the time, we are cared for and cared for well, and I don’t think we know how lucky we are.

Good luck my American friends.

 

Liberating Structures

September 30, 2013 By Design, Facilitation

Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless put together their brilliant collection of participatory methodologies called “liberating structures” a few years ago.  I had occasion to visit their website this week and notice that it is even more brilliant than before, containing detailed descriptions of the structures tools and processes and elegant minimal instructions for using them.  For seasoned facilitators, this is a gold mine of reference, and I’ve added it to my Facilitation Resources page.

Of the musics you have ever got…

September 10, 2013 By Music, Travel

Home now from Ireland, with this marvellous extract from Flann O Brien’s “At Swim-Two-Birds” that somehow captures my experience of living a week in Ballyvaughn listening to the rush of na Gaeilige spoken from the mouths of scholars and poets and activists and to the floating tunes on the air of the night as I walked home from O Loclainn’s pub with the taste of Green Spot on my lips and my skin kissed by the breeze off the sea.

 

Of the musics you have ever got, asked Conan, which have you found the sweetest ?

I will relate, said Finn. When the se

ven companies of my warriors are gathered together on the one plain and the truant cleancold loudvoiced wind goes through them, too sweet to me is that. Echoblow of a gobletbase against the tables of the palace, sweet to me is that. I like gullcries and the twittering together of fine cranes. I like the surfroar at Tralee, the songs of the three sons of Meadhra and the whistle of Mac Lughaidh. These also please me, manshouts at a parting, cuckoocall in May. 1 incline to like pig grunting in Magh Eithne, the bellowing of the stag of Ceara, the whinging of fauns in Derrynish. The low warble of waterowls in Loch Barra also, sweeter than life that. I am fond of wingbeating in dark belfries, cowcries in pregnancy, troutspurt in a laketop. Also the whining of small otters in nettlebeds at evening, the croaking of smalljays behind a wall, these are heartpleasing. I am friend to the pilibeen, the red necked chough, the parsnip landrail, the pilibeen mona, the bottletailed tit, the common marshcoot, the speckletoed guillemot, the pilibeen sleibhe, the Mohar gannet, the peregrine ploughgull, the long eared bushowl, the Wicklow smallfowl, the bevil beaked chough, the hooded tit, the pilibeen uisce, the common corby, the fishtailed mudpiper, the cruiskeen lawn, the carrion seacock, the green ridded parakeet, the brown bogmartin, the maritime wren, the dovetailed wheatcrake, the beaded daw, the Galway hillbantam and the pilibeen cathrach. A satisfying ululation is the contending of a river with the sea. Good to hear is the chirping of little red breasted men in bare winter and distant hounds giving tongue in the secrecy of fog. The lamenting of a wounded otter in a black hole, sweeter than harpstrings that. There is no torture so narrow as to be bound and beset in a dark cavern without food or music, without the bestowing of gold on bards. To be chained by night in a dark pit without company of chessmen-evil destiny! Soothing to my ear is the shout of a hidden blackbird, the squeal of a troubled mare, the complaining of wildhogs caught in snow.

Relate further for us, said Conan.

It is true that I will not, said Finn.

With that he rose to a full treehigh standing, the sable catguts which held his bogcloth drawers to the hems of his jacket of pleated fustian clanging together in melodious discourse. Too great was he for standing. The neck to him was as the bole of a great oak, knotted and seized together with musclehumps and carbuncles of tangled sinew, the better for good feasting and contending with the bards. The chest to him was wider than the poles of a good chariot, coming now out, now in, and pastured from chin to navel with meadows of black manhair and meated with layers of fine manmeat the better to hide his bones and fashion the semblance of his twin bubs. The arms to him were like the necks of beasts, ballswollen with their bunchedup brawnstrings and bloodveins, the better for harping and hunting and contending with the bards. Each thigh to him was to the thickness of a horse’s belly, narrowing to a greenveined calf to the thickness of a foal. Three fifties of fosterlings could engage with handball against the wideness of his backside, which was wide enough to halt the march of warriors through a mountainpass.

I am a bark for buffeting, said Finn, I am a hound for thornypaws. I am a doe for swiftness. I am a tree for windsiege. I am a windmill. I am a hole in a wall.