15 Organizations I Recommend for a Year End Gift

Here are 15 Organizations I recommend for a Year end Gift.

I discussed these on the most recent episode of the H3 Leadership Podcast. You can listen here.

All of these organizations are ones that I'm invested in- both in terms of giving gifts and supporting them, as well as knowing the staff and the people behind these organizations. So as you think about year-end giving, I would recommend any of these organizations as a great place to invest.

Convoy of Hope – provided over 100 million meals to those in need the last 9 months in the US. Best in class in disaster response as well as feeding programs, with multiple programs globally focused on solving issues of hunger, and feeding children now all over the world. Seen it up close in Haiti where COH feeds almost 100,000 kids a day!

Alpha – an 11-week course that creates a space, online or in person, where people are excited to bring their friends for a conversation about faith, life and God, allowing those outside the church to ask questions about faith. 

charity: water – bringing clean drinking water to millions around the world. Scott Harrison and team have revolutionized the concept of a well run, artistically designed and powerfully delivered charitable organization. 

Young Life - been involved with Young Life since college. No one creates better experiences for teenagers and introduces the Gospel in such a compelling and loving way.

World Vision – a Christian humanitarians organization helping children, families and their communities overcome poverty and injustice. 

Operation Christmas Child - part of Samaritans Purse, an incredible ministry delivering boxes of joy to kids all over the world during Christmas time.

Compassion - sponsor a child. I sponsor several. I've seen their work up close in Rwanda and Ecuador and Guatemala. Your money is being stewarded well.

Plywood People- great social innovation organization founded by my good friend Jeff Shinabarger. Including gathering social innovators, leading a community of startups “doing good,” and providing creative solutions to education and social issues. Initiatives such as Plywood Presents, Plywood Place, and coaching of young social innovators is part of the Plywood People mission.

International Justice Mission - Gary Haugen and the team at IJM have been fighting sex trafficking and human slavery for the last 25 years. Rescuing victims as well as bringing justice to areas where no justice exists.

Hope International - run by good friend Peter Greer, HOPE Int provides micro-finance loans all over the world, helping give dignity and lift people out of poverty. A $100 gift goes a long way.

Help One Now – empowering families in developing countries through a business launch program, education and restorative care, using the combined gifts and talents of high capacity local leaders and entrepreneurs to end extreme poverty. 

The Bible Project – a non profit ed-tech organization and animation studio that produces 100% free Bible videos, podcasts, blogs, classes and Bible resources to help make the biblical story accessible to everyone, everywhere.

IllumiNations -  translating the Bible for all. One billion people still live in Bible poverty with access to the Scriptures in their language. Help provide all people access to God’s Word by 2033. 

First Response Team of America - good friend Tad Agoglia and his team provide help and hope at times when communities need just that- following disasters such as tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and floods.

A21 Campaign - headed up by Nick and Christine Caine, rescuing those trapped in human trafficking and modern day slavery all around the world, their goal is to end injustice in the 21st century.

Bonus:

Bearings Bike Shop- run by friends Tim and Becky O'Mara, providing hope through bicycles for kids in the city of Atlanta, building community one bike at a time. 

**and, don't forget Your Local Church- make sure you are giving regularly to your local church body. That is the place to start.

Also on the latest H3 Leadership Podcast- a breakdown of “How to Connect and Ask for a meeting with someone you don’t know.”

Based on this recent article in the New York Times: The Right Way to Ask ‘Can I pick your brain?'

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Join in next week for this Free online Leadership Next Summit

Here are a few critical things I’ve learned about leadership over the years: 

1. Using a carrot and stick approach to motivation doesn’t work. 

2. If people don’t feel fulfilled or aren’t growing, they won’t stay. 

3. Conflict is inevitable, so we must learn to use it well, or everything and everyone suffers. 

The team members in your organization ultimately lead to your success. And in order to build a successful team you must have strong people and diverse thinking. 

We all must keep growing, and keep learning.

To that end, I’ve been invited to share some thoughts as part of a FREE online event designed to help leaders with these challenges.  

It’s a FREE event happening next week September 5-7 called the LEADERSHIP NEXT ONLINE SUMMIT.

Register FREE now

My talk is entitled Cracking the Code to Leading Millennials.

In it you’ll learn:

·       3 essential habits of the best leaders in the world

·       3 ways to support and motivate young leaders and the emerging workforce

·       The 3 biggest contributions that millennials bring to organizational life

 My friend and colleague Shane Hipps, a former megachurch pastor turned executive coach to Fortune 50 leaders, is hosting the summit. 

He has assembled some of the top leadership experts in the world to help you learn how to attract, motivate, and align the best people.  

Now, you have an opportunity to learn those same strategies through this new virtual training. 

I don’t know all the speakers personally, but I know they’ve all learned how to lead the hard way. They’ve overcome personality obstacles, difficult work environments and have learned to align even the most complex and diverse groups of people.

They’ll each be sharing important truths about how to build a dream team that will lead and direct your organization for years to come.

It all starts in just a few days. 

To join us, just click here 

I’ll “see” you there.

Join me at Rethink Leadership on April 26-27 in Atlanta

For the last 20 years I've been involved with events and conferences. Putting them on, producing them, attending, creating, and ultimately being impacted by them.

One of the things about conferences that is incredibly helpful, but hard to create is a peer to peer learning environment. An environment where the experts are not just on the stage, but actually in the seats next to you and at the tables around you. 

That's one of the many reasons I'm excited about Rethink Leadership, a gathering for senior pastors, lead pastors, and executive pastors happening next month in Atlanta on April 26-28. 

I'm helping curate this event along with Carey Nieuwhof and Reggie Joiner, and if you're in a leadership position in the local church or a non profit, this gathering is for you and you're invited! 

If you haven't registered for Rethink Leadership yet, please do so now!

TODAY, Thursday, March 16, is the last day you can get early bird pricing, but your registration also gets you into a pre-event reception Tuesday night.

Then over the next two days, you'll get a chance to interact not only with 600 other leaders from across the US and the around the world, but with world class leaders like Bob Goff, Reggie Joiner, Jon Acuff, Les McKeown, Jeff Henderson, Kara Powell, Dan Reiland, Geoff Surratt, Danielle Strickland, Carlos Whittaker, Clay Scroggins and more. We'll have main stage sessions, but also affinity conversations where the crowds are smaller and your questions get answered. 

So if you haven't locked down your spot at Rethink Leadership yet, do so NOW!

Look forward to seeing you in Atlanta next month!

15 New Books I Recommend

It's the end of the year. And this is probably more than you can read over the Christmas holiday, but wanted to provide my current top 15 list of new books I recommend you read. In no particular order:

1. Team of Teams - Stanley McChrystal 

2. How's Your Soul? - Judah Smith

3. Designed to Lead - Eric Geiger and Kevin Peck 

4. Tools of Titans - Tim Ferriss

5. Originals - Adam Grant 

6. Grit - Angela Duckworth 

7. Smarter, Faster, Better - Charles Duhigg

8. When You, Then God - Rusty George 

9. The Content Trap - Bharat Anand

10. Present Over Perfect - Shauna Niequist 

11. The Ideal Team Player - Patrick Lencioni

12. TED Talks - Chris Anderson 

13. Shoe Dog - Phil Knight

14. Living Forward - Michael Hyatt and Daniel Harkavy

15. #AskGaryVee - Gary Vaynerchuk

BONUS: Thomas Friedman's new book Thank You for Being Late. 

The Unreasonable Power of Discipleship and Community- guest post from Rich Birch

Here's a guest post from Rich Birch, the author of a new book entitled Unreasonable Churches. If you don't know Rich, he's been involved in church leadership for over 20 years. He also blogs and podcasts weekly at UnSeminary.com. 

How Pursuing Discipleship Created an Unreasonable Church that’s Reaching Disney Employees

Journalist Shane Snow surveyed 3,000 people with this question: “Who would you trust more as your leader? J.K. Rowling or Queen Elizabeth?” The vast majority would rather follow the storyteller than the world leader. The famous proverb reveals why: “Those who tell the stories rule the world.” This saying, attributed to Plato and to native Americans, describes why the most established story-telling juggernaut in the world, the Disney Corporation, continues to cause parents everywhere to hear “Let It Go” 35 times a day.

Stories are ultimately about people, with all the trials and victories that people blunder through. The storytellers themselves immerse their lives into their stories; just like the characters of their stories, they wander down life’s unknown paths with doubts and fears. Who will reach these storytellers with the greatest Story of all? Only an unreasonable church!

A New Testament Church

Cast Member Church—one church with three locations in Orlando, FL and Anaheim and Burbank, CA—is one of the most unique churches in North America. Steven Barr launched and pastors the church along with leaders at all three locations throughout the week. The focus and vision of Cast Member Church is to bring a Kingdom influence to every corner of The Walt Disney Company—the largest media company in the world. The Walt Disney Company employs over 100,000 people in all of its facilities, and the majority of the Cast Members do not attend church anywhere, nor are they Christians.

Cast Member Church gets its name from the title which the Disney Company gives to its employees. No matter what job they have at the parks and resorts, the workers are all called “cast members.” Every employee has a role to play.

Pastor Steven had worked as a cast member for a season, and during that time, he thought, “It would be great if there was a church just for cast members.” He had forgotten about this thought, but it came back to lead him to this one-of-a-kind ministry. Pastor Steven set out to reach cast members with the gospel of Jesus Christ, but he certainly had some obstacles ahead of him.

As he began efforts to establish the Cast Member Church, Pastor Steven spent several weeks meeting with church leaders in Orlando. He was trying to figure out what had worked and what had not worked from established churches trying to reach out to the employees at Disney. All he heard was horror stories of churches trying and failing. This group of people was so diverse and different. He quickly found that a typical church model was not going to work.

In prayer, he decided to go back to the Bible to figure out what kind of ministry he should do to reach out the cast members at Disney World. He asked the question, “How did it work in the New Testament?” He studied the book of Acts and how the Lord grew the infant church. As he studied the Scriptures, he recalled what author Mike Breen said, “If you plant churches, you might get disciples, but if you make disciples, you always get the church.”[1]

A Micro-Church of Disciples

So, to birth the unique Cast Member Church, Pastor Steven did it the old fashioned way. Trusting the truth of Scripture, his plan was to make disciples instead of planting a church for the cast members. He began this effort of unreasonable discipleship believing that as he made disciples, God would take care of the church. Pastor Steven began to gather a group of young cast members whom he taught, mentored, and discipled. These disciples, in turn, began to gather a group of people around themselves whom they also discipled. They named this network of groups, CommuniDs (D for Disney, or also for Discipleship).

To continue the growth of the Cast Member Church, Pastor Steven began to enter the parks as a guest on an annual pass (Disney doesn’t pay him, and he is not endorsed by Disney World). He connected with cast members at the Disney parks and hotels, as a paying guest, and engaged them in conversation. As cast members showed interest in the unique ministry, Pastor Steven invited them to the CommuniD groups.

The CommuniDs are “micro churches” of four or five cast members that meet at all kinds of times and places, mostly in hotels where the cast members can find a small quiet space. Some of them meet online. The CommuniD also functions as a family element, providing a secure relationship in which it’s safe to share questions and doubts. Once a month, all the CommuniDs come together for a time of extended worship, prayer, and fellowship. Pastor Steven is constantly working to grow the network and expand the reach of the micro-church concept.

Every new group is introduced to Life Beyond Imagination, which Pastor Steven developed. Life Beyond Imagination is a process which provides a way to share about Jesus without having the conversation shut down before the gospel even comes up. Pastor Steven discovered early on that if he told cast members that he was a pastor, or talked about Jesus, then the conversation quickly ended. But alternatively, he found that cast members were very interested in talking about their purpose, and Life Beyond Imagination uses that route to introduce the gospel.

The series of conversations use “Disney speak” to talk about finding their purpose in ways that the cast members relate to, using words such as “dream,” “quest,” and “story” to help them understand the significance of God’s Word and His gospel in their lives. Cast members at Disney World often have these questions floating around in their heads: “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” “Where am I going?” “What does it even matter?” These issues open up the opportunity to share their purpose in Christ. In the process of introducing Christ, the lessons teach that each cast member has a purpose, but they have been separated from the One that gave them purpose. At their micro-church meetings, group leaders work with their CommuniD groups through this process of understanding their purpose in life and how the gospel of Jesus Christ relates to them.

To read more about Cast Member Church and stories of other UNREASONABLE CHURCHES, visit http://www.UnreasonableChurches.com

Rich Birch has been involved in church leadership for over 20 years. Early on he had the privilege of leading in one of the very first multisite churches in North America. He led the charge in helping The Meeting House in Toronto to become the leading multi-site church in Canada with over 4,500 people in 6 locations. In addition, he served on the leadership team of Connexus Community Church in Ontario, as well as on the Lead Team at Liquid Church in the Manhattan facing communities of New Jersey.

Rich speaks at conferences like Orange, WFX and various regional multisite church events. He's a featured writer on Auxano’s Vision Room, ChurchLeaders.com and MinistryBriefing. He's honored to blog and podcast weekly at unSeminary.com

Rich is married to Christine and together they parent two wonderful teens, Haley and Hunter. Collectively they try to keep their dog, Rory, from chewing everything that lands on the floor.