Will Mancini

I am working with a small group of church consultants and thought leaders from different disciplines to integrate learnings from “movement phenomenology” into how we think and help the local church. The group is called “Future Travelers” and Alan Hirsch is leading our process. 

Below are links to other encounters I have had with Alan and some new nuggets from today:

• Alan’s primary thesis: Every believer contains within themselves the potential for world transformation.
• Our goal is that every believer is a church planter and every church a church planting church
• Are we in the “people of God mode” or “professional mode?”
• How can you improve on Jesus’ plan of discipleship? He said, “Die.”
• If we don’t get Jesus right, we create a toxic system, that produces toxic people.
• If you want to reproduce, you have got to be “reproduce-able.”
• With disciples you can go places, with consumers you can’t.
• We must act our way into a new way of thinking not vice versa.
• We engaging a people group, we can’t preempt the gospel with our version of church (structure).
• The church is a “scratch and sniff” experience of the Kingdom.
• Incarnation is how the God engaged the world. He doesn’t overwhelm us, he invites us.

RELATED LINKS

What are the Six Aspects of Movements?

My Single Favorite Quote from Alan Hirsch

Notes from Coaching at PGF Together

A Free E-Book with Contributions from Alan Hirsch

Here is the video from the Verge Conference on the six ingredients:

Over the last few years I have enjoyed attending and speaking at conferences.  Yet staying on mission for me means having to miss some. Now with twitter, you can have an entirely new experience of attending a conference virtually. In fact I have found a new reality that twitter creates, enabling a preferred experience to watching a conference on DVD.  I call this new reality anEmotional Resonance Spectrum (ERS). Right now I am attending The Verge Conference virtually using the hashtag #verge10.

So why do I call it an ERS?  If thousands of people attend a conference, then hundreds will be tweeting. This stream creates an entirely new snapshot and experience of the conference. (I am not saying “more” or “better” but definitely new.) Imagine that every minute you receive from 5 to 30 short responses from people that include:

• Favorite quotes
• Bursts of emotion (good and bad)
• Questions
• Humor
• Web links to related content
• Links to typed summaries on blogs
• Side commentary from notable leaders
• Gateways to side conversations about content

Here are some huge benefits that emerge from watching a conference using a tweet stream. (It kinda reminds me of looking at “reality” through the vertical streams of random green digits in the movie The Matrix.)

Absorb the conference while multi-tasking: It’s easy to keep a tweet stream up while working at the computer on something else (for example I typed this while attending Leadership Summit 2009) Or, you can check what’s happening on your phone at a stoplight while running an errand.

Enlarge your perspective on the teaching: Every person or team that attends a conference has built-in biases. Watching the comments of hundreds provides radically different perspectives that enlarge my own.

Feel the collective soul of the conference: I am a quote junkie, so certain phrases will always get to me.  BUT, I love watching what touches the heart of the collective soul of the conference.  Some quotes are repeated and retweeted scores of times, while others are a single burst. This learning enables a unique discernment as I serve the wider body of Christ through my consulting. What struck a chord with attendees of the Leadership Summit  last year? Dave Gibbons said, ”Your failure is your platform to humanity.”

Follow up on the content that most interests you: Last year as the conference ended, I looked for summaries of all of the talks via blogs referenced in the tweet stream.  I saw two that I followed up with- Tony Morgan’s and Dave Ferguson’s. Keep in mind there are two kinds of summaries, aggregators and specialists.  An aggregator (like Tony Morgan) are masters at building info hubs and they do it fast. A specialist, like Dave Ferguson (in this case a senior pastor), summarizes the conference from his point of view. By the way, I plan on following up on one of the speakers (Gary Mamel) and will purchase his book today on my kindle.

Build relationships and extend your influence: I traffic in the arena of clarity and vision.  Several people yesterday attending the conference tweeted references to me and my work.  For example a guy named Kevin tweeted, ”Jessica Jackley just nailed the clarity and uniqueness quotient for Kiva. @WillMancini would be proud. #tls09″  How cool is it that I get to have a conversation with Kevin, even though I am not at the conference. Another example is that Bill Donahue and I, a staff guy and Willow, were able to comment and critique publicly on one of the speakers quotes (again while I was typing this).

When it’s all said and done, I am somewhat hooked on attending conferences via twitter. Sure, it may not replace being there, but this is a learning strategy I will engage for now.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

There is a great line up of places to meet and get down and dirty with clarity. Here is where I will be hanging out and speaking in the next several weeks:

Verge in Austin is Happening NOW. This is the first conference to focus on Missional Communities. It sold out around 2000 folks. The good news is that you can attend the conference via live feed. Sign-up here. Why Verge?

• #1 Missional Communities are the next thing. We’ve gone from “mega” to “multi” to “micro”
• #2 Austin is a great town. (Especially for those who are truly free in Christ.)
• #3 This huge meet-up will be an inspirational high

If you want to meet there I will be coming late and staying over Sunday and Monday to spend time with Alan Hirsch with some other thought leaders. 

The following week you might want to check out the Churchplanters.com Conference in Atlanta. Why do I look forward to this conference each year?

• #1 Sean Lovejoy, David Putnam and company host a great event with focused content.
• #2 The vibe is real and raw- You’ve  gotta love the guts it took to plant a church in Andy Stanely’s backyard. You’ve gotta respect their results.
• #3 Mt. Lake Church and Auxano are partnering to launch an Atlanta based co:Lab 

I look forward to seeing your there. I will be speaking twice on Tuesday and hosting a lunch if you’re interested in the Vision co::Lab

One March 3rd, Leadership Network is bringing their next online conference experience to the masses. This time its called “Aha!”  Why attend Aha!

• #1 It’s totally free and you get to learn from comfort of home!
• #2 40 Aha moments all delivered under six minutes
• #3 Fresh voices will be highlighted, so get off the rock-star train. 

For Aha! I submitted one of my own stories entitled, “How a Funnel Changed My Life.”

While these are the next three, there are many others coming in the next few months where I would love to connect! More on these to come. 

• Cornerstone Alignment Conferences  This fantastic event happens in four big cities- the first one is March 16th in Indianpolis. 
• Large Church Initiative for Methodists in San Antonio on April 12-15th
• Exponential – My favorite of them all! April 19-22 in Orlando
• Q Gathering in Chicago, April 28-30 
• NACBA Conference in Orlando 

What kind of disciple is your church designed to produce?

At Vince Antonucci’s church plant in Las Vegas, called VERVE,  they not only have a clear and compelling answer to this question, but to all five of the irreducible questions of clarity that make of the Vision Frame. This is Church Unique at its best. As Vince builds community-focused church to reach lost people on the Vegas Strip, he constantly casts vision to the kind of people they are trying to become. It’s what I call a “mission measure” or “missional life-marks.” Verve’s stunning articulation this is that they are becoming:

• God Stalkers
  
• Grace Wholesalers
• and Guerilla Lovers

Check out the way Vince articulates others aspects of the Vision Frame with a similar three-fold simplicity (core vision, core practices and core process) Go to “about VERVE” and then “core.”

About a year ago, my son Jacob I and spent a day with Vince and his core team. His first book (I Became a Christian and All I Got was this Lousy T-shirt) greatly enriched my son’s evangelistic fervor.  That’s why I am so excited that Vince has launched a new book with some very cool FREE stuff for churches to integrate in their services. The title of the book, is of course from his life-marks- Guerilla Lovers.  Check out the great resource site. 

Leadership Network (LN) is an great organization, and they are doing more amazing stuff this year. Some of Dave Travis’s comments on their Learnings Blog have hinted to their 2nd big online conference, called Aha! Fresh Voices, New Ideas that will happen on March 3rd, 2010. Dave mentioned that the official announcement and details will be made early this week by Todd Rhodes. (Aha! Link is now up.)

What can you expect?  The same incredible format as their first online conference The NINES – a totally free online experience, with a mix of some great folks you already know as well as some new faces. Look for fewer total participants (40) and shorter clips at 6 minutes each. Contributers were asked to focus on a key learning and “aha!” moment in their life and ministry.  

Where did the name originate?  About ten months ago, I worked with LN’s team to distill down their six values. They named this conference after their second value. Here is the list:

1. What’s next? - We explore what could be.
2. Aha! - We create environments for collaborative discovery.          
3.  Positive deviants*  We work with the exceptional.           
4.  Generous relationships. We invest in the success of others.
5.  Results, results, results… We pursue BIG impact.
6.  JESUS  We strive to model Jesus in everything we do.

The mission of Leadership Network is to accelerate the impact of 100X leaders. See a fun little interview on LN- Ben Arment with Dave Travis.