Walking the U of Saskatchewan..

Onto the University.  The size and scale of the U of S is impressive.Even though school was essentially out for the summer, and the hallways and cafeterias were bare, there was still a powerful sense of its vibrancy. And the building and renovation is everywhere!  It is a city within a city.  

In a few weeks this will be jammed with students...

 As I mentioned to John, it is almost painful for me to step onto a campus in September. The sheer weight of the challenge and the potential of the opportunity is simply overwhelming. As Drew guided us through its hallways, and we stood on the sixth floor of a building looking over the campus, we were led to pray. The weight of the opportunity was tangible. The sense of God's Spirit brooding over the campus was real.

Praying over the U of S Campus

There is a lot of work to do. At Campus Mission Canada, we approach the campus in a variety of different ways. Chaplaincy? Student Club? Church Ministry?  What approach, or variety of approaches, would be best? Further, we do not want to either run ahead of God nor to lag behind Him. Our natural tendency is to lag well behind, but regardless we want to get it right. The number one priority at present, and in fact the first item of business would be catalyzing prayer for the campus. Not token prayer, but intentional prevailing prayer.

So, we have specific options. What rights and privileges go with Horizon College’s affiliation with the U of S? How do we go about starting a student group? With whom? How do we sort out the necessary procedural stuff within the District? How do we engage people meaningfully in the project so that we are able to leverage the gifts and abilities of those who are being called to help build a enduring campus ministry. It is honestly difficult to overstate the potential in God for what might happen on and through this campus. 

Running Back to Saskatoon: The Journey is underway

Flat?  Maybe,  but the skies were alive. God was speaking.

 I wasn’t quite sure what He was saying, but He was certainly speaking…

Actually, it was a show. 

The Skies were alive in 360 degrees

Yup... God rays..

It was a show...

The gently undulating topography of the prairie is certainly more subtle than that of other areas but nonetheless beautiful.  Because you can see so much further, the far away changes in vegetation and elevation almost beckon you … it does something inside of me...

I arrived in Saskatoon and met with John Drisner and his intern Drew Chapman. Drew was a grad of U of Guelph and formerly a C4C worker at the U of S. Presently the student president of Horizon College.

John and Drew

John is the Superintendent of the Saskatchewan District,  and in the unusual position of being  both the DS and the lead pastor of his church. I was at the conference where he was upfront ( see May blog), when he let his name stand for the DS elections.  He affirmed that he and his church leadership had prayed about it and that he would run with the clear understanding that he would still maintain (although adapt)  his lead pastoral role at Lawson Heights . At the time, although I was a visitor, it was clear to me that John was going to be ‘the guy’.  I had the opportunity to shake hands with him as the conference came to an end and then chatting with him over a meal, last month,  at our national Mission Canada conference.

He is a strong leader and a solid communicator. In beginning a series on FaceBook Theology, he intersected with various theological discussions occurring online. Affirmative of the fact that people are actually discussing theology over Facebook, he provided the caution that most do not have grids or filters through which to evaluate people’s comments or arguments. He  then made an effort to lay out a primer on postmodernism and how it affects the way people perceive and process the world around them. What could have been a dry academic exercise was made relevant by describing how different generations “think” or “feel” about truth. Moderns  demand logic and sense. Postmoderns want it to “feel right”. While this is no doubt a generalization, it is one that has some connection to reality.

Lawson Heights Pentecostal Assembly is well situated in relation to the University of Saskatchewan. It is less than a ten minute drive, just across the river on the North and West of the city. Further, it has a user friendly feel to it that would appeal to a broad cross section of students. However, the idea behind what we do is not to try to attract students to church but to bring church to students. It is incarnational rather than attractional. One should not have to choose, but the point is: we need to go to where they are. 

Calgary: The journey begins...

I got the chance in Calgary to have breakfast with Kelly Johnson and Glenn Ryland who are our chaplains at the U of Calgary and Mount Royal U, respectively. I was hopeful about checking out the University of Lethbridge with them but it wasn’t going to work out.  I am continually struck with their quality and just how well their universities and faith communities are served by them.  Glenn is actually being hired full time by MRU on its faculty ( they love him that much) and will be able to continue his chaplaincy duties on a part time basis. 

Some random personal things....

I worked through my midlife crisis in four days. The rental company gave me a free upgrade to a Mustang GT 5.0.   It had been a long time since I had heard ( felt)  the roar and throb of a jacked V8.  It turns out that the 2011 GT is Ford’s pride and joy, the car critics' darling, and that it  can go from 0 to the traffic court in mere seconds.  Anyway.. got that out of my system.

Personal stuff. Helping my mom sort through meaningful things as she moves into a seniors' home. Thinking about what to bring back home that would be meaningful for the coming generations – especially for my daughters. China.. carefully packed and brought home. I also inherited Mom's little red car which would bring me back across the country. I took a lot of digital pictures of Mom's pictures....

My family when I was 11

My family when I was 35

Having helped my Mom find a suitable burial plot, we buried my father’s ashes. There had been a variety of complications that prevented this from happening before. .... Hope of resurrection. From dust to dust.  Ashes to ashes. He was a special man. A brother in Christ. Victorious in death. 

I got to meet David’s former boss who made it clear to me how much he thought of the boy and what he stood for. He too had lost a son and we were able to connect at the level of empathy. It is like finding a fellow compatriot in a foreign country. We spoke the same language and understood each other. Thank you, brother.

Meleagris gallopavo, Wild Turkey, juvenile, photo: Lynn Jones, 2011

Bird list for July 11 to 22, 2011:

Wild Turkey, a large youngster now hanging out with the three males - that's the little guy in Lynn's photo above
Double-crested Cormorant, solitary fly-over
Herring Gull, occasional fly-overs
Killdeer, a family group of three
5. Osprey, a pair - one with a fish

Red-tailed Hawk, our resident pair
Rock Pigeon
Mourning Dove
Downy Woodpecker
10. Northern Flicker


Colaptes auratus, Northern Flicker, female. photo: Lynn Jones, 2011

Common Raven, a good sighting by Lynn
American Crow
Blue Jay
Red-eyed Vireo
15. Cedar Waxwing, feeding fledglings now

European Starling
American Robin
Gray Catbird
Northern Mockingbird
20. House Wren

Black-capped Chickadee
Barn Swallow
Tree Swallow
Yellow Warbler
25. Northern Cardinal


Mystery bird. photo: Lynn Jones, 2011 - probably #28 on this week's list.

Song Sparrow
American Goldfinch
House Finch
Common Grackle
30. Brown-headed Cowbird
House Sparrow

Thirty one species recorded for a two-week period in the middle of July.

The Millennials and PricewaterhouseCoopers

Playing a bit of catch up here, but there was an interesting article in the July 11 Wall Street Journal about one of my favorite topics…the millennials! PwC’s CEO Switches Tactics to Keep Millennials is worth reading on a number of fronts, but especially in his comments about the millennials and their interests relative to working. Dennis Nally is the CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers and the author of the article is Javier Espinoza.

From the article:

Mr. Nally: This millennial generation is not just looking for a job, they're not just looking for salary and financial benefits, they're looking for skill development, they're looking for mobility, they're looking for opportunities to acquire different skills and to move quickly from one part of an organization to another. How you manage that sort of talent and how you deal with their expectations is very different from what's been done in the past.

Mr. Nally: The millennium generation is probably the most technological group of people ever joining the workforce. How they want to work, use social media and team within a company is very different than the prior generation. If your human policies aren't responsive to what they are looking for, they are going to go to a company that is. They want less-hierarchical structures, they want more flexibility, they want to work as hard but they want to define how they do their work. If you can't figure out a way to accommodate that kind of flexibility, you're not going to be able to retain that talent.

WSJ: What [is PwC] doing to attract and retain talent?

Mr. Nally: We have adapted both how we recruit and how we work with people once they join us to suit the millennial generation. For example, in the U.S. we have set up a LinkedIn application that allows students to track the career paths of existing graduate trainees already in the firm so a student can see how a career with PwC develops. In the U.K., we use a Facebook application to connect recruits together before they join so they can begin to build their own PwC community.

We also provide mentors for our people from day one both formally and informally and encourage people to actively use their mentors to build skills and experience. We understand that flexibility and the ability to gather useful experience are key, as a result we actively encourage our people to move both between different business areas and around the world to gain experience. We also provide career breaks, flexible working, cycles of experience outside PwC and we actively encourage volunteering.

Non Profits and the Mission Statement

Terry Teachout’s column in today’s WSJ, Why Does NY Need Two Opera Companies, should be required reading for non-profit executives. While the focus is on opera, anyone in the nonprofit space can read this and see their own particular organization and consider their own mission statement.. While I think he overstates the case of the very short mission statement, a clear notion of “what do you do” and “why do you do it” needs to be at the core of everything the nonprofit does. Good luck to the Opera company in coming to grips with those questions.

From the article:

Good mission statements grow naturally out of sound strategic thinking. Peter Drucker, the great management consultant, said that a mission statement should be "short and sharply focused. It should fit on a T-shirt. The mission says why you do what you do, not the means by which you do it…. A mission cannot be impersonal; it has to have deep meaning, be something you believe in—something you know is right." That's what made "The People's Opera" so effective: It summed up in three crystal-clear words a mission that made sense.

Quiet July

Here are a couple of the Meleagris gang at noontime today, browsing the weedy edges at West Campus, hopefully finding delicious ticks and beetles for lunch. (three male Wild Turkeys)

July really is a dead zone for birders. By which I mean it's more difficult to find birds, by which I mean you have to work a lot harder to find them...
Yeah, we've been pretty busy with projects at work, and just haven't made the time to get out and find the birds.

So here's the cumulative list for the past two weeks, June 27 through today, July 8th:

Wild Turkey
Killdeer
Great Egret
Herring Gull
Ring-billed Gull

Red-tailed Hawk
Rock Pigeon
Mourning Dove
Downy Woodpecker
Northern Flicker

American Crow
Barn Swallow
Northern Rough-winged Swallow
Cedar Waxwing
Black-capped Chickadee

Red-eyed Vireo
Warbling Vireo
American Robin
Wood Thrush
Gray Catbird

Northern Mockingbird
European Starling
House Wren
American Goldfinch
House Finch

Yellow Warbler
Northern Cardinal
Song Sparrow
Common Grackle
Brown-headed Cowbird

House Sparrow

Looks like thirty-one species for our quiet two weeks.


Canada Thistle flowers, and...

Canada Thistle gone to seed - time for the goldfinches to be nesting!

Hope you're enjoying summer - the wonderful warm days of summer - my bones still hold the memory of the long cold winter now many months distant, so I'm loving these hot humid days!