How Guatemala Welcomed Me

Posted by Kevin Ring in Everything Else, Government, Kingdom, Missions on May 28, 2010 | No Comments
How Guatemala Welcomed Me

I’m in Guatemala (that sentence is for my benefit, I’ve been marveling at the fact that I am in Guatemala all day).

We flew in to Guatemala City Thursday evening, our plane touched down a little after 7 pm.

A little after “a little after 7 pm”, Mount Pacaya (one of Guatemala’s three active volcanoes) erupted.

Pacaya is 18 miles south of Guatemala City. The eruption threw a large amount of ash into the air and it began raining (along with the actual rain of that evening) down on the city.

We walked out of the airport to black volcano ash falling from the sky.

This isn’t what I’ve seen but apparently this is how Guatemala welcomed me: ——————————

I’m in Guatemala working with

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Why I’m in Guatemala

Posted by Kevin Ring in Fundraising, Kingdom, Mercy, Ministry, Missions on May 28, 2010 | 5 Comments
Why I’m in Guatemala

I’m Guatemala.

You probably didn’t know that. I didn’t tell many people I was going; no real reason for keeping it quiet. I was just being selfish.

I’m in Guatemala for four days. I flew in yesterday (Thursday). I fly out on Sunday.

Friday and Saturday I’m working with a local ministry called Potter’s House Association to do what we in the consulting world like to call “discovery”. Which really means I’m here to figure out how I’m going to help this ministry.

See, Potter’s House serves the scavenger families of the Guatemala City garbage dump. Guatemala City has a population of approximately 3.2 million people. Guatemala City’s garbage dump is the largest in Central America, covering over 40 acres.

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Business as Mission Metrics – Measuring Effectiveness (part 2)

Posted by Kevin Ring in BAM Operation, BAM Research, Business as Mission, Justice, Measurement, Missions, Research, Strategy, Transformation on March 16, 2010 | No Comments

Creating Eternal Value through Strategic Management

Business as Mission Metrics – Measuring the Effectiveness of BAM Efforts (part 2)

What the Business as Mission movement does not measure

If the Business as Mission movement does universally agree that a particular metric is not indicative of BAM success, it does is not mean that metric isn’t valid. Of all of the measures tested by the BAM survey, only a few were rejected by a significant number of respondents (Table E). The common aspect of all of these metrics can together is that it is questionable whether any company should be responsible for...

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Planning the Next Phase of Haitian Relief

Posted by Kevin Ring in BAM Research, Business as Mission, Church, Fundraising, Missions, Strategy on February 4, 2010 | No Comments

The devastation of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake on January 12, 2010 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti (and the 49 magnitude 4.5 or greater aftershocks) is heart-wrenching. The pictures of the damage… of the hurt and suffering experienced by the people there… of the chaos of a massive world effort to provide the basics: emergency care and medicine, food, shelter, security… are haunting. (Click the following links to see pictures from January 13th , January 18th, January 22nd, and February 1st. WARNING: the images are graphic.)

According to a...

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Clarifying Business as Mission Objectives

Posted by Kevin Ring in BAM Research, Business as Mission, Missions, Strategy Development on January 19, 2010 | 1 Comment

The following is another excerpt from the BAM Survey 2007 Report. The BAM Survey 2007 Report is an in-depth assessment of the state of the Business as Mission movement based on survey responses from 497 people in 38 countries. You can purchase an electronic copy of the BAM Survey 2007 Report for $14.99 here.

Business as Mission Companies Create Eternal Value Through Strategic Management

Whereas evangelism, profit, and (to a lesser extent) mission to the developing world were the historic points of...

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Kingdom Strategist looks back at 2009

Posted by Kevin Ring in About, BAM Research, Blogging, Business as Mission, Church, Excellence, Family, Fundraising, Internet Strategy, Kingdom, Leadership, Media & Technology, Missions, Online Church, Research, Social Media, Strategist, Strategy on December 31, 2009 | No Comments

I haven’t fully gotten into the blogging groove yet. I’ve been at it for just over a year now but I’m only recently starting to feel like I’m picking up momentum. But I enjoy blogging and I’m especially enjoying all the new people I’ve met and interacted with this year. I know that my blog doesn’t have much to do with these relationships forming but it’s part of it none the less. Well someone forgot to send me the memo letting me know that bloggers have to do two things at the end of the year.

Write a really awesome retrospective post. Write a post highlighting your top content from the past year.

Check and check.

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Can Missions Organizations Be Excellent in Today’s Environment?

Posted by Kevin Ring in Excellence, Missions on November 18, 2009 | 4 Comments

Yesterday, I received an email from leader in the mission field with some feedback about the value of trying to define a standard of excellence for ministries’ online activities. What he described was a reluctance among mission (and probably all non-profit) organizations to embrace standards because doing so would mean committing to doing what it takes to live up to those standards. As he put it:

We have not had much traction in finding groups looking to set more standards that they would then have to adopt/invest effort to measure up to.  It is a particularly challenging time for mission organizations trying to do as much as they can, as well as they can with shrinking resources.

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A Six Year Old’s Sense of Injustice and the Power of an Online Community

Posted by Kevin Ring in Blogging, Fundraising, Kingdom, Missions, Schools, Social Media on November 9, 2009 | 2 Comments

Holy crap. Jon Acuff and the Stuff Christians Like blog community totally hijacked my day. Here’s the recap:

Jon Acuff of StuffChristiansLike.net is inspired by his 6 year old daughter’s sense of injustice that there are hungry children around the world; Jon, still reeling from how many people have come to enjoy and support SCL gets an idea: leverage the power of the community to do something big for a charity; Jon reaches out to the community for inspiration as to what charity to work with; Jon settles on Samaritan’s Purse and works with them to coordinate the building of a kindergarten in rural Vietnam… all Jon needs is to raise $30,000.

Which brings us to today. This morning

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Well done, good and faithful servant!

Posted by Kevin Ring in Blogging, Children, Conferences, Kingdom, Missions on November 9, 2009 | No Comments

I met Jon Acuff at the Christian Web Conference earlier this year. I got to talk to him a bit, primarily about the tremendous responsibility that comes with being funny (I think that’s what we talked about, it’s all a blur now). I saw him again at the Cultivate conference in Chicago and got to spend a little more time with him. Jon Acuff is a good guy.

The one of the main things I like about Jon (other than his ability to pull off the “down-filled vest” look) is that he gets that the point of all of this is not just to have a blog, not just to be funny. The point is to use what God has given us to love and serve others all over the world and in doing so, proclaim Christ as King to the nations. We are to use our...

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Tony Steward’s Thoughts on Kingdom

Posted by Kevin Ring in Church, Closed access countries, Conferences, Family, Government, Ministry, Missions on August 19, 2009 | No Comments

Tony Steward posted some of his thoughts on the difference between an empire (large and vertical structure) versus a Kingdom (collaborative and horizontal structure).

Now is a time in the church when we need to ask ourselves if we are willing to sacrifice our empire to help strengthen the kingdom, what we call the global church – the body of Jesus.

It’s important to note that he is not devaluing the process of empire-building. I think Mr. Steward would agree that collaborative effort toward a common vision, group goals, authority structures, rules and procedures are not bad. Instead, he is making a key distinction which is has to do with our orientation.

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