A Link Worth Watching

I was very challenged to watch this presentation by Dan Pallotta.



My place is the Nonprofit Sector is far away from its epicentre, where he sees a clash between morality and frugality.  We are situated in a different but similar web of convictions and guidelines that underpin our work, which also needs an overhaul.



Yet I watched this in the very same week that a new Pope was selected, the first one ever to choose the name Francis.  Finally! I hope that this is a signal that he is willing to tip over a few paradigms?  Lest the church become nothing more than a "compassionate NGO" as he remarked this week.



Thanks for you prayers for our meetings.  The Board meeting went very well.  The other meeting never happened - again.  Look like we have reached the end of the road in terms of "finding one another again" so dissolution of the Joint Venture is now on the horizon.



Back to the Board meeting.  It has set up a task force to look very hard at the "big picture".  Not just C4L and its choices but the missiology and convictions that underpin it.



This is likely to lead to more change, streamlining, and right-sizing - as we "strenghten the things that remain" and scrap what is not mission-critical.



My prayer request is for wisdom as we enter this exercise, and for the clarity of analysis and thinking that I appreciated in the video link above.  As much as the content, I think that the presentation of it is superb.  We need incisive analysis like that to really become social innovators.



I have sensed the power of your prayers in the past days, as I watch the Lord's creative script writing of history.  It's nice to be part of a drama where you don't memorize your lines, but you are still amazed at the awesome author of the drama.  He has once again shown us that He is in control and that not even a sparrow falls that he doesn't see.  It looks like he has some pleasant surprises in store for C4L in the next few years.  Stay tuned for more on this as it unfolds.



I echo the words repeated by the new Pope, Francis I, which also bode well: "Pray for me".