The Sixth Sense

Working for Mosaic

As of this month, I am now employed one day per week by Mosaic. This is another exciting step for me in the midst of a whole host of exciting changes.

Today I thought I’d share some of the things I’m going to be focussing on as I embark on this new phase. So, here pretty much is my job description:

• Identify and train team leaders for the various teams Mosaic is looking to establish.
• Create training resources to aid the development of team leaders and team members.
• Develop resources and materials for the Underground (the Christ-following community that is part of Mosaic).
• Identify and connect with other people and groups around the UK, Europe, and the rest of the world who are looking to move in a similar direction to Mosaic. Provide support, training, and leadership where appropriate.
• Establish more tangible goals and plans for supporting the work of other organisations (e.g. Oasis in South Africa, Open Kingdom in Cameroon, Help Unlimited in Uganda), and catalyse more people to serve with them and establish a fundraising base to support this work.
• Oversee the establishment of a registered charity and provide leadership and oversight to all itʼs functions.

I’m excited to have this dedicated time to serving within and through Mosaic. Looking forward to the progress that comes as a result too!

Tags: Employment, Mosaic

All change

I mentioned in a previous post at the start of June that there were some changes on the horizon. Well I thought I’d go public with what’s going on!

For those of you who don’t know, since December 1999 I have worked full time as an IT administrator with a firm of accountants here in Sheffield. My work with Mosaic has always been something in addition to this. It keeps me busy!

From next week though my number of days with my employer is going to be reduced to 4 days per week. And then I am going to be doing 1 day a week with Mosaic. I’m excited about the change and opportunity.

Not only this, from next January I am going to be dropping to 2.5 days with my current employer and am looking to set up my own business focussed primarily on human potential consultancy.

I’ll share more about the specifics of both my work with Mosaic and the new business in later posts, but I thought I’d get the basics out on the table. I know some of you have been waiting with baited breath since that last post!

Tags: Human Potential, Life, Mosaic, Work

Progress

I realised today how much I thrive on progress. I need to feel like things are happening, that there is forward momentum. And, if there’s not, I can quite quickly start to feel drained.

Tonight three of us from Mosaic met to have a ’strategic planning session’ for something called VOX Sheffield. The vision with this is to try and create a movement that will give voice to both artists and causes. Essentially we want to showcase creativity in Sheffield and work together to create a better world.

We have made a few tentative steps in this direction in the past, but we really want to get this going. Ryan is going to be the catalyst and team leader. The meet up tonight was about setting some specific goals and identifying some tangible objectives.

I’m really excited and buzzed by the meeting. It really felt like a momentum creating meeting. Seems like we made some real progress and took some tangible steps forward. Watch this space for the details in the coming months!

What project are you passionate about right now?

Tags: Art, Causes, Mosaic, Progress, VOX Sheffield

Far too many email accounts

Guess how many different email addresses I have?! Ok, I’ll just tell you. It’s ten. And I’m sure there might be one or two others lingering about that I’ve forgotten about.

Clearly that’s way too many and far too confusing for others. I’m getting increasing complaints from family members asking which address they should use to contact me.

To be fair, apart from my work email account, all the other email address automatically forward to one main account, but still, I think I’m in need of some consolidation.

At the moment, I’m looking to break down my emails into three accounts: Work, Personal, and Mosaic. Then I’ll have one dedicated email for each and encourage people to stop using any others. I will then look to keep my main Gmail account but simply as a backup where a copy of all emails sent to those three main account goes just in case.

Obviously my Work and Mosaic accounts are pretty set, but I am looking to use my .Mac (soon to be MobileMe) for personal emails. 

The only potential complication to all this is that I do want to make the most of the new MobileMe push services for email, calendar, and contact updates. I don’t know what the setup of MobileMe is going to look like, but I may decide to route everything though MobileMe if I can’t attach my Work and Mosaic accounts to it. We’ll see!

I guess ultimately I’m saying all this to say that I’m trying to make a concerted effort to get on top of my email addresses and do some consolidation. I’ll keep you posted with how it goes!

What about you? Have you got too many email addresses?

Tags: Email, MobileMe, Mosaic

Burma death toll jumps to 78,000

The news from both Burma and China keeps getting worse and worse. The latest article on the BBC website says that the death toll has reached 78,000. Not only that, the number of people still missing is close to 56,000.

In China too, news is coming out that up to FIVE MILLION people are now homeless as a result of the earthquake there. Five million. I can’t even imagine what that looks like. If that was in the UK that would be 1 in every 12 people.

These two tragedies have really got me thinking about how Mosaic - the movement I serve with here in Sheffield - can become something that really gets our hands dirty in terms of doing what we can to make a difference in these situations and others like it.

I don’t want us to be a passive group of people who expect others to do something. Even though we are just a small group of people, we can make a difference.

One of our strap lines is ‘creating a world that works for everyone’. Surely it is in situations like this that we need to rise up and make the strap line a reality?

What do you think?

If you haven’t already, please reply to the ‘Who Are You?’ post. Thanks!

Tags: Burma, China, Death, Disaster, Earthquake, Life, Mosaic, Mosaic Sheffield, News

A new kind of leadership

I just came across this from Barack Obama’s new-media director Joe Rospars. He was talking about how the Obama camp has been able to build such a successful grassroots campaign, particularly in relation to raising funds.

“We’ve tried to bring two principles to this campaign, one is lowering the barriers to entry and making it as easy as possible for folks who come to our Web site. The other is raising the expectation of what it means to be a supporter. It’s not enough to have a bumper sticker. We want you to give five dollars, make some calls, host an event. If you look at the messages we send to people over time, there’s a presumption that they will organize.” (Emphasis mine)

Read the full article here.

This really resonated with me because it captured precisely some of what we’ve been trying to do with pioneering Mosaic here in Sheffield. 

Mosaic is a movement of dreamers and visionaries who are working together to try and create a world that works for everyone. At the heart of this movement, is a community of followers of Jesus Christ.

And, as a community, two of our expressed goals have been to:

• Lower the bar on what it means to be and do ‘church’
• Raise the bar on what it means to be a follower of Christ

People have had enough of being spectators. They want to be involved. For too long leadership has been about doing it yourself. Leadership should be about equipping and empowering others to be involved and engaged.

This is why Obama is on the brink of winning the Democratic nomination when he should never have been in with a shout. And this is the direction leaders of any kind of community need to go if they’re not going to get left behind in this new 21st century world.

What do you think?

Don’t forget to reply to the ‘Who Are You?’ post. Thanks!

Tags: Barack Obama, Church, Leadership, Mosaic, Politics