Greg Darley:

At the end of the day will mark the first full week of our Free Chains campaign to end child sex trafficking. It has been a great week. Let me give you a few updates:

• 71 people have joined the Facebook Cause.
• 364 people have joined the Facebook Group.
• Numerous people have blogged about the campaign. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here.
• We’ve sold a dozen “All Should Be Free” t-shirts with proceeds benefiting our safe house in Nepal.
• We’ve sold 2 dozen Free Chain key chains with proceeds benefiting our safe house as well.

We’re off to a great start. Thank you to everyone who is playing a part. So everyone knows…our initial goal is to raise $65,000.  This is the amount needed to operate the safe house and all of their programs.  This will help upwards of 65 girls and children to have a safe place to sleep, a place to recover, to learn job skills, to receive education and a place to feel loved.

Please consider becoming a monthly donor to support them!

I finished up “Loving God” by Chuck Colson while on our trip.  Chuck has had a great influence in my life.

Chuck quoted John Calvin in one chapter and it has stood out to me in  huge way.  He said, “It is the first duty of the Christian to make the invisible Kingdom visible.”

WOW!  That is awesome.  What would it look like if all Christians made this their first duty?  How would the world be changed?  How different would culture look?

What are the ways that you see Christians doing this?

Here are a few that I’ll bring up:

Free Chains.  Project we started through World Causes trying to stop child sex trafficking.

Eleho: Organization by a friend in San Diego making a difference for the Karen People.

Innocence Atlanta: Friend in Atlanta trying to end sex trafficking within the city.

Fermi Project: A group trying to help Christians impact and influence culture

Prison Fellowship: organization by Chuck trying to bring truth into prisons.

Ethur: creative group dealing with issues like character and consumerism.

What are some ways or people you know trying to make the invisible kingdom known?

-The IRS has been so gracious to us and approved World Causes as a 501c3 tax exempt organization!  This is the first of hopefully many milestones.  All gifts to World Causes (Free Chains) are now tax deductible.

-Free Chains shirts are selling quickly.  If you want one, shoot me an email. 100% organic cotton. $20. Proceeds benefit out child sex trafficking campaign.

-I came 2 inches from eagling the same hole on the same day this past weekend.  I played in tournament with my dad and brother.  We eagled a par 5 and then we played another 9 after the tournament. After hitting the green in 2, I rolled my putt with in inches of another eagle.

First day of Ministry @ the Max was just that…sooooooo much information.  There was a lot of good information.  A lot to digest. A lot to dig through.  It was pretty much the opposite of the Q conference last month which centered around big ideas, future thinking, innovation, creativity, etc.  This was more of the nuts and bolts of how to make all that happen. (In other words, all the stuff I’m not good at).  Let me give a brief overview:

-85% of start-up businesses (and ministiries) fail within the first five years because of inadequate planning, structure, and systems.

How do we not become a statistic?

Ministry Venture’s 5 Best Practices are a step.

1. Prayer

God is a God of order.

“Putting things in order is Wise and faithful stewardship”

That is a very convicting statement for us dreamers, visionaries, idea guys, and big thinkers.  Have to work on that.

3 Biblical Principles:

1. Build on a solid foundation of prayerful planning.

2. Build a ministry that can withstand adversity.

3. Build around process and not personality.

I’ll be attending a seminar tomorrow that is supposed to help with the foundational issues of leading a non-profit.  I’ll post notes tomorrow and share all the info that I’m taking in.  Should be a great time of learning about systems and effective communication.

Always striving to get better (and Lord knows I’ve got a long way to go!)

Jim Collins (author of Good to Great) must have been very proud of Sergio Garcia yesterday.  He confronted the brutal facts.  After winning the TPC at Sawgrass, Sergio thanked Tiger Woods for not being there!  He said it does make it easier with Tiger at home.  I loved it.  It’s true.  Not many “professionals” would want to admit it, but its true.

This is an idea that if embraced could have great impact in many areas of life, business, and ministry. Confronting the facts of your current situation will help you make better choices and decisions.  For World Causes we’ve looked at all our current human and financial capital and have seen what we can and cannot do right now. We want to do everything with excellence, which right now is Free Chains.

Check out his speech and think about areas where you need to confront the brutal facts.

Mark Batterson talks about the importance of unlearning in his book, In a pit with a lion on a snowy day. Thinking Steps Not Programs is the practice that we have to unlearn some stuff, before we can effectively apply this practice.

Having a program is natural for those who grew up in church. You have a need, you build a program…its simple. But that is not necessarily the most effective way to achieve results. Here’s the difference.

A program is a system/project to meet a need.

A step is a series of actions taken to achieve a goal.

A program asks “what is the need?”

A step asks “where do we want people to be?’

The goal is to figure out where you want people, then create steps to get them there. You want to have teenagers have an intimate walk with Jesus, don’t just create a “youth program” create steps that will help get them there. There are numerous applications.

For World Causes, we want people to ultimately commit to being a part of the solution of the issues of poverty, injustice and epidemic disease. Commitment is the goal, and the steps to get them there are:

1. Raising awareness to the issue (this is one of our “wins”. To raise true awareness. To shorten the gap between our reality and their reality. Repeating a statistic is NOT awareness)

2. Getting people to respond to those needs.

3. Creating ways and possibilities to commit.

Commitment means altering lifestyles, changing behavior, changing character. Its big stuff. But that is where we want to take people and that is the only way that 2.5 million girls will be freed from sex trafficking, and 1.2 billion people can live on more than $1 a day. There are also distinct forms of commitment that we’ll be shooting for with different groups. Individuals, churches, business owners, students…commitment may look different for all the groups, so we’ll need steps for all different groups to get them there. Andy calls this “doing ministry with the end in mind.”

What are your steps?

Clarify the Win means to figure out what is most important for your organization. This is what you are shooting for. At the end of the day (week, month, year, campaign) this is what you look at to determine if what you did mattered. It also helps you determine where you spend your time and your money. If something is not going to help you get to your win, then its an easy decision to make.

Just as important as clarifying the win, is celebrating the win. More to come on this…

How do we Clarify the Win?

For World Causes, a win happens when we: (1) Raise true awareness to the issues of Poverty, Injustice, or Epidemic Diseases. (2) Have creative and simple ways for people to respond to those needs. (3) Help people commit to being a part of the long term solution.

Those are some of the larger Wins for World Causes. We have specific wins like, “To find the best price for environmentally and socially conscious goods that we buy”, “to get 24 local churches to join the Free Chains Campaign during the first 12 months”

For each person, initiative, or project that we start, Clarifying the Win will be crucial. Before we invest time, money and other resources into something, we have to make sure that we know what we’re shooting for.

Another great lesson I learned today while reviewing this was the ability to use this principle with other relationships, especially the family. Clarifying the Win with my relationship with my wife helps me determine where I spend my time and money. A win for that relationship is when she feels loved. Flowers, a great investment. Cotton Candy, another great investment. Talking without my cell phone off…fantastic investment. Gold watch, poor decision. New tv…nope.

Next principle :Think Steps not programs.