the two open days went well for the new cms pioneer training course i am leading. someone asked me what an open day was – hadn't figured that the term wouldn't cross cultures! it's simply a day for people to come and visit and hear about the course, see the facilities and meet students and ask questions. we'll be having another one in may – the 19th is the most likely date – if you missed out this time round.

there is now a blog on the pioneer web site. this is my first introduction to using word press which i am impressed with though it still like typepad too – the blend of pages and posts and drop downs makes it a very powerful tool for creating a web site. one of the easiest ways to follow along with news about the pioneer course is to subscribe – see subscribe on right hand column of the site – and then you simply get new posts arrive as an e-mail – all very neat. give it a week or two and we'll add in a facebook and twitter feed so you can follow along there too if that's your preferred world of info flow. i am not going to post everything i post here there and vice versa but it's so much my focus at the moment that i am barely having time to think about or do much else. so i will be picking some posts out to put here no doubt. we've created a couple of categories around inspiration – one is stuff we find that is inpsiring and the other is creative stuff produced by students on the way. anger passion talent is the first thing i have put in the inspiration section…

Kaospilot in Denmark is an innovation school that looks wonderful! They have been a source of inspiration for me ever since I bumped into some students at a youth ministry conference I was speaking at in Denmark many years ago. They seem to have an open source policy and will be putting up materials on to their web space. You've got to hunt around a bit to find things but I suspect it's a bit of a treasure trove. Anyway I unearthed a gem that I have begun to use in conversation in the pub, with my family over a meal and probably lots of other places.

I think I noticed it because of the reflecting we have been doing in the mission spirituality module on the course. I think it would be easy to dive straight in to this course with pioneers who are generally activists and think how can we make stuff happen and help them make stuff happen. But we've resisted that and our first two modules have been much more about who we are and how we reflect on that and who God is in relation to us and the world rather than what we do. In mission spirituality, Johnny Sertin who leads it has been getting us all to focus on who we are and what our unique contribution is to the world and out of that to write a mission statement. It's really hard to do but also been quite an important and powerful thing to focus on.

Anyway the gem I uncovered is a pdf booklet called life purpose by Neil Crofts who is a life coach. If you go to the kaospilot online library and scroll down it's the section titled what is my purpose. In it he suggests you draw three circles – anger, passion and talent. In each write 5 to 8 words of things in the world that make you angry, things you are passionate about and talents you have. Then distill those down to one word or phrase. Weave together those things into a purpose or mission statement. It sounds the simplest thing in the world but it has blown me away just how powerful a tool it is. We did this round the meal table with family at the start of the year and it was incredibly moving. I won't share all their statements here though you can see what I came up with through this process:

I connect with and inspire creative leaders who don’t fit in, to help them be true to who they are and to do amazing things.

So I guess setting up and leading this course is a pretty neat place for me to be right now! At least I hope so 🙂