The End of a Transition and the Beginning of a Journey

When we suddenly found ourselves in a liminal time of transition just a few months ago, I shared very openly about our process and about the lessons my wife Mindy and I were learning as we journeyed through a time of even greater dependence on God.

Thank you to each of you for being part of that journey. Your encouragement, connections and prayers along the way have made all the difference as we have strived to honor God through our transition. Over the past months I have written the following posts about our process:

• Transparency in Transition
• Open Sourcing Your Innovations
• Rethinking Publishing
• Serving Through an Interview
• What Happens When We Can Only Think at Starbucks

And now I write this post to share about how God has guided and directed us to a new phase of ministry. As you have seen from my posts of late, God has put the publishing industry on our hearts. Better said, God has burdened Mindy and I with a passion to help people communicate their ideas in new ways for a new century. This is not new, but in transition you always go back to the passions that God has given you and ask Him for a fresh perspective.

We did that over the past months. I interacted in great detail with many in the publishing field trying to identify what God is doing through the publishing of ideas to further His Kingdom. We asked the hard questions and looked for the key innovations that would be part of making God's Word and His work in the lives of believers available to more and more people.

At the end of that process God gave us the opportunity to join a new publishing start up called Novo Ink (www.novoink.com) in Colorado Springs. This new organization will be coming alongside content providers such as Christian publishers to help them move their current and back-list titles into a high definition, color eBook reader delivered by Zinio, a long-time digital content provider with over 7 million subscribers globally. These eBooks will be available on people's computers, iPhones, iPads and soon in the Android Market.

As of September 7, I have taken the role of Account Manager and I have the great pleasure of working with the publishing staff of the Christian publishers that decide to partner with Novo Ink to get their content into this new format and available for purchase. I am very excited about the potential because Zinio's platform has the ability to deliver static content in an excellent/high-quality experience but it also has the ability to deliver audio, video and Flash content within the books - helping Christian publishers make the jump to Enhanced eBooks and a more dynamic experience for readers.

Mindy and I will continue in the Generous Mind cause, including blogging on innovations in publishing as I move deeper into that arena along with innovations for ministry in general. We also will keep blogging about our latest book Through the River: Understanding Your Assumptions About Truth and encourage you to purchase a copy and take time to think through how you understand truth.

Again, it is with great humility and thankfulness that we write this note. We owe so much to each person that is part of the Generous Mind cause. We look forward to your comments and your thoughts as we begin this new journey.

P.S. To follow along as Novo Ink launches in the coming weeks/months please connect in these ways:
Web: www.novoink.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/novoink
Twitter: www.twitter.com/novoink

What happens when we can only think at Starbucks?

It sounds silly but this is a serious question. As I make my trek through a liminal season between full-time jobs, I find myself working on contract work from many locations - including Starbucks. What I have seen has caused me to think.

As I go into these coffee shops and restaurants with free wireless, I see tables full of workers focused on projects, teams of collaborators discussing their work, business people in the middle of a meeting and HR people interviewing potential employees.

And the crazy thing is that this is all happening in each location at the same time every day!

So back to my question. When some or all of these people get the types of jobs they consider "regular" jobs, will they be able to function in the sterile world of cubicles that they once knew? I think that this will be a harder transition than they think. A Starbucks has legal stimulants, groovy music and plenty of noise. It is a fast changing environment and it reprograms how you go about work. I know, I have had to adjust my work still when I am in such a public place.

At this very moment a huge percentage of the workforce is being reconditioned to work in very different environments than the fortune 500 companies of America. This means that they are meeting new people, learning about new ideas, setting up new environments for innovation and creating a "new normal."

As businesses and ministries begin to rehire they will have to take this into consideration. The millions that were laid off will not go back into the workforce the same. Now that is not necessarily bad. The white collar workers who have been laid off have developed new skills, grown through their challenges and created new relationships.

All that can lead to new innovation as many of these "Starbucks workers" begin to come together around opportunities and new ideas. It can also be a huge benefit to organizations who hire these workers.

The key will be to realize that the transition has changed you the worker and that will change the company you eventually work for or start on your own. All this can lead to innovation if it is understood, processed and harnessed.

So are you a "Starbucks worker"? What has your experience been in this transitionary time? How will you harness what you have learned to create new innovations?

Are you a company or ministry looking to hire? What steps will you take to engage in this new reality?

Serving through An Interview

God give me work till my life shall end and life till my work is done. Amen. (Yorkshire Tombstone)

If you are in a career transition as I am, you are very aware that interviewing is a lot of work. You are networking, filling out applications, researching organizations, meeting with staff, praying about opportunities, taking assessments and the list goes one.

But for some reason we usually put interviewing and job hunting in a different category than "real work." We choose to treat it as a necessary evil that will hopefully result in meaningful purpose. But an innovator, if they are being intentional, will not view it that way. Instead, every job application, every hour of research, every in-person interview, is a chance for you to grow and develop your skills and ideas.

But more than that, every interaction with a potential employer is a chance for you to invest in them! If you are on a job hunt today, part of your job is to invest in those who are considering you. What does that look like? It might be the questions you ask in the interview. It might be an encouraging note or helpful article you send to the HR staffer you are working with. You might provide some key insight into that leader's challenges when he interviews you.

The challenge with viewing the job hunt as meaningful work is that you have to be satisfied with God's timing and results. If God's purpose in having you interview at a certain place was to give them an insight, then your work there is done. That is so hard for us goal-oriented people. We believe that the only worthy result of an interview is an offer. But in a day where offers are few and far between, I think we are realizing another level of how God can use this liminal time in our lives.

Is the job hunt the word God has set before you today? Don't waste this time of service! Look for every opportunity to serve God as you search.

Transparency in Transition

This is one of those world-colliding, mega-shifting, paradigm-questioning posts that overlays all the different strands of our lives and turns them upside down. It is not so dramatic because of the content but because of the implications that we would like to challenge you to consider just as we are doing the same.

What happens when something challenging and life-changing comes up in your life? What do you tend to do? Most people that we have known tend to hide the challenge.

And they use the following logic in doing so:
1. If people see my life in turmoil they will think there is something wrong with me.
2. If I act confidently then new opportunities will present themselves.
3. What people don’t know won’t hurt them.
4. Besides, I don’t want to burden anyone with my problems.
5. If I share, then when I see “so and so” next it will be awkward.

So as people slog through this recession, many choose to go it alone using one or more of the points I shared above. But if you decide to use this approach, you are missing out!

But before I share why, let me explain why we are writing about this today. As many of you know, Mindy and I have been on a journey. Last year, just as our second book was released (Through the River), we transitioned out of a job that we really enjoyed as Executive Director of Strategic Communication for HCJB Global and went to a fundraising start up. We made this move out of a deep conviction to work together as a team and to learn a discipleship-driven donor development model. However, 8 months into that learning process, the group we joined went through a merger process and several transitions that resulted in the elimination of our job. So here we are, jobless but convinced that God wanted us to make the move and unsure of what He has next in our journey.

It is with that context that we now want to share three reasons why hiding a transition and going it alone are exactly the wrong thing to do:

1. Authenticity: In today’s world where people are surrounded by gimmicks and half-truths, they are searching for authentic voices who speak from their hearts and engage people with truth. But the truth they are looking for is a truth based on humble learning. That is what we learned as we wrote our book: Through the river: Understanding your Assumptions about Truth.

2. Generosity: In our idea economy, you get influence by sharing ideas and then putting those ideas into action in creative and intentional ways. Your transition will birth in you many ideas that need shared and discussed. In fact, as you go through a transition, you will need others to process with and to understand what happened. Your generosity in transition will likely lead to your next opportunity.

3. Innovation: Unless you engage others with what you have been through and the ideas you are developing as a result, there will be little chance for innovation to arise. If you live transparently through your transition, you will have opportunities to share ideas, hone them and possibly apply them in ways you never imagined. It could be that God has allowed you to be in transition so that a new idea can be birthed for His glory. If you spend time on our Innovation in Mission blog, you will notice that disequilibrium is a powerful force for innovation.

We do have one caveat in all of this: transparency, authenticity, generosity and innovation don’t ensure that you won’t get beat up, abused, ignored or drug through a long transition process. In fact, you may have to endure many things you did not expect if you choose this route. However, we can guarantee that you will come out the other end a stronger and more trusted voice for the causes you love. You will certainly be positioned to be a better Kingdom servant than if you deflected and hid during your transition.

So over the next months as we go through this transition, we are committed to being authentic, generous and innovative in our efforts to find out what God has next. And if you have any inputs for us in that journey or any ideas we should consider, we want to hear from you at jonhirst(at)generousmind.com.

Our prayer is that this transition in our ministry life will end up inspiring and blessing countless others as we faithfully live out our faith in community.