From October 10, 2007

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Half the population of Los Angeles lives in the San Fernando Valley. There are somewhere around 1.5 million residents of all walks of life who call the Valley home. For some reason, those who don’t live in the Valley (but live in LA) are often critical of the Valley (and honestly Valley folks rarely critique the West Side). But I’m tired of the harassment from popular culture and others about life of the Valley. So this post represents my defense of the Valley and response to the haters on the other side. Go 818!

1. Traffic: Sure, the freeways of LA don’t discriminate based on region. It’s the surface streets that always bothered me when living on the West Side. When in the Valley, you don’t have to avoid driving on any surface during peak hours because traffic (again, apart from the freeways) is rarely an issue.
2. Malibu: For most of us in the Valley, Malibu is considered the “Valley Beach.” It’s easy to get to and it’s a beautiful beach. There are miles and miles of sandy beaches, with plenty of parking and without the crowds (unlike the West Side beaches like Santa Monica).
3. Nights: So no one would argue that there are some pretty hot summer days out here, but nothing beats a beautiful summer night in the Valley.
4. Straight Streets: The streets are straight. For all my friends on the Westside is Jefferson Blvd a North-South street or an East-West street?
5. Parking: There is plenty of it (both streets and in lots) and it’s often free. I wouldn’t be surprised if I spent half of my time in the car looking for parking when I lived on the West Side.
6. Public Transportation: I can jump on the Orange Line and criss-cross the Valley and then also hook up with the Red Line to get downtown. And if the Metro is not for me, the Bus system does a pretty good job covering the Valley.
7. The Fly-Away: I am done driving to LAX airport and paying to park near the airport.
8. Diversity: A local geography professor at CSU Northridge drafted a map to show a diversity breakdown in Los Angeles. The Valley had more sections higher on the diversity index than any other section of Los Angeles.
9. Middle Eastern Food: The ‘Falafel King’ restaurants all over the West Side are no substitute for authentic Middle Eastern Food found only in the Valley.
10. Affordable: Gas is cheaper, rent is cheaper, and houses are cheaper. And with so many grocery stores, competition only drives food prices down.

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Using a pseudonym, a college professor shares his reflections on his students in this Atlantic Monthly article. As the writer wrestles with the myth that a university education is for everyone, he makes observations that resonate with my own but comes to conclusions that I find far too cynical.

As he describes students, I can relate to his reflections and frustrations. The shift that I have had to learn and make in my thinking about college students has had to do in learning the culture of students who commute. College had been defined to me as, “going away to school.” That was certainly my experience and definition of college.

But for the vast majority of Americans, college is not “going away to school” but simply “going to school.” Professor X writes, “They chose their college based not on the U.S. News & World Report rankings but on MapQuest; in their ideal academic geometry, college is located at a convenient spot between work and home.”

I minister in such a convenient spot, and the challenge is to focus students to consider the convenience as a calling rather than simply a campus of “last resort” (as the writer of the article puts it). If the majority of Americans will do college in a place of convenience, how does a ministry such as mine that is committed to the college campus minister in such a place?

Core to the vision of InterVarsity is to work toward the renewal of the university. The language of renewal feels even more relevant being at two commuter campuses. It may be counter-cultural to call students in a commuter culture to consider their campus as their mission field and a place to pursue community, but it is the very thing we are calling students to do.

There are plenty of joys and challenges in leading a community on a commuter campus. One challenge is best captured by Professor X. He writes, “When I am at my best, and the students are in an attentive mood—generally, early in the semester—the room crackles with positive energy…. The bursting of our collective bubble comes quickly. A few weeks into the semester, the students must start actually writing papers, and I must start grading them.” There is always positive energy at the start of the semester (and year), but within a few weeks, I notice it is a little easier to find parking and the lines for food are shorter.

My ministry requires me to lead my community of students through the bubble and the bursting of it. I find myself having to do two things: to work against the bursting of the bubble but to also plan for (and expect) the bursting of it.

The campus is no doubt a value-added entity in our society. I think that the college campus is also a value-added entity for the church. The college campus provides a fantastic laboratory for leadership development, cross-cultural training, ministry experience, character integrity and lifelong skills. Personally, I don’t care for the debate of whether college is for everyone–and that is a tempting debate to pursue, particularly when I minister among 60,000 students at two commuter campuses.

What I do care about is how to best minister in this place of convenience and empower students to radical and deeper faith that will bring transformation to our campuses now and to their contexts in the near future.

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A few years ago, I went through the StrengthsFinder material as part of my continued leadership development. Though I was cognitively aware of the value to develop strengths, the material that we studied as a staff team during that season propelled me to evaluate and recognize gifts and strengths in a new light.

The basic premise of strengths based theory is that rather than work on our weaknesses, we should be developing our strengths. Rather than always focus on how to fix the problems, we should put our energy in making the things that make us thrive be more central to our lives.

What has been helpful in this material is that this leadership tool validates our strengths and urges us to focus more energy in developing them. I think it was back in high school when a teacher mentioned to me that we should not just learn from the sub-par papers that we write, but also from the papers that score us an A. In fact, she said, there is a lot we can learn from our successes. The strengths theory material focuses our energy to learn on our leadership successes and to put them to practice.

Last year, I read Marcus Buckingham’s Go Put Your Strengths to Work. You can get the thesis of this book from just the title. It was helpful to go through his exercises and assess where my passions and joys lie.

This particular theory does have it’s flaws. Though it can be formative, it cannot be the only leadership development principle at work in our lives. Leadership and jobs often require us to put much energy into things that we do not particularly like. They often will force us to develop skills in areas that are not our strengths or even our passions. And sometimes, we need feedback on our weaknesses and we need to face the failures of our live.

But our strengths do count. For too many leaders, their passions, gifts and strengths are glossed over and feedback is often unfairly focused on weaknesses and failures. Leadership is to develop our strengths so that we can multiply them to make an even greater impact.

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We just got back from New Orleans, having taken ten students as part of our first Missions Team. We served alongside a Southern Baptist ministry that is helping rebuild it after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

This was my second trip to New Orleans in response to Katrina. Nearly three years later and there is still a lot to be done. The director of the mission with which we worked confessed that the old New Orleans cannot and should not be rebuilt—that what we are rebuilding is a new city.

The population of the city is about half of pre-Katrina, and though some people have rebuilt, many others have either abandoned their homes or have run out of funding to rebuild. On every block, you could see the contrast between a newly re-built home next to a home that looks like it has been abandoned, with grass and weeds populating the yard, with a big X on the side of the house that was tagged by the rescue workers in the days following Katrina.

What we did was simply put in insulation and the sheet-rock in the interior of a home. But what God did was far more inspiring. The text of scripture that captures for me the week comes out of Isaiah 58. In that text, I hold on to a promise and a prayer for the city of New Orleans: “Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall rise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in” (Isaiah 58.12). In that text, God challenges the hearer to consider religious practices (in this case it’s fasting).

When we studied it as a group, we could not help but notice that so much of our attempt to know God is done by filling our lives up with things that are “religious” in nature, yet the text challenges us to consider the least among us as an act of worship. For it is when the Israelites practice justice and reconciliation in relation to one another, that the Lord will say, “Here I am.”

While it was nice that we could do something to help rebuild the city, what I wanted is for students to gain a deeper value and longing for missions. I wanted students to see God at work through missions. I wanted God to redefine himself to students within the context of loving others and caring for the least among us.

As the old theme song for the city declares, I saw ten young saints come marching in last week thinking that acts of service were extra-curricular activities of the Christian faith. But they came back seeing that it is essential to the faith.

I doubt this trip was my last to the city. My daughter was born on the eve of Katrina, so I sense having some sort of relationship to this city that runs deeper than merely feeling sorry for it and the residents. I am convinced that the city will be built on the back of volunteers. Some say that the local, state and federal governments failed the city. I sometimes wonder if that should surprise us. It is the people of God (not other entities) who have access to the determination and desire to rebuild the city. Consider whether you could give of yourself to help rebuild this city and help to financially support the faithful men and women who are doing so.

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My nearly three year old daughter is my resident theologian. After our nightly prayer, she turns to her mother and confesses, “After I pray I feel happy.” (Incidentally, she actually had been feeling unusually sad this evening before the prayer time)

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The best corporate leaders never point out the window to blame external conditions; they look in the mirror and say, “We are responsible for our results!” Those who take personal credit for good times but blame external events in bad times simply do not deserve to lead our institutions.

– Jim Collins, “Fortune Magazine” May 8, 2008

It is tempting and common among humans in general to take credit for good times and blame external factors in bad times. But I like Jim Collins’s insight that leaders must take responsibility for both the successes and failures of their institutions. Leadership doesn’t necessarily mean that we thrive on success and only on success in our tenure.

Like a marriage, there will be good times and bad, and leadership is being responsible during both seasons. It is always tempting to give ourselves too much credit when things are going well and to blame everyone but ourselves when things are not going well. If anything, humility may entail that we should err on the side of giving others credit when things are going well and taking responsibility when things are not going well. I’m not suggesting that we engage in some form of poor self image, but that the first question we ask in successful leadership is: How did others contribute to the success of this? And when things are going poorly, we first ask: How did I contribute to this failure?

This is not easy. I rarely want to take responsibility for failure. I fear of what it says about me and my character if I am found to be an imperfect leader. But as Collins says, the people who are not able to acknowledge their responsibilities in failure do not deserve to be in leadership.

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Some of our students compiled this video…

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