Jon Stolpe
Author Archives: Jon Stolpe

An Easy Way to Help Someone

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to spend some time at one of my favorite job sites. While I was there, one of the facility engineers asked me if I could help his sister’s sister-in-law. Seems like an interesting requested coming from a trash mouth colleague. Instead of leaving the details for me to explain, here’s the information he passed out. (I contacted the organization today to get my free test kit.) I hope you’ll be inspired to help out.

I am sending this e-mail about my sister-in law to my friends in hope that you will pass this request for help to your friends. From the bottom of my heart, I appreciate your help.

Eighteen months ago, my sister-in-lay, Myra, was diagnosed with a rare form of Lymphoma, a blood cancer. Three weeks ago, we learned she now needs a blood stem cell transplant from a donor. The doctors believe they can put her in remission for three months, which means we have a short window to find a suitable donor. Unfortunately, finding someone with similar DNA is pretty difficult. That’s why my goal is to recruit as many new stem cell donors as possible in order to give hope to Myra and others like her who are in need of a stem cell transplant. Currently, her doctors are searching the National Donor Registry for a match. So far there are no matches for her. You could be the ONE.

With the help of DKMS, the world’s largest bone marrow donor center, I am conducting an on-line donor drive. If you are not already in the National Marrow Donor Registry, please consider being tested. The screening is non-invasive and simply requires a prospective donor to swab their mouth with a cotton-tipped swab and to complete some paperwork. Your sample is sent to a lab, assigned a tissue type and then put into an anonymous National Registry. It is easy to request a free test kit on-line and have it mailed to your home. There is no charge to the potential donor for any part of this process.

Please use these links to better understand your commitment and find out if you are eligible to register.

To request a free test kit by e-mail, click here or send an e-mail to info@dkmsamericas.org

I would greatly appreciate it if you could pass along this e-mail to any of your friends and family who might be interested in signing up to potentially save a life. You do need to be between the ages of 18-55 to be a donor.

I would be more than happy to answer any questions you might have about registering and the donor process. I hope that you will consider taking advantage of this amazing opportunity to potentially give someone a second chance at life.

For more information, please visit www.dkmsamericas.org

Many, many thanks for your consideration.

Shari

(Thanks to DKMS, I am able to get the testing at no charge. DKMS, a non-profit, is the only organization I found that will cover the costs of testing for the sake of saving a life. If you would like to make an individual contribution, you can do that on-line as well if you like.)

So what do you think? Seems like it’s at least worth checking out.

I became a Christian and all I got was this lousy t-shirt

I just started reading Vince Antonucci‘s book – I became a Christian and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

I’m only 42 pages in so far, so I probably shouldn’t say for sure, but… So far this book is great! I was laughing out loud last night as I read a section on how Vince came up with his son’s name.

Not only is this book hilarious, but it really seems to bring back to the basics what being a Christ follower is all about. Here’s an excerpt that I have to share, so you can see what I mean:

“When I read the Bible I notice that Jesus didn’t go around asking people to believe in him. It’s what I would expect; it’s just not what he did.
He also didn’t ask people to behave. Again, it’s what I would expect, but it’s not really what he did.
Instead, he asked people to follow him. Here’s the kind of thing Jesus did. One time he walked up to some dude who was in the middle of work and said, ‘Hey, follow me.’ And this guy did it.
If Jesus were here today, I doubt it’d be different. I don’t think he’d ask me to believe in him. He’d ask me to follow him. According to Jesus, being a Christian is not so much about believing or behaving correctly as it is about traveling with him. Jesus is going somewhere and he wants me to go with him.”

This is really an interesting and fantastic analysis. You have to pick up a copy, so you can see what else Vince has to say.

Stay tuned for more…

Group Life Conference Follow-Up Post #4

I’ve got one or two more take-aways that I want to share, so here’s the next one:

As Christ followers, we have a tremendous opportunity to use technology to support (start, continue, enhance, …) community!

I am more an more convinced of this all the time. Do I think technology is the end all and be all of community? Well, I hope not. But let me share my observations and thoughts.

1. My buddy Frank helped me sign-up for facebook while I was on the trip just over two weeks ago. Since then, I have reconnected technologically speaking with friends from my neighborhood growing up, my high school, my old churches, my college, my workplace, and even with people from the conference. What a neat tool.

2. We live in a “I want it now”, “Show me something cool” generation. Our churches have the opportunity to use technology to enhance their services, to help with bookkeeping, to help with logistics, to help with initial connections, to help with passing along information,…. We miss the boat if we don’t look into how these things can draw people who are far from God to Him.

3. In my opinion, technology can be the start of community that leads to face-to-face community. For example, over the past year or so, I know that there is a gentleman from our church who has been following my blog. He’s even made comments. Part of me feels like I know who this guy is. The crazy thing is that up until last week, I had never connected his name with his face. Thanks to an introduction, I now know who he is. I look forward to the conversations we will now have not just on-line but now face-to-face.

I’m sure there is so much more that I could share on this subject. Check out my notes from my previous post, and let me know what you think.

Stay tuned…

Group Life Conference Follow-Up Post #3

As promised, here’s the second take-away from the conference take from session one:

Christ must be my centerline! And community helps bring me back to THE centerline!

What do I mean? Well, it’s somewhat easy to go about life doing “good” things – raising our kids, working hard, working out, leading small group ministry, helping those in the community, etc. These things mean nothing if Christ is not the priority and focus (center) of my life. So why is this a big deal? I know for myself, I can get trapped into the “doing” part of being a follower (kind of like Martha) and I forget about the “being” – being totally immersed in God’s grace, love, power – part of being a follower (kind of like Mary). The appropriate “community” environment can provide a reminder and encouragement and support to either keep me on THE centerline or to remind me to return to THE centerline.

(I guess I especially appreciated this analogy because of my involvement in the construction industry. Most buildings are build off a centerline – a reference line physically drawn in a building which workers use to construct their electrical, plumbing, duct work, and walls. When everyone follows the centerline, the construction process goes well and everything goes in its correct place. On the other hand, when someone fails to follow the centerline, things get out of control on the construction site, and the building effort does not go smoothly.)

That’s it for now. Stay tuned for more…

Group Life Conference Follow-Up Post #2

I want to make sure I capture my primary take-aways from the conference. So here’s the first one from the pre-conference coaching forum that I attended (see previous post):

I need to be in community!

That’s it! It seems kind of basic, but here’s why I think it was so directed at me. Over the past 6-9 months, I have been doing this groups coaching thing without actually being in a group. Not only is this somewhat hypocritical, it’s sad. We were created for community. To say that our coaching meetings offer community isn’t actually correct as these meetings have really been more business type meetings planning for the upcoming season (not a bad thing, but not community). In other words, being a coach does not exclude us from entering into community.

So here I am now, trying to figure out how to get plugged back into life giving community.

How about you?

Stay tuned for more…

Group Life Conference Follow-Up Post #1

My last breakout session of the conference was on Transformational Discipleship led by Greg Ogden (see my previous post). Greg showed a clip from the movie below to show us how discipleship relationships in in groups of three or four could radically change the world. Think about it. I get together with two or three other people. We hang out with each other for 9-18 months – studying, growing, more and more becoming Christ followers. After 9-18 months, the three or four of us start up new triads or quads set up to intentionally study, grow, and follow. Suddenly, we’ve got 9-16 people who have been transformed. But that’s not the end. These 9-16 people do it all over again. 9-16 becomes 27-64 transformed people. Then again. 27-64 people become 71-256 transformed people. Then again. 71-256 people become 213-1024 transformed people. You get the point. Why do you think Jesus started with just a few…?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvbgetKzrmA&hl=en&fs=1]

What do you think?

Group Life Conference Session 5 – How Community Transformers

(Pre blog notes: Everybody needs somebody sometime. Great reminder about a friendship that I need to work on.)

This session was led by Miles McPherson.
How come Christians are not lined up to help people escape from fire?
– We have to redefine our evangelistic starting point as God’s response to a broken world.
The gospel is a person – Jesus! God not only wants an experience with you. He wants you to share this to the world.
Exodus 3:6-10 Our communities are crying out. The church must respond to the cry of the people in the community. We need to first LISTEN to the cry.
– Identify God’s response to the brokenness of your own life.
What is your God experience? What is God doing in your life? Surely, you (I) are not fixed. Surely, God is still working on you. Small group leaders are not fixed and perfect.
As leaders, are we transparent to our groups?
If we realize how God has worked in our own lives, we will have a new perspective for sharing God’s amazing grace and power to others.
– Identify and love the brokenness in your church.
Our groups are breading grounds for helping people through their brokenness.
– Identify and love the brokenness in your community.
We need to find the people in our communities and listen to the tears.
What is going on within a 10 mile radius of our church? Where is the brokenness? We need to take Christ’s compassion out to the community – bars, strip clubs, adult book stores, women’s centers, jail, ….
Let me go to the bar and drive people home who are drunk.
The community wants this interaction, they just don’t know how to initiate it.
– Reestablish your evangelism priority.
It is a non-negotiable that you love your neighbor.
God created the church for the people who aren’t in it yet. (We turn it into a country club.)
God wants to bless us so that we have overflow to give away.
STOP, LISTEN, and GO!
Don’t waste the opportunity to turn people into a Jesus follower (not a Christian).
Keeping it to yourself will kill your ministry or your small group.
Take a risk!
….
Miles McPherson was hilarious and great!
Thus ends the conference. I hope to have a couple more posts to recap, so stay tuned until the next post…

Group Life Conference Session 4 – Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Blog entry from Session 4 led by Bill Donahue:

Life puts us in challenging and difficult situations that force us to make a decision.
There are times where we don’t always make the best decision – despite our best strategies, ideas, and intentions.
(Reminds me of an early date with Leanne where I thought it would be “cool” and “impressive” to slide down a long banister at the student union of Grove City College when we were returning to the campus for the date. Let’s just say that I didn’t make it to the bottom of the stairs before I went flying over the banister onto my rear. This was the first of many embarrassing things that Leanne has had the pleasure of experiences thanks to me.)
Sometimes we make decisions out of a desire to satisfy our egos. We exchange expedience for wisdom – convenience for conviction.
What do you do when a good idea goes bad? When something we work hard on fails? How do we learn from failure in our ministry?
Reasons for failure:
1. An obsession with vision while ignoring reality.
2. Implementing a strategy without building an infrastructure.
3. Empowering leaders without developing them.
We need to mobilize every resource possible to support, shepherd, and enable our leaders.
4. Launching groups that never learn to be in community.
We need to help people in Relationship 101. People are self centered and don’t naturally know how to relate.
How do you recover from these failures? Is there hope?
How you respond to failure really matters.
– We need to own up to our mistakes, and we need to say that we’re sorry when we mess up. “I’m sorry, I made a mistake.”
– We need to forgive ourselves.
– We need to remember that there is hope. God can redeem our failures. (Just look at the Bible-a story of failure redeemed.)
– We need to cling to Christ – the anchor of our soul.
Our job is to be make sure that people know that there is hope. We need hope, so we can pass it along to those in our community.
Do you have hope? Do I have hope? Where/who do you place your hope in? Hope can change the world. We have Christ to hang on to!
Great session!
Stay tuned…
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