If I had to pick one word that would describe our relief efforts for Haiti LAST WEEK it would be EMERGENCY! Going into day 14 though, the new word to describe our relief efforts must become ORGANIZE. It is now abundantly clear to most that we are dealing with an emergency, but our response now, while full of energy must not be frantic, but must be energetically methodical.
If you or your business or your organization is at all interested in being a part of the solution to this once in a lifetime humanitarian crisis, complete this form now (click submit at the bottom when you are done) and we will begin to tell you some real action steps this week -including trips & more.
I am more convinced than ever that social technology is changing our world and making it much smaller. This entire video is great.
At 1:10 into this NBC Nightly News video you will see how one of many volunteers on the ground in Haiti saw a 911 tweet I wrote last week and responded. Let’s keep tweeting!
Last Tuesday thousands of Haitian men, women, and particularly children suffered traumatic brain injuries, skull fractures, and every other type of head injury imaginable.
One problem.
After the quake – Port Au Prince had ZERO neurosurgeons. Consequently, Dr. Sanjay Gupta (there as a medical journalist for CNN) ended up performing emergency brain surgery on a 12 year old girl in the medical facilities of the USS Comfort. At least a bit frustrated, he tweeted this…
“attention: no neurosurgeons in haiti that can be found. needed, along with proper instruments. please ensure uss comfort has one as well.”
The world has thousands of neurosurgeons. I even heard that dozens and dozens had attempted to get to Haiti but were turned down time after time for misc. red tape rationale.
Many of you read his tweet. I saw it. You were shocked. I was shocked.
Except in Twitter world we don’t believe in red tape. Together (on 1-19-2010 @ 2pm EST) we decided to locate 5 willing, world class neurosurgeons and figure out a way to get them to Haiti right away. About 5,000 tweets later we found 5 great neurosurgeons ready to drop everything and take the plunge THIS WEEK. Just hours after tweeting about not having neurosurgeons in Haiti, Sanjay tweeted this:
I’d pretty much say we cut through the red tape! Twitter style :-)
Thank everybody that tweeted and everybody that made a financial donation so that we could act quickly and get these doctors on the ground in Port Au Prince, Haiti.
And a big shout out to the neurosurgeons from Portland, Chicago, Indianapolis, and Atlanta now on their way to save lives!
I have not asked for any money from anybody for Haiti. However, I now have an extremely URGENT request. Let me clarify. When I say urgent, I mean LIFE & DEATH.
Several of my friends in Haiti are in desperate, immediate (as in yesterday) need of high power, military-grade laptop computers. We need four of them. Current failures of communications systems there is making the distribution of aid, the reporting of injuries, and much more AMAZINGLY DIFFICULT. These laptops will be used for many purposes – including creating a mobile phone bank, a portable command center, and more.
These laptops will multiply the value of the aid and assistance.
Each Panasonic Toughbook costs about $3,200. With the features we need it will cost a bit more than $4,000 per toughbook. We need this type of notebook because they are built from the inside out to withstand very tough conditions, heat, spills, dust, etc.
Let’s raise $16,000 and Courageous Church will cover any overages and the emergency shipment. We have already arranged for these to be hand delivered early this coming week.
Give now please. Give as much as you can and tell everyone you know. I strongly believe that these 4 toughbooks will allow THOUSANDS…MAYBE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people to be helped better…faster.
Aid is arriving in Haiti but communications systems are broken and this minor investment will be multiplied right away.
If you want to send a check or money order please consider overnighting it via FedEx, etc. and send it to:
Courageous Church
190 Centennial Way
Atlanta, GA 30313
I thought about adding a horrifying photo or video here, but you’ve seen them. It’s bad.
Here’s the thing though – YOU can help bring HOPE to Haiti. If you are broke or have money – you can do this. If you have a passport or not – you can do this. If you have been to Haiti or not – YOU CAN BRING HOPE.
My friends on the ground in Haiti have asked that we do EVERYTHING we know how to do to help…Including going to Haiti.
I am going to be hosting 4 meetings to get us moving in a MAJOR WAY. I will be asking you to step up and lead this effort alongside me and others. Here are the details:
First Meeting
Date & Time: Friday, January 15th @ 11am Location: Courageous Church Office – 1330 West Peachtree Street, Atlanta, GA 30309 in our 5th Floor Office. Park in top visitors lot under the building or in lot adjacent to the building.
All people are welcome
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Second Meeting
Date & Time: Friday, January 15th @ 7pm Location: Courageous Church Office – 1330 West Peachtree Street, Atlanta, GA 30309 in our 5th Floor Office. Park in top visitors lot under the building or in lot adjacent to the building.
All people are welcome
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Online Meeting (Particularly for Out of State Friends)
THIS SUNDAY MORNING! (Service is NOT @ our REGULAR LOCATION)
Date & Time: Sunday, January 17th. Free Breakfast @ 9am & Service @ 11am Location: Morehouse College, King Chapel: 830 Westview Drive, Atlanta, GA 30314
Courageous Church is scheduled to celebrate our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY & King Day on the campus of Morehouse College @ 11am. What better way to honor our first year and to honor Dr. King than to make this Sunday a catalyst of HOPE for Haiti.
We have room for 2,501 folk so we definitely have room FOR YOU!
I will be speaking on how our faith should cause us to live a courageous life of action.
What a year! To celebrate our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY we are moving our Sunday morning services to the campus of Morehouse College! The college asked us to host the MLK Day service there this Sunday and we figured we’d just make it a big ‘ol party!
Maybe you know that the vision of Courageous Church is:
LOVE GOD! LOVE PEOPLE! PROVE IT!
Who did that better than Dr. King and how cool is it that we are going to have our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY @ Morehouse as we celebrate Dr. King’s great legacy???
We are having a HUGE FREE BREAKFAST @ King Chapel on the Morehouse Campus from 9am-10:30am and our CELEBRATION begins @ 11am!
In addition to the message and some great NEW ORIGINAL music from the Courageous Church crew we are having a few VERY COOL SPECIAL GUESTS…
#1: Yep. I’m serious. We have a SPECIAL PRIZE for any person that wears a SNUGGIE to either our 9am or 11am service this Sunday! It’s cold out and so many of you joked last Sunday that you wish you wore yours so now I’m giving pastoral permission and a prize :-) Think about it, the design is perfect for you to lift your hands and praise the Lord. Reply now if you think you might be bold enough to wear your Snuggie so I have an idea of how many prizes to bring!
For all of you that are not fortunate enough to have a Snuggie, we purchased three additional space heaters this week to make sure we stay toasty.
#2: Tomorrow (Sunday) we will begin our Next Steps class again for 2010. We have a new conference room available directly across from the auditorium and it will be offered immediately after the 9am service is over. Grab your breakfast and come on to this casual reception to learn what the NEXT STEPS are for you as you commit yourself to God through Courageous Church. If you are interested in becoming a member of Courageous Church, this reception is required.
#3: Our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY service is being hosted @ Morehouse College on Sunday, January 17th @ 11am! During this service we will be celebrating what God has done in our first year, looking forward to year two, and helping the college celebrate MLK Day! I find it to be very powerful that our church was invited by the college to host our service on King Day!
We’ll have several awesome guests and cannot wait to SEE YOU THERE! More details coming from us soon!
#4: So many of you have asked how you join or become a member of Courageous Church. Wanting to make sure that we take membership seriously, we have waited until now to introduce Courageous U - an engaging, surprising, interactive 4 step process to becoming a member of our church. It’s coming this February and will only be offered 3 times a year! Are you ready?
#5: SMALL GROUPS are coming!!! Starting the last week of February we will be launching our very first small groups for kids, men, women, and married couples! We will also be offering Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University twice every Sunday! Are you excited??? I am!
We hope you’ll continue doing a great job spreading the word about all that God is doing through our young church!
(Warning…I do attempt to squeeze a leadership lesson out of this weather report.)
People in Chicago (and everywhere else up North) make fun of us here in Atlanta.
They think we’re wimps. It snowed about an inch last night and our city is a TOTAL MESS! People are wrecking everywhere and a 29 car pile-up was just reported on one of the busiest interstates in the city.
Here’s the thing though – we’re not pretending or exaggerating. The roads are covered in ice. Wifey and I were on a date last night and it snowed while we were in the movies. The van we were in would literally not drive up the icy hill.
(And…here comes the not so subtle leadership lesson…)
Without proper preparation for tough conditions in life, what some people can easily endure can cause others to completely fall apart. How weather-proof is your life?
Our pediatrician told us recently that we were really in the season where we needed to let our baby cry at night.
This is easier said than done. We love her so much! Hearing her cry breaks our heart. She wants us. She needs us.
Right?
Kind of.
If we don’t begin to let her cry at night, the doctor said that she will never learn how to soothe herself and self-soothing is an essential skill all children need to learn. As long as we keep taking her out of bed and rocking her or putting her in the bed with us, she will never develop the foundational life skills she needs.
Do you have any babies (not human infants) that you need to let cry? Maybe they are adults in your church. Maybe they are bad habits inside of you. Whatever they are, try letting them cry. You’ll be doing them AND YOU a big favor.
News flash! Launching a growing church is hard work.
In an attempt to save time and not reinvent the wheel, Courageous Church has borrowed forms and a few systems from other churches that we really admire. I would still strongly endorse this practice, but I am learning how cutting and pasting content from forms sometimes ignores the context where you serve.
Let me be more specific.
We borrowed a fabulously written set of forms and emails from another church all about baptism. These forms are amazing.
Seriously – if an award could be given for church forms, these would win. We cut the name of the church out and pasted Courageous Church in there and BAM! We had forms!
Not! The people that attend THAT church are very different than the people that attend Courageous Church and these forms have been a bit of a bust. They were so awesome that at first I really thought something was wrong with the people we had reading them. Until I discovered that pretty much every person we gave these forms to was overwhelmed by them.
Other borrowed forms have worked fine, but not this one. We have to create our own forms with our own language and structure for the people we serve.
Hello! I'm Shaun King - a 30 year old husband, father, pastor, and grad student (in that order) in downtown Atlanta.
I am the Lead Pastor of The Courageous Church- a brand new, diverse, exciting church in the heart of downtown Atlanta! Before I put on my SuperSuit and go live out my call in the city, I fix my five kids a bowl of cereal, change diapers, pack lunches, and give my wife a kiss.
This blog is all about the tight rope that I walk between Courage & Corn Pops!
