Blog

The first rule of volunteer recruitment is to make direct asks. You’re more likely to succeed with direct asks than a general appeal. The downside is that while direct asks do work, you have to make a lot of them. As a youth pastor, I remember going about...

This week, I asked my husband what he was working on, and he said, “Well, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about quaternions.” “What’s a quaternion?” I asked. “It’s a way of using a four dimensional cube to describe the orientation of something.”  My blank stare at...

 I stood outside Jeni’s ice cream with an old friend and her two elementary-aged children earlier this week. We were at the ice cream shop 8 minutes before it opened and were chatting on the sidewalk. The younger of the two children looked at her mom and said, “What...

My dad was a self-taught deep sea fisherman. It all started with him bringing one of his fishing rods from the lake and just casting it in the surf while we were on a family vacation to the beach. After a few little catches, he wound up asking some other fishermen on...

During World War II, researchers from the Center for Naval Analyses conducted a study on the damage found on aircraft after they returned from missions. The thinking was that they could reinforce those areas that were taking the most hits and make the planes more...

This blog is about sausage rolls and an airplane painted to look like a salmon.  I once worked at a church that accidentally stumbled into explosive growth with its contemporary service. The “service,” which was really more like a very one-sided Sunday school...