I was meme'd

Sheldon Kotyk — Wed, 05 May 2021 00:00:00 -0700

My awesome team surprised me with an encouragement session and in the midst of people saying why they like me as their director, they presented me with this.

Creating the Water Cooler for Remote Teams

Sheldon Kotyk — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 00:00:00 -0700

The problem: I run a department in a large non-profit. The team is spread out across multiple countries and time zones. We can't afford to meet together in person. People are feeling disconnected. When people feel disconnected, they lose creativity, collaboration, and it can lead to a lack of trusting each other.

I worked in an office environment for over a decade. We had a startup-like feel in terms of furniture for part of that and a cubicle farm for others. I had an office for a few years where I could shut the door and focus and during it all, I worked from home at times when Vancouver declared a snow day. Productivity increased for me when I worked from home as I wasn't distracted by people stopping by to say hello, to ask a question, or give me an in-person bug report.

What I missed over time, however, was "chatting over the wall". Finding out how a co-worker's new baby was doing or hearing the latest complaints from Vancouver Canuck fans about the referees. I was able to get to know people and although some became friends, just knowing my acquaintance's reaction to real-world situations gave me the ability to trust their character (or question it in a few cases.)

There are probably studies to prove and disprove this theory but in my view, the unofficial watercooler conversations develop a team better than any fall-off-the-tree-and-we-will-catch-you retreat will.

Due to budget constraints, the team in the office shrank. We always had a team that was spread out across the country but when hiring began again, we hired people that could work remotely. Soon, just a handful of our team was working full-time in the office. We were using tools like Slack and Hangouts to communicate.

When all you do together is come up with plans and implement them, you can miss out on the God-given talents that people are blessed with.

- me

A few years ago I moved to a small city and my closest team member was a 2-hour flight away. Our team was spread out over 4 time-zones in Canada and we were expanding worldwide. We never saw each other in person except at a staff conference when most of us could gather together.

Our designer, who was working remotely and never connected in-person raised the concern about a lack of community. Even though she would engage in the #random channel on slack, she didn't really feel a part of the team.

The Solution: A consistent, no-agenda, everyone invited, zoom video call. We call it community time but you can call it "The Water Cooler" or another fancy name if you want.

The first people to join, start the conversation about whatever they want and it goes where it goes. Sometimes the laughter is contagious, sometimes we talk about hard times that people are going through (if they want to of course.) Stories from our more experienced teammates make us wonder why they haven't written books. Those that engage, become more connected on the team and seem to trust each other more because they know each other.

You also realize that even though someone's role is A, they may actually also be really good at B in their spare time as they share their latest photos or illustrations.

When all you do together is come up with plans and implement them, you can miss out on the God-given talents that people are blessed with.

Our community times happen on Wednesday for an hour and Friday for a half-hour. It isn't mandatory to attend both but I've asked that people attend at least one a week if they can.

We've even made it a part of our recruiting pitch like doing a tour of the office was. People can join our team in our community time to see if they would want to work with us.

As we currently live in the days of lockdowns, social-distancing and working from home, these planned community times are even more important for your team to remain a team.

Photo by Dillon Shook on Unsplash

December 2019 Ministry News

Sheldon Kotyk — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 00:00:00 -0800

NAME CHANGE: In January we will be moving away from The Life Project brand and use Power to Change Digital Strategies. This will allow us to fit with the rest of the world that is using Digital Strategies (DS) to identify their part of the ministry. I am on the Global DS team as the area leader for Canada and work closely with 15 other leaders of different regions around the world. This change will help make our communication easier as we don't have to explain what we do after saying who we are.

We're also excited to have a new logo for Power to Change. This all officially changes January 2020.

PARTNERSHIPS: October's ministry trip to Albania, Turkey, and Ethiopia led to even greater partnerships than I was hoping. The idea for the trip started back in May when I was asked to take part in strategic planning sessions the Central/Eastern Europe (CEE) Digital Strategies team was going to be having in Tirana (the feature image). Since I was in the neighborhood, I planned to stop in Istanbul to connect with a co-worker there, then head to Ethiopia.

I was hoping to get 3 or 4 countries signed up in CEE and maybe a couple in the PACT area (Persia, Armenia, Central Asia, and Turkey). I was blown away when all of the seven CEE countries represented signed up to engage with us in our mentoring strategy and the PACT area also signed up multiple regions.

Ethiopia was already onboard with us. In fact, they aren't just partnering with us, they wanted to be part of us. Our Ethiopia office is doing amazing things. They have a counseling office with a team of staff and volunteers answering the phone. It was amazing to meet their Digital Strategies leadership team as well as a number of their software engineers who have been working with us to develop SMS (text messaging) and Whatapp connectors into our mentoring software. This will be used through the Christmas season in Africa as the JESUS Film is shown on television to an estimated 30 million people with a WhatsApp number shown for people to connect to a mentor. If just 0.1% request a mentor, that is 30,000 people. We'll need more mentors!

After a night in London to recuperate, I made it home for a week before a trip to BC for ministry leader meetings. October was a whirlwind but a fantastic month, setting up for the future.

QUEBEC: We received word a few weeks ago that a P2C proposal we are a part of to reach Quebec, has been funded through a foundation. We are excited to increase our church partnerships and recruit mentors in a few key cities throughout the province for this first phase. We'll be working with our Students ministry, Leader Impact, Athletes in Action sports camps and Drime. Our part will include evangelism and discipleship training as well as targeted marketing of our French IssuesIFace.com content to social media users around the churches.

PERSONAL: Our oldest daughter Kristin has her learner's license! Julie's got a line at work so we can actually plan our lives. In sad news, there was a tragedy in Julie's side of the family a few months ago so Christmas will be low-key this year. Pray for Julie's mom and dad as they continue to grieve their friends' (her sister and her husband) passing back in September.

Empathy is the Bridge

Sheldon Kotyk — Thu, 09 May 2019 13:30:00 -0700

At The Life Project, our desire is to help everyone come to know who Jesus is. We want them to get closer to him, regardless of where they are starting out.

Due to some very not-Christian events with over the last two thousand years, with a global world-view wanting to blame Christians for everything wrong in the world, the following images are how Christians are seen by those that haven't had the opportunity to experience Jesus.

Ned Flanders

The Crusades

Westboro "Baptist Church"

So how can followers of Jesus break through the wall of distrust and even hostility that people have put up as protection from those claiming to be Christians?

I believe that the only way to do so is genuinely loving those that we are wanting to reach. When you genuinely love the person as Jesus did, it allows you to empathize with their situation.

Empathy is the bridge between Christians and a world that has turned its back on Christianity. It is also something that many people struggle having enough of and it is getting worse.

When compared to college students of the late 1970s, O'Brien and Konrath found that college students in 2009 were less likely to agree with statements such as "I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective" and "I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me."

- University of Michigan Institute for Social Research 2010

The good news is that as Christians, we have the Holy Spirit and when filled, the fruits will eventually show. One such fruit is love, another is gentleness, and yet another is kindness. I feel that those three fruits together will lead to more significant amounts of empathy for the people we meet and get to know.

So what is empathy anyway? Without getting into too deep into some of the different types of empathy, my favourite definition of empathy is "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another" (Oxford).

How can this lead to higher engagement in ministry? If you can be empathetic in a world which isn't, you will be a light in a dark world. People flocked to experience Jesus, and it is because of his love that they left satisfied. He didn't need to feed the 5000 that followed him to the remote area that day when he wanted to be alone. He understood their need and shared in it. The woman caught in adultery that was under the judgement of the religious leaders of the day experienced his love and empathy as he wrote in the ground, causing those leaders to slip away.

Empathy doesn't mean taking on someone's burdens, nor does it require that you solve the problem. It is our role to communicate that only Jesus can carry the load.

Would you like to know more about empathy? We'd love to share more in our new training, coming soon to our mentoring software. The system is available for you to develop empathy as you share your story with others from around the world, that are looking for love but not finding it.

Become a Mentor

Photo Credit: Rosalind Chang

Happy Anniversary Julie

Sheldon Kotyk — Thu, 09 May 2019 02:30:00 -0700

Roses are red

Violets are blue

It's cold outside.

So are your feet.

But it is worth it.

A Father's Delight

Sheldon Kotyk — Sat, 27 Apr 2019 00:00:00 -0700

This fabulous video was produced by the Jesus Film Project. I love it.

Global Digital Strategies Summit 2019

Sheldon Kotyk — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 08:00:00 -0700

This year's Global Digital Strategies Summit took place in beautiful Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In 2017, I hosted the summit in Vancouver with just over 30 attendees, focusing on some foundational platforms for Global Digital Strategies. This year's summit had 110+ attendees from 70 nations. The larger group allowed us to develop a new group of leaders in the digital strategies (DS) role (DS), and to encourage national teams without a DS leader to assign the task to a qualified individual.

I had the opportunity to share what we are doing in Canada with Issues I Face and mentoring. I gave an update on the incredible reach we can have with Facebook advertising in the developing world. I was also asked to talk about one of the training adjustments we are making with mentoring. We are finding that Christians generally have not adjusted to the changing spiritual landscape and are responding quickly with the 4 Spiritual Laws to questions about loneliness and other issues.

Although we do want to share Jesus as early as we can in conversations, most people in post-Christian Canada and majority other-religion nations like India and Indonesia, know little about the Jesus of the Bible. Instead, the media and religious leaders teach them that Christians are not only wrong but evil. Until people can see Jesus' love in us, it is difficult for them to understand that "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life," otherwise known as "Law One." After my short presentation, attendees approached me with several questions while expressing their gratitude as they had been seeing a similar shift in their cultures but had not yet figured out what needed to change.

As the leader of DS in Canada, I had the opportunity to bring along a few of my team as well as invite a few others. Dorrie, the Director of Partnerships for The Life Project (TLP) and Anne-Marie, Content Strategist for TLP came along with Chris from P2C Marketing. I enjoyed having the opportunity to connect with them face-to-face as in-person meetings are rare, and most of our communication happens online.

Centro Cultural Kirchner

As other DS leaders had the opportunity to share from the stage, a number of our international partners shared how they were excited to use Issues I Face and mentoring to reach the "unaware" in their respective parts of the world. We define "unaware" as those that are not curious about Jesus because they are either content with their current spiritual situation or hostile to the God of the Bible.

South Asia, South-East Asia, Latin America and Oceania are all in the early stages of launching their versions of Issues I Face in their languages. These shout-outs led to many opportunities to begin new partnerships. Our teams in East Asia, South-East Africa, Western Europe, North Africa & Middle East, and PACT (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey and more) to move forward in partnership with us. These new partnerships would potentially increase our reach beyond 3 billion people.

The outdoor market: Just a few thousand of the billions we want to reach

The South-East Africa partnership also includes an exciting opportunity with the Ethiopian DS team. We are excited to see how we can work closely with this team on the programming side. Ethiopia has a dozen developers and is excited to join us in developing new tools. We have been praying about growing our team of volunteers and contractors so that we can move forward on some exciting opportunities.

There are many opportunities to reach more people faster than ever before through Digital Strategies. Please pray for wisdom and the ability to identify the best places to invest our time and energy.

If you aren't already a partner with me, either with prayer or finances, and you would be interested in learning more, I'd love to talk to you.

Learn More

"In the Name of Jesus" by Henri J.M. Nouwen

Sheldon Kotyk — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 13:01:00 -0700

Henri Nouwen's life story and his work with the L'Arche Daybreak community gave him the platform to write this great little book on Christian leadership for the future. This book was published back in 1989 so obviously, the future is now.

I received this book as a gift at the Global Digital Strategies Summit last week.

Nouwen's ability to capture my attention with a story of how he was going to give a talk but God gave him a partner in the process, had me wanting to skip to the end to finish that thread. Thankfully, I did not.

I enjoyed his three distinct points based on Jesus' leadership as seen through the temptations that Satan brought to him.

My favourite quote came early in the book.

"... I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self."

- Nouwen Pg 30

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in a quick read (it took me an hour) on Christian leadership, regardless of whether you lead a large team or serve a small group. I would even recommend that anyone who does not "officially" lead anyone to read it and learn from it as it teaches us the posture we need to take.

Buy the book

Faith Muscle Building

Sheldon Kotyk — Thu, 31 Jan 2019 18:00:00 -0800

I was privileged to be a part of an evening at a conference where a number of highly influential leaders shared about how their faith has grown.

There were stories as well as some principles communicated to us.

Unfortunately, due to security and privacy concerns, this is not for distribution to the general public. Please contact me for permission to view.

Politics: Hope, Fear and Misplaced Faith

Sheldon Kotyk — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 00:00:00 -0800

A counterfeit bill isn't worth anything unless the receiver is fooled by its appearance. These are my thoughts after watching America's political landscape get ripped apart by an earthquake.

Obama came to power with the slogans "Hope and Change" and "Yes we can" broadcast to millions of adoring fans. People literally wept in his presence, fainting when he spoke, and basically worshipping him.

Trump destroyed their future. Their desire for Hillary to continue what Obama promised: equality for all, the climate fixed, and world peace was dashed as what they consider to be a racist, mysoginist, billionaire won the electoral college in a hacked election, stealing it with less votes than Hillary, making him illegitimate and therefore, not their president.

How did Trump win? He won by promising to "Make America Great Again" and protect their lives from terrorists, to give them jobs, and basically make everything gold.

Eventually, if God allows the world to continue to exist without Revelation in full effect, we will see tears again. Trump supporters will be disappointed and someone else will be promising a utopia.

In behind the scenes is what the Bible calls the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world [Ephesians 6:12]. The verse makes it clear that what we see in the flash and blood is not our enemy but there is something going on behind the scenes.

So where should be actually put our hope. Romans 15:13-15 says that "our hope comes from God." It continues to say that we will be filled with joy and peace because of our trust in Him and that the power of the Holy Spirit will make that hope stronger.

As a Christian, I can honestly look at terrorism, an economy in ruins where people can't find well paying jobs, and a fear of the unknown and say that although I don't have answers to the world's problems, Jesus does. It is only through faith in the one who defeated death on the cross that we can have hope.

Do you have hope in flesh in blood or do you focus on the one who breathed life into dust and created us?