Every year we gather together to celebrate what God has done through World Next Door and to dream about where he might take us next.  We call it our Annual Celebration and Fundraiser.

But that name is sort of dry.  It’s better to think about it as a birthday party!

On January 26, we had our third birthday party and it was a blast!  Live music, amazing soups and breads, a really cool photo gallery and, for the first time, live social media engagement.

But I know that a lot of our friends weren’t able to make it last Thursday, so I’ve put together a photo gallery of the event by one of our amazing volunteers, Jeremy VanAndal (you can check out his work at www.jeremyvanandelphoto.com).

And be sure to check out the great video by Mike “Mighty” Chandler below!

It’s hard to believe that World Next Door’s third birthday is just around the corner.  God has been working in some powerful ways through our ministry and now it’s time to celebrate!

You are invited to the third annual World Next Door Celebration and Fundraiser on January 26, 2012.  Join us for a night of stories, great photography and, of course, lots of laughter!

Here are a few things you can expect at the event:

• Delicious soup and desserts
• Live music
• A photography gallery of some of WND’s best shots (all of them finally for sale!)
• A chance to win awesome stuff in our raffle
• First-hand accounts of how WND has changed lives this year
• Hilarious stories of some of the crazy places we’ve found ourselves abroad
• Exciting and concrete ways to get even more involved
• A few glimpses at what lies ahead

The event will take place at the Levey Mansion (2902 N Meridian St), just one block south of the Children’s Museum.  We will begin with an open house at 6pm with a formal program starting at 7:30pm.

Feel free to dress casually for the event.

Please RSVP on the event’s Evite by clicking the button below:

We really look forward to seeing you there!

We on the World Next Door team are excited to announce that we are officially hiring our next full-time position: Communications Coordinator.

This person will become the Senior Editor of our online magazine, they’ll help us significantly increase our readership and they’ll take over a lot of our general day-to-day communications.

Our team is growing!

We need someone who is super creative and passionate about social justice, but also diligent, organized and awesome at writing and editing. He/she won’t need to travel internationally very much, but will need to live in Indianapolis.

All the details are at www.worldnextdoor.org/jobs.

If you or someone you know would be perfect for that job, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!  Please send all inquiries and resumes to jobs@worldnextdoor.org.

Haiti has always had a big place in my heart.  After the January 2010 earthquake devastated the Caribbean nation, I had the incredible privilege to live inside an internally displaced people camp and write about what life is really like for families there (click here to read those articles).

That is why I was so excited to learn about the work of a friend of mine, Jace Freeman.  Jace, a talented documentary filmmaker, also spent time within Haitian refugee camps after the earthquake.  And while I used writing and photography to try and capture what I was experiencing, Jace used film.

A scene from The Country Club

Trying to describe Jace’s film-making style is difficult.  It’s a bit like… well, like you’re actually there.

But wait… Why am I telling you all of this?  Why not just show you?

Jace and his co-producer Sean Clark have just released their 14-minute short documentary, The Country Club and have given us permission to embed it right here on World Next Door!

I encourage you to take a few moments to focus in and let the story of one 12-year-old boy open your eyes.  After you watch it, take a look at the Next Steps below to learn more.
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It gets me every year.  A sight I have seen many times before, but one that continues to evoke strong emotions… the sight of thousands of suburban Christians gathering together on a brisk autumn day.

They stand together and sing worship songs, full of energy and excitement.  But these “suburbanites” are not gathering for a church service… They are gathering to be sent out.

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Click on the image to see a very cool 360 degree panorama of Grace’s Weekend of Service Commissioning!

Every year, Grace Community Church closes its doors, cancels its weekend services and sends its congregation out to serve with organizations and ministries outside the walls of the church.

My food collection team gearing up to collect food in a north-side neighborhood.

This year, more than 4300 volunteers signed up.  These volunteers headed downtown to serve meals.  They painted murals for ministries serving lower-income youth.  They collected thousands of pounds of food from homes all over the north side of Indianapolis.  In all, there were 175 different projects over the weekend.

But the cool thing about the Weekend of Service is not the amount of work that gets done (as helpful as that undoubtedly is).  The cool thing is that 4300 suburban Christians had an opportunity to rub shoulders with ministries and individuals serving the “least of these” (Matthew 25).

Sure, more than 30,000 meals were packed for Kids Against Hunger.  Hygiene kits were packaged for The Relief Bus in NYC.  Winter clothes were distributed to homeless folks in Indy.  But in the process, thousands of suburban Americans with every excuse in the world to ignore the poor and marginalized got up close and personal for a weekend.

A look at some of the food collected for the 2011 WOS! Photo by Brad Doran (www.twitter.com/braddoran).

Who knows what long-term change was started this past weekend?  Who knows what chance encounters have launched people into a lifelong journey towards justice?

Just a quick look at the comments left on Twitter shows that many WOS participants were deeply influenced by their experiences.  Suburbanites getting involved in social justice… Just about my favorite thing in the whole world!

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For many, the 2011 GCC Weekend of Service was undoubtedly a satisfying end.  But for some, it was a powerful new beginning.

For the next few days, volunteer journalists from GCC will be sharing with us some of these stories of “first steps.”  Each of them embedded with a different Weekend of Service project, and now they’ll be sharing what they discovered.

I hope you’ll take the time to listen to their stories.  Who knows? Perhaps it will prompt a “first step” of your own!

I recently took five American businessmen to Kenya for a week of learning and discovery (click here to read about that trip).   It was a fantastic opportunity to see what life is really like in the slums of Nairobi.

However, I wanted the team to see that Kenya is not just a place of poverty and squalor, but a place of great beauty and stunning wildlife as well.  That’s why, at the end of our trip, we went on a short safari to Maasai Mara to do our trip debrief.

It was a great time of connecting and prayer as a team.  Oh, and we saw some UNBELIEVABLE animals as well!

Here is a quick glimpse into what we saw. 

p.s. You can buy prints of most of these here. Shoot me an email (barry@worldnextdoor.org) if you’d like any of the others.

This is part two of an article about a short-term trip I led to the slums of Nairobi.  To read Part I, click here.

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We Take Requests

The second thing we did differently is a lot more important than it might look at first glance:  Everything our team did to help was based on requests made by our host ministries (for example, the topics we covered at the business seminar were suggested by Pastor Fred).

We didn’t come in with xyz initiative and say, “tell us how we can make this happen.”  We came in with open hands and said, “tell us how we can help you!”

Hearing the stories of small business owners in slum communities allowed our team to see how deep the issues of poverty really go.

The best example of this came from the financial commitment the guys on my team decided to make at the end of the trip.  After seeing the work of Tumaini Church and hearing about the church’s plans for building a new sanctuary/classroom to reach more community members and students, we decided as a team to commit to fully funding the project.

What would a trip to Kenya be without goofing around with kids?

We didn’t offer money with a list of preconditions attached.  We didn’t come in with the answers to all of Kibera’s problems.  We simply heard what a local organization was doing to restore their community, heard their dreams for the future and decided to help bring that future just a little bit closer to the present.

Partnering with the Long-Haulers

Third, we looked for ways to partner with people who will be doing this work long after we have gone home.

As Americans, it is all too easy for us to throw our energy and money into “quick fixes.”  We want to see results now! But our obsession with immediacy can often end up causing great harm over time (e.g. Feeding hungry people by donating tons of free rice, only to watch the local rice industry shrivel due to a lack of business…).

By sponsoring the construction of Tumaini Church’s new sanctuary, we are helping Pastor Fred and his team to do things their way.

Learning about the realities of poverty from inside a small pork butchery.

Will it be a state-of-the-art facility? Nope.  Will it be a perfect multi-purpose building that will solve every problem faced by the church in one fell swoop?  Nope.  But will it be a sustainable project thought up by Tumaini Church itself and constructed using local labor and materials?  Absolutely.

Beyond Emotions

Finally, we worked hard to develop concrete “next steps” so that we can continue our engagement long after the emotions fade.

Short-term trips are the breeding ground for broken promises.  “I will never take clean water for granted again!”  “I will always remember this moment when I go grocery shopping back home.”  “I will stay in touch with my new friends forever.”

The fact is, real life makes it hard to run at the same emotional high we had while standing in the middle of a slum.  And more often than not, it doesn’t take too long before we find ourselves right back where we were before the trip.

Tumaini Church’s current building. The new one will be three times as big and will allow them to add 90 students to their elementary school!

To counter that reality, my team took several steps to keep our level of engagement high.

First of all, as I mentioned above, we committed to fully funding Tumaini’s building project. That money isn’t going to raise itself!  It’s going to require each of us to pull our friends and families into the life-change with us for months after returning home.

Second, we “friended” our Tumaini buddies on Facebook and committed to keep each other accountable about staying in touch and praying for them.  It helps that our Kenyan friends like Vincent are really great about keeping relationships alive.

Finally, we came up with an exercise that will undoubtedly keep our hearts and minds in the right place.  In November, the guys in our group will try to live out the command to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” quite literally.

For 30 days, we will give away $1 for every $1 we spend on ourselves (that includes rent, food, utilities… everything!).  Not only will it help us to be more generous, it will help us to think more carefully about how we spend our money as well.

All of these things will allow our trip to continue changing us even after life has returned to “normal.”

Our team (clockwise from top left): Me, Jeff, Dave, Beau, Coty and Cameron.

Who’s Next?

So there it is.  My first attempt at leading a “new” kind of short-term trip… Was it perfect?  Nope.  Did I avoid every pitfall mentioned in When Helping Hurts?  Probably not.

But did I fulfill the mission of World Next Door by getting suburban Americans involved in social justice without doing more harm than good?  I really think so.

With that in mind, there is one question I need to ask: Who’s next?

Many short-term “missions” trips end up doing more harm than good.

There. I said it.  As American Christians, we spend millions of dollars every year sending people around the world to “help.”  But these well intentioned teams often end up playing right into the systems of injustice that keep people locked in poverty, helplessness and despair.

Well then. That’s a cheery opening to an article, isn’t it?

I apologize.  I am just really fired up right now.  For two reasons.  One, I recently finished an incredible book called When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor… and Yourself.  It is a must read.

Can American “suburbanites” spend time in a place like Kenya without doing more harm than good?

In the book, the authors explain something I’ve been learning firsthand on all my local and international trips for World Next Door.  Our good intentions are not enough.  If we’re not careful, we can end up harming the very people we’re trying to help.

The book puts into words thoughts that have been developing here on World Next Door for years (Don’t believe me? July 2009, September 2010, April 2011…). Reading it was a huge confirmation that we’re on the right track with our philosophy of ministry.

Our primary objective was to learn.

The Second Reason

But I said I’m fired up for two reasons.  The second reason?  I just led a short-term trip team made up of American businessmen. I took them into Kibera Slum in Nairobi, Kenya for a week of intense experiential learning and discovery.

But wait just a minute, Barry.  I thought you said that short-term trips were bad!

Ah, but that’s exactly why I’m fired up.  This was no ordinary “missions trip.”  This trip was a new kind of short-term trip. One of a growing number of trips that don’t fit the usual mold… One that leaves both the trip participants and the ministries we came to visit stronger and better off than before.

I’ve been on several of these “new” kind of short-term trips through my church, Grace Community in Noblesville, IN, but this was my first attempt at designing, organizing and leading one myself.

And let me tell you… From everything I can see, it was a huge success.

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Hearing the stories of amazing leaders like Jane Wathome of Beacon of Hope was central to our trip.

“So,” you might be asking. “What made this trip different?  How were you able to bring American businessmen to Kenya without doing more harm than good?”

Good question. Let me try to briefly explain how our trip attempted to break the mold…

Meet the Team

Our team was made up of young businessmen who have been in a discipleship group together for a couple of years. I joined the group about a year ago.  When our leader, Jeff, asked what we wanted to do for our annual team retreat this year, I threw out a crazy suggestion.  “Let’s go to Kenya!”

I honestly didn’t expect anything to come of the idea.  Until this trip, only a couple of them had ever visited the developing world before, and none of them had been anywhere in Africa, much less inside a Kenyan Slum.

Our team visiting the home of Pastor Fred.

Imagine my surprise when the response was a resounding, “Let’s do it!”

Out of nowhere I found myself responsible for taking four 20-something guys and the CEO of a large international company into the slums.

I wanted the trip to be different, so I got to work designing a tailor-made experience that would be life-changing for the guys but also helpful and honoring to our Kenyan hosts.

It was definitely a challenge, and there was no guarantee that it would work, but in the end I feel that we accomplished our goals…

Learning, Not Doing

First of all, our team spent our time learning, not doing.

Many short-term trip teams travel far and wide with the express purpose of digging a ditch or painting a wall or something.  While this is not necessarily a bad thing, having a big to-do list in front of us can keep us closed off from deeper partnerships and learning opportunities (“What do you mean ‘Take a break so we can meet some of your community’s leaders’? We’re on a schedule here!”).

Our business seminar was mostly discussion-based.

Instead, our team came with little on our to-do list besides “Hear Pastor Fred’s story,” “Learn about leadership from the staff of Beacon of Hope,” “Visit homes in Kibera,” “Pray for Tumaini Church.”  Not exactly a lot to accomplish.  But it gave us the flexibility and freedom to stay open to what God would want us to learn.

Now, we did end up teaching a simple business seminar for neighbors of Tumaini Church in Kibera (arguably doing, not learning), but even that was discussion based: our team asking lots of questions instead of coming in with all the answers…

Want to hear what else we did differently?  Click here to read Part II.

“This is going to be an awesome year.”

As Laura, Stephen and I looked down at the calendar we had just marked up, I couldn’t help but be excited.  “Ok, so Laura, you’ll be embedded on the U.S./Mexico border, then Stephen will take off for India… And then, cool! In April all three of us will be writing!”

The excitement that I felt during that planning meeting is becoming routine these days.  This is an unprecedented time for World Next Door.  With three full-time writers and an ever-growing team of committed volunteers, we are growing in ways that were never possible before.

And so, in the midst of all this excitement, I thought it would be cool to give you a look ahead.  A glimpse at what is on the horizon for World Next Door.  At the end, I’ll share a few ways that you can get engaged with what we are doing.

I can’t wait to have you along for the ride!

Upcoming Trips

One of the things I am most excited about right now is the diverse range of organizations we’ll be writing about over the next 12 months.  As always, very little is set in stone, but our upcoming trips are really starting to come together.

World Next Door is returning to India!

Starting this week, Laura (our newest year-long journalism fellow) will begin posting articles from her time with the Indianapolis branch of Safe Families, a fantastic organization dedicated to helping families in moments of crisis. After that, I’ll be adding a few posts about my short trip to Nairobi, Kenya, where I will be taking a group of young businessmen to the slums for their first experience in the developing world.

As the fall turns into winter, Stephen will be writing about another U.S. organization, possibly focusing on rural poverty in the Appalachian Mountains.  Around the same time, Laura will take off for the Middle East and Senegal.  In January, Stephen will be posting articles from India and Laura will be reporting from the U.S./Mexico border.

And that only takes us to the beginning of 2012.  Many more adventures are sure to follow.  Like I said, it’s going to be an awesome year!

Events you DON’T want to miss

Along with our writing and traveling, we also have a few great events you might want to stick on your calendar.

Fellowship Kick-Off Party – On October 20, 2011, you’re are invited to join us for a fun night of desserts, live music and storytelling.  This is your chance to meet Laura and Stephen in person and hear them talk about their dreams for the upcoming year.  To RSVP or get more information, check out the event on Facebook or Evite.

Grace Community Church Weekend of Service – On November 5/6 weekend, GCC closes its doors and goes out into the city to serve.  If you’re part of the Grace community and want to hear more information about spending the day volunteering as a World Next Door journalist, send an email to Jim Meacham (jimm@worldnextdoor.org).

WND Third Anniversary Celebration and Fundraiser – On January 26, 2011 from 7pm-9pm we will be having our third annual event to celebrate what God has been doing through our ministry. No details to give you yet, but I have no doubt that it will be another unique and memorable night!

How to stay connected

As we continue to write articles and explore how God’s kingdom is breaking into this world, there are several ways you can stay connected to World Next Door.  Check ‘em out!

Follow us on Twitter. This is a great way to hear the latest news
about what’s happening with our ministry.

“Like” our Facebook page and have WND content
show up right in your news feed.  Another awesome
way to interact with our ministry!

Want to stay in the loop behind the scenes? Consider signing up
for our newsletter or joining our prayer team!

Make sure you don’t miss an article.  Subscribe to
our posts by email or subscribe to our RSS feed.

Finally, if you’d like prints of our photography, check out
Barry Rodriguez Photography. 100% of the proceeds from
WND prints come straight back to World Next Door!

As always, if you have any questions on how to get plugged in, shoot us an email at info@worldnextdoor.org.  We’d love to connect!

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Well, that’s it for now.  I should probably get back to work… There’s a lot to do these days!!!

I just realized that World Next Door is two and a half years old. Crazy!  Can you believe we’ve been at this already for one fortieth of a century? 

It’s an exciting time for our ministry.  We have an office.  We have a growing staff team (our second year-long fellow, Laura, is moving to Indianapolis next weekend!).  Our operating budget is close to 5 times what it was when we started.

Things are really taking off for World Next Door.

It's been an amazing journey so far...

But in the midst of all this growth and excitement, there is one thing that hasn’t changed at all since we began… our website.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love our site.  It’s slick. It’s eye catching. It’s awesome.  But after doing this for two and a half years, I’m realizing that it’s time to tweak a few things “under the hood.”

We could make this site a lot more functional.  We could make it much easier to find and read past articles.  We could make our design more interactive.

We could do all of these things, but we need your input to know where to start.

Your input please…

How would you like to see the WND site grow and develop?  What would you like to see changed?

Below is a short survey focused on potential changes to our site.  Would you take a moment to share your thoughts with us?

If you do, guess what?  You will receive a $10 off coupon for Barry Rodriguez Photography, where you can buy high-quality prints of World Next Door photos!  Cool, huh?

Thank you so much for being a part of our ministry’s journey!

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Thanks again!