Mighty Rasing's Blog, page 2

Simple Joys brought by Coffee

I am a certified coffee lover. It may have started when I was in 5th grade. My mother asked me to prepare coffee for her. I put hot water in a cup, scooped more than half a teaspoon of Nescafe instant coffee, and finally added a teaspoon of sugar. After tasting it, I almost spat it out because it was bitter. But after several days of doing that, I acquired the taste of coffee. Eventually, coffee became a constant companion for late night writing and meetings.

Instant coffee used to be the cra...

Navigating Remote Work & Productivity

A few months after the pandemic in 2020, the leadership of our organization decided it was best to adapt and move to a fully remote work mode. It was temporary at first, but fast forward a year later, they decided to go fully remote work from home!

Many of us were thrilled.

Goodbye morning traffic. Nashville traffic has been getting worse since we arrived in 2015. A lot of people were moving to the city. It wasn’t quite as bad as Manila traffic, but on worse days, my 20-minute commute ex...

The Over-Committed Person’s Guide to Streamlining Commitments & Simplifying Life

Bambang LRT Station, circa September 2012

She turned from me and wiped her eyes as the train sped away from the platform of Bambang LRT Station. Tears fell from her eyes, I’m sure of it. And my chest constricted. I looked up the ceiling of the station, trying hard to prevent tears from falling.

It must have been my wife’s monthly appointment with her OB-GYN. It’s the fourth month of the baby in her tummy.

And I could not be with her…

I had a meeting that day. I could not remem...

Tonight I Packed Participants’ Bags for the Youth 2019 Event

Our office is sponsoring a huge event in Kansas City this week: #Youth2019. We’re expecting more than 3,000 youth and youth workers to come worship God, have fun, and learn more about their faith.

I am here as part of the staff team of our office, Discipleship Ministries. I don’t really have a part in the program. But I am helping out behind the scenes: packing bags for participants, doing small tasks here and there, and just making myself available to help anybody.

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This experience remind...

Notes on Phyllis Tickle’s “The Great Emergence”

Introduction

As a Christian, I had been interested in the history of the faith. I got wind of Phyllis Tickle’s “The Great Emergence” through a friend who wrote a book using Tickle’s idea of a “Church rummage sale” every 500 years or so.

The last such “Church rummage sale” was the Great Reformation, which shaped the history of the church in Europe and, arguably, the whole world.

As is my usual reading process: I would listen to the Audiobook and then pick up the printed or electronic book to...

Notes on Program Design, Implementation, and Evaluation 2: Strategic Planning

I am taking a class on Program Design, Implementation, and Evaluation this semester. This is part of my Master’s in Youth Development. To make my notes more accessible, I decided to put them here. Our textbook is “Effectively Managing and Leading Human Service Organizations, 4th Ed.” by Ralph Brody and Murali Nair. 

These are my notes from the chapters I am reading. 

* * * * *

Chapter 2: Strategic Planning

“Strategic planning describes the process of addressing change. It develops goals, acco...

Notes on Program Design, Implementation, and Evaluation 1: Leadership

I am taking a class on Program Design, Implementation, and Evaluation this semester. This is part of my Master’s in Youth Development. To make my notes more accessible, I decided to put them here. Our textbook is “Effectively Managing and Leading Human Service Organizations, 4th Ed.” by Ralph Brody and Murali Nair. 

These are my notes from the chapters I am reading. 

* * * * *

Chapter 1: Leading the Organization

Effective managers have “the ability to produce results based on their leadership...

Amplifying Youth Voices through New Media Technologies

In the past decade, starting around 2006, a lot of Social Media sites started breaking into the mainstream. Blogs, Facebook, photo-sharing, and video-sharing sites started attracting hundreds of thousands and millions of users around the world.

As expected, young people led the way in adapting and finding various uses of these technologies. Some built blogs that earned the money, some started building their online following, and observers around the world were fascinated with the immense poss...

We Need a Conversation on Evangelism, Discipleship, and Church Growth

This article was originally published in The Filipino Methodist Magazine
As a church, we are good at ministering to and educating children through Sunday School, Vacation Bible Church, Children’s camps, and many other ministries. When these children enter puberty and youth, they naturally attend the Christmas Institute and join the United Methodist Youth Fellowship. A lot of these youth then become trained and serve as leaders in local churches, districts, annual conferences, in the national...

Christmas Institutes and My Leadership Journey

Right before the Christmas vacation of 1993, my father, who was assigned as the Pastor of Roxas UMC at the North Central Philippines Annual Conference, told me to attend this gathering of church youth. I was 11 then, one year short of the official age of an official member of the UMYFer.

I didn’t know what the Christmas Institute was all about but right after Christmas day, I chose the nicest clothes from among the gifts I received that year. I watched as jeepneys and tricycles full of youth...