ISKCON Communications Europe Leadership Team (ICELT) is holding meetings in Radhadesh, Belgium, April 18 - 22.

I saw the program here, and immediately developed a desire to attend.

As you might know, Communications and Leadership are the two majors of my study. The particular sessions that are going to be held are very interesting for me too. They typically examine the tension between two contradictory considerations.

One thing that you realize when you leave the armchair and start to assume the responsibility of the service of leadership is that theory may be very clear, but the actual implementation is not. There are a large number of contradictory, complementary, and confusing factors. Balancing them all is as much art as it is science, and it requires continual adjustment.

The sessions at the ICELT meetings examine contemporary contradictions in preaching.

A pet one of mine is the emphasis that Srila Prabhupada put on the fact that the Krishna Consciousness movement is not “Hindu”, and the 1996 ISKCON Communications Ministry proclamation that we are. That’s going to be examined on day two in a session entitled: “Am I a Hindu? Yes, no, when it suits me. ”

Obviously I can’t go, but the Lord within the heart knows everything, and by His mercy the ICELT meetings are going to be podcasted live.

Word. I may write summaries of the sessions on here if time allows

Here’s an interesting podcast from the Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMMA) Blog. It’s a conversation with Douglas Atkin. “Centered on belief, the need for belonging, the desire to bear witness, Douglas makes the connection between community values and vibrant brand evangelism.”

Atkin did research into the phenomenon of brand evangelism and word of mouth, and in an effort to understand it he went to the roots of brand cults or communities - yes folks, that means Hare Krishna.

Very interesting listening.

Here is the latest Urban Missionary Podcast. It’s just another one of my stream of consciousness monologues on the way to work, but I have edited it up a little bit to make it a bit more professional. The next one will be more of the style that I want to do, like a magazine.

It’s a fact that shorter presentations require more preparation. This one goes for about 36 minutes. If I had time to prepare for this I could have communicated the same information in less time. I recorded this on the way to work on Tuesday morning. In this edition I cover the “Sandwich Concept” - a new paradigm for a strategic approach to urban outreach, the new Atma Yoga center in Brisbane, and some of the lessons learned from the shift, and Atmananda’s Atma Yoga program, which we are now a part of.

Anyway, here it is:

Urban Missionary Podcast 2006 / 03 / 03 (.mp3, 36 minutes, 17MB)

Here are links to the resources mentioned in this podcast:

• Super Sunday Series - articles by Kaunteya das on the Sunday Feast
• The Cell Church - book by Larry Stockstill
• Bhaktivrksa Manual (free registration required)
• Dr Yonggi Cho’s Church in South Korea - the largest church in the world with 800,000 members in cell groups
• Atma Yoga Brisbane - Some photos of our new facility in Brisbane
• Atma Yoga (US) - Atmananda das’ Atma Yoga Teacher Training Program

Totally recommend Tim and Tony’s Simply Strategic podcast. I have two of their books - Simply Strategic Volunteers: Empowering people for ministry [1], and Simply Strategic Stuff: Help for leaders drowning in the details of running a church [2].

I’m recommending it for the content. The presentation format is also good, and representative of the potential of podcasting.

As you can read on my livejournal I’ve been working on a podcast, called Fedora Reloaded, for the Fedora community with my friend Wade, and it’s been going well. Vrajadhama and I have been discussing our plans to do an Urban Missionary one, and that should be coming up soon.

So far I haven’t seen what I consider to be a good Hare Krishna podcast. Putting a class into an rss enclosure is not really podcasting. (Well ok, technically it is, but it’s not exploiting the fullest potential of the medium, or even really any of it). Putting a monologue to the audience into an rss enclosure is a little better, but it’s still not there. What we need is the aural equivalent of a magazine.

Stay tuned - and if you’re going to change your name, go for Krishna.com rather than UrbanMissionary.info….

Yesterday my spiritual master, His Holiness Devamrita Swami dropped over for lunch. We invited a few people around, and Maharaja talked for about half an hour, casting vision about urban missionary preaching. I recorded it using the WCE6T microphone, both to get a good recording, and also to allow Gurudeva to get used to it before the Sunday Feast program today.

Here’s the recording:

Lunch time talk at Red Hill by H.H. Devamrita Swami

This is the second podcast in a series about the principles that we are use to organize our preaching. (Here’s a link to the first). Practices may be different in different places and circumstances, but the underlying principles remain the same. Understanding what these principles are, and how to apply them, leads to more effective organization of the preaching mission.

At the basis of everything is individual spiritual practice and personal purity. In addition to this there are principles for organizing time, effort and resources in the most effective way.

The second principle that I discuss here is “Think Steps, Not Programs”. It’s about focusing on people - the people we work with and the people we work for - rather than programs. Programs exist for people, not the other way round. We have to “preach on purpose” - be intentional and conscious about what we are doing. When a program serves the people, it serves its purpose. People are important, because people are important to Krishna.

Preaching is about personal transformation. It’s about producing transformation. It’s about a process. A process requires steps. Programs are nothing more or less than steps in that process of transformation. Are you providing all the steps that people need to undergo the process of transformation, in a way that they can take them? This is a new lens for looking at your programs from a strategic, people-focused perspective. Think steps, not programs.

Principle #2: Think Steps, Not Programs

This is a podcast about the first principle in organized preaching. Props to Aghahanta das (currently in Auckland, NZ) for the rhyme at the start.

Principle #1 is about being conscious about first of all what your goals in preaching are. What are you trying to do? Of course we know that ultimately your goal is to please Guru and Krishna, but if you’re preparing a feast to offer to Guru and Krishna you need to be a little more specific than that to be successful, and the same is true in organizing preaching and preaching programs.

It’s about becoming conscious of what you are doing and why you are doing it. Then comes how you are doing it, and becoming conscious of the effects of what you are doing. Is it effective? Are the current practices contributing to your stated goals?

Then becoming intentional - proactively organizing things to fulfill your stated objectives. Do things on purpose, not out of habit. “Is it justified, or simply a custom?” as Krishna asked Nanda Maharaja recently.

Here’s the podcast of the first principle:

Principle #1: Be Conscious, Be Intentional (17 mins, .mp3, 40kbps, mono, 5MB)

This Sunday we started our new series: Live to SERVE.

We’ve changed the format slightly. The opening kirtan was not getting much traction, so we’ve made it into a bhajan performance section. A lot of the people who come at 5pm are first time guests, and asking them to sing as soon as the walk in the door puts them on the spot a bit. When you are relying on them to sing and they don’t it puts you on the spot, and generally everyone feels a little uncomfortable. People are familiar with the “performance” format, and it allows them to relax.

The words are projected on the screen and different singers lead. Surprisingly we’ve found that this has actually increased people’s participation in the kirtan at the beginning.

The translation for the bhajans is in the handout that we debuted this week. Check it out here (.pdf, 184kb).

I gave the class “Service brings Significance“.

(.mp3, 16MB, 56kbps, mono)

It was the fifth time I delivered the class - the other four times were at the ashram. The development cycle was close to two weeks. Each time I gave the class we would sit around and discuss it, analyzing the different aspects. I recorded it each time and listened to it at least two times before giving it again.

The class weighed in at 40 minutes. I think that the next one I give will be 30 minutes. From the feedback I got from people the regulars were happy and would have been happy to get even more content, but I sensed the new guests wearing out.

This series is pitched squarely at our existing crowd, so it’s not intended so much for a first-time crowd. At the same time, we have to strike a balance. What I call the “logical chain”, the number of steps from the beginning of the argument to the conclusion was a little too long for a number of people. This can happen when their mind becomes overwhelmed with too many details, too much new information, or too many unfamiliar terms. People who are familiar with the philosophy could follow, and enjoyed it. For people without as much intellectual power or disadvantaged due to unfamiliarity, the class would have seemed like a collection of unrelated, random things, rather than a structured presentation. Intoxication, illicit sex life, meat eating, lack of austerity, and an unregulated lifestyle all conspire to destroy your intelligence as well.

Wherever I go I have people telling me: “People in this country are not intellectual. They don’t read, they don’t get into philosophy - they just like to chant and dance.”

Let me tell you something - 90% of the people in the world are like that. There is nothing wrong with pitching your presentation at the other 10%. Those are the people who are going to help you to make a massive prasadam distribution program for the other 90%. But if you don’t have some of those people on your team, and you just try to pitch to the 90% your movement will die out pretty quick due to lack of leadership.

Afterwards we discussed the class. I got some good feedback from Dhruva prabhu. Too many personal stories in one class. The logical chain was too long for a lot of people. Some people were really into it, however it left a lot of people behind. That’s ok, but I wasn’t expecting that, even after giving it four times with feedback each time and trying to find its weaknesses.

One thing is that as the test audience at the ashram are all experienced devotees they can’t see the class as first time guests will see it. They accept a lot of things whereas the mind of the first time listener is critically examining everything, which wears them out fast. Also, a pure lifestyle and study of scripture increases your intelligence. The other thing is that after hearing it three or four times you become blithely unaware of the impact on a first time listener.

Anyway, it was a ranging shot for calibration. Teach less for more. Teach less material for more comprehension. Teach less action points for more action.

Here is the class from Thursday morning. At the moment we are doing Text 4 of the Nectar of Instruction. Channell talked about “checking into the hospital” and taking off the bandaids that people are using as stop-gap solutions to the deep problems in society and in their lives, and entering the “school of love” to learn to love one another and to love Krishna.

Afterward we discussed the relationship between service to Krishna and love of God, and service to and love for others. Click the logo to get the goods.

(.mp3, 32kbps, 22 mins, 5MB)

It was the third and final part in the three part series that we did on “What is Krishna Consciousness?”. This final part was entitled “Your Unique Significant Contribution”.

The first part was an informative class entitled “Your Spiritual Nature”. The second part was an entertaining program entitled “Hare Krishna Network”, where we talked about our relationship with Krishna, and the third part was a persuasive presentation.

(If you read my comic book you’ll see that messages have one of four primary goals: inspirational, informative, entertaining, persuasive)

I did the whole thing standing up, as much by accident as by design. When we set up the space I simply forgot to set up a chair. When it came time for me to deliver, I realized that there was no chair, but it would have looked really dumb to put one out. We have to get a good chair.

For that space, the best kind of chair is one is a stool where you are at roughly at standing height when you sit on it. This means that everyone can see you, instead of peering around people to stare at the back of someone’s else head in front of them.

I didn’t have much time to prepare my message, but I spoke from my passion so I covered it, although not to my satisfaction. We’ll repeat this program every six weeks or two months, and I’ll have time to prepare for the next one. This is the vision cast for the Sunday Feast. When you come to the Sunday Feast, you are coming in contact with a group of people who are on a mission.

Our mission is to apply our skills, abilities and talents at the point of greatest need - providing spiritual nourishment for a starving world. We’ll get behind anyone and build them up, give them opportunities to express and develop themselves in line with that mission.

I interspersed my presentation with three pre-recorded “testimonials” of Sunday Feast volunteers. At the next one we will have more elaborate videos showing our teams of volunteers at work in different aspects of the program. For this one we simply had a monologue from each volunteer.

You can check out a couple of the videos here:

Alison (.wmv, 32MB)
Channell (.wmv, 23MB)

and you can listen to my presentation (including the audio of the testimonials) here: (.mp3, 28MB).

We videoed the whole thing, and an online version of the video will be available next week.

In the past week we have received a donation for a screen for the projector and have added a sax player to the kirtan at the end.

People give to vision, moreso than to need.

This is Vrajadhama das giving class on Bhagavad-gita 9.27 at the Red Hill ashram.

I also have a recording of Param Satya giving class on this verse, which I’ll post tomorrow.

Tomorrow we change to Bhagavad-gita 4.33. Everyone gives class on it in alphabetical order, then we go on to the next verse linked with the values in our ashram mission statement. Alison is first.

This is the class I gave at the Sunday Feast this week. It’s part of a three part series based on a one sentence definition of Krishna Consciousness that I’ve been working on.

Krishna Consciousness is:

making your unique significant contribution with a deep understanding of who you are, including your spiritual nature and your relationship with Krishna.

The series is divided into three parts:

1. Your Spiritual Nature
2. Krishna, and Your Relationship with Krishna
3. Your Unique Significant Contribution

Next week’s presentation is a talk show that I am hosting, with Abhilasa das ACBSP as the guest. We should have our digital projector online by then, so we’ll have the opening and closing credits on there. For the future we’ll have ads as well, short 20 - 30 second dramas that we’ll record during the week. Those of you who were at the “Hare Krishna Network” programs in Miraflores already know the style.

Hare Krishna Network in da house!

About this week’s presentation

I used a style I got from John Maxwell, with the “fill in the blanks” class notes handout. It’s a good way to outline the class as part of your preparation, engage people during the presentation, and give them something to take away. That went across well.

Here are my own feedback items on the presentation:

• “Spiritual Malnutrition” was the hook to hang this off. Application first, then text. I did it backwards, which is the classical style of preaching. It’s fine for those who are already convinced, but others coming for the first time need to experience the benefits first. Give them the free sample.

  This failure is due to lack of preparation. I should have given this class at the ashram and discussed it with advisors (especially Vrajadhama and Tri Yuga) first.

• Shorter, Shorter, Shorter!
• To be honest with you, I was planning on doing the Prabhupada videos this week, so I spent all of about two hours preparing for this. Of course, this is on top of the ongoing thinking and teaching that I am doing. Still, I want to dedicate more time to preparing. More preparation. More preparation. More preparation!
• More preparation will allow me to be more relaxed, and to take more risks. I can potentially engage the audience a lot more passionately than I have been doing so far.

  Here’s a note I wrote to myself the other day: “If you are tense and nervous, the audience will be tense and nervous. If you are relaxed and confident, the audience will be relaxed and confident. If you are overconfident you will alienate the audience. The secret to confidence is preparation.”

• My vocal dynamics were suppressed because of the new WCE6T mic. It works great, but without a sound man I had to be really carefully to keep my voice at the same volume. “Nothing ruins a holy moment like a blast of feedback”. This makes the whole thing really mellow - read: boring.

  I experimented with standing up, but only briefly. When you hear me say: “If I take my clothes off…. I’m not going to do it….” I stood up and pretended I was about to unbutton my shirt. People appreciated the humour. I sat right back down again. Playing it safe - read: boring.

  Fear of failure is what kills you.

• I mentioned this last week - and again: I have to get rid of that nervous, short laugh.

A lot of people really liked it and came up afterwards and thanked me for it. Little do they know….

I feel so guilty these days about the lack of time and energy that I have been putting into these presentations. It is simply not fair to the public.

Anyway, here’s the schwag:

Intro (3 MB, 64kbps .mp3) - Discussion of Prabhupada’s appearance and Parampara
Your Spiritual Nature (21MB, 64kbps .mp3) - The Class
Questions (9MB, 64kbps .mp3) - And the outro to the kirtan

Handout (180K, .doc) - Presenter’s and Audience’s versions

We’re in the new ashram in Red Hill now, cleaning like mad. Oh yes, there is a lot of cleaning to be done.

The process of changing house is pretty traumatic - a slight glimpse of the process of changing bodies. It’s very disturbing.

Here is an mp3 (26MB, 37 minutes) of the first Bhagavatam class at the new ashram, from yesterday morning. We are in the Seventh Canto, but the Bhagavatam was packed up, so Alison brought out the First Canto Part Three, which is what she is reading, and I chose a verse at random, from Dhrtarastra Quits Home SB. 1.13.54.

There is no scriptural context component in the class (that’s the part where you talk about the verse in the context that it appears in the Bhagavatam) for that reason, and also because what I really wanted to do was put our current situation in context.

Otherwise if I had been able to prepare more for the class, knowing which verse it would be etc., I would have included this. It would have fit nicely, Dhrtarastra’s preparing himself for the transition of death and our shifting ashram viewed as training in remaining committed to devotional service in trying times.

The class segues into an operational briefing. We usually have one operational briefing a week where we cover Ashram, Loft, Sunday Feast, Volunteer Program, as well as a more strategic meeting where we discuss vision and direction. In the past month we haven’t been able to have either or any of these, and we have been working in urgent mode, meeting as and when we are able to all get together to synchronize.

Reflections on the class

I’ve been listening to this class since yesterday, and analyzing it. It’s completely improvised, and it shows. At the beginning I am saying that “non-devotees experience no satisfaction”. Later on I explain that they do experience some type of satisfaction, but it is very meagre and temporary. You can hear how I develop the theme as I am going.

Of course, my audience is on my side in this case, but in future:

• It should be “Krishna Conscious persons” instead of “devotees”
• It should be clear from the beginning that everyone experiences some taste, but that the taste that persons who are lacking Krishna Conscious direction in their lives experience is of a relatively inferior nature.
• “Many people” is far and away preferable to “most people”, which is too generalized.

Those are the three main things that I am taking away from this one, as well as working on my pronunciation of “can” - the word is not “kin”.

At the moment we do our welcome at 5.30 pm, because that’s when we’ve plateaued in terms of attendance, until around 6.30 pm. This mp3 is of this welcome.

The goal of this welcome is to create a community atmosphere - to make everyone feel like they are part of a big family. At the moment we’re shying away from the cliched: “How many people are here for the first time?”

Does anyone know why we do that? I think it might have started as a targeting mechanism for a visiting speaker to know how to pitch their class. Anyway, week after week it wears thin on the audience, and I’m not sure if it really contributes to creating community. It seems to me that it might send the message to those who are there that they are not so important, and it puts the new people on the spot.

I used to do it every week, and dialogue with the new people, asking them how they heard about us and why they came. Some people like to speak (especially about themselves), others don’t like the spotlight on them.

As we start to get tens of new people each week it will become increasingly irrelevant, and we’ll get more information through our feedback cards.

Anyway, let’s see what a different approach (or at least thinking about it) gets us.

Here it is: MP3 #1: Transition from Kirtan to Welcome to Class.

A few points for improvement:

• First week, so the transition from Madan to me was not smooth enough.
• My delivery was forced from the beginning. Not enough preparation, and no quiet time for me before going on, which I really need to deliver nicely
• Need to work on vocal inflection, and especially to reduce the “command” quality of my voice to make it less like I’m barking orders at people
• The humor was good, but the delivery needs work (god, especially get rid of that self-conscious, nervous laugh).
• The ending transition fell apart. Not enough preparation

Basically more time spent in preparation (eliminate roles through delegation and empowerment in order to create more quality in this role), and more practice will lead to improvement.

I think that with more time to prepare and rehearse the delivery will improve. A lot of the flaws are due to doing too many other things. Basically I want to develop this role and work on class presentation, giving a class every month or two, at the moment.

Today’s podcast is a conversation with Tri Yuga on Loft preaching, team-building, and personality types. This is the longest podcast yet at 25 minutes. It’s a 17MB download, which is nothing for all you broadband junkies out there. Apologies to all our third world readers with dial up.

Here are links to the resources mentioned in the podcast:

1. Tri Yuga’s summary of the 4 main Keirsey personality types.
2. Overview of the 16 Keirsey personality profiles.
3. Simple questionnaire to determine your personality type.
4. Please Understand Me, by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates.

Here’s today’s podcast on Tactical Adaptation and Time Management, which covers some further commentary inspired by the Sampradaya Sun article and by my attendance in the Franklin Covey FOCUS Time Management course yesterday.

It’s 13 minutes long and about 9MB. I recorded it as I walked to the train station, so I’m a bit out of breath at times. Tomorrow I’m going to see if Tri Yuga and I can sit down and discuss a little about his visit here, which is drawing to a close.

Here’s my first podcast kicking it in the house. It’s a commentary inspired by an article on preaching that I read on Sampradaya Sun. Here’s the article, which is by Dasanudas Vanacari, well known for his flute recordings and his book on the Science of Ragas and music - Spiritual Music Manifesto.

Dasanudas’ article, and a conversation the other day with a Loft preacher in New Zealand, made me aware of some missing material from a similar article that I wrote last year, which you can view here. I recorded the podcast at the train station this morning. Make the best use of time. Today Param and I are doing the Franklin Covey FOCUS time management training course at my work, so I thought that I would get something out today via podcasting.

Enjoy!

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