This week’s reading was brutal. Our cohort had to read, not one, not two, but three books in a matter of days. They weren’t easy ones either. Absorbing the material from Simon Walker’s The Undefended Leader trilogy was like drinking from a leadership fire hydrant. This is not to say that the arduous reading [...]
As I write this there are no less than seven stories in this morning’s paper lambasting the intemperate excesses of large companies that have resulted in large scale privacy loss, antitrust violations and billions worth of lost capital. Not surprisingly, Facebook, one of the four horsemen in Scott Galloway’s book The Four: The Hidden [...]
Reading Manfred F.R. Kets De Vries’ Down the Rabbit Hole of Leadership was like embarking on a backpacking trip. One had to slog through the initial rough terrain, enduring steep switchbacks before reaching breathtaking mountain-top vistas. Except I thought this book’s trailhead started in the dumps. I was almost tempted to use my newly [...]
O wow! Reading Edwin Friedman’s A Failure of Nerve was like drinking from a fire hydrant — there’s just so much to assimilate. I found myself highlighting many parts, frequently re-reading sections, trying to comprehend his ideas about leadership. Then there were the familiar concepts we’re told not to emulate, such as empathy and [...]
Reading this new historical tome by Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads reminded me of my favorite quote which sums up the atrocities in the Middle Ages: “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”Attributed to French philosopher Denis Diderot. It’s a gruesome picture [...]
Political theologian William Cavanaugh asks a provocative question: “How does a provincial farm boy become persuaded that he must travel as a soldier to another part of the world and kill people he knows nothing about?”William T. Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination: Christian Practices of Space and Time (London: T&T Clark, 2002). 1. That is [...]
Reading Tom Camacho’s Mining for Gold was refreshing, encouraging and challenging all at once. Refreshing because it locates leadership within each of our strengths (ironically, this means relying on our weaknesses); encouraging because Camacho reminds us that our identity is in Christ; and challenging because it requires full reliance on the Holy Spirit for [...]
Reading our text, CultureShock! A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette: London, this week brought fond memories of the time my wife and I were in London almost six years ago. It was a very special occasion because a good friend who was completing his D.Phil. at Oxford at the time invited my wife [...]
Reading Emma Percy’s book What Clergy Do: Especially When It Looks Like Nothing turned out to be an enjoyable and fun experience. When I first scanned the pages, (a practice I do before I actually sit down to read any book) I thought “would the cultural and denominational distance between me and the author [...]
Ever since I started the discipline of reading the weekly required text for the doctoral program I’m (and my cohort) in, I’ve made it a point to recommend some of the titles to my pastors. I feel comfortable doing that because my local church leaders know what my ministry passions are. It’s also my [...]
