Helping

I’ve just made my way through Edgar Schein’s Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help, and have found it it very informative for helping others. It is not just that, however. Schein also writes about how to help teams and organizations. This is a very helpful book for consultants to read in order to improve their own skills, particularly in process consulting. One comment that he makes is that he does not fully understand some things, such as why focusing on process is more helpful than focusing on content in consulting and facilitation. This one thing made me stop and think. How important is process? I think that it has to be important. By focusing of the process of communication, or anything else, the content naturally will develop. Why then, do we spend so much time on content?

Books for Christmas

I recieved four books for Christmas:

Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help by Edgar Schein

Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership by Warren Bennis

Getting Started in Consulting by Allen Weiss

Common English Bible New Testament (DecoTone Tan/Chocolate Brown)

It’s good to have these to balance out all of the theoretical books I read last semester.

New Posts

There will be new posts soon, discussing some thoughts about evangelism, social entrepreneurship, community development, and leadership / organizational issues. As soon as final are over.

Classes for January Term and Spring Semester

In January I will take a short (relatively) class:

CD920 Instructional Theory and Development

In the Spring I am taking:

ME914 Theology of Evangelism

ME983 Evangelization Seminar: Applied Conversion Perspectives

MD921 Leading Groups & Organizations

MD955 Holistic Mission & the Use of Business In Global Outreach

After this, I will only need one class to finish my coursework. Then, qualifying exams, dissertation proposal, and dissertation.

Classes for Fall

Here are the classes I am taking this semester:

MC945 Cross-Cultural Communication of Christianity with George Hunter III ME981 Evangelization Seminar: Historical Perspectives with Art McPhee MH977 Christian Witness and Other Religions with Terry Muck ML 790 Independent Study (Organizational Behavior and Missiology) with Russell West

Augustine on the Appropriation of Secular Knowledge

I love this quote from Augustine (On Christian Doctrine, Book II, Chapter 40) on why our efforts as Christians should be interdisciplinary:

Moreover, if those who are called philosophers, and especially the Platonists, have said aught that is true and in harmony with our faith, we are not only not to shrink from it, but to claim it for our own use from those who have unlawful possession of it. For, as the Egyptians had not only the idols and heavy burdens which the people of Israel hated and fled from, but also vessels and ornaments of gold and silver, and garments, which the same people when going out of Egypt appropriated to themselves, designing them for a better use, not doing this on their own authority, but by the command of God, the Egyptians themselves, in their ignorance, providing them with things which they themselves, were not making a good use of; in the same way all branches of heathen learning have not only false and superstitious fancies and heavy burdens of unnecessary toil, which every one of us, when going out under the leadership of Christ from the fellowship of the heathen, ought to abhor and avoid; but they contain also liberal instruction which is better adapted to the use of the truth, and some most excellent precepts of morality; and some truths in regard even to the worship of the One God are found among them. Now these are, so to speak, their gold and silver, which they did not create themselves, but dug out of the mines of God’s providence which are everywhere scattered abroad, and are perversely and unlawfully prostituting to the worship of devils. These, therefore, the Christian, when he separates himself in spirit from the miserable fellowship of these men, ought to take away from them, and to devote to their proper use in preaching the gospel. Their garments, also,—that is, human institutions such as are adapted to that intercourse with men which is indispensable in this life,—we must take and turn to a Christian use.
61. And what else have many good and faithful men among our brethren done? Do we not see with what a quantity of gold and silver and garments Cyprian, that most persuasive teacher and most blessed martyr, was loaded when he came out of Egypt? How much Lactantius brought with him? And Victorious, and Optatus, and Hilary, not to speak of living men! How much Greeks out of number have borrowed! And prior to all these, that most faithful servant of God, Moses, had done the same thing; for of him it is written that he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. And to none of all these would heathen superstition (especially in those times when, kicking against the yoke of Christ, it was persecuting the Christians) have ever furnished branches of knowledge it held useful, if it had suspected they were about to turn them to the use of worshipping the One God, and thereby overturning the vain worship of idols. But they gave their gold and their silver and their garments to the people of God as they were going out of Egypt, not knowing how the things they gave would be turned to the service of Christ. For what was done at the time of the exodus was no doubt a type prefiguring what happens now. And this I say without prejudice to any other interpretation that may be as good, or better.

you can find a translation of it here.

This is scary…

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Book Note: Transforming Church in Rural America: Breaking All the Rurals

Many thanks to New Leaf Publishing Group and Jennifer O. White for the review copy. Shannon O’Dell has written a commendable book in Transforming Church in Rural America: Breaking All the Rurals. For who have never been in ministry in a small, rural, church, this book will shed a great deal of light. For those who do serve in rural areas, and there are many, this book will resonate, and ultimately, give hope. Why would a successful staff pastor leave a large church, city, and salary to go out to the sticks? This book tells the story.

While many of the concepts that O’Dell writes about are not new,  the context in which they are set is. While there have been a handful of books written about rural ministry, few have been able to tell of the success that O’Dell has seen. More than anything, this book gives hope for those who serve in some of the most challenging areas with very limited resources. O’Dell does not paint a rosy picture about rural ministry; readers will find stories that will make them angry, laugh, cry, and jump up and down.

Throughout the book O’Dell shares the values and leadership needed to faithfully fulfill God’s mission in rural areas. The stories are inspiring. They give hope. They are accurate. This is a book that every pastor serving in a rural setting should read. Some might find qualms or questions with O’Dell’s conservative views, but these do not override the message of the book: Rural ministry is not a dead end, but with hard work, faith, and a lot of guts, rural churches can be God’s witness to those areas most would rather run from. Very inspiring; recommended.

Book Note: Transforming Church

Transforming Church by Kevin Ford is a unique and valuable contribution to church growth and church health research literature. Unlike many books on church growth/health, this book does not offer quick and easy answers to church decline. It does, however, offer valuable insights based on filed research.

Ford’s name may not be known to many in the field of church growth, but should be. Ford is not an academic, but an organizational consultant with the TAG Consulting group. Since he is a consulting, the value in this book is that the perspective comes from organizational and leadership development. This has often been an area that has not been fully investigated by church growth proponents, or at least not investigated accurately or profitably.

This is not to say that Ford or TAG consulting is unfamilier with church consulting. The group has done work with many churches, large and small, and through that developed the TCIndex, which is a unique congregational survey & assessment tool used to understand and help introduce change into a congregation.

One of the benefits of this book is that it introduces readers to adaptive leadership and change, a theory developed by Harvard leadership guru Ronald Heifetz.

In the book, Ford outlines fives key indicators that must be considered in understanding the transformation of churches:

1. Consumerism/Community

2. Incongruence/Code

3. Autocracy/Shared Leadership

4. Cloister/Missional

5. Inertia/Reinvention

This is not purely theoretical; Ford provides case studies illustrating each. One of the valuable points that Ford makes is that change is not instant, but happens slower that most would like. he likens the transformation of the church to a journey. Throughout the book, the reader enters the world of the consultant, gaining knowledge not only of the factors that can lead a church into change and health, but the questions to ask in the process. The case studies, which highlight the positive, as well as the hard aspects, of church change, give the reader a way to understand the theory presented, and are worth the price of the book alone. This is welcome addition to the literature, as well as a book that can be very important for churches that are plateaued or in decline. Highly recommended.

New Resources Page

I Added a New Resource Page on Leadership and Organizational Studies. It’s just starting, and I will add more, particularly areas in which leadership and organizational studies help to inform evangelism, missiology, and church growth.