Category: Biography, Drama, History
By: Dylan Branson on October 26, 2020
I stand on the bank of the raging river outside of Knowing’s Edge, watching the stream rush by before me. The gurgling of the water flowing before is both enticing and terrifying. I’m not entirely sure how long I’ve been at the inn – it feels like a long time, and yet not long at…
By: Dylan Branson on September 21, 2020
I’ve failed. My conversation with the Seeker replays over and over again in my mind. Their parting words cut to my core: “Until others can grasp what you say, knowledge is useless. Knowledge may be powerful, but if it is not properly wielded it is simply useless strokes on a page.” Fury rises in my…
By: Dylan Branson on September 1, 2020
Identity and narrative are two of the most powerful driving forces in our lives. The questions “Who am I?”, “Where have I been?”, “Where am I now?” and “Where am I going?” influence not just the way that we see ourselves, but the way that we see the world. But what happens when our narratives…
By: Joe Castillo on April 13, 2020
To develop strong and effective leadership in these challenging times, it is essential to recover the issue of the negative image that the world has of Christians. Possibly 90 percent of the world’s population believes that there is a Supreme Being who created all things and rules the universe. Even atheists or primitive people in…
By: Mario Hood on February 14, 2020
The famous or infamous University of Toronto professor and clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson, PhD, is an unlikely celebrity in our current culture. Known for his straight forward demeanor and political incorrectness. He is also the author of 12 Rules for Life and this weeks reading Maps of Meaning. In Maps of Meaning, Peterson sketches…
By: Mario Hood on February 6, 2020
The general agreement suggests that we live in a postmodern context.[1] Stephen R. C. Hicks is a Canadian American philosopher. He teaches at Rockford University, where he also directs the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship. In his book, Explaining Postmodernism, he seeks to trace the origins of our current intellectual way of thinking. As Marcus…
By: Mario Hood on January 30, 2020
I heard a speaker/preacher once say at church, “if you go back far enough, everyone has a past.” The purpose of saying that was to make everyone realize you are not where you use to be but never think of yourself to highly because, without God, none of us would be where we are at…
By: Joe Castillo on January 14, 2020
I want to reflect on chapter 5 from the book “Evangelicalism in Modern Britain” because it resonates with my own Methodist experience. I want to focus primarily on “The Methodist Holiness Tradition.” as I perceive it. There are two points that I come to mind as I read the chapter; WE ARE MADE HOLY IN…
By: Mario Hood on November 14, 2019
Simon Walker is the CEO of STEER, a UK based company in which he leads the research team in projects that describe and apply to how steering cognition influences human society. If you are like me, you might be wondering what the heck is steering cognition. Well, thanks to one of the four, google says,…
By: Mario Hood on November 7, 2019
In a recent podcast of Building a StoryBrand Donald Miller, the guest explained that even though Amazon stock was at an all-time high, this was still the best time to buy the stock. When pressed for the reason why the guest said because this is the lowest it will ever be. He continued and said…
By: Mario Hood on October 24, 2019
Kets de Vries is a Dutch management scholar and psychoanalyst, Professor of leadership development and organizational change at INSEAD, and consultant.[1]He takes all his various spheres of knowledge. Then he examines how people in positions of leadership project their personal neuroses[2] in his book Down the Rabbit Hole of Leadership, Pathology in Everyday Life. The book is divided into two parts.…
By: Mario Hood on October 17, 2019
In 1983, Apple launched its computer Lisa, and the last project Jobs worked on before he was let go. Jobs released Lisa with a nine-page ad in the New York Times spelling out the computer’s technical features. It was nine pages of geek talk nobody outside NASA was interested in. The computer bombed. When Jobs…
By: Mario Hood on October 10, 2019
At one point in the not so distant past, there was one view of history. The dominant power largely determined that view. In his book The Silk Road, Peter Frankopan, a Senior research fellow at Worcester College and the director of the Centre for Byzantine Research from Oxford University, sets out to rewrite history or…
By: Mario Hood on June 20, 2019
I absolutely love reading Tom Camacho, Mining for Gold: Developing Kingdom Leaders Through Coaching. I spoke to me on many different levels, and while it was not the most prolific academic work we have read thus far, it is powerful, practical and I would even add prophetic for where leadership is going. Camacho self…
By: Mario Hood on June 6, 2019
In the book Reasonable Radical? Reading the writings of Martyn Percy, editors Ian Markham and Joshua Daniel present a collection of writings that introduce the reader to Martyn Percy as well as essays from Percy himself. The first half of the book is ‘substantial, critical introduction’ to Martyn Percy’s thought; the second half consists of…
By: Mario Hood on May 16, 2019
This week’s reading, The Coddling of The American Mind, written by Haidt (social psychologist and professor in New York University’s Stern School of Business plus Board Chair of the Heterodox Academy) and Lukianoff (president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) deals with the well-being of the “iGen” generation. The book deals…
By: Mario Hood on April 4, 2019
In, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt lays out a case for why moral judgments stem from emotional feelings rather than rational reasoning. In reviewing the book, Margery Lucas, a Professor of Psychology and Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences at Wellesley College, states, “this book remains an ingenious…
By: Mario Hood on March 7, 2019
In Simple Habits for Complex Times, Jennifer Garvey Berger and Keith Johnston set out to help leaders navigate through the rise of VUCA: volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.[1] The style of the book while packed with research and analytical data is written in an easy to digest format that both academics and non-academics will enjoy.…
By: Mario Hood on February 21, 2019
As a pastor and marketer, I find Vincent Miller’s, Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture, fascinating on many levels. From the marketing perspective, it challenges the ethics of said industry when it comes to the commodification of religious symbols. Daryl McKee in the journal of marketing writes, “He (Miller) goes…
By: Mario Hood on February 15, 2019
In the social sciences field, similar to Karl Polanyni’s, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Max Weber’s, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, is considered a seminal work and “still remains one of the most influential and widely read works in social science”.[1] Weber using both empirical research and…
