By: Erica Briggs on February 15, 2024
On Thursday, February 8th, 2024 a mother called the crisis line to report that her 12-year-old son was destroying personal property and exhibiting aggressive behavior towards members of the household. The operator told her to call the police. When officers arrived, the child walked off the property and away from the scene. Since he was…
By: Jonita Fair-Payton on December 6, 2023
Most of us live two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands resistance. ~Steve Pressfield The back cover of this book asks a question that I yelled “YES” as an answer! YES, I dream about writing the Great American Novel! Now that I’ve cleared that up…how do…
By: Jonita Fair-Payton on September 14, 2023
I had a plan for my Summer. It included many trips to the beach, a quest to find the best breakfast taco (my favorite food), a moderate amount of Uber driving for my children, leisurely reading for a book club that I joined (friends from high school), drinking frozen beverages and having my age-appropriate version…
By: Kayli Hillebrand on September 9, 2021
I found Steele’s Shame to be a thoughtful critical analysis of America, our political systems, and the forces at play that are competing for power and control. His explanation of the new liberalisms ‘poetic truth’ and its impact on society and specifically minority populations describe the ongoing barriers that have allowed disenfranchised people groups to…
By: Dylan Branson on September 28, 2020
I pause at the door, my hand hovering over the latch. The steps out of the Tower and out of the City are filled with Unknowns I don’t know where I’m going – I hardly know where I’ve been at this point. I can still turn back. I can still I say, “No.’ That’s…
By: Dylan Branson on September 7, 2020
The room is large with high vaulted ceilings and windows that stretch to unimaginable heights. The flames of the torches hanging in their wall sconces bounce off of the walls, casting dancing shadows across the endless shelves of books of and scrolls. Each section is ordered and labeled properly: Preserved scrolls of the great philosophers,…
By: Dylan Branson on March 9, 2020
In Simon Walker’s The Undefended Leader trilogy, Walker seeks to lay out various challenges found within leadership. In the study of leadership, the question is often trying to discern a definition of leadership that is both applicable and makes sense. Walker writes, “Leadership is about who you are, not what you know or what skills…
By: Mario Hood on February 20, 2020
FYI, the title has nothing to do with my post, it just came in my head so I decided to go with it :)! Steven Pinker, Ph.D., is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. In his book, Enlightenment Now, he lays out his argument for why the Enlightenment, reason, and humanism, aka…
By: Mario Hood on January 24, 2020
The other day, I was just in the gym getting ready to work out, and I walked up to a conversation between two people, and one turned to me and said, “explain to her the difference between North Carolina and South Carolina.” Without hesitation, I knew what she was inferring that South Carolina people are…
By: Joe Castillo on November 16, 2019
“It seems hard to believe that a book called “How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read” would hit the best-seller lists in France, where books are still regarded as sacred objects and the writer occupies a social position somewhere between the priest and the rock star. The ostensible anti-intellectualism of the title seems more…
By: Mario Hood on September 19, 2019
In Deep Work, Cal Newport, associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University, lays out his argument for focused work or what he calls deep work. The guiding principle Newport lays out is one that encourages the reader to engage in work that demands your full focus. By engaging in this type of work, one…
By: Mario Hood on September 12, 2019
James C. “Jim” Collins is an American author, consultant, and lecturer on the subject of business management and company sustainability and growth.[1] In his classic and continuing bestseller book, Good to Great, Collins and his researchers sifted through 1,435 Fortune 500 companies to find the few that met their study’s criteria for greatness, out of these companies they…
By: Chris Pollock on September 12, 2019
In the house where I grew up I remember there was a book on a shelf in the upper hallway that had a picture on the front cover that often caught my attention. The picture was of open hands covering a woman’s face. ‘With Open Hands’ is the title of the book and, Henri Nouwen…
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: Shawn Hart on June 6, 2019
I am not sure about the rest of you, but I am a visualist. To be honest, I don’t think that is even a real word, but what I mean by it is that I try to visualize things in my head all the time; especially, I want to visualize the bible…
By: Shawn Hart on April 12, 2019
What a truly refreshing book to wrap up this semester with! Though we have had some very thought-provoking reading materials lately, I believe this book summed up a number of places that can be a challenge in ministry; and evidently, even in graduate school. For the point of this paper, I decided to highlight on…
By: Shawn Hart on April 4, 2019
(Please forgive me; I have been everywhere but at my desk today so my response to the reading will be less than complete; in addition to a busy week thus far, I have left my copy of the book at the church building…so no quotes from it). It seems this has been the book I…
By: Mario Hood on March 14, 2019
Reading Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World[1] this week could not have come at a timelier spot. Thirty years ago, in March, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who at the time was working at CERN, invented the foundation for the World Wide Web after he took hypertext and connected it to…
By: Mario Hood on February 28, 2019
University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter published the seminal work, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World, in 2010. As much talk in the Evangelical ethos centers around engaging culture or transforming the world, Hunter’s work was much anticipated then and continues to be influential now.…
By: Shawn Hart on February 21, 2019
Decisions…decisions! Perhaps “Scandal” is the best title for this book when reviewing this week’s reading, “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind;” after all, Mark Noll seems to enjoy hitting on some of those favorite topics of the modern-day preacher…evangelical or not. The fact is, he hit upon two of my personal favorites; Revelation and Evolution.…
