DLGP

Doctor of Leadership in Global Perspectives: Crafting Ministry in an Interconnected World

Category: Uncategorized

The Soundtrack of Growth: How Choir Has Shaped My Life

By: on April 23, 2025

Singing has always been my escape, a way to clear my mind and release what weighs me down. I quickly learned a powerful truth in choir: you are not in control. Someone else is conducting, others are harmonizing alongside you, and if you miss a note, chances are no one will notice. You blend into…

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Clear Thinking Knows No Age

By: on April 21, 2025

Last week was the crescendo event of the 2025 FIRST Robotics season. Nearly 50,000 people from 160 countries converged on Houston, Texas for the World Championship. It was an exhausting week of problem-solving competition that saw tears of joy and defeat. For our family, the season started in the fall of 2024 as an after-school…

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Catching Flies With Vinegar

By: on April 20, 2025

Before reading Gad Saad’s The Parasitic Mind, How Infectious Ideas are Killing Common Sense, I reflected on a few of my previously gathered ideas about ideologies. As people’s understanding of life is formed by their family, faith and political environments, it crystallizes into a framework of understanding the world. How people think and feel about…

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A Shooting Star!

By: on April 18, 2025

I was about to turn 30 years old. I planned a four-day, three-night whitewater rafting trip over in California, the American River, inviting about 60 of my church members, youth, young adults, and their families. Somehow, I was able to find a spot right next to the river, with a mountain rising on the other…

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Saying “No” to Defaults

By: on April 18, 2025

It was another clear and crisp morning at 4 a.m. when we stumbled out of our tent and peered into the West Texas skyline to view the glow on the horizon. Ken, Jerry, and I quickly shaved and began our routine ten-minute stroll to the operational control center, where we were planning the next phase…

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Wants, Values, Therapy & Fire.

By: on April 18, 2025

It’s unsettling how much intentionality is required to spend our hours doing what we want to do. In our transcendence through the information age into now limitless potential and possibilities, creators and leaders are paralyzed by freedom.  The biggest obstacles creators (entrepreneurs, knowledge workers, pastors, artists, writers, etc) face is knowing what they are supposed…

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By: on April 18, 2025

The Hamster Wheel: How do I get off?   Since September 2024, when I decided to return to school, my days have followed a demanding rhythm. Mornings begin with waking the kids, packing lunches, getting everyone ready, and making the school drop-off, all before starting my workday by 7:30 a.m. That early start is often the only…

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To Speak or Not To Speak- That is The Question

By: on April 17, 2025

A Personal Perspective on Modern Ideologies As I sit and reflect on my current beliefs about modern ideologies, I find through my years of diverse exposure an increased commitment to worldview views. Admittedly, growing up, I was indoctrinated into an American lens deeply steeped in Western culture and context. Now with a broader scope, I…

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(Organizational) Life after Death

By: on April 17, 2025

One of the least fun or exciting tasks—but perhaps one of the most important—I’ve completed in recent days is a crisis response plan for the church I serve as lead pastor if I’m suddenly unable to perform my duties. I know that death, incapacitation, or dismissal would be a tremendous challenge for the organization, especially…

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Some Things Just Work!

By: on April 17, 2025

As I sat down to write this blog post on Shane Parrish’s New York Times Bestseller, Clear Thinking [1], I suddenly became quite fuzzy due to heavy ingestion of serious painkillers. I knew that many things were competing for my clarity of thought. I suddenly felt the urge to turn this ordinary moment into an…

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Cognitive Contagion

By: on April 17, 2025

The human mind is both fantastic and flawed.  It is capable of deep reason and dangerous delusion. In George Orwell’s 1984, the protagonist Winston Smith lives in a world where truth is not discovered but manufactured by the oppressive regime of Big Brother. The Party controls not just the actions of its citizens, but even…

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Truth Matters and So Does Love

By: on April 17, 2025

 “Why do I need to wear those?” I protested to my dad. I was about six years old, and he insisted I wear white tights before church. His reasoning? “They’ll help keep you warm in the subzero temperatures,” I remember scoffing—did he really think that thin layer of nylon would make a difference? Even then,…

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A Reflection on Modern Ideologies and Their Impact

By: on April 17, 2025

What About Modern Ideologies?  A few years ago, a rumor circulated that schools were placing litter boxes in bathrooms to accommodate students who identified as furries[1]. I wasn’t living in the United States at the time, so I didn’t track how it all unfolded. Whether true or not, it’s telling that public discourse was stirred…

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Ambivalent

By: on April 17, 2025

Previous Understanding of Ideologies Lacking a clear definition of ideologies, I tend to believe they are the belief systems of people, dissatisfied with the status quo, who take religious, political, or philosophical beliefs to extremes. Ideologies appear to be a framework that their adherents believe will set the world to rights if only everyone gets…

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Decisions, Decisions, Decisions…

By: on April 17, 2025

Leadership is hard work. Particularly when you think of all the factors that go into improving one’s leadership mindset, style, and approach. Jules Glanzer, in last week’s reading, indicated that “everyone is called to serve, and some are chosen to lead.”[1] The idea of “being chosen” comes with great responsibility in not only how we…

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Tempering The Inner Honey Badger

By: on April 17, 2025

 This week’s reading, The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense by Gad Saad, critically examines the prevailing worldview and approach to life that the author attributes to leftist academia. Saad posits that there is an escalating crusade in society to concoct increasingly irrational departures from reason as a signal of progressive virtue.[1]…

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Defaults and Strengths

By: on April 16, 2025

In Clear Thinking, Shane Parrish explores biological defaults that shape human behavior. The “emotion default”[1] arises when emotions overpower rational thought, a phenomenon Dr. David Rock attributes to limbic system activation reducing prefrontal cortex function.[2] The “ego default”[3] defends self-worth and social standing, often reacting defensively, aligning with Rock’s concept of status, where threats are…

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Whose Mind is Infected by Parasites?

By: on April 16, 2025

Special assignment: Before reading The Parasitic Mind by Gad Saad, answer these questions: What do I believe about “modern ideologies”? Why do I believe what I currently do? What are my current convictions and most deeply held beliefs and understandings based upon and why? Then do an inspectional reading. How have my beliefs been affirmed…

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Response-ability

By: on April 16, 2025

I was recently presented with an opportunity to define leadership from my cohort colleague, Robert. Here’s how I chose to do so: Leadership defines what today is and influences others toward what tomorrow will be. Good leadership does so while not losing one’s own soul. It’s a work in progress and open to critique. In…

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Can I Title This: “Let’s Grow a Pair?”

By: on April 16, 2025

Pre-Reading on modern Ideologies: Let me first state that I am painting with a broad stroke here regarding modern ideologies. Secondly, let me state that I am primarily looking through a Western, American lens. There are Islamic ideologies that are also growing that I do not have space to dig into.   Modernism: This ideology…

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