By: Mark Petersen on September 7, 2017
Thomas C. Oden’s brief work, How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind, is a tantalizing, mouth-watering attempt to whet the appetite of the reader toward feasting on new ideas. His astonishing premise radically reshapes traditional Western concepts of the foundations of the Christian faith which I was educated under. Gone is a myopic, Eurocentric perspective on…
By: Kyle Chalko on September 7, 2017
Thomas C. Oden’s book, How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity challenged me and how I have considered Christianity. It is true that many westerners and Europeans have viewed Africa Christianity with the same sort of mindset that the colonizers did. Many hold the attitude that every academic or…
By: Lynda Gittens on September 7, 2017
Then this Daniel was preferred above the presidents and princes because of an excellent spirit [was] in him, and the king thought to set him over the whole realm. Daniel 6:3 KJV Let all things be done decently and in order. 1 Corinthians 14:40 KJV According to the website Know Jesus Know Peace, in…
By: Jennifer Williamson on September 7, 2017
There is no doubt that African influences and voices were paramount in shaping Christian thought and self-understanding. In How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity, Oden endeavours to “Set forth the basic vision for a renewed initiative in the theological and historical reassessment of early African Christianity” (Kindle loc…
By: Katy Drage Lines on September 7, 2017
Ubiquitous on office shelves across the business, social and religious sectors, Jim Collins’ book Good to Great and its companion, Good to Great and the Social Sectors are undoubtedly required reading for leaders and potential leaders, especially those who want their companies or organizations to be “great.” I believe Collins’ simple, straightforward explanation of what…
By: Jennifer Dean-Hill on September 6, 2017
Confession. My covetousness in reading Collins’ book, Good to Great was at an all-time high. I found myself coveting: the humility and skills of a Level 5 leader, the wisdom to take good businesses to great businesses by getting the right people on or off the bus, the ability to operate the Hedgehog concept, the…
By: Dan Kreiss on September 6, 2017
Thomas Oden in his book ‘How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind’ encourages readers to reconsider the foundations of Christian thought. He argues that much has been lost by the European ethnocentrism of Christian teaching. Neglecting the significant theological contributions of the early Christians based on the African continent negates the importance of their insights and…
By: Stu Cocanougher on September 6, 2017
I was first introduced to Jim Collins and his book Good to Great years ago at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit. Our church, Southcliff, hosted the WCGLS several years via live webcast. Collins’s talk was memorable. The concept that “good was the enemy of great” certainly stuck with me. Having said that, it was…
By: Jake Dean-Hill on September 6, 2017
How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind by Thomas Oden was completely shocking to me. Every other chapter revealed another truth about Africa’s contribution to Christianity that has been kept hidden from me all these years. Like the author reiterates throughout the book, I have been brainwashed to believe that most everything Christian had European roots.…
By: Mary Walker on September 6, 2017
“To be successful, the first thing to do is to fall in love with your work.” Sister Mary Lauretta “You begin with passion, then you refine passion with a rigorous assessment of what you can best contribute to the communities you touch. Then you create a way to tie your resource engine directly…
By: Jim Sabella on September 5, 2017
Jim Collins’ books and franchise are very successful. Regrettably, my experience with the Good to Great “framework of ideas” has not been positive. That experience has informed this post. “Our five-year quest yielded many insights, a number of them surprising and quite contrary to conventional wisdom, but one giant conclusion stands above the others: We…
By: Kyle Chalko on September 3, 2017
Welcome. You found the potato.
By: Dave Watermulder on September 3, 2017
Happy Sunday morning!
By: Jason Turbeville on September 2, 2017
test test test
By: Chip Stapleton on June 29, 2017
I really enjoyed reading through Thomas Oden’s provocative history How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity. I enjoyed being reminded of the central and critical role that Africa and Africans played in shaping what we think of as Western Christianity and Western Christian thought and theology. Oden states plainly: Africa…
By: Kevin Norwood on June 23, 2017
Mark Mathabane in his autobiography Kaffir Boy gives a clear picture of what life under apartheid is truly like for those who are on the lowest level of humanity. In his words, he was a “fourth class citizen.” The struggle of what faced human beings because of other human’s desire for control and power is…
By: Geoff Lee on June 23, 2017
What an inspirational story. From the slums of a South African township to a college scholarship. From abject poverty and apartheid to academia and America. This is a story of redemption and hope out of a seemingly hopeless hovel of an existence. Some of the things that stood out to me as I read the…
By: Katy Drage Lines on June 23, 2017
An old Turkana man agrees to wed his daughter, Kaiikeny, to a friend, as his third wife. Kaiikeny’s new husband agrees on the bride price (two hundred goats, dozens of donkeys and sheep, and ten camels). Kaiikeny then participates in the akinyonyo, a women-only celebration in her new husband’s emachar (brand, clan), initiating her out…
By: Jason Kennedy on June 23, 2017
I have to admit, I was never really familiar with apartheid. Sure, I had heard the word and even heard about Nelson Mandela, but it was something far in my rearview mirror. I am not sure why. It is probably the closest thing to Nazis Germany and the Holocaust that my generation has seen. Maybe…
By: Chip Stapleton on June 23, 2017
Kaffir Boy is Mark Mathabane’s autobiographical story of his growing up and coming of age under Apartheid in Alexandra, South Africa. It doesn’t quite feel right to say this was a ‘good’ book or that I enjoyed reading it (in a similar way, that I didn’t enjoy watching Schindler’s list). But it is certainly a powerful story…
