By: Jay Forseth on October 26, 2017
Ethnography? I am embarrassed to say I never heard that word before this Doctoral program, not even once… It’s kinda sad to have to look up your key word for the week to see what it means. But, look it up I did. Sorry to say, I still don’t fully understand what it really is.…
By: Dave Watermulder on October 26, 2017
In the era of “fake news”, there are questions about what we hear, see and consume as “trustworthy” or “true” information. What does an event mean, how do we understand the words that a person uses, and how “objective” can reporters really be? In her book, “Doing Visual Ethnography”, Sarah Pink writes that “the…
By: Mark Petersen on October 26, 2017
In the development of our DMin research, we must not neglect the significant potential of image and video to record, track, explain, and illustrate concepts. Sarah Pink’s book, Doing Visual Ethnography (2nd Edition), advances the power of image to convey meaning; as we apply these principles, we can also communicate our ideas in a more…
By: Chris Pritchett on October 26, 2017
“Images + Words > Words alone” Every pastor who gets ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA) is required to take at least one unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). For me, this involved 120 hours in a hospital setting, with a small group of other students doing chaplaincy training together. CPE is a painful journey…
By: Mary Walker on October 26, 2017
“A niche thus exists for this book, which affirms that the choice is often between articulation and ‘desertion’ – voice and exit, in our neutral terminology.”[1] All through his book, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States, Albert O. Hirschman has an underlying assumption that things can get better.…
By: Greg on October 26, 2017
“If a picture paints a thousand words”, says Nicholas Boyd Crutchley, “then let a picture inspire a thousand words.” [1] This is such a cliché and overly used phrase, but true. Pictures and media can speak to us in ways that simple words would not let us hear. I have seen this while preaching on…
By: Jim Sabella on October 26, 2017
In 1970 I was 12 years old. That was the year when more than fifty percent of the members of our church decided to exit our church community. My family was not one of them. I remember the pain it caused in our church and our family. People who were friends for years no longer…
By: Dan Kreiss on October 25, 2017
From my current vantage point writing a dissertation, even with terrific mentorship, seems like sheer nonsense and fantasy. How on earth will I ever be able to adequately discern a meaningful question, conduct beneficial and focused research, and then formulate the acquired knowledge and information into something that contributes in some small way to a…
By: Lynda Gittens on October 25, 2017
As a 9th grader, I was involved in a confrontation, and at that moment I was about the lead with a right hook, a teacher came around the corner. Now, I was a student at the school where my father taught, so I chose to exit. Forward three years, I was a model for…
By: Kristin Hamilton on October 25, 2017
My experience as an American has given me the impression that loyalty is expected, except when it’s not, that choosing to leave is disloyal, except when it’s not, and those who protest should shut up or leave, except when it has worked out nicely for Americans to stay and complain. For many of us, our…
By: Jake Dean-Hill on October 24, 2017
Sarah Pink’s, Doing Visual Ethnography, was an interesting read. Although I did not like her writing style, I was interested to learn more about this word/term, ethnography, that I was introduced to for the very first time. As I did some research on this book and this new term, I learned a few things that…
By: Jennifer Dean-Hill on October 24, 2017
When there is a decline of an organization, the participants or customers wrestle with how to respond: do they exit by walking away from the organization, talk by voicing their opposition and concerns to the leadership, or remain loyal to the organization in hopes of improvements? Although Hirschman gives a thorough, intellectual explanation of each…
By: Stu Cocanougher on October 24, 2017
The handwriting is on the wall. Actually, it’s not handwriting that adorns the walls of many churches, but a wooden plaque with removable numbers that indicate the church’s attendance and offering receipts. For many churches, that information has migrated from the plaque on the wall to a spot in the church bulletin. Either…
By: Mike on October 21, 2017
Sarah Pink’s, Doing Visual Ethnography is a breakthrough in the use of visual media to inspire, create, and express new dimensions of knowledge. Ethnography is an approach for researchers to connect and relate to social cultures with new disciplines, agendas, and theoretical principles.[1] Pink’s work confirms the successful transition of visual anthropology into the 21st…
By: Chip Stapleton on October 20, 2017
What does leadership really look like? That is, in essence, the question that just about every book on leadership asks and then, in turn, seeks to answer. Milton Friedman’s opus, Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, in that sense, is not such an unusual entry into the voluminous category of ‘leadership’…
By: Kristin Hamilton on October 19, 2017
Edwin Friedman’s theories about family systems changed my life. In my MDiv program we read Generation to Generation in one class, followed by Failure of Nerve a year later. These two books opened my eyes and gave me the courage to make some very important changes in my life, including where I lived, how I…
By: Christal Jenkins Tanks on October 19, 2017
As I began to read his book, my curiosity grew as to who was Edwin H. Friedman. I asked myself “why was his input on the subject matter of leadership and family seen as important?” In searching the web for information, I stumbled upon his obituary in the Washington Post dated November 7th, 1996 entitled…
By: Jean Ollis on October 19, 2017
It’s been a surreal week as the Elite 8 cohort has struggled to read and respond to Derek Rowntree’s Learn How to Study: Developing the study skills and approaches to learning that will help you succeed in university. While I couldn’t locate but one insignificant review on this book, I jumped in to the reading…
By: Jay Forseth on October 19, 2017
I am a little sorry, but the first thing I noticed about Bayard’s book was the common usage of the letter S instead of the letter Z in words like “memorising” and “analysing”. I understand this is not a very deep first impression of an academic publication, and it should NOT have surprised me, especially…
By: Mark Petersen on October 19, 2017
In Learn How to Study: Developing the Study Skills and Approaches to Learning that Will Help You Succeed in University, Derek Rowntree offers basic and practical concepts to aid learners in assimilating and retaining the vast amounts of material we will encounter in our DMin program. I’ve decided the best way to approach the learning…
