By: Ryan Thorson on October 24, 2024
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, by Wendell Berry. Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbours and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will…
By: Jennifer Eckert on October 23, 2024
Let’s be honest. The relationship between faith and economics can get pretty messy, and opinions can vary wildly. Just look at any discussion around the U.S. Presidential elections, and you’ll see what I mean. In this blog, we’ll explore Karl Polanyi’s world to learn how he stumbled upon the big idea that became the backbone…
By: Debbie Owen on October 23, 2024
The American dream: a concept as varied as the individuals who dream it. In his 1931 book, The Epic of America, James Truslow Adams coined the term, “the American dream,” and defined it as, “That dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone.” [1] In her paper,…
By: Graham English on October 23, 2024
This week, I was introduced to The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time by Karl Polanyi. Polanyi was an economic anthropologist and economic sociologist who lived through the collapse of a western society after the nineteenth century. He blames this collapse on the myth of the self-regulating market. While it might…
By: Russell Chun on October 22, 2024
“እርስዎች ውስጥ ዝቅተኛ ነው” (irswochi wüst zqṭeñä new),”humility is in short supply” Amharic Part 1: What the Cohort is saying. Part 2: What Edgar and Peter are saying. Part 3: (epilogue) The power of the Minus 1 & Team leadership Geniuses Part 1: What the cohort is saying. Humble Leadership: The Power of Relationships,…
By: Glyn Barrett on October 21, 2024
(Image – Maps of Industrial Manchester) Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, the political and economic origins of our time,[1] first published in 1944, is a seminal work offering an analysis of the economic and social upheavals that accompanied the rise of market capitalism. It is not a natural go-to book for me, but it was…
By: Shela Sullivan on October 21, 2024
What is this book about? I began reading the book, “The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time,” by Karl Polanyi on my flight to Washington DC last month, knowing I would need ample time to mentally digest and process the content. Consequently, articulating my post this week proved difficult. The challenge…
By: Pam Lau on October 21, 2024
The week before we flew to Washington D.C. for our third Doctoral Advance, I was praying about my project while standing in the kitchen willing time to just stand still. With my hands open, I released to God the details of my final project until after October 2. The next day I received a phone…
By: Scott Dickie on October 21, 2024
I love the overall premise of Humble Leadership: that, “leadership is always a relationship, and truly successful leadership thrives in the substrate of high openness and trust.” (1) The book challenges the notion of a superstar leader and non-relational hierarchies within organizations, arguing for a more collaborative, inclusive, open and relational team environment. In this…
By: Jeff Styer on October 21, 2024
I am not an economist and this week’s readings were some of the hardest for me so far. However, as Simone Weil said “students who love God should never say: ‘For my part I like mathematics’; ‘I like French’; ‘I like Greek.’ They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop…
By: Jennifer Vernam on October 21, 2024
Last week a friend invited me to her house to watch a simulcast hosted by Whitworth University with David French, a New York Times columnist.[1] The conversation intended to “help the campus and local community engage in critical thinking and civil discourse in anticipation of the 2024 elections.”[2] I enjoy David French, with his unique…
By: Tim Clark on October 21, 2024
In the book Humble Leadership: The Power of Relationships, Openness, And Trust by Edgar and Peter Schein the authors repeatedly return to a particular concept: Situational Humility. When I first saw this term, it threw me. It reminded me of the phrase situational ethics, which “takes into account only the particular context of an act…
By: Kally Elliott on October 21, 2024
In the first page of their introduction of their book, Humble Leadership: The Power of Relationships, Openness, and Trust, Edgar H. Schein and Peter A. Schein ask, “Would it help to think of leadership not as the “7 Steps” you must take to lead, but as the energy that is shared among members of a…
By: Travis Vaughn on October 21, 2024
Leadership is already hard. Humble leadership is…harder? I’d compare the kind of leadership described in Humble Leadership, by Edgar H. Schein and Peter A. Schein, to the sort of well-differentiated prowess one needs in order to navigate the intersection of emotionally healthy leadership and the technical expertise required to get the job done. To be…
By: Noel Liemam on October 20, 2024
“The Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730’s to the 1980’s,” by D.W. Bebbington and a chapter 2 from Dr. Jason Clark Thesis, titled “Evangelical Anxiety: From Assurance to Providence” are the assigned readings from this blogpost. For me, Bebbington’s is so comprehensive to grasp in and fully understand within the time frame.…
By: Joel Zantingh on October 19, 2024
Assurance, confidence and narrowness of focus all meet each other on the same road leading to ‘success’. Growing up in 20th Century North America was like being in a pressure cooker of success, spurred on by capitalism’s constant call for innovation, and the delivery of the next great artifact, product or solution to peddle to…
By: Julie O'Hara on October 18, 2024
About 15 years ago I attended a church welcome class that opened with a session designed to place that particular church within the stream of historical Christianity. The leader differentiated between Roman Catholic/Protestant, Calvinist/Wesleyan-Arminian, and conservative/liberal, this last being less about church history and more about the politics of social issues. Then, the leader shared…
By: Jana Dluehosh on October 17, 2024
This book was hard to read. It was a dagger in my heart as a mom of 3 teenage boys. What Jonathan Haidt wrote in his book The Anxious Generation was not surprising or new information for me. I believe my husband and I have been struggling with this addiction to screen time since our…
By: Chad Warren on October 17, 2024
I recently met with 20 key leaders in our church, discussing our doctrinal statement and those beliefs that distinguish our church. I indicated that, most simply, we are a Christian, Evangelical, Baptist, and Congregational church. Immediately, a hand shot up, and one of our leaders asked, “What does it mean that we’re ‘Evangelical,’ and how…
By: Daren Jaime on October 17, 2024
Journeying through ministry I am mindful of some of my ministerial mentors and those who taught me polity and liturgy. One such professor was Dr. Odinga Maddox. Dr. Maddox was a respected pastor, leader, and critical thinker. During one of his lectures, he reminded this novice group of emerging leaders to form ecumenical bonds. When…
