By: Jean de Dieu Ndahiriwe on February 18, 2023
Max Weber, German Social Scientist and author of The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism, Explains and reveals an interesting way of looking at Capitalism and its relationship to Protestantism. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (German: Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus) is a book by Max Weber, a German sociologist, economist, and politician. Begun as…
By: Mary Kamau on February 18, 2023
Critical Theory has become a buzzword common in politics and social justice academic talks and even found its way to the school curriculum, yet only a few know its sources. James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose have delved into this topic. They have tried to demystify it in their book, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made…
By: Jenny Steinbrenner Hale on February 17, 2023
The reading this week was challenging and engaged my intellect and emotions from a variety of angles. Main Points from Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism (1904-1905) Max Weber, German Social Scientist and author of The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism (PESC) argues that the Protestant work ethic, promoting…
By: Greg McMullen on February 17, 2023
It was fall quarter in my fourth year of bible college when I had to make some hard decisions. Most of my experience in ministry up to this point had been with youth ministries. The focus was more on entertaining and making Jesus exciting for young people. I was ministering more and more with adults,…
By: Noel Liemam on February 17, 2023
The word, “Leadersmithing,” sounds so catchy and interesting. It made me wanted to rush into the book and find out exactly what it is or what does it mean. Then, I look closely at it, it has some similarities with words like locksmith and blacksmith in which I said to myself, “ha-ha,” I kind of…
By: Cathy Glei on February 16, 2023
In the book Leadersmithing by Eve Poole, the concept of leadership development is crafted around an analogy of “smithing” or leadersmithing. Poole, adjunct professor at Ashridge Business School shares about how leaders learn and about the process of crafting around ideas and practices that prepare leaders. The first part of the book focuses on an…
By: David Beavis on February 16, 2023
What are the conditions that caused capitalism to emerge in civilization? This is the question the German sociologist, Max Weber, tackles in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.[1] Though the answer is complex, Weber highlights the influence Protestantism in particular had in creating an environment for capitalism to thrive. Dr. Jason Clark…
By: Troy Rappold on February 16, 2023
Another great selection for the book-of-the-week-club by Dr. Jason Clark. Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsey, published in 2020, traces the historical arc of postmodern thought from its beginning, its development, and onto the modern incarnations we see today. This book, like so many others we have read for this program, spends time…
By: Kristy Newport on February 15, 2023
Dr. Clark’s doctoral research centers around Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism, and in this blog I hope to share a few ideas on stewardship as a response to Weber’s unanswered question. Dr. Clark cited Sedgwick and Weber, they “lead us, but do not answer the question “how are ascetics ordered…
By: Scott Dickie on February 15, 2023
Unlike some in my cohort, I was looking forward to digging into Leader-Smithing, by Eve Poole . While I have been in Pastoral leadership for the past 27 years, I have not done any significant reading or studying on the topic of leadership. By God’s grace, a decent intuition, and a great community of mentors…
By: Kally Elliott on February 15, 2023
“If you can do something beautifully in miniature, it convinces both you and your masters that you are ready for bigger things.”[1] (85) I’ve been involved in athletics most of my life. In my youth I played soccer and swam on the swim team. In high school and college I ran cross country, began working…
By: Jenny Dooley on February 14, 2023
Reading Leadersmithing, by Eve Poole took me down memory lane and sent me to my basement storage room searching for copies of Aesop’s Fables and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The mere mention of these books brought back delightful memories of reading these stories to my children and sobering moments of clarity about myself and…
By: Pam Lau on February 14, 2023
Annie Dillard, in her beautiful book The Writing Life, says, “How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and that one is what we are doing.”[1] Every time I begin the process of writing this blog I pick up a book and hold it…
By: Tim Clark on February 13, 2023
When I was 15 years old my Grandad and I got into an old manual transmission pickup truck and drove to a very steep hill where, without warning, he pulled the emergency brake, got out of the vehicle, and told me to get into the driver’s seat. He was determined to teach me how to…
By: Jennifer Vernam on February 13, 2023
Poole’s Leadersmithing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership [1] endeavors to provide a resource to leaders in all stages of development. This is a lofty goal, as the topics reviewed were broad and would be difficult to completely cover in 232 pages. I found it helpful to review it as an index and appreciated it…
By: Daron George on February 12, 2023
“The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles” by Steven Pressfield is a book aimed at helping creatives overcome the resistance they experience in pursuing their artistic endeavors. The book says many things about “resistance,” such as “Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be…
By: Russell Chun on February 12, 2023
رهبري د ژوند وخت نیسي – نو یو کومان شئ، نه خر. In Pashtu, رهبری یک عمر طول می کشد – پس یک لاک پشت باشید نه خرگوش. In Dari/Persian. Leadership takes a life time – so be a tortoise, not a hare. (Poole,p.182) [1] As some of you may have noted, my subject titles…
By: Kayli Hillebrand on February 11, 2023
While the contents of this weeks reading were not entirely new, the combination of the components that Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder in Rare Leadership: 4 Uncommon Habits of Increasing Trust, Joy, and Engagement in the People You Lead provided me a new lens in which to view leadership and how I choose to steward…
By: Chad McSwain on February 11, 2023
Resistance is a funny thing. It comes in all shapes in sizes as it stands against any effort of true meaning. Like the crushing weight of the Titan moon hurled by the Infinity Gauntlet, is resistance to the one who seeks to put forth enough effort to materialize that which didn’t exist just a moment…
By: Jenny Steinbrenner Hale on February 10, 2023
This Could Change my Life… at Least my Writing “How many pages have I produced? I don’t care. Are they any good? I don’t even think about it. All that matters is I’ve put in my time and hit it with all I’ve got. All that counts is that for this day, for this session,…
