By: Jeff Styer on January 22, 2024
I picked up and began to read Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding[1] and came across the concept of “Threshold Concept”[2] I began to wonder what threshold concepts I or my department teach. I am an assistant professor of social work at a small Christian liberal arts university located in the corn fields of Central Ohio. …
By: Jennifer Eckert on January 19, 2024
When I think about shiny, rich yellow gold, the mountains of Montana come to mind, especially the Garnet Mountain range that surrounds a tiny ghost town about 18 miles outside Missoula. This once hustling and bustling late 19th-century community now sits quiet and contained, locking history inside herself. To what and whom is her legacy?…
By: Akwese on January 19, 2024
In Tom Camacho’s “Mining for Gold,” he shares his own journey of what I call leading whole, which is leading from a deep belief that who you are, as you are, is complete, whole, and lacking nothing. It sounds easy enough but unfortunately, it isn’t. Camacho talks about this challenge we face regarding believing the…
By: Kari on January 18, 2024
Perched on the edge of the produce stand, the red caught my eye. As I picked it up, I could smell the berries through the packaging. Strawberries, one of my favorite fruits, are rarely seen in my city in North Africa. When they are available, the quality is questionable, and the price tag is extortionate.…
By: Julie O'Hara on January 18, 2024
Tom Camacho’s Mining for Gold took me on a journey. I rode the twin rails of “Julie as a Leader” and “Julie as Human.” These rails were connected by the crossties (sleepers for our friends in the UK) of insights, a-has, and when-will-I-learns from the book. The trip included stops at Unpleasant Memories, Joyful Discoveries,…
By: Chad Warren on January 18, 2024
When I saw the cover of “Mining for Gold” by Tom Camacho, my mind raced back several years to when my wife and I binged a reality TV show called “Gold Rush,” which follows crews mining for gold in the Yukon Territory. By the end of the second season, we were experts ready to set…
By: Erica Briggs on January 18, 2024
From the title of this week’s reading, I expected to learn how to coach Kingdom leaders. Although, Camacho speaks to this, what I gleaned from Mining for Gold was much different. It affirmed my belief that I’m designed to thrive, not just survive. He confirmed that stunted growth is a result of an empty cup…
By: Christy Liner on January 18, 2024
In 2017, our family answered the call to become a foster family. We embarked on the journey with high hopes, unrealistic expectations of adoption, and a desire to be the difference for at least one child. As we entered into foster care, we quickly realized our support network was quite thin and that we were…
By: Elysse Burns on January 18, 2024
There is nothing I love more than being part of the birth of an idea and seeing it come to fruition. However, I find that if I’m not careful, I can easily focus more on the task at hand rather than its substance and the people involved. One of the best pieces of advice I…
By: Ryan Thorson on January 18, 2024
This past summer we spent some time with family in Eastern Oregon. On one of our days together we went to an old mining town where gold is still being dredged from the bottom of the river to this day. At the visitor center, there were large tubs of sediment and sand where anyone could…
By: Daren Jaime on January 18, 2024
Just this week the Dallas Cowboys were sent home packing from the NFL Playoffs. Down 27-0 in arguably the worst first-half playoff performance in team history with the half winding down and Dallas seconds away from being shut out the Cowboys have time for one more play. The home crowd is hopeful, many on their…
By: Nancy Blackman on January 18, 2024
The title Mining for Gold is such an appropriate phrase for the coaching process because a coach isn’t panning on the surface but hoping that the coachee is willing to dig deep for the gold within them. The gold is already there because God put it there. They just need to find it and come…
By: Chris Blackman on January 18, 2024
Right off the bat, I got excited about this book. I have seen the beauty and the hand of God with marginalized people. I have gotten to know houseless people and have worked with people with addictions and alcoholism. As some of you know (because I am not shy), I lived inside prison walls for…
By: Joel Zantingh on January 17, 2024
Coaching has been a part of my story for more than two decades. For context, it was while I was still a young 30-something church planter that I had the privilege of being certified as a coach within my denomination, The Evangelical Missionary Church of Canada (EMCC) [1]. Early on in my pastoral work, I…
By: Noel Liemam on January 17, 2024
After the first week of readings and a lot of discussions on readings, taking notes and how to improve oneself in these areas, I try to approach this week’s readings in light of those lessons. As we are reading this week assignment, “Minning For Gold: Developing Kingdom Leaders through Coaching,” by Tom Camacho, I ask…
By: Debbie Owen on January 17, 2024
The assignment to read Camacho’s book, Mining for Gold, couldn’t have come at a better time for me. After the feedback I received from the workshop last fall, as well as from both formal and informal conversations since then, I’ve pivoted a bit from where I started. I’m passionate about discipleship and disciple-making in churches since my…
By: Glyn Barrett on January 16, 2024
I was somewhat disappointed with Tom Camacho’s book. Perhaps I assumed too much from the title and the foreword. It’s not that the book was poorly written or that the subject matter was irrelevant; it appeared to promise one thing and deliver another. The title says “Developing Kingdom leaders through coaching”. That is an audacious…
By: Graham English on January 16, 2024
Reading “Mining for Gold” by Tom Camacho came fresh on the heels of a recent visit to Yellowknife, a small Canadian city in the Northwest Territories synonymous with the gold rush of the 1930s. Even though the goldmines have been closed for some time, there is still a vibrant and eclectic community of approximately 20,000…
By: Shela Sullivan on January 15, 2024
For our initial assignment last week, we explored the works by Adler, Mortimer Jerome, and Charles Van Doren, “How to Read a Book,” along with Ahrens, Sönke’s “How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning, and Thinking.” I applied the reading and note-taking techniques from these sources to this week’s material,…
By: Adam Cheney on January 15, 2024
I had been asking the same question to dozens of people at a conference regarding refugees. “Where did you go to school and why should I go there?” I was searching for direction but could not figure out if the Holy Spirit was directing me to a doctoral program or somewhere else. Most answers I…
