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…
By: Diane Tuttle on January 15, 2024
In Mining for Gold, Tom Comacho explores ways for individuals to recognize their spiritual and personal gifts, their gold. The process for doing this can be for personal use or to assist others to find what inspires and energizes them through coaching. Reading this book brought a flood of thoughts that initially seemed independent of…
By: Jeff Styer on January 15, 2024
No pressure here folks. Our second blog post, not fully confident in our reading and writing abilities and we are assigned Tom Camacho’s Mining for Gold [1]. I picked up the book and read the comments on the back, I read a blog post I found online and then I read the reviews inside the…
By: Jennifer Eckert on January 12, 2024
I have made multiple attempts to pen this premier blog. As a champion overthinker, I visited numerous rabbit holes to critically consider what a self-assessment means and what standard I compare. Framing my evaluation in humility may sound disingenuous, and efforts to incorporate humor did not seem as funny the next day. So, the cycle…
By: Noel Liemam on January 11, 2024
As I try to give an assessment or an evaluation to the levels of reading, note taking and writing capacity, I come to terms with the thought there are correlations between my reading, note-taking, and writing essays abilities. Generally speaking, we could say that writing skills would improve by not only writing, but the practice…
By: Erica Briggs on January 11, 2024
I was not a reader in early elementary, didn’t become one until I discovered the fantasy section at the local library. Battles between angels and demons. Tolkein’s orcs and elves. Legends of dwarves and fairies. When I discovered Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, I was hooked on the written word – at least in the third way words…
By: Julie O'Hara on January 11, 2024
About 10 years ago it seemed that everyone I knew was obsessed with “Strengths Finder” as a self-assessment tool. It never excited me the same way that Enneagram or Extended Disc has done, but I still remember three of my top strengths were Responsibility, Learner, and Strategic. Those strengths, and their corresponding shadow sides provide…
By: Chad Warren on January 11, 2024
Literacy equals access. Access to what? According to the ancients, freedom. In “The Republic,” Plato first introduced the seven liberal arts, those arts which would set a human free, and he began with reading and grammar. In your first few years in elementary school, the goal is to learn to read so that, eventually, you…
By: Chris Blackman on January 11, 2024
Writing was and is my biggest concern in this program and was actually one of the things that prevented me from starting earlier. There are two things against me. Firstly, I am a self-professed standard writer, certainly not an academic writer. The second is that I have always been a slow word-for-word reader, and as…
By: Daren Jaime on January 11, 2024
Growing up as a child I was introduced to the popular saying, reading is fundamental. This simple but complex saying stayed etched in my mind throughout my life’s journey. It speaks to a highly valued skill that is essential for a person’s growth and lifelong learning. What I took from this saying is reading…
By: Kari on January 11, 2024
Bold, wise, and courageous while being a minority are some of Daniel’s admirable traits in the Old Testament. Until this week, I never correlated his actions with his “learning and skill in all literature” as seen in Daniel 1:17 [1]. Perhaps it seemed more obvious as I have focused my own on reading, writing, and…
By: Elysse Burns on January 11, 2024
I remember watching films in which the main character, in a flash of inspiration, writes a literary masterpiece or reads all the resources on a given topic in a very short time, usually overnight. I don’t know why, but throughout my early studies I thought this method was a worthy practice. I think some people…
By: Akwese on January 11, 2024
To be honest, I was struggling to sit down and do this first assignment. The mere thought of delving into reading and writing with the knowledge that public eyes and comments awaited me was paralyzing. Although imposter syndrome had been discussed by others, it wasn’t something I truly connected with until now. That’s because when…
