By: Steve Wingate on October 23, 2019
I focused my reading on section three of our text, “The Variability of Leadership: What’s Core and Contingent” because in the pastorate the variables are many, the need to exegete the community and situations are critical, and the need to discern what is core for a life-giving community are very similar to sustainable businesses. Therefore,…
By: Jer Swigart on October 21, 2019
Leadership is a complex endeavor. With myriad definitions and various forms of practice, it’s a concept that conjures over 5.5 billion references on Google. Many of the books written on the topic help the individual identify what kind of leader she is, offer input into how she can overcome leadership obstacles, or advise on the…
By: Shawn Cramer on October 21, 2019
Stories are the air we breath, the lingua franca of our existence. Our actions are constantly in line and in sync with the story we most believe at the time. Above the desk in which I join our Zoom calls lies one of my prized possessions. It’s that proverbial one thing I would grab if…
By: Dylan Branson on October 21, 2019
Leadership is a tricky topic to discuss. As the Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice shows, there are not just many definitions of what leadership is, but many different ways in which it manifests itself. Although we may try to systematize leadership in a clear cut way, the reality is much more complex. There is…
By: Darcy Hansen on October 20, 2019
If an unsettling began when I watched the documentary Dying Green for my Pastoral Ministry class, then complete disruption happened when I read the first couple chapters in Grave Matters, by environmentalist, Mark Harris. Harris walks readers through the historical terrain of how American’s care for their dead, from the most toxic to the most…
By: Joe Castillo on October 18, 2019
I appreciated Nohira and Khurana and their approach to leadership. Even dough they addressed a secular audience, they are very inclusive in pointing out essential elements to practical guidance. The author writes about two chapters that are very close to my heart. 1-13 – LEADERSHIP AND CULTURAL CONTEXT At the start of every age, a new…
By: Chris Pollock on October 17, 2019
The Biosphere, is the layer around the planet containing the sum total of all living organisms. Within this layer of life is another stratum that has been referred to as ‘the “Ethnosphere”, the social web of life’ [1]. David Wade defines the Ethnosphere as ‘as the sum total of all thoughts and intuitions, myths and…
By: Greg Reich on October 16, 2019
In the James Cameron movie Avatar, the greeting used by the Na’vi was “I See You”. As the movie unfolds it is obvious this greeting means more than seeing one physically, seeing becomes the idea that until a person sees beyond the physical into the soul of an individual, they do not exist. The main…
By: Nancy Blackman on October 15, 2019
When I first introduced myself to Instagram (IG), I began clumsily. As someone who began with film and a darkroom, I found it to be clunky and structured. In time, however, God began to utilize my clumsiness for the Kingdom and kindom. The short story is that I was bedridden for six months. As I…
By: Jer Swigart on October 14, 2019
On August 9th, 2014, Ferguson Police Officer, Darren Wilson, gunned down Michael Brown in his Canfield Green neighborhood and left him lay on the sunbaked street for four hours. Rather than being an isolated event, the shooting was yet another in a long and storied stream of events that manifest the systemic oppression of Ferguson’s…
By: Steve Wingate on October 14, 2019
Polyvalent Images May Be Invisible in a World of Scapes We moved from a very nice condominium in south-central Ohio to what is called near-east Indianapolis, before the recent purchase of our new home just outside the near-east. The near-east home was located on Denny Street where during any night from January to September we…
By: Joe Castillo on October 14, 2019
Pink touch on a very familiar topic of ethnography, which is very close to my interest. As I think of the essential keys words that couture my attention like Image-illustration of concepts, objectivity, visual anthropology, audiovisual ethnography, fiction, documentary, representation, re-enactment, photographic potentiality, media transfer, resignification, memory. I think of the words of Clifford “[…]…
By: Shawn Cramer on October 14, 2019
Sarah Pink, in her textbook Doing Visual Ethnography, inadvertently lays out reasons why the field of visual ethnography is itself innovative, and why the potential for future innovation in the field remains bright. As a surprising unintended consequence, she offers insights into how others might approach research more innovatively. Pink goes so far to boldly…
By: Dylan Branson on October 13, 2019
They say that a picture tells a thousand words. Captured images are snapshots of history, moments of memory that we can draw from for different purposes. It may be to quell a building nostalgia, it may be to examine evidence from a crime scene, it may be to gather information about people within a culture,…
By: Darcy Hansen on October 13, 2019
Tucked in amongst foreboding structures of world financial institutions lies St. Margaret Lothbury, a small Church of England parish church established 1185 C.E., burned in 1666, rebuilt and reinstated in 1690 C.E. The worship space is cozy and decked out in some of the finest 17th-century wood carved elements. The sturdy pews are darkly stained,…
By: Simon Bulimo on October 12, 2019
THE QUEST OF READING A BOOK Systematic reading of a book is very important to anyone who wants to understand and apply the book into his or her life. What most people lack is the kind of methods to be used in knowing how to read a book? Adler in his book has given the…
By: Chris Pollock on October 11, 2019
The other day I was in London, UK (!) out for a walk on the other side of the Thames River. I wasn’t wasting time; I was wandering aimlessly with curiosity. I had about an hour or so before I was to meet a friend who I had served with as a missionary about 20…
By: Nancy Blackman on October 10, 2019
All photos courtesy of Chris Chan Shim (@royyaldog on Instagram) Do you want to skim the surface with idle chat as you size me up wondering where I’m from? Do you care that I have to check the “Other” box every single time! No frustration here. Nope. How much of this book –…
By: Greg Reich on October 9, 2019
As a father I promised myself that I would not default to the common response “because I said so” that my father often gave me when I was a teenager trying to negotiate less stringent rules as I grew older. I can’t say I was 100 percent successful but the majority of the time as…
By: Jer Swigart on October 9, 2019
I was in the second grade when my habits of reading were shaped. The program was called “Book-It” and the method was designed around repetition and quantity. The idea was that competition was the ideal lever to pull in order to generate children who were fond of reading. That, if we learned to read, with…
