By: Nicole Richardson on September 7, 2022
Je suis à peu près sûr que je suis français et pas seulement dans le nom. Communication is hard. Whether, as Kahneman points out in Thinking, Fast and Slow, it is the ways our brain’s System 1 & 2 function in decision making and “humans confounding tendencies to believe that what we know is the…
By: Michael Simmons on September 7, 2022
Erin Meyer’s work compiles cutting edge research into one location as it pertains to cultural mapping and cross-cultural communication. Meyer’s book The Culture Map focuses primarily on cultural competency within the context of business, however, her work is applicable to a variety of industries and contexts. She distills cultural difference into an applicable tool that…
By: Andy Hale on September 6, 2022
“If you go into every interaction, assuming the culture doesn’t matter, your default mechanism will be to view others through your cultural lens and to judge or misjudge them accordingly,”[1] argued Erin Meyers, in her global economics and sociology book, The Culture Map. Exploring cultural differences in social interaction and how it affects how we relate to…
By: Henry Gwani on September 5, 2022
Cultural Intelligence (CQ) might be a critical success factor if the global church is to effectively engage our multi-ethnic world. Paul illustrates the need for CQ by occasionally leveraging indigenous poetry in his sermons, correcting Peter’s culturally-related hypocrisy, and becoming “all things to all men” (Acts 17:28; Galatians 2:11-14; and 1 Corinthains 9:22). In the…
By: Mary Kamau on September 3, 2022
Nelson Mandela was discriminated against and made to suffer for fighting an evil system of racial discrimination; who would ever have thought that he would become the world-renowned and respected moral and political leader and an international role model to many? He won the Nobel peace prize for his successful struggle against the Apartheid regime…
By: Denise Johnson on September 3, 2022
My encounter with Nelson Mandela through Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, [1] and Bishop Desmond Tutu, in No Future Without Forgiveness, [2] revealed a treasure trove of ignorance and misinformation about Africa and Africans. I discovered that my deficit of knowledge and experience in the region was shaped vicariously by the…
By: Elmarie Parker on September 1, 2022
South Africa’s journey is very personal to me. I grew up in a bi-cultural household. My mother is a born and raised white, Dutch Reformed, Afrikaner—all my mother’s side of the family remain in South Africa (with one cousin now in Malawi). My father is a white American. My mother came of age when apartheid…
By: Troy Rappold on September 1, 2022
This semester’s reading starts with two important books from two important South Africans—Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. Both biographies will prove to be enduring for generations to come. Both men earned the Nobel Prize for Peace and both men helped bring an end to Apartheid and the beginning of Democracy. They were both pillars of…
By: Roy Gruber on September 1, 2022
“The oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors.”[1] I find truth in that Paulo Freire’s quote from my own life. Long ago, being picked on in school easily led me to be the offender rather than on the receiving side. One might conclude there are only two places to reside…
By: Michael Simmons on August 31, 2022
“The heroes and leaders toward peace in our time will be those men and women who have the courage to plunge into the darkness at the bottom of the personal and the corporate psyche and face the enemy within.” – Sam Keen, The Enemy Maker from Meeting the Shadow This quote from Sam Keen continues,…
By: Eric Basye on August 31, 2022
Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, and Desmond Tutu’s biography, No Future Without Forgiveness, are two powerful books demonstrating the influence of resilient leadership to challenge gross injustices with a kingdom orientation. Born in 1918 to the son of a chief, Mandela spent much of his life advocating for the freedom of his people,…
By: Nicole Richardson on August 31, 2022
A South African Anglican Archbishop, a Dutch psychologist, and a Rabbi walk into a bar… Comedy removed due to it causes to much anxiety inciting trauma and no one was ready to forgive. All lightheartedness aside, as I begin this new semester reflecting on my first quarter in my new pastoral call, I believe…
By: Andy Hale on August 31, 2022
Two very distinctive leaders, taking on two wildly diverging paths for the same pursuit, equality, and equity in South Africa. Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela could be compared to the spiritual and political contemporaries, Nehemiah and Ezra. Tutu was said to be the moral compass of South Africa, while Mandela was its father, guiding the…
By: Jonathan Lee on August 30, 2022
Nelson Mandela, the recipient of the Nobel peace prize in 1993, grew up battling the evil against human rights and racial equality in South Africa. In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela recreates his lifelong destiny and struggle in overcoming apartheid in South Africa. And Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the author of No Future…
By: Henry Gwani on August 30, 2022
Long Walk to Freedom discusses South Africa’s democracy from the perspective of one of her most beloved sons. It chronicles the life of Nobel Laurette Nelson Mandela from birth at Mvezo, a South African rural area in a province that was then called The Transkei, to becoming the country’s first democratically-elected president. The journey includes…
By: Kayli Hillebrand on August 28, 2022
I spent most of the summer in Nelson Mandel’s Long Walk to Freedom. I chose to read it in entirety, compelled to know as much as I could about this global figure. Only ten when he was released from prison, I have limited memories of what was on the news surrounding his release and international…
By: Roy Gruber on April 28, 2022
An actual conversation I overheard last week: “Did you hear? There was another shooting.” “Yes, I did. We shouldn’t be surprised, though. Jesus said it would get worse and worse before the end.” “We are seeing that playing out right now. Maybe Jesus will return very soon.” “I sure hope so; it’s getting really dark.”…
By: Denise Johnson on April 27, 2022
The one’s mind is an amazing organ that can collaborate with others to solve the most seemingly unsurmountable challenges. Yet those same brilliant, and incredibly gifted individuals can become fixated on the numbers that substantiate their certainly. [1] Hans Rosling with his daughter-in-law Anna Rosling Rönnlund and son Ola Rosling joined forces in challenging the…
By: Elmarie Parker on April 27, 2022
Daniel Kahneman in his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow”[1] introduced us in the fall semester to the contrasting fast thinking of intuition (which includes perception, memory, and the mental shortcuts of heuristics), naming it System 1, with the slow thinking of effortful deliberation or System 2. Hans Rosling, in his book, “Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re…
By: Troy Rappold on April 27, 2022
In Hans Rosling’s 2018 book, Factfulness, our assumptions about the nature and the state of our world are challenged. Rosling organizes his book with “10 reasons why we’re wrong about the world, and why things are better than we think” (p.7). He devotes one incorrect perception with our world per chapter. A brief summary concludes…
