By: Fred Fay on November 8, 2013
This is a repost. The week began with my children’s ministry leader telling she heard that one of the children’s leaders was sleeping with her boyfriend. In a very conservative church sexual matters matter! In the same week, three young adults said they wanted to rent a house that the church owns and had just…
By: Sharenda Roam on November 8, 2013
This is the kind of book I like to devour with a hot cup of herbal coffee sitting next to a fireplace in a busy coffee house. It delves into the variety of philosophical approaches regarding ethics. Nullens and Michener, in their book, The Matrix of Christian Ethics share tasty bits of knowledge from Aristotle,…
By: Richard Rhoads on November 8, 2013
It was late in the Spring of 2010. I had just finished up my last class and was about to leave for a well needed rest over Spring vacation. Just before closing my office door, my dear mentor, friend, colleague and co-leader for our Israeli travel-learn tours casted a vision for a new site…
By: Sandy Bils on November 8, 2013
“Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.” This quote is by Neo, the main character of the matrix trilogy. Neo says it in the third part, called matrix- the revolution. The matrix trilogy is by the Wachowski brothers, who worked over 30 years to film…
By: David Toth on November 7, 2013
How does one determine what is good? Is it discovered, dictated, or determined? Will it still be good tomorrow? In another culture? These and many more ethical questions and possible decision paths are the topic of Nullens and Michener’s book The Matrix of Christian Ethics. The purpose for the book is to promote “an embrace of…
By: Garrick Roegner on November 7, 2013
Patrick Nullens and Ronald T. Michener unpack the intersection of ethics and Christianity in their work The Matrix of Christian Ethics: Integrating Philosophy and Moral Theology in a Postmodern Context. They begin with a definition of ethics as “emphasizing the methodical thinking of morality rather than morality itself (9).” As pertains to Christian ethics they…
By: Chris Ellis on November 7, 2013
How we as Christians make ethical decisions isn’t a straightforward process. It’s not nearly as simple as ‘The Bible Says.’ After all, what does the Bible say about nuclear power or in vitro fertilization or heavily fertilized land? In The Matrix of Christian Ethics by Patrick Nullens and Ronald Michener create a matrix of ideas and…
By: Cedrick Valrie on November 7, 2013
Humans leave a mark for good or ill on others. As Christ followers, we are called to be examples of peace, charity, justice and mercy. Our words and deeds are to resemble the master teacher, Christ, to others. In Christ, there is not a list of rules to be checked off but a heart and…
By: David Toth on November 6, 2013
Gilbert W. Fairholm writes, “The transition from headship based on personality and talent to one based on control is the history of the rise of management to preeminence in our social institutions” (Kindle 835-836). He makes the case that managerial leadership is a contemporary phenomena and that it came into being “as the answer to…
By: Mark Steele on November 2, 2013
Friedman in his book Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix; A Failure of Nerve, describes leadership as an emotional process rather than a cognitive phenomenon (Friedman 1999). He says leaders can be hindered by an obsession with data and technique instead of making decisions from their own integrity and presence. Freidman believes Christopher…
By: Sam Stephens on November 2, 2013
Of all the reading I have done on leadership during the recent past, Edwin Friedman’s book A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix has been the most challenging and yet quite stimulating. Friedman’s approach to addressing the leadership crisis is from quite a different angle than that which most of…
By: Phil Smart on November 1, 2013
Am I doing anything right? This is the question that confronted me while reading Failure of Nerve by Edwin Friedman. My church recently hired a new Executive Director /Pastor. She has been very methodical in transforming our 40 employees into a very organized and accountable group of pastors and assistants – or so I thought.…
By: Sharenda Roam on November 1, 2013
According to Edwin H. Friedman in his book “A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix,” three interlocking characteristics of an imaginatively gridlocked system are: “an unending treadmill of trying harder, looking for answers rather than reframing questions; and either/or thinking that creates false dichotomies.”(Kindle, 684) Regarding the “treadmill of trying…
By: David Toth on October 31, 2013
Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat was a defining look at the dynamic of globalization that enabled the reader to embrace the largest global dynamics and understand how they worked together. In Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, Edwin Friedman accomplishes much the same feat inregard to leadership as he puts forth a…
By: Sandy Bils on October 31, 2013
We live in a leadership-toxic climate. The system is toxic itself, because we live in a chronically anxious society, almost like a seatbelt-society, that is more oriented towards security than adventure. In this circumstance of anxiety most of the time a resistance to leadership doesn’t occur out of problematic issues, but merely out of the…
By: Garrick Roegner on October 31, 2013
Sam Houston and Edwin Friedman There is a sense that the world faces a crisis of leadership. Europe is embroiled in a seemingly intractable economic crisis, much of their own doing. The US struggles with the continual threat of government shutdown. The millennial generation’s response seems just as dysfunctional in this liquid world as popularly…
By: Chris Ellis on October 31, 2013
A Failure of Nerve by Thomas Friedman is unlike any leadership book I’ve ever read, and that’s mostly a good thing. To be honest, my brain is almost in overload mode because his notion of how to be a leader and to bring about change in family, organization and society comes from a different vantage…
By: Richard Rhoads on October 31, 2013
I have always been intrigued by the stories in Greek mythology. One of my favorites is the story of Sisyphus. Sisyphus was the King of Ephyra (same city as Corinth)and was the son of King Aeolus of Thessaly. As the tale goes, Sisyphus who struggled with chronic deceitfulness was banished to a life of rolling…
By: Fred Fay on October 30, 2013
Many people are concerned about the faith of the young people in our churches and especially the emerging young adults as they transition into the adult world. I have heard parents say in frustration to youth, “Why don’t you just grow up.” Which is curious, because that is just what they want to do, but…
By: Cedrick Valrie on October 27, 2013
In much astonishment to some people, as humans, we are meant for relationships. Be it a spouse, brother, sister, mother, father, coworker, or a stranger we have yet to get to know, we hold the influence to make the relationship healthier or weaker. One characteristic in human interaction to maintain balance is emotions. Emotions are…
