By: Kristin Hamilton on September 7, 2017
When you tell a recovering perfectionist that “good is the enemy of great,”[1] you tend to create an existential crisis for said person. In fact, it may take that person a few days to remind herself that great does not necessarily mean perfect…or so I hear. Anyway, most times I read Jim Collins’ book, Good…
By: Lynda Gittens on September 7, 2017
Then this Daniel was preferred above the presidents and princes because of an excellent spirit [was] in him, and the king thought to set him over the whole realm. Daniel 6:3 KJV Let all things be done decently and in order. 1 Corinthians 14:40 KJV According to the website Know Jesus Know Peace, in…
By: Katy Drage Lines on September 7, 2017
Ubiquitous on office shelves across the business, social and religious sectors, Jim Collins’ book Good to Great and its companion, Good to Great and the Social Sectors are undoubtedly required reading for leaders and potential leaders, especially those who want their companies or organizations to be “great.” I believe Collins’ simple, straightforward explanation of what…
By: Jennifer Dean-Hill on September 6, 2017
Confession. My covetousness in reading Collins’ book, Good to Great was at an all-time high. I found myself coveting: the humility and skills of a Level 5 leader, the wisdom to take good businesses to great businesses by getting the right people on or off the bus, the ability to operate the Hedgehog concept, the…
By: Stu Cocanougher on September 6, 2017
I was first introduced to Jim Collins and his book Good to Great years ago at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit. Our church, Southcliff, hosted the WCGLS several years via live webcast. Collins’s talk was memorable. The concept that “good was the enemy of great” certainly stuck with me. Having said that, it was…
By: Mary Walker on September 6, 2017
“To be successful, the first thing to do is to fall in love with your work.” Sister Mary Lauretta “You begin with passion, then you refine passion with a rigorous assessment of what you can best contribute to the communities you touch. Then you create a way to tie your resource engine directly…
By: Jim Sabella on September 5, 2017
Jim Collins’ books and franchise are very successful. Regrettably, my experience with the Good to Great “framework of ideas” has not been positive. That experience has informed this post. “Our five-year quest yielded many insights, a number of them surprising and quite contrary to conventional wisdom, but one giant conclusion stands above the others: We…
By: Chip Stapleton on June 29, 2017
I really enjoyed reading through Thomas Oden’s provocative history How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity. I enjoyed being reminded of the central and critical role that Africa and Africans played in shaping what we think of as Western Christianity and Western Christian thought and theology. Oden states plainly: Africa…
By: Geoff Lee on June 23, 2017
What an inspirational story. From the slums of a South African township to a college scholarship. From abject poverty and apartheid to academia and America. This is a story of redemption and hope out of a seemingly hopeless hovel of an existence. Some of the things that stood out to me as I read the…
By: Katy Drage Lines on June 23, 2017
An old Turkana man agrees to wed his daughter, Kaiikeny, to a friend, as his third wife. Kaiikeny’s new husband agrees on the bride price (two hundred goats, dozens of donkeys and sheep, and ten camels). Kaiikeny then participates in the akinyonyo, a women-only celebration in her new husband’s emachar (brand, clan), initiating her out…
By: Chip Stapleton on June 23, 2017
Kaffir Boy is Mark Mathabane’s autobiographical story of his growing up and coming of age under Apartheid in Alexandra, South Africa. It doesn’t quite feel right to say this was a ‘good’ book or that I enjoyed reading it (in a similar way, that I didn’t enjoy watching Schindler’s list). But it is certainly a powerful story…
By: Kristin Hamilton on June 23, 2017
My heart hurts. That’s the thought that keeps rolling through my mind as I try to figure out how to put my feelings about Kaffir Boy, Mark Mathabane’s autobiography, down on paper. It hurts because Mathabane’s description of coming of age in South Africa’s apartheid once again shines a light on just how cruel human…
By: Stu Cocanougher on June 22, 2017
A few weeks ago, as I looked at the list of readings for my Doctor of Ministry program, I saw that a book was available in audio form. The book was Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane. Upon downloading it, I saw that the book was a daunting 18 hours and 33 minutes in…
By: Christal Jenkins Tanks on June 22, 2017
This week we read a book that was not an academic account of the historical events that occured during the Apartheid in South Africa. We have been reading books from theologians who have fever and passion about shifting the narrative back to its origins. The origin of our Christian faith which belongs now and has…
By: Jim Sabella on June 22, 2017
“In South Africa there’s a saying that to be black is to be at the end of the line when anything of significance is to be had. So these people [living in Alexandra] were considered and treated as the dregs of society, aliens in a land of their birth.”(1) As I read the painful accounts…
By: Katy Drage Lines on June 22, 2017
THE WHITE & THE BLACK While I’m gone, white mother, kill the fattened oxen And feed your dear ones well, prime meat and curds Overspilling so the dogs too lap the juice, And still enough is left to throw a surplus To your close kin across the seas. And you, black mother, hold…
By: Jennifer Dean-Hill on June 21, 2017
There were two perspectives I came from as I read “Kaffir Boy”: #1- Professionally, as a therapist, understanding the emotionally damaging effects of living in an oppressive state and the power of compassion. #2- Personally, viewing my first experiences of overt discrimination and my ethnic friendships. #1- Professionally, understanding the effects … To live…
By: Lynda Gittens on June 21, 2017
KAFFIR BOY young students in Soweto, South Africa (Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church Mission trip) People moving out, people moving in. Why, because of the color of their skin. Run, run, run but you sure can’t hide. Segregation, determination, demonstration, integration, Aggravation, humiliation, obligation to our nation. Ball of confusion. Oh yeah, that’s what…
By: Mary Walker on June 21, 2017
I had to believe in myself and not allow apartheid to define my humanity.[1] Mark Mathabane The delusion lies in the fact that no matter how well we think we know the Other, we still judge from within the imprisoning framework of our own limited cultural criteria, we still speak within the cliché of the…
By: Josiah Philipsen on June 21, 2017
Queen Lynda Wright Gittens was born in Houston, Texas during an era where the hope of achievement in America was held and inspired by her parents, church leaders, and teachers. She was born in the era of segregation where her kind was referred to on paper a colored. Through her lifetime she has been identified…
