By: Jenn Burnett on May 30, 2019
I’ve never really fit into a mould. I’ve never had any desire to. For a season I was a rugby playing, pastor mom. (I’ve since stepped back to rugby coaching.) Nobody in my life could really reconcile that combination of identities, but I found the tensions were liberating. My final season of varsity rugby, I…
By: Mario Hood on May 30, 2019
In What Clergy Do, Especially When It Looks Like Nothing, Emma Percy drawing on her Ph.D. work and experience as a priest describes the life and work of modern-day priest using the model and language of motherhood. Many reviewers were aptly aware of the parallels between Percy’s work and that of Naomi Stadlen’s saying, “the…
By: Rev Jacob Bolton on May 29, 2019
Much has been made in the Presbyterian Church (USA) about using gender inclusive terms to describe God. Since 1971, the General Assembly (the body of the church that makes nationwide policy decisions) has taken action “encouraging the use of inclusive language in worship, education, publications, and theological and biblical reflection.”[1] Being one of those “Gen…
By: John Muhanji on May 28, 2019
When we were growing up in our villages in Kenya, we used to get a lot of stories and so many dos and don’ts. For example, when we were growing up to the age of ten years, we never knew how a child is gotten. We understood that a child was brought by an aircraft,…
By: Wallace Kamau on May 19, 2019
The natural instinct of any human being is to avoid risk and seeking safety but may not necessarily be the best approach to life, life is prone dangers and risks of different kinds and we have to adapt and learn how to deal with adversity. The way to learn is by being exposed to such…
By: Shermika Harvey on May 19, 2019
A detailed comprehensive “How To Parent” Manual is not given by God at the time of childbirth. Though there are a plethora of parenting self-help books given to new parents at baby showers from no parenting friends, one would soon discover that parenting is strictly trial and error and hopefully it will be more concrete…
By: Mary Mims on May 18, 2019
“I can’t talk to him about not doing his work”, my co-worker complained; “I already had a suicide”, she explained. As we proceeded to talk about strategies of how to tell this underperforming employee he was not doing his job my friend told me this employee started to cry when she spoke of his performance.…
By: Rhonda Davis on May 18, 2019
“I need to know the University understands how this makes me feel. I am offended.” This is a common statement I hear from students when they counter decisions made by university staff and faculty. As members of Gen Z continue their way through the college experience, those of us tasked with the holistic development of…
By: Karen Rouggly on May 17, 2019
Last week, my office mobilized and launched 20 of 28 teams serving this summer around the world. One team was missing a member. She decided about 7 days prior to her trip departure that she no longer “felt called” to go. While the student leaders had been having conversations with the team member about her…
By: Tammy Dunahoo on May 17, 2019
Human history seems to reveal a constant motion, a swinging pendulum regarding many subjects. There is a propensity when people are concerned about something to move the opposite direction to correct it. Unfortunately, we often move too far the other way and end up with a similar problem on the opposite side. This metaphor…
By: Digby Wilkinson on May 16, 2019
The Coddling of the American Mind.[1] A coddle is an Irish dish comprising layers of roughly sliced pork sausages and bacon rashers with sliced potatoes and onions. I initially wondered if the book title was subtle reference to the American mind being somewhat overloaded with fatty deposits with a slightly sour edge. But apparently the…
By: Harry Edwards on May 16, 2019
Ever since I started the discipline of reading the weekly required text for the doctoral program I’m (and my cohort) in, I’ve made it a point to recommend some of the titles to my pastors. I feel comfortable doing that because my local church leaders know what my ministry passions are. It’s also my way…
By: Sean Dean on May 16, 2019
Following the rules is my thing. I am apparently custom built to be a rule follower. I cannot grasp the fullness of the saying, “rules are made to be broken.” I certainly understand what is being said, but I just cannot grasp why anyone would believe such a thing. Along with this comes the distaste…
By: Jenn Burnett on May 16, 2019
Much of what I learned about grit and resilience was learned on the rugby pitch in University. Three key deceptions are proposed by Lukianoff and Haidt as weakening the next generation in their book Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation For Failure: “The Untruth of…
By: Andrea Lathrop on May 16, 2019
I was relieved to see The Coddling of the American Mind on our reading list. The first I had heard of this book was last Christmas when my brother-in-law showed it to me. He said it was a book about the “ethic of safety”. I knew immediately this book would be helpful to me. We…
By: Mario Hood on May 16, 2019
This week’s reading, The Coddling of The American Mind, written by Haidt (social psychologist and professor in New York University’s Stern School of Business plus Board Chair of the Heterodox Academy) and Lukianoff (president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) deals with the well-being of the “iGen” generation. The book deals…
By: Rev Jacob Bolton on May 16, 2019
Ever since speaking with Garfield in Hong Kong, I have been doing my best to read each of our assigned books through the lens of “how does this impact my dissertation research” and then have tried to write a weekly essay on how the reading impacts my work. Some weeks I have done that well…
By: Wallace Kamau on May 13, 2019
We’re in the middle of change in our ministry organization and this book could not have come at a better time. I’ve been in leadership for long to realize that change is the law of life, you simply cannot avoid it, the natural thing would be to be armed on how to successfully manage change.…
By: Harry Fritzenschaft on May 12, 2019
Roth in his review of The Coddling of the American Mind declares that Lukianoff and Haidt diagnose the problematic effects of the commonly accepted “false” belief that young people are fragile. “Safetyism,” is the symptom of the “paranoid parenting” styles that the authors claim reached a peak in the 1990s. Lukianoff and Haidt do an…
By: Mary Mims on May 11, 2019
Nine-eleven is the universal number used in the United States when someone is in serious trouble, or in danger of dying. Sometimes people wait too long and try to solve the problem themselves only to later frantically call 911. The excuses for waiting are usually that people do not realize how close the person was…
