By: Wallace Kamau on November 15, 2018
The African Continent is highly endowed with resources, from natural mineral resources, big water bodies and rivers traversing the continent, wild life and great geographical diversity and beauty that present great opportunities for tourism, vast stretches of land with good climate that favors agriculture, opportunities for harnessing renewable energy, and more. The African continent also…
By: Mary Mims on November 15, 2018
Moving to the Washington, DC area from the Midwest of Michigan presented a different perspective of leadership. Leadership in the blue-collar states of the Midwest for me was represented by hard work and dedication to a company. Many believe if you work hard for a company, you will gain new knowledge, and move up in…
By: Jenn Burnett on November 15, 2018
I’ll never forget my first camp counsellor. I was eight, and it was my first week away at camp. She was loud, she was fun, she was encouraging AND she let us paint her for counsellor paint. I can still sing some of the songs that she taught us that week. Not only did she…
By: Rev Jacob Bolton on November 15, 2018
As our cohort continues to learn, read, and share, we have been able to also learn quite a bit about one another. Many of us are proud of the geographic in which we live. I know it is very fun for me to share stories with Mary and Nancy about our Michigan histories. Jenn and…
By: Mario Hood on November 15, 2018
One of the most impactful sermon series we do every year in the youth ministry is our series focused on identity. I learned very quickly that young people desire to “know” who they are and respond great to messages on identity. The response we so overwhelming year after year that we try to incorporate in…
By: Andrea Lathrop on November 15, 2018
There were several ‘ways in’ to this week’s text for me. Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice is a welcome addition to my personal library as it provides a dense overview of leadership as an academic discipline. I found the sections on hard and soft power and identity-based leader development especially helpful. But I was…
By: Harry Edwards on November 14, 2018
Scripture tells us in Romans 12: 3 to “…not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.” This is not to say that we ought not to think of ourselves as anything at all. Good…
By: Harry Fritzenschaft on November 14, 2018
Reading sections of the Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice took me back to my MBA studies from 1979 to 1982. During that life period, I was wrestling with pursuing a call to ministry while also pursuing an enhanced vocational education to provide better employment options to support my new bride and an eventual family.…
By: Sean Dean on November 14, 2018
For nearly a decade the unofficial motto of the Facebook development team was “move fast and break things”.1 This motto emphasized the importance of innovation within the development team. In the early years it was common for whole segments of the site to suddenly change, causing widespread complaining and ultimately a better experience. For over…
By: John Muhanji on November 11, 2018
Many of African communities, in general, raised their people through a set of moral values that guided both young people to grow up responsibly and the adults in taking responsibilities. It is a society that respected their seniors in age. When we were growing up in the community, our right fabrics and character shaping by…
By: Shermika Harvey on November 10, 2018
Theory of Everything Is there a Social TOE (Theory of everything)? Could there possibly be an ultimate social theory that encompasses a theoretical single, comprehensive, lucid theoretical framework of social phenomena which conjoins together all social and cultural facets of society? Thus, the solution may be one of the famous lines in the Hitchhikers Guide…
By: Mary Mims on November 10, 2018
“Shoot me now”, was a quote scribbled on a note by Senator Obama (before he became president) while listening to a long-winded speech by Senator Joe Biden. This phrase, “shoot me now”, is often used when someone feels a topic is boring or when someone is talking about something they do not want to hear. …
By: Nancy VanderRoest on November 9, 2018
My heart is broken today as another tragedy hits our world. Arising at my usual 6am, I turn on the news to hear about the horrific scene that took place in Thousand Oaks, California. The horrendous loss of life, the pain on the faces of the kids who were enjoying a night out on the…
By: Wallace Kamau on November 9, 2018
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”[1]. This is an extract from the American declaration of independence which is a clear expression of the human desire for…
By: Digby Wilkinson on November 8, 2018
Sociology, like economics, has many theoretical strands that attempt to understand and articulate a view of the world from which social construction models can be created. Like economics, few of those strands strands see eye to eye. It is these multi-dimensional ways of seeing human society that motivated Elliot, and erudite sociologists like him, to…
By: Rev Jacob Bolton on November 8, 2018
“We live in a world of radical change: do you agree?”[i] Elliott poignantly concludes his “Further questions” section of the opening introduction to his seminal work Contemporary Social Theory: An Introduction with this question. What better group to be asked this than a group of church people studying leadership? Because if there is any place…
By: Jenn Burnett on November 8, 2018
Remembrance Day is just a few days off. The melancholy that permeates this day is usually undergirded by the dark and growing bareness of Canadian mid-November weather in a predictable, almost divinely scripted, pathetic fallacy. As a youngster, I often stood in the cold and rain, in my girl guide uniform, thinking about my grandparents…
By: Tammy Dunahoo on November 8, 2018
Reading Elliott’s Contemporary Social Theory: An Introduction and events of this week have left me in a melancholic state. I had a sense of sadness hearing the creatures who do not seem to know their Creator draw from every concept imaginable to define life on this planet. As I write this blog I have just…
By: Harry Edwards on November 8, 2018
Constructivism, deconstructionism, structuralism, poststructuralism, modernity, modernism, postmodernism, postmodernity, etc. are useful methodologies that help our understanding of human nature and the way they situate themselves in the world. Habermas, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Rorty are some of the familiar names who dominate these fields of knowledge. While studying some of these experts in the book Profiles…
By: Rhonda Davis on November 8, 2018
The University I work for is only 25 years old, but the last six years have been especially interesting. With an aging founder and new partnerships in Dallas-Fort Worth, the main campus relocated from California to Texas, which led to high staff turnover. Enrollment has increased and decreased…retention has decreased and increased. New programs have…
