By: Rev Jacob Bolton on January 15, 2020
“Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age is one of the most important books of the new millennium,”[1] proclaims The Christian Century, describing the massive tome as imperative reading. The good people at Theos describe it as, “long, dense, academic, and often obscured by Taylor’s idiosyncratic terminology, it is not for the faint-hearted. Nevertheless, it is original,…
By: Sean Dean on January 15, 2020
A scream of abject fear rang out around our house. It was two in the morning, within seconds we were all awake and within a couple more minutes we had all gathered on my parents bed. My sister, the source of the scream, told us how she had awoken to a demon dancing in her…
By: Shermika Harvey on December 20, 2019
The alarm on the iPhone goes off on the nightstand as Cheyenne frantically reaches to shut it off. However, once it is in her hand, notifications for work emails and social media flood her screen. Without hesitation, she unlocks her phone and immediately begins to check the onslaught of distractions greeting her before one foot…
By: Shermika Harvey on December 19, 2019
Many years ago, I found my voice and passion for writing in the theatre. The ability to create works of fiction that imitates life without the complication of reality was fascinating. It was exhilarating to become a different version of myself without fear of rejection. Being trusted to lead the audience on a journey of…
By: Shermika Harvey on December 19, 2019
Rethinking History! The Shocking Reality of History In the Making Reading The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by British writer and historian, Peter Frankopan, sparked intrigue and bewilderment on this new interpretation of a pivotal time in history for the West. Moreover, in the book Frankopan provided a challenge to the reader…
By: Nancy VanderRoest on November 17, 2019
Being an effective leader: what does that mean? According to Walker, the goal of effective leadership is leading out of who you are and helping enable people to take responsibility.[1] This is some pretty powerful stuff! In one of my favorite passages from The Undefended Leader, the author shares that it is a moral responsibility…
By: Mary Mims on November 16, 2019
Marvin Gaye once sang a song called, “Mercy, Mercy, Me”. This song was directed to the ecology of the earth being disrupted by oil spills in the ocean, mercury in the fish, and pollution in the skies. Even in the 1970’s, this soul-singer was concerned by what he was seeing, wondering how things could progress…
By: Tammy Dunahoo on November 16, 2019
Simon P. Walker, author of the trilogy The Undefended Leader, in Leading Out of Who You Are: Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership, distinguishes certain leaders as those with moral authority “having been proved trustworthy, usually through trial and suffering.”[1] Walker describes the difference between these remarkable versus ordinary leaders as those with character which…
By: Harry Fritzenschaft on November 16, 2019
Researcher Simon P. Walker, working with his colleague Jo Walker, discovered consistent patterns through repetitive cognitive tests conducted between 2000 and 2015, in studies with over 15,000 individuals.[1] From his research, he coined the term “steering cognition.” Walker proposed that steering cognition crucially aided individuals to self-regulate their mental wellbeing and social competencies. Out of…
By: Digby Wilkinson on November 16, 2019
Last evening I attended the graduation dinner for a group of students at a school where I am the chaplain. The keynote speaker for evening is currently a principal dancer in the New Zealand National Ballet. What struck me from the moment I met him was how uptight he was; he later confessed he did…
By: Wallace Kamau on November 16, 2019
Reading the Trilogy of the undefended Leader by Simon Walker[1], was indeed a great opportunity, not only to see where I stand as a leader, taking stock of my strengths and weaknesses but also bring Clarity as to what kind of Leader I need to be. Simon Walker is a researcher and writer in the…
By: Rhonda Davis on November 15, 2019
I really enjoyed reading this week. In fact, The Undefended Leader may be my favorite book of the semester. I wish I had more than one week to devote to reading it, and I hope to return to it after my DMin projects have been turned in. Admittedly, I read too slowly and did not…
By: John Muhanji on November 15, 2019
It is impressive how Simon Walter brings out the trilogy of the Undefended leader. His definition of these types of leadership brings out the right kind of leadership we experience in our lives. Leading out of who you are, with nothing to lose and with everything to give, is a Christian concept of self-denial for…
By: Sean Dean on November 15, 2019
When I was sixteen my parents went to a conference with John Wimber. During the course of the conference my dad went forward to get prayed over by Wimber. By all accounts it was an amazing experience for him. My dad was a mistake, or at least that is what his mother repeatedly told him…
By: Jenn Burnett on November 14, 2019
Christianity in Canadian context finds itself somewhere in between secularised Europe and the dominance Christian culture still holds in the United States of America. Canada is decidedly post-Christian in its secularised public life, but almost a third of the country is still committed to organised religious practice while another third is practising private spirituality.[1] The…
By: Karen Rouggly on November 14, 2019
There’s an episode in the television hit, Parks and Rec, where Leslie Knope is trying to create the best dinner party for a guy she’s dating. This guy is a big wig lawyer and has stories of traveling around the world and doing awesome things. Leslie, in an effort to win him over, invites him…
By: Andrea Lathrop on November 14, 2019
Simon P. Walker’s work and writing is changing my life. There are an incredible number of ways into this book trilogy for me this week. How could there not be when it comes to the leadership journey as the letting go of all the normal defenses we surround ourselves with? I am reading it too…
By: Rev Jacob Bolton on November 14, 2019
The biggest fault to Simon Walker’s character that I can find is that he didn’t make time to hang out with us while we were all visiting Oxford. Walker, an ordained Anglican cleric and leading scholar in the world of culture and cognition is perhaps most widely known for his writing in the field of…
By: Mario Hood on November 14, 2019
Simon Walker is the CEO of STEER, a UK based company in which he leads the research team in projects that describe and apply to how steering cognition influences human society. If you are like me, you might be wondering what the heck is steering cognition. Well, thanks to one of the four, google says,…
By: Harry Edwards on November 14, 2019
This week’s reading was brutal. Our cohort had to read, not one, not two, but three books in a matter of days. They weren’t easy ones either. Absorbing the material from Simon Walker’s The Undefended Leader trilogy was like drinking from a leadership fire hydrant. This is not to say that the arduous reading was…
