By: Jeff Styer on February 26, 2024
After reading Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow I feel like the peddler in Esphyr Slobodkina’s children’s book Caps for Sale. In this book, a peddler who sells caps is having a day of no sales, he is tired and goes out into the countryside and falls asleep underneath a tree wearing all his…
By: Jennifer Vernam on February 26, 2024
In his book Not So Black and White, Kenan Malik is preaching a message of “universalism”- an idea that a lot of us can relate to, even if we are not familiar with the term. Universalism is the belief that everyone should be treated equally, regardless of their race. The first part of the book…
By: Travis Vaughn on February 26, 2024
In Not So Black and White: A History of Race From White Supremacy to Identity Politics, Kenan Malik wants to “turn the common sense argument” around racism “on its head.”[1] Instead of the commonly held perspective of racial inequality as treating people “unequally because they belong to, or are seen as belonging to, distinct races,”[2]…
By: Jennifer Eckert on February 25, 2024
Last week, Nex Benedict, a sixteen-year-old non-binary student was beaten up at school by fellow students, and later died. The following day, when asked his thoughts on the matter, the Oklahoma State Senator for that district, Tom Woods, responded, “We are a religious state, and we are going to fight it to keep that filth…
By: Noel Liemam on February 25, 2024
This book, ‘A FAILURE OF NERVE’ by Edwin H. Friedman is a bit difficult and cumbersome for me to grasp for my week’s reading. So, I went back and forth between what others said about it, while doing my reading. This process helps me a lot. But I would still need more time to fully…
By: Jana Dluehosh on February 23, 2024
Our brains, a territory yet to be fully discovered, and underutilized. I came face to face with truly understanding how very little we actually know about our own brains as a parent who has had to journey with all three of my children having some sort of neural divergence. My oldest having…
By: Jonita Fair-Payton on February 23, 2024
I started this Doctoral journey being very intentional about connecting the assigned readings to my NPO. There were a few books where it was a bit challenging to relate them to my research but in most cases I was able to find a point of connection. Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow was one of…
By: Daren Jaime on February 23, 2024
In this week’s writing, Edwin Friedman speaks to the anxiety of America and the emotional regression that ensues from a failure of leadership. Fast forward to 2024. It is hard to move the needle on the climate of America as there is still plenty of room for anxiety. A quick glance at today’s headlines and…
By: Akwese on February 23, 2024
Anxiety and overwhelm weren’t big issues for me until recently, after a build-up of chronic stress that had me in the hospital almost every week for a year and a half. While everything in me wanted to focus on helping myself, there was always work to be done, so I did what any “hard worker”…
By: Dinka Utomo on February 23, 2024
“God’s sovereign searching of our hearts, and then His call to leadership, are awesome to behold. And they make a person very humble.” -Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder- Allow me to start this article by reciting a poem entitled “The Pastor”: If he/she is young, he/she is considered to lack experience But if his/her…
By: Todd E Henley on February 22, 2024
JESUS AND RARE LEADERSHIP In John chapter 8, the religious teachers show great disrespect to Jesus and those in the synagogue by interrupting Jesus’ teaching and bringing in a woman in front of the crowd who was caught in adultery.1 But Jesus is a RARE leader. According to Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder, RARE means:…
By: Christy Liner on February 22, 2024
This week’s reading, A Failure of Nerve by Edwin Friedman [1] came with high reviews, both from my lead mentor, Dr. Jason Clark and pastors who have utilized Freidman’s teachings in their ministry contexts. The word “utilizing” might be a bit of an understatement. “Those who have been transformed” might be more appropriate. The Very…
By: Julie O'Hara on February 22, 2024
She was 16 and caught on camera in an act of vandalism. Details will not be shared to protect the guilty. My daughter admitted to some other behaviors she had been up to in the weeks leading up to that incident. She was devastated about all of it. Looking back, there was not one thing…
By: Adam Harris on February 22, 2024
For a little over a year, I’ve been meeting with a leadership coach, thanks to our assignments and reading Mining for Gold.[i] The person I currently meet with is retired from running several companies and spends much of his time coaching others and speaking at leadership conferences, which is where I met him. He is…
By: Cathy Glei on February 22, 2024
Several years ago, when teaching Kindergarten, I hosted Patio Nights before the start of each school year. In the August heat, families enjoyed popsicles, met other families in our classroom community and best of all my incoming K students would come so we could begin getting to know one another, see their lockers, and go…
By: Kari on February 22, 2024
“They are stuck in their own manure pile, and they want everyone else to join them. They’re not even trying to get out; they just want to fling their poop around and pull people in!” I was figuratively talking about people who were playing the victim role (again). This was not the most articulate or…
By: Elysse Burns on February 22, 2024
Reading A Failure of Nerve felt like crossing a threshold. It feels for some time I have been trying to find the best paths to navigate the anxieties that go hand in hand with life. A Failure of Nerve provided me that “Aha!” I couldn’t help but nod when reading the brief interaction between Steinke…
By: Debbie Owen on February 22, 2024
What does a “with-God life” look like? What makes it different and attractive? Do we need to have a perfect with-God life to invite others to join us on the journey? These are questions I had been praying about so I could discern how to talk about discipleship and disciple-making for my doctoral project. I…
By: Diane Tuttle on February 21, 2024
I had a hard time getting started on this blog. It is not that I didn’t read or like Failure of Nerve by Edwin Freidman. On the contrary, it was one of the most thought provoking and compelling books that I have read in a long time. My problem was winnowing everything into what were…
By: Scott Dickie on February 21, 2024
“To lead well, we need a new paradigm. That is precisely what we will be presenting…” (1). So begins a rather haphazard book that reads one-third leadership training, one-third Pastoring-in-1990-Evangelicalism and one-third sales-pitch for their ‘new’ leadership paradigm that may have been newish back in 2016, but certainly not unique. Rare Leadership in the Workplace…
