By: Jennifer Williamson on April 13, 2018
Samuel Chand’s book, Leadership Pain: The Classroom for Growth, has a distinctively prosperity-gospel flavour to it, which made it difficult for me to connect with his take on the relationship between leadership and pain. He rightly observes that within the USAmerican culture, “Christians often have more difficulty handling personal pain than unbelievers. They look at…
By: Jason Turbeville on April 12, 2018
To be honest I was not sure I wanted to read this book. I remember sometime last semester Dr. Clark saying sometimes you will have to not read a book and still do a review, and then see if anyone notices, or something to that effect. I have had plenty of pain throughout my ministry…
By: Jean Ollis on April 12, 2018
Sam Chand speaks truth in his highly acclaimed leadership book, Leadership Pain. The premise of his book is simply this – No pain, No gain. Chand challenges the reader to embrace the idea that when leadership “pain” subsides, you are not leading effectively. Chand makes the argument that leaders grow by pursuing their vision through…
By: Greg on April 12, 2018
Walking into a place and paying money for a person to physically assault your body seems to go against every natural fight or flight instinct we have within us. Yet this is something that is done everyday. The last time I experienced this was 2 months ago. Walking into this place knowing that the end…
By: Trisha Welstad on April 12, 2018
Good Friday is one of my favorite church services of the year, with Ash Wednesday being a close second. This is not because I am a masochist but perhaps more the opposite. I am an optimist and I like to think of life as hope-filled. I also did not grow up with the tradition of…
By: Mike on April 12, 2018
Samuel Chand’s Leadership Pain: The Classroom for Growth is an insightful and encouraging book to finish the 2018 Spring LGP8 Semester. Why? Because Chand gives leaders a no-nonsense, “count the cost” picture on how to lead in ministry while following Christ.[1] I have been a transformational-situational-servant leadership practitioner for many years and I frequently tell…
By: Shawn Hart on April 12, 2018
Statistics in the Ministry[1] 72% of the pastors report working between 55 to 75 hours per week. 84% of pastors feel they are on call 24/7. 80% believe pastoral ministry has negatively affected their families. Many pastor’s children do not attend church now because of what the church has done to their parents. 65% of…
By: Dan Kreiss on April 12, 2018
As a coach for several decades in sports ranging from rugby, cricket and softball to basketball, cycling and tennis, I have been the cause of a lot of pain in my athletes. (And no Kyle not just a pain in the ass.) Not all pain is good, in fact, pain generally is a sign that…
By: Jake Dean-Hill on April 11, 2018
In reading Samuel Chand’s book, Leadership Pain: The Classroom for Growth, I discovered the following story shared by Lisa Bevere of Messenger International at the beginning of chapter 8. After you read it you’ll know why I had to make it the focus of my blog… “Recently I found myself traveling on a plane…
By: Kyle Chalko on April 11, 2018
Leadership Pain by Samuel R. Chand immediately became one of my favorite reads of this semester, partly because it was a book genre I was most familiar with. A straightforward leadership book, with equal parts inspiration, principles, and application. The thesis of Chand’s Leadership Pain is simple, “Growth=Change, Change=Loss, and Loss=Pain. Therefore Growth=Pain”[1] Such a…
By: Jay Forseth on April 10, 2018
One of my first bosses said to me, “Only the pioneers get the arrows.” Little did I know what that meant, but I now see how people may substitute the word pioneers with “leaders”. Or maybe also, “Pastors”. My first year of pastoring, I visited a retreat center for Pastors outside of Bozeman, Montana. I…
By: Jean Ollis on April 7, 2018
Jonathan Haidt’s text, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion is a societally relevant and thought provoking read. His text is also highly controversial “he’s at his worst, his cringe-inducing worst, when he tries to be polemical. He succumbs to his most embarrassingly hypocritical impulses in what are transparently intended…
By: Trisha Welstad on April 6, 2018
A few years ago I took a seminar from a friend of mine who owns a communication company. The online seminar taught how to deliver a message more effectively. The primary take away was that communicating a message is not just about presenting the facts or a story revealing value. It includes both along with…
By: Kristin Hamilton on April 5, 2018
I feel pretty safe saying that we Christians love our binaries. Good and evil, saved or unsaved, heaven and hell – it’s like we aren’t comfortable unless we can label a situation with a coin of two sides. It’s part of our desire for a tidy spirituality, I think. It’s even better if we can…
By: Christal Jenkins Tanks on April 5, 2018
In August of 1991 a female hip hop duo Salt-N-Pepa released a song entitled “Let’s talk about sex”. It depicted a story of a woman who was able to get any man that she wanted but was left feeling empty because it was “just sex”. No love, communication and lacked safety. The song addressed to…
By: Shawn Hart on April 5, 2018
I have often struggled with the implication made in Matthew 5:9, which showed Jesus teaching, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God;” mainly because the same Jesus also said, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword[1].…
By: Stu Cocanougher on April 5, 2018
Last year I wrote more than one article about prosperity theology. Some of the books that our doctoral cohort has read touched on the subject. These included Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics by Ross Douthat and Nation of Rebels, Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter. …
By: Chip Stapleton on April 5, 2018
[Note: This post was written with very spotty – and much slower than advertised – cruise ship internet, so please excuse errors and the lack of usual visual elements…. I get it, I am definitely not complaining, but it did take 10 minutes just to get the cursor to start typing!] This week our class…
By: Dan Kreiss on April 5, 2018
The polarizing effect of our incessant moralizing is evident all around us. From the most recent US presidential election to the debates over the morality of same-sex marriage. From the disagreements over illegal immigrants and ‘DACA’ status to the food stamp and unemployment benefits programs. Let’s be honest, these strong points of view are even…
By: Mark Petersen on April 5, 2018
If you favour CNN over Fox, or are Anglican rather than Baptist, you might be bewildered by the apparent intransigence of those who believe and vote differently than you do. Jonathan Haidt, in his book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, offers compelling research that begins to unpack how…
