By: Troy Rappold on February 9, 2023
Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder wrote Rare Leadership: 4 Uncommon Habits for Increasing Trust, Joy, and Engagement in the People You Love in 2016. Since that time this book has undoubtedly been a benefit to many Christian leaders wanting to improve their effectiveness and ministry. But like a key note speaker whose opening banter drags…
By: Pam Lau on February 9, 2023
Sitting across the top of my desk are the first several books assigned to us for our program. True Confessions: Since November, each time I read the title, “How to Read Numbers,” my heart raced with excitement thinking it was a guide in reading the Old Testament book of Numbers! To be fair, the English…
By: Nicole Richardson on February 9, 2023
RARE; how one may describe good leadership today. It is definitely implied by authors Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder in their book Rare Leadership: 4 Uncommon Habits For Increasing Trust, Joy, and Engagement in the People You Lead. Wilder, who holds a Ph.D. in Psychology and an M.A. in theology, and Warner, who holds a…
By: Roy Gruber on February 9, 2023
In my early years of ministry, I heard repeated ideas about the essence of leadership. “Leaders have a bias toward action” and “Leaders get things done” were common descriptions voiced about the identifying marks of strong leadership. In Rare Leadership, Doctors Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder point in a different direction than outcome-based definitions and…
By: Todd E Henley on February 9, 2023
While reading How to Read Numbers, I received two notifications on my phone about 15 seconds apart. The first one read, “Thousands Killed in Turkey-Syria Earthquake” [1]. The second one read, “40% of American children have a parent who works outside the traditional daytime schedule.” [2]. Normally, I would have responded to the second notice…
By: Jonita Fair-Payton on February 9, 2023
My Relationship with Numbers Are you good with numbers? Are you a numbers person? Are you a writer or mathematician? I’ve heard these questions asked many times. It always felt a bit limiting to me. I never understood why you had to be one or the other. But I just accepted that being good at…
By: Jonathan Lee on February 8, 2023
RARE Leadership is a leadership development book written by Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder. Dr. Marcus Warner received his seminary education from Trinity Evangelical Divinity, and he is the president of Deeper Walk International, an organization that focuses on equipping ministry leaders to help them grow in their identity and leadership. Dr. Jim Wilder has…
By: Mathieu Yuill on February 8, 2023
And I have the mugs to prove it. After the 15th consecutive year I had this honour bestowed on me unanimously by the judging panel, I made the decision that I would wait until I hit the 20 years or maybe even when I eclipsed the quarter century mark that I would start to speak publicly…
By: Esther Edwards on February 8, 2023
In 2017, my husband began having pain while running. The doctors dismissed it but as it continued to get worse, tests were taken and concluded that Keith had bladder cancer. Within minutes our family was googling bladder cancer and every statistic possible to inform us of what might be our future. We breathed a sigh…
By: Cathy Glei on February 8, 2023
In all honesty, when I first read the title, my heart sank and a bit of math phobia was reactivated. In 1990, Ray Hembree, from Adrian College, conducted a meta-analysis of 151 studies concerning math anxiety. The study determined that math anxiety is related to poor math performance on math achievement tests and to negative…
By: Kally Elliott on February 8, 2023
I got a D in statistics in college. Yep. I tell you that because several of you have admitted your own inadequacies when it comes to math and statistics. To be fair to me, my statistics class was at 8am in winter quarter in Davis, CA where between tule fog and rain it was always…
By: Eric Basye on February 8, 2023
Rare Leadership: 4 Uncommon Habits for Increasing Trust, Joy, and Engagement in the People You Lead is a leadership book that incorporates elements of neuroscience and psychology. Written by Jim Wilder and Marcus Warner, the combined duo provide a breadth of experience to speak to the spiritual, mental, and social elements of leadership. Dr. Wilder…
By: Michael O'Neill on February 8, 2023
The world is fast and we accelerate it with the ability to keep up. There is an inversely proportional relationship between peace and chaos; and the antithesis of our over-committed stressful routines, poor choices, and difficult roads to completion – is occasional freedom. I often find myself somewhere on the spectrum near procrastination and “inspired…
By: Jean de Dieu Ndahiriwe on February 8, 2023
The reading this week was terrific. King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft and Steven Pressfield’s War of Art are both full of nuggets for anyone willing to take a rip of faith and grow their potential against all odds. Pressfield, in War of Art, speaks of our two lives and the internal demon…
By: Andy Hale on February 8, 2023
A quick Amazon search for “leadership books” will yield over 50,000 results, so either the market is desperate for more leadership wisdom that many people struggle to lead or something else altogether. I am glad I chose to write a book for clergy and congregational leaders for my doctoral project… Don’t fact-check me on this,…
By: Jenny Dooley on February 7, 2023
When I read the title of the book for this week’s blog post I cringed. I’m not very good with numbers. When I went to my bookshelf to retrieve, How to Read Numbers, by Tom Chivers and David Chivers it was not there. I hadn’t purchased the book! Maybe I was in denial and holding…
By: Jennifer Vernam on February 7, 2023
“He was a prophet who did powerful miracles, and he was a mighty teacher in the eyes of God and all the people…We had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel.”[1] In reviewing the dialogue that Jesus’ followers unwittingly had with him after his resurrection, Oswald Chambers writes: “Every fact that…
By: David Beavis on February 7, 2023
Let’s begin with a thought experiment. What is the first image that comes to mind when you hear the word “writer.” If you’re anything like me, you imagine the likes of an Albert Camus with a life of great freedom, creativity, and ease of work. I mean, how hard can putting one’s thoughts on paper…
By: Scott Dickie on February 6, 2023
I know what you are all thinking about my title: “Scott, without giving us your IQ number, we can’t determine how much smarter you have actually become.” Fair point, and one that you might not have identified as deficient quite as quickly if you hadn’t engaged with this intriguing book. Many of us are familiar…
By: Tim Clark on February 6, 2023
When someone quotes a statistic in a conversation with me, I’ve been known to respond: “Did you know that 78% of all statistics are made up on the spot?” What varies is that I make up a different number, every time, on the spot. It’s a slightly sarcastic way to let them know that I’m…
