By: Pam Lau on March 23, 2023
My parents were first generation Christians who each experienced a radical life change when they accepted Christ. My mother converted from Judaism to Christianity through a neighbor who convinced her Jesus was the Son of God; while my father walked the aisles to “Just As I Am” at a Billy Graham Crusade. To say my…
By: Jenny Dooley on March 22, 2023
I tell myself stories. They are usually harmless assumptions about why people do, say, or believe certain things which are confusing or cause me distress. The stories can be positive or negative. When telling myself a story I usually try to make it a good one. I recognize my storytelling arises out of uncertainty, my…
By: Mathieu Yuill on March 22, 2023
My best game of golf was one I played alone. On vacation at a cottage we had rented for the week, I went into the local town and played a round of 18. The course is a typical municipal course, each hole is fairly straight, the sand traps are easy to navigate and there certainly…
By: Eric Basye on March 22, 2023
Liberalism has failed because liberalism has succeeded. As it becomes fully itself, it generates endemic pathologies more rapidly and pervasively than it is able to produce Band-aids and veils to cover them. The result is the system rolling blackouts in electoral politics, governance, and economics, the loss of confidence and even belief in legitimacy among…
By: Shonell Dillon on March 22, 2023
I am guilty of staying too long in what is familiar. When the CD era came about, I was still trying to carry around my box of cassette tapes. I was not an “out with the old in with the new” kind of person. I was what one might call “ole school”. As advancements started…
By: Andy Hale on March 22, 2023
“Progressive,” “Fundamentalism,” “Liberalism,” “Conservatives,” and “Neoliberals” are all terms that are thrown around often as a label for a particular way of thinking or belief system; equally as often, they are used as grenades to lob at the other side for their “extreme” or “woke” agendas. However, like many words, a large segment of the…
By: Kim Sanford on March 22, 2023
The evidence is mounting. The conclusion is clear: we are likely to misread reality. We’ve read about this through various lenses. Be it admitting our errors (Kathryn Schulz’s Being Wrong) or the risk of developing cancer (Chivers and Chivers How to Read Numbers), we must face our own misperceptions and just general lack of ability…
By: Greg McMullen on March 21, 2023
In my teens my parents divorced, remarried, and relocated. I was still in high school and just recently lost my football scholarship. I was in a world of emotional hurt and destruction and all alone. The next four years was devastating for me as I tried to bury all the hurt and despair I was…
By: Kristy Newport on March 21, 2023
After reading Vincent J. Miller’s book, Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture, I was ready to sign up for his class at Georgetown University. Miller makes some interesting observations regarding Christian consumer culture. He states he wrote his book out of “a profound concern about the corrosive and destructive consequences of…
By: Cathy Glei on March 21, 2023
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Proverbs 1:7 The more I read, the more confused I think I am becoming. I was asking my husband all sorts of questions and sharing quandaries in my thinking; not sure that any of it was connecting. My system…
By: Jonita Fair-Payton on March 21, 2023
I think of the things that I have been wrong about; it is a list that is longer than I care to admit. But let me list a few. I was wrong when I thought that me and my best friend in second grade would be friends forever, we are not even Facebook friends. I…
By: John Fehlen on March 20, 2023
Years ago, like in the early 1990’s, I read a book that was “all the rage” called “The Day America Told the Truth.” After a quick internet search for it, I was reminded that it was written by a then relatively unknown James Patterson, whose books have gone on to sell over 425 million copies,…
By: Tim Clark on March 20, 2023
“I hope this book will show you what a varied and extraordinary place the world really is” [1] Some families are sports families. Some are music families. Others are into animals, or the outdoors, or food. The Clarks are film people. Movies are something we all love, so every year my family settles into our…
By: Jennifer Vernam on March 20, 2023
For me, there was one pressing issue which surfaced in our reading this week. This was the discovery of our resistance to clearly identify (and deal with) our delusions due to our fear of losing community. It was concerning, but also articulated something I have sensed to be true, and this gave it language. In…
By: Travis Vaughn on March 20, 2023
Are Atlanta Hawks fans (and executives) delusional, allowing “our emotional responses (to) influence our perceptions of reality”[1]? Are the Hawks spending too much time thinking about what might go wrong, prompting the front office to make some drastic changes (e.g., firing their head coach half-way through the season)? Or is the perceived mediocrity of the…
By: Chad McSwain on March 19, 2023
Other than playing sports and rolling my eyes at the person trying to make the class behave for the substitute teacher, I am not sure when I understood the necessity of leadership. No doubt I had lots of experiences of leading and being a follower, I do remember the first time that leadership was a…
By: Daron George on March 19, 2023
Introduction: “Leadership: Theory and Practice” by Peter G. Northouse is a seminal work in the field of leadership studies. The book provides a comprehensive overview of various leadership theories and practices, offering readers an in-depth understanding of the complexities involved in effective leadership. My review aims to evaluate the book’s strengths and weaknesses and highlight…
By: Tonette Kellett on March 19, 2023
Introduction This week’s book, Leadership: Theory and Practice by Peter Northouse presents different models of leadership. It is, as Dr. Jason Clark said in our zoom meeting last week, the foundational book on leadership for any student. Northouse’s definition of leadership is the “process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a…
By: Michael O'Neill on March 17, 2023
Leadership, written by Peter Guy Northouse, is a comprehensive guide to leadership theories, research, and practices.[1] This book is much more than Northouse’s opinion about leadership, it is an all-encompassing manual for leadership at its core. Northouse provides a detailed chronology of leadership and provides readers with an understanding of both traditional and contemporary approaches…
By: Jenny Steinbrenner Hale on March 17, 2023
It is interesting how the experiences of our lives shape the people we become. In 1999, my husband and I, our two-year-old daughter, our golden retriever, and our two cats moved to Mexico where we had accepted positions with a nonprofit organization in Tecate. It was an adventure that enriched our lives and influenced who…
