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Cycle of Incompetence: Learning from the New York Giants
The New York Giants have just fired another coach after two years. Unfortunately, the team’s recent cycle of hiring and firing coaches is tied directly to a deeper cycle of leadership incompetence at all levels of the organization. The Giants have lost 100 games in the last 10 years and have been the second worst […]
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What does “secular” mean anyways?
There is a lot of hand-wringing in the church today because the United States is becoming more “secular” and “post-Christian.” When we, as the church, analyze the culture, we often equate secularism with atheism. We believe, erroneously in my view, that America is becoming more atheistic and hostile to Christianity. While America may be getting […]
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The Family Firm by Emily Oster
Should you get your kid a phone? A seemingly simple question like that can be quite hard to answer. What kind of phone? A smartphone? A “dumbphone”? What will you say when your kid begins pestering you because all their friends have one? Emily Oster, in her book, The Family Firm: A Data-Driven Guide to […]
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Time Management for Mortals
Even though Oliver Burkeman is not a Christian, he has written a deeply Christian book. His book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, book could be summarized as saying, “You’re not God!!” or as Moses wrote thousands of years ago, “Teach us to number our days, That we may present to You [God] a heart […]
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Disciples Making Culture by Brandon Guindon
Why churches begin with the best of intentions to make disciples only to drift off course, falling back in pragmatic or programmatic ways of thinking? Probably because there’s a culture problem argues author Brandon Guindon. Guindon points out that strategies for making disciples don’t set the culture of the church. It’s the other way around: […]
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The Big Rocks Lie
Productivity guru Stephen Covey popularized a very compelling illustration about prioritization in his book, First Things First, using a jar to represent a person’s life. Typically, we haphazardly jam our lives to the full, placing in big rocks (our highest priorities), pebbles (middling priorities), and sand (things we don’t really care about) in a jumbled […]
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At Your Best by Carey Nieuwhof
Carey Nieuwhof has written At Your Best to help knowledge workers do what they are best at, at their best time. He first chronicles the difficulties that many people have today being overworked, overcommitted, and overstressed. He then confronts the lies we tell ourselves about our life: “To revive some semblance of hope amid all […]
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How do you actually outline the Song of Songs?
Christians and Jews have long recognized the Song of Songs to be one of the most mysterious books of the Bible. One medieval Jewish commentary, Saadia, claimed the book was like a lock whose keys had been lost. When reading the book, a host of questions arise like, “How ‘literally’ should the book be taken?” […]
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Blogging the Institutes | 1.17.8 | Providence Trains the Godly
If bad things happen to believers, they will immediately begin thinking about God. His hand is the most effective at impressing upon us the need for patience and calm thinking. If Joseph kept thinking about how he was betrayed by his brothers, he could have never forgiven them. Instead, he turned toward the Lord, which […]
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Jocko’s 12 Rules for Leadership
1. Be humble. It is an honor to be in a leadership position. Your team is counting on you to make the right decisions. 2. Don’t act like you know everything. You don’t. The team knows that. Ask smart questions. 3. Listen. Ask for advice and heed it. 4. Treat people with respect. Regardless of […]