Samuel R. Chand. Cracking Your Church's Culture Code: Seven Keys to Unleashing Vision and Inspiration. Jossey-Bass: 2011. ISBN: 9780470627815. Meet the Author Samuel R. Chand is an author, conference speaker, and consultant. He has written five books including Cracking Your Church's Culture Code: Seven Keys to Unleashing Vision and Inspiration (2011), Ladder Shifts: New Realities, Rapid Change, Your Destiny (2006), What's Shakin' Your Ladder? 15 Challenges All Leaders Face Read More …
Should Clergy Act More Like Nurses? (#0203)
Gallup has conducted an Honesty and Ethics survey since 1976. The survey has been conducted on an annual basis since 1991. Nurses were added to the list of professions included in the survey in 1999 and have been rated as the most honest and ethical every year since except 2001. Shown below in the form of a bar graph are the results of the 2010 survey: So What? In 2010, clergy ranked 7th among the professions surveyed. Just over half (53%) of all respondents rated the Read More …
Review of Saving Jesus from the Church (#0202)
Robin R. Meyers. Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus. HarperOne: 2009. ISBN: 9780061568213. Meet the Author Since 1985, Robin R. Meyers has served as the Senior Minister of the 750 member Mayflower Congregational Church in Oklahoma City, which has been recognized as the fastest growing United Church of Christ congregation in the Kansas-Oklahoma Conference. In addition, he serves as a tenured professor of rhetoric Read More …
Dangers in Multitasking (#0201)
Media multitasking is increasingly the way most people work, but perhaps it shouldn't be. "Cognitive Control in Media Multitaskers" (written by three Stanford University professors: Eyal Ophir, Clifford Nass, and Anthony D. Wagner) suggests media multitasking may not be the effective work style its adherents presume. As a part of their research they "developed a questionnaire-based media multitasking index to determine the mean number of media a person simultaneously consumes when Read More …
Review of The Next Christians (#0200)
Gabe Lyons. The Next Christians: How a New Generation is Restoring the Faith. Doubleday: 2010. ISBN: 9780385529846. Meet the Author Gabe Lyons is the founder of Q, which serves to educate Christians on their historic responsibility to renew culture. Q, an outgrowth of the now defunct Fermi Project he co-founded with his wife, began offering national gatherings in 2007 and launched Qideads.org in 2009. Previously, Lyons served on the team that co-founded Catalyst, which Read More …
World Aids Day (#0199)
The World AIDS Day theme for 2010 is Universal Access and Human Rights. Celebrated every year on December 1 since its inception in 1989, World AIDS Day plays a critical role in raising money, increasing awareness, fighting prejudice, and improving education on a global scale. UNAIDS estimates that there are now 33.3 million people living with HIV, including 2.5 million children. During 2009 some 2.6 million people became newly infected with the virus and an estimated 1.8 Read More …
Time Before Money (#0198)
Wendy Liu, Assistant Professor of Marketing at UCLA Anderson School of Management, and Jennifer Lynn Aaker, General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, co-authored "The Happiness of Giving: The Time-Ask Effect," which was published in the Journal of Consumer Research; October 2008, Vol. 35 Issue 3, pp.543-557. Those interested in the full text can read it here. The abstract summarizes the paper: This research Read More …
Review of Christ the Key (#0197)
Kathryn Tanner. Christ the Key. Cambridge University Press: 2010. ISBN: 9780521732772. Meet the Author Kathryn Tanner joined the faculty of Yale Divinity School as Professor of Systematic Theology earlier this year. Previously she taught at the University of Chicago Divinity School for fifteen years and at Yale University's Department of Religious Studies for ten years. Tanner's research relates the history of Christian thought to contemporary issues of Read More …
An Advent Conspiracy (#0196)
The Advent Conspiracy is an international movement centered around bringing a deeper meaning to Christmas. It started in 2006 when five pastors decided to make Christmas a revolutionary event by encouraging their faith communities to unite around four principles: Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More and Love All. Over the last several years, this ecumenical alternative to consumerism has grown to include more than 1500 congregations representing a variety of Christian Read More …
Should Your Church Buy Ads on Facebook? (#0195)
Earlier this week, Justin Wise wrote an article for Church Marketing Sucks about his congregation's experience using Facebook ads. It is a brief but informative look at both the basics of setting up an ad and his congregation's positive initial experience. He concludes his article recommending that all churches consider trying Facebook ads: If you’re in a church that has a small budget for marketing, you need to give Facebook ads a try. If you’re in a church that has plenty of Read More …