Book Review, leadership, Ministry, Relationships, Spirituality

Quick Review: The Art of Mentoring

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I finished The Art of Mentoring: Embracing the Great Generational Transition by Darlene Zschech last week and here are some of my takeaways and thoughts. I read it because I have been trying to read at least one book a year on mentorship and this book was an opportunity to do so from a female author, which I’ve been looking to add a few more of into my reading list given a lot of what I’ve been reading lately.

What I enjoyed about this book was that it was framed about various values and it included a lot of anecdotes from real life. The best thing about the book was different stories from the author’s ministry or experiences that really bear witness to God’s hand at work.  I know there are a lot of Hillsong haters out there, but the book had a lot of Scripture utilized and I found it solid theologically for the most part for what the book’s purpose was.

Personally, this book just wasn’t what I hoped it would be. I was wasn’t more insights on succession or intentionality in passing on leadership from one generation to another. This was a more general approach, general exhortation to what Christians should be and do in their relationships. It essentially was aiming to help Christians live for me and engage more with the purpose of expanding their influence in other people’s lives.

So in a lot of ways I wouldn’t recommend it unless you really are a fan of Hillsong or you just want some general Christian inspiration and exhortation. None of that typically describes me. I listened to this book and the narrator was Australian and sounded like my daughter’s 1st-grade teacher so that added some novelty to my experience. I enjoyed a lot of the stories, but also struggled with the frequent “you should…” or “you should stop….” or “you should start….”

So if you are wanting to really develop in mentoring I might suggest other alternatives.

Book Review, cross-cultural, Culture, Development, Epic, History, leadership, Ministry, Relationships, systems, Thoughts on the Bible

Quick Review: Culture, Conflict, and Mediation in the Asian Pacific

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I have been reading Bruce E. Barnes’ Culture, Conflict, and Mediation in the Asian Pacific and found it unbelievably helpful as one who has been working in Asian contexts for the last decade and who currently is engaged regularly with people from over a dozen Asian nations.

The book is an exploration of how culture has influenced dispute resolution practices throughout Asia. There are chapters for each main country in Asia and they include Hawaii as well for integrative reasons.  Each chapter uses some of Hofstede’s cross-cultural indexes in different areas to provide a basic framework for the discussion and then the author unpacks the history of conflict resolution practices within those nations and how they may or may not have changed due to political or national changes.

For example – I didn’t realize China had such a rich history and interesting systems of mediation built into the framework of their history and culture and it was fascinating to see how Confucianism shaped conflict practices in different ways in China, Korea, and to a lesser extent Japan.  There was so much that really helps you understand more nuances of approaches to negotiation, conflict, or how to handle disputes.

The book provides a lot of comparative analysis between nations in some ways too so you can see how Japan is different from other Asian nations or how the Philippines or Indonesia is different.  In the west, most people now understand that “saving face” is a big deal, but this was a great resource to explore how those dynamics are different in different Asian countries and what the background influences culturally and historically might be.

The biggest takeaway from this book though relates to third-party strategies to conflict. Henry Cloud posted on facebook a couple of weeks ago a quote that said, “Direct communication is the best way to go through life.”  He went on and elaborating on things related to emotional and relational health. I think there are ways that this statement is true, but the book reinforced the reality that there are many ways in which indirect conflict resolution is healthier and in fact – better.

This is a worthy conversation – but I’ve seen too many white or American leaders write off, dismiss, wear down, or shame Asian-American or Asian leaders who were trying to resolve things genuinely, but that just weren’t respected or judged because their approach was different. Some of those things are not healthy, but not as much as what an average white American might think.

There are many ways where an indirect and third-party system of dispute resolution is very much compatible with the Scriptures and it’s worth a lot of reflection and cross-cultural dialogue about these situations and practices. You may find that it may offer a helpful corrective to some assumptions about certain Biblical passages related to conflict or at least it may expand the possible range of meaning and application.

I have been working through different strategies of how to apply some of the wisdom gained in this book, especially when matched up with insights from Ministering in Honor-Shame Cultures and Cross-Cultural Conflict.  At the heart – it’s about a relationship first approach to conflict which I have come to increasingly value instead of the propositional truth or logic approach to conflict resolution.

Book Review, Culture, Development, History, leadership, Ministry, Relationships

Quick Review: Ask More

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I read Frank Sesno’s Ask More: The Power of Questions to Open Doors, Uncover Solutions, and Spark Change. It was published in early 2017 and I’ve been going through several books that deal with question asking in different ways.  I reviewed Conflict Coaching recently which contains large sections related to question asking when coaching people through conflict situations. Leadership Coaching contains great content on asking different types of questions to get at the heart and help someone problem solve in different ways.

But I really enjoyed this book as well for different reasons. It was really easy reading but set up in a way that was very helpful. Each chapter was basically self-contained which allows the book to have multiple resources for different contexts.  The chapters are designed around different contexts or types of questions so you get deeper dives on categories like diagnostic questions, strategic questions, empathy questions, scientific questions, confrontational questions,  hosting questions, mission questions, legacy questions, and others.  The author was a significant reporter and utilizes his connections to draw on some big names to illustrate the different sections. For example, Gen. Colin Powell is interviewed in “strategic questions,” Anderson Cooper contributes to “confrontational questions, ” and several other big names like Sandra Day O’Conner and others contribute a lot of wisdom and insight.

The chapter I found most helpful was the mission questions chapter and it would seem to be a great resource for some of the courses I teach. The empathy and hosting questions were helpful as were the diagnostic questions.  The most interesting or challenging set of questions was the confrontational questions – how to use questions to hold people accountable.

One of the things I liked was the way it sought to help someone prepare and be intentional with the questions they ask in different situations. It gives great criteria and guidance for developing the questions needed.  One area that I think was not really addressed was the role of culture in terms of questions in some of these areas. The author touches briefly on culture in the final main chapter and occasional through a few different anecdotes, one involving Yasser Arafat for example, but it’s a bigger variable than what is sometimes acknowledged.

The book has a helpful appendix section where there are abbreviated “refreshers” of each main chapter that gives a summary and review to help retain the information and as a quick reference section which I’ve found helpful.

It’s a helpful resource. For audio folks, it’s a great listen. But I’ll be picking up a hard copy so I can use sections in classes in the future.  But there’s going to be a lot of value in this book for just about everyone given the wide range of questions involved.

 

Book Review, cross-cultural, Culture, Development, leadership, Ministry, Negotiation, Relationships, Spirituality, systems

Quick Review: Conflict Coaching

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I’ve been working through the textbook Conflict Coaching: Conflict Management Strategies and Skills for the Individual by Tricia S. Jones and Ross Brinkert over the past few weeks.  It was written about 15 years ago when conflict coaching was just starting to become more popular in the dispute resolution world.

Jones and Brinkert introduce their Comprehensive Conflict Coaching Model, which has a lot of narrative dimensions to it as well as a lot of components that are quite helpful to negotiation, conflict coaching, and mediation. The general flow of the process begins with discovering refining the story in a conflict and then proceeds towards deeper reflection about story through the lenses of identity, emotion, and power. That provides the foundation for crafting a better story in a conflict situation and working skillfully through relationship building forms of communication.

The dimension of the model I find most helpful is the intentional process of helping facilitate reflection in identity, emotion, and power. This is what makes or breaks conflict in my opinion and lack of reflection in these areas is often where people get stuck.

Like many narrative or secular dispute resolution models, there is no treatment of themes like forgiveness, confession, or apology. There is only conversation about how to shape a better story with others, which I believe metaphorically is a great way to envision an alternative future. But that future has limits without heart change and the dynamics of reconciliation. I believe combining heart work and Biblical approaches to reconciliation with this type of narrative framework for working through conflict can be very powerful, but there are problems if we just try to move forward without dealing with hearts.

That being said, this is a tremendous resource for people who want to do a deeper dive into conflict coaching and mediation. There’s a lot of great research and scholarship pulled into this that makes for a lot of great research-based insights and learnings.

 

 

Book Review, cross-cultural, Culture, History, leadership, Ministry, The Prophetic

Quick Review: 7 Women

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7 Women and the Secret of Their Greatness by Eric Metaxas is a collection of 7 short biographies of significant women whose Christian faith informs their faith and extraordinary impact in this life.  I read the seven different chapters or short biographies periodically over the last year and wrapped up the final biography of Mother Teresa this past week. I read Metaxas’s 7 Men a couple years ago which you can get a feel for here.

I enjoyed this and learned a lot. Each biography was fascinating in different ways, but I really enjoyed learning about Hannah More and Rosa Parks especially.  But I was fascinated by Susanna Wesley, Mother Teresa, and Maria Skobstova. I was most familiar with Corrie ten Boom, but enjoyed this again. Maria Skobstova was really interesting – in her parallels to Bonhoeffer, but also that she was a twice divorced, alchohol drinking nun who became a saint in the Greek Orthodox church.

These are great books if you want to do some biography but you don’t want to go all in on a long one. This book is also a great listen as well for audio book people. Each chapter or biography was the length of my commute to work so that was quite convenient.

There’s been amazing women  in the world and in the history of the Church  – I suggest getting familiar with many of them starting with these 7.

 

 

Book Review, Development, leadership, Ministry, Negotiation, Relationships, Spirituality, Theology, Thoughts on the Bible

Quick Review: Feelings and Faith

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I recently read Feelings and Faith: Cultivating Godly Emotions in the Christian Life by Brian S. Borgman. There’s so many that ride the extremes of emotion – either being driven completely by emotion or rejecting emotion out of hand. Feelings and Faith is a theology of emotions for people who want to understand emotions through the grand story of creation, fall, and redemption.

A good amount of the book is focused on unpacking from Scripture what it has to say about emotions and what that means for the character of God and what it means to be human. Borgman challenges various false perspectives about feelings that plague Christians and non-believers alike. He anchors his theology of emotions with a solid foundation that is easy to understand and follow even though it still is challenging.

He continues to tackle Biblical perspectives on various emotions such as anger, fear, and depression among others. He does a good job in this section helping the reader understand the intersection of the physical person and spirituality. In the world today much is treated as exclusively physical – but there are helpful discussions about spirituality, Scripture, and sin as they impact feelings and emotions.

He dives into various areas such as worship, preaching, Christian community, and reading Scripture among others to explore the importance of holistic experience as part of God’s design of revealing Himself.

This is a very solid book. I have read so much on some of these areas that I did not find much of the book revolutionary. But if I had read this in college or in my twenties I would have really benefitted from it. But I continue to be struck by one of the main points of the book – that our emotional life is subject to the Lordship of Christ just like any other area. This isn’t a popular notion as emotions still tend to get filtered by what’s culturally appropriate, but there are emotions God wants us to experience and emotions that He wants us to have control over.  That’s a radical idea to many.

So if you find yourself blown around in the wind too often or detached from any source of meaning and connection, I’d suggest reading Faith and Feelings.

 

Book Review, cross-cultural, Culture, leadership, Ministry, Negotiation, Relationships, Spirituality, systems, The Prophetic, Theology

Quick Review: The Fire Next Time

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I read James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time over the weekend and found it really powerful. I had wanted to read it for a while and have heard many people compare Te-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, which I found really powerful a few months ago. That increased my drive to prioritize this book and I’m really glad I did, despite being late to the party as it were.

As a book that was written in 1963 in the heart of the civil rights struggle, it struck me just how many of the themes are similar. As I was reading the book I saw the recent news that home ownership for African-Americans was assessed as having made no progress in the past 50 years, since the time The Fire Next Time was written. That bit of info powerfully shaped my reading and experience of what was written in 1963 with such power, art, and conviction.

One of the fascinating dimensions of the book was Baldwin’s critique of the nation of Islam’s approach to peace and justice as he found them to be ideologically on the same ground as white supremacists. But he provides a first-hand account of conversations and interactions I could never experience or observe in person and I found myself riveted in hearing the raw passion and anger and desire for justice. I was also disturbed by the unfiltered hate for whites by some. At this point in my own journey, such realities do not generate as much fear in me as they once may have. Instead, they generate deep sadness and anger of my own. It is true that much has changed for the better in the last 50 years, but it’s also uncomfortable just how much continues to reflect the same patterns of sin and injustice.  It’s these realities that make this book important for today as well.

Baldwin gives a strong critique of religion in this book through the lenses of oppression, corruption, and hypocrisy. He offers helpful perspective on how the church – both the black and white churches of the time contributed to the cycles of hatred, violence, and systemic injustice of the time. He clearly turns away from the church as a result, but there’s a lot about his experiences and insights that merit self-reflection for the modern church – especially the way religion and religious institutions can get enslaved by culture and the ideology of the time.

At the core of it, I heard through Baldwin’s anger and contempt for some of these institutions a deep longing for the church to truly be what it should be in the context of such blatant hatred, evil, and injustice. It’s a reality that when the church fails to have anything to say or do that engages meaningfully in matters of injustice and that fails to point to a tangibly different possibility instead of pie in the sky theology, the Church loses its credibility. And Baldwin, stirred with passion and anger, still resists the temptation of ethnic hatred and retaliation in favor of love and sacrifice.

This won’t be the last time I read this book because there’s so much in here that you just can’t absorb or take in one time through.

 

Book Review, Books, cross-cultural, Development, Negotiation, Relationships, Theology

Quick Review: Narrative Mediation – A New Approach to Conflict Resolution

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I finished this week John Winslade and Gerald Monk’s Narrative Mediation: A New Approach to Conflict Resolution.  This book is grounded in social constructionist theory and postmodern philosophical assumptions. I’ll share a few thoughts on what was helpful and where I found some problems.

The approach is fundamentally influenced by the assumptions that behavior and meaning are shaped by discourse and socially constructed narratives. Conflict is not something that is intrinsic or caused by who someone is per se but driven by discourse and the socially shaped meanings as they act and are acted upon.

A big part of the approach is “externalizing the conflict,” which basically can be summarized as avoiding judgment and making the conflict itself “the bad guy.” The goal is to eliminate all guilt and shame so a positive alternative story can be discovered and developed.

Some strengths of this approach – one is that it can help in scenarios where people feel significantly attacked or threatened as a mediator seeks to restore a sense of safety and trust. There are some great components of the approach with different types of questions that can approach a conflict a bit more indirectly or in ways that allow really defensive people to find their way back. Another strength is there are some great methodological categories for finding your way through a conflict towards an alternative story. There are some things I really found interesting and helpful from a tactical and strategic standpoint.

But it was fascinating to read a book in which there was 250 pages of mediation yet there was not even a whisper or allusion to the concepts of forgiveness, confession, apologies, repentance, or reconciliation. This isn’t a surprise given the underlying philosophical assumptions, but that’s the giant and glaring weakness to this approach. It does not get at the heart. This approach more guides people how to manage conflict and get out of it and move on with your lives and hopefully with a chance at restoring the relationship. However, there is no attention to heart issues and the kind of sin and character elements that drive and perpetuate conflict.

That being said, I found a lot of the tools in the book helpful from a tactical or strategic standpoint in different potential situations, but I just don’t share the fundamental assumptions of the authors and some of their broad philosophical commitments to their process.  But the idea of helping people develop a better story together that is characterized by peace is great. Worldview is a big piece here and this is why having a metanarrative to me is the most important component for a narrative approach to mediation – because it points to the grand story and that includes themes that ultimately lead to better stories like forgiveness, sacrifice, and love.  To try to form better stories without connection to that bigger story leaves conflict resolution and mediation with limited possibilities where some of the deepest forms of transformation are neglected.

But – I think there is a lot tactically here that could be of help mediating in multi-ethnic situations or in indirect cultures because the strategies and tools are designed to save face for everybody at all times. That’s part of the problem, but there are areas of training  embedded in this that would help someone doing this outside the West.

 

Book Review, Books, cross-cultural, Culture, leadership, Ministry, Negotiation, Relationships, Spirituality, systems, Theology, Thoughts on the Bible

Quick Review: Cross-Cultural Conflict

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This past weekend I read Duane Elmer’s Cross-Cultural Conflict: Building Relationships for Effective Ministry. There doesn’t seem to be a kindle version of the book, which would be a shame. The book has some great stuff and in some ways is a forerunner to the recent honor-shame “movement” in missions and Christian scholarship.

This book offers some basic primers on cross-cultural relationships, especially honor-shame dynamics in collectivist cultures such as in Asia and Africa. The focus is still on helping Western missionaries think more cross-culturally and contextually in terms of relationships, conflict, and ministry so there is a lot here designed to help Westerners self-reflect about their own cultural biases.

There’s actually a lot of common ground between this book and Ministering in Honor-Shame Cultures by Jayson Georges, which I shared some thoughts on last week. That book has benefitted from a couple decades of additional scholarship, but Elmer’s book includes some fantastic insights on collectivist culture and dynamics.

There are several chapters that deal with indirect approaches to dealing with conflict but goes much more in-depth than Georges does in his relationships chapter in his book. In addition to discussing patron-client dynamics in a chapter on the one-down position, Elmer also offers some great stuff on storytelling as an indirect strategy for resolving issues in honor-shame contexts. Of great help to me at a time where I am studying mediation was Elmer’s chapter on mediation and the mediator with an honor-shame culture in view. The role of a mediator is really interesting as expressed in different cultures. Each culture celebrates some forms of mediation and rejects others it seems. Mediation in Asia from what I’ve experienced tends to function very differently than mediation in the United States.

Elmer also unpacks a great negotiation, honor-shame conflict case study from Joshua 22. I’ve heard some helpful things on this case study before, but I enjoyed Elmer’s treatment of it.

One additional benefit of Elmer’s book here is that there were numerous examples drawn from the Philippines, where I currently live and serve, which I found actually really helpful. There’s a lot here that I can draw from for my current context.

So while there is a lot of commonality with Ministering in Honor-Shame Cultures, this book goes a bit more deeply into the arena of conflict especially as the title suggests.  I’m really glad I read it.  I was fascinated by the reviews – some of which are highly positive and some are negative. It’s clear that some people really have a hard time looking at conflict, relationships, and the Scriptures through an honor-shame lens.  There’s so much to be gained.

 

Leadership Formation & Development Within Systems and Organizations