Dynamic Discernment rings true—it portrays change leadership to be as complicated, fraught, adventurous and exhilarating as it really is. Sarah Drummond draws on her considerable experience, research, and theological acumen to expertly guide leaders in understanding and engaging the dynamic interplay between reason, emotion and power for leading change. Dynamic Discernment is an outstanding and hopeful resource to prepare for that kind of creative leadership."—Matthew Floding, Director of Ministerial Formation at Duke Divinity School and the former chair of the Association for Theological Field Education Leadership that seeks to be effective must navigate the emotional systems, learning habits, and power dynamics of any community it hopes to serve through seasons of change. When conflict, stagnation, and decline threaten an institution's imagination and sustainability, leaders must be adaptable, self-differentiated, discerning, and liberation-minded if they are going to cast a vision for--and lead the work of--transformation. With experience and practicality, Sarah B. Drummond offers critical tools, social theory, and theological perspective to equip leaders in organizational change.
The structure of the United Church of Christ, and its well-being, depends upon shared leadership: between ministers and congregations, between congregations, between believers with diverse life experiences, across regions with varied histories. That quality of collaboration is often understated – in contrast to the United Church of Christ’s more public pronouncements – yet the ethos of shared leadership may be one of the UCC’s greatest gifts to a secular world that is increasingly narrated by division and platform.
Field education is an opportunity for students to develop ministry skills, practice ministerial reflection, discern their call, experience professional collegiality, and undergo personal transformation. Field education offers them a place to practice ministry and a space to reflect on it, to integrate theory and practice, and grow towards competency. In Welcome to Theological Field Education! eleven directors of field education in seminaries and divinity schools across North America pass on their wisdom to both students and their supervisors. Edited by Matthew Floding, director of field education at Western Seminary in Holland, Michigan, this volume covers critical topics such as the art of supervision and formation, the use of case studies and peer reflection groups, self-care and ministerial ethics, and assessment. Formation for ministry is especially challenging at this time in the church's life. First, the explosion of knowledge, pluralism, and consumerism and a host of other complicating factors make huge demands on what a minister must know to be effective in ministry. Second, with the erosion of thick religious subcultures, the novice minister has fewer sources of practical wisdom to draw upon. The next generation of ministers, if they are to be more fully formed for ministry, depends on skilled mentoring alongside wise supervisors. This book is the tool to help them make the most of their field education experience.
Dynamic Discernment rings true—it portrays change leadership to be as complicated, fraught, adventurous and exhilarating as it really is. Sarah Drummond draws on her considerable experience, research, and theological acumen to expertly guide leaders in understanding and engaging the dynamic interplay between reason, emotion and power for leading change. Dynamic Discernment is an outstanding and hopeful resource to prepare for that kind of creative leadership."—Matthew Floding, Director of Ministerial Formation at Duke Divinity School and the former chair of the Association for Theological Field Education Leadership that seeks to be effective must navigate the emotional systems, learning habits, and power dynamics of any community it hopes to serve through seasons of change. When conflict, stagnation, and decline threaten an institution's imagination and sustainability, leaders must be adaptable, self-differentiated, discerning, and liberation-minded if they are going to cast a vision for--and lead the work of--transformation. With experience and practicality, Sarah B. Drummond offers critical tools, social theory, and theological perspective to equip leaders in organizational change.
In Holy Clarity, Sarah Drummond explores the most basic reason leaders of religious organizations conduct evaluations: To find and create God-pleasing clarity regarding the organization's purpose and the impact of its activities. Leadership and evaluation are not separate disciplines, she argues. Effective leaders evaluate because they need to know what is happening in their organizations and how those activities are effecting change. Drummond first describes the way in which our postmodern culture makes clarity difficult to obtain. She then looks at holy clarity from a biblical and theological perspective and make the case that it is a spiritual discipline that can stand on its own theological merits. She presents four approaches to evaluation that can help a leader to guide a community toward greater clarity, both when evaluating or analyzing programs and when planning and starting programs. Finally, she considers the work of clarification as a faith practice, one that can make a pastor or layperson not just a better leader, but a better Christian who is more firmly grounded in God. Each chapter concludes with a fictional case study that provides a jumping-off point for discussion and helps bring her theory to life. Holy Clarity provides an accessible resource as an entry point for those who are eager to learn the best practices of this crucial discipline.
The structure of the United Church of Christ, and its well-being, depends upon shared leadership: between ministers and congregations, between congregations, between believers with diverse life experiences, across regions with varied histories. That quality of collaboration is often understated – in contrast to the United Church of Christ’s more public pronouncements – yet the ethos of shared leadership may be one of the UCC’s greatest gifts to a secular world that is increasingly narrated by division and platform.
Leadership is, inherently, a management of tensions. The individual and (or versus!) community. Inclusions and boundaries. Structure and creativity. Each pulls at the other—helpfully at times, harmfully at other times, and always with complexity. Leadership scholar and author Sarah B. Drummond provides a framework for leading tension, intentionally, especially within religious communities and institutions.
In this revised edition of his study of San Francisco's economic and political development since the mid-1950s, Chester Hartman gives a detailed account of how the city has been transformed by the expansion - outward and upward - of its downtown.
Despite efforts to widen participation, first-in-family students, as an equity group, remain severely under-represented in higher education internationally. This book explores and analyses the gendered and classed subjectivities of 48 Australian students in the First-in-Family Project serving as a fresh perspective to the study of youth in transition. Drawing on liminality to provide theoretical insight, the authors focus on how they engage in multiple overlapping and mutually informing transitions into and from higher education, the family, service work, and so forth. While studies of class disadvantage and widening participation in HE remains robust, there is considerably less work addressing the gendered experiences of first-in-family students.
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