Bricks and Mortar

A Clearinghouse on Faith, Development and Nonprofits

Archive for About this blog

Back again

July 28, 2009 at 6:12 pm · Filed under About me, About this blog, PhD, Taylor University

I’m back in the United States after spending four weeks in Sri Lanka.  There, I was able to lecture at a local seminary and conduct training at World Vision Sri Lanka.  All of these teaching assignments were stretching!

During my time in Sri Lanka, I was also able to meet with some NGOs who will partner with me for my dissertation.  I also identified three additional funding sources which should allow me to spend seven months in Sri Lanka doing data collection for the dissertation.  This all seems too far away but I know things will move fast.  For the rest of the summer, I will be speaking at the Transformational Development Conference next week, continue to prepare a new course on Nonprofit Management for the fall and get ready for PhD classes.  My plate is full.

This year you should continue to expect biweekly posts from me.  I hope you are finding Bricks and Mortar an important resource in your work.

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Mashable

March 13, 2009 at 8:46 pm · Filed under About me, About this blog, Jobs, Nonprofit Management, Nonprofits, Social Entrepreneurship

I’ve found a social networking website, Mashable through one of the nonprofit professional listservs I’m on.  Mashable is an excellent repository of social media tools.  They also good advice on networking through social media, using broswers like Firefox and search engines, and ways to effectively market your blog.  Here are some of favorite posts:

Top 10 Social Networks for Entrepreneurs

WordPress Resource Lists

How to make Firefox your productivity machine

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Lessons from a first year PhD student

February 25, 2009 at 10:26 pm · Filed under About me, About this blog, Community Development, Community Economic Development, Community Organizing, Higher education, International Development, PhD, Social Work

  1. The PhD will change the way you think – you begin to see the connections between theoretical and practitioner mindsets.
  2. Eat curry – it will make you smarter.
  3. Make a detailed chart outlining what you plan to do each day – when you are done with your daily task list – stop working.
  4. Remove all tertiary commitments from your life – this is especially true if you have full-time job and a family.
  5. Talk with other faculty members at your alma mater  about what worked and did not work for them during their PhDs.
  6. Spend time playing matchbox cars, monopoly and uno with your kids — kids keep you grounded.
  7. Tailor your assignments to your dissertation topic
  8. Take an independent study and use it as the way to expand and build your literature review section
  9. Take time to break bread with your fellow students
  10. Take time to critique your dissertation topic (design, methods, etc.) with fellow students and faculty outside of your field
  11. Start talking/interviewing experts in the field of your topic – one of them might be willing to be on your committee
  12. Your chair should be vested in your topic, but you also need to have a methodologist who will help you to create a robust research design
  13. Create a database on excel of your literature review – author(s), title, full abstract, and content area which the article fits into your “literature tree”
  14. Reflect on what you read – don’t inhale it. (This is very difficult to do when you are not a full-time student).
  15. Watch a good movie every week that stirs your soul.

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Congregation-based community organizing

July 22, 2008 at 10:56 am · Filed under About this blog, Community Organizing, Faith, Holistic Missions, Social Justice

I‘ve just put together a class on congregation-based community organizing. I thought I would share a list of resources for you in case you are looking to connect your church, synogogue or mosque to a community organizing effort.

Here are three of the well-known national community organizing institutes who work with congregations (I’m sure there are more out there):

In addition, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America has an excellent page on congregation based community organizing. I would also direct your attention to comm.org’s website which has a 2001 study on the congregation-based community organizing.

Ron Snyder, an organizer for PICO, recently published an article in the New Directions for Youth Development journal, about the work of Oakland Community Organizations and their ability to empower low-income Oakland, CA parents to pressure educational reform in local public schools.

Finally, Jewish Funds for Justice has an excellent video that I embedded in this post on YouTube.

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The New Conspirators

July 9, 2008 at 11:40 am · Filed under About this blog, Community Organizing, Faith, Globalization, Holistic Missions, Social Justice

I’ve just finished a book by Tom Sine called The New Conspirators: Creating the future one mustard seed at a time (IVP, 2008). Thank you, Tom Sine! In this book, Mr. Sine explores the four new ways the church is working and being organized in the world in the 21st century.

Mr. Sine begins the book by dividing it into five significant conversations:

  1. Taking the new conspirators seriously.
  2. Taking the culture seriously.
  3. Taking the future of God seriously.
  4. Taking the turbulent times seriously.
  5. Taking our imagination seriously.

In conversation #1: For those unfamiliar with the “new conspirator” movements, which are often used interchangeably, Mr. Sine provided me with an excellent overview of the emergent, missional, monastic and mosaic movements. Mr. Sine helps the reader to understand the particulars of each stream and how they impact the church in the west. (These church movements are mainly confined to the US, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom).

Conversations #2 and #4: Being someone that is interested in studying the trends of globalization on local communities, I found these sections most interesting. Mr. Sine, known to be a futurist, is a master “connector of the dots” as author Shaine Claiborne states in the forward. He is able to simplify, but not oversimplify how the global context we now and will live in impacts the role of the church. I thought his description and understanding of this post 9/11 world profound and I believe this is one of the few Christian books which helps disinterested, “over family-focused” evangelicals to clearly see the implications that our current global context will have on the rich, middle and low income groups across the globe.

Some concerns: while I understand some of the reasons for the book, I felt that Mr. Sine tried to do too much in one book. Conversations #2 and #4 could have been separate books in and of themselves. The biggest weakness of the book was the lack of examples in many sections of the book. While Mr. Sine seemed to provide an reasonable rationale for his various assertions, I do not believe he demonstrated consistently where the emergent, missional, monastic and mosaic movements are specifically intervening to deal with our current global context and reality. Finally, I would also have liked to see him point out some of the shortcomings of the New Conspirators in dealing with these five conversations and how they plan to engage them.

Tom and Christine Sine head up an organization called Mustard Seed Associates. Recently, Tom and Christine Sine recently lead a conference on the topic of the book, called the New Conspirators Conference. Mp3s for the conference are available, (they’re not free) here.

Here are two more resources:

The New Conspirators WordPress blog

The New Conspirators book website

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Feedburner

September 26, 2007 at 10:30 pm · Filed under About me, About this blog

If you are already subscribing to this blog, please resubscribe using the icon on the right of my blog. I am now using Feedburner, a easy-to-use software tool used to promote, track and measure the audience of this blog.

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Blog on ChangeFan!

July 31, 2007 at 2:50 pm · Filed under About me, About this blog

My blog was recently highlighted on changefan.com. If you like to read and see more about changefan.com, check out their website. They seem to be the digg.com for us social change folks!

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