Organizations Books

This book is a unique resource for organizations, employers, and people who care about the diversity in their midst. Melissa Marshall's approach to helping people understand why they should care if they're physically and programatically accessible is...well...accessible. As one of the people she trains says, "You mean it's fair!"
Marshall is funny and creative, and is clear that she isn't interested in having people feel guilty. She talks about her adventures navigating a wheelchair through Chicago's O'Hare airport, hotel fires, offering fabulous prizes (like finger puppets)to button-down corporate types, and using masks to help people "get it" about what it means to be disabled today.
This is a book that should be on the shelf of anyone who trains around issues of diversity, all human resources staff, and executives of for-profit and not-for-profit corporations alike.
Get it!

This book is an exceptional resource for any trainer who needs to learn more about disability,

This book is a unique resource for organizations, employers, and people who care about the diversity in their midst. Melissa Marshall's approach to helping people understand why they should care if they're physically and programatically accessible is...well...accessible. As one of the people she trains says, "You mean it's fair!"
Marshall is funny and creative, and is clear that she isn't interested in having people feel guilty. She talks about her adventures navigating a wheelchair through Chicago's O'Hare airport, hotel fires, offering fabulous prizes (like finger puppets)to button-down corporate types, and using masks to help people "get it" about what it means to be disabled today.
This is a book that should be on the shelf of anyone who trains around issues of diversity, all human resources staff, and executives of for-profit and not-for-profit corporations alike.
Get it!

A very helpful and enjoyable read. The stories really helped to bring the book into the context of our daily lives. It was easy to relate to many of the families in the book...and Bempechat's advice was reasonable and easy to follw. She didn't make the reader feel like there was an absolute "right and wrong" way, but points out some of the pitfalls we, as parents, all find ourselves in when trying to motivate our children in school.

This book is wonderfully informative and entertaining. Bempechat speaks in language accessible to all parents about the struggles we all face trying to do the best for our kids' education. Her anecdotes and suggestions for dealing with everyday problems, such as homework, are right on the mark. Not at all preachy, Bempechat urges that we think about what works best for us and our families, to help us help our kids do well in school. A must read!

A very helpful and enjoyable read. The stories really helped to bring the book into the context of our daily lives. It was easy to relate to many of the families in the book...and Bempechat's advice was reasonable and easy to follw. She didn't make the reader feel like there was an absolute "right and wrong" way, but points out some of the pitfalls we, as parents, all find ourselves in when trying to motivate our children in school.

Absolutely brilliant, absolutely fascinating, absolutely timely,and absolutely of great importance. This is an excellent and extremely informative book for those participating in the upcoming elections. After having read The God Stragegy, the reader will be able to listen to the candidates with a more informed ear and will be able to make more informed choices on their ballots. David Domke and Kevin Coe have done their homework in researching this book. Their ideas aren't just off the tops of their heads; they can back up every statement they make, and do so. The God Strategy is definitely a book for both readers of faith and non-believers alike. For those with religious beliefs who might tend to shy away from the title alone, David Domke is a self-professed Christian. The God Strategy is a must read for those who are concernced about making America a strong and compassionate country.
By Carol White, Tacoma, Washington

If you read David Domke's last book, "God Willing", (a must read for every
one) which exposed the myth of a Free and Independent Press during the
current Bush administration following 9/11, and the calculated steps taken
by Bush and his staff to craft a framework to grow support for the president's
policies and his growing reliance on the ideology of Political Fundamentalism, then you will really enjoy this new book. You will also come to understand how politicians, thru a strategic communication approach grounded in a conservative religious worldview, "The "God Strategy" were able to achieve the two tasks listed above.



This new book traces the growth of the God Strategy in American politics
from the days of President Franklin Roosevelt to the current George Bush and
how both the Republicans and the Democrats have embraced the joining of
religion and politics. Domke and co-author, Kevin Coe lay out in great detail how politics
and religion came together and how both sides, to push agendas and win
elections with results that often threaten the very foundations of American
Democracy, have used this wedding



In reading the" God Strategy" I have come to understand some of the how's,
why's, and so what's involved in the rise of religion in American politics. I
am surely more aware of the subtleties used by both sides in their efforts
to shape a new America. I am even more aware of the misguided and often
angry methods used by the followers of the God Strategy in achieving their
end results and of the price America as a nation might be called on to pay
for those methods

Thanks Domke and Coe for this interesting, insightful and well-researched view of religion in America politics.

"The God Strategy" is a well-written, meticulously researched, and eye-opening examination of how U.S. politicians (particularly our four most recent presidents) use religion to win votes. It's also a genuinely interesting read. If you're at all curious about just how influential religion has become in today's political arena, you need to read this book. David Domke and Kevin Coe provide clear and varied examples that show how campaigns have increasingly capitalized on the use of religious messages (the God strategy) to get their candidates elected. Once you have read this book you will view the current presidential campaign in a whole new light; I have been amazed at how many times in the past couple months I've noticed politicians using this strategy in political ads or during debates. It is as if the authors predicted exactly what is now occurring. Clearly, this is a testament to the strength of the research that informs this book. "The God Strategy" should be a part of every thinking person's library.

Out of all house church books, this is my favorite because of the straightforward and concise dissertation on the hinderances to Biblical community, outreach, service, and fellowship that most Institutional Churches naturally inhibit.

Easy to read yet deeply profound in meaning, Smith gives adequate Scripture and documented research as to the problems hindering true revival in our churches today. Free from bitterness or complaining, the author recognizes that God is still sovereign over all His church, regardless of our flawed platforms, yet advocates the house church model as one that is most Biblically centered on Christ's purpose for believers. He also leaves plenty of freedom to enjoy variety within the house church model, structure, and operation, using language free from a dogmatic and know-it-all pretense.

In all his proposals, most readers will feel quite convicted by their dependence upon being a spoonfed benchwarming puppet on Sunday, their wasted resources on useless building expenditures, their prideful disunifying sectarianism within their denomination, and their lack of concern for the needs of others in their community. Smith admonishes a 24/7 Christianity where EVERYTHING you do is glorifying to God...including your job, family, chores, free time, etc., instead of just doing the usual list of spiritual things proscribed by the church. No wonder we can't feel the power of God or the freedom for the Holy Spirit to move in our hearts and our gatherings!

A MUST HAVE BOOK for any student of the Scriptures or those who feel there has to be more to the Christian life than the usual Sunday morning routine.

I have read many books on church restoration. This is currently the one I am recommending to those who notice the problems, but are unsure of the answers. For those who recognize that the plethora of religious gimicks and more "purpose-driven" products will not do... this book is for you.

There are many authors today that are very elequently able to articulate the problem with the church today, yet... most of them are not able to do what Smith has done in his gentle presentation. The problems in the institutional church are great and the people who support it are very dependent upon it. I submit to you that slamming them with their error is not the most effective means of conversion. Smith presents biblical truth as an invitation. He reveals the problem and invites you to discover the answer. He allows the Holy Spirit to connect the dots!

I appreciated Smith's focus on community from the very start. I also was refreshed by his obvious influence of the Anabaptist tradition. It was a breath of fresh air to hear a "house church" proponent talk about the doctrine of the two kingdoms and radical discipleship.

Christ is the answer to the church's ills today. A return to the person and work of Christ is the foundation of our faith. Ultimately, people must receive a fresh new vision of Christ and his work (life and teachings) before anything of true worth can take place. Then, there must be an undestanding of God's image in us is community. The Trinity enjoys community in eternal love and faithfulness. This is the image in which we were created. We experience this community together in the church once we have seen Jesus (God in the flesh) as he truly is and we gather around him in natural Body life.

If you are noticing the problems and are looking for more than just pop-culture American Christianity... or maybe you are just curious... I encourage you to get this book. So far... Smith's book is the one to start with... in my humble opinion.

After reading Smith, I suggest reading:

The Centrality of Jesus Christ (Works of T. Austin-Sparks)
The Normal Christian Life
The Release of the Spirit
Created for Community,: Connecting Christian Belief with Christian Living
Pagan Christianity: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices
Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community

Christian Smith goes to the heart of the problems within the organized Christian church. He does more than just complain about the way things are though ... he offers practical solutions to each problem in easy to understand text.

If you are still in the organized church -- yet, you see that "the emperor has no clothes," this book is for you. It will confirm many things that the Lord has been showing you. It will give you the strength to leave the "dog and pony show" (the performance-based church) and to forge out in the land that the Lord will show you.

If you desire to meet in a simple way with other believers and develop true relationships -- then this book is for you. It will give you the tools you'll need to begin your journey.

This book received such a glowing in-depth review (from reviewer "Center for Nonprofit Management"), I was disappointed to see that it was out-of-print.

Then I saw the good news - there's a second edition of this book (which strangely was published only 7 days before the in-depth review was written)!

So fret not, you activist, grant-writing wannabes (or is that grant-writing, activist wannabes?), just head on over to ISBN 0787965782 and begin your journey of making a difference!

If you come in to our nonprofit management support organization and ask for a book on grant proposal writing, there are two we'll pull out right away: Grassroots Grants and Winning Grants Step by Step. We're often asked which to choose. Of all the books we see, these are the two we most often recommend, but they do have different approaches.

Winning Grants Step by Step takes a pragmatic tone. It accepts the rules of the game and offers to show you how to win within them. "Most funders prefer to give grants for new and expanding programs or in support of special projects and new ideas rather than for the general operating expenses of an organization or the ongoing costs of established programs," it explains. "Because funders have these preferences, this workbook uses the idea of creating a new program as the basis for developing a proposal." (The book does also give examples of core operating support proposals, and does start with a planning guide to help you see which programs fit your priorities).
In the introduction to Grassroots Grants, on the other hand, the publisher shares her qualms about publishing a book about grants at all, preferring that the reader focus first on developing more renewable and less restricted gifts from individual donors. "This book is about two things: money and power," says Grassroots Grants, and calmly analyzes the dynamics of both in the grant proposal process. This big-picture view is in the end more pragmatic - it encourages you to take control of the grantseeking process by searching out those funders and pitching those programs that really best fit with what you are trying to do.

Both books have excellent project planning guidelines. As Winning Grants Step by Step observes, "Generally, organizations will spend approximately 80 percent of their time planning a project and only 20 percent of their time writing and packaging a proposal," so this section is obviously very important. Both books ask questions such as "What is unique about your organization's project?" "Is anyone else working on a similar project?" "What members of your community support each project?"

Both also contain useful information about finding appropriate funders, which is key to the process - much more important than your writing skills is finding the right funder who cares about projects like yours. Although Winning Grants Step by Step puts this information at the end in an appendix, you should really read it first, particularly the excellent section on corporate giving programs. Grassroots Grants contains very helpful guidelines about what to consider when deciding whether a funder is really a good fit for your organization, and detailed information about ways to develop good relationships with potential funders.

The books have different approaches to how they help you with your own writing. Winning Grants Step by Step has a workbook format, with questionnaires you fill out as you go, so that by the time you have completed them you will have addressed most of the subjects covered in a typical proposal, and it will be easy to cut and paste the appropriate bits into the funder's preferred format. It comes with all the worksheets on a CD-ROM so you can fill them out electronically and reuse them. If you like project planning, but get nervous about the writing process, this format may help walk you through. Grassroots Grants has questionnaires throughout the text, and it has more examples of proposals, query letters, and other documents with notes on how they were developed. If you like to write by reading examples to inspire you to your own purposes, this book will suit you.

Ultimately, these books complement one another. Even if you prefer the workbook format of Winning Grants Step by Step, the "big picture" you get from reading Grassroots Grants will help you answer all those questions. Likewise, if you prefer the style of Grassroots Grants, you can still benefit from the excellent sections on overhead costs and planning for sustainability in Winning Grants Step by Step.

Andy Robinson tells it straight and tells it true - this is a very clear and lucid text on the art of getting grants, written from a grassroots perspective. I especially appreciated the wealth of samples and examples. Robinson holds your hand through the whole process from beginning research all the way through to dealing with acceptance and rejection letters.

Beautifully -- in places lyrically -- written, this small volume makes a compelling case for preservation of the natural beauty that once prevailed throughout North America, and which now has become all too rare. Never straying far from her main theme (the life of Grey Owl), Jane Billinghurst draws us into the passion and dedication of her subject, leading us reflect on environmental questions not as dry policy issues, but as ones that can relate to an almost spiritual connection between the individual and his natural surroundings. Must reading for historians, environmentalists, and those with an interest in Canada, this insightful book is thoroughly rewarding for the general reader as well. Very highly recommended.

It has been said, "one cannot judge a book by it's cover", however, we must also keep in mind that there are no absolutes as this book is a story which is depicted, in large measure, by the cover. Sensitive, warm, and poetic presentation of the life and contributions of Grey Owl. The photos exceptional in quality, and accurate as to life and times of the era. These are real people, places, and times that were a part of North American history. The manner in which sayings and aspects of Grey Owl are available as the story unfolds are done in such a manner I think you get two books for the price of one. I read the book from cover to cover the first time then re-read the white pages only, and then followed by reading the tan colored pages. Either way it is easy, fast, and enjoyable. I think the author did an excellent job in demonstrating the efforts of Grey Owl. He was an interesting fellow who had a vision and purpose in life which is so unique that a major moving picture has been make about him as well as four documantaries. Jane Billinghurst has created a work which makes possible an interpretation of the content, by the reader, as it is a factual and well documented treatise. There have been several books published about Grey Owl, in my opinion this is, like the Land of Shadows (Don Smith), is a must read for a deeper appreciation of this most remarkable fellow, Grey Owl.

This is a wonderful book. Well researched and balanced. Jane Billinghurst tells the story of Archie B. and I could not put it down. Other's have borrowed it and have praised it also. I am off to check out what else Billinghurst has written!

I have just finished reading "The Habits of Highly Effective Churches" through for the second time and will probably read it again in the future. Having served in ministries for over three decades, I recognize the nine habits presented in this book as touchstones for any ministry that wants to see lives genuinely transformed. It is too easy for a church to lose its effectiveness. Barna's book helps to show why so many churches are filled with attenders yet are having little impact on the world around them with the life-changing message of the Gospel.

Buy this book! George Barna always has some interesting insights that will challenge you to think about your church, denomination, or parachurch organization. Besides, his books are among the few resources you can get that are based on scientific research and not hunches.

Borrow this book only if you have everything Barna has written, you go to one of his conferences at least every two years, and you just want to take a quick look at his new book.

The book describes "a ministry as being effective when lives are transformed such that people are constantly enabled to become more Christ-like. Effective ministries foster significant and continual changes in how people live." page 7-8]

Of the nine habits, one of my favorites is that highly effective churches develop significant relationships within the congregation. Significant relationship with God and one another transform lives!

According to Barna, the bar that defines highly effective churches is high. It probably ought to be because too many churches feel that good enough is good enough when mandates of the Kingdom of God may be calling for more.

I am very impressed with Barna's book, as he hits the nail on the head on a number of issues. Based on his research, this Christian pollster shows how the church should relate to the world around it. I am going to go through this again--I highlighted throughout--and write down the main points. I also want to give this book to my pastors, as there are a number of areas my local church could improve. If we want to see God work in our churches, then we need to be smart and use biblical principles and practices. Barna definitely provides us with a solid work here.

An important study of the impact of an intense collegiate experience on students.

Education program from the 60s still lasts From the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet 28 September 1999

In 1965, with anti-Vietnam demonstrations at their worst, philosophy professor Joseph Tussman began The Experimental College Program at the University of California, Berkeley. His goal, education for the sake of the individual and of society, sounds like a dream for the jaded higher education of today. In Habits of Mind: the Experimental College Program at Berkeley, Katherine Bernhardi Trow evaluates the program and its long- term effects. While evaluation of education generally focuses narrowly on the short-sighted and fashionable, this book's great merit is its description of the long term effects. Tussman College lasted four years, from 1965-1969. Some 300 students were chosen at random to participate. Trow interviewed forty students who completed the program, and she paints a vivid picture of how they were affected, what they learned and what positive influence it had in their lives. Tussman maintained that it was the university's fundamental duty to reawaken interest and get students involved for the sake of principles which are fundamental for individuals and for society: to develop an exercise of power built on rational, democratic and constitutional principles; to increase sensitivity to humanitarian values and fundamental human problems; to cultivate and strengthen ways of life and ways of conduct which make it possible for humanity to continue a war with institutions and with a spirit of rational discussion to find solutions to problems. Democracy demands of its citizens a political interest and active participation. To do this, according to Tussman, one must educate oneself in a fashion which before the breakthrough of democracy was reserved for members of the ruling class. Students probed deeply into fundamental problems. They examined the interplay between freedom and power. They were taught to be responsible citizens in a democratic society and custodians of western civilization. The program consisted of two parts: a syllabus and a pedagogical method. The syllabus focused on big problems and cultural crisis periods in history which had driven great thinkers to tackle fundamental questions. The reading list consisted of classics, such as the Iliad and works by Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Mill, and Marx, along with more current books, such as The Autobiography of Malcolm X. These were books by authors now viewed as "dead, white males." But students remember the reading as fantastic. Pedagogically, the program diverged radically from then-prevalent teaching methods. Teachers were recruited from various areas of study. All the reading material was read by both students and teacher, regardless of which subject the teacher normally taught. Lectures were held twice a week with all the students and teachers present, and smaller seminars were held. The students wrote essays every other week, and every day they jotted down thoughts and reflections prompted by books, lectures, seminars and discussions. These notes became an intellectual autobiography. The activities reinforced each other and formed a tight intellectual tapestry which stimulated and strengthened learning and education. It was, in short, a program which moved against the stream of mass education. The program seems even more radical if one considers that it, with its high standards, was established when the general trend was toward a relaxation of the demands on students and when Berkeley, like many American universities, was in a permanent state of uproar. What were the long-term effects? In the evaluation, the dense essay- writing comes out as highly valued and as a central force in the program-- at once challenging and entertaining. Essay assignments taught the students to think more analytically and abstractly. The students' linguistic ability was radically improved, in speech and in writing and as much in style as in grammar. The intense contact with the teacher, and the criticism the teacher provided in tutorials, played a constructive and crucial role. The lack of grades was positive. Instead of focusing on grades, one concentrated on the ideas and the knowledge for itself; competitive thinking was conspicuous in its absence. The important thing was to understand what one read and to be able to apply it in other contexts than the immediate one. It was not regarded as meritorious to memorize details in order to regurgitate them later. Tussman encouraged individual thought. The environment--a separate house and small groups --contributed to the feeling of a learned society and stimulated the students. The program helped students to grow intellectually and morally. Their ability to analyze, to adapt themselves quickly to new things, new environments and new problems and to view these from different perspectives grew. They acquired a better understanding of the world around them and a better ability to interpret and understand events in it. Empathy increased and led to intellectual satisfaction and a more content life, which is reflected in the professions in which the program's former students are now active: physician, journalist, attorney, civil engineer, etc. Why did the program cease if it was so good? The answer is brief: university bureacratic staffing problems and a certain amount of lack of interest in basic education at research-oriented Berkeley made the dedicated Tussman tire. The market has become an ideology instead of a means--even, with some exceptions, in academia. Students do not study to grow as a human being, but to satisfy the market. Within the not too distant future, perhaps we will hear a university or college president who, in a travesty of Kennedy's inauguration speech, will welcome novices with the admonishment: "Ask not what the market can do for you, but what you can do for the market." Doris Lessing calls the product of this competence-fixation the well-educated barbarians; those who have gone to school for twenty years, have brilliant records, but never read a book, know no history, and care only about knowledge in their field. That group does not include the graduates of Tussman College.

An exceptionally rich and multifaceted account of an experiment which occupies an interesting and important place in the history of American higher education.

Nel Noddings absolutely hits the nail on the head with her discussion of how we need to reevaluate the aims of our educational system. As it is currently situated, education serves almost entirely an economic function, in preparing students to enter the workforce and become good consumers in a successful economy. Whatever social functions the school serves are relegated to the background, and in fact tend to be discouraged if they are ever considered to be possibly getting in the way of the true goals. Of course, Noddings is also right in that we seem to have even lost focus of our original economic aims. The need to compete with others in standardized testing has forced students to learn things that may be becoming increasingly less and less relevant - Noddings's point about how asking an algebra teacher says that the point of a lesson is always going to be related only to other algebra lessons is something that every student of the school system has been frustrated with at one point or another (75).
Fortunately, Noddings does not fall into the trap that I envisioned as possible - that she would instead declare that the defined goal of education should be happiness. Such a lofty but ultimately nonsubstantive goal would be, to put it quite simply, silly, and ultimately even worse than the economic goals of the current arrangement. Fortunately, Noddings avoids the mistake of trying to make a singular definition of happiness and then working toward it. Instead, the final two thirds of the book are devoted to various different parts of life that Noddings would like to see become more prominent as aims of education. What makes the book so good is in how Noddings successfully weaves in the notion of happiness throughout all of these elements of life - which include raising a family, spirituality, participation in the democratic process, and, yes, in the workplace - together with the discussion of how education must be aimed toward these goals. It is almost as if the book is a collaboration of two distinct theses - how these parts of life are important to our happiness, and how education must serve these parts of life - and that seems to be the reason for how the book flows as well as it does when it is based on a topic like happiness that in lesser hands would be incredibly trite and quickly grow repetitive.
Of the two theses, neither is easy to quibble with. In regard to the thesis about how schools need to refocus their aims toward more relevant applications, I certainly have no disagreement; I believe that we clearly have lost track of what schools should be about and that the U.S. educational system is slowly careening toward greater and greater irrelevance (although it probably isn't much of a new phenomenon after all; how much of what scholars studied in ancient times was really necessary for their life experiences?). The idea of how the various elements that Noddings discusses as being keys to personal happiness are somewhat more spurious, in that personal happiness is by definition personal, and what makes one person happy is going to be far different from what makes another person happy (traditional education does make many lifelong scholars happy, for one). But Noddings does allow for this, and so I have no quarrel with her desire to try to point out some elements that typically make people happy for the sake of the argument.
Consider a sample sentence from the introduction to chapter 7; the introductions to all of the chapters in parts 2 and 3 of the book are structured quite similarly: "Possibly there is no human task more demanding, more rewarding, and more universal than parenting, and yet our schools apparently think that algebra and Shakespeare are more important" (138). The point of how schools are inadequate in their current aims is constantly reinforced. Here Noddings makes the argument that education needs to be reshaped such that students become more acquainted with concepts like child-rearing and how parents can play effective roles in their children's lives, "without preaching or direct instruction" (156). Noddings is right in having to address this final qualifier, since such nontraditional lessons might be controversial if they try to teach right and wrong answers in the same way that algebra might. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to go in that direction. After all, having an open discussion about the legitimacy of educational lessons is far from being the worst thing that could happen. The worst thing, rather, would be to maintain our current inertia.

Even though I live in Norway where the educational system works differently than in the US, this book was a real eyeopener to me. In a time where the school focuses more and more on the student's achievements in basic subjects like math, reading and writing, and where there's been put more and more weight on testing the students in these skills, this book represent and alternative way of thinking. Do we all need an academic education? Why do we educate students in the thought that all of them should go on with their studies beyond a collegelevel? What about all those occupations where you don't need academic skills, those occupations where you need practical skills? (skills that you weren't taught in school because the weight was put on the teoretical subjects). Being a teacher or a parent, this book will give you a new perspective on how to raise and educate our children.

In Happiness And Education, author and academician Nel Noddings (Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Emerita, Standford University) draws upon her years of experience, expertise and research as a teacher, administrator, and curriculum developer in public schools to address the very specific issue of the relationship of happiness to that of the experience of education and why, although parental expectations are quite clear that happiness is a kind of byproduct of education, it is not normal mentioned as one of the principle aims of education. Professor Noddings explores what it means to be happy, and then goes on to address how educators can help children to understand what happiness is. Criticizing an almost exclusive focus on economic well-being as the approved outcome of educational accomplishment, Professor Noddings emphasizes the contributions education provides with respect to making a home, parenting, developing character and interpersonal growth, identifying and engaging in work that is satisfying, participating effectively in a political democracy, and ways in which we can make schools and classrooms happy places of learning and intellectual exploration. Happiness And Education is especially commended to the attention of public and private school teachers, and administrative policy makers as informed, thoughtful, and though-provoking reading.

After 20 years in pastoral ministry, preparing for retirement, I wish I were back in seminary, with Galindo's book. He has given me a hugely helpful way to understand what goes on in churches. I'm buying a copy for my district superintendent, and my friend who's just starting seminary.

I do have a question: if a pastor canot "cast a vision" for a church until she's been there five years, how does that work for us United Methodists and our brief-tenure itinerant system? And I wish Galindo had used a few more examples, real-people illustratons of his oobservations. Other than that, I'm unequivocaly enthusiastioc - and I do plan to start over, reading the book again!

Israel Galindo's "Hidden Lives of Congregations" affords an excellent overview of the Christian church and its followers, diagnosing the cause and effect of the life, growth and attrition of churches in America. Its in-depth analysis of the mindsets of the average churchgoer, the clergy and the infrastructure of the church provides us with an essential profile of the movers and shakers that make the modern church the cornerstone of American society it is today. Yet we are introduced to the paradox as to how conformity to industrial paradigms result in the failed mission of the church in its purest form. This social phenomenon is explored in an informative and comprehensive dialogue that makes this a worthy addition to any Christian library.

The author leads us through an exploratory narrative as we trace the paths of ministers and their congregations who begin on the home church level, evolving into storefront ministries, growing into the need for their own church building, and finally expanding into property development to suit their advancing requirements. Only we find that the transition results in the church morphing into a mirror image of the secular corporation, requiring a board of directors to supercede the elders of the church in ministering to its greater needs. The pastor grows more detached from his teeming congregation, his leaders forced to spend more time administering to the needs of its members than pursuing its evangelical and community goals. As a result, the monolithic superchurch achieves corporate success as its profits soar, but ultimately becomes a failure to God and man.

"Hidden Lives" can be seen as an indictment of the consumer-friendly megachurch system that dominates the American religious scene today. The author depicts how idealistic ministers become discouraged and demoralized by the myriad of responsibilities thrust upon their shoulders, faced with exponential demands of their overgrown ministries. The book suggests a return to the apostolic vision of Pauline doctrine, the smaller church being more flexible and less encumbered as it pursues its simple mission to preach the Gospel to all nations. Providing a variety of social services in ministering to the needs of its followers is just one of the many excesses that hinder the church from its soul-saving mission. This book dissects the problem at its root causes and gives every clergyman the opportunity to avoid many of the pitfalls on the road ahead.

This is an excellent gift item for Christian workers and clergymen, as well as sociology buffs and casual readers alike. Don't miss out on this well-written, in-depth study; your home church will thank you for it.

This book opened my eyes to a lot of the enfighting that you see in churches. It has also enhanced my thoughts about the spirituality of church and why they worship the way they do.