Organizations Books

This is the secong not-for-profit organization that I have directed. I have used this guide and the subsequent Carver guides to help with organizing and direction setting. Volunteer board members always respond well to the material. It is easy to understand yet the Carver model is very comprehensive. I would recommend this to any organization that is engaged in charitable work.

This first in a 12-part series of general guides on Policy Governance is a great introduction to author John Carver's new approach to nonprofit board development. Basically, this approach clearly separates the roles of board and staff as they go about their separate but related jobs of organizational governance and management. Policy Governance clarifies these roles through policy development and permits the board---governing as a body---to control the management and direction of the organization in a global policy approach. This guide is a good start in grasping the concepts of the approach.

The Amy in this book is near and dear to my heart. And that is not because she shares the same name as me. Or that i find her story to be inspiring and uplifting. Rather i cherish this book because Amy was my teacher in college.

No, I am not deaf, nor hard of hearing. Rather I am an Occupational Therapist.

Amy was my sign teacher at Mt. Mary College and she brought to us a wealth of knowledge that has known little equal.

People talk about imersion schooling, that is what it was like with Amy. There was no talking just signing learning and growing. First with baby steps and then with leaps and bounds. She was not teaching us about how to communicate with her world... but rather how our world needs to open our eyes and communicate with hers.

This story is a great reflection of Amy's life. What her life was and the things that her parents fought and advocated for helped to form the truly magnicifient person that she is. As a result she has a special inner light that shines for all to see.

I now work in a school system, much thanks to Amy. Without her inspiration i don't know if would have choosen this path. It is not easy to fight for my kids to get them the services they need. Its never as easy as it could be... kids need services but money always drives that bottom line.

Perhaps this is a good book for any parent to read that has a child with special needs. Weather that special need means IEP or 504 it should matter not. We all have to advocate for the little ones... they are our hearts and our souls. If we be not the Gladiators to defeat the Lions... then I know not who will be the voice of those who have none.....

A Case about Amy by R.C. Smith. 1996. Temple University Press. 322 pages.

Smith takes a reader on a time odyssey (1976-1982) to witness a struggle of the Deaf parents of a Deaf daughter, Amy Rowley, and a hearing son endured through the maze of an education and court systems in their quest towards an equal opportunity for Amy enrolled in a public school.

His book, which took Smith about 12 years of researching and interviewing, illustrates how the systems of power could be shifted into their favor by manipulating the interpretation of loosely worded in Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. And later in Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (PL 94-142), which was renamed Individual with Disabilities Act (IDEA). Instead of accepting the lower court's order to provide Amy Rowley a sign language interpreter, the school board appealed and argued over the definition of "equal opportunity" versus "full potential" or "appropriate education" that went all the way to Supreme Court.

Along that time odyssey Smith introduced the family's lawyer, Michael Chatoff, who turned deaf in his 20s and how he overcame unjust discrimination against him as he was striving to become the lawyer he was and argued the case for Rowleys at Supreme Court. Smith is successful in presenting an objective insight of the politics, controversial issues, and everyone revolving around and inside the community of Deaf citizens.

A reader may be stunned to learn that the judges of Supreme Court did not scrutinize the Act that was passed in Congress, and they decided that since her achievement tests scores proved that even without a sign language interpreter Amy was getting an appropriate education. As a result, the definition of "appropriate education" or "full potential" won over "equal opportunity." This decision was also cost effective for a public school to avert providing a sign language interpreter for Amy.

Hence, from that time odyssey, a reader questions the true intention of society at large in educating bright deaf children like Amy. Does the school board ever encourage deaf children to accomplish beyond the standard academic achievement expected of average hearing children?

This work is short, but each chapter is quite informative. The book itself is a small collection of scholars (mostly Lutheran) such as Robert W. Jenson, David S. Yeago, Carl E. Braaten, Gunther Gassmann, Frank Senn, etc. Each chapter covers a specific topic ranging from The Authority of the Church, The Church as Community, the Catholic Luther, to The Reform of the Mass and Lutheran Pietism and Catholic Piety.

The essential thrust of the work is to demonstrate that the Reformation was not meant to be a move away from the Catholic Church, nor a complete separation from the Catholic Church, but rather an attempt for the Catholic Church, at the time, to experience and evangelical awakening.

Some of the better chapters include David Yeago's titled "The Catholic Luther." Yeago describes that Luther was certainly not intending to completely separate him and those who followed him from the Catholic Church. Rather, at a specific time in Luther's life (1518) Luther experienced a shift in thinking which ultimately led him to a desire to reform certain things within the Catholic Church. Yeago is very detailed in this chapter, using Luther's actual works to demonstrate this shift in thinking.

Another excellent chapter in the work is Frank C. Senn's titled "The Reform of the Mass." Senn demonstrates how the Mass had changed within the Reformation and those years following the Reformation. Moreover, Senn discusses how certain men (i.e. Zwingli, Luther, Calvin, etc.) affected the Mass, and what changes were implemented by each man that led to what certain denominations do with the Mass today. Moreover, Senn discusses changes with the Mass which occurred prior to the Reformation.

Overall, this small book is well worth every cent paid. It is quite detailed and well written for such a brief work, and is quite ecumenical in pleading for an evangelical catholicity. I recommend this work.

What form of Protestantism is to take the center stage in America? This book by a group of, all but one, Luthernas represents two distinct trends in American Protestantism. One group sees the Reformation as an end in itself, complete and finished. Free forms of worship, no institutionization of the Spirit, etc. This group sees there to be no need whatsoever to be reunited to Rome. That would be a step backward.

The other group understands the movement differently. These beleivers understand themselves to be Catholics in exile, to varying degrees, who think that the Reformation may be doing more harm thatn good, even if it was, in Pelikan's words, "a tragic necessity".

The authors are very fluent in teh terms of the questions at hand and represtent the main thinkers on the subject.

Please consider the following statement by a late 19th century Lutheran: "One is not a Lutheran who every day does not ask himself why he is not a Roman Catholic."

The "Cell-Driven Church" is full of practical insights into the "nuts and bolts" of the cell model. It is easy to read and moves along quickly. I found great illustrations and testimonies of people on the front-lines of cell leadership. Also, the "Cajun" jokes are really funny and effectively placed!! I highly reccommend this book to anyone interested in the cell church concept.

For three years, I was a vestryperson of Christ Episcopal Church in Overland Park, Kansas. (1997-2000) The last two years of this service was spent as the senior member of the vestry, known in the Episcopal Church as Senior Warden. The Senior Warden's responsibility is to lead the twelve person vestry as well as work closely with the clergy on all church matters , both secular and spiritual.

For the past decade, our church has witnessed phenominal growth, due primarily to the increased spiritual vitality of the church and strong leadership of our senior pastor,Ron McCrary. In the past few years, we have prayed about and researched ways to serve our growing church community. We had become basically a program based church. Although small groups were a part of our church family, programs, which catered to the masses and which the staff implemented were thought to be the foundation for meeting the congregation's needs. I believed strong progams was the answer to meeting the spiritual needs of a growing church. I had my doubts about the effectiveness of small groups and was not a proponent of cell based ministry.

Several months ago, Ron McCrary gave me a copy of the Cell Based Church and asked me to read it and tell him what I thought. Reluctantly I began the book, not initially expecting anything that would change my mind about cell ministry.

After the first chapter, I discovered that I was underlining, highlighting and making notes in the margins. The reason was that so much of what I was reading seemed to have relevance to our church and had specific relevance to many of the people that I knew personally in our parish.

By the time I finished the book, I had become a cell based ministry convert. Not only did many of Billy Hornsby's ideas seem to have great potential and benefit for our church, the "proof of the pudding" evidence, from other churches doing cell base ministry, convinced me that we had to change our church's ministerial philosophy from program based to cell based.

Our clergy and vestry agreed recently to convert our ministry philosophy and stategy to a cell based approach. We are now in the embryonic stages of that conversion.

We have known for some time that God is truly blessing our church. We also know that He has now sent us Billy Hornsby with his exciting ideas and proven stategies in order that we may really take our responsibility in doing God's work to the next level.

The Cell Driven Church is a "Must Read" for any church leader.

Roy Jackson

This book provides an excellent overview of the field of cellular automata. It brings together a broad range of concepts and ideas which have been percolating over the past 70 years. In many ways the field of cellular automata and its offshoots remind me of the principles and ideas expounded on in Thomas Kuhn's book `The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'. For this field is truly revolutionary in its ability to easily show the power of emergent properties from simple rules.

The flow of the book is easy to understand and the documentation and references are excellent. The prose is well written and the author's ability to clarify basic ideas is exceptional.

I highly recommend this book. The first chapter `Preliminaries' clearly shows the author has brought a rich scope to the presentation of the material.

Although I have been nebulously aware of the term "Cellular Automata" for about 25 years, it was not until I read the book Cellular Automata that I really understood what it entails. As a result, I have become enamored with the field and its mathematical elegance. It is unfortunate for this fascinating field of study, that it is called Cellular Automata -- a marketing disaster if you ask me.

Though Cellular Automata probably has a strict definition, you can think of it as how simple rules governing a cell (or a neuron or an ant or whatever) through time can give rise to complex ordered systems. People often think that there's some intelligent design behind the complexity we see in nature, but as this book demonstrates, all it takes is a few simple rules about what happens in a local neighborhood to give rise to systems that order themselves into amazing complexity.

The book is a comprehensive survey of the history and current state of Cellular Automata. I wish I had the time to follow through on the amazing panoply of interesting paths, papers, web sites and ideas presented to the reader, but this could easily require a lifetime of study (and computer time).

In spite of having no background in Cellular Automata, I found this book to be extremely accessible and clearly written with many illustrative examples. I read the book cover-to-cover and understood it all, which for a textbook is really saying something. For the layman, it helps to have a strong mathematical background as well as a keen interest in number theory, but none of this is necessary. One of the nice things about this book is that if for some reason you don't understand a topic such as say, the Sierpinski Triangle, the rest of the book is not predicated upon it, even if it is called back on occasion.

The only possible issue I had with the text is that complex theoretical concepts were on rare occasion difficult to follow. Such concepts were introduced in order to give readers a complete primer on the current state of CA research, but the reader has to trust that the results are as stated in the book, and that an army of Grad Students carried out all the dirty work. Step-by-step implementation is (and should be) beyond the scope of the text, although for math weenies like myself, it may have clarified certain concepts.

Highly recommended.

This is a fascinating and erudite book that spans centuries of Hebrew printing. It would be worthwhile for the end-notes alone. It is a must read for anyone interested in the history of Jewish printing as well as anyone interested in the development and dynamic of censorship, both internal and self imposed.

This book is indeed first of its kind in its treatment of the history of books and book-culture in early modern Italy and Europe. Jewish-Christian dialogs and negotiations over questions of print and publishing are reviewed in a new and fresh light. The final outcome of what is otherwise simply viewed as a tool of coercion and persecution is surprising.

I had to read this re my masters course. It relates to actual situations and was very relevant to the field of educational leadership across the board. Great user friendly resource.

Centering Educational Administration is a veritable tour de force. Erudite, thought-provoking, and compelling, it effectively marshals the many strands of social, pedagogical, and organizational theory to weave its main message: in the noble service of the next generation, educational administration can uphold education's humanistic value by cultivating meaning, community, and responsibility. For Starratt, one of education's most encyclopedic and articulate public intellectuals, this entails moving beyond simply considering the "discrete functions of administration" and towards engaging "the essentials of administering." Much as the overtones of Starratt's argument may have W. B. Yeats turning in his grave (i.e., there is a center to educational administration... that can hold), it should be heeded for its critically normative orientation and purpose: to move educators and institutions from what is to what ought to be.

The book does so by centering educational leadership on the cultivating and monitoring of a learning agenda that begins with the self and students and extends to teachers and the community. Our ecological interdependence means that "School communities do not exist in isolation from their surrounding communities. What and how they learn needs to be in dialogue with their surroundings" (233). To this end, Starratt explores the separate and intersective synergy of theory and practice, teaching and learning, of individual and community, to organically develop a vision of school as "a humane and socially nurturing environment in which the pursuit of academic learning would go hand in hand with social learning" (96). He extends the conceptual foundations for ethical education first developed in Building an ethical school (1994) and engages substantive aspects of moral leadership, keeping students at the centre of the educational enterprise and offering perspectives to help educators through this late-modern era of high-stakes accountability, diversity, and uncertainty.

Starratt achieves this ambitious purpose through thoughtful organization of material, clear, vivid prose, and rich illustrative examples. The eight chapters of Part I, Elements of the Leader's Vision, take readers through the conceptual foundation of his argument about what school renewal looks like, why it's needed, and how it can be achieved. As the book's sub-title suggests, Starratt's vision for a new centre of educational administration comprises three main themes: cultivating meaning, community, and moral responsibility. For Starratt, school renewal is fundamentally about enriching and enhancing the learning of the schoolhouse's many selves - student and staff - in relation to their physical, social, and human worlds. It is about nurturing "moral excellence" in all learners, a sense of being responsible to, and for, what one learns. To this end, educational administration's core is therefore about cultivating personal, public, applied, and academic meaning-making by initiating "conversations among teachers about the basic meaning behind what and how they teach, and the meanings that are implied and assumed in the curriculum" (224).

Part II, Bringing the Vision to Reality, builds on the opening section's conceptual foreground to demonstrate how the active learning of all students, and the facilitating of this work by teachers, can take place in classroom, school, and district practices. Its six chapters apply Part I's lenses of moral philosophy, critical sociology, and cognitive science to refract and cohesively connect theory, policy, and practice. With carefully selected examples, each chapter helps illustrate the interdependency of Starratt's main themes in practical and workable situations. The site-based activities that conclude each of the book's fourteen chapters are especially useful in Part II. Clearly rooted in Starratt's vast experience as a scholar-practitioner-leader, they encourage readers to deepen their understanding of the many learnings through action research that is situated in the dynamics and structures of schools. Through this gestaltian marriage of theory and practice, readers are encouraged to reflect and operationalize the book's many rich concepts. The book's 57 site-based activities would make it a valuable addition to any graduate program in educational administration that seeks to integrate the scholarly with the practical.

As a former teacher and administrator turned doctoral student, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Centering Educational Administration. It challenged my thinking, forcing me to iteratively revisit eight years of professional experiences through Starratt's tripartite conceptualization of centered educational leadership; and it extended my scholarly experiences, developed over many graduate courses in educational administration. Most helpfully, it enabled me to connect meaningfully many scholar, practitioner, and leadership learnings of the last decade, honed as I moved in and out of schools as an educational administrator and the academy as a graduate student. Consequently, Starratt's latest will definitely find a place close at hand on my bookshelf of important educational administration texts and readily used, particularly given its clear, two-part structure, 21 explicatory diagrams and figures, and helpful author and subject indices.

This is an excellent book of guidelines for the various ceremonies of the liturgical year. Monsignor Elliott explains the special ceremonies (such as those of Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter) in a very plain and understandable fashion. A priest can find the information he needs quite readily in these pages. Monsignor Elliott also does an excellent job of explaining how the liturgical year sanctifies all time.

If you want to know how Midnight Mass, the Easter Vigil, or other such special ceremonies are supposed to be celebrated with reverence and dignity, then this is the book for you!

Few priests, deacons or others responsible for preparing the celebration of the Liturgy have time to study in detail the rubrics and instructions found in the liturgical books and interpretative documents issued by the Holy See. This, the second book of ceremonial from the pen of Msgr Peter Elliott (his first, Ceremonies of the Modern Roman Rite: The Eucharist and the Liturgy of the Hours appeared in 1995), seeks to bring together such directives for the feasts and seasons of the Liturgical Year in one handy volume.

In doing so, Msgr Elliott has performed a great service. What cleric will not reach for this book with gratitude as Holy Week approaches? What liturgical preparation group will not fail to find in it treasures of the Church's liturgical tradition, both old and new, that cannot but enrich the celebration of the Church's feasts and seasons throughout the year? Homilists, too, will find helpful suggestions for the exercise of their ministry.

Helpful tables are given, covering the precedence of liturgical days, movable feasts and cycles of readings, and appendices give suggestions for further enrichment of the liturgical year. The paragraphs of the book are numbered throughout. This undoubtedly makes referencing easier, but can also confuse. The bibliography is somewhat sparse, lacking some of the official sources of the Modern Roman Rite. A small but useful glossary is included.

Of course, writing a ceremonial manual is a precarious task, as there are so many sources to synthesise and practical judgements that need to be made. The Holy See's Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy was published too late to be incorporated in the present volume. Ceremonies of the Liturgical Year also contains one or two errors (the most glaring being the failure to use the new National Calendar for England, published in 2000), and some points regarding which one may disagree with the author. (In a book such as this it is important to distinguish between what the liturgical books require and what legitimate diversity they tolerate.)

On the whole, though, the approach taken is sound and practical. Indeed, this book is a valuable aid for all who seek to celebrate the Liturgy, to borrow the words of Cardinal Hume, "in a manner that is prayerful, dignified and worthy of so great an action."

Last June, while shopping for things in a religious book store, a book caught my eye. I don't know if it was the two eyes peeking over the stained glass windows, or the brilliant title "Challenging the Church Monster" with the word monster in green letters, but the book just seemed to call to me. I took it from the shelf and leafed to the Table of Contents where I was then led to the Foreword where is says:
This book is especially for you if you ever have left a church meeting wondering if anything was accomplished; had two weeks to go before the Sunday -school year began and needed six more teachers; wondered why a certain, apathetic church member agreed to serve on the church council ;assumed that it is the pastors job to make sure that everything in the church gets done; awakened in the middle of the night worrying about your committee being prepared for its next big project ; spent two months getting a new-church initiative ready only to have it voted down; thought that you church was putting the cart before the horse; or tried to inspire others at church but ended up just as discouraged as they were. This book is especially for you if any of the above scenarios describe something that has happened to you.
I was sold, hook, line and sinker. I purchased the book, rushed home, and could not put it down. The more I read the more it made sense to me that this book, this "Church Monster" is not only speaking about the author's church, but also many other churches that are still living under the same stagnant structures of the mid 1900's. The ideas found in this book are a wonderful fresh look at the church of today and how we can find ways to grow in the ministry of all people together while spending less time in the meeting rut of the past.

Brian McLaren, a prolific author and a senior fellow in Emergent, wrote an endorsement for Challenging the Church Monster: From Conflict to Community. McLaren wrote, "If Douglas Bixby is right, when people complain about `organized religion,' they're really complaining about `overorganized' or `poorly organized' religion. If that diagnosis rings true, savor the wise and practical insights offered in this helpful, needed, concise, and well-written book."

I found this book to be both clearly written and insightful. It helped me significantly on a practical level. The case studies were provided both vivid and interesting illustrations of the different pacts made within an organization.

This book offers helpful insight into creating corporate change that is supported by the work force. It is a must for every manager, employee and people interested in the dynamics making change in the business world. This book contains many enlightening, even humourous case studies which accompany the theory. Strebel's book is a refreshing change from traditional, dull management books. If there is one book this year that will make you a more effective manager, this is the it. Buy it or get left behind.