Organizations Books

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.

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

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.

Dr. Ellie Drago-Severson's, "Helping Teachers Learn" is an indispensable guide for district administrators, principals, and teachers. With the nation focusing on improving student achievement and leaving no child behind, I believe that, "Helping Teachers Learn" is the foundational text upon which teachers' professional development programs should be built.

An easy-read, Dr. Drago-Severson effortlessly combines theory and practice in a straightforward manner that busy administrators and teachers can appreciate. You will be inspired by the stories of principals who are engaged in the same daily struggles we all experience as we strive to support teachers in their daily efforts to improve teaching and learning.

How can I help you to become a better teacher? This question which is continually at the forefront of our minds is answered throughout the text in the descriptions of the 25 principals who participated in the study.

"Helping Teachers Learn" provides administrators, principals, and teachers with an essential resource they can readily use to help make professional development opportunities meaningful learning experiences for everyone.

Helping Teachers Learn will become an essential part of an educational leader's thinking, learning, and language. Drago-Severson is an excellent writer who masterfully weaves theory into practice. Her attention to and explanation of Bob Kegan's Constructive-Developmental theory lends clarity, as well as insight into helping adults learn and grow in their professional lives.

As she states in her book, "Growth is an ingenious mix of supports and challenges." Drago-Severson provides leaders with tools to create various supports and challenges in environments that can and should foster growth. I found that her four pillars, and the new model for learning-oriented school leadership were particularly useful in crafting a faculty professional development plan.

This is a must read for any educator who believes in adult growth and professional development.

Eleanor Drago-Severson's book does very well what it intends to do, i.e. serving as a guide, an assistance to the principals. Even though Robert Kegan's constructive-developmental theory is very complex, Drago-Severson describes and applies it to teachers' learning very skillfully and in a very clear form. She lays out complex ideas very clearly making them sound like they are common sense. Therefore, I think the ideas would very naturally and organically become a part of the reader, as if he/she has always known that somewhere but has just never thought about it. Because of this, the mere careful reading of this book with a pencil in one's hand while making extrapolations and connections with one's life could be in itself a step towards transformational learning, or at least seeing its value, which is a big start.

Most importantly, even though the book is about ways to foster growth and development in teachers, I really think this book can serve as a model for any kind of organization and even a private company in a business world! This book should be a must for any kind of manager. It has a school scenario as an example, but can be applied absolutely anywhere. How wonderful would it be to penetrate these ideas into the business world, for people to come together, share their ideas, have constructive dialogues, reflect on their experiences, and, as a result, enrich themselves and grow. If adults, wherever they are -- private companies, schools, corporations -- could be engaged in all these things and see their value, I really believe people would lead much more meaningful and happy lives in their adulthood.

A very wholesome, useful, insightful, and inspirational piece of work! Besides recommending it to principlas, I highly recommend it to managers, CEOs, deans and everybody else who is interested in and believes in life-long growth and development!

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.

This book provides a VP of sales or sales manager with the behind the scenes research that went into Professional Selling Skills and other landmark training by Learning International. If anyone has a questions as to why this training vs. others - this answers the question! By the way, I would highly recommend their training also. The best consultative sales training on the market.

This is a very clearly written book that puts definition to what you are likely already seeing as your new role as a sales person in the 90's. I found it very applicable for my sales position in aerospace sales. It gives an outline of how to assess your customers and meet their expectations. It further spells out what skills you need as a sales person today and what customers expect from you. It stresses the changing role to business consulant from order taker. Good reading

Kevin J. Corcoran is my uncle, so I thought his book was down right cool. Maybe I think that all those related to me have that benefit. But seriously, this book presents some very significant business information with some flair. Check it out! I should be in sales... Brian A. Corcoran (brian@princeton.edu)

I bought this book because I am in Real Estate and getting a home to look as close to a model home is needed for buyers to be interested. Especially with the high inventory seen in many local markets today.

This book is a step by step guide on getting the home ready for a sale - on the home staging perspective. Rooms can feel more spacious and inviting with just the arrangement of furniture and this book is informative and illustrates how.

Highly recommended.

This is a GREAT book. Actually it is helpful in that it guides you through the steps and the process of home staging. That is the part that most people find a mystery, the magic happens in 4 hours...NO there is alot of preparation and work that goes on before the fact. This is helpful so that when people are thinking of putting their homes on the market they know what to expect. A GREAT resource.

"Home Staging for Dummies" is a brilliantly written guide which explains the benefits of home staging in addition to giving real solutions to homeowners who are embarking on the process of selling property.
This practical guide is so easy to read and understand that you will be able to apply the principals on your own; or if you don't have the time or the creativity to do it the book provides you with every resource needed, in order to get the professional assistance to get the job done.
The Real Estate Staging Association (RESA) is proud to FULLY endorse Home Staging for Dummies.

Linda Lyman has captured the essence of the typical experiences for a principal working in a poor school. However, the object of her research, Kenneth Hinton, is a remarkable principal. His decisions are grounded in doing what is best for children. He cares. He cares enough to make tough decisions that can be risky for any principal. Lyman sets the groundwork for understanding the principalship and leads the reader to understand the work of servant leaders. In addition to the stories, she provides an excellent background for the theory of educational leadership and a template for turnaround principals. This book should be reading for every school board and every person seeking to become an administrator.
Kathleen Hickey

It is so refreshing to learn of an individual, such as Kenneth Hinton, who sincerely cares about children, parents, and his profession. Many may claim that they care but do not take the extraordinary measures necessary to convey it. Hats off to Mr. Hinton and Ms. Lyman for a job well done!

In her recently published book, Linda Lyman shares an aspect of leadership that focuses on caring and its implications for learning within schools. She does this through an ethnographic approach by observing a caring principal within the context of an entire school community. First, Lyman introduces a caring environment within a theoretical context. Then, she profiles the principal, Kenneth H. Hinton, by providing an historical background of the school and community with various themes and implications for caring. Each chapter is rife with specific experiences illustrating examples with references to research on caring. Through the comments of Hinton, his colleagues, the children, and their parents, readers get a glimpse of what a significant difference caring leadership makes within their learning community. Questions at the end of each chapter provide focus for personal reflection and grist for further dialogue. Lyman chronicles Hinton as a catalyst who not only shapes change for what is best for children, but he transforms lives and learning through caring. The reader can, then, better recognize and reflect upon how caring makes a positive difference within a learning environment. Not only is this a provocative and inspiring read, but Lyman articulates and illustrates a critical component of learning which is caring that might otherwise be difficult to illuminate. At a time when publics continue to scrutinize the quality of learning within schools, Lyman provides a refreshing articulation and detailed description of how caring schools come to be and the tremendous rewards for all involved. Lyman's research and literary contributions provide hope as well as specific ingredients for a personal and professional commitment to children and caring. This book provides reason for further critical reflection and dialogue on this topic.

This book tells you "how to" by stories with specific examples of events, both successful and not so. It is a step-by-step handbook which will easily assist and motivate any fundraiser in any walk of life.

This is a very easy read - with lots of "Ah-ha" moments. You'll be circling and underlining and making yourself notes all the way through. It really puts fundraising into perspective. Fundraising is not just about getting people to write checks! It is about providing people with an opportunity to show their true colors - how much they love their community, children, animals, or the environment. There are people who want to do something great for a cause - sometimes, they just haven't found the right cause yet. Fundraising is basically learning to connect with people so that you know how to help them succeed at doing something great! This book shows over and over again the beauty of developing relationships that allow donors to do brilliant, wonderful, extravagant things - and have some limelight for doing so - how allowing them to shine benefits your organization. I've never felt so empowered. You are going to love this book!

As a first-time executive director of a non-profit, this book has invaluable advice on nurturing a Board of Directors. It addresses issues that I never even considered, and probably would have had to learn the hard way. The author's out-of-the-box publicity and fundraising ideas were great inspiration, too.

I am a new homeschooling mother. This book has many "extra" ideas to add to your daily curriculum. I found it to be extremely helpful and an enjoyable read.

Ms. Jacobson's book is marvelous! It's easy to use and helped me identify exactly where my son was strong, and where he needed a little help. I have very limited time to work with my kids on their school work, and I really appreciated the author's fun ideas for working with my 5-year old son to help him with various skills that only take a few minutes each. I felt I was able to make a difference, working with him, while we were just driving together in the car, running an errand, etc. I highly recommend this book - very accessible and very creative ideas!

As a teacher I critically examine any book that claims to help parents at home. There are many that are nothing but laundry lists designed to further a political idiot-ology (read as E.D. Hirsch). This book is wonderful for helping parents to understand the stages that their children are going through and the best ways that they can address those needs and support current and knowledgable teaching methods. A must for any parent or teacher.