Family Resources Books

This book is very boring and I feel that it is a stupid way to look at the church and to try to settle conflicts. I did not like it and I do not recommend anyone purchase it unless you necessaryly have to for a class like I did.

This book advances a theory of conflict management called "systems theory." At the core of this theory is the concept that individuals in the congregation are not responsible or accountable for their aberrant behavior. The fault lies in how the community interacts within itself, the unwritten rules it has established, and the secret games it plays. To improve a conflicted congregation, one must fix the system and not confront any individual.

Sadly lacking are biblical references that either support the "systems theory" approach to conflict management or show "systems theory" in use by God. In fact, a systems approach to conflict resolution is at odds with revealed Scripture, since Scripture places individuals on the hotseat for repentance, resolving their personal disputes, and making restitution.

Assuming you value biblical methods for dealing with life, pick up a copy of Ken Sande's "The Peacemaker" instead.

Charles Cosgrove (professor of New Testament at Northern Baptist Seminary in Brookfield, Illinois) and Dennis Hatfield (former parish pastor and current Analyst/Consultant with Gallup) have produced a very well written, thorough, yet highly practical book that analyses the cause of conflict within a church while it gives pastors techniques for dealing with such conflict.

The metaphor that runs throughout the book is the church as a family. Just as families have parents (those who wield authority) and children (those who look to parents for guidance and social cues) so churches also have members who fill each of these functions. Much of the analysis and advice Cosgrove and Hatfield give revolve around the systemic identification of who occupies the position of a congregational parent and who is a congregational child (as well as identifying your own role). Such systemic mapping is beneficial in both the short- and long-run.

Another major theme presented by Cosgrove and Hatfield is their push to create healthier systems through fostering effective, honest communication. Much communication theory is presented in these pages, including the relationship between type of communication and various emotional bonds, triangles, affirmation, and various models of influence/leadership.

There are many positive aspects of this book-many of which are previously mentioned. It is highly readable, highly practical, and thorough. The authors illustrate their theories with many examples and give helpful techniques. Also, their focus is not on immediate (urgent) conflicts, but encourages a proactive, long-term systemic involvement to improve the communication style and interrelationships within a congregation. While there are not many negatives, I do wish the authors would've addressed some related topics as I walk away with some questions. The authors thoroughly cover the parent/child relationship, but how does one become a child or a parent? How can one gain influence in a congregation? How can parents relate to one another and is this different from the way in which children relate to one another? What is to be done with "ghosts"? In the chapter on "games," how does one begin to get the congregation to stop playing a game (short of using the rules to your advantage, thus playing the game)?

In all, I highly recommend this book. It is a great introduction to systems theory, congregational dynamics, and even pastoral leadership styles. If you have interest in any of these, you will do well to make a study of this highly readable book.

Paula is a name-dropping, pretentious, self-serving author who pretends to be an economist but is really neither a capable quantitative nor a particularly insightful ethnographic scholar.

I wish this book was required reading for every attorney I coach - and the managing partners of every law firm. Paula Rayman presents an compelling argument for law firms to examine
the consequences of their bottom line approach to doing business.
The billable hours culture, which places greatest value on overwork and heroic individualism, hurts families, diminishes the care of children and elders, reduces the possibilities for the success of women attorneys, limits the dignity of lawyers, makes lawyers abandon their civic responsibilities - and ultimately erodes the fabric of our society.
Rayman provides a sophisticated social, economic and moral analysis of the problem and offers both conceptual solutions and specific examples of their success. Rayman offers wise
counsel to the counselors.

By Author:
Homeschooling an only child is sometimes a daunting idea for most parents to consider, but it need not be. While there are some issues to consider, there are none that cannot be overcome.

Homeschooling and the Only Child gives parents of only children access to a book, that not only talks about home education in general, but delivers it with an only child focus. Chapters include topics from starting out in homeschooling, to learning styles, and from Expectations and worries, to the ever-present topic of "SOCIALIZATION."


The author, while a homeschooling parent of an only child, felt that her thoughts alone were not enough so, she also offers commentary and viewpoints of other homeschooling parents of only children.

Review

I thought that this would be great for someone starting out their homeschooling journey. It would be particularly beneficial to a parent of an only who is just starting out. I particularly enjoyed the topics that were specific to only children. Expectations & Worries was good for me to read.
- S. Claire

Most of this book is about homeschooling in general, not necessarily about the only child aspect.

Also, this book focuses on the Christian perspective so it may not be very helpful if you are homeschooling for reasons other than religious considerations. For example, the main argument for why you don't need to worry about your only child feeling too isolated is that the Bible never specifies that we need to socialize and, in fact, urges us to be wary of bad influences.

Whereas the author claims to be providing the perspective of many different families, I found it to be very much like sitting at the park listening to one particular mother talk about her experiences with homeschooling her only child.

Also, the book is badly in need of an editor.

In a world where teens are exposed to a lot of sexual information and sexual stimulation, it does not help to attempt to control their behavior by preaching morality and attempting to instill guilt and shame. Early sex-negative indoctrination is not easily reversed and can impact later adult sexual relationships.

Books for teens should focus on responsible decision making, realistic appraisal of consequences, and endorsement of freedom to be naturally curious. Sexual feelings are not immoral, sexual thoughts are not sinful, and all informed sexual options should be carefully considered.

What have the youth of America do to deserve this weak, uninformed, factless, baseless attack on their self image and sexuality. I am completely against the idea of book-burning, but the entrie print run on this one should be reserved for use as ballast when sand is running low for filling sandbags.

I wish I had a role model sit down with me when I was a young man and do something like this book with me. Now I am a young father trying to raise a son on my own because I tried to build a relationship on sex. I knew every fact and statistic there was and every one of them flies out the window when you are not morally grounded. Setting us "free" to our sexuality is the reason that divorce rates and diseases are climbing through the roof. Praise God I didnt catch an STD but many friends did. If your book changes one young persons life then it should be applauded. These comments from people that are educated beyond their intellect show why our nation is falling apart at the schools. My heart aches for the pain I have caused many women and for the pain many others will incur because of this attitude. The men also that try to do the right thing and still lose. Of all the pain and loss and mistakes in my life the only regret I have is that I did not wait until marriage. Sex is for a husband and a wife, period.

In these modern times, books that promote abstinence are irrelevant to teenagers. Teens who are developing relationships need advice to keep them safe from the inevitable consequences of intimacy, not religion based abstinence. If the point of this book is to steer teenagers into early marriage before developing maturity and the skills to promote lasting relationships, the divorce rate, single parent rate and STD rate will continue to be unacceptably high.

This is just another outdated abstinence book. Teenagers deserve more. They deserve honest relevance, not moralizing. They deserve sex positive treatments that relate to who they are and how they behave. This is totally irrelevant to today's teenagers, who are sexually active.

Unfortunately this book falls short of the promise of its' title. I ordered this book hoping for practical information about creating a funeral service for my mother-in-law, for whom we were providing hospice care in our home.

Disappointingly this book did not inspire my creative process. The material was dry and read like a research paper. If I'd been writing a class paper, it would have been a good resource, but its' helpfulness in creating a ceremoney was nil. The use of the "mourning needs" list, as an organzing force for the different elements of a ceremony stifled creative process. This book would have been more useful if it had included actual ideas and resources for readings, music, eulogies and perhaps outlines of what other people have put together.

I thought I was ordering the Experiencing God for Couples textbook and in the description it just says spiral bound. When I get the book it is the notebook that evidently goes with a video. I do not have the video with it, so how do I get the video or the textbook, if there is one?

Debbie Quinn

The networking solutions provided by these authors very clearly illustrate the public sector's misuse and misunderstanding of information production, delivery, and presentation technologies.

The focus of most contributors is on technologies and concepts that were even out of date at the time of publication. There is little or no mention of data driven, decision support using spatial analysis of community specific health needs, or data and information preparation for community health analysis. In short, the book takes a, largely, traditional public sector IT approach to community health networks, which does not usually focus answering the questions of -- what information is needed, how will the information be used, how and to whom should the information be delivered, how will data be organized (architected) so that community health assets can be compared, ... and so on.

I had high hopes for this book, but when I got it I was sorely disappointed -- her definition of Los Angeles completely ignores the San Fernando Valley! Every pointer she had was either for the Basin or for Orange County. Hello -- the San Fernando Valley is part of LA too!

i rated this really low because it was not at all what i was looking for. the information about this book lead me to believe that it was alot more "crafty" than it was. i was looking for something our 1&2 year old nursery kids could do during the church worship hour, but it turned out to be cheap, cheesy crafts that if you thought about it you could make up on your own. i was looking for something a little more...i guess the word is sophistcated....this stuff was making things with toilet paper rolls, or photocopying a picture so they could color it. duh..who hasn't already done that?? talk to a kindergarten teacher and they have probably made most of this stuff up on their own already! basically, someone thought to write down all of the already done....overdone crafts from household products and made money on it. kudos to them for thinking of it first!! i'm just sorry i wasted my few dollars on it. you'd be better off continuing your search for craft ideas.

This book is very thin. Very little information is included. A few examples are given. The therapy doesn't make sense to me. The authors seem to think that if you distract people from their problems by getting them to work toward some outcome (sometimes a kind of uninspiring outcome) that the problems go away. I'm not convinced. The examples in the book were unconvincing.