Browsing Tag

Nancy Ortberg

Salvaged, So you think you're a writer?,

An Exciting Update!

I’m very excited to announce that I’ve signed a contract with NavPress for my second book! See my big smile in the picture? That’s me happily signing the contract.

Tentatively titled Salvaged: Leadership Lessons Pulled from the Junkyard, the book will be released in early 2019 if all goes as planned.

A number of people are deserving of mention for making this happen, but I want to mention three in particular.

First, thanks to D’Aun for graciously making the margin in our lives for yet another of my crazy adventures.

Second, thanks to Nancy Ortberg for telling me over …

Book Reviews,

Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands

There were all types of suggestions for books to read about hope, but perhaps one of the most counterintuitive was Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands: Lessons in Non-Linear Leadership by Nancy Ortberg. It’s a book I had read when it came out several years ago, and “hope” wasn’t the first thing that came to mind.

But then I re-read the first chapter and found myself furiously underlining sections about hope. Here are a few of the best quotes:

“I think the core of leadership is hope. Leadership is the hope that we can change the things that need to …

Book Reviews, Junkyard Management, Random Thoughts,

Journey of Hope

What is hope? The meaning of hope has been on my mind lately, so I’ve decided to think more on the topic in 2015. It seems both healthy and timely.

We live in an era when millions of good things are happening, yet we grow weary with despair. We worry about our broken political system, the rise of extremism, the violence in our schools, the pervasiveness of greed in our culture, the wealth disparity, high taxes, ISIS, the Byzantine health care system, immigration reform, Putin/Russian aggression, measles outbreaks, and out of control social media.

It’s endless what we can find …

Book Reviews, Emerging Ministries,

American Grace and Emerging Ministries

It was probably ten years ago when I first conceived of the Emerging Ministries idea. As with most ideas, a lot of different streams of thought became a strong force that kept pushing me. One stream was my desire to do something locally; most of my non-profit leadership had been international to that point. Another stream was a friends dissertation that said the San Francisco Bay Area had never seen a spiritual revival. Still another stream was my interest in “the emerging church”, which was then an innovative new expression of faith.

Emerging Ministries evolved from all of these lines …

Sabbatical,

Sabbatical Contentment

About the time I started planning my sabbatical break, John Ortberg began his. John and I have known each other for a few years and I serve on the Emerging Ministries board with his wife Nancy. Their daughter and son-in-law, who traveled to Belize with me last August, suggested I contact John and ask for advice about how to “do” a sabbatical. It was a good suggestion because it was a good fit: neither John nor I had taken a sabbatical before and I’m about the same age as John (though he has more hair … but hey, he’s a …