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Category: Books
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Title: Team Building Books  | views:155 |  Review by John L Ng Feb 09
Becoming A Healthy Team, Stephen A. Macchia, Baker Books, 2005
Leading The Team Based Church, George Cladis, Jossey-Bass Books, 1999
The Fifth Discipline, revised, Peter M. Senge, Doubleday, 2006
The Wisdom of Teams, Jon R. Kalzenbach & Douglas K. Smith, Harper Business, 2003
Nothing gets done without a team; nothing gets done well without an effective team. A team is a managed group of diversely gifted members who are mutually accountable to strive toward a shared purpose. Many groups in ministry are not teams. They may be a working group whose members share information only to better their individual tasks. They may be a pseudo team whose members meet without a common purpose or a collective task focus. The members of a real team share complement skills, mutual accountability and a common purpose.
Real teams are challenging to lead and more difficult to build. In Becoming a Healthy Team, Macchia, a church consultant, writes about the five basic traits of a healthy team. Using the acronym TEAMS, he spells trust (relational), empowerment (personal), assimilation (collective wholeness), management (organizational), and service (collective purpose). With a dash of biblical references here and there and reflection questions for discussion, Macchia gives us a simple, readable resource to cultivate and nurture a healthy working team.
In Leading the Team-Based Church, George Cladis, a mega church pastor, defines pastoral leadership as a team leader. Using the Trinitarian model (a bit of a theological stretch), he demonstrates the dynamics of teamwork that include covenanting, visioning, culture-creating, collaborating, trusting, empowering and learning. Filled with stories and illustrations, the book is a good read and practical for those who want to build and lead a team effectively.
Like many books written by Christians, it is predictable that they use scriptural references and examples as proof texts. At times, these quotes are out of context or badly exegete. I also find that these books often refer to management books from the business sector as their theoretical reference point. Two of them are: The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge and The Wisdom of Teams by Jon Kalzengbach and Douglas Smith.
Senge, of the Center for Organizational Learning at MIT, introduces the idea of a "learning organization" that is shaped by personal mastery, mental models, shared vision and team learning. The book is tough read. Plowing through the thick materials requires slow and careful reading. For someone willing to invest the time, it offers helpful insights to think conceptually. Katzenbach and Smith, management consultants, offer a “high performance organization” model that is propelled by performance challenge, mutual accountability, collective focus and individual discipline. The book is more anecdotal and less conceptual. Although the case studies are helpful, the book leaves the readers to discover for themselves what make an effective team.
Every ministry leader needs to cultivate and nurture a working team to get things done well. These book samples may serve well as primers for understanding, building and leading a more effective team toward a shared vision and common purpose.
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| Review submitted: 2009/2/27
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| Category: Books
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 Title: The Case For God | views:97 | Book Review John L Ng Dec 09
The Case For God
By Karen Armstrong, Alfred A. Knopf. 2009
Standing in his workshop, I entered into a delightful conversation with a Yeshiva teacher who moonlights as a furniture repairer (He was fixing my dining table chairs). I asked him to help me understand the illusive meaning of El Shaddai, one of the Hebrew names for God in the bible. He said one must begin by acknowledging that God is beyond human knowing. No one can know God; otherwise God is not God. We can only perceive God through our experiences within God’s creation. This brief encounter prepared me for Karen Armstrong”s The Case For God.
Ms Armstrong begins her monograph with the same premise as my Jewish friend. It is an eloquent and intelligent survey of Western religious thoughts. The book is divided into two parts, from The Unknown God prior to the Renaissance to The Modern God since then. She is no stranger to the subject. According to my count, she has written at least 15 books, including A History of God: the 4000-year quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and The Bible: a biography, on similar subjects. In fact, if you have read any of her books, you will find that there is much recapitulation in this one.
Her approach is in contrast to Tim Keller’s The Reason for God. Both seek to argue for the reality of God. Here they part company. Keller uses pseudo-rational methods to prove the God of the Christian traditions. Few of his arguments are circular reasoning. Armstrong argues that you cannot prove or disprove God through reasons (logos). Rather every religious tradition is embedded with stories (mythos). Its adherents experienced God through rituals, symbols and gestures in these stories. For example, the Christian tradition centers around two great narratives – the Exodus event in the older Testament and the Christ event in the newer Testament. Out of these grand narratives, every Christian in history finds faith, meaning and a sense of being.
The rise of science in the Age of Reason is the cause of this shift from the mythos to the logos. The mistake of the church was to succumb to rationalism in defending its historical faith. It tried to apply scientific methods in understanding Scripture. This rational approach to faith would be foreign to the great church fathers from Augustine to Aquinas. In many ways, the Western church has continued this rational approach to faith and has not recovered from this gross error.
Of particular interest is her critique on the recent atheistic movement in the West. These neo- atheists, Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker, The God Delusion, Hitchens God Is Not Great: how religion poisons everything, and Harris The End of Faith: religion, terror and the future of reason, make the same glaring error in their polemics as the religious fundamentalists. Both take a similar literal and rational approach to argue for or against faith. Armstrong rebukes both to lower their polemics by recognizing the balance and differences between mythos and logos.
Theism is not a rival theory to be tested. It is not primarily a set of propositions about God to be asserted and assented in a worldview. God is not a theory to be discussed but an ultimate reality in which people, individually and especially communally, find significant meaning through story living and story telling. Much of our Bible is narrative. It was given through history not to argue for God in rational sets but for us to encounter God in our ontology.
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| Review submitted: 2010/1/20
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| Category: Movies
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| Title: The Chronicles of Naria: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe | views:400 | Review by John L Ng Jan 06
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
It is no great secret that C. S. Lewis wrote his children’s fantasy, The Chronicles of Narnia (first published 1950), as an allegory of Biblical redemption. Lewis’s apologetic intention in the movie is neither invisible nor an apology. However, to the uninitiated, Lewis’s allegory may be missed. For example, the scene of Aslan’s sacrificial death and resurrection is an analogous of Christ’s atoning work. But for those who have never gone to Sunday school, they can still enjoy the movie without religious thoughts. The media controversy concerning the movie’s religious overtone is over-hyped. If you look for the Biblical analogy, it’s there; but if you are not aware of it, it doesn’t have to be.
The Chronicles of Narnia is the enchanted adventure of four siblings, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy who discover the land of Narnia. Its meta-story, like many children’s fantasies, is the great cosmic conflict between good and evil. As the four enter this conflict (in London and in Narnia), they learn about the great themes of their parallel universes: good and evil, desire and responsibility, faith and doubt, and right and wrong. The first scene with the German bombing London is a vivid reminder that this eternal conflict is real in their immediate existence.
There are several subtexts that emerge as the story unfolds. The story is the battle between the noble lion Aslan and the wicked white witch. The witch has put Narnia under her wintry spell. But Narnia is in good hands because Aslan, the lion king, rules. His appearance on the scene breaks the wicked witch’s control. The four are drawn into the battle to fulfill a special task as ‘sons of Adam’ and ‘daughters of Eve.’
A subtext is the complex nature of being human. The siblings’ essential characters emerge as they journey in Narnia. Lucy, the youngest, has childlike faith. With sparkling eyes and a sweet smile, she wants to believe. Peter, the oldest, struggles with virtue, courage and responsibility. He wants to do right but often is not up to it. Susan doubts. She questions all that threatens her sense of well being. And Edmund is wayward. He struggles with dishonesty and desires. When we watch them on the screen, we see ourselves.
A second subtext is the paradoxical nature of Christ. Aslan is both fabulous and fearsome. When he speaks, he roars. When he consoles, he whispers. The image of Aslan (thanks to great CG technology) causes Lucy to wonder: Is he dangerous? Of course Aslan is dangerous, comes the reply, but the noble lion king is also good. The vision of this good and dangerous lion king is analogous of St. John’s grand vision of Christ in Revelation.
The most interesting subtext in the movie is human need for community. To define who we are and discover our destiny, we need others in community. Before and after they enter Narnia, the four, like every human family, whine and bicker. But being human that they are, in the midst of communal rivalry, they find social significance and personal meaning. As they journey together in Narnia, they learn to need and accept one another. At the end, when Edmund is finally rescued, his siblings embrace him in a group hug as they rejoice in gratitude. I think the three recent popular fantasy movies, Lewis’ Narnia, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Rowling’s Harry Potter share this great subtext: we need one another in community to find ourselves.
I’m not a big fan of Harry Potter – not very comfortable with its black magic genre. But Harry Potter and his two companions, Ron and Hermione, show something about personal growth in community. Young Harry’s destiny to be a great wizard is a long and learning journey. He needs his companions to complete who he is. Hermione is the smart one. She represents intellect. Ron is the emotional one. He is empathetic and supportive. Ultimately Harry finds himself and his way with Hermione and Ron. In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo Baggins is chosen to carry the ring to Mount Doom and destroy it. To accomplish that dangerous task, Frodo is supported by a fellowship of faithful companions, Sam, Merry and Pippin, Aragorn and others. To complete his journey, Frodo needs a little help from his faithful friends. He is made adequate with others.
All three fantasies show that we can only find who we are and our way in life’s journey in community. Our walk with God in faith is very personal, but there is nothing about our faith that is private. We all need to live, move and have our being in communal. That is, we need community to know who we are and where we need to be. To be sure, we need community to realize and practice our faith in Jesus Christ.
When my adult children wanted to go see Narnia, I was apprehensive. It was the same feeling I had when I first read Lewis’s fantasy years ago. Seemingly Lewis, who taught medieval and Renaissance literature, ransacked his every literary resource for characters to populate his Narnia: classical mythology, English romance novels, Grimm’s fairy tales and European folklores. The movie is a faithful visual adaptation of that collage. But my jaded, middle-aged eyes were not easily gratified with enchanted forests, ice castles, knights, dwarfs, fauns and talking animals. But at last, I was put at ease. While walking out of the theatre, my children were quick to remind their father that Narnia is a children’s fantasy. Nothing more. Like faith in God, I have to approach it with a child-like expectation.
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| Review submitted: 2009/2/27
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| Category: Movies
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| Title: The Dark Knight | views:203 | Review by John L Ng Aug 08
The Movie The Dark Knight can be mistaken for a dark night. Christopher Nolan’s epic long Batman film is indeed darkly grim. An action hero flick, not – it is more like a Shakespearian tragedy, a Gotham City Hamlet or Macbeth. There are few gratuitous special effect thrills, only existential grimace. Much of the movie is at night, where glimpses of light are artificial and darkness is real and pervasive.
This Gotham City’s universe is morally ambiguous and contradictory. Batman, our hero, is tortured and ambivalent. In that iconic pose, where Batman, played by Christian Bale, perches on a skyscraper’s ledge overlooking Gotham City (Chicago, not New York), our hero appears more defeated than definite. Ironically, its villain, the Joker, played brilliantly by the late Heath Ledger, is delightfully mischievous and banally evil. Self assuming, he roams, taunts and muses freely.
With tangled greasy hair, a face caked with clownish white paint, deep hallowed eyes and a tongue that licks wickedly his smeared red lips, the Joker goes about his senseless mayhem. Others may carry guns, but he reels a knife. When he flashes it, it is more menacing. But his evil is beyond playful bantering. Destruction and deaths pile up like a garbage heap. It is so banal, we are numb in our juristic anxiety. The troublesome thing is that I find myself viscerally giggling and amuse with his perverse but clever carry on.
To make sense in this morally dark and chaotic universe, everyone seizes the moment to pontificate. Harvey Dent, the district attorney, played by Aaron Eckhart, laments, obviously about himself and perhaps also Batman, “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain.” I don’t know what to do with that. Like much of the philosophical sound bites, it just doesn’t sound right.
The movie seems to bind us to two philosophical assumptions. To be sure, much in this universe is chaotic, complex and cynical. Justice is seldom systemic, but vigilante. Institutional law is utterly inapt and corrupt in its enforcement. Batman is at best a vigilante and at worst a failed vigilant for truth, justice and the American way. The Joker is more fearsome than our hero. He is feared by lawless gangsters and lawful citizens alike. He is so dangerously unpredictable, we, in quiet fear, wonder if anyone, including Batman, has enough moral integration to face the challenge. The only person that is truly heroic is the police lieutenant, Jim Gordon, played by Gary Oldman. He is a common man of simple integrity, helpless but not hopeless. No wonder he seems so out of place in this morally dark place.
The other assumption defines our human conditions. Strangely, Batman and the Joker’s relationship is symbiotic. The Joker jokes with Batman, “I don’t want to kill you. You complete me!” That playful wisecrack is deadly serious. Like good and evil in the cosmos, they are both opponents and complements. Their truer selves are better realized by the ontology of the other. Batman’s vulnerable self is shaped by the Joker’s self-assurance; the Joker’s determined evil is fed by Batman’s reluctant virtue. Without the other, they won’t not know who they are or perhaps they can’t even exist.
I walk out of the dark theater into sunlight exhausted and disturbed. Alan Jackson’s Here In the Real World lyrics come to mind: “Cowboys don’t cry/ heroes don’t die/ good always wins/ again and again. . . . But here in the real world/ it’s not easy at all. . . . If life were like the movies/ I’d never be blue.” The universe Batman and the Joker reside makes me hopelessly blue. The Dark Knight is not fun.
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| Review submitted: 2009/2/27
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| Category: Books
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| Title: The Great Transformation: the beginning of our religious traditions | views:295 | Review by John L Ng May 05
The Great Transformation: the beginning of our religious traditions
By Karen Armstrong, Alfred A. Knopf 2006
Post modernists see the world existentially, with egocentricity and in disconnected fragments. Post modern Christians see the world exclusively, void of historical layers and ignorant of religious traditions, including ours. Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation pushes us to see how we got here in our varied worldviews by bringing us back to the beginning of history as we know it – the millennium BCE. She calls it the Axial Age, a term borrowed from the German philosopher Karl Jaspers. This is the historical frame in which our major religious traditions find their genesis.
A thick book of more than 400 pages, it traces the development of biblical monotheism, Greek rationalism, Hinduism and Buddhism and Confucianism and Taoism. At first glance, these traditions seem to have little in common. Armstrong’s very readable narrative weaves these diverse strands into one fabric of parallel episodes. It is not an easy feat. It is understandable that at times the narrative is too sweeping, forced and even contradictory. As a former Catholic nun (her dark and faith damaging convent experience is vividly described in Through The Narrow Gate), Armstrong betrays her subtle irritation with the God of the Bible. Yet, The Great Transformation is a well researched and thought provoking book that demands our lingering reflection.
She guides the reader through an imaginative chronology of concurring but worlds apart events of intellectual thoughts, military conflicts, social upheavals and political evolutions that forged our religious traditions. The chapter headings are according to successive periods of history: “Ritual” 900-800BCE, “Kenosis” (Greek for emptying) 800-700BCE, “Knowledge” 700-600BCE, “Suffering” 600-530 BCE, “Empathy” 530-450 BCE, “Concern for Everybody” 450-398 BCE, “All is One” 400-300 BCE, “Empire” 300-220 BCE. However, after a 400 page, aggressive narration, it ends with a whimper. Her final “The Way Forward” chapter of about 40 pages concludes simplistically that living in a fearful and painful global village, we must learn to first practice self-criticism and then to guard against intolerance. Her best quote is all but obvious: “The Axial sages put the abandonment of selfishness and the spirituality of compassion at the top of their agenda.” To live well and good in religious pluralism, we must understand things by seeking to see the world through the windows of others. But if we claim that biblical faith is true and truth by definition is mutually exclusive, we still have to face up to the real and non-negotiable differences of our worldviews. Even if we put away ignorance and prejudice, we still live in a village of incompatible religious traditions.
Still, Armstrong’s ability to simplify the most complex and confusing events into a lucid narrative makes her book a good read. Any thoughtful Christian will find her informative and challenging. Her other books worth our while are The History of God, Holy War: the crusades and their impact on today’s world, Jerusalem: one city, three faiths, In the beginning (a thin but excellent commentary on Genesis), Islam: a short history, Buddha. |
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| Review submitted: 2009/2/27
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