The Thing in the Bushes is a book about corporate blind spots. Authors Kevin Graham Ford and James D. Osterhaus point out that most leaders of companies or other organizations know "something is seriously wrong, but they can't see it. Something unidentified and insidious is lurking in the shadows like a 'thing in the bushes,' and it has the organization in a death grip." Through careful research, ...

Congregations that would accept a member of a cohabiting unmarried couple as a lay leader: 31 percent

Congregations that would accept a member of an openly homosexual couple as a lay leader: 23 percent

I had been serving in the church high school ministry for just over a year. I loved it! It had become my passion. Though I was still a senior in high school, I had been asked to be a campus leader and was doing some teaching under the mentorship of our youth pastor. I knew in my heart that this was training for a lifetime in ministry. I could feel the Holy Spirit working through me. I was having the ...

Eight Men Out is the historical drama about the infamous Chicago White Sox scandal of 1919. When many of the players felt cheated and demoralized by owner Charles Comiskey's penny-pinching and tough-handed ways, gamblers influenced several of them to lose the World Series in exchange for a large amount of money. A newspaper reporter eventually exposed the scandal. A sympathetic jury later found them ...

Describing the difficulty of racial reconciliation, one African American church leader tells this story:

It was my third year with the ministry. I got a call from a prominent white Christian leader, asking me to go to lunch with him. As we're sitting down to eat, all of a sudden this guy starts crying.… He explained that God had blessed him—his children were healthy, he was known throughout ...

With the growth of the multinational church, mission is becoming multidirectional. The U.S. remains the largest single contributor of Protestant cross-cultural missionaries. But which country is the second largest? Not a Western nation, but India. And it is possible that India has overtaken the States in the number of those involved in truly cross-cultural mission—both within and beyond India. ...

The Long Walk Home, a movie starring Sissy Spacek and Whoopi Goldberg, tells of the relationship between a white housewife, Miriam Thompson, and her black housekeeper, Odessa Cotter, during the 1955 Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott. Miriam begins to sympathize with Odessa and her long, 9-mile walk to and from work. Defying her racist husband and the White Citizen's Council, she decides to drive Odessa ...

Courage is like a muscle. The more we exercise it, the stronger it gets. I sometimes worry that our collective courage is growing weaker from disuse. We don't demand it from our leaders, and our leaders don't demand it from us. The courage deficit is both our problem and our fault. As a result, too many leaders in the public and private sectors lack the courage necessary to honor their obligations ...

Our Fathers is a dramatized account of the hidden sexual abuse and scandal that shook the foundation of the Catholic Church near the beginning of the 21st century. In this scene, a group of the victims gather at a local bar to celebrate a face-to-face confrontation with Cardinal Bernard Law, where they told of being sexually abused as children at the hands of parish priests.

One of them, Tommy Blanchette, ...

The highly regarded HBO miniseries Band of Brothers follows a company of U.S. paratroopers through the preparation and experience of invading Europe on D-Day. Based on real life interviews by survivors, the series captures both the intensity of war and the heroism of the troops.

The leadership of E Company was usually exemplary, but then someone at division headquarters sent down a new lieutenant to ...