Category: Resources & Reviews

Dal­las Willard wrote an excel­lent paper called Liv­ing In The Vision of God (9 page PDF) about why min­istries so often stray from their orig­i­nal mis­sion (think of the YMCA, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, most denom­i­na­tions, etc).

Regent Sem­i­nary (in Van­cou­ver) is web­cast­ing some out­stand­ing lec­tures from renowned schol­ars like Eugene Peter­son, Alis­ter McGrath, Gor­don Fee, and N. T. Wright! (link via The Ooze).

On my flight to Bal­ti­more about two months ago I read The Wis­dom of Crowds by James Surowiec­ki. I actu­al­ly did­n’t plan to buy the book–I just saw an auto­graphed copy at Kepler’s and picked it up on impulse.

The first page of the intro­duc­tion sucked me into wild intel­lec­tu­al romp from which I’m still recov­er­ing.

Since that flight I’ve rec­om­mend­ed it to dozens of peo­ple and pur­chased it for two (to whom I owed a book). I’ve been mean­ing to write about it ever since, but I kept get­ting dis­tract­ed. Plus I saw that two of the blog­gers I read com­ment­ed on it: Jor­don Coop­er and Todd Hunter (who com­ment­ed not once, not twice, but thrice), so I knew the book was get­ting the buzz it deserved.

So what’s the big deal? What’s the idea that is still rock­ing my world? Sim­ply this: giv­en the right con­di­tions, diverse groups of peo­ple col­lec­tive­ly solve cer­tain types of prob­lems bet­ter than experts.

This isn’t a bolt from the blue: the basic idea has been kick­ing around for a long time, but the book is mag­nif­i­cent nonethe­less. The anec­dotes are pre­cise and illu­mi­nat­ing, the data is detailed, doc­u­ment­ed, and con­vinc­ing, and the writ­ing sparkles.

What Prob­lems Do Groups Solve Bet­ter?
There are some prob­lems you need experts to han­dle (prob­lems of skill are the most impor­tant kind: land­ing a plane or oper­at­ing on the brain are good exam­ples), but there are sev­er­al broad types of prob­lems that groups tend to out­per­form experts on:

1. Cog­ni­tion Prob­lems: ques­tions with fac­tu­al answers
   How many jel­ly beans are in a jar?
   Where is a sunken sub­ma­rine?
2. Coor­di­na­tion Prob­lems: how do we all work togeth­er when it’s in our best inter­est to do so?
   How can we dri­ve safe­ly in heavy traf­fic?
   How should we deliv­er this prod­uct to mar­ket?
3. Coop­er­a­tion Prob­lems: how do we work togeth­er when we have diver­gent goals and val­ues?
   How can we con­trol pol­lu­tion while pro­mot­ing indus­try?
   How can bor­row­ers get mon­ey from lenders at the best rate for each?

Under What Con­di­tions Do Groups Solve These Prob­lems Bet­ter?

There are four key qual­i­ties that make a crowd smart. It needs to be diverse, so that peo­ple are bring­ing dif­fer­ent pieces of infor­ma­tion to the table. It needs to be decen­tral­ized, so that no one at the top is dic­tat­ing the crowd’s answer. It needs a way of sum­ma­riz­ing peo­ple’s opin­ions into one col­lec­tive ver­dict. And the peo­ple in the crowd need to be inde­pen­dent, so that they pay atten­tion most­ly to their own infor­ma­tion, and not wor­ry­ing about what every­one around them thinks.
from The Wis­dom of Crowds Q &A, empha­sis added

Note that these cri­te­ria (diver­si­ty, decen­tral­iza­tion, aggre­ga­tion, and inde­pen­dence) often tend to move us towards a solu­tion that not every­one is hap­py with. In Surowieck­i’s own words:

The wis­dom of crowds isn’t about con­sen­sus. It real­ly emerges from dis­agree­ment and even con­flict. It’s what you might call the aver­age opin­ion of the group, but it’s not an opin­ion that every one in the group can agree on. So that means you can’t find col­lec­tive wis­dom via com­pro­mise.
from The Wis­dom of Crowds Q &A

What Can Go Wrong?
When any of the above cri­te­ria are not met, groups often per­form abysmal­ly worse than experts or even iso­lat­ed idiots. Some spe­cif­ic chal­lenges:

1. Cas­cades (p 40f and through­out the book): peo­ple imi­tate each oth­er with­out under­stand­ing and every­body jumps off a cliff because all their friends did. Think about the stock mar­ket in the late 90s.
2. Group­think (p 36): peo­ple don’t feel free to dis­agree and groups reach sub­op­ti­mal deci­sions that almost every­one can see a prob­lem with but no one is will­ing to com­ment on. This is one of the car­di­nal sins of the Assem­blies of God, by the way.
3. Polar­iza­tion (p184-190): peo­ple egg one anoth­er on until the entire group adopts a more rad­i­cal view than any of the mem­bers would have advo­cat­ed going in.

Sum­ma­ry Thoughts
Surowieck­i’s real con­tri­bu­tion, in my esti­ma­tion, is detail­ing the cri­te­ria under which groups out­per­form experts and the con­di­tions under which groups fail cat­a­strop­i­cal­ly.

Also, his end­notes rocked–they’re as good as the foot­notes in Gor­don Fee’s com­men­tary on 1st Corinthi­ans. If you read this book and did­n’t read the notes, go back and read them right now!

The most stim­u­lat­ing idea in the entire book for me was using of arti­fi­cial mar­kets to pre­dict future events (pages 17, 79, 103, 220–221, espe­cial­ly 278–280, and 285). I have no idea how it applies to my con­text, but it was a fas­ci­nat­ing con­cept.

Learn More
You can read an excerpt from the book, read an arti­cle by the author or hear him dis­cuss the book on NPR.

I just read a web page that rang true with my expe­ri­ence: it’s Cam­pus Cru­sade’s Youth and Tech­nol­o­gy Forum.

If you work with col­le­gians (or youth), give it a read. Hat tip: Andrew.

After read­ing Joel Spol­sky’s com­ments on Look­out (and the fol­lowup noti­fi­ca­tion that it was now a free down­load) I went ahead and got it for my machine.

Very impres­sive.

If you use Out­look at all, you MUST down­load this pro­gram. It will make find­ing mes­sages SO much eas­i­er… search­ing for an old mes­sage used to take for­ev­er and now it’s faster than I can keep up with.

I’ve just received my third install­ment of resources from Rel­e­vant Net­work. I reviewed my first box, meant to review my sec­ond but got a lit­tle bit busy, and now want to tell you what came in my third (and also allude to the sec­ond when appro­pri­ate).

In both the sec­ond and third box­es I received 5 copies of the most recent issue of Rel­e­vant Mag­a­zine. Nice for hand­outs to students–I gave away the last ones and I’ll give these away as well.

In both of the last two box­es I received the lit­tle mag­a­zinelet Rel­e­vant Leader, which seems to be devel­op­ing into some­thing a lit­tle more than the anno­tat­ed resource review it was in the first box.

As in the pre­vi­ous two box­es I received a good mix of books and CDs.

The CDs include:

• Jami Smith — Home
• Hymns Ancient & Mod­ern by Pas­sion Min­istries.
• Des­per­a­tion: From The Rooftops
• Israel & New Breed: Live From Anoth­er Lev­el
• Every­thing Counts: Wor­ship Songs for Rad­i­cal Liv­ing

The books are:

• The Word on the Street by Rob Lacey (the box had the UK edition–the US edi­tion won’t be out until Sep­tem­ber). There was also an enhanced CD based on the book.
• Sum­moned To Lead by Leonard Sweet
• Miles to Cross by Mike How­er­ton
• Mak­ing Sense of Church by Spencer Burke (nice web­site, worth check­ing out)
• Rock Stars on God by Doug Van Pelt
• Here I Am To Wor­ship by Tim Hugh­es

My crit­i­cism of the first box (that it con­tained almost no min­istry resources) has been tend­ed to, inci­den­tal­ly. The last box, for instance, con­tained a High­way Video DVD and a Blue­prints CD from Crave Resources. I was­n’t as impressed with the Blue­prints CD as I want­ed to be, by the way.

This box car­ries on the resource trend with a DVD called That’s My King from Ver­ti­cal Sky Pro­duc­tions. There is also a jour­naly kind of Bible-study thing to accom­pa­ny the Miles to Cross book.

All in all, I still think Rel­e­vant Net­work is the best bang for buck any min­istry to col­le­gians or twen­tysome­things is like­ly to run across.

I down­loaded Groove Work­space today to see if it would be use­ful in our minstry train­ing pro­gram.

Will it ever!

I per­suad­ed Antho­ny to down­load it and give it a whirl. This soft­ware is absolute­ly amaz­ing. We were able to talk over the net quite effec­tive­ly and could col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly edit doc­u­ments and do all sorts of oth­er cool stuff. We could eas­i­ly work as a team on ser­mon prepa­ra­tion or con­duct web sem­i­nars or do just about any­thing involv­ing ideas.

Free for per­son­al use (with restric­tions) and afford­able for pro­fes­sion­al use. What a com­bo!

Now I just can’t wait until Groove 3.0 comes out…

Yes­ter­day I spent 10 hours in a meet­ing dis­cussing train­ing strate­gies for col­lege min­is­ters (most of whom come from sec­u­lar col­leges). While dri­ving back I began think­ing about the chal­lenge a new min­is­ter with­out for­mal train­ing faces in build­ing a pro­fes­sion­al library. Books are expensive–the New Inter­na­tion­al Com­men­tary series on the Old and New Tes­ta­ments retails for near­ly $1,500 (OT, NT)! For some new min­is­ters, build­ing a qual­i­ty library can seem so over­whelm­ing that it’s hard to know where to start.

Inspired by a sim­i­lar exam­ple, I decid­ed to com­pile a sol­id (although basic) min­istry library for under $200 (I failed by eleven cents). I priced the books (used) on Amazon.com on 6/18/2004. Books are list­ed in rough order of impor­tance with­in each cat­e­go­ry.

The Ref­er­ence Col­lec­tion — $102.85

• NIV Exhaus­tive Con­cor­dance $19.35
• Sys­tem­at­ic The­ol­o­gy, Mil­lard Erick­son $29.99
• The IVP Bible Back­ground Com­men­tary — New Tes­ta­ment, Craig Keen­er $13.95
• Hand­book of Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics, Peter Kreeft & Ronald Tacel­li $5.99
• Chrono­log­i­cal and Back­ground Charts of the New Tes­ta­ment, H. Wayne House $10.15
• Chrono­log­i­cal and Back­ground Charts of the Old Tes­ta­ment, John Wal­ton $9.99
• Mul­ti­pur­pose Tools for Bible Study, Fred Danker $13.43

The Per­son­al & Pro­fes­sion­al Growth Col­lec­tion — $97.26

• Devo­tion­al Clas­sics, Fos­ter & Smith $6.65
• How to Read The Bible For All Its Worth, Fee & Stu­art $1.99
• Mere Chris­tian­i­ty, C. S. Lewis $4.95
• The Spir­it of the Dis­ci­plines, Dal­las Willard $9.60
• The Chal­lenge of Jesus, N. T. Wright $10.97
• Prayer, Richard Fos­ter $5.00
• A Tale of Three Kings, Gene Edwards $3.85
• The Pur­suit of Holi­ness, Jer­ry Bridges $2.49
• Exeget­i­cal Fal­lac­i­es – D. A. Car­son $8.99
• Between Two Worlds, John Stott $9.00
• The Mas­ter Plan of Evan­ge­lism, Robert Cole­man $0.97
• The Pur­pose-Dri­ven Church, Rick War­ren $8.00
• Chris­t­ian Coun­sel­ing, Gary Collins $10.50
• Solu­tion-Focused Pas­toral Coun­sel­ing, Charles Kol­lar $12.71
• Take and Read, Eugene Peter­son $1.59

Total Cost: $200.11 (exclud­ing ship­ping & han­dling)

I tried to end each list with a book that would lead to more books, so that this would only be the gen­e­sis of a pro­fes­sion­al library…

I wel­come sug­ges­tions for replace­ment vol­umes. What do you think impor­tant for a novice min­is­ter with lit­tle the­o­log­i­cal edu­ca­tion to read?

I final­ly received the first install­ment of my sub­scrip­tion to Rel­e­vant Net­work this morn­ing (I say final­ly because I expect­ed it last week).

Any­way, I had won­dered what I would get with my sub­scrip­tion, and now I know. I thought I’d pass it on in case your min­istry is con­sid­er­ing join­ing the net­work.

I got a mag­a­zine called Rel­e­vant Leader. It looks okay–it’s a guide to the resources in the kit (reviews, inter­views with artists, etc) along with a hand­ful of extra arti­cles thrown in.

I got 5 copies of the most recent issue of Rel­e­vant Mag­a­zine. That was nice, but for some rea­son the mag­a­zine has always under­whelmed me. I’ve always felt that they try too hard. But then again, I tend to get annoyed at most things I’m sup­posed to find cool (like pop­u­lar music and tele­vi­sion pro­grams), so that’s a clue that Rel­e­vant is hit­ting its demo­graph­ic (for the record, I’m a NPR junkie. If there’s ever any­thing else on in the car it’s prob­a­bly because Paula is dri­ving).

I got 7 books (Red Moon Ris­ing, The 250: Evan­ge­lism Ideas for Your Cam­pus, Enjoy­ing God, Enter the Wor­ship Cir­cle, Soul Sur­vivor, What’s So Amaz­ing About Grace — Visu­al Edi­tion, and The Air I Breathe).

I got 2 study guides (one for Red Moon Ris­ing and the oth­er for Soul Sur­vivor).

And I got 5 CDs (Anony­mous: Accel­er­ate in Slow Motion, Enter The Wor­ship Cir­cle: The Third Cir­cle, Des­per­a­tion, Antho­ny Skin­ner: For­ev­er and a Day, and Tele­cast: The Beau­ty of Sim­plic­i­ty).

Not a bad deal. Not bad at all. I was wor­ried I would be dis­mayed with my pur­chase, but I was actu­al­ly quite sat­is­fied.

I had hoped for some video clips (like the kind of stuff High­way Video puts out), but that was­n’t to be. Per­haps in future install­ments.

UPDATE: After a lit­tle more reflec­tion, I real­ized that I was sur­prised at how few of the resources were actu­al­ly min­istry resources. Most were per­son­al growth resources.

As I men­tioned before, I was most anx­ious to receive tools (such as video clips) that would be use­ful in con­duct­ing wor­ship ser­vices or plan­ning out­reach­es or craft­ing ser­mons. Videos from Nooma, for exam­ple, would be real­ly help­ful. Two or three ser­mons on CD would be extreme­ly use­ful. A bible study or two would be well-received.

I guess I’d pre­fer to see 50%+ of the resources be min­istry tools and the minor­i­ty be per­son­al growth mate­ri­als.

Just some thoughts.

Over­all, it’s a great invest­ment. The books and CDs I received were worth far more than I’m pay­ing for the sub­scrip­tion.

One of the things that bound my col­lege roo­mate Dave Rainey and I togeth­er was our mutu­al love of books–especially old books.

That’s why I’m so hap­py to announce David’s new web­site: Chris­t­ian Book Find­er.

It’s an anno­tat­ed bib­li­og­ra­phy orga­nized by subject–very use­ful! The only thing I don’t like about it is that he does­n’t link direct­ly to online book ven­dors… that would make it eas­i­er to act on one of his rec­om­men­da­tions!

By the way, Dave is well-qual­i­fied for this ven­ture. In addi­tion to being a lover of books, he has a Mas­ter of Library and Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence. How cool is that?