Who Moved my Cheese ?!?!?!
For the mini-mester, I took a graduate level youth ministry course with Bob Rice. In case you're unfamiliar with him, Bob Rice is a crazy, amazing, HOLY man who's semi-famous for his youth ministry skills at a LIFETEEN hub parish in Albany, New York. He brought LIFETEEN to Steubenville and for the last several years, he's been leading the music ministry for the Steubenville Summer Conferences. He's perhaps most famous however for his recent, "Hand motions in Heaven" at the NFCYM conference in Las Vegas, NV. Okay, maybe not the most famous, but it's pretty funny (look it up on youtube.com). Anyways, in all this fame, he still has time to teach classes at our fine university. I've had him for one class before, but for this minimester, he was brave enough to teach youth ministry to grad students. Even though there were only seven of us in the class, it was utterly amazing.
We had lots of reading to do and it was all great :). We read a few "business" books, because Bob felt that we had to understand a lot of business in youth ministry. He summarized the Seven Habits of Highly effective people, We read "the Five Dysfunctions of a Team", along with a few other really good books. The one that was super exciting to me was "Who Moved my Cheese?" It was great.....A friend of mine read it and recommended it to me in undergrad, but I didn't read it. The book is a super quick read (less than 100 pages), but in those pages, there's a ton of action. The book opens with reviews in which people are talking about how great the book is and how it changed their life. I scoffed, not believing that my life would be changed...I was wrong.
Read the book, it's pretty amazing, and it's all about how to respond to change. There's two points in the book in which I UNDERLINED, CIRCLED and put exclamation points next to. I think it's very applicable to all of life, but especially to ministry. I've listed them below:
1. What would you do if you were unafraid?
2. the way we imagine something to be is normally far worse then it really is.
I think this is some amazing food for thought. Fear paralyzes me and it's good to think about what you would do if you were unafraid. That right there, has made all of the difference to me. Get the book, read it, think about it and really, bring it to prayer. It's pretty amazing! I highly recommend it.
Labels: Bob Rice, books, Who Moved my Cheese?
posted by Em @ 1:41 AM
7 Comments:
Last summer the staff of the parish I am at used this book as our summer read and shared it together. It is an easy read and thought and discussion provoking. We enjoyed using it as a catalyst for discussion and it is a nice alternative to staff meetings that are event driven. **** four star
~cammie
I read this my senior year of college along with a room mate. "Where's your cheese today?" became a favorite question.
Another CYM in my area and I routinely talk about how 'church' people really need an understanding of the 'worldly' world, too. Whether it be business, education, the sciences, manufacturing, there is much that can benefit our ministries. Parallels the story of the dishonest steward. Wisdom can often be found in the least likely circumstances.
I recently read the book "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team". I would like to know your thought on it as well as Bob Rice's.
Along the line of book recommendations, I'm hunting for good reflection & formation ideas for my teen leadership group. Any suggestions? Anyone?
You gotta love how the floor is still sticky from the end of the year party and you're already planning the coming year's kick off. (Not that youth ministers get the time off, but one can dream)
I highly highly highly recommend "7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens" by Sean Covey. Go through this with your teens. It is practical and it doesn't talk down to them.
We very briefly talked about the five dysfunctions of a team, because it was a summer course, he just made us read the conclusion, but it was good and Bob had good things to say about them. If we can ever learn how to post, I will put them up for the world to see.
Em,
Where did your cheese get moved to?
Did you ever find out who moved it?
;-)
Post a Comment
<< Home