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The Manifesto of Done

January 6, 2012 in Th.M. Program, Writing with 3 Comments

Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.

That’s my favorite quote from the Manifesto for  The Cult of Done. The Manifesto offers 13 rules  for getting things done. Although they apply to people from every walk of life, I think they’re particularly relevant to students and writers.

Now I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I’m encouraging sloppy writing/thinking. Some students could use a little more striving for perfection in those areas. But some (and I’m one of them) struggle more with the ideal of perfection, an ideal that can prevent us from finishing anything. If that’s you, feel free to laugh at perfection every now and then.

Here are some other gems:

  • Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
  • The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
  • Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
  • Done is the engine of more.

So, if you’re working on something, great. If you get it done, better.

How bad is the job market for PhDs?

January 6, 2012 in Th.M. Program with 21 Comments

This is for anyone who would like to pursue a Ph.D. so they can go into full-time teaching. I don’t want to rain on your parade. (Actually, I don’t really like parades. So I wouldn’t mind raining on one–especially if I could do it when there weren’t any clouds in the sky and people weren’t expecting it. That would be cool.) But here’s an outstanding infographic that helps explain why it’s so difficult to get a teaching job in higher education these days.

If you don’t have time to read through the whole thing, here are some compelling statements:

  • New doctoral degrees = 100,000; new professorships = 16,000
  • The number of faculty approaching retirement age in the next 10 years is reaching the lowest level in 30 years.
  • Full-time tenture track employees are down 15% while graduate student employees are up 45%.

I’m sure these numbers are at least somewhat different at seminaries and Bible colleges (for example, I think the number of faculty approaching retirement at seminaries is higher than this suggests), but that doesn’t mean the situation in theological education is any better (for example, I think the ratio of new degrees to new professorships might be even worse than this).

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Flotsam and jetsam (1/6)

January 6, 2012 in Flotsam and jetsam with 0 Comments

Good Reads

  • What Do We Do With Our Slavery-Affirming Theological Heroes?: “How is it possible to believe the gospel and articulate so clearly the doctrine of justification by faith alone, yet miss how this doctrine severs the root of racism and ethnocentrism forever? Even more, how can one’s life be so out of step with one’s theology?”

How to use Wikipedia and other online sources for research

January 4, 2012 in Th.M. Program, Writing with 8 Comments

In every syllabus, I tell students to use “quality sources” in their research papers. But that only raises the question of what qualifies as a “quality source.” One student wanted to know if he could cite the Bible as one of his sources. After all, you can’t get much more quality than that! Another took things a step further and asked if individual books of the Bible counted as different sources. Talk about a quick way to pad your bibliography.

But the question everyone wants to ask: what about Wikipedia?

Before I say any more, let’s be clear about one thing: I like Wikipedia. When I want to learn about something new, Wikipedia is usually my first stop. It’s a great place to surf for entry-level information on almost any topic.

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Flotsam and jetsam (1/4)

January 4, 2012 in Flotsam and jetsam with 2 Comments

Good Reads

  • Here’s a great read for staring the new year right. Time Lost and Found: “I’ve heard it said that every day you need half an hour of quiet time for yourself, or your Self, unless you’re incredibly busy and stressed, in which case you need an hour. I promise you, it is there. Fight tooth and nail to find time, to make it. It is our true wealth, this moment, this hour, this day.”
  • The Next Billy Graham Might Be Drunk Right Now: “Most of the church in any generation comes along through the slow, patient discipleship of the next generation. But just to keep us from thinking Christianity is evolutionary and “natural”…, Jesus shocks his church with leadership that seems to come like a Big Bang out of nowhere.”
  • How to Stone People without the Inconvenience of Picking up Rocks: “Shepherding those who struggle with life dominating sin is not unlike swimming out to a drowning victim. There’s always the potential of having your nose broken by the very one you are trying to save. It’s an exhausting sort of love, but sincere. Churches that truly love their members swim out to each other’s lives in light of the risks.”
  • A Forgotten Text? ”I have often in the past stood with those who laughed at what we regarded as the ignorant, unsophisticated taboos of the older generation.  But now I worry about the ease with which the rising generation talks explicitly of ‘the fruitless deeds of darkness’ in the name of cultural engagement, fear of being thought passé or simply a desire to slough off the legalisms of their fathers in the faith.”

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The Absolute Best Way to Grade Essays

January 3, 2012 in Humor with 4 Comments

If you teach or ever plan on teaching, you need to learn this grading system. Trust me.

The Best Everything of 2011

January 2, 2012 in Misc with 0 Comments

Before we move too far into 2012, I thought it would be good to take stock of what happened in 2011. And what better way to do that than to look at some of the more interesting and bizarre “Best of 2011″ lists around.

First, here are a copule of lists that try to compile best of the “Best of” lists for 2011.

Flotsam and jetsam (1/2)

January 2, 2012 in Flotsam and jetsam with 0 Comments

Good Reads

  • The Pedestal Complex: “Our celebrity culture not only honors the wrong people; it actually undercuts the heroes who used to be the real celebrities — those we ought to celebrate.”
  • Doesn’t Anyone in the Media Ever Read the Bible? ”It happened again just the other day. I was reading the New York Times and I came across something so hilarious that for a moment it seemed to be some kind of joke. But this was in an obituary.”

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A Prayer for Sunday (Zwingli)

January 1, 2012 in Prayers with 1 Comment

“Almighty, eternal and merciful God, whose Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path, open and illuminate our minds, that we may purely and perfectly understand your Word and that our lives may be conformed to what we have rightly understood, that in nothing we may be displeasing to your majesty, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Ulrich Zwingli prayed the preceding every morning before he began his study of the Word. Zwingli was a man after God’s own heart, a man of prayer, and a student of God’s Word. However, he is perhaps best known in a negative sense; namely, for his opinion that the Eucharist was simply a metaphorical event – a view which Calvin and Luther (and myself) disagree with. He placed the authority of Scripture above that of Church Councils and the writings of the Church Fathers; he is perhaps one of the first men to place the writings of the scripture above Church tradition and authority. Zwingli was a very influential man, especially in Switzerland. He had wanted to reform the Catholic Church, but ultimately split apart from it. I believe that Zwingli had a passionate love for Christ Jesus, even though I do not necessarily agree with his theology on several levels. However, in the Spirit of Christian unity, I would prefer to hold on to the things which we share in common, especially as we celebrate the day of his birth, January 1, 1484.

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Flotsam and jetsam (12/30)

December 30, 2011 in Flotsam and jetsam with 0 Comments

Good Reads

  • Churches Bring Custom Apps to Their Flocks: WSJ takes a look at technology in the church. “Pastors and parishioners say the technology can enable people to uphold the call to stay religiously involved at all times, not just on Sunday. App developers expect thousands of churches to develop the apps in coming years to meet demand from worshipers.”

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