From quietism to the blogosphere

Dirk Willems in the digital age?

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of conducting a break-out session at the 2011 Anabaptist Communicators Conference, which was hosted here at Eastern Mennonite University. The conference theme was "Anabaptism in a Visual Age" and my session was billed as follows...

From quietism to the blogosphere
Surveying Anabaptist online engagement

This session will survey the various forms of online discourse within contemporary Anabaptist traditions, particularly Mennonite and Church of the Brethren. Both scholarly and popular venues will be examined, with plenty of discussion time to explore the implications to traditional structures and processes for Anabaptist discourse.

An organizational culture view on strategic planning

I used to work in places like this; Photo by st3ve (CC lic.)

Strategic planning has been on my mind a lot recently. It all started a few months ago when my friend, Josh Brockway, blogged about the church needing to be less strategic and more tactical. Yet he works for a denominational board that just underwent an extensive strategic planning process, producing the Church of the Brethren Mission and Ministry Board Strategic Plan 2011-'19 (PDF). The implementation of this plan will purportedly guide that board and its work for the next eight years of its organizational existence.

Then my organizational studies professor at the Center for Justice & Peacebuilding, David Brubaker - from whom I've taken an organizational leadership course and will take a congregational conflict course this fall - sent me the following article/blog post from Nilofer Merchant at the Harvard Business Review: Culture Trumps Strategy, Every Time