A Resource for Financial Analysis in a Seminary Setting

There is so much to learn. I have been a academic dean for four years. I was a religion major in college and emphasis in Bible and theology in seminary. So I was unprepared for the financial side of educational administration. In workshops at the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of school and Universities I learned about ratio analysis. I read the article “The President’s Role in Financial Management” by Anthony Ruger, John Canary, and Steven Land in the book A Handbook for Seminary Presidents edited by G. Douglass Lewis and Lovett H. Weems Jr. The bibliography at the end of the chapter suggest one read Ratio Analysis in Higher Education: Measuring Past Performance to Chart Future Directions, for Independent Institutions. Of course I went to Amazon.com to find the book. But no luck. I did find a pdf. file on ratio analysis in higher education I have not finished digesting the material but it looks quite promising.

Notes on The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by John Battelle

This book is a history of “search” technology that uses the story of Google as the main rubric. John Battelle is an excellent writer.

Like a number of authors today he set up a blog, searchblog related to the book project. You might also want to watch a short video of his speech to Google employees in NYC.

Battelle clearly explains the elements of a search engine. He has some very important and intriguing ideas such as the database of intention and a search economy. His notion that he likes news sources that can make the most of deep linking also opens up new ways of thinking.

However, he spends a lot of time on the business news part of the book, namely the Google IPO and things like that which were of only minor interest to me. I wanted more on the transformed culture and the new business rules and a more impressionistic history of Google. In that sense I think the book over promised.

American Bible Society Trip

 

 

This has been a full week. I had the opportunity to have a taping of the American Bible Society presents television program. The American Bible Society was established in 1816 and has its headquarters in New York City. It is the largest This is the second season for their television show “American Bible Society Presents,” hosted by the American Bible Society’s president and CEO, Rev. Dr. Paul Irwin. Last year the program won a Telly award. The other scholars on the program were Clarice Martin of Syracuse University, Amy Jill Levine of Vanderbilt University. My friend Dr. Joseph Crockett has been part of the the American Bible Society for seven years.During the trip I stayed at the Le Meridien in Beverly Hills. It was an elegant hotel. I met Freddy Boswell a part of Wycliffe International, an organization that translates the Bible into the languages of the world. There are four hundred fifty translations of the Hebrew Scriptures and six hundred translations of the Greek New Testament. There are some six thousand languages. So you can see the disparity. It was an inspiring time to think about the work of ABS and Wycliffe.

The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture

I first heard about this book through the Soundview Executive Book Summaries program last May. The title promises a lot. John Battelle provides a history of Google. Those who want to understand “search” better this is a helpful book. David Vise and Mark Malseed have written a history of Google as well, The Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media, and Technology Success of Our Time . I have not had a chance to read it so I will not make any comparisons a this point.

However, it gives a little more detail on the history of Google than many readers will want. His notion of the database of intentions is a very compelling. The idea is that persons are willing to pay to have some access to this database. His definition is quite helpful. “The Database of Intentions is simply this: the aggregate results of every search ever entered, every result list ever tendered, and every path taken as a result.” (p 6)

The search drive clickstreams and clickstreams are key elements in this database of intentions for the move to a digital world means that the process of search is revamping marketing, media and technology etc.

The Search outlines some of the implications of the transition of computing. “But when the locus of computing moves to the Web, as it clearly has for second generation applications like social networking, search, and e-commerce, and law is far fuzzier.” (p 14) The University of Phoenix has raised the stakes of marketing in higher education. Goldie Blumenstyk outlined in her article “Marketing, the For-Profit Way” in the Chronicle on Higher Education in December 2006 that many institutions of higher education are using the leads from search clickstreams as a resource in marketing.

Now that search is now a marketing method. I continue to be most interested in the idea of Google AdWords.

Another of the interesting observations that Battelle that Yahoo catalog is a matter of human indexing while Google uses algorithms to produce its search engine. Many readers will find this contrast of the Yahoo and Google cultures interesting.

Jon M. Kleinberg in his paper “Authoritative Sources in a Hyperlinked Environment” said “Bibliometerics is the study of written documents and their citation structure.” He noticed that the concept of scholarly papers is the use of citation and annotation. This becomes a key element in the search and in higher education as well.

As a professor of biblical studies I have been working with students to establish a biblical literacy. Now the question of search raises the question of whether one needs to know the Bible when one can search the biblical text for any memorable quotation one might want. There are differences between literacy and the ability to find information. Literacy means that a person has instant access to material without the constraints of search.

Society of Biblical Literature

The role of technology and the emerging field of biblical studies. There have been several articles on the Society of Biblical Literature site on technology more specifically the role of wikipedia.

The Society of Biblical Literature through the SBL Forum has debated the role of wikipedia in biblical studies. One of the issues for a group such as the SBL must address the notion of peer review. SBL journals and presentations go through a thorough peer review by other scholars. Taylor David Halverson, Indiana University introduced the subject in the SBL Forum. In an article Wikipedia or Wackipedia? On the Reasoned Use of New Technology another article during that time was written by Lawrence J. Mykytiuk of Purdue University in his article Wikipedia: Unreliable Source, Useful Heuristic Tool raised complementary issues including the market theory related to wikipedia. He makes the point the point that while wikipedia is a bad source that may have good heuristic properties. The emerging technology provides an opportunity to think again about ethics and practicalities as Janet M. Giddings, San Jose, California shows us in her article Ethical Issues in Pedagogy: Wikipedia. Holger Szesnat, Eastern Region Ministry Course / Cambridge Theological Federation outlined other practical issues in his article “Who knows? Wikipedia, Teaching and Research”

Kathy in the Condo

Kathy in the Condo

Originally uploaded by stephenbreckreid@verizon.net.

A Condo?

Vital Pastors Retreat

Vital Pastors Retreat

Originally uploaded by stephenbreckreid@verizon.net.

The Vital Pastors Retreat

I have spent the week at the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence retreat for the Vital Pastors program of the Brethren Academy in Ellenton Florida at the Dayspring retreat and conference center. This retreat brought together four cohorts from south/central Indiana, mid-Atlantic, southern Ohio, and northern Ohio. What follows is not meant as a rehearsal of the retreat but rather some interesting nuggets that I heard from the participants.

 

Three of the four cohorts began as part of the sustaining pastoral excellence vital pastor process. It seems that while pastoral friendships are something that everyone knew to be a good thing the grant process worked as a catalyst. One member remarked that oranges and other types of fruit you could not tell about the fruit until it was turned into juice. He observed that people were like oranges before the juice you can only measure their commitments under the stress. So he asks folk what happens to them when they are squeezed.

 

We did an exercise where everyone was asked to select a picture from a gallery provided. The participants were then asked to use the picture to illustrate the story or character of one’s cohort. One person choose a picture of a rowing team. In the success pictures the caption talks about the all the members of the team pulling in the same direction. This person observed that another element of the picture is that most of the members are rowing in a direction they cannot see.

One of the groups talked about being at Westminster Cathedral. Two stories struck me. The first story was about the group’s being bared from evensong until they told the guards that they were clergy not simple tourists. The second story was in a similar vein. It described a group of believers who continued to celebrate the Eucharist despite tourist who gawk during the service.

In the vital pastor’s program each group comes up with a critical question that shape their ongoing conversations. The questions these groups are coming up with show an interesting lens on the church today. For instance, how does the early Brethren a decisive force in today’s Brethren identity? Another question was the issue of how can we be good stewards of the transformative work of worship? These are my renderings of the questions.

 

A Condo?

This week Kathy and I looked at a condo in Elgin Illinois. This is a nice place and will be quite comfortable. It is close to the Church of the Brethren General Offices. This is a renovated Shoe Factory. The building is about one hundred years old.

Budget Workshop

This week I went back to Richmond for a budget workshop at Bethany. While there I stopped into the office and saw Pam. Then there was a productive afternoon with the adminstrative team and Dan the acting academic dean.