Proven Methods for Churches to Attract and Engage Young People One question faces every church leader looking to the future: How do we attract younger generations? Many things have been tried, but in this book, church consultant David Stark shares practical methods that have been proven to work in a variety of congregations. Stark helps leaders identify and use their church's strengths to engage millennials, even those with negative views of Christianity. Based on principles that built the church of the New Testament, he shows how churches today can reach out to their communities in ways that align with the natural, positive interests of young people.

This updated comprehensive guide helps people discover how God has uniquely created them. Engaging stories, inventories, self-tests, and other easy-to-use exercises make Discover Who You Are a one-ofa-kind tool. It will help those longing to find or deepen meaning in life, considering volunteer opportunities, contemplating career changes, or desiring to become more useful to God. The book, workbook, and leader's material provide all that's needed for a LifeKeys workshop.

Stunning contemporary tabletop designs inspired by historical decorative objects from the world’s great museums.

Throughout history, tabletop decoration has been at the nexus of utilitarian function and innovative design. In At the Artisan’s Table, designers and event producers Jane Schulak and David Stark pair historical table wares from the world’s finest design museums with pieces by an international array of contemporary artisans who reinterpret traditional crafts and styles, including Aptware (marbled clay), blue-and-white Delft, chinoiserie, faux bois, plaster, splatterware, and trompe l’oeil.

Each chapter features a museum object that serves as a muse; the work and studio of the artist who has updated the traditional craft; and gorgeous table settings designed by Schulak and Stark that incorporate the artist’s handmade wares and provide inspiration for everyone who has ever wished to wow their dinner guests.

Children's reactions to art can be incredibly insightful and few artists attract a young audience as much as Keith Haring, who used thick black lines, bright colors, and striking symbols to create paintings that are as open to interpretation as they are joyful and fun. This engaging book records children's reactions to Haring's most imaginative drawings, and the results are as unpredictable and profound as the work itself. Along the way, the book encourages its readers to let their own imaginations run wild. By exploring Haring's life, technique, and creativity, the book will inspire readers of all ages to express themselves, whether through art, poetry, or simply saying what is on their minds.

David Stark could not find a book which explained climate change and related energy policy in appropriate detail without being patronising and alarmist so after seven years of research he wrote one himself. He believes that the contagion circulating through young people of the 21st century, eco-anxiety has spread because the agenda was set by activism where rational and informed debate is precluded. With this comprehensive - but entirely accessible - guide to climate change, debate and the healing process can now start. We can all begin to understand why efforts to date to 'save the planet' have hurt the economies of Western democracies and placed our energy and manufacturing security in the hands of autocracies. This book discusses the different arguments that are often heard in documentaries and news reports but breaks them down with facts and empirical scientific evidence, cutting through the hyperbole to see whether they are actually the cause for panic that we've been told they are and whether the solutions being proposed will really help. The current energy crisis suggests that the cure is worse than the disease.

To what extent can contemporary socialist economies be reformed by the introduction of markets? The question is usually debated in either a Chinese or an East European context; this collection of eleven essays is unique in taking the first steps toward a comparative analysis. Twenty years of experience with reforms in Hungary and a decade of experimentation with reforms in China proivde a critical mass of evidence for analyzing the problems endemic to cnetrally planned economies and the dilemmas faced in efforts to reform them. In reflecting on the Chinese and East European experiences, these essays trace the shift from a conception of reform as a mix of planning and makrets within the state sector to a socialist mixed economy with implications for the emergence of new social groups and autonomous social organizations. The essays exemplify a new perspective in the study of state socialism that changes the focus from ideologies to economic institutions, examining how the activities of subordinate groups place limits on the power of state elites. The authors include scholars who have shaped debates in Eastern Europe and whose work is now stimulating much discussion in China, as well as representatives of a younger generation of economists, sociologists, and political scientists writing on the basis of field research recently conducted in factories, cities, and villages in China and Eastern Europe. The contributors are: Wlodzimierz Brus, Walter D. Connor, Zhiren Lin, Victor Nee, Susan Shirk, David Stark, Ivan Szelenyi, and Martin King Whyte. An introductory essays surveys recent theories and research on state socialism and outlines a new institutional perspective for understanding the dilemmas of partial reforms, the political cycles of reform and retrenchment, and the role of subordinate groups in stimulating changes outside the state sector.

Nancy Warner's photographs and David Stark's interviews and reflections provide fresh perspective on the history and culture of a distinctly American phenomenon. Continuing in the tradition of Solomon D. Butcher, who photographed some of the first midwestern settlers in the nineteenth century, and Wright Morris, who combined photographic and verbal accounts of farmers' lives in the twentieth century, Stark and Warner explore a way of life that continues to adapt in the face of wrenching change.

This book pairs images of abandoned farm places with the plain-spoken recollections of the people who still live in nearby communities. In his afterword, Stark grounds the project in the relationship between people and their land; the cadences and tough-minded humor of everyday speech; the ongoing mechanization of farming; the lure of cities for the young; and genetic and chemical innovations for improving crop yields. The result is both art and document, evoking memories, emotions, and open-ended questions for anyone with rural American roots.

What counts? In work, as in other areas of life, it is not always clear what standards we are being judged by or how our worth is being determined. This can be disorienting and disconcerting. Because of this, many organizations devote considerable resources to limiting and clarifying the logics used for evaluating worth. But as David Stark argues, firms would often be better off, especially in managing change, if they allowed multiple logics of worth and did not necessarily discourage uncertainty. In fact, in many cases multiple orders of worth are unavoidable, so organizations and firms should learn to harness the benefits of such "heterarchy" rather than seeking to purge it. Stark makes this argument with ethnographic case studies of three companies attempting to cope with rapid change: a machine-tool company in late and postcommunist Hungary, a new-media startup in New York during and after the collapse of the Internet bubble, and a Wall Street investment bank whose trading room was destroyed on 9/11. In each case, the friction of competing criteria of worth promoted an organizational reflexivity that made it easier for the company to change and deal with market uncertainty. Drawing on John Dewey's notion that "perplexing situations" provide opportunities for innovative inquiry, Stark argues that the dissonance of diverse principles can lead to discovery.

This volume applies a rhetorical-discourse method to the Yahadic manuscripts and Romans to show how community leaders uniquely determined specific hermeneutical rules, axioms, and paradigms for their communities. Stark examines the Yahadic texts using Thomas Kuhn's arguments about scientific paradigms and their shifts as a framework for considering the patterns through which Paul and the Yahad interpret their scriptures. Stark outlines the three ways in which the Teacher determined the perspective from which the Yahad approached its scriptures. Following this, he analyses the Romans and the three thematic ways that Jesus determined the perspective from which Paul approached his scriptures. Despite strong similarities between them, the paradigms under which the Yahad and Paul operated moved them to fundamentally different understanding of the kinds of faithfulness they should exhibit towards those whom they received as Yahweh's appointed agents. The Yahad understood faithfulness to the Teacher within the context of Torah, but Paul understood the Torah within the context of Abraham-style faithfulness to Jesus.

This volume applies a rhetorical-discourse method to the Yahadic manuscripts and Romans to show how community leaders uniquely determined specific hermeneutical rules, axioms, and paradigms for their communities. Stark examines the Yahadic texts using Thomas Kuhn's arguments about scientific paradigms and their shifts as a framework for considering the patterns through which Paul and the Yahad interpret their scriptures. Stark outlines the three ways in which the Teacher determined the perspective from which the Yahad approached its scriptures. Following this, he analyses the Romans and the three thematic ways that Jesus determined the perspective from which Paul approached his scriptures. Despite strong similarities between them, the paradigms under which the Yahad and Paul operated moved them to fundamentally different understanding of the kinds of faithfulness they should exhibit towards those whom they received as Yahweh's appointed agents. The Yahad understood faithfulness to the Teacher within the context of Torah, but Paul understood the Torah within the context of Abraham-style faithfulness to Jesus.

Is there a distinctly East European capitalism? This volume analyzes democratization and economic change in the postsocialist societies of East Central Europe. It demonstrates that the collapse of communism was not the same across the region and that the differences in how the pieces fell shaped the building blocks used for reconstructing political systems and restructuring economies in the region. Among the key concepts are the importance of social networks in the economies and of deliberative institutions in the polity that include the interests of subordinate groups in policymaking.

What's valuable? Market competition provides one kind of answer. Competitions offer another. On one side, competition is an ongoing and seemingly endless process of pricings; on the other, competitions are discrete and bounded in time and location, with entry rules, judges, scores, and prizes. This book examines what happens when ever more activities in domains of everyday life are evaluated and experienced in terms of performance metrics. Unlike organized competitions, such systems are ceaseless and without formal entry. Instead of producing resolutions, their scorings create addictions. To understand these developments, this book explores discrete contests (architectural competitions, international music competitions, and world press photo competitions); shows how the continuous updating of rankings is both a device for navigating the social world and an engine of anxiety; and examines the production of such anxiety in settings ranging from the pedagogy of performance in business schools to struggling musicians coping with new performance metrics in online platforms. In the performance society, networks of observation - in which all are performing and keeping score - are entangled with a system of emotionally charged preoccupations with one's positioning within the rankings. From the bedroom to the boardroom, pharmaceutical companies and management consultants promise enhanced performance. This assemblage of metrics, networks, and their attendant emotional pathologies is herein regarded as the performance complex.

Can property regimes be successfully transformed while simultaneously extending citizenship rights to the property-less? This is the postsocialist challenge analyzed in this comparative study of the new democracies of a distinctly East European capitalism. Tracing the diverse pathways from the collapse of communism, a leading American economic sociologist and a pioneering Hungarian political scientist examine the innovative character, born of necessity, of postsocialist institutions in which actors are recombining economic assets and redefining political resources. Under conditions of extraordinary uncertainty, networks of enterprises become the units of economic restructuring, blurring the boundaries of public and private and yielding distinctive patterns of interorganizational ownership. In contrast to calls to liberate the market or to liberate the state, this sustained comparative analysis demonstrates the benefits of deliberative institutions that are neither market friendly nor hierarchical. By extending accountability, actors bound through associative ties make agreements that extend the authority to carry out reforms.

This book is about change in Central and Eastern Europe, and about how we think about social and economic change more generally. In contrast to the dominant 'transition framework' that examines organizational forms in Eastern Europe according to the degree to which they conform to, or depart from, the blueprints of already existing capitalist systems, this book examines the innovative character, born of necessity, in which actors in the post-socialist setting are restructuring organizations and institutions by redefining and recombining resources. Instead of thinking of these recombinations as accidental aberrations, the book explores their evolutionary potentials.
The starting premise of Restructuring Networks in Post-Socialist Societies is that the actual unit of entrepreneurship is not the isolated individual personality but the social network that links firms and the actors within them. Drawing insight from evolutionary economics and from the new methods of network analysis, leading sociologists, economists, and political scientists report on changes in organizational forms in Hungary, Poland, Eastern Germany, Russia, and the Czech Republic.

Can property regimes be successfully transformed while simultaneously extending citizenship rights to the property-less? This is the postsocialist challenge analyzed in this comparative study of the new democracies of a distinctly East European capitalism. Tracing the diverse pathways from the collapse of communism, a leading American economic sociologist and a pioneering Hungarian political scientist examine the innovative character, born of necessity, of postsocialist institutions in which actors are recombining economic assets and redefining political resources. Under conditions of extraordinary uncertainty, networks of enterprises become the units of economic restructuring, blurring the boundaries of public and private and yielding distinctive patterns of interorganizational ownership. In contrast to calls to liberate the market or to liberate the state, this sustained comparative analysis demonstrates the benefits of deliberative institutions that are neither market friendly nor hierarchical. By extending accountability, actors bound through associative ties make agreements that extend the authority to carry out reforms.

Art. Photography. Using a large-format view camera, David Stark Wilson elevates the architecturally underappreciated utility buildings that dot California's great Central Valley. In both words and pictures, Wilson captures the disquietingly abandoned landscape that, neither "cultural" nor "natural" has, nonetheless, much of the beauty and consequence of both, though it is, like these buildings, an industrial ruin, still in use.