So, what are your thoughts?

We look at the stats of people dropping out of church as they graduate high school and are quick to point to all the externals: postmodern pluralism and relativism, lack of teaching a “Biblical worldview,” over secularization of media and society, etc. What if the problem is inside? What if the problem isn’t what we aren’t teaching? What if the problem is what WE ARE teaching?

I loved that she challenges adults to learn from children. I think we can do that about education and about spirituality as well. I think so many times we can get so caught up in teaching children that we forget that God can use them to teach us as well.

I remember one time with the Kindergarten class I am currently leading, as we were praying one of the children spontaneously started thanking God for various things like her house and her parents. I was about to correct her for interrupting my prayer when I almost audibly heard God tell me to shut up… no joke. God used this little 5-year-old to teach me that spontaneous praise and thanks is an important part of prayer. Since then, I’ve tried to allow for that time with the kids. It’s been one of my favorite times!

How about you? What has God taught your through children? What are ways that we can continue to be open to learn from children?

On a side note… my wife and I are loving reading ChildFaith by Don and Brenda Ratcliff. In addition to teaching parents how to pass on faith to children, it also teaches parents how to learn faith from their children. We’ll be posting a joint review on the book soon!

OK, I’m going to add my thoughts to all the Christmas and Santa posts that have come out. (You can see some here, here, here, here, here, and here; if I didn’t link to yours, then leave it in the comments.)

In a spirit of full disclosure, I will say that in our home Santa is a game. We talk about him around Christmastime when the kids bring him up and when we go to the mall and see him. Most of what they know about Santa they get from friends or TV shows. We don’t discourage it or necessarily encourage it. We play along. I’ve got four kids. The two oldest (10 and 8) have figured out Santa is a game. Our two youngest (4 and 2) haven’t figured it out yet. Growing up, Santa wasn’t a big deal. As long as I can remember, I’ve known it was treated as a game in my family… a fun one that we enjoyed playing.

Now on to my thoughts…

Christmas is about the fulfillment of thousands of years of promises by God to send a Savior to the world–Jesus. He did it, though, in the most unconventional and least expected of ways. Jesus arrived as a baby. The God of the universe, who has always existed, who is the Word responsible for the creation of all things became a baby! He was born of a virgin! Angels announced his arrival… to shepherds of all people! A star announced his arrival and guided astronomers from the East to see him! OK, I’ll stop with the exclamation marks…

The Christmas story is a miraculous one filled with mystery and, dare I say it, magic. If it weren’t for the mystery and magic of it all, I don’t think there would even be a Santa or Rudolf or whatever stories there are about belief, generosity, selflessness and peace. It is the miracle of God becoming man that sparks many of the stories, myths, and legends that exist about Santa.

Now, I’m not saying that we replace Jesus with Santa… or even that we go to extreme lengths to perpetuate the Santa myth. I do think, though, that we snuff the mystery and magic and miracle surrounding Christmas by turning a hose on the imaginative spark in people. We are so quick to point to facts and figures. We distill the miracle of Jesus born to a mere historical fact just so that we can feel good about ourselves because we stuck to the truth. We make claims that children will be confused about Jesus if we don’t expose the myth of Santa to them. We try and remove any vestiges of imagination or story from Christmas in the name of historical fact.

Is our faith that fragile? Is the faith of our children that fragile? If it is, it isn’t because of a juvenile belief in Santa. If we are living out our faith in front of our children everyday of the year, then Jesus is the one constant that children will have in their lives while all the other stories will become just that–stories–as they grow and develop the cognitive ability to distinguish between real and fantasy.

So I say, let the magic and mystery and miracle of Christmas live on! Point children to the truths of faith, generosity, sacrifice, etc. that show up in different Christmas stories. Emphasize that Christmas is about Jesus’ birth and the miracle of that. Celebrate Advent with your children and look forward in anticipation to the Christ-child…. and enjoy the Santa stories. You can even tell them about the real person behind Santa–St. Nicholas. (VeggieTales has a recent video that does a fun job of telling that story!)

It’s interesting what you learn about kids when you take time to talk and listen to them. When is the last time you sat down with a group of kids and simply listened to them? When’s the last time you’ve heard their take on the world around them?

Thanks to my good friend Steve Tanner, I read this great post on the differences between Twitter and Facebook Status updates.

In short, it comes down to Facebook being more about conversations and keeping up with people you already have realationships with and Twitter is more about personal branding and meeting new people. (Yes, there are exceptions to these broad generalizations!)

Many people have different thoughts on all of these multiple social networking platforms (add things like MySpace, Orkut, FriendFeed, Tumblr, Posterous, Ning communities, etc) and what to be a part of and how to update each. Some keep them separate and some try and consolidate it all.

As far as Twitter and Facebook go, I think the article does a good job of clearing some things up.

What are you thoughts? Do these different things help what you do? hinder what you do? How much is too much?

Personally, I keep my accounts separate and do different things with them. The key for me is to have specific purposes for each and limiting the time I spend on each.

I grew up with schizophrenia when it came to Halloween. I remember being very young and going to a Halloween party at my church with carnival games and dressing up and such. I remember dressing up and trick or treating. I even remember times where we turned off the lights and pretended not to be home because Halloween was evil. Whatever Dobson or Fallwell or Robertson said about Halloween from year to year determined what we did. I’ve heard all about the evil origins of Halloween. I’ve read the articles and tracts. I think we even gave out some of those tracts one year.

I ran across this post from Michael Spencer as well as this other one that Spencer refers to in his post that give a different understanding of Halloween history than what I was familiar with. I thought they were interesting.

Regardless of the origins of Halloween and what each person chooses to do on that day, Halloween does offer a great opportunity for us to be in our neighborhoods and interacting with the people we live around. We can choose to create our own alternatives so we can feel good about not celebrating evil yet still having fun. We can choose to participate in the fun and go from house to house gathering candy while dressed up. Or we can find ways to build relationships with our neighbors.

What does that look like? Well, if you’re a regular reader of Elemental Children’s Ministry then you already know the answer to that question. It depends on you, your culture and your context. For some that means setting up activities in your front yard that neighborhood kids can participate in, giving you time to interact with other parents and guardians. For others, it might mean handing out hot chocolate and coffee to shivering kids and adults. For another group of people it could mean giving out boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts that were left over after a fundraiser as a thank you as your kids get candy from various homes (we did this one year… it was so much fun!). Use your imagination!

As an extra treat, here’s a video of our Family Pumpkin Party this past Sunday.

Here is an article in the London Times by N. T. Wright, an Anglican Bishop, on the support of US Episcopalians for homosexual clergy. It is worth a read.

I think Wright did a great job of stating both Biblical and non-Biblical reasons for not ordaining homosexual clergy and at the same time not come off as gay bashing. This response is a great example of the tone we should be taking as well as the the thought we should be putting into how we respond to a growing acceptance of an active homosexual lifestyle.

I’m really excited because tonight my wife and I will be going to catch the sixth instalment in the Harry Potter movie franchise: The Half-Blood Prince. I enjoyed the books as they came out, and now am enjoying each film as they are being released.

I do know that not everyone shares my enjoyment of the Harry Potter series. I remember when the books started coming out, culminated by the release of the first movie, all the controversy among the evangelical Christian world surrounding the stories. What a fun time to be in children’s ministry!

I won’t go into the debate on whether or not the books and movies are right or wrong. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt…

With getting ready to go see the movie, I remembered a post by my friend Matt Guevara about developing a Christian ethic of story. In other words, developing a thought-out filter for looking at story and determining whether or not it has any redemptive value. (At least that is my understanding of his post and subsequent article linked to his post.)

I highly recommend reading the post and the article. The article is a bit on the academic side, but it’s good to exercise the brain every once and a while!

One of the points I like in the article is evaluating story using a centered set vs. bounded set paradigm. I had a 3-post series about using centered and bounded sets when evaluating what it means to follow Christ. You can read the posts here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

• What do you think about Matt’s ideas on developing a Christian ethic of story?
• How do you evaluate stories, art, culture? What are the filters you use? How do you determine whether something is “redeemable” or not?
• What do you do to help kids and parents develop filters for media, entertainment and culture?

Last week I wrote about my view on camp and how I’ve seen God move in the lives of children and volunteers uniquely in a camp setting.

A couple of days ago I came across this article when reading through Dave Roberts’ blog on Children Matter.

The UK is getting its very own atheist camp! In 1996, Camp Quest, was launched in the United States as an alternative to religious summer camps. Here is a description of the camp from the Camp Quest site:

“Camp Quest is the first residential summer camp in the history of the United States for the children of Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists, Brights, or whatever other terms might be applied to those who hold to a naturalistic, not supernatural world view.

The purpose of Camp Quest is to provide children of freethinking parents a residential summer camp dedicated to improving the human condition through rational inquiry, critical and creative thinking, scientific method, self-respect, ethics, competency, democracy, free speech, and the separation of religion and government guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.”

Now, I’m not a fan of the “us vs. them” mentality that is so easy to fall into when running across stuff like this. It is so easy to either ridicule the camp or try and point out all the fallacies in secular humanism or think of ways to “evangelize” to these kids. The only problem is that camps like this one are formed in reaction to those typically evangelical responses.

How, then should we respond to camps like these and those who run these camps or send their kids to these or the kids who do attend these camps? Rather than looking only to the Great Commission, I think we ought to filter our call to make disciples through the Great Commandment of loving God and loving others. We need to enter into relationship with people and love them regardless of whether they will become Christians or not. I think we need to listen more and give answers less. We need to respect the journey that people are on and allow the Holy Spirit to move things along.

• What are your thoughts when you read about a camp like this?
• How would you respond to these parents and organizers?

“He Has Risen” & “God Bless America” Lawn Ornaments, On Route 31 (Just North Of Beulah, MI), originally uploaded by takomabibelot.

Those of us who either grew up in the States or have lived there for a while are most likely familiar with the song “God Bless America.” It’s a song asking for, duh, God’s blessing on America. I don’t necessarily have an issue with the song. I am wary when I hear people sing it. There seems to be a sense of entitlement in the voices of those who sing it, as if it is expected for God to bless America because America is at the top of God’s “My Faves” list.

Don’t get me wrong. I was born in the States and appreciate the history and the tradition of democracy and independence which the US embodies. I also do think it is OK to ask for God’s blessing. I think, though, that a large segment of American Christians have allowed nationalistic pride to take hold of their Christianity and fuse their identity as a US citizen with their identity as children of the Kingdom of God.

One example of this is the continual misuse of 2 Chronicles 7:14:

“Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.”

If you grew up in church in the States, you probably heard this verse quoted many, many times in reference to America. The problem with this is that this verse had a very specific audience and a very specific purpose. I won’t go into it all, but Bob Robinson at Vanguard Church does a thorough job if you are interested (he uses stronger language than I would, but I agree with his overall point).

While, yes, this verse shows that we can pray for a nation, unfortunately we have wrongly assumed that we can take the specifics of this verse and transpose the nation of the United States and American Christians into it. By doing so we presume and promote the idea that America is somehow a “chosen nation” and that American Christians are “God’s chosen people.” We, in essence, claim that America has the same standing in God’s eyes as Israel did in the Old Testament: that salvation will come out of America. I know that some will balk at what I am saying and do the obligatory backpedaling that all good Christians are taught to do. I was taught to do it and have done it. But if we are truly honest with ourselves, most American Christians do feel some sort of entitlement or feeling that we are more blessed than other nations.

This idea that any nation is any more blessed or any more held up in God’s eyes than any other nation is dangerous. When Christ came, the mark of being God’s people transcended physical traditions of laws and sacrifices and circumcision. The mark of being God’s people became faith in Christ and our love of God and others.

Does that mean there is no room for pride in one’s nation? Of course not. My family and I will be making our trek south of the border (when you live in Canada, south of the border isn’t Mexico) to celebrate the birth of our home nation by wearing red, white and blue and watching fireworks.

What we need to be careful of is to remember that being a follower of Christ transcends any other citizenship or membership we may have to any nation, people group, denomination or culture. When asked what the most important commands were (what were the most important distinguishing markers of children of God), Jesus answered this in Mark 12:

“The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The LORD our God is the one and only LORD. And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”