Introducing your Children to God

So, we've had, so far, four answers to the question I posed last time: "What is the most important thing for a parent to ensure his or her child learns?"

The consensus seems to be, from what I can tell, that the one most important thing that a parent can teach his or her child is about God.  Specifically, to introduce one's child to God is the first and most important responsibility of a parent.  To mix what Orlinda, Juliana and Cameron said together, parents should teach their children who God is, that He loves them, and teach them to love Him back.

So, here's Question #3:

What is the second-most important thing for a parent to teach his or her child?

Third Time's the Charm, or Three Strikes and Yer Out…

So, obviously, my attempt to keep this blog going stumbled, again.  That means that this will be the third time that I'm trying to keep writing on a somewhat regular basis.  It I don't succeed this time, I'll be done with the whole thing and stop bothering everyone.  Hopefully, that won't be the case.

So, the consensus from everyone who answered my last question, both here and on Facebook, seems to be that, basically, the responsibility to educate a child belongs to the parents, especially in the area of ethics.  One commenter on Facebook pointed out Deuteronomy 6, the famous passage in which God commands the Israelites to teach their children about God and their history.

I definitely agree.  Children are given to parents, not to the State or to the community at large.  The responsibility to educate them falls totally to the parents.  That said, as a good number of those who commented pointed out, the possibility exists for parents to in some way arrange for others be involved in their child's education.  As besiderself pointed out, even when this occurs, the parent is not delegating ultimate responsibility for the child's education to the other people who are involved.  So, while Gilligan and James (through support) have a good point about how parents aren't always (or usually) equipped to totally execute their child's education alone, and how parents should let, say, someone who know's Calculus be the one to teach your child Calculus, most of the responsibility to have your child taught Calculus remains with the parent; I think we can probably all agree that some responsibility does, though, go to the person who has agreed to teach the child Calculus.

So, Question #2:

What is the most important thing for a parent to ensure his or her child learns?

Apologies, Reboot, Question

Hmm.

It's becoming increasingly clear to me that I started this off the wrong way.  I'm sorry.

I should have realized this sooner, but then I've never been known to my friends as someone who is terribly good at seeing how what I say is being received.

Here's where I think I went wrong:

1. I invited my readers to a conversation and then presented a multi-part story as the first part of the conversation.  There really wasn't any place for comment until the end of the story.  That makes for a lousy conversation.

2. I didn't realize just how different some of my starting assumptions are from some other people's and I just jumped right into where my thought processes are now instead of going back to the beginning of my thought processes so we could iron out assumptions and see if we end up back where I am right now or if we end up someplace completely different.

Here's what I'm going to do about it:

1. Reboot.  I'm starting the conversation over.  This time, no multi-part stories- which are, to one degree or another, me monologuing.  This time, more questions.

2. This time, I'm going to endeavor to "start at the very beginning, a very good place to start." (Sorry, one of my mom's favorite movies is Sound of Music, so I grew up watching it.)

So, let's try this again, shall we?

Question #1:

Who's responsibility is it to educate children?

Saltshakers and Bubbles, Part 1

So, maybe it was a strange way to start off this discussion in my head, with a fairy tale… but I think it shows a lot of my concerns about the current state of the Church in the States today.

But this is supposed to be a conversation- both sides of the issue battling it out in my head, in this blog (including the comments- I really do need other people's input to figure this out)- so that means we need some arguments for Christian Education as well as against it.  I'm planning on trying to dig some more up, but here's what I have so far, and I think that it will at least be a good start:

As Christians, we're to be the Salt of the Earth.  Salt is used to preserve and flavor food by being sprinkled or rubbed on food (or, as I learned yesterday, dissolved in water which the meat is then soaked in, called "brining"); for our purposes, the basic principle here is that the salt is everywhere- it permeates the meat.

The salt isn't concentrated- it permeates the meat evenly.


We should be doing that as well, as the Church.  We should be everywhere.

At first glance, then, it would seem that Christian Education is the exact opposite of this; it's a concentration of Christian kids and Christian teachers in certain schools, resulting in lowered concentrations of Christians in other schools- a dilution, if you will.  Christian Education seems just like a bubble from my fairy tale.

Here's an alternate theory: what if Christian schools aren't bubbles at all, but are actually saltshakers?  Saltshakers are concentrations of salt even higher than that found in meat which is treated with salt, but they are also far from unproductive.  They store salt until it is time for it to be used.

This alternate theory, then, is that Christian schools are saltshakers; they are for training and preparing Christian students to go out into the world and be the Salt of the Earth.

More on this in posts to come, but what do you think?  Are Christian schools, by nature, bubbles or saltshakers? Or does it depend of execution?  Can a Christian school choose whether to be a bubble or a saltshaker?  Do you have stories about one or the other kind of experience, or about being in a public school "diluted" by the existence of Christian schools?

A Fairy Tale, Part 3

And the Bubbleheads started to forget what it was that made them Bubbleheads in the first place.  They forgot that "Bubblehead" just meant that you were friends with the King of Everything and His Son.  Some of them started making rules for how Bubbleheads should act, and they cared more about that than about being friends with the King of Everything and His Son.  Others decided that being a Bubblehead was all about the experience of air all around you and cared more about the experience of the air than about the King of Everything and His Son.  Some people decided to live in the bubbles without becoming friends with the King of Everything and His Son.  They fit in because they followed the rules and they enjoyed the air.

And some of the Bubblehead's kids didn't became friends with the King of Everything and His Son, but lived in the bubbles anyway, because they were nice and safe and because they knew the rules to follow to make everyone think that they were Bubbleheads, but most of all because, when they were inside the bubbles, no one could tell whether they would have air around their heads if they left the big bubble.

But a sad thing began to happen.  Slowly, the bubbles the Bubbleheads lived in began to change.  The hot air that they used to keep others out began to mix with the cool air they lived in.  The people who weren't Bubbleheads that lived in the bubbles brought in the sea water.  The hot air and the sea water mixed and frothed and became a hot, salty foam that began to choke the people in the bubbles.

This happened so slowly that the people in the bubbles didn't notice it happening, but the people outside the bubble did.  When they came to see what the bubbles were about, they stopped wanting to go in and become Bubbleheads.  When they got a whiff of the air in the bubbles, they recoiled in disgust at the hot, salty froth inside.

And slowly, slowly the people inside the bubble that were there for the air and the safety started to leave.  And the Bubbleheads' children decided that the sea water was nicer than the froth inside the bubbles and that they didn't have as many rules outside the bubbles and so, when they grew up, they left.

And, as sad as this was, the saddest thing was that the Bubbleheads living in their bubbles barely realized what was going on and didn't know what to do about it at all, because they had forgotten that what was important was that you were a friend of the King of Everything and His Son, not that you were living in a bubble, or that you followed all the right rules, or that you felt air all around you, or that you were safe.

And, one by one, as the people left and the Bubbleheads died away, all the bubbles in that country shrunk away and disappeared.

So, what do you think?  Is this fairy tale "true?"  And how might it apply to Christian Education?

A Fairy Tale, Part 2

As people began to understand that the Bubbleheads were there to stay, some of them began to react to them differently.  While some still put a lot of energy into killing them wherever they could find them, others stopped killing them at all.  They realized that trying to kill the Bubbleheads just spread them around and made them united.  Some places, where the king became a Bubblehead, made it a law that everyone had to be a Bubblehead.

In one country, Bubbleheads had a lot of freedom.  No one killed Bubbleheads, and if they did, they went to prison.  There were a lot of Bubbleheads there; in fact, many Bubbleheads had moved there because of the freedom they could have there.  When these Bubbleheads got together, they noticed how their bubbles joined together.  If enough Bubbleheads got together, they had giant bubbles they could walk around in and feel the air all over them, not just around their heads.  They decided that they liked this and wanted it all the time.  In fact, some of them decided that it was dangerous outside these big bubbles.  After all, people who weren't Bubbleheads still didn't like Bubbleheads, even if they didn't kill them, right?  They still said bad things about the King of Everything.  They lied about Him and about the Bubbleheads.  It was so much nicer and safer to be inside big bubbles with lots and lots of Bubbleheads all the time.

And so the Bubbleheads in this country decided to see if they could live in giant bubbles all the time.  They decided to all work together in the same places and had big bubbles there.  They especially decided to send their children to Bubblehead schools, where the teachers were all Bubbleheads and where no one would tell them lies about the King of Everything or about Bubbleheads.  Then the Bubblehead children went to Bubblehead universities where most everyone was a Bubblehead too, and then they got jobs with lots and lots of other Bubbleheads and lived in those bubbles.

Some Bubbleheads were born in a bubble, raised in a bubble, married in a bubble, raised their own kids in a bubble and died in a bubble.  They liked this, because the air felt so good.

But the people that lived at the bottom of the sea are a forgetful people and the Bubbleheads began to forget things too.

They began to forget how it felt not to have any air to breath.  They forgot that, just outside their bubbles, other people were gasping through their short, painful lives.  They forgot how to be friends with people outside their bubbles, because they hadn't had any friends that were outside their bubbles even when they were kids.  They forgot how to tell people about the King of Everything and His Son that He had sent.  They forgot how to tell people about the air bubbles around their heads.

They forgot that the King of Everything wanted them to tell other people about Him because He wanted more friends.

And the things that people said about the Bubbleheads came true.  The Bubbleheads began to think that they were better than the people outside their bubbles, and they said so.  Sometimes people tried to get close to the big bubbles to see what it was all about.  Sometimes they got whiffs of the cool, relaxing air and came in and became Bubbleheads.  Sometimes, though, they found that there was a wall of hot, blasting air between them and the cool air the Bubbleheads were living in.

And so the King of everything had less and less new friends in that country.

A Fairy Tale, Part 1

One of my favorite authors is George Orwell, who, among other things, wrote Animal Farm.  This fairy tale is inspired by Animal Farm and is in the same genre.  While some things have a one-to-one correspondence to our lives, others might not.  The point of this genre is to communicate the big picture in a new, fresh way so that it is easier to look at something we're used to looking at in one way in another way.  So, without further ado:

Once upon a time, there was an air-breathing people who moved to the bottom of the sea to live.

They had a problem: there was no air at the bottom of the sea.  Now, this air-breathing people could live a for a few years without air, unlike us, who can only manage a few moments, but, if they had air to breath, they would live forever.

And so this people continued to live on the bottom of the sea without air, gasping out their short, painful lives, and they began to forget that they could breath air, or that they could live forever when they breathed it, or even that air existed.  After thousands of years of living at the bottom of the sea, most of them even forgot what air was.

One day a Baby was born who had a bubble of air around his head.  He said that He had been sent by His Father, the King of Everything, to tell everyone that they could have air too, if they believed Him and became friends with Him and His Father.

Most people didn't believe Him.  They had stopped even debating whether air existed and didn't even know what it was anymore, so they didn't recognize that the bubble around His head was air.  Even the people who wanted to be His friends didn't really understand what air was, but they loved Him anyway and tried to understand.

One day, the people at the bottom of the sea got together and killed the Man with the bubble of air around His head, but He came back to life.  His friends started to understand what He had been talking about.  He went back up above the sea, but His friends started to have bubbles of air grow around their heads because they believed in Him and were friends with Him and His Father.

They started telling other people, people they knew and people they didn't know, about Him, His Father and the air around their heads.  Many people got excited about what they had to say.  Many people who had doubts about what they said were won over because they saw that the people with bubbles around their heads didn't gasp painfully through life the way they did.  Sometimes, when the people with bubbles around their heads got close to people who didn't, the people who didn't would bump the bubble and get a whiff of air.  Many people decided to believe in the King of Everything and to be His friend and bubbles of air grew around their heads too.

But many people decided that these people with bubbles around their heads were bad.  They killed many of them and chased most of the others from place to place.  They called them "bubbleheads" and said that the only air they had around their heads was "hot air."  They got mad at the "bubbleheads" for saying that they had bubbles around their heads and that other people didn't.  They said that the "bubbleheads" thought they were better than everyone else.

The King of Everything's friends started calling themselves Bubbleheads too, and continued to tell everyone about the King of Everything as they were chased from place to place, so that more and more people heard about and became friends with the King of Everything.  In time, many, many people became Bubbleheads.  Even some kings and emperors became Bubbleheads.

While it's not finished yet, does this genre seem to be working? Is it giving new perspective to old concepts and understandings?

Christian Education

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about Christian Education, that is, private Christian schools, whether elementary/middle/junior/high school or colleges.  I'm going to begin to post a good number of entries to this blog that record the debate within me.  Last month in an email to a good friend I wrote the following; let it be a preview of posts to come:

And that's the tension I'm struggling with right now- my experiences and ecclesiology on the one hand, my confusion that Wine is still in the leaky wineskins, my internal check of my biased perspectives, my epistemological self-doubt and my wonder that other "organics" don't seem to believe in the evils of Christian Ed with the same ferocity that I do on the other.  On the one hand, I have the admonition that those who pick fights with the Bride don't take long to find themselves fighting with the Bride-Groom, on the other, I have the strong, strong "deviant labeling" in Scripture for those who are hurting the Church- at what point is criticizing the Church attacking Her chains and at what point is it attacking Her?

Thoughts? Any simple answers to prevent multiple posts wasting perfectly good internet?

I'm Back, Part 3

I'm still sold on this whole Organic Church thing, and I am still pretty fervent about this being the right way to be doing Church.  The thing is, I look around and most of the people around me in the Organic Church movement aren't as ready to breathe fire as I am, aren't as ready to insist that everyone should be doing Church organically.  Lately, I've seen this most in the difference between my view of Christian Education and other people's views on Christian Ed.  While I'm at a place where I would advocate the total abandonment of Christian Education, the people I do Church with seem to have more positive attitudes towards Christian Ed, to one degree or another.

This really confuses me.  Organic Church being the outworking of Biblical Ecclesiology seems so obvious to me while doing Church in the other ways that it is being done in the US today seems so wrong to me.  Why aren't other people who see things the way I do as adamant about this as I am?

Maybe I'm missing something.  Maybe I should slow down.

One of my good friends and mentors recently told me that when you start attacking the Bride, it isn't long 'til you're fighting with the Bridegroom.  While I'm trying to attack the chains that bind her, is it possible that I've been overzealous and been attacking the Church and not just the forms that bind Her?  As I said in my first set of posts, I'm young, unwise, rash and full of energy.  Perhaps I should concentrate on being wise right now.  When I'm old and hopefully wiser, I can concentrate on making sure that I'm breathing enough fire.

Maybe I'm being too close-minded.  Maybe there are more ways to do things Biblically than I thought.  I'm going to try to keep that in mind as I blog here.  There will still be some challenging things in this blog, as what I blog about here will be about what I'm going through, which will be challenging.  I'm just going to try to make it so that the challenge is framed so it is at us, both you, the reader, and me, instead of being from me at you.  I'll talk about what is challenging me and hopefully you'll talk back to me about it too.

I'm Back, Part 2

So, in "I'm Back, Part 2" I said that one of the changes in my vision of this blog was that it was more about God.  This is because I am more and more convinced that everything that has to do with Church is all about God.

I think that we oftentimes get caught up in "what, when, where, how" questions when we talk about doing Church.  I know I do.

That's exactly what I was doing when I started this blog.  I was convinced that I had found the movement that had, or was at least beginning to have, the answers to these questions right.  These people knew what to do correctly for Church, they knew when to do Church (all the time), they knew where to do Church (everywhere) and they knew how to do Church.  This, for the most part, is what drew me to the Organic Church movement.  I haven't really changed my mind concerning whether the movement has the right answers to these questions, though that's a subject for part 3 of this post.

What has changed is what questions I think are important.

I still think "what, when, where, how" questions are important, but I think that they pale in significance compared to "Who?" and "Why?" as questions we deal with when we talk about Church.  The answer to both of these questions, of course, should be "God."  God is Who the Church is for, Who Church is all about, Who we do Church to get to know better.  God is Who this is all about.

And God is Why.  God is why we can meet with people we don't have anything else in common with and can be united.  God is why we tell other people about Him.  God is why we have the love that is needed to sacrifice our own good for the good of others, from our family to our enemies.

When you boil it all down, when you cut through the fancy words, when you get to what this is all about, there's only one thing left: God.

Church, in fact, is nothing more, nothing less, than God loving me, me loving God back with His love, me being loved by others with God's love, and me loving others with God's love.  That's all there is to it. It's impossible if you take God out of any part of the definition, but it's ridiculously simple if He's there in all of it.  It's all about God.  He's Who this is all about and He's Why we're able to do this.

I'm Back, Part 1

So, as promised, with the new year comes renewed activity on this blog.  I plan to post two to four times a week.

Besides the fact that I plan to be posting again, the biggest change to this blog will be to the philosophy of the blog. When this blog started, I laid out a grand vision for my blog as follows:

I've become convinced that this is not just the way of doing church that best fits me, but that Organic Church, meaning the principles and foundations of Organic Church, is the way church should be done. This blog is meant to be a way to explore this idea and to engage in conversation about the way church should be done. It is meant to be a catalyst for discussion both within the Simple Church movement (there is a lot to discuss- Organic Church being the right way really means the right starting points, not the right exact executions) and without, as an apologetic organ for the movement. I hope to convince those outside the Simple Church movement that, firstly, this isn't apostasy or heresy and that, secondly, they should join us.

Here's my new vision for my blog:

This blog is to record my thoughts and serve as a place for discussion about my experiences and beliefs as I try to delve into the depths of "doing Church," which I'm increasingly convinced means "living life with God."

A bit of a change, huh? Besides being far less of a mouthful, the main changes are that it is more about God and isn't as dogmatic. 

More on these changes in parts 2 and 3 of this post.