Okay. Back to regular programming...

What shall we talk about? Ideas?

I've been getting into some BBC Jane Austen. Pleasant.

Also, playing a bit of 500. With the kids and with the i500 app. The kids are harder to beat.

You? Done anything interesting lately?

Get Along

Is this the most annoying song ever written?

Yes. I think it might be.

vibrato

I have to learn how to do it.

It's hard.

It's become a very large mountain in front of me.

Doesn't help that Micah took precisely 10 minutes to learn how to do it on cello. Is it harder on viola? Is it harder when you are OLD? Or is it just hard if you are me?

I'm trying to speed through the next couple of grades - finish grade 3 by Christmas, grade 4 by easter, grade 5 exam in August... but I'll be stuck where I am if I can't get this vibrato thing happening.

grrrr.

grrrr.

Can I just play some more scales instead?

visitors, visitors and visitors!

I'm loving this. Keep on coming, everyone!

"Gentle" vs "Mainstream" Parenting

I hate this stuff.

But, yeah. I'm mainstream.

I don't feel any particular passion here - my kids are far past the baby and little kid stage - but to balance things a little, let me present a table biased in the other direction.

Mainstream Parenting	Gentle Parenting
Experts study infant behaviour and work out the routines for eating, playing and sleeping that promote the most happiness in babies and young children. Parents and carers are thankful for advice and use the parts of it that work on their particular child.	New parents are left to their own devices and told to follow the ‘natural rhythms’ of their child. Mothers end up feeding their cranky babies up to 20 times a day and are left feeling exhausted.
Children are raised secure in the knowledge that their parents are in control. They don’t feel the anxieties they would feel if they had to make decisions that should be left to adults.	Children are left to make their own decisions about what they will eat, what they will wear, what they will do, when they will sleep. Developmentally they are not ready for such responsibility and feel considerable anxiety.
Children are raised knowing that they have much to learn and respectfully look to their parents to teach them.	Children are raised thinking that their ill-informed ideas are correct. They show little respect for their parents.
Parents recognise that sleep is very important for both children and parents. Children are taught to ‘self-settle’ so that they get a better night’s sleep and are happier during the day.	Parents think that constant night waking is normal and so will not try to teach a child to sleep through the night.
Parents praise and reward behaviours which they want to reinforce in their children.	No behaviour is rewarded as parents believe that each child should work out what is right for them without external input.
Parents believe that children have the capacity to learn right from wrong and curb their own natural impulses to selfishness. Parents see it as their responsibility to teach their children so that they will grow to be self controlled and morally upright adults.	Parents believe that right and wrong are social constructs. Children learn the importance of ‘looking out for number one’ and often seek to have their own desires filled at the expense of others.
Children are compared to averages for things like eating, speaking and walking as  developmental delays can be early indicators of problems that can be addressed through intervention programs.	Children are thought of as individuals and not expected to meet milestones at any particular point. Some early indicators or potential problems are missed or ignored.

My observation is that kids turn out okay and not okay with many kinds of early parenting. I teach lots of kids in their first year of school. Here are some things that I think they need to learn early if they are to flourish:

1. That the world is a fascinating place. Things are interesting. The more you know about things, the more interesting they are. 

2. Other people are important. We must respect other people's bodies and feelings. We don't want to hurt their bodies or hurt their feelings. They deserve as much air time in the classroom as I do. 

3. They are loved and secure and safe.

4. They don't need to worry about things that are mum and dad's responsibilities. They just need to take care of their own responsibilities. 

5. Effort brings reward. 

Thoughts?

On Church A stealing creative content / intellectual property from Church B

1. Just because people are happy to be generous, it doesn’t mean that they’re happy to be stolen from. I might be happy for you to come in to my house and join me for a meal, I may give you permission to let yourself in and make a sandwich, but I’m probably not happy for you to climb in through a window, unannounced, and cook yourself dinner. It is rude to presume. Ask!

2. It is deceitful to try to make yourself look cleverer than you are. Would your church’s AGM video have the same wow factor if your people knew that the script wasn’t yours at all? Are you pretending that it is your creativity and your amazing vision for the future, when... it isn’t. Would that change the way your people see you? Would you be embarrassed if someone posted the original and your rip off side by side online and it went viral for all your church members and peers to see? Yes? Then by doing it you were trying to deceive people about your own cleverness. No? Then why the heck didn’t you put a note on the video/sermon/document attributing the ideas to the people they came from?

3. Ideas that people publish in church growth books are fair game in a way that artistic interpretation of those ideas aren’t. You might say, “There’s nothing new under the sun. In what church x does, I can see the direct ideas of church growth books a, b and c. In fact, some of their vision ideas came directly from those books. I just took what they had already taken.” Um. No. By buying the book, some proceeds of the ideas are going to the creators. But you should still attribute the ideas - just tell your people which books you have been reading and say that you’ve gotten ideas from them.

I don’t think that God is too impressed when we steal other people's ideas and pass them off as our own. I propose that we put a couple of simple things in place to discourage it.

1. Come up with a standard way of attributing ideas. If you use the materials of others, at the end of your video (or whatever) you have to print: “Creative content courtesy of St Peter’s Orthodox church www.stpoc.org.au/stolenvideo” For non-video content, credits could be printed in the notice sheet or something and certainly on the church’s website. 
2. Set up a website exposing church intellectual property theft. www.youstoleourwork.com . It sounds harsh, but our hearts are sinful and having consequences for ungodly behaviour helps us to be godly.

Baking adventures

Last week I made a chocolate slice substituting the sugar and half the butter for a pile of mashed pumpkin. It worked well and was eaten quickly.

The other night I substituted the pumpkin for mashed cauliflower and broccoli. It is is still in the fridge.

Come and try some if you like. It looks like chocolate cake and kind of tastes like zucchini slice.

What should I learn from this?

My recent comments widget is broken.

Unguyly guys

I know quite a few guys who worry that they don't fit their gender stereotype. If you are one of them, here's a post for you.

Three observations about (apparently) unguyly guys.

1. Most of you are Myers-Briggs E*F* types. You do conversation well. You make decisions based on your personal values and feelings. You don't much like conflict.

2. You may doubt your guyliness, but seriously, no woman doubts it. (I've asked around. You can be sure women see you as 100% male (whatever that might mean!)) You might think that you express yourself more like a woman than a man, but... (how do I say this?) You don't. At all. You sound like a guy.

3. I suspect that appearing unguyly to women is not really your concern. You worry about appearing unguyly to other guys. You want to fit in to your pack. You feel you need to be more ... Driscoll... if you're to step on others and climb the ladder and become the alpha. Maybe you don't want to actually be the alpha, but you want to not be stepped on.

Three suggestions for (apparently) unguyly guys.

1. Why beat yourself up about being who you are? Your E*F*ness is a gift to the world. You are good at many things. And you are fun to talk to. What would I do without E*F* types?

2. If you want to feel more Alpha, read a leadership book. Or two. Or three. Testosterone oozes from the pages and is absorbed through your skin as you hold the book. Seriously, you will feel like a Leader when you are done. Even a Leader of Leaders. Or watch this TED talk and do the body language exercises it suggests.

3. Stop thinking about elements of your personality in gendered terms. It's really unhelpful. Being an E*T* type or an E*F* type or whatever has got nothing to do with gender. You are clearly a guy. Be convinced of that.

they took the children away...

Have you read this article about a German homeschooling family having their kids taken away?

What did you think?

A few thoughts.

1. Yes. A team of 20 social workers, armed police officers, and special agents "storming" a homeschooling family’s residence and taking the children without even letting the parents say goodbye does seem heavy handed. If it happened like that, it is concerning.

2. It is in a country's best interests that its children are educated. Different countries will have different rules aimed to ensure that every child is educated. In Queensland, parents must send their children to school or register them in an alternate approved program. Failure to do this will result in the parents being warned and then fined $750 the first time and then $1500 each time after that. A family with 3 school age children could be fined over $15K per week! This is a significant sum of money and shows how seriously our government takes educating our children. In the last few years, the requirements for homeschooling have been tightened and parents really have to show that their children are being educated at home - unfortunately, some families who claimed to be 'homeschooling' were really 'non-schooling'. Germany does not allow homeschooling but has several different types of schools that children can attend - religious and non-religious.

3. Australians and (even more so) Americans find it hard to understand a culture where the government regulates many matters in everyday life. We think, "Why shouldn't I be able to educate my child however I please?" But this is not the European way! Heck, there are even laws about what you can call your child in Germany - each baby's name has to be given official approval before it can be used! In France, the names that you give your pets have to be approved! In Europe, having a rule that your children must go to school is not out of place.

4. As Christians, we are called to follow the laws of our country as far as we can without being disobedient to the scriptures. I assume that the family in the article thought that sending their children to school would have been an act of disobedience. Of course, I think that they were wrong in this, but I hope that they had been reasonable in their interactions with the authorities and tried to negotiate as much as they could - for instance, agreeing to send their children to school but removing them for science or whatever.

5. Isn't this pretty much what white Australians did to Aboriginal children, not just once, but for decades and decades?

6. Hasn't this happened before? Oh no. That was in an Amish romance I read. The family solved the problem by moving to Mexico.


7. I think John Piper's question, "What will you do when they come for your children" is unhelpful and alarmist.

'Protecting 'finer feelings'.

Here's a really interesting interview with 4th year theological student Tess. I'm fascinated by this paragraph towards the end:

"Admitting that it is hard to specifically identify what is in many ways just a “vibe” she gets, she modestly and carefully explains that sometimes, as an intelligent women, she feels she has hold back to protect the finer feelings of the men in her classes, so as not to offend them. She admits that feeling is a bit ridiculous, and explains that clearly, scriptures don’t bar her from holding or expressing her own ideas."

Of course, we sometimes hold back our ideas and opinions out of consideration for others. This is just a normal part of life. I'm not going to contradict a person with 20 or 30 more years of life experience from me - or I'm not going to do it in the same way I would to someone my own age or younger. But it is curious, if as women, we feel we can't debate energetically with our male peers, exchanging ideas and opinions with them as we would with our female peers. In the theological college environment, a female student would not be overstepping and having teaching authority over her male classmate if she did this. If she felt she needed to hold back (more than she would with female peers), it would be either:

1. Because she was imagining some impropriety that didn't exist.
2. Because she knows from experience that (some of) the guys in her class feel quite insecure in their masculinity and will be threatened by her.
3. Because she knows from experience that expressing opinions in this group context isn't considered womanly and engaging in robust debate would lower her in the eyes of others in the group.

If #2 is the reason, then holding back might seem a kindness but probably won't help the guys in question be better husbands to their wives or ministers to women in the future.

Thoughts?

I have a tupperware dish...

...full of little pieces of paper. Each one has a scale written on it.

There are 23 scales/arpeggios in total.

Two or three times a day I play through the scales in a random order.

I'm getting better at them.

My exam is on Saturday.

three thoughts/questions.

1. I hate the word 'excommunicated'. Can we never use it again?

2. I read an article on the weekend which said the family is the primary place for theological education. I'd put the church ahead of the family. Thoughts?

3. I had a chat with a friend yesterday who was concerned she was freeloading at church - getting all the time rather than giving. She's not. I think that she is giving lots and lots by being a massive encouragement to us all. But it made me think about freeloading. I think a freeloader is someone who has been coming once or twice a month for a couple of years and doesn't help out and then complains that the creche isn't run very well. What do you think?

Article vs Sermon vs Song

An article I've written (on Song of Songs and Erotic Romances) is getting published in the Briefing later this year. I've not had an essay type thing published in the Briefing before and I'm kind of chuffed.

But it took ages to write. Ages. A really long, long time.

And who reads 3000 word essays anyway? In the era of facebook and twitter ADD, is anyone going to read it from beginning to end. (Actually, yes they will. It is about sex.)

Songs take ages to write too, but then you get one published and it gets sung thousands of times (hopefully).*

Sermons take quite a bit of effort to write, and then you preach them once (or maybe five or six times if you're lucky) then they are done.


Song:
Length - 300 words
Effort - lots
Times used - thousands

Sermon:
Length - 3000 words
Effort - lots
Times used - 1-5

Article:
Length - 3000 words
Effort - lots and lots
Times used - Published once (probably), read ???

Songwriting is looking pretty efficient by this comparison.


*But for every song I have published, I've written another 10 that haven't made it.

Christian Romances - part five

Continuing on with the problems. So far we've had:

1. Christian romances explicitly teach that God has a special someone lined up for each of us.

2. Christian Romances feature Mr. Perfect.

3. Christian Romances are too ambitious in what they set out to do.

One more for now...

4.  Christian Romances are set in an imaginary world. 

Of all the Christian romances that you've read, how many of them are set in a modern day city? I can think of 3 out of the 20ish I've read. One doesn't count because it was set in an Amish community that doesn't use electricity, cars etc. Another doesn't really count because it was more a piece of pro-life propaganda than a novel. The third was a YA novel called 'Bonnie' (I think I read it when I was 15) and I remember it being quite good - about a girl's struggle to accept her new stepmother, to not sleep with her boyfriend and to surrender to Jesus.  Writers seem to prefer historical settings. Prairies are popular. 

I think the far away settings are used to cover flaws in the writing. Implausibilites in the plot are less obvious when the setting is unfamiliar. Unbelievable characters become easier to cope with when they are wearing prayer kapps or suspenders, and unlikely dialogue is hidden behind words in Pennsylvania Dutch.

More seriously, I think that the distant settings are used to cover inadequacies in the authors' theology. Working out our faith in our day to day lives is just tricky. C.R. authors see the complexities of our modern world as we do, but they have nothing to offer us. They retreat into an imaginary past to avoid the difficulties of the present. This stops them fulfilling their edification aims. While they try to inspire us to live for Jesus, what they really end up telling us is that faith is something that sits best in another era.

That's enough for now. I think I have one more problem to put forward and then, maybe, some ideas about where we should go from here.

Christian Romances - part four

I'm continuing with my list of problems with Christian Romances.

So far I've said that 

1. Christian romances explicitly teach that God has a special someone lined up for each of us.

2. Christian Romances feature Mr. Perfect.

Now for my third point.

3. Christian Romances are too ambitious in what they set out to do.

Ordinary romances aim to tell us a love story. We meet the heroine. We meet the hero. There’s a couple of bumps along the way and then they get together. 

Christian romances try to do a lot more than this. They not only set out to entertain us, they also try to inspire us to lead more godly lives. Like ordinary romances, Christian romances features bumps along the road to happily-ever-after. But the bumps in Christian Romances are much more significant than they are in other romances and they don’t stop after the wedding ceremony. There can be poverty, illness, disaster, disability and death (though not of the hero or heroine!). Christian Romances include tragedies and obstacles because they aim to show us that God is sovereign over all things and to teach us to trust and obey him in difficult situations. They try to teach us that we can trust God with the death of our firstborn, with our sister who is straying, with a drought. They show how we can stand firm to our godly principles when bandits are raiding our township and when an evil government insists that our children go to school. They teach us that we should trust God to find us Mr Right and not settle for a nonbeliever.  Christian Romance authors aim to teach us how to integrate our faith into our lives, seeing God’s hand in all circumstances and obeying his word. This is an ambitious aim.

There are a couple of problems created by having such lofty aims. First, authors have to fight against the inherent flimsiness of the genre to achieve their ambitious purposes. The genre necessitates that unpleasantness be passed through quickly to get the story heading back towards the happily ever after. So a book that aims to teach about faith during severe trial can have a young widow losing her four year old son suddenly in one chapter (a horse and buggy accident!) and then be back functioning normally in the next chapter. Two weeks (and 2 pages) is enough for her to get through the bulk of the grieving (she prayed about it). After that the boy is mentioned every couple of chapters and we are told that she never completely forgets him. But life seems to go on for his mother as usual. In fact, having the kid gone frees her up to pursue her new man. Fairly likely she’ll get a replacement kid soon.  

Now I’ve never lost a child myself, but I know women who have. From my observation the grief is nothing like this. The pain the mother feels in the first couple of weeks is nothing compared to the agony that will follow. Life doesn’t just go on. Christian Romances aim to prepare women for trials and suffering by including tragic events in their stories, but I think that often they do more harm than good. What is the reader to do when she loses a child and finds herself still desperately sad after 7 months? Because of the necessity of getting things happy again quickly, we are taught to expect that difficulties will be overcome quickly - rather than expecting faith to be a long journey of patience.

Second, believable characters who experience ongoing, long term complexity, dysfunction or sin (as we all do), is, I think, required if a novel is going to move us and really help us be more godly. To achieve this, a very skilled hand is needed. An author will need to have a good understanding of people, a solid understanding of God, and an excellent ability as a writer. It is a really big ask and I honestly just don’t think that many people are up to it (though some are - Francine Rivers is said to be very good). If an author is aiming to be entertaining, then relatively little is lost if she fails. If she is aiming to edify as well as entertain, then the consequences can be more serious. She could make people feel like they know God when they actually don’t. Come trial, this can be devastating.

The inadequacy of the genre and writing ability to achieve the lofty aims of Christian romance is a problem. But again, I don’t think we should black list them. More soon.

Christian Romance Novels - part three

I'm continuing with the problematic features of Christian romances...

2. Christian Romances feature Mr. Perfect.

A feature of romance literature from Mills and Boon to Jane Austen, is the superhuman hero. Mr Darcy. Mr Knightly (Man, even his name makes me sweat!), Edward Cullen, Jacob Black, Gilbert Blythe... these guys are pretty near perfect. It’s not just that they are amazingly good looking. They are also remarkably competent, strong and athletic, confident in themselves, and deeply, deeply in love with me the heroine. If the hero has a fault - perhaps shyness or pride - it’s one that can be fixed by love. I The heroine can cure him and make him complete.

Christian romances, being a subset of general romances, follow the formula of the superhuman hero. In addition to being good looking, strong, confident, competent and so very, very in love, the heroes of Christian romances are also wise beyond their years, prayerful, and very, very godly. The exception is when the heroine (or the sister of the heroine) falls in love with a super guy who isn’t a believer. That then, becomes the one ‘flaw’ that she cures him of and he very quickly moves from 0 to 100 on the godliness scale and they get married.

The heroes of romance novels (and especially Christian romance novels) are guys women imagine it would be a dream to be married to. Submitting to them would be a pleasure since they are so alpha and competent and wise and spend all their time thinking dreamy thoughts about you. You know they would step in front of a bus for you or take a bullet for you, because they pretty much have (that was in chapter 15). Sleeping with them would be... idyllic. They have such a knack of making you feel good about yourself. They are so good at telling you how beautiful they find you and how ridiculously obsessedthey are with you. All your insecurities just melt away when they are around. Married to the hero you have no money worries because his supreme competency has been rewarded with wealth - or in Christian romances, his wisdom and hard work has provided him with all you need. If, through some unforeseen and unavoidable event (say, a drought for a farmer in an historical romance), money is tight for a bit, his trust in God’s soverignty keeps your anxiety at bay (in fact, you feel serene!) You pray and in the next chapter God sends rain.

The superhuman hero is one of the things that make romance novels the delight that they are. Women read them to escape. Who would want to read about Joe-Average, his ordinary life, his petty sins and his solid but mostly unpassionate relationship with his wife? 

For the Christian woman reading romance novels, the superhuman hero does pose a problem. The way they work is to tap into our discontent and make us revel in the thought of being married to the hero. When a married woman stops reading her book, she looks at the good, but very human man that she married, and she sighs. She knows that she hasn’t married the hero. When the single woman puts down her book, she too sighs. Then dreams... 


Out there somewhere, is someone... But he doesn't exist. For single women, Christian romances will either make her unable to find any guy good enough, or she will construct a idealised, pretend view of the guy she is currently crushing on. She won't see him as he really is and if they get together, it will all fall down at some point. 

Christian romances preach wifely submission but in a way that makes respecting your husband harder. How it usually works is that the heroine agrees to submission in principle, but then post-marriage has a moment when she doesn’t want to submit to her Jesus-like husband. She wrestles with it for a page or two, then reluctantly submits. In the next chapter she realises that he was right all along and she decides she’ll never doubt him again. He is wise and godly and always thinking of her. She can trust him. 

Of course this is not what wifely respect is really like. Our husbands will be wrong a lot of the time. They will be weak (like us) and prone to sin. Christian romances teach that submission works because the alpha hero is so trustworthy. My husband isn't right 100% of the time so I blame him for my struggles to submit. Reading Christian romances and dreaming about Mr. Whoever makes me think like this. But the main thing stopping me respecting my husband is not his faults at all but my own fallen heart. I want to control things. I want what I want. Even if I was married to Jesus I would find submission hard. The problem isn’t my husband, it is me. 

Christian romances make me discontent with my husband. They stop me from seeing my own faults and make me think that the reason why our marriage isn’t perfect is because he is not a hero.

Now, of course we are not silly. As we read we give ourselves the talk that it’s all make believe. We tell ourselves that Mr Knightly doesn't exist. We laugh about it. But deep down we still want him. The man in front of us becomes less that our ideal.

Now, I do think that this is a real problem, but I don’t necessarily think we should avoid all romances altogether for this reason. More on this in a few posts time.

And more later.

Christian Romance Novels - part two

In this series of posts I'm looking at the Christian Romance genre, based on my reading of maybe 20 books over the years and in particular five in the last couple of weeks. It's not a huge sample but it's enough, I think, to give a pretty good idea of the features of the genre. Please correct me if you think I've missed something important.

So far I've asked whether Christian romances are good, bad or indifferent. In asking this question, I'm not concerned with the books' literary merit so much as I'm concerned with how they affect us. Primarily I'm asking whether or not these books are edifying. 

In my last post I listed five good things about Christian romances.  I said that:

1. Christian romances can be a pleasant pastime. 

2. Christian romances legitimise many of the things that women do every day. 

3. Christian romances are romances!

4. Christian romances attempt to teach us how God is at work in our lives every day. 

5. Christian romances espouse the value of many good and godly things. 

These are all good things!

In a lot of ways, it is a really obvious list. But I made the effort to write it because I think there's an unnecessary amount of scoffing over women's reading of genre fiction. (And yes, I think this is a gender thing.) Christian romances are not Dickens novels, but neither are Alistair Maclean adventures. They are what they are. Yes, the characters can be two dimensional (or one dimensional). Yes, the plots are at once predictable and unlikely. Yes, the settings are unrealistic. That's genre fiction for you. If we play the part of the literary snob, we'll fail to see good where there is good and our critique will be ill-informed and unhelpful.

Having said this, though, sometimes a book's literary limitations will affect its ability speak deeply to us and change us. It will be unhelpful because the writing is not good enough to achieve what the writer wants to achieve through it. In some of my points of critique this will be apparent.

Anyway. Here what you are waiting for.

Problematic features of Christian Romances

1. Christian romances explicitly teach that God has a special someone lined up for each of us.

Each book does this. The heroine starts out by wondering who it is that God has picked for her. (Sometimes she's known who it is since age ten when the two of them made a secret pact.) When she is with her one true love, she comforts her still-single sister by saying that God has the perfect man lined up for her too. And sure enough, by the end of the book we meet him! The truth of the God ordained guy is attested to time and time again through the books. As Deb says, even Jenny, the blacksmith's daughter that we met in passing in chapter 5, is paired off by the end of the book with the guy who owns the woodshop in the next village... It wouldn't do to leave anyone single, would it? The game to play in reading these books is to guess ahead of time which secondary and minor characters will end up with each other. Because that's the crux of God's work in the world. Pairing us off.

The God ordained partner such a theme of Christian romances that if you read a lot of them uncritically, you will end up thinking it's true. Years ago, I heard a minister's wife say this to a group of teenage girls. "Trust God. He has the perfect man picked out for you. Just wait. God will send him to you and you'll be oh so happy..." I questioned her afterwards (probably in a painful way - I was 21 at the time) and she said, "It's what I truly believe."

Hang on! There can't be a Christian guy for every woman, let alone a perfectly suited Christian guy. Simple maths tells us that! There are more Christian women in the world than Christian men, so some Christian women will miss out. Sorry.

I think this is a problem for a few reasons. First, it sets up unrealistic expectations for girls. They may not marry and that's okay. Second, and more seriously, it moves the focus of God's work in the world from the salvation of fallen humanity to my romantic fulfilment. Before the foundation of the world, God was not planning my love life. He was sorting out the more important things.

God makes heaps of promises to us in the bible, but never does he promise us a husband. To say he does is to misrepresent him.

more later.

Christian Romance Novels - part one

Though many scoff, Christian romance novels are big business. Evangelicals just consume the stuff. Together with Rick Warren, they are keeping Christian bookshops in business. Jeanette Oke boasts 23 million in sales and Beverly Lewis has sold seventeen million books. In my experience, most Christian women have at least a couple of Christian romances on their shelves and many have had to buy bigger bookshelves to hold their collections.

So what are we to make of Christian Romance as a genre? Is it good, bad or indifferent? Is it edifying, neutral or corrupting? Do these books espouse godliness or do they just dress worldliness in spiritual attire?

Like most Chrsitian women, I’ve read a decent (or indecent) number of Christian romances in my time. I can recall a dozen titles that I’ve read in my 24 years in the faith. But in the last couple of weeks I’ve read a further 5 in quick succession. All of them are by acclaimed authors. Two of the titles came highly recommended by the girl who works in my local Christian bookstore and three of them have sold very well as e-books. 

I don’t want to come down with a hard line on whether or not you should be reading this kind of thing. (My gut feeling is that if you’re reading a couple of chapters of the bible a day, you will probably intuitively know whether or not something is good for you.) What follows is a brief list of good things about Christian romance novels. In the next few days I’ll follow it up with a list of problematic things about the genre and then you can form your own opinion. 

Good things

1. Christian romances can be a pleasant pastime. We all need to rest. Some people rest by playing squash. Some people play bridge, some paint, some bake, some watch dvds, some scrapbook and some read. Christian romances are a legitimate way to take a break from the pressures of life. Like a formula murder mystery or western they are not too taxing. Many find them engaging and even moving. They are certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, but that doesn’t matter. I don’t see the appeal of motor sports but motor sports shouldn’t be rejected on that basis.

2. Christian romances legitimises many of the things that women do every day. House keeping, daughterhood, sisterhood, wifedom, mothering and serving others are central to their settings and plots and as such they legitimise the tasks that many women carry out everyday. The shift from reading a novel to cooking a meal for the family is smooth, since the characters spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Christian romances infuse the mundane with meaning and romantic possibilites. 

3. Christian romances are romances! Who doesn’t enjoy a good love story and a happy ending? 

4. Christian romances attempt to teach us how God is at work in our lives every day. His sovereign hand is shown to be holding the strings, bringing good from bad and joy from hopelessness. Many Christians report them to be a great help to their spiritual lives.

5. Christian romances espouse the value of many good and godly things. In a world that screams at us that chastity is unhealthy, repressive and impossible, Christian romances provide a refreshing escape, promoting sexual purity. They uphold the biblical idea that sex is for marriage. As opposed to regular romances which can be quite explicit, Christian romances are appropriately reluctant to take us into the bedroom. Further, things like marrying in the faith, respecting your parents, forgiving others, praying and working hard are promoted in these books. The strong values present in these books cause many readers to overlook weaknesses in writing or plot.

More soon...

Reading...

Amish romances.

3 down, 2 to go.

Want to knock 150 pages over tonight.

Case study: Extraversion vs Introversion

Exhibit A
13 year old plays trombone. He is okay at it. He joined the school concert band. Then he joined the school orchestra. Then he joined the school stage band. Now he asks if he can also join a community brass band. "Football season has finished. My Tuesday nights are free now."

Exhibit B
12 year old plays clarinet. He is okay at it. He enjoys concert band but hates that it means he has to be around people for another hour each week. Could it happen in class time so his precious alone time isn't cut into?

A question on the Song of Songs

I've been working on an essay on the Song of Songs. I'm pondering the purpose of S of S. Two question.

1. Do you think there's any way that a chapter which:

"first represents the woman's body as a mountainous landscape teeming with animal life, then evokes the actual mountains of northern Israel and Lebanon from which the lover asks his beloved to come down with him, and finally once again represents the woman's body as a landscape: this time, an enclosed bower ripe with fruit, moistened by a fresh-running spring that has its source in Lebanon, the water thus flowing underground  from the literal landscape just mentioned to the figurative garden."
Robert Alter in Bloch and Bloch The Song of Songs: A New Translation talking about Song of Songs chapter 4.

was not meant as a turn on?*

2. If you think it was meant as a turn on in some sense, do you find this problematic?


Most people are okay with the Song being an endorsement of sexual love within the biblical boundaries of marriage. But are you okay with it not being just a theoretical endorsement of (married) sex, but also... more than that. Poetry that makes us feel nothing is bad poetry. The language is meant to work on us and in us to do something... Are you okay with that? For married and unmarried readers?

* Of course, readers who have dulled their senses will find a 3000 year old unillustrated text not worth the effort.

Prayer for Sydney's Archbishop election this week.

Sovereign Lord,

As the Sydney Synod votes this week, please make our greatest desire not that 'our man' will be elected, but that you will be glorified in us and in our world. Thank you for providing Sydney with two nominees who are passionate for the cause of the gospel and who love you. Please guide the Synod so that they select the man who is best skilled to lead the diocese in proclaiming your word to the world, compelling the lost to seek you, and your people to love and serve you whole heartedly. As people speak for one candidate or another, guard their lips from lies, half truths and slander. Give them insight into their own hearts so that they will see their own biases. Let them so trust in your Lordship that they won't think it necessary to exaggerate their claims. Let those who vote see the strengths and weaknesses of both candidates clearly. Help them cast their votes, not on party lines, but on thoughtful and prayerful consideration. Please equip whichever candidate is elected, so that your church is strengthened and more people come to honour the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Amen.

I'm pretty sure people write these things just to annoy me.

I have a long history of over-reacting to posts/books on poor misunderstood introverts, but is this post not asking for it?

_____

When I was with my [extrovert] ex-boyfriend, I used to have this strange problem of “shutting down” around him. Completely out of the blue my brain would just freeze, making me literally unable to speak or do pretty much anything at all. He would try to talk with me and ask me what was wrong, but I just couldn’t bring myself to answer or even look at him. On more than one occasion, I went completely mute for what must have been at least 30 minutes. And for some reason– and this is the really weird part– this total shut-down seemed to happen only with my boyfriend and no one else. As you can imagine it wasn’t very pleasant, and it put a lot of stress on our relationship as it happened quite frequently. Other weird things happened too. Sometimes when I was with him, I would just start crying for no reason at all. I mean, I literally had no idea what was wrong, but suddenly I couldn’t stop myself from sobbing uncontrollably. It was disturbing. I thought I had some sort of mental illness.

Obviously things never worked out with that boyfriend, and we never found a solution to my strange problem. I felt a lot better after breaking it off with him though, at least.

Then later I read The Introvert Advantage, and suddenly it all made sense! You see, my ex-boyfriend was very much an extrovert. He was a lively, active, talkative person who loved people. He had a ton of friends and was always chit-chatting with everyone he met. He was also extremely intelligent, with a brain that soaked everything up like a sponge. He was well-educated and thoroughly read, and probably could have easily won a boatload of money on Jeopardy or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. There was nothing that didn’t interest him, and it seemed like there was nothing he didn’t know. So he would go on and on telling me all about the intricacies of Chinese politics, or the successful business strategies of a certain clothing company, or the state of the economy in some random country.

But the problem was that those things didn’t interest me. I was sorry they didn’t interest me and kind of felt like they should, but they just didn’t. Unlike his, my brain was not able to retain every piece of information that came pouring into it. And unlike him, I couldn’t claim to be interested in everything. Sometimes he did talk about things that interested me (like languages, which he was also quite knowledgable about), but not always. Unfortunately he also seemed to get quite hurt or offended if I didn’t remember something he’d explained to me, or if I didn’t seem engaged or interested in what he was talking about. So I couldn’t very well just flat out tell him that I wasn’t interested. I listened and tried my best to pay attention, but despite my best efforts I still couldn’t manage to appear fascinated by Chinese politics. He often stopped to ask me if I was listening or not, and then got really upset because my responses weren’t clear enough to him.

He also tended to ask a lot of questions that seemed completely pointless to me, and that I often had trouble answering. Things like, “So what did you eat for lunch yesterday?” My first thought in response to that question would be ‘Why would you care about some insignificant thing like that?’ And then I would proceed to try to remember what I had eaten for lunch the day before, which would often take quite a while. It might seem silly, but sometimes I simply could not remember what I had eaten for lunch.

_______

_____Um... Love... That's not just introversion/extroversion at play. You've made him sound like an odd and socially awkward person (which is not very nice of you) and you've made yourself sound like a non communicative, passive victim. I don't think that introversion/extraversion was the primary problem in your relationship. If he is as bad as you make him sound, why go out with him in the first place? And why blame his social cluelessness on extraversion? And are your insecurities, helplessness and poor communication skills also more the problem than your introversion?

Eleven things that I love about being a minister's wife

I haven't read a book on how to 'cope' being a minister's wife for years. I read a few when we first started out then just moved on. I love being a minister's wife. Wouldn't trade it. Sure there are some annoying things (my top 2: religious holidays (public holiday mostly equals more work and if it doesn't, we still can't go away) and the fact that I'll never be able to do church as my paid employment) but here are eleven things that I love about being a minister's wife.

1. I get to sleep with the minister.
2. If I don't like something that's happening at church, I can whinge directly to the top.
3. I don't have to serve my time (often years and years) before I can influence things.
4. Even though I'm not a minister or an elder, I can help craft the church's vision and strategy.
5. People want to talk to me and are more likely to have significant conversations with me faster because of who I'm married to. I find small talk tedious so this is useful.
6. I get to meet a lot of interesting people.
7. Clergy is like a club. Being part of it (even by marriage) opens up doors for all sorts of things. Being minister's wife kind of gives you credibility in an odd way.
8. I have a lot of reasons to read the bible. Currently I'm in two bible study groups a week and I go to church twice each Sunday. That means I'm opening the bible 4 times a week without even trying.
9. Lots of people care about our kids.
10. Lots of people come over to our house.
11. People are very kind to us and express love and appreciation.

11 thoughts on men and women in Genesis 2-3

1. The woman was created as a helper to Adam: almost the same as him “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh!” (Gen 2:24) yet sufficiently different from him for God’s purposes to be achieved. They are to fill and subdue the world together (Gen 1:27-28). She is created from Adam and it is God’s plan that the two will be continue to be one flesh. They are living alongside one another, naked and unashamed. There is nothing marring their relationship, no sense of fear or insecurity.

2. In Eden, there is an ordering of the male-female relationship since Adam was created first and Eve was made from him. Yet it’s hard to imagine that that ordering was ever mentioned between the two of them. Adam is delighted with the woman. She is from his side and at his side. They are one. He cannot achieve God’s purposes without her, nor does he want to. He needs her. He delights in her. 

3. The serpent approaches Eve in the garden, plants the seeds of doubt in her head and influences her. There is no record of her having received the command to not eat from the one tree from God himself, perhaps it was Adam who told her. Regardless, Eve knew she was not to eat the fruit and then ate it anyway. When confronted by God, rather than confess her willful sin, she pleaded stupidity: the serpent ‘deceived’ her. What?!? Did he chop up the forbidden fruit and put it in a fruit salad disguised with apples and bananas? Can I suggest that avoiding responsibility by pleading stupidity is a common feminine fault? 

4. With the fall, Adam and Eve’s relationship is compromised. Their first thought is to cover up - from eachother and from God. Rather than delighting in her, he blames her and blames God for making her.

5. The curses pronouced on the woman are directed at her two unique roles: as child bearer and as wife. 

6. The great multiplying of her pain in childbearing does not just refer to the act of giving birth but to the pain that every woman from 12 years old up knows only too well. What was to be her joy is now difficult and dangerous. A woman’s ability to have children leaves her mentally and physically weakened and if she does have children, her body will bear the scars long after the children have grown. 

7. Even though the act of childbearing carries so much risk, part of the curse is that women will still sign themselves up for it. Her pain in childbearing is great, “yet [her] desire will be for [her] husband.” (Gen 3:16) Hardwired into us is a driving need to pair up. 

8. Some have argued that “your desire will be for your husband” means that Eve desires to rule over her husband, usurping his God given role as head. They cite Genesis 4: 7 “sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you” and argue that as sin desires to rule over Cain, the woman desires to rule over her husband. I think a more natural reading of both Genesis 3 and 4 is that desire is speaking of a physical want. Sin is pictured as a hungry wild animal wanting to devour Cain. He is desired by sin’s taste buds and stomach. The woman desires her husband in a sexual sense. This is also the desire of Song of Songs 7:11 “My beloved is mine and his desire is for me.”

9.“And he will rule over you.” The woman’s desire for a husband is not only dangerous in that it exposes her to all the risks of childbirth, it is also dangerous because it puts her at the mercy of her husband. Her body, weakened through its childbearing ability, leaves her vulnerable to abuse. He is able to exploit this vulnerability, ‘ruling over her’. Hardline preachers are known to urge men to be rulers in their families, but it is interesting that ruling is part of the curse. In Eden, the creation order gave Adam a primacy (and women ought to show due repect to their husbands in view of this), but delight and unity was the song that was sung. The New Testament recognises husbands’ tendancy to exploit their wives’ vulnerability and urges them to love their wives.

10. As people who live outside Eden, we can expect marriage relationships to be strained. Men will be inclined to abuse their strength and exploit their wives. Women will refuse to take responsibility for their sin, pleading stupidity. Both will play the blame game. Marriage and childbearing will be a pressing desire for women - often to the detriment of their own safety and sanity.

11. For us as Christians, the Edenic picture of marriage is what we ought to pursue. We should look to live alongside our spouses, working with them in respect and love and unity to acheive God’s purposes for the world. 

[Changed my mind on this one. Not sure that Eden is what we should be pursuing. Is something different/better available for us in Christ? I'll think about it some more. (Maybe you've got ideas.)]

Lullaby

Many my enemies, many my sorrows

Many my troubles about and within

Many the promises that I can cling to

God is my refuge I shelter in him

Steady, my soul, for there’s hope in the anguish

steady, my soul, you have no need to fear

lay down and sleep for the Lord will sustain you

steady, my soul, for salvation is near 

I will not fear though the armies are gathering

Storm clouds descend yet I stand unafraid

God is my helper, my shield and defender

Salvation is his, he will come to my aid.

sar 2013

Micah's speech

If I was Prime Minister for a Day.

If I was Prime Minister for a day I would do three main things: try to change the asylum seeker policy; try to change the school curriculum; and have a BBQ.

I would try to change the asylum seeker policy because Kevin Rudd changed it to have asylum seekers go straight to Indonesia. I would change it so they stay in Australia. I think Australia should be kinder to asylum seekers.

I would try to change the school curriculum if I were Prime Minister for a day. I would change it for all of Australia to have a bright future. Picture Australia being the smartest country in the world. Wouldn’t that be good? That is why I want to get a better curriculum in Australia.

I would have a BBQ because of the happiness of me being Prime Minister. I would also have a BBQ to raise funds for the homeless in Australia.

It would be great if I was Prime Minister for a day.

Micah R (age 9)

Meditation on Psalm 1

What is it that makes someone successful in life? What is it that distinguishes the person who fulfills or exceeds their potential, who flourishes, from the person who bumbles around in mediocrity or worse? Countless books have been written trying to identify the defining characteristic of the successful. There are any number of seminars I could go to that claim to be able to teach me how to be the best me I can be. And I’m sure they have stuff to offer. 

But God has his own answer. 

According to Psalm 1, I can be like a tree planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in its season, with its leaf not withering (verse 3). Imagine that. A tree with a constant source of water. Nourished. Growing. Green and lush and beautiful. Bearing fruit. Fulfilling its potential. Psalm 1 says that the defining feature of people who flourish in God’s eyes is that their

delight is in the Lord’s instruction,
and [they] meditate on it day and night. (Psalm 1:2)

If I am to flourish like that tree, the source of my nutrition is to be the Lord’s instructions. For the ancient readers, this would have meant the Pentatuch. For us, it encompasses the entire Bible. I am to read it, to think about it, to delight in it. I am to constantly have the stories of God’s dealings with humanity on my heart and on my tongue. Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and Joshua and Sampson and Barak and Ruth and Saul and David and Jonathan should be more real to me than the characters of my favourite TV show or novel. I should celebrate their successes, grieve over their failures. I should find myself in their story - which is, in Christ, my story. With the prophets, I should long for the coming of the Messiah. With the angels, I should rejoice at his appearing. With the apostles, I should wonder at his resurrection, marvel at his love for me and resolve to spend my days proclaiming his gospel.

Most of us know what it is to obsess over a story - be it Twilight or The West Wing or Pride and Prejudice. While we watch it or read it, it has us gripped. When we turn it off, it stays with us. We wonder what will happen next. Our minds replay our favourite scenes. We dream about the hero. Sometimes it is so in our hearts that we talk about it almost without meaning to. It just comes out. 

The word of God is like a stream that refreshes and nourishes us. It causes us to grow and flourish. As we delight in it and meditate on it, we are changed. We see the world as God sees it. Our tastes alter. Some things start to matter more. Some things matter less. Certain pastimes that once seemed desirable lose their charms. Our outlook is different, healthier. Through his word, God makes us into that tree that bears fruit and does not wither in the heat of summer or in the cold of winter.

An interesting thing about this Psalm is that it only gives us two options. Either we are like the tree nourished by the stream or we are like chaff, disconnected, dry and blown away by the wind. The chaff are the ungodly: those who first ‘walk in the wicked’s counsel’, (that is, they take the advice of the evil), who then ‘stand in the way of offenders’ (they do evil independantly) and who finally ‘sit in the session of scoffers’ (they offer evil advice to others.) The chaff are destined for destruction. While they sat comfortably in their scoffers court (verse 1), they will not be able to stand when facing God’s righteous judgement. They have no roots, no source of nourishment. They will be blown away and lost (verses 5-6).

The word of God is the stream that nourishes us. Delighting in it is the defining feature of those who are flourishing in God’s eyes. As New Testament believers, we know that stream to be the incarnate Word, Jesus himself. In John 4, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that  “whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” (4:14)

The Incarnate Word is the hero of the written word. When we read the bible, Jesus becomes increasingly real and precious to us. We delight in him. Dream of him. Wonder at his love. We become grounded and nourished. Like the tree, we do not wither in summer or winter. Indeed, in life and death we flourish; growing green and lush and bearing fruit in season.

Psalm 1

1 

How happy is the man
who does not follow the advice of the wicked
or take the path of sinners
or join a group of mockers!

2 

Instead, his delight is in the Lord’s instruction,
and he meditates on it day and night.

3 

He is like a tree planted beside streams of water
that bears its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.

4 

The wicked are not like this;
instead, they are like chaff that the wind blows away.

5 

Therefore the wicked will not survive the judgment,
and sinners will not be in the community of the righteous.

6 

For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked leads to ruin.

Protocol for responding to a facebook unfriending

So’ve you been unfriended on facebook. It’s tough, I know, but it happens to all of us sometime. Right now you might feel bowled over by the grief of losing a friend. You don’t know what to do.

Don’t worry. To help you through this time, I’ve put together a general protocol for what to do in the event of an unexpected unfriending. Work through the steps at your own pace and I promise that you’ll be feeling better by the end of the process.

1. Feel the shock. You didn’t expect this. How could it have happened? You and Penelope were like... facebook sisters! You don’t know how to take the news but let yourself feel the shock. When the numbness wears off, move to step 2.
2. Try denial. It must be a mistake. Penelope’s account must be faulty. Maybe she’s switched off facebook all together to stop that guy from stalking her. She’d never unfriend you! After you’ve made all the excuses you can think of, move to step 3.
3. Get angry. Stamp you feet. Kick the walls. Swear. “F*&$^* Penelope! What a#$%$%! How dare she do this to me!” When you calm down, move on to step 4.
4. Make a deal with the faceverse. When you are calm again, try bargaining. “Dear faceverse. If Penelope refriends me I promise that I’ll never ever tag her in pictures of ugly animals again. I also promise that I’ll take down that picture of her dribbling in her sleep. Please mighty faceverse, let Penelope refriend me!” When you’ve made your bargains you are ready for step 5.
5. Blame yourself for the unfriending. Feel guilty over everything that you’ve thought, said and done online and in real life ever. Admit that the unfriending is your fault. Only bad people get unfriended. You got unfriended, therefore you are a bad person. Accept this and then move to step 6.
6. Realise that life now offers you nothing. Penelope is the first who unfriended you. Everyone else will soon follow. Life will be empty from here on. Get used to it. Mope. Wallow in your misery for as long as you feel it necessary. When you find yourself smiling again, move to step 7.
7. Get over it and move on. It may take you years to reach this final step, but believe me, you will get there. You will realise that Penelope is only one of your 2000 facebook friends and that her virtual friendship is something you can live without. Penelope’s rejection of your fb friendship does not mean that you are (necessarily) a bad person. It isn’t (necessarily) the beginning of a major unfriending trend. Life can go on. Smile, make some new facebook friends, cull some unnecessary people yourself, then post a picture of your breakfast.

Hinges in kids' talks

A couple of posts down, I talked about 'hinges' being a weakness in many kids talks.

Commenter Adam wanted to know what I meant by hinges and asked for some examples. So here we go.

___

Whenever you turn a corner, there's a chance that others won't turn with you. Those trying to follow can lose sight of where you're going and head off in another direction altogether. In order to take people around the bend with you, you need to guide them around it. Plan for it, signal it in such a way that they feel that the turn is the most natural route to take. In fact, you should make it so smooth that people don't even recognise it as a turn at all. It's just the way that the road goes.

Every piece of communication has corners. You move from the introduction to your first point. You are talking about x and then you start going in a different direction, talking about y. You move from your main points to a summary section wrapping it all up. In order to take your listeners with you around these corners, you need to make it smooth for them. Take them by the hand. Guide them. Don't give them the chance to get lost.

I call 'hinges' the words and sentences that we use to link one idea to another and show listeners the way around the corners. The better thought out your hinges are, the smoother your transitions will be.

As I said the other day, hinges are a real weakness in many kids talks (and sermons). Kids get lost because the person up front was talking about an apple, but now they are  suddenly talking about Jesus. The hinge between 'apple' and 'Jesus' wasn't apparent.

Here's last Sunday's kid's talk. Being what it was (a talk concept that was really quite abstract - the wise man built his house upon the rock - 'We were talking about building houses and now we're suddenly talking about Jesus!?!') it had the potential to have really awkward hinges. I tried to oil then by talking about good decisions right from the start. It was still a bit jerky at the end, bringing listening to Jesus in, but I made it work okay. (I changed the text colour so you can see all the words that helped the hinge work.)

I did this talk on Saul and David a few years back (just searched my blog for 'kids talks'!) I think it was part 3 in a series.

Sometimes we want to be the big guy. The one who is strong and impressive. The leader of the pack. The one who would never get laughed at or teased. The one who tells everyone else what to do. 

Saul was the big guy. He stood a head taller than anyone else. He was strong. He was handsome and he was... a very bad king for God's people.

The trouble with being the big guy is that it can make you think that you don't need God. You think that you are big enough to win battles by yourself. You think that you are big enough to make up the rules. And you get a bit too big for your boots.

Which is what happened with Saul. Big King Saul thought that he didn't need to wait for God's prophet. He thought that he could offer sacrifices to God himself. But did God like that? No. [THIS WAS WHAT WE HAD SEEN IN THE PREVIOUS WEEK'S TALK]

God rejected big King Saul and was looking for a new king. Someone who was... smaller.
God told Samuel to go to the town of Bethlehem and find a man called Jesse. One of Jesse's sons was going to be the new king of God's people. But which one?

Samuel looked at Jesse's oldest boy. His name was Eliab. Samuel liked the look of him. He was big and handsome. Samuel said to himself “Surely this Eliab is the one!”

 But God said no. “Don't take any notice of what he looks like or how tall he is, because I have rejected him. God doesn't see like people see. God looks inside. He know what we're really like.”

Hm. Which one then. How about Aminadab?
No. Not him either.
Shammah!

No. God didn't chose him.
Samuel looked at seven of Jesse's sons but God said no to all of them. “The Lord hasn't chosen any of these,” he said to Jesse. “Are there any more? Are these all of your children?”
“There's one other,” Jesse said. “But he's just a boy. He's little and he's out looking after the sheep.”
“Go and get him.” said Samuel. So Jesse sent someone to get his youngest, smallest son.

David came in from the field. Samuel looked at him and said, “this is the one.”

Often we want to be the big guy. But God's not interested in big guys. Big guys (like King Saul) can think they are so big they don't need God. They can think they are too big to keep God's rules. Or to ask God for help. God chooses the little guy. Like David. Like Jesus. People who don't look strong. People who aren't too big for their boots. People who will trust God to win the battle and save them.

See the hinge between the intro and the story? See how the application part at the end didn't feel like a big shift? That's what I mean by working on your hinges. Make sense?

[Here are some others from that series. #1 and #2.]

Sermon writers... Any thoughts on hinges in sermons?

Thoughts on Psalm 137

I wrote these thoughts on Psalm 137 for the PCQ Women's Ministry Newsletter.

Read the Psalm here. It starts: By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion...

Despite its violent end, I have long loved Psalm 137. Is was written by grief stricken Judeans shortly after their deportation to Babylon and is raw and real. It’s generally thought of as a lament, but to me it’s a love song. The Psalmist has been ripped away from his beloved Zion and he is vowing to never forget her, to stay faithful to her despite the distance between them. The possibility of moving on and getting over her is real, but it must not happen. It would be better for him to lose his ability to play his harp than for him to play songs to someone else. It would be better for his tongue to stick to his upper palate than for him to sing of anyone else. Though it’s likely he’ll never see her again, she must remain the most important thing. His hope, his highest joy.

5 If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill.
6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.

I love this Psalm. I love it for its realness and passion and I love it because it is my song. Like the psalmist, I am in a foreign land. Jerusalem, the new Jerusalem, the city of the great King, is my home. I long for her and must continue to long for her. The attractions of this land, the land of my exile, must not charm me. I must not become so at home here that I forget her.

Though others mock, I will sing the songs of Zion. Though the world sees her as a spent force, an irrelevance, I will sing of her beauty, of her enduring strength, of the security of those within her walls.

The new Jerusalem is my city. The Psalmist was pulled away from his Jerusalem but he wouldn’t let her go. She mustn’t become merely his past. She must remain his highest joy, every moment. The new Jerusalem is my future. She is where I am headed but she must also be present.

O new Jerusalem, capture my imagination. May I sing of you. May I hold on to you as my highest joy. Amen.

kids' talks in church vs kids' talks in sunday school

A minister friend told me recently that in his next church there will be no children's talks in the morning service. Kids' ministry (which he strongly believes in) will happen separately, in Sunday school.

There's reasons for and against having kids' talks in church. The main reason against is that they are often poorly done. They are cringeworthy and of dubious educational benefit.

To hit the mark, a talk must:

- be absolutely true to the bible,

- be crystal clear about the one point that it is teaching (the big idea of the passage it is based on) and not get distracted with other stuff,

- be age appropriate (there's a knack to finding the correct level to pitch it at in a multi-age group),

- be concrete without losing the subtleties and nuances of the passage,

- be presented in an engaging, energetic and creative way so the kids can't help but be drawn in,

- be entertaining for the adults,

- keep the kids under control (no one likes to watch kids misbehave)

- be pretty short, and

- fit with the broader flow and feel of the service

A decent adult's sermon takes at least 10 hours to write. Most people won't have anything like that amount of time to spend on a kids talk. If you have a kids' talk in church each week, the chance of it not hitting the mark most of the time is pretty high. Even if you employ a 'professional' (a teacher or a someone with a degree in theology) to give the talks, the results are often still disappointing. (IMO, the skills/personality required to give good kids talks are quite different from the skill set of the general classroom teacher.)

So why try to do kids' talks at all?

Well, I don't think every church should.

Kids talks (done well) are a fantastic addition to a church service. The children feel that the main church service is for them. Parents get to see what their kids are learning. Adults learn along with the kids (this is particularly helpful for people with English as a second language or lower literacy levels). Kids talks can add a fun element to the service. The importance of children's ministry can be highlighted and kids' ministers get an opportunity to profile what they do. Furthermore, having kids' talks in church makes it easier for the church's leaderships - minister(s) and elders - to oversee what is happening in children's ministry. If it is off track, action can be taken.

But kids talks done poorly detract from the service. Generally, the bigger the church, the more professional the kids' talk needs to be just to be adequate. If kids are taught exclusively in Sunday school, then different teaching methods can be used. Small group leading requires a different (and more common) skill set to up front teaching. With preparation and basic training, most Christians will be able to teach a group of 5 or so kids. Good small group teaching will achieve much more than poor up front teaching and will be more achievable than up front teaching for most churches.

So my friend's next church won't be having kids' talks. 

Fair enough. 

But most churches aren't about to give up on kids' talks. How can the pain be minimised?

In my experience, most kids' talks suffer most in their 'hinges', in their pitching, and in their delivery. 

The 'hinges' between the different parts of the kids talk are really hard to do well, particularly the hinge between the opening illustration or story and the direct teaching part of the talk. If the connections aren't really clear in your mind and seamlessly executed, then you'll lose the kids. I usually spend as much time working on the hinges as the rest of the talk. I find they work best if I've flagged where I'm going right from the start so that the 'moral of the story' isn't just an awkward add on. 

Pitching a kids' talk is also a real challenge. If there are kids in the church from 0 to 16 it can seem really perplexing deciding where to aim your address. But the trick is to not worry about ages but worry about clarity. A five year old can understand (at a basic level) just about any biblical doctrine if it is taught properly and a four year old, a fourteen year old and a forty year old will all be fascinated by a story that is told well. If you don't know where to pitch your talk, don't worry about it. Work out exactly (EXACTLY!) what you want to teach and when you are absolutely clear (ABSOLUTELY CLEAR!) about your big idea, teach it by telling a story well, flagging your big idea from the start. Object lessons (where you take along an object and draw out some similarity between the object and God or something (I've bought along this ring today. Look at it. See how shiny it is? It's very precious to me. Something else that's precious to me is the bible/Jesus/?)) are much more likely to fail than stories. Chances are that you'll hold no one's attention.

The delivery of kids talks is also tricky. You have to be enthusiastic. You have to be confident. You have to present in such a way as your draw kids (and adults) in. You have to be seen as exciting or interesting or as a close friend. Different people will achieve this in different ways and while everyone can learn to do it better, some people will never be able to do it really well.

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That's all for now. Thoughts? Does your church have kids' talks in church or does it focus on its Sunday school program? Do you have strong feelings one way or the other?