Made-Up Church

For those of you who haven't run across Richard L. Reising's compelling blog, Beyond Relevance, you should certainly check it out.  Be absolutely sure to see the excellent and all-too-true video, 'What if Starbucks Marketed like the Church?'

After you watch the video, read 'Top Ten Church Communicator's Mistakes: #8 'Brand Name Overload'. Reising's thing seems to be revising the way the 'Church' presents itself to the community, and he does have some interesting things to say. His subject in this particular post is about the over-naming of all things 'church', which he illustrates tongue-in-cheek with the fictional sign below:

 

Reising then translates the various 'ministries':

 

Very amusing indeed.

And, unfortunately, all too true.

One thing that I greatly appreciate about Reising's approach to "'church' marketing" is his assertion that most churches need to look deep inside before trying to reach outside, and that is certainly the case! Consider the following from another entry, "Promotion without connectivity is destructive. I often share with church leaders that most of the churches in the United States should not promote themselves. Why? Simple. If your current membership is not actively inviting people or visitors are not staying, there are reasons why. If you do an advertising campaign, you are asking people to come in your doors only to realize why no one wants to invite anyone to your church. They never come back and leave to tell all their friends what they did not like about your church. This is not good marketing."

With this I agree whole-heartedly.

However...

In looking at the signs above, as – well – nauseating (not to make too fine a point on it) and accurate as they are, the point that most stands out to me is the name of the 'church', "Made-Up Church." Unfortunately – very, very unfortunately – that is exactly what we have all across the land on every corner in every community – Made-Up Church.

Take a close look at either of those signs again. What can you identify there that actually comes from the Bible?

If you were to revise the sign to reflect it's scriptural basis, it would look like this:

I dunno. Maybe you could leave the cross at the top. 

This sign illustrates so well the very thing that we have been saying is completely wrong with the 'church'. Supposedly the Body of Christ, we have abandoned the traditions given to the Ekklesias and have replaced them with Made-Up Church. Instead of coming together as a corporate whole under our head, Christ, we are divided up and split into every segment of the populace that you can imagine: children's ministry, youth ministry, young adults ministry, seniors ministry, women's ministry, men's ministry, singles ministry, divorced ministry, Hispanic ministry, etc., etc., etc. – and as if that were not enough we will now creatively enshroud these non-biblical divisions in hip neo-Christianese encryptions.

Brother, we have liberty in Christ to make up whatever churchy ideas you can think of, but we are set free from the legalism of the traditions actually given to us in the Bible by Jesus and His apostles, so don't try to put those chains on us!

Have we lost our minds? Have we really lost our ever-lovin' minds? How on earth can millions of followers and leaders and 'pastors' go to 'church' every week and not cringe at the obvious differences between what we do inside those walls and what the Bible plainly says?

As K.P. Yohannan said in Christ's Call, the American Church confuses obedience for legalism.

Boy is that the truth.

OK, just as one small example; the whole, entire, complete purpose of the 'body' analogy in the Bible is that the Ekklesia of God is supposed to come together in one place, as one body, for one purpose, each contributing what each one has to the functioning of the whole. But we intelligent, educated, industrial,

institutionalized, conveyor beltlings have streamlined and economized it into a crate containing a box of noses, a box of ears, a box of knees, a box of feet, a box of hands...

Why do we keep holding that little book up in the air and proclaiming that it is God's will for us? What on earth do we suppose that we mean by that?

Folks, we can do better. He died so that we can do better. He gave us the Spirit so that we can do better.

It is time to re-examine the whole thing from stem to stern and top to bottom.

Back to School: What's Wrong with this Picture?

One week last year my dutiful wife and committed mother of our children picked up the August 2009 Atlanta Parent's Back to School 2009 issue of Atlanta Parent. Having seven children of our own – ranging in age from 23 years to 22 months – whom we have always home schooled, we are always on the lookout for sources and information pertaining to local events and activities to augment our home. But we were particularly interested in this "Back to School" issue, as we have a particular interest in our society's attitudes toward, and efforts to cope with, schools.

In the years since 1991 when we first officially began "home schooling" our oldest child we have seen considerable change in attitudes about home schooling. In those still-early years of the home school movement, we were regularly questioned when out in public as to why our children were not in school. The majority of these early questioners had not previously encountered a home school family (nor had we), and obviously found the concept to be suspect. Some of my immediate family openly told us that what we were doing would be detrimental to our children. But as the years went by we were questioned less and less about why the kids weren't in school (we haven't even heard that one in years), and more and more people began to signal their approval of our choice – and their misgivings about the school system.

Likewise, our own thinking has changed quite a bit too. In fact, where once we proudly claimed the title "home schoolers," we now find a genuine and deep-seated dislike for that term. For one thing, children are flat-out, wide-open, full-throttle, busy learning machines even before birth – never mind "school age" – so it isn't as though they've been sitting around in a crate somewhere until the "educators" got them out at a certain age. For another, even the best school situations – whether Public, Private, or Religious – are inferior to a modest home regarding the child's overall development. So to tack that term "school" on there actually insults the "home." Unfortunately the "school" mindset has become so deeply ingrained in our cultural psyche that some reference to it seems altogether unavoidable and "home school" is what we are left with.

One important development in our beliefs concerns the nature of what precisely is "wrong with the schools." Like most of the people who signaled their approval of our home-school choice, and themselves had misgivings about the schools, we started out with an inherent assumption not that there was something fundamentally wrong with schools themselves, but that something had rather gone wrong in the system. From the school prayer decision to the lack of market competition to Heather Has Two Mommies, there has been a wide selection of ideas put forward attempting to analyze just what exactly is wrong with the schools, and what to do about it. Maybe we should have "year-round" schools? Maybe we should have even more extra-curricular activities to gain the child's interest? Maybe we should adopt uniforms to force children to focus on the "important" things? Maybe we should tie extra-curricular participation to academic performance? Maybe we should erase academic distinctions make sure the child's feeling don't get hurt. We should be more creative. We should be more old fashioned. We're too easy on the kids. We're too hard on the kids. We need more teachers! Get them into school earlier; no, earlier than that; no, earlier than that! And the perennial; we need more money; no, more money than that; no, more money than that! After-school activities, before-school activities, free lunch, free breakfast, free sex (at least with cucumbers – until they're ready for the real thing).
What do the Dutch do? What do the Japanese do? What Would Oprah Do?
(Has anyone seen my education-sponsoring lottery ticket?)

Maybe it is time to ask if we are asking the wrong question.

I myself for many years stated that the only way to fix the school system was for the American people to abandon it "en masse." My assumption was that the entrenched school establishment would never be materially changed until it was forced to by the public pulling the children out wholesale. But along the way, my wife and I have become convinced that the inherent and irreducible thing that is wrong with schools is; The Schools. That the whole concept is simply contrary to the nature and being of children, families, and society, and is doing nearly (if not quite) irreparable harm to all three.

Looking at the returning school year through Atlanta Parent's Back to School 2009 edition we found: a mother who writes to "Ask the Teacher" how to get her daughter excited about going back to school in the fourth grade (as if the Teacher who never met the girl should know the child better than her own mother of nine years!); a Nationally Known Psychologist who reports that the "fun" of Back To School will wear off after about two weeks (No surprise there – for me the "fun" of back to school wore off the minute somebody said, "Back to School."); and a freelance essayist assuring us that children entering kindergarten as a "formerly sweet and loving child" will quite certainly contract "kindergartenitis" which will progressively turn them into a "Grinch with a greasy black peel" (italics mine). In the article "Easing Back-to-School Anxiety" we are advised that a child's apprehension about the coming school year might manifest itself in "clingy behavior" (as though there might be something peculiar about a child that does not relish being separated from his parents and placed into an impersonal institution); and a nationally televised network news story covered how to help children cope emotionally with the "Pre School Blues" they are likely to experience in the time leading up to the start of the school year.

Question: How many children have you ever heard of "skipping" home in order to go to school?
Next Question: Is it possible that there might just be a reason for that?

In all our public dialogue about school and how to help our kids deal with it, it's way past time we got some rather obvious truth out on the table and into the discussion. Such as 1. The primary difference between a mother teaching her children at home and a Professional Teacher teaching other people's children at school is that the mother teaches her children because she loves them, whereas the Professional Teacher only teaches the children because she is being paid to. Take away the pay and that's as far as her "care" goes. 2. Children must be manipulated into being interested or excited about school because they are actually designed to be raised in a home environment by their own parents who love them, and even the very best Professional Teachers are a very poor substitute for that. 3. In point of fact, most of the child-rearing that does occur in the schools is the children raising one another, instilling in one another values (or anti-values?) drawn from popular music, movies, gaming, toy and clothing manufacturers, and – that perennial enemy of decency – the Television.

I for one find it very peculiar that the majority of writing and advertisement in a parenting magazine – devoted to helping parents in parenting their children – deals with removing the child from the parents and entering them into some form of educational institution, whose sole interest in the child – no matter what the form of institution – is monetary.

Now I realize that not every household approaches childrearing from a Biblical standpoint – neither did we when we started down the homeschool path – but even from a strictly secular, naturalistic approach to the subject, does it not seem reasonable to suppose that if nature has placed a given child into a given home with a given set of parents, that just possibly the best place for that child would be with those parents in that home? Our society assumes that much when we're only talking about baby squirrels or baby birds! At the risk of prematurely introducing a religious aspect to the subject, I would posit that each child's parents actually have a peculiar anointing from God to teach and to raise that child. Or put another way, that He gave that child to you for a particular purpose, and that you are doing yourself, the child, and God a disservice when you hand them over to someone else to raise. And you have handed them over to someone else to raise when they are gone from the home enough to amount to a full time job. In fact, the majority of time actually spent "together" between parents and children in a schooling household is spent sleeping.

I realize too that society has been accustomed for a long time to suppose that Professionally Educated Teachers have one-up on the poor parents who do not have the benefits of a Professional Education in Education. And I would have to admit that the average parent does not have all the benefits of being as knowledgeable in any one particular educational field – say mathematics for instance – as a specialist in that field. But the rearing of a child is concerned with much more than educational specialties, it is concerned with producing a whole person. And no battery of specialists arranged in any format whatsoever – even if they were each one the most dedicated and knowledgeable Teachers to be had – could replace the inherent bond and "anointing" between parent and child which is to the child's benefit. The truth, however, of the matter, which most of us who have been to School ought to be well aware of, is that our children are not too likely to be faced with a battery of the most dedicated and knowledgeable teachers. I would suppose that if they encountered two such specimens in all their travels through the schools they should count themselves fortunate, and, as previously noted, even those two would be home from work the next day if they were not paid to be there.

Now it is certainly true that no parent is the model of dedication, love, and determination just because they are a parent. They may not always act with their child's best interest at heart. But that is only to say that they are just as human as the Educators that we are expected to entrust our children to – no less certainly – and it is a fair supposition that no amount of college education is somehow going to remove the baser facets of our human character. Probably most Professional Teachers are parents themselves, but, strangely, if they were to quit their job as a "Teacher" to stay home and teach their own children, dedicating their lives to the foremost charges in their lives, teaching them day by day in a complete – holistic even if you will – teaching of a full lifestyle and the instilling of a well rounded and whole education, 24/7, without pay, they would be generally considered by overall societal outlook to be wasting their lives (especially if they happen to be a woman). But if they leave their children in another's hands, leave the home, and burn up their lives teaching a very shallow form of education, merely for pay, while losing forever their special opportunity to maximally impact their own children's lives, in order to minimally impact the lives of strangers, then they would be lifted up and considered worthy of honor and a special class of license plate on their car.

The plain fact of the matter is that children suffer from "Back-to-School Anxiety" or "Pre School Blues" or whatever you want to call it for one simple reason; that they are only going to school because they have to. And they only have to because their parents surrender them to this very peculiar and very recent notion called institutional schooling. Some because they have believed a lie that their children will be better off in the hands of strangers and hirelings than in their own home, some – shamefully – because the parents want to be rid of them and not bear the burden of rearing them. We encounter these latter people on an almost-everyday basis, who say things like, "How can you have seven? I can't even stand the two I have..." But whichever variety of parent the child happens to have, every "clingy" child innately realizes that their parents could save them from this unhappy turn of events if they simply wanted to.

I myself can remember having "Back-to-School Anxiety" every single week of every school year: about noon every Sunday I would realize that I had to go back to school the next day, and my weekend out-of-school bliss would be interrupted by anxious foreboding from that point on. And, as I recall, I never heard excited children cry aloud for joy, pouring off the buses on Monday morning – as they did on the way to the buses Friday afternoon.

So what is the fruit, then, of this very recent and very peculiar notion called the schools? Surely the time and opportunity that we have yielded in the lives of our children must have produced some advantage to society as a whole? I would suggest that even if it could be demonstrated that the schooling system was producing generations of Einsteins, that the effect of schools upon our children, our communities, and our culture has indeed done irreparable damage. Not to push this point too far, but consider the case of Nazi Germany: undeniably excellent in terms of sheer intellectual and technological development, but also undeniably harmful both to the world at large and to German society itself – which actually is the very birthplace of compulsory education by the way.

However, I do not think that anyone will soon make the case that we are producing generations of Einsteins through schooling – though they keep ramming the poor little tykes into the system earlier and earlier. In fact, as John Holt maintained, the difference between a good student and a bad student is merely that the good student waits until after the test to forget everything they have been taught.

Rather, I think it more obvious that with each generation since the introduction of compulsory education laws (established from the end of the 19th Century to the Beginning of the 20th) each generation has a weaker grasp upon the foundations of our society, has a hazier understanding of God and the Bible and His undeniable formative role in our culture, slides further down the path of unrighteousness and immorality, has a weakened commitment to societal standards and norms, and is progressively found to simply be weirder and weirder than each preceding generation. This is specifically because compulsory education has interrupted the parental bonds connecting each generation to the next and thus opened them up to shallower and more superficial change.

If you are inclined to doubt my assertion about shallowness and superficiality, go and stand in the children's clothing section of the local Wal-Mart for a little while. Look at the clothes that the newest generation is dressed in. Consider the vapid condition of our indecent but technologically excellent satellite television and gaming industries.

No, I never have heard of a child skipping home to go off to school, and neither have you. It's past time we began to ask ourselves if we've not been sold a bill of goods. It's high time we began to realize that when a child is born, God Himself has entrusted us – us – flaws and failures and baser facets and all – with a living, breathing, human being; a person who will make some kind of difference forever; and that one day we alone will stand before God to answer for what exactly that little one was and wasn't taught.
Looks like we'd better make some important parenting decisions right now.

Thoughts on Literacy

I learned to read at an early age; about four or five. I was an avid reader from that time –which is actually pretty early for boys– and have always been an exceptional reader. Strangely, I had no idea until three or four years ago that there was anything unusual about that.

Now, lest you think I boast, gentle reader, I should point out that I was always quite challenged by mathematics. I didn't care too much for it in first and second grade, and from third grade onward I really struggled with it. I can remember my mother and my school teachers saying in frustration, "You're just not trying!" But I really didn't get it. At the end of my junior year in high school I had to do some fast talking to convince my math teacher to sign me up to take the tenth grade geometry class in my senior year, and they did so with some misgiving I may say. Amusingly, in the first half of that geometry class, surrounded by tenth graders, while the course focused on the abstracts of theorems and such I had a consistent A while all the tenth graders had C's. In the second half, when we switched from abstracts to proving the theorems algebraically, the tenth graders all shot up to A's while I dropped down to a C, despite really trying at it.

My wife and kids could tell you several much more amusing stories about my mathematical ability.

My point is simply that each one has his or her gifts, one in this thing, and another in that, and none of these make the person in question of any greater or lesser value. Which brings me to my point.

Today we received the new 'The Homeschool Minute' e-newsletter from The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. This issue focused on teaching boys. It featured a link to a blog entry entitled, "Books that my 13-Year-Old Boy Will Read  . . . Without Being Forced." I only glanced over the article, and have never heard of the books discussed therein, so I do not want to say too much about those particulars. But I have on many occasions heard or read homeschoolers (or public school parents too) say things to the general tune of, "My child is reading these so-and-so books (often of dubious character) but at least they are reading without being made to." The thinking often seems to be that reading is some sort of virtue in and of itself.

Well homeschooling is as homeschooling does, and we ourselves, as stated elsewhere, cringe at the very usage of the term 'homeschool'. The reasons that people homeschool are like the reasons that people go to the store: they can be quite variable and far ranging. And it does certainly seem to be the case that many people in our unusually literate society do consider reading to be a virtue in and of itself.

But I tell you it is not.

Reading is a skill. It is a valuable skill – perhaps even an invaluable skill – but it is merely a skill. The only virtue too be found in reading is in what you do with it. Reading good things is good. Reading bad things is bad. Even if you really enjoy it.

Being one who has read all sorts of stuff just for the enjoyment of it, I assert what should be the obvious: that a considerable amount of writing that is available to us is of highly dubious value at best, and a very large portion of what remains is simply not worth investing your precious time in.

The reading of books (or magazines) is a time consuming thing, and you need to be discerning about what you invest that time in. What you read should be for a purpose, it should be for your edification, and hopefully for the edification of brothers and sisters in Christ. That does not mean that you should only read the Bible, but the Bible should surely get the Lion's Share of your reading time, day in and day out.

In fact, if you haven't read the Bible that day, put that foolish book or magazine away and put the first things first. That goes for your kids too.

Do you know why our nation has such a cultural emphasis on literacy in the first place? So that people can read the scriptures. That's right. The Bible is the very reason why we began teaching our children to read, so that they could know the things of God for themselves.

Yes, there are some other things that are good to know, but the vast, vast majority of what is available for you to read ain't it.

Don't encourage your children to read just anything for the sake of reading, and don't model that idea for them yourself. We Christians should strongly encourage our children, and one another, to read – and to read such things that enhance your relationship to the King or that enhance your life in Him.

And, uh...that goes double for TV. Maybe triple. Or quadruple....

Christ's Call: Radical Obedience by K.P. Yohannan

Just heard this broadcast from KP Yohannan over the weekend. You may have to work through his accent, but you should do it if you have to.

Folks, this is what it's all about... reaching the lost and dying.

God, in the 18th and 19th centuries, established Great Britain as THE world power, an empire like there had never been before in the world. But He did not do it just so that you could buy Sri Lankan tea in London! He did it to further His Kingdom throughout the world. Sadly, our brothers and sisters there were more concerned with tea and coffee and sugar, and not a fraction was done for the Kingdom that could have been done. In WWII God took away the mantle of authority from Great Britain and gave it to her daughter America. Now we are outrageously blessed with authority and wealth like no nation has ever been.

Will we do any better? We sure aren't now...

You think we are drowning in money just to pay off personal bank loans, drink cappuccino,  and wallow in debt? We have only a very very short time!

Just (Don't) Do It, Moms

Ahhh... it's that time of year again... there's nothing quite like the smell of the Back to School season. Every store is loaded down with clothes and school supplies and posters promising impossible bargains, the air is practically abuzz with activity as beleaguered household budgets are overspent on children's apparel and the various accoutrements of compulsory education, and every mother's heart is all astir at the thought of the kids being out of the house and out of their hair once again. It all rushes upon the olfactory senses in a great accumulation of new paper, fresh denim, warm summer breezes, pencil erasers, and tiny beads of fearful perspiration as children of all ages realize that their brief reprieve of living (at least somewhat) in the way that their Creator intended is about to come to another end as they are rounded up and sent back to the institution for further conditioning.

In fact, most Moms aren't ashamed to state right out loud in the hearing of anyone and everyone that they can't wait to get rid of their own children, assuaging whatever objections their conscience does raise by bending or breaking the family's finances for the children's sakes – for Heaven sakes!

Let me tell you a little story.
Once upon a time there was a pair of twenty-somethings who had four children, including a set of two and three year old boys together. The years went by and the twenty-somethings grew older, as twenty-somethings are wont to do. One day they found themselves now forty-somethings, blessed by God in such a way as to have seven children total, including yet another set of two and three year old boys together. The forty-somethings discovered that there was a considerable difference between having a set of two and three year old boys together at forty-something than at twenty-something. The forty-somethings dearly loved their new set of two and three year old boys together with all their might, but were very glad indeed every day to have a necessary-though-brief respite at nap time, and very glad indeed each night to get the two little fellows to bed again so that the forty-somethings could collapse in a puddle for an hour or two before completely collapsing in bed themselves. The forty-somethings understood by way of experience how trying children of all ages and combinations can be, and how very creatively and independently a given child within any given set of children can approach any given set of circumstances – or, say, parental decisions.

The forty-somethings, though blessed indeed by God with every child with which they were entrusted, were never indeed blessed by God with a child that was somehow magically or miraculously or genetically perfect in their behavior – contrary to the musings of various persons in association with the forty-somethings at various times.

In short, the forty-somethings understood as well as anyone could that children are challenging and can even be rather tiresome. No wonder that when you see a photo of John Brown, the infamous abolitionist – himself the father of some twenty children – that he had such an intense, gritty, edgy, and slightly nutty look about him. It wasn't his commitment to freeing the slaves after all.

But seriously, we ourselves can understand to some extent why you would be tempted to want to hand them over to someone else to handle (i.e., to raise), but just don't do it moms! Say no to the easy and socially complicit way!

God has given those children to you, and He has given you everything you need to raise those children yourself as He intended! We know that they will drink the catsup when you aren't watching and that all kinds of bedlam can come about from their most innocently intended curiosity, but that is what it's all about! We know that they don't see any reason that the dirt in their diaper is less suited for play than the dirt in the front yard; or for that matter why they can't eat real tree leaves when they're playing giraffe – even after you have explained it to them.

We know that the great flow of our culture thinks that you are wasting your life and your potential as a person if you are raising your own children instead of sacrificing them to your career, and the culture makes that very clear to you in a thousand subtle and not so subtle ways. We know that very few people will look you in the eye and tell you this is a great thing that you are doing. We know that you will not feel yourself on most days to be involved in any great endeavor, and that your very real failures and flaws will never seem to stack up against the false mythical heart and training of professional teachers who have 'given their lives to make a difference in the lives of children'. We know that society – even close friends and family and supposed Christians – will look down on you for raising your own children at home for no pay, because you aren't doing anything with your life, whereas they would laud you from the Pulpit to Little House on the Prairie if you were keeping other women's children for pay, because then you would be 'doing something' with your life.

We know that you have been called by God and gifted by God to raise your own, if indeed He has given any to you.

We know that you will certainly stand before Jesus to give an account of what you have done with everything He has entrusted to you, including your children.

We know that your children are eternal beings and their choices and lives will have eternal consequences. We know that you have been given a stewardship over these eternal beings, and that there is no stage of their lives – even when very very small, or very very big – that your choices about them aren't potentially impacting them for all eternity, and impacting eternity through all of them.

We know that it is God's will that you yourself raise up these eternal beings in a godly way and point them toward God with all your life and choices.

We know that schools aren't going to do that. (No, not even 'Christian' schools: how on earth are you going to explain to your child that you are sending them, contrary to the will of God, to a place that will teach them to live in the will of God? If they are even trying to do so...)

We know that our society is off-balance, off-center, sick and wounded, unsound and reeling, because we have ignored the clear purpose of God and neglected the home in these very ways for many generations now.

We know that the Body of Christ in our culture is falling over itself shamelessly to provide unbiblical nursery, sunday school, children's church, and youth ministries to do a very poor job of doing your job, simply because we all know that you aren't doing your job in raising your own children in the way that God intended, and that no school can ever do.

People, don't give your children to the schools: not public schools, not private schools, not 'Christian' schools.
Not in kindergarten age and not in high-school age.

Trust God and do what's morally right: Raise your own Children at Home.