Practicing Families

Passing on the faith from one generation to another needs to be a high priority for every church community.  Introducing children to the grand narrative of scripture and with that, an invitation to participate in this grand story of restoration and redemption is at the heart of this endeavour. The importance of spiritual practices in this journey of ‘passing the faith’ cannot be underestimated.

As a youth pastor, I emphasize that the most important place where ministry happens is within the home.  More importantly, I am always concerned with ways in which to equip families to tackle head on the question of ‘how do we teach our children about faith in Jesus?’  Which brings me to an exciting and terribly important blog project called Practicing Families. 

At it’s core, Practicing Families is an online ministry that equips, and facilitates the spirituality of families in a manner that is formative for both parents and children.  To be a practicing family takes patience, effort, an appetite for experimentation and a desire to have the presence of Jesus be formative for a particular time and place. 

When asked to participate as a contributor in this online space I jumped at the chance. 

Be sure to check out this online resource to be encouraged, inspired to try spiritual practices with your family, and to participate in a journey with many others who seek to facilitate and strengthen the ministry of the family.     

www.practicingfamilies.com 

Be sure to check out the facebook page too. 

https://www.facebook.com/PracticingFamilies

O Little Town of Bethlehem

A fascinating and telling video of life in the Middle East.  5 minutes.  If you haven’t seen it yet, it is well worth your time.

Jesus was a refugee.

HT: Michael Frost

Merry Christmas

The Spirituality of the Psalms: Walter Brueggemann

 

When we pray these Psalms, in community or in private we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses who count on our prayers.  Those witnesses include first of all the of the Israelites who cried out against Pharaoh and other oppressors.  But the cloud of witnesses includes all those who hope for justice and liberation.  This does not detract from the conviction that God is powerful Spirit.  It does not reduce the Psalms to political documents.  It rather insists that our spirituality must answer to the God who is present where the questions of justice and order, transformation and equilibrium are paramount.  We dare not be positivists about our spirituality, as though we live in a world in which all issues are settled.  The spirituality of the Psalms assumes that the world is called to question in this conversation with God.  That permits and requires that our conversation with God be vigorous, candid, and daring. 

Walter Brueggemann, “Spirituality of the Psalms”  74.

Psalms are messy.

Life is messy.

Sometimes we are offered a spirituality that does not do well with the messiness of life.  It glosses over the dirty and serves up heart warming clichés on a silver platter.  What this kind of spirituality does not leave room for is the human experience. 

The Psalms are loaded with questions, wonderings, challenges, and pain.  They are jam packed with the human experience that dares to explore with a candid vigour a conversation with God about real life and faith. 

Read a Psalm.  Pray through a Psalm and participate with ‘the cloud of witnesses’ in a messy spirituality. 

Have you read a Psalm today?

The Friday Connect

This week someone found my blog by googling “are Anabaptists into drug production.”  Awesome!

It was quite a reflective week for me.  One in which I began to think about what it means to own up to the decisions that I make in life.  A scary thing to think about, as I’ve made mistakes over my 31 years on this planet and fully anticipate making more in the future.  Yet, I felt thankful for the inspiration I get to see everyday!  I look upon the face of my wife and kid and want nothing more than to make them proud.  

I stumbled upon this song by Noah Gundersen called “Ledges.”  It fit very nicely.  Take a listen. 

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Here are some of the good things I’ve come across in and around the internetz this week.

- Youth ministry is way more than the kids that show up in your building every week.  Youth ministry is way more than those kids bringing friends every week.  Adam Mclane brings wonderful wisdom to what our youth ministries should strive to be.  This is one of the better posts on youth ministry I have read in a long time.  “Why Youth Ministry in America is not Working.”

- Marty Troyer, a Mennonite pastor out in Houston gives a helpful walk  through of the Lord’s prayer.  A very good meditation.  “Why our Prayers in Worship are broader than individual concerns.” (Hat Tip to Robert Martin for sharing this earlier in the week.)

- A very interesting read in the New York Times on Christian leaders being power house social networkers.  “Twitter Dynamos, Offering Word of God’s Love.”  Very interesting to read that Christian leaders were engaged on Twitter, a social networking site, more than NBA players and politicians. 

I hope and trust that your weekend will treat you well.

Peace!

adventures in loving your neighbour: bullying

‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’  Matthew 22:36-40 NRSV

Bullying is a reality.  It is dominating reality in many different contexts where people relate to others.  Places and spaces such as at the office, school, on sports teams, on street corners, and even in families.  In the past few years the media eye, in all it’s mediums, has tuned it’s fine eye toward the numerous suicides of high school students that are a result of bullying.

Bullying is something that happens over a long period of time.  The stuff you see in the hallways at a school are a mere microcosm of what the bullying is actually doing.  The persistent assault on a persons physical and emotional self worth is where the sheer brutality of bullying lays it’s foundation.

“What does loving your neighbour look like when you see someone being bullied?”

The beautiful part about the parables of Jesus is that they are so open ended.  They poke and prod the mind to think outside the box.  They offer our imaginations a place to think about what it would look like if the kingdom of God and our context would collide.  The parables of Jesus orient us to a different reality, in doing so, they offer a critique or current context.  Even now, 2000 years later.  The parable of the Good Samaritan is no different (Luke 10:25-37).

There was risk for the Good Samaritan when he picked up the nearly dead Jewish traveler, put him on his donkey and took him to an inn to be cared for.  It is no secret that in 1st century Palestine Samaritans and Jews hated the mere sight of each other.  Imagine the audience listening to Jesus talk of a Samaritan helping a fellow Jew.  The mere thought of being associated with ‘the other’ must have been a difficult thing for the listeners to wrap their heads around.  Jesus is telling the listeners in this parable that you don’t pick and choose who your neighbour is.  They aren’t merely the people in your cul-de-sac.  They can even be your enemy.  So the broad range of people whom we should love is, well…. everybody.

Part of the brutality of bullying in a high school context is the public arena in which it takes place.  So to love a neighbour being bullied infuses one into the centre of the crowd.  It’s as if you are putting on the same uniform as the one being bullied.   We can call that ‘guilty’ by association.  By associating with ‘the other’ their problems become your problems.  That takes guts.

That is where the risk is!

The risk is in the long term committed association with the person who is being bullied.  It’s in the relationship, it’s not merely stopping a bullying event in a hallway.  Its being a friend for them to take emotional refuge in and not just physical rescue which is a mere symptom of what is really happening within the person being bullied.  Long term and sustainable relationship.  It’s as if the love Jesus is talking about is calling us to invest in the neighbour, not do a mere superhero drive-by.

If someone I cared about asked me if they should intervene in a bullying scenario my first instinct is to weigh the risks of the person I care about.  I take a second to respond because the mere association with the bullied person could bring the same risk to their doorstep.  Yet, if I were to ask Jesus the same question I have an inkling that he encourages me to take that risk.

Yikes.  It may be easier to stay within my cul-de-sac.