The Church, the Family, and the Single Story

May 14, 2013 in Ministry with 0 Comments

The Bean

Downtown Chicago

A few weeks ago I helped put together a conference for people in the Chicago area that minister to children. During the first session of the conference, my friend Amy Dolan talked about the great history of children’s ministry in the Chicago area and shared a look about the people that we minister to in our area (she’s got a great info graphicon Lemon Lime Kids).

I’m not sure if she intended to highlight these particular stats, but here’s what I focused in on:

  • Chicago has 621,000 children
  • The 5 collar counties (I live in Lake) have 850,000
  • The racial make up is W: 16%, B: 37%, L: 40%, A: 3% (Chicago) vs W: 58%, B: 7%, L: 25%, A: 6% (collar)
  • 19% live with a single mother
  • 49% are from low income families
  • During the 2010-2011 school year, 39,000 students were homeless
  • In 2012, 15,000 children were in substitute care
  • In 2012, 28,000 cases had enough evidence for DCFS to confirm child abuse or neglect

There’s more to the story »

Why have a resource center?

May 7, 2013 in Family with 0 Comments

In the back of our church’s sanctuary, near side door, live several row of bookshelves. Recently, we remodeled some of these shelves to become home to our Legacy Milestone resource center. Legacy Milestones is part of our church’s plan to partner with parents to help them disciple their children. The resource center is a place where parents, aunts, uncles and others that will be involved in this discipleship process can find books, CDs and other resources that will help them teach core competencies as families move from one milestone to the next.

But there is a bigger reason to have a resource center. An elephant sized reason.

Actually, it’s more to do with the rider of the elephant than the actual elephant.
In their book Switch, Chip and Dan Heath write about change, specifically, the things that make it hard for us to change our habits.

Chip and Dan use the analogy of a rider, and elephant and a path to describe the elements of choice. The rider is our logic, the elephant our emotions, and the path is, more or less, the environment. So, your rider is the one that wakes you up and encourages that early morning run, but the elephant is what keeps you in bed wanting to stay comfortable. An example of changing the path to help you get up would be to put the alarm clock across the room. One of the first things to grasp is that the rider has control over the elephant, but the elephant is MUCH bigger and can also do what it wants.
Discover more reasons for a Resource Center »

What Generation Y & Z is thinking

April 30, 2013 in Child Development with 0 Comments

Want to know what the kids in your church are thinking?

This is a pretty good insight…

10 Christians – a review

April 23, 2013 in Books with 0 Comments

I enjoy biographies and try to read at least one each year. I thought 10 Christians Everyone Should Know would be a good way of reading several mini-biographies at once. I was looking forward to reading about Saint Patrick, Galileo, D.L. Moody and the rest of the diverse set of historical figures.

Unfortunately, the writing is dry and uninspiring. Much of the tales seem to be hacked together from other sources with no overall goal but to impart random information about the figure. In some ways, that’s what a biography is about – learning random facts…but they also tell a story about the person that helps you get to know them, this book doesn’t.

A book of abbreviated biographies should give the reader a taste of the people, perhaps sparking a hunger for more. These simply make me want to avoid reading any more biographies.

While I’m fairly certain the collection is historically correct, I found this to be a tedious, dry and uninspiring read. I received this book free via Book Sneeze in return for a review. I’m sure that they were hoping for a positive one, but instead, I was so uninspired by this book that I allowed my account to be suspended rather than finish reading it.

If you’re interested in these people, you’re better off reading wikipedia.

Fatherless

April 16, 2013 in Books with 0 Comments

There is no denying that family is an emotional word. It brings different images to mind for different people. And for many, it’s an uncomfortable word. I think that is part of why there is such a backlash against family in our culture.

A couple of months ago, I was doing some research for a sermon on family and found a large number of anti-family comments, many from popular authors or leaders. Here’s just a sampling:

  • Speaking at a colloquium at Colegio Mexico in Mexico City, UNFPA representative Arie Hoekman denounced the idea that high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births represent a social crisis, claiming that they represent instead the triumph of “human rights” against “patriarchy. – Reported by Lifesite News
  • Writer Linda Gordon seems to side with Lenin’s idea of winning the country through the destroction of family as she writes, “ The Nuclear family must be destroyed.”
  • “Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership.” Andrea Dworkin, author

So what, this is simply radicals, right?
Read more of the Review of Fatherless »

Page 1 of 2612345»1020...Last »
But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household,
he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. 1 Timothy 5:8