Archives for May 2009

All four areas have implications for Christian education. A key demographic target for growing the church deep and wide is the generation missing from many of our churches, the millennials who are in their 20s and 30s. They are the “digital natives” who are connected 24/7 with smart phones and laptop computers. Multi-tasking to them is second nature. They communicate instantaneously across all boundaries. A pastor friend to youth and young adults discovered if she leaves a phone message on voice mail or sends an e-mail message she may get a reply in a day or two, but if she sends an instant text message she receives immediate replies. Millennials populate Facebook and Twitter, maintain personal blogs and Web sites, and create video clips for YouTube. Bruce Reyes-Chow, the moderator of the General Assembly, is a prominent representative of this generation, as are other young pastors leading our church into the future.Jesus’ last words to his disciples were, … you will be my witnesses in … [Read more...]

And so, as I sit before my computer, I imagine you, faithful teacher, sitting at your desk or at your kitchen table or even curled up in an afghan on your sofa, cradling your first cup of morning coffee, Bible and other papers spread before you, preparing for the class which you will teach. I am not acquainted personally with each of you, but if you are both an Outlook reader AND a teacher of adults, then I believe that I can make some assumptions about you: •           that you are compelled toward the vocation of teaching by a love for Jesus Christ; •           that prayer fuels your passion for sharing the good news of the gospel and your particular subject; •           that you carve out adequate time for preparation prior to stepping into your classroom or the other settings where you teach; •           that you view your curriculum, your Bible, your books as starting points for the creative work which the Spirit will accomplish in you and in your class, and not immutable … [Read more...]

It is a labor of love, preparing this slide show for your 26-year-old’s wedding. You’ve gone back to the shoeboxes full of family pictures cataloged year by year. You’ve got the first day of kindergarten and Boy Scout and baseball shots, the Halloween costumes and school play outfits. There are shots with grandparents and birthday parties and standing too near the edge of the Grand Canyon. You’ve pulled out school pictures and family portraits from church directories. Here are some from recent years, he and his bride-to-be.One day you receive the e-mail from your future daughter-in-law’s father.  “I’ve got mine done,” he writes, “go to snapfish.com and enter this password, they’re there.” You go, and there are dozens of shots of the young woman your son will marry, except they are of a baby girl, a toddler in her grandmother’s arms, school pictures too, and family portraits. Mixed in are photos through the years of her with her mom and dad, love you can understand in their faces. Ah, … [Read more...]

Teaching adult Sunday School is one of the joys of my life. In this particular class we’ve spent three weeks exploring faith and poetry. The point I want to make isn’t about the subject matter, however, it is about the participants.What I have found (consistently over the years) is that the classes tend to grow in numbers from week to week, and the questions and discussions among the participants are phenomenal. These classes, I believe, are so lively for one simple reason: The people in our churches are hungry to be taken seriously. They are eager to have placed at their disposal the rich treasury of resources our faith provides for dealing with life. I say this because I believe many Protestant churches tend to trivialize the faith of, and are habitually condescending toward, their members. Many religious leaders treat the people of God as though they are morons. They most certainly are not. The adult class I’ve been teaching lately is fairly representative of adults in most of the … [Read more...]

According to rabbinical tradition the holiday should always occur on a Wednesday, because God created the sun on the fourth day. What grabbed my attention was not the holiday itself, however. It was something Rabbi J. David Bleich, said in the course of commenting on the holiday. “You’ve got to understand that the closest thing the Jews have to a sacrament is study.”1Rabbi Bleich’s statement stood out for me because it coincides with something several professors on our faculty have been saying for years. The way they put it, the classroom is “sacred space,” where we are drawn deeper into the life of God through the exercise of our minds. But, of course, it’s not just the classroom that’s sacred space. At the end of my son’s first year at Princeton Theological Seminary, he took me to the spot on the seminary campus that had become for him the most sacred place, a particular nook in the library where he studies, reads and reflects, conscious that as he does this he is connecting to the … [Read more...]