Children’s Christian Ed

“These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.  Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.  Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”

From this snippet of scripture flows a host of divergent dogma on how to accomplish the task of what used to be called Christian Education but now seems to be going through either an identity crisis or a marketing makeover.

I’ve already frustrated some of you by not quoting the reference.  As I was trained as a kid, you say the reference before and after the verse if you want to get full credit in earning points toward your camp scholarship or the star for verse memorization (the hat trick was verse memorized, Bible in hand and lesson done).

I was pretty good at the scripture memory thing.  I also had the books of the Bible down, which came in handy during “Sword Drills”.  I don’t think my kids ever participated in one of those, but they were a staple component of the Sunday school at my church.  In the sword drill, a scripture reference was called out and who ever could find it and stand to read it first got a point for their team.  Honing your ability to quickly draw and deploy your “sword”- as Ephesians 6 calls the Word of God”, was essential to upcoming battles with the world or the Devil or just a pastor who couldn’t develop a thirty minute sermon without hopping all over the Bible.

My formal education consisted of regular Sunday school, Sunday morning sermons, often Sunday evening sermons, and an occasional prayer meeting.  One Good Friday, my brother and I accompanied my Dad to a service in downtown Newark to listen to seven sermons on the seven last words of Christ.  I remember that the church was dark, it was a beautiful sunny day outside, and the stairwell in the parking garage below Branch Brook Park smelled like urine.  We also got compliments on our matching red blazers from some of the ladies who attended.

Occasionally, my folks would get on a kick of having family devotions during dinner.  If it was before the meal, we kids were pretty anxious to get to the eating.  When my mom would spring a hymn on us that added another 5 minutes to the wait.  During one season, mom included readings from an etiquette book.  I learned that I should spoon my soup away from me and that there is something called a finger bowl.

One of the biggest reinforcements of spiritual growth was my experience at summer camp.  We would go for a week a year, to a Christian Service Brigade camp in upstate New York where you would have your own devotions, and group Bible study each day.  I’d usually return home inspired to have my own devotions and be kinder to my younger brother for at least a week or two.  There is more to say about that in the future.

Anyway, when we got involved in church as a couple, my wife and I were full of ideas and expectations about how children grew in Christ and fit into the life of the church.  We also heard a lot of ideas from others.  One pastor pleaded that he could not communicate to both a junior high mind and an adult in the same message (guess he wasn’t aware of the findings on the adult male attention span); one couple filled us in that we would discover we would not want our children fidgeting beside us during the service and would be glad for the provision of children’s church to whisk our kids away during the worship hour; those who were more achievement oriented wanted to see results, such as verses memorized and historical timelines recounted.

We wanted our kids to know God and to see that their own parents saw their relationship with God as central to their life.  Although Janet was able to more naturally weave faith into conversations with the kids about decisions and life’s events, we were together in our commitment.  Evening family devotions were not going to work for us.  Everyone had a different schedule and palate so we sat around the table only a few times a week and the prayer was more of a starting gun than a pause before food and conversation.  For a while, we had a small group in which we got together as with kids included in every other session.  We did skits, family verses, and praise songs together.  Sometimes our kids sat with us in the worship service, sometimes they went to children’s church, sometimes we just had to bail and head outside. Our family went to a Walk Through the Bible seminar once.  That was a bust- for the older two it was probably the equivalent of my Good Friday service experience.  The highlight for them was lunch at the local KFC.  Our youngest picked up the most.  She was in the session for the 4-5 year olds and had a great learning time.  During their high school years I would go to the bagel shop one day a week with each of my kids.  My son would allow me three questions before my quota was up and we would eat in silence- so if I wasted one asking about whether he was ready for his tests, I only had two left.  My daughters were more conversational, but they didn’t put up with any monologue exhortations either.  Janet had better luck during her after school or lunchtime debriefs.

Well, our youngest is twenty so we’re through the childhood stage- it’s gratifying when you daughter calls up and asks for you to pick out a devotional for her, since you’ve supplied them faithfully over the years.  Sorry we can’t present a winning formula- one thing we’re convinced of is that there are already enough people promoting their formula.  We only know that we need to be in Christ and point our family to him as well.

2011
11/07
CATEGORY
Childhood
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The Wilderness

Christ went to Perea, Moses went to Midian, Luke Skywalker went to Dagobah and we went to South Florida.  Our wilderness experience may not have been thoroughly redemptive but certainly had an irreversible impact.  It also served as a great essay topic for our oldest two when it came time to fill out college applications.

They told us that once you get south of Lake Okeechobee, you are in the tropics- what they didn’t tell us was that you have left Americana and entered a bizzaro universe which is a blend of New York City and Latin America.  We first became suspicious when we were house hunting.  We would walk into a model home in the middle of a landfill that shoved aside the everglades to stare at a map of the planned community that would soon exist.  There were sites for gas stations, convenience marts and at least three protestant churches along with the Catholic church and synagogue.  The developer had already estimated the needs and religious makeup of the prospective population.  Maybe he was able to do it based on price range and floor plan.  The house that had the wife’s playboy bunny suit encased in plexiglas over the bed left us no doubt that we were not in Kansas anymore.

It was our first (and, Lord help me, last) experience living in a gated community with a strict architectural code.  We would get friendly reminders occasionally from the HOA that our house had a little too much orange mold on it, our flower beds needed sprucing up or our sidewalk was due for a power wash.  The reminder would close with an offer for the association to have it done and billed to our residence.  We even had a particular blend of Sherwin Williams off white paint required for our mailbox.

Gloria Estefan was the queen of the city and red lipstick and nail polish were always in style.  In the hot weather, you couldn’t get away with the typical upstate New York ensemble of bulky sweatshirts and sweatpants so the general practitioners did a brisk business in fen-phen and the ENTs were more interested in scheduling nose jobs than determining whether your kid needed tubes to combat her ear infections.  At one of my son’s little league games, one of the moms sat sprawled across the benches in a bikini top with her hot pants undone at the top to ensure that she had an adequate tan below her belly button.  Guess the Junior League had different standards down here.

Since the company relocation package paid for spouse education, my wife enrolled in seminary.  She sat in a room of mostly guys who would fall into discussions of the “anger that they felt in the city streets”.  Her prof pointed out to her that she didn’t need to deal with the anger in the city streets so much as her own smoldering bitterness.  It wasn’t easy being an educated woman in the church who wanted to serve in her field of Christian Education.   Somewhere during our time down there, we encountered a conservative seminary graduate who knew some of our friends and relatives who were associated with the school.  On hearing her background, he suggested to my wife that she would be qualified to serve coffee in his church.  The same guy had a contracting business power washing roofs and siding.   He wanted to be paid in cash, of course (After pointing out that there is only one reason I know that contractors want to be paid in cash, I wrote him a check).

Finding a church was torturous.  I think we went to somewhere between fifteen and twenty different churches.  After the service, the whole family would sort out their experience and what struck them as particularly good or bad.  There was the mega-church with the former youth pastor whose church was eclipsing his mentor’s in % growth and attendance.  It was OK, we even went to a new attender’s class there.  Once our son emerged bug eyed from a Saturday evening class to describe a fistfight that had broken out in the class room.  The pastors seemed sincere and charismatic- it just didn’t click as a place in which to serve and grow given it’s strong staff led model.  Closer to home was the Baptist church in our development (one of those preplanned sites of course).  They were in the middle of a fund raising drive and there were testimonials from the congregation on the blessings of giving to the building fund.  Our kids referred to that “the money church” in all subsequent conversations.  We had an office meeting with that pastor too.  He had big plans for that congregation- but it turns out those took a back seat to an internet relationship which he was cultivating on the side.

For a while we attended a conservative Presbyterian congregation that met in portables in the middle of an open field of palm trees- I was suspicious that they would try to serve Kook-Aid in the communion cups – something about the setting gave me the creeps- plus the kids thought the pastor always sounded angry and I was annoyed that they didn’t list both me and my spouse on the quarterly giving statements- we were both listed on the checking account so why couldn’t they list us both on the tax statement?

When we finally settled on a church to attend regularly, we were doing just fine until an adult Sunday school class that got into a discussion of the imputation of Adam’s sin.  After about 20 minutes of passionate discussion on the topic it dawned on us that we were the only ones there who held the view that Adam’s sin is imputed to all man.  They were holding to some doctrine of age of accountability and discussing whether it happened at 12 years old or any earlier.  Our response was, “Why bother with any Children’s Christian Education if that is your doctrine?” And since we had invested our lives in pointing our own children along with lots of others toward God, it was a little too much for us to swallow.

We finished out our time there attending a Calvary Chapel that was 20 minutes away up in Pompano Beach.  The Preaching was great and the alter call response reminded me of a Billy Graham Crusade.  Our kids enjoyed not only the preaching but also the comfortable airport lounge chairs.  I think we were too exhausted to keep looking and needed a rest.  While I appreciate the sermon that gets it’s point across in 20 minutes or less, this guy proved that if you have a Spirit filled message worth hearing, people will sit for nearly an hour or more in wrapped attention (if you are going nowhere with the message, dragging it out doesn’t help).

Toward the end of our time there we were pretty desperate.  Our friends were being transferred away and we were still looking for a community beyond our family in which to anchor our lives.  My wife and I often took nighttime walks around the neighborhood talking and praying and occasionally encountering a toad as big as a rabbit.  Along the way, I got a call for an open position and was transferred- As we drove along the beach, on a last weekend prior to our departure, my daughter stared out the window and declared, “ I won’t ever miss this place.”

We had survived.  We had each other, we had our faith, we would each sort out the meaning or value of the experience.  What was for sure was that we were changed.

2011
10/29
CATEGORY
Florida
Uncategorized
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Happy Halloween

One of the holidays that seems to be surviving, even thriving during the current sacred versus secular tug of war is Halloween.  While we are deleting references to Christmas from the public calendars (Frosty the Snowman has replaced Santa as the acceptable winter icon for decorating school windows), Halloween is alive and well in the public plaza.   This week the inflatable pumpkins, ghosts and Frankenstein monsters are rising to life on neighborhood lawns.  Meanwhile, we evangelicals, being skeptical of the lineage of All Hallows Eve, have decided to explore our agrarian roots through the promotion of the sanitized alternative of Harvest parties.

If Christmas decorations occupied an entire corner of our attic, Halloween was a distant second in the volume allotted (Easter was relegated to a couple book boxes of multicolored baskets filled with green shredded paper).  The Halloween paraphernalia was stored in a large trunk in the walk-in cedar closet.  During the summer we would sneak up the narrow stairs to check out the stash that was baking up there under the shingles.  We would do an inventory of the swords, horned Viking helmets, cowboy hats, bed sheets with eyeholes cut out, and assorted plastic masks with their disintegrating rubber band straps.

Our family had a lot of fun with Halloween.  We kids would hit the neighborhood streets from after school until dinner time, running from house to house in sweaty masks which would cut your tongue if you stuck it in the slit for your mouth- and surviving street crossings in spite of our impaired visibility.  We probably took in a lower haul than most since our parents insisted that we use the walkway for each house rather than cutting across the lawns and flowerbeds (a rule we dutifully obeyed even when out on our own).

In the evening, we usually had a family party, which even included my grandparents decked out in costumes and masks.  We’d do some bobbing for apples or our dad would trick us into trying to claim a quarter in the middle of a pile of flour by touching it with our nose (guess what would happen when you got close).  Then we would drive around town calling on church friends, shooing away any evening trick-or-treaters, and barging into their living room before they could figure out who we were.  The evening climax was listening to grandma tell the story about the farmer who was haunted by his severed big toe which he had cooked up in his pea soup in the desire to include a little meat flavor.

We also loved a good spook house.  One summer our mom helped us set up a walk-through spook house in our basement, complete with creepy stuff for all the senses.  We had the kids enter via the steps from the access door, crawl blindfolded under a card table draped with a wet sheet (bats on the walls) and into the maze of our unfinished basement with the converted coal furnace that looked more sinister than the one in Kevin Buckman’s house.  They would walk past the skunk hole (limburger cheese), stick their hand in a bowl of cats eyes (peeled grapes) or brains (cooked macaroni), and then be transported past Niagara Falls (water running in the utility sink).  Every now and then they could take the blindfold off to gaze at the mummy, or the fiery furnace (we’d open the coal door for that).  The first time we set up the spook house, we couldn’t even get the friends we had hired as guides to go through it until we agreed to drop the blindfolds.

Maybe the church became more suspicious or just more protective, maybe the culture was becoming more dangerous and had less perspective concerning the reality of the spiritual battle- but by the time my kids were ready for Halloween festivities, it became apparent that it was best to keep a low profile regarding such revelry.   It was decided that the nursery school at our church would hold a Harvest party.  The children were encouraged to dress as pilgrims, scarecrows, or superheroes (don’t know how they fit in).  My son chose to go as a witch one year and a skeleton the next.  I don’t think any of the other kids picked up on it.

After a realizing that the harvest theme was a dud with the teens, the para church groups figured out that they could increase their appeal by running their own spook houses and herd the group into a room at the end for an evangelistic message (scaring the heck out of them?).  I guess the end justifies the means.

How should we handle this increasingly lavish yet polarizing holiday?  I can’t tell you what is right or best for you and your church or family- it depends on your experiences, environment, foibles and sensitivities.  But if you are going to give out tracts, give a treat as well- and if you gave out nickels thirty years ago, you should switch to quarters.

We’re not into the inflatables and head stones on our lawn, but one of my youngest’s favorite movies is “The Nightmare before Christmas”.

2011
10/22
CATEGORY
Childhood
Halloween
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Life Part 5: How Should We then Live?

That was the title of the Francis Schaeffer book that had just hit the shelves with accompanying 13 week study guides and, for those who were introducing cutting edge technology: VHS tapes featuring Francis himself wandering through St. Peters.  I was sitting in the discussion group across the circle from a Bible college student I was trying to impress and arguing that Schaeffer may have a few nits to pick with Aquinas but was no match for the man’s genius.   Welcome to adult Sunday School:  There are no grades or required reading and the hierarchy of expertise is in descending order: the guy on the tape, then the teacher, then anyone else who wants to talk.  If you are lucky, there are folks who will tactfully steer the discussion toward requiring some Biblical basis for the claims being asserted.

I was between college and grad school, working as a junior alchemist and paying discounted rent at my folks new home.  My uncle was an elder at my new church, which was helpful, as he had to run interference for me a few times when my name came up in their meetings.   We had a college and career group that would meet on Sunday evenings that we all took turns leading.  Once in a while we’d end up in a box, like the time we were discussing the necessity of salvation and a girl refused to give up her position that God wouldn’t let people go to hell but she couldn’t identify any scripture on which to build her case.  Sometimes we wandered into the flake, like when a guy started out in Ecclesiastes and wanted to segue to the contemplation of life on other planets.

The Bible college student (and Christian bookstore girl), who I would eventually marry, had given me a CS Lewis book, Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly Concerning Prayer– since I was having trouble connecting my experience with the stories others would relate.  I was going through life making decisions about jobs, school, relationships without any “calling” or deep conviction that I was doing exactly the thing God wanted for me.  It was some reassurance that I had a prof in College who described God’s will as a dune buggy ride rather than a railroad track- but it would be nice to be driving the dune buggy during the day or at least with the headlights on.

One of the more frustrating situations, was a young adult Sunday School class on a pop book called “The Christian Employee”.  I couldn’t easily skip the class since the group was small and I was pretty outspoken.  It as taught by a godly, successful, corporate middle manager, about the age of my parents.  He shared experiences of how early in his marriage, he bought his wife a piano that he couldn’t afford but was able to pay it off as his career advanced and how once he had a terrible boss who was temporarily transferred out of his department.  During the time the boss was away, everyone got raises.  I mean, it was all wonderful that this happened for him, but how was I supposed to reconcile that with the missionary who just got shot and killed leaving his wife and two children behind?

I think sometimes we get caught up in some Old Testament model of Patriarchal blessing- Abraham with his flocks and armies, David with his conquests and power.  Sometimes we mash secular success with spiritual success- if you’re a Christian athlete, you’re the captain and leading your team to the championship, if you are a Christian businessman, you are fast tracking your way to the corner office and financial independence- any setbacks are temporary and make your later success that much sweeter and your testimony that much more inspirational.

I’m not buying it…I don’t think being a Christian Employee means that we get anything in return.  Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t.   Even if the percentages are in favor of material rewards and recognition for being a good employee, should we take comfort in the percentages?   The hard truth is that we are in a spiritual battle and we are sustained in this life by Christ himself.  He has declared that HE is sufficient for us.  Those things we cherish in life – our possessions, recognition, health and happiness, reward for achievement or loyal service, easily prove to be distractions which deceive us in to thinking that they are necessary and deserved.

Yes, I still want success; I want recognition; I want a comfortable life- but if I make that my goal, I’m shoving Christ to the side and if I let others think “God will do this for you too”, I’m feeding them an inferior hope.

2011
10/15
CATEGORY
Uncategorized
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Life Part 4: Church

I don’t know if it is a particular affliction of the evangelical church or whether it is a universal experience that has been going on since the Reformation- but we seem to be enamored with programs and formulas.  It wouldn’t be so bad if these formulas were not often easily debunked as repackaged pop psychology.  It isn’t all bad- I mean- we are people who exist in a culture and the God meets us within the culture- the part that I don’t get is why we box God into our culture.  Worse than that, we box God into our subculture so there are different anthropogenic churches clashing with each other in the marketplace of ideas and the sideline watchers figure that we are just another convenient rationalization and social group.

When I left college, the Jesus People were winding down and the organized church was jazzed about “Church Growth” models.  The research concluded that homogeneous churches grew fastest so the strategy was to formulate your church such that it was racially, economically and generationally as uniform as you could make it.  Then there came the Seeker Sensitive model.  Worship became a dramatic and musical spectacle with performers on stage and an audience in the pews.  Church ministry became focused on serving lattes in the lobby and providing social services including financial seminars, marriage and child rearing classes and auto repair.  Some of this was fine when presented in the name of Christ, but the worship offered to God morphed into entertainment offered for men and current social theory depreciated timeless Truth.  In the mean time, as the percent of Americans attending church moved nowhere, churches became bigger and loaded up on staff and services including gymnasiums and schools- kind of like the growth of government- so that for those who attended the church, there was even less reason to be involved in the PTSA, local sports club or other community organizations. While we were insulating ourselves from the community around us, our spiritual muscles atrophied as we relied on the professional infrastructure of the church to teach us, counsel us organize us and lead us.  We didn’t leave our kids to play pick-up stickball- we organized sports leagues with adult umpires for them- why would we let them form their own Bible study group or take on a ministry ourselves with out staff vision and leadership?

In the 90s, the organizational prowess of the evangelical church birthed the Christian Coalition and the evangelicals became a political force.  We were now fully invested in influencing civil government to drive our agenda.  The Modern church was about achieving driving our agenda through our ambition, influence and wealth and of course, our agenda was God’s agenda.  God had become our insurance policy, protector and hero and he demonstrated his love for us by giving us good things.  If God didn’t bless you with a successful career, well-adjusted kids who were great athletes, and a Stepford wife, you need to examine your heart.

Well, many of those who couldn’t sustain that fantasy stumbled on to the emergent formula.  They tried to get back to something real, and to them, real was something which was meaningful.  This woke the antibodies of the modern church, who assumed if real implied “meaningful” these emergents must not value “factual” and should be viewed as risks if not as heretics.

Now I understand there is a group called Hipsters, which I can’t claim to understand very well- but seem to be into fine dining and green living.

Why this long digression?  Because, in spite of all the formulas, strategies, and classifications, we are all people just trying to live in obedience to Christ.  Seldom does an individual fit the type once you get to know them.  And if you dig deep enough, you might discover the self-doubts of the “How to Succeed in Christianity” peddler.  Life in the church means sometimes being caught up in, sometimes fighting against these trends.  If I walked away, I would probably end up starting a cult so I need to stay on the inside (John says something about that in his letter – 1John 2:19).

2011
10/10
CATEGORY
Uncategorized
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Life Part 3: College

Much like Gooley in Joe Bayly’s “I saw Gooley Fly”, I escaped to Christian college and except for a few letter exchanges with my high school crush who felt sorry for me, thinking that I was off to an all male college, I disappeared from the radar of my high school class until our 10th reunion.

Wheaton was one of those places that I wished was better than it was but I had to admit, it beat the alternatives.  There were some quirky rules but the staff would actually try to explain the rationale to you.  I remember sitting in a cabin up in snowy northern Wisconsin over spring break, listening to the athletic director, who was an institution at the school, explain the prohibition against using Playing Cards.  As he described it, “When you get those old familiar faces in front of you, you will not be able to stop from reaching for your wallet.”  Since my family only played something called “Rook”, the “Christian alternative” to Playing Cards- they weren’t all that familiar to me, and the only game I ever played using Face Cards was War- so I figured this guy had some demons that I couldn’t relate to.  The school dropped the prohibition by my senior year.

One of the great experiences was mingling with students and professors who were from all sorts of denominations.  For the first time, I heard a Biblical basis for infant baptism during a casual debate with a friend.  This was foreign- I mean- we wouldn’t even let those people take communion at my church back home.  So on the Sunday’s that I didn’t sleep in or wasn’t off in Wisconsin with the climbing club, I went to the Baptist Church, the Presbyterian Church and a few different independent churches, but mostly to the Plymouth Brethren Church where they had a full service just around communion every week.  They had some pretty strict ideas about women in worship (silent).  I guess the women there were pretty patient or were just biting down hard on their tongues.

For me, the environment had a generous mix of challenges to my paradigms as well as support from others who either worked through the conflicts or were in the process.  The reconstruction of my worldview required realizing that within the Body of Christ, there was a lot more diversity of opinion and belief than I may have liked, and I would have to accept that while there may not be agreement, we remained together in the Church.  There were pacifists and ROTC cadets, theistic evolutionists and six-day creationists, Calvinists and Charismatics, socialists and libertarians, all of whom were seeking to pursue a Christian ethic.  This was all fine except that when I felt the freedom to challenge convention outside of the academic environment, I was quickly labeled a troublemaker- if I didn’t buy into flood geology, I was an evolutionist, if I invited discussion of Adam as an archetype, I was tearing at the authority of scripture.  Of course, I was hopeless when it came to church polity.  How could I ever be convinced that there was one “Biblical” model after being exposed to every variety of governance, each claiming to be scriptural?

At one point during each year there was usually a Black emphasis week or African American awareness week- I can’t remember what the pc term was at the time.  We’d get the staff person in charge leading the chapel service and be made aware that as whites we weren’t doing what we should be to be inclusive or understanding or actively changing the campus to help these folks.  There would usually be an inner city gospel choir doing a concert on the weekend- which had some fantastic music enjoyed by a huddle of the black student group in the first few rows and me along with six or seven others spread about the cavernous auditorium.  I invited the leader of the student group to dinner at the dining hall once to try to understand what I was missing regarding my responsibilities.  I was trying to understand what I was neglecting and he was insisting that the overwhelming presence of me and my peers was oppressive- so the conversation wasn’t very helpful.  One of the learnings I keep coming back to is that it is always more comfortable to deal with stereotypes and labels than it is with individuals.   Individuals demonstrate a complexity that we wish others appreciated in us and invoke a degree of empathy and pity that we don’t want to invite in.

Somewhere about half way through my four years, I started appreciating the fact that we had an incredible stream of speakers coming through the school for chapel and various special lectures.  I would need to travel to conferences all over the country to hear these people otherwise.  Some were “out there” (Anne Kiemel), some were booming (EV Hill) some were inspiring (Corrie Ten Boom).   I could blame it on the sermon survival skills I developed as a child, but it remains a shame that I wasn’t more attentive.  Now that I’m writing tuition checks for my third child I keep prodding her to go take in everything available.

2011
10/01
CATEGORY
High School
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Life Part 2: High School

Part 2 High School

High School was a spiritual battleground – in which faith was tested and young minds were tempted.  For me, one of the biggest daily challenges was finding a restroom that was not a smoker’s hangout and still had some TP available in the stall.  As I tell my kids, I went to an “urban high school”.  We didn’t do homecoming floats- those would have been burned well before any parade.  The school fence was locked after homeroom and “open campus” was only for those kids who would dash out the front door and sprint to the Acme across the street during the switch to first period.

It was the early 70s.  Neil Armstrong was about to step on the moon and Hal Lindsay’s, The Late Great Planet Earth, was screaming that Armageddon was near and we had a good idea which world powers would bring it about.  I was just hoping that the rapture didn’t take place before I had had sex (married sex of course- which meant the world better hold together for at least 10-15 years).  1984 was still a way’s off so George Orwell’s future could be reality.

I was busy being sometimes a jerk, sometimes a Pharisee, sometimes naïve and once in a while getting things right.  Events like “rally round the flag” hadn’t been invented yet so I knew only a few other Christians at my school outside of the kids from my church and the total was maybe 10, definitely less than 20.  So the likelihood that any of them would actually be in a class with me was pretty slim.  Of course there was no such thing as a “born again Catholic” that I had heard of yet.

Union County, New Jersey must have been written off by most of the big high school para-church ministries because they were only rumors were I lived- probably thriving out by the Short Hills mall (our dentist moved out there from Newark- and if the Brady Bunch lived in Jersey, they’d live there).    Anyway, there was this ministry that we hooked up with called Hi-BA – an acronym for “High School Born Againers”.  It was my link to normal Christian kids who actually went to other high schools and churches in my area.  I guess Hillside just made it into the fringe of their coverage area.  The attraction was primarily meeting and mingling with other Christians- and in the meantime I was getting tons of inductive Bible Study and being pushed to do evangelism.  The Bible study was great and seeing as it appears that most sermons and Bible lessons seem to have now latched on to the “Think and Do” model of pedagogy, it is sorely missed (“Think-and–Do” books were these fill in the blank primers which were the standard curriculum in my elementary school days up through at least fourth grade- complementary workbooks for anyone who was devouring the Dick, Jane, Sally and Spot dramas).  The evangelism part was forced and awkward.  My Catholic and Jewish classmates politely tolerated my proselytizing.  I was mostly relieved that I could report that I dutifully performed and still had friends (even if they now were aware that I might turn “Jesus salesman” on them in a one on one situation).  One guy in my grade became a Christian through a Jesus People or other type of charismatic event- not through anything I had done.  He was amazing to observe- he really felt changed and would talk about it with others just like he was talking about sports, cars or girls- that wasn’t me- I had too many interests to balance and risks to weigh.

The other BIG threat in High School was Biology class and evolution. Creationism was just breaking on the scene and not yet debunked as Seventh Day Adventist rationalization (Oh- you didn’t know?), intelligent design was still thirty years off.  I had to make a stand in the classroom and began rattling off challenges (which I had carefully digested and practiced) based the Piltdown man, abnormalities in the progression of the horse and the second law of thermodynamics. With every eye in the class looking at me like I was from another planet (not just the quirky freshman in the sophomore bio class) or just enjoying the diversion, the teacher asked a follow-up on thermodynamics.  I was tapped out- all I knew was that this was supposed to be a perfect foil (after a full semester of thermodynamics in college there is no way I would introduce that to the debate). I beat a hasty retreat by mumbling about irregularities in Carbon 14 dating methods and survived the rest of the unit in stony silence planning a strategy for the upcoming test.  Was my teacher going to fail me if I just wrote down Genesis 1 on my test paper when asked to explain the evolutionary process?  I think I just spat out what he wanted while using the word “Theory” in every other sentence- after all – I needed to stay on the Honor Roll.

2011
09/24
CATEGORY
High School
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Life Part 1: Childhood

They say that God has no grand children- because each one of us must come to Christ on our own.  If that is true, why do they also throw out the statistic that most Christians came to Christ during their childhood years with the additional suggestion that one of the best ways to grow the church is for Christian couples to have babies?

Well- I guess I’m one of those 2nd generation Christians.  I’m told that my dad became a Christian down in Texas while stationed at Fort Bliss, El Paso.  Since they were there about 2 years, during which time, I was born, I don’t know if he came to Christ before or after my butt breach entry into this world.

Church was what we did- and we were not just Christians- we were Baptists- a heritage which I was informed was most like the early church which began just after the resurrection (or was it with John the Baptist?- I can’t remember- except when I got to college I learned about Zwingli and the Anabaptists and figure that the roots more likely rose out of the stew of the Reformation).  I should add, we were Conservative Baptists…There were apparently people called American Baptists who were too liberal and Southern Baptists who were akin to used car salesmen and the Regular Baptists who all had crew cuts and burned books and Beatles records.  From what I knew, the Conservative Baptists had it dialed in just right.

We went to the First Baptist Church (don’t think there was a second Baptist church in our town).  Dad was a deacon and the Sunday School Superintendent and my mom was a 2 and 3 year old teacher and did most of the solos during special music.  We sat about 2 rows back from the front every Sunday on the right side.  I could tell you just about every detail about that sanctuary.  I knew where all the water spots were on the ceiling tiles, how many rows of pews there were, and which pieces of stained glass were cracked.  On the side wall was a Mercator map of the world with little lights where each of our missionaries was located as well as one for our church.  I could name every one of those missionaries as well as their kids since their pictures were all thumbtacked on the corkboard in our kitchen.  When some guy from our church left for the mission field, he repainted and updated the board, adding a light for his destination city.

In between drawing on offering envelopes, adding up the digits of the hymn numbers posted on each side of the platform, and trying to guess which families were sitting behind us by peering under the pew and looking at all the legs and shoes hanging down, I picked up a jumbled theology of legalism and grace.  One pastor often challenging us to consider what our answer would be if the communists burst into to our church, lined us up outside and demanded that we renounce Christ or be shot.  I guess people got tired of that talk because attendance kept dropping and he eventually left.  Our next pastor was a reformed alcoholic and avid fisherman.  He had hit bottom at the rescue mission in downtown Newark, went to Bible College and was now in our pulpit, with his wife at the organ and his kids in the front row.  “Rescue missions” really are about just that.

We kids in the church would sometimes go down to the mission play our instruments and sing while the pastor did the sermon.  Hard to believe that in that sea of sorry looking humanity that wandered off the street knowing that if they just sat through the service, they would be rewarded with a warm meal, there could be a future pastor.

Anyway, pastor Al was about grace, his most memorable illustration being about a little boy making a boat only to have it lost down a storm drain.  Later he finds it in a second hand store and purchases it, saying “little boat, you are mine twice- once because I made you and twice because I bought you.”  Must be a good illustration because I still remember it- and it is a heck of a lot better tale than what happened to the kid and his boat in the opening chapter of Stephen King’s “It”.

As to how I came to faith- I don’t know if it was the Holy Spirit, peer pressure or being spooked about hell, but I don’t think that matters any more.  I know I had a conversation in the back yard with my brother and prayed some time around the age of 5 or 6.  Later when I was nearing my 8th birthday, we had some evangelist doing a series of weekend meetings- “Dynamite Robbie Robertson” wow- I am not making this up!!  The first night he has some sort of call to conviction which my older brother raised his hand for.  That got kudos for him when Robbie congratulated my parents on Bill’s response.  I also knew that in order to get to take communion, I needed to get into that baptism pool which was under the floorboards where the Pulpit stood.  The next night I figured was my turn so I made my move.  I guess he was looking for something bigger because I next found myself after the service sitting with two men who came forward along with Robbie himself and we were reading John 3:16 together and praying the sinner’s prayer (what is it Billy Graham used to say?  “You may have come here on a bus- don’t worry, it will wait for you”).  I figured, no harm in doing a second round because I sure didn’t want the alternative- I observed later that people were constantly invited to rededicate their life to Christ- what that means about the first time or the last rededication, I don’t know- maybe we should just do confession like the Catholics.

Anyway, shortly after that, I got baptized and became a member of the church- which meant, I got take communion and actually vote during church business meetings.  Plus I got put on the tract committee that had a budget somewhere near $50/year.  “Chick” tracts were just making their appearance- best described as graphical horror novels for Christians.  If they didn’t scare you into becoming a Christian, they would scare you away from Christians.

2011
09/18
CATEGORY
Childhood
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Welcome to TrappedInEvangalicalism

TrappedInEvangelicalism looks at life from the perspective of a struggling Christian – who sometimes doesn’t think he fits and sometimes is afraid he fits too well into the subculture called “Evangelicalism”.  Sometimes affectionate, sometimes self loathing, sometimes disappointed, sometimes angry, sometimes encouraged – yet, in Christ, persevering.

2011
09/18
CATEGORY
Uncategorized
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