Teen girl squad, Wednesday night pinch hitting, etc

Well, Teen Girl Squad was pretty good on Wednesday. We talked about pacifism, which is something that we don't talk about a whole lot in our church (unfortunate! Churches of Christ were among the "peace churches" up until the 1950s..and then I guess we forgot about that). I totally cribbed a sermon from Rob Bell at Mars Hill Bible Church (I love their podcast). The girls really liked it--it gave some historical context to the whole "turn the other cheek, go the extra mile" thing. They seeemed deeply interested in the number of things that are hidden in the Biblical text, simply because our historical perspective blinds us. Amanda, in particular, seemed fascinated by the idea that she had heard that text a thousand times, always thinking it meant one thing when it meant another.

The real victory of Wednesday night came in the 3rd and 4th grade class, which JC had to teach on his own, because Ginny was out of town and I was teaching the older girls. He had had a really long day at work and was really not feeling up to teaching. I saw Lachlan before classes, and I mentioned that JC was teaching by himself--could she please be extra good for him? She said she would try. "Can you help Amanda be good?" I asked. She rolled her eyes.

Here's what JC told me about class: When Amanda's mom came in, she saw JC and said, "Oh, you're here. Do you need me to stay?" JC told her that she should go to her own class, he could handle Amanda.
Once her mother had left, Amanda said, "If my mom isn't going to stay, I'm going to be extra bad so that she'll have to come back."
JC looked her straight in the eye and said, "I don't care how much you act up, I'm not going to reward you for being bad with mom time." Her jaw dropped--he had figured out her game.

While Amanda was not terribly well-behaved during class, she at least paid attention to the story and played the games related to the class and things.

If only we could figure out a way to reward her with mom time for being good. I think I'll talk to her mom about that this week.



Ali's dad is still missing, and they've called off the search. I don't know what we're going to say to the other kids tomorrow, or to Ali if she's there. Poor child.

Prayers needed

Ali's dad was in a boating accident and is presumed drowned.

We haven't seen the family in a while--they've been "church shopping"--but I still think of her as one of my kids.

It's still possible that her dad will be found and is actually ok--but I don't think the odds are very good.

Please keep that family in your prayers. This must be unbelievably terrible for Ali and her sister and her mom. I can't even imagine.

Psalms

This morning, during the sermon, David read Revalations 3:19: "Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline." I should get that printed on a shirt or something, just for teaching Sunday school.

This morning, Ginny (kids' Wednesday night teacher) asked me to take over for her this week. She commented how lucky I was to have JC there with me, and how she got frustrated with maintaining order all alone. JC and I really don't use an overly harsh hand with them, I think--but we do require them to behave properly. Having him in there doesn't make them behave any better--usually if any discipline has to happen, I'm as likely to be enforcing it as he is. "I want them to like class and to want to be there," Ginny said, "but it's really hard--they get way out of hand." I wish I knew what to tell her. All I said was that the kids were in Bible class for a reason, and while we hope they have fun, it's equally important that they learn. I feel so bad for her--her son is just a little guy who probably doesn't require much more in the way of discipline than five minutes in the Time Out chair. She's a good bit older than JC and I, so I don't know that she really remembers what it was like to be ten, either--what kinds of things you might do to distract or harass a teacher just because you knew you could.

Class today was interesting. JoEtta had mentioned that she hadn't really gotten too far with them on the repentence aspect of the David and Bathsheba story, and it showed. "So, you guys talked with Mrs. D. about David and Bathsheba, right?"
"Yes," said Josh. "He was a baaaad boy!"
So, we went over that repentence bit again. And then we added Solomon, Absalom, and Nathan to the family tree--adding all 19 of David's sons and all their mothers seemed like a bit too much. We told them briefly about how Absalom had betrayed David, and how Solomon became the next king. We'll talk more about Solomon next week, we told them. We spent some time talking about the various ways in which God punished David--the death of the baby, Absalom's betrayal, forbiding him to build the temple. "So David did not just get off totally free," I said. "He was punished. But God also loved him a great deal, and David was very sorry for what he did."

We asked each of the kids to pick a number between one and 150. "The only number you can't pick is 119," JC said--so of course, all of them wanted that one! Once everyone had picked a number, we each read the Psalm that corresponded to the number we chose. Then, we asked the children to draw their psalms. They had to include every thing that was in the psalm, whether it was someone using another person as his footstool or rivers clapping their hands. Lachlan seemed to like the activity, and JC and I had fun drawing our psalms, but the boys...

David was there, which he hasn't been--we haven't seen him over a month. He told us that his mom tended to oversleep lately, since she's been working the night shift. David's a bit of a wild card as our students go. He's older than Joshua, and sometimes he can really influence the younger kids. David doesn't care much for drawing. He's one who will just scribble something and declare that he's done. Actually, that's sort of his MO for everything--just write a word or two, just toss on some glitter, just lose a round or two, and he's done. Then we tell him that he must sit quietly while the others finish, and he whines that he's bored. Today, at least, JC was able to "check" his picture. "You're not done," he would say. "Where are the piles of dead bodies?" The trouble, really, was that Joshua, who ordinarily likes to draw, decided that drawing was not a fun activity today--I suspect because David didn't want to draw. He started doing the same thing as David: "I'm done!" Unfortunately, he had a short psalm and his (kid's) Bible left out a lot of imagery (Psalm 120--lying tongues, etc) that makes for better art, but greater confusion to a young reader, I guess.

Actually, Josh was just kind of cranky today over all. When we asked them to put the books of the Bible that we had covered to date in order, he really pouted about it and insisted he didn't want to--but he did it anyway. That was before David got there. Maybe he was just in a bad mood, which happens to the best of us.

Josh is also the only kid who is any where near the goal to get some kind of prize with his "class points." These points are supposed to be an incentive for them to take notes in the sermon, memorize scripture, think about Bible stories between classes, etc. We thought they would earn the points a whole lot faster than they have-- I guess they haven't been much of an incentive at all. Anyway, we're trying to think of what exactly we could give him as his prize--it has to be both something that he would like and something that the other kids would see and would think, "WOW, I should get to work." I'm sort of stumped. But, I'm sure we will come up with something.

What it's ok to pray for

As some of you know, one of my essays was published last summer in The Rambler, a neat little magazine from North Carolina. That essay did pretty well for itself. In addition to publication, I received a little money and a one-year subscription to the magazine. It's a very good little magazine, and I look forward to it coming every other month. I might just have to write something else so that I can keep up my subscription.

In the September/October issue, which for some reason sat on my bedside table for months, utterly forgotten, the feature is an interview with Lewis "Buddy" Nordan, who wrote a bunch of novels I haven't read--but might look into, now. He's not a "Christian" writer, in that he's writing mainstream novels, not "inspirational" fiction. Anyway, the article describes one thing "he always does when he sits down to write: he will pray to God to make him a great writer. He jokes that he used to pray to God to make him a good writer, but upgraded to asking to be a great one."

That really got me thinking. I've often prayed for inspiration (like when I had to sum up my church in 1000 words or so for the local news paper!), and I've prayed thankfully--that I have any gift with words at all.

I haven't prayed to be a great writer, though. Praying for gift on top of gift--as if what I've been given isn't enough--seems audacious. Isn't it enough to be thankful that I'm an above-average writer? Yet, when I read that, it made total sense to me. Yes, I want to be a great writer. Yes, I should ask God for all my desires--because what I'm doing now, relying soley on my own skills and determination, is not working fast or well. Plus, it's a lot of work!

Does God mind when we pray for greater gifts? Maybe He likes it.

Long time, no update

Sorry about that.

I've had the craziest two weeks ever. The car needed a new clutch, the hubby needed to go to a doctor (only good news there, as it turns out), we're thinking about buying a house and so have to fax every financial piece of information to total strangers, plus of course looking at houses, AND both of our teams at work have serious deadlines this week. In fact, I'm at work right now, but because of a server crash, I have a little break.

Through all this craziness, we've been praying and really taking care of each other, and that's good. I've been so exhausted these two weeks--I felt awful when we were visiting JC's family because I was much less of a help to his mom than I usually try to be...I just could hardly convince myself to do anything. I kept praying though, every minute, and I kept (almost literally) hearing the Holy Spirit within me, just saying, Keep moving. Look after the task that's in your hands now. Don't worry about what's coming down the pike. Take it one minute at a time. The primary instruction seemed to be, just don't sit down and cry and give up. Keep moving keep working keep trying keep praying. And you know...I did. And the clutch was fixed in time, the records all got from various previous doctors to the one we were going to see, the doctor was wonderful and helpful and thinks he knows what's going on, the paperwork is mostly taken care of, we maybe have picked out a house, and everyone at work is being super wonderful to each other, despite being insanely stressed. People are going out of their way to be kind because they know they're predisposed to being grouchy.

Does trusting God preclude being scared? Before dinner, on the night when we drove to Richmond for JC's early morning appointment, we sang together (we sing rather than praying before meals). I got to pick--it was just the Doxology. And we were standing there, singing, and looking into each other's eyes, and I couldn't get past the second line, I just started crying. I kept thinking about how God is the fountain of all blessings, but as Job says, He also taketh away. I was feeling very trust-y, very relying on God, very feeling the Holy Spirit right at my side, supporting me. I wasn't scared that we wouldn't get through what ever was coming our way. I was just scared of the thought of losing JC--not scared that I couldn't handle it, but scared of having to.

As I said, doctor visit went very well, and most of the truly frightening diagnoses have been ruled out with a pretty high degree of assurance. I know that even if they hadn't, we would keep moving, keep working, keep praying, because what else is there to do? That doesn't stop me from being a scared child sometimes though.


So..
The Sunday before last, we did a pretty quick romp through most of 1 Samuel and the first little bit of 2 Samuel. It was mostly what we call a "story telling" session, not, I'm afraid, very interesting. We talked about forgiveness (all those times David lets Saul go when he could kill him and end it there).

One cool thing was that the division of the kingdom under David and Ishbosheth finally helped the kids understand the tribes of Israel. I don't think they got it before, but we told them about the divisions (Judah goes with David, everyone else doesn't) and we used the family tree in our classroom to explain it. I saw light bulbs go on, I really did!

On Wednesday night, I was showing JoEtta around our classroom, because she was going to take over for us on Sunday (we were going home to visit JC's parents & sisters). As I was showing her all the different things we do with the kids, and explaining how we decide (sometimes preplanned, based on material, sometimes spontaneous based on which kids are there), I realized that wow we really have a lot that we do with them. Jo was (and has been) incredibly encouraging, exclaiming over all the things that we've thought up. I felt great about our class after I showed her all that--so funny, I don't even realize what I'm doing until I sit down and try to explain it, step by step, to someone else.

So that was good, and when I called Jo yesterday, she said that she had a great time with my sweet little monsters! :) I really appreciated her doing that for us, and she complimented the notes I sent her. I had worried that they were unclear--I had tried to write down what we do in class, which is basically to play a game or something (not really a game, usually something like, Who can look up their Bible verse the fastest? or similar), and then get into the text and talk about it a few verses at a time...and then maybe do a map, diagram, chart, or something. "It's very simple," Jo said, "and I'm not sure I would have been brave enough to trust kids that age with those kinds of questions or expected them to carry on that kind of discussion. I was surprised at how well they did."
Jo had opened class (her idea, and a good one) with a game she called, "Good King/Bad King." She brought a little crown that the kids took turns wearing, and each kid had to be either a good king or a bad king. Another student got to choose what kind of good (generous, brave, loyal) or bad (grabby, cowardly, cruel) monarch a given student was, and then that student had to act out what a miserly king would do or a merciful queen. Because the story of David is basically all about being a good or bad king, this was a really great way to introduce the kids to the first serious "bad king" segment--the whole Bathsheba incident.

I had suggested that JoEtta ask Lachlan or Josh to read the racier bits of the story because they have children's Bibles, which tend to be very tasteful. She told me, laughing, that theirs were actually a good deal more graphic than the New King James! Oops.

Jo and I had had a long talk about what one can or cannot discuss with other people's children, how we talk about adultery and sex in Sunday school, etc. My number one rule, which she thinks is a good one, is to be entirely unafraid of the response, "That's a very good question. Why don't you ask your parents for more information about that?" Depending on the content, I might alternatively offer to talk about it after class, or to talk about it with the child and a parent. It's a touchy subject, though. JoEtta said that the kids were mostly unphased by that, although Josh was bothered by a drawing she brought to show them, of Bathsheba bathing on the roof. "I added a few lines so it looked like the towel was covering her more than it was originally, but Joshua didn't want to look at it. I just wanted them to see what the flat roof looked like! I didn't think it was racy at all." She said that, other than that, the kids really took this difficult material in stride. In Sunday school, we usually talk about sex as, "acting like she was his wife" which some of the kids take to mean kissing, and they can fill in about all they know or want to know in their own minds.

She ended by doing a Venn diagram of Jesus and David. "I wish we had had more time for that," she said. "The kids really got into it!" I was pleasantly surprised that they were able to come up with differences and similarities and understand what to do with such a diagram. Perhaps we'll do a few more of them, comparing various Bible characters with Jesus, and then at the end of the quarter ask them to do one comparing themselves to Jesus. It might be interesting, anyway. I'd like to see how they do at that. That's a hard self-evaluation. I might consider doing that with my teen girls too.

I forgot to ask Jo if David was there. He's been missing a lot lately, and I worry about him. He's a good kid. They all are.

JoEtta, thank you so much again for taking over! I'm sure the kids had a great time with you--I always love having you for a teacher (and a friend!). <3

Ok...time to post something on the kids' blog before this server comes back online. :)

Lesson 22: Jealousy and Reading Comprehension

It won't take me long to write about Sunday's class because it was really good...and therefore, uneventful, oddly. I had been thinking about making the paraphrasing exercise easier by turning it into a worksheet where the kids would answer questions ("Who is Samuel talking to? What does he want him to do?"). JC and I both hate worksheets, though, and as he pointed out, the kids don't seem to like solo work at all. They all love writing on the whiteboard, though, and so we decided to modify that worksheet idea into a whiteboard game. The game was this: I wrote all the interrogatives (Who, What, Where, etc) down the left side of the board. The kids (unfortunately, only two showed up) took turns generating questions for each other, about the three-verse passage we were reading (1 Sam. 18:6-9). The catch was, each interrogative could only be used once. That meant that if Josh asked Lachlan, "Why were the women singing?" she could not ask him, "Why was Saul angry?"

The amazing thing was--they loved it. They wanted to play another round! Unfortunately, class was just about over by then. Still, wow! We'll definitely repeat this activity. Generating the questions turned out to be the hard part for them--but that's the essence of reading comprehension, right? Figuring out what question each sentence is answering?

We had a teacher meeting during evening church. When Ralph asked if there were any major problems we were having, I mentioned being surprised at the lack of reading comprehension. Pat said, "You can't fix that. You can't teach them that. Maybe for the older kids, the high school kids, you can expect that, but not fourth-graders." She basically implied that I shouldn't bother trying--but how will they ever be able to study God's word on their own? How will they magically learn to understand what they read in time for high school if they can't do it now?

If not me, whom? If not now, when? (wow. that loses some punch when you throw in the good grammar....)

Anyway, we're trying, we're insisting...and they're coming along, inch by tiny inch.

In good news, everyone at the teacher meeting agreed that the Sunday school curriculum we've been using (21st Century Christian) is total junk and filled with a bushel of busy work. Pat got very upset with them when she called the head editor for the curriculum and he said, "Well, I'm sorry you don't like it"--without thanking her for her feedback or telling her that he would take her concerns into account. It's also really expensive (JC's on the budget committee, and when he told me how much that fluff garbage costs, my jaw dropped). So, everyone is taking very seriously this search for new curriculum. Pat says she has one at home that John (the preacher father of a respected, intelligent, and eager-minded member of our congregation) recommends. "You'll like it," she told me. "It has timelines." :) Maybe I'm getting a bit of a reputation...

Pat told me that her little kids (4- and 5-year-olds) do an activity about putting the books of the Bible in order, as a class. We should institute that as a solo opener activity for our class-give them five minutes to do it, who ever does it fastest gets a class point or something. I'm not sure I could do it very well, I'm ashamed to say. I'd get messed up in the minor prophets and the later epistles. Maybe instituting this activity would help me get better at those too. I really should self-educate more strongly.

Ok..time for the day job.

Ignorance

JoEtta says that it's presumptuous of me to say that no good history of the Churches of Christ exists. She points out that there are a number of good articles on the subject--and I'm sure she's right. What I meant was more like...a biography of the Church.

I still haven't found one of those, but I've found a number of books that look like good places to start--including (duh) the works of Alexander Campbell himself.

I think I was also reacting to the culture of willful ignorance of our roots that seems to pervade our church. Why that? Jo says that she hadn't really thought about all this until grad school, and she's surprised that I'm thinking of it now. I guess that's a point, but she grew up in the church. I'm a newbie still, and I'm used to asking questions like, "Why doesn't our auditorium have windows? Why don't we use instruments?" etc. "Why don't we talk about our history?" seemed to fit logically in that pattern.

Another thing I'm wondering about lately is the "Church of Christ--Emergent" movement. They have a stub on wikipedia which seems to connect them to the Church of Christ as I know it, but I don't know if that's a real connection or what. A lot of these churches have different names and don't call themselves "Church of Christ" at all. None of the websites referenced from the wikipedia seem to have a FAQ--this is where we're coming from, this is who we are. Still...the conversation they seem to be inviting is an interesting one. Is it time for a re-restoration? Have we become as traditional as the denominations our founders were reacting against?