The Melheimian Sabbatiblog

Losing Faith

H2H Director Monty was floating around the radio dial, and  ran across David Wheaton talking about a new book he just wrote about spiritual issues of teens going off to college. He's a Minnesota boy who was a pro tennis player in the 1990s.

From http://www.davidwheaton.com:

The statistic is staggering: As many as 50 percent of Christian students say they have lost their faith after four years in college. That's right: 50 percent! Just as surprising, there is little difference in the faith attrition rate whether at secular or religious colleges. For far too many, the transition from home-life to campus-life is traumatic -- what begins as a University of Instruction ends up being their University of Destruction…with long-lasting negative effects and no guarantee of return. Author David Wheaton, radio talk show host, inspirational speaker, and professional tennis champion, relates his own collegiate experience at Stanford and captivatingly conveys:    
€      The three Pillars of Peril students face in college: Sex, Drugs/Alcohol, and Humanism (secular or religious);    
€      A time-tested game plan for victory over these pitfalls based on improving your spiritual G.P.A.;
€      The important difference between professing and possessing Christians;    
€      Practical advice on dating, friends, and choosing the right college;    
€      How to get back on course if you have gone astray.

Spidey Prayer

“Spider man” Grace

By the Owens family: Mary, John, Andrew, Sandi, and Pastor Paul, Alpena, MI

Conceived and formed at our dinner table during February, 2005; this goes to the tune of the old “Spiderman” cartoon.

Remember to build in the connection between the wounds in Jesus’ hands and Spidey’s web-shooting wrist action… and God’s providing hands.

 

Died for us (web shoot/nail piece on one hand), lives again (same on other hand)

Does what only the Lord can (outstretch arms on cross)

Gives us gifts from his hand (cup open hands and hold in front like receiving a gift)

Hey there…(shoot web/touch nail pierce on each hand)…thank you to Jesus man!

Entertaining?

If you are doing brain-based teaching correctly, you will undoubtedly be accused of being entertaining. (As if that was a bad thing!")

Websters defines entertainment as "holding someone's attention for a prolonged period of time." Shudder! We can't do that in the church!

Let's break the word down for a moment:

En means in or into. Ter (territory, terra, terrain, terrarium) means the land. Tain
(contain, retain, obtain, fountain) means to hold. The word en-ter-tain literally
means to “enter their land and hold them.” That sounds like mission work… Jesus
work.

In a missional, post-modern world, you can’t expect the learner to enter your space. You must enter their space - their land - if you are to hold them. Complain about this if you wish. Nag and guilt people and try to convince them that it shouldn't be this way. It won't do any good.

"You don't have to live in reality," says my friend Monty Lysne, "but you ought to visit it from time to time."

The only way to enter the post-modern mind - the only way to enter their land today and hold their attention is through relevant and recognizable patterns! What makes something irrelevant and unrecognizable? The lack of meaningful patterns. What makes it meaningful and relevant? You recognize some familiar patterns and the brain calls out for more.

So what does this mean for preaching? For teaching? For reaching in a post-modern world?

I'd love your feedback on this for the next week.

Why Teach Scripture with Art?

Art connects to the visual cortex, but it does a lot more. Color, contrast, and the emotional content of the art – all theses add recognizable patterns. Karaoke letters flashing on a screen, beautiful paintings inspiring the mind, along with art that the children create themselves, all these add a rich tapestry of depth to the learning experience. Bombarded with a sensual array of sight, sound, motion, emotion, fun, and meaning – the gatekeepers of the brain have no choice but to send the information through from short-term to long-term memory centers.

Sing it. Sign it. Dance it. Draw it. Present it in worship. Return to it seven nights week in a Home Huddle. You will remember this verse for the rest of your life.

Why Teach Scripture with Movement?

Sign language is all about patterns. It creates motion with meaning
and connects multiple areas of the brain and body all at once. Like
learning to ride a bicycle, once sign language is mastered, it is rarely
forgotten. It appears that this “skill memory” has an unlimited
storage capability in the brain and is among the most easily retrieved of all longterm
memories. Why is this so?

There is a barrier between the blood and the brain. It’s called the “blood-brain
barrier.” (Creative, huh?) There are only two natural molecules small enough to
make it through this barrier: oxygen and glucose. Singing and signing at the same
time floods the brain with both.

The higher the oxygen level in the brain, the more it can focus and stay alert.
Think of it: when you sing you move your diaphragm up and down, breathe
harder, and connect a whole array of muscles together, stimulating the brain. A
myriad of new connections (synapses) appear. Neurons throughout the body link
with neurons in the brain to memorize the song. Add sign language to the song
and you connect neurons throughout the body with the meaning of the song while
pumping glucose into the brain. Glucose creates the “glue” (Glial cells) that holds
neurons in place and insulates them to make them fire more efficiently. Every time
the song and sign are repeated, synapses get more and more efficient in
recognizing a whole array of sensory input. The song and sign together become a pattern that the brain can easily recall, retrieve and relive. This imprint is so
powerful that even by closing your eyes and visualizing the Bible song and sign,
your brain will retrieve the pattern from its memory banks and allow you to
reinforce it.

Aside from the oxygen and glucose you get while singing and signing a verse,
watching your friends sing and sign can be fun, too. This positive emotional boost
pumps a dozen or more memory-enhancing neurotransmitters (adrenalin,
serotonin, and dopamine) into the blood stream. By adding dance to the song and
sign, the motor cortex in your frontal lobe connects to the internal gyroscope in
the bones behind your ear, which connects to your somatic sensory cortex in the
parietal lobe, which registers the location of your arms and hands in space. (Okay,
that is more than you want to know.) Suffice it to say, teach with song, sign
language and dance, and you’ll be feeding the brain the patterns it craves as well as
the chemicals it needs to solidify the thoughts in place.

Why Teach Scripture with Music?

Why? Because music feeds the brain what it craves. Patterns.
If you have ever caught yourself unconsciously tapping a rhythm
with a pencil on a desk or with your foot on the floor when you
were nervous, anxious or bored, your brain was simply not getting enough
patterns, so it created its own.

Music is all about patterns. Cords are full of patterns. Rhyming words contain
patterns. The melody is a pattern that activates the right hemisphere of the brain.
Rhythm and harmony are patterns that activate the left hemisphere of the brain.
The beat of the music travels deep into the sub-brain (cerebellum) and actually
starts to synchronize your heart beat and breathing in a pattern. All of these
different areas of the brain chatter and link up with one another while the music
plays, increasing nerve connections between multiple parts of the brain and
codifying them into retrievable memory patterns.

The Power of Family Rituals

The power of ritual is, it can hold you when you can’t hold yourself.

Most parents have some form of a nightly ritual with their small children. They
brush their teeth, put on their pajamas and sit on the side of the bed to talk about
the day. Perhaps there is a story, a song, a prayer, a blessing, a hug. As children
age, this child-friendly routine often fades from the schedule. Stories become less
frequent. The simple, peaceful songs shared between parent and child give way to
isolated iPods and adolescent attitude music. Hugs and blessings may cease. By the
time the child reaches age ten, the ritual might simply be a “goodnight.” By the
time the teen years roll around, many parents feel lucky to get a “goodnight” - let
alone a conversation about the events of their day.

By instilling and installing simple faith practices in the home early enough
and reinforcing them weekly with the accountability of friends at church, open
nightly communication can continue as the norm in family life before the teenage
years hit. Children will be used to talking to their parents. Bringing God into the
conversation, singing and signing the Scriptures, praying and blessing every night
will become a healthy habit. Rather than fading away, these nightly faith rituals can
increase in depth, meaning and value as children age. The caring, consistent “every
night” faith dialogue may become central to family communication and health.

It can help hold a family together in a world that could tear them apart.

Taking the Brain Seriously

The following is from the manual on our new Bible Song Sunday School.

We learned above that without at least two types of simultaneous
stimuli, an individual molecular gate won’t open. Without the gate
opening, an individual nerve cell won’t fire. Without multiple
nerve cells firing a massive sensory bombardment of information,
the brain won’t recognize patterns and register what you are trying to teach or
recall. If you take this brain science seriously, it will force you to rethink how you
teach everything. How you preach. How you create your space. How you do
pastoral care in small groups and presentations in large groups. Music and sign
language will become more and more central to the learning experience?

Why?

Because they work. Because they teach the way the brain learns. Because they
create patterns that cross all portions of the brain and reach beyond the brain to
neurons in your extremities. Because they will turn everyone involved into activist
participants in their own education.

“Neurons are greatly influenced by the company they keep,” says Dr. Thomas
Czerner. Adding music, movement and art will engage the learner and bring an
end the mindless doodling that generates from a pattern-starved mind.
The word “education” comes from the Latin (educatio) meaning to lead out or draw
out. If you want to teach something your learner will be able to draw out for the
rest of their lives, why wouldn’t you have them literally draw it out on paper now?
If you are serious about putting a pattern into their brains that they will be able to
retrieve years later, why wouldn’t you teach with more than the spoken word?
Why wouldn’t you employ eyes, ears, mouths, muscles, emotions, and the one
sense that is often forgotten in the classroom - the sense of humor? If you want to
optimize memory, you will use every asset in your brain-based arsenal, and put
those patterns in place at the optimal moments in a child’s life.

“Now thank we all our God, with hearts and hands and voices” isn’t just a good song.

It is good brain science.

That’s what BSS is all about.

Why Memorization before Puberty?

The earlier you begin to learn a language, the better chance you
have to speak it like a native. The earlier you learn the language of
faith, the more natural it will be to you the rest of your life. You
can learn a new song at any time, but before age 12 your brain is
set up to learn it a whole lot easier. Prior to puberty, the brain is operating at
1/250,000 of a second. At the onset of puberty, it slows down to 1/150,000 of a
second. The child’s brain in the 3 – 6th grade level is almost twice as efficient at
grasping and holding the Scripture verse as it will be when their hormones kick in.
Henry Kissinger came to America at 12. His brother was 10. Kissinger speaks with
a strong German accent. His brother has no accent. Suffice it to say, “Teach Bible
with music and movement – and teach it before age 12 – and you’ll cement the
Word of God into patterns you can recall the rest of your life.”

The Brain's Processors

The following is part of the brain theory for Bible Song Sunday School.

Processor I: The Short-term Scratch Pad (Hippocampus) There is a
seahorse-shaped apparatus called the hippocampus tucked between the two
hemispheres of your brain. (hippo = horse in Greek) This device converts current
daily events into storable memories. When you first see, sing, sign or experience
something, that data is sorted, classified, and stored for a while in this short-term
memory center. The moment you repeat it, it moves from the scratch pad into the
long-term memory centers of the neo-cortex. Learning something new and then
repeating it a short time later is a powerful way to move it from short-term to
permanent storage. In fact, it is the only way to move it and mark it for later
retrieval.

Processor II: The Gate Keeper (Thalamus) There is a guard at the door of
your brain’s long-term memory center. This guard, called the thalamus, controls
what goes in and what goes out of the neo cortex. It is not a relay station but a
check point to the deeper brain.

The thalamus is a discriminating gate keeper. It has to be. Billions of competing
messages bombard it every second. Most are blocked out. Only the few chosen
ones get through. Your ears are processing 10,000 bits of information per second.
Your eyes are processing 7 billion bps. Estimates are that you are only consciously aware of 1/10,000 of the information that assails your brain every second.
Without a good guard at the gate, you likely would go mad with sensory overload.
How do you get a message beyond this gate-keeper to the deeper brain? How do
you convince it to allow information through to long-term memory? With all of
the competing chatter going on in the wiring, you’ve got to bombard the guard.
Your only hope of getting through with whatever it is you are trying to teach, is by
creating a multi-sensory attack on the guard post. The more senses you employ,
the more convincing, compelling, challenging, novel, coherent, pattern-driven
sensory bombardment you can create, the better the chances that your message
will get through. It is the synchronous bombardment and stimuli from a variety of
sense organs that pounds on the doors of the thalamus – the sensory gateway –
and tell it “Listen to this!” and “Let us in!”

You’ve got to hit it with your best shots again, and again, and again.

Processor III: The Emotional Filter (amygdala) Emotion and memory are
more connected than most people think. The reason for this is an almond-shaped
structure called the amygdala. Connected to most areas of your brain – especially
the advanced sensory processors – this fingernail-sized dynamo actually selects
those experiences that your brain will choose to remember. Only those events that
connect strongly with the emotions, create meaningful patterns, and unlock the
magnesium locks will be marked for future recall. (i.e., long term memory) The
amygdala’s earliest fears, impressions, and pleasures are nearly impossible to
dislodge. Some think that the amygdala is the one part of the brain that never
forgets. For this reason, you want to design all emotional exchanges within your
small groups to be positive, affirming, direct, fun, and creative. You don’t get a
second chance to make a good (or bad) first impression when it comes to the
amygdala. You’d better make the first shot count.

Sensory Input Devices: The body may have five major input devices (eyes,
ears, nose, mouth, skin), but it has billions of listening posts sending information
to central command at every given moment. You understand complex topics
better when you experience them with rich sensory input. You want depth in
learning? Increase the number of neurons involved in your learning process. You
want long-term retention of the materials you are teaching? Increase the number
of synaptic connections between those neurons. If you sing a verse, sign the verse,
dance the verse, act the verse, draw the verse, add form and color to the verse, you
add depth and meaning to it. You give your brain more reasons to notice it first,
store it second, and retrieve it later on.

Tomorrow: Why Memorization before Puberty?