The Melheimian Sabbatiblog

Colorado UMC

We've begun our second UMC "Rethinking Family Ministry as Families DOING ministry" conference at the Faith Inkubators retreat home in Aspen. A dozen great movers-and-shakers-and-systems-breakers gathered to dream out loud. Last night we all shared our faith journeys, who and what's important to us, and why we care about the future of the UMC. Today it's off through Independence Pass to the Yurt.

Each person will be journaling on "best practices" and "biggest obstacles" on the way.

We'll post tonight. Stay Tuned.

MDP + MET + MEP = ? (Reinventing Faith Education)

If there were no such thing as Sunday School and you wanted to invent faith education, what would you invent?

Here's a formula I've been teaching in 66 cities thus far this year.

MDP + MET + MEP = ?

MDP = Most Dedicated People

There are people in your church who would take a bullet for a kid without thinking twice. They're called parents. You can't hire that out. There are people in your church who have access to the kids every night. They're called parents. They can set the tone for faith incubation from cradle to graduation. Why wouldn't you use them? They are the most dedicated. They are the most committed. (Mothers turned prematurely gray and went up two dress sizes for the kids. THAT's commitment!)

If there were no such thing as Sunday School and you wanted to invent faith education, WHY WOULDN'T you want ONLY the most dedicated people teaching the kids the faith?

Everyone else is just a hired hand. A loving hired hand, maybe, but a hired hand just the same.

MET = Most Effective Time

Neurologically, the most effective time for ANY education (if you want it to stick) is NOT Sunday morning at 9:15. The most effective time for ALL education is the five minutes before you go to sleep. Whatever you return to, reflect upon and plant into the young mind just before you turn out the lights will become the filter by which all the events of the day are sorted, processed and connected as sleep begins and the day's memories move from the short-term scratch pad (hippocampus) into the long-term hard-drive (neo cortex) wherein all deeper meaning is made. If there were no such thing as Sunday School, why wouldn't you want to do your faith education at the most effective time of the day for the young (and old) brain?

Why is sleep so important for memory and meaning?

Your brain is only consciously aware of 1/10,000 of all the information that comes across the senses in any given day. It is only on a good night's sleep that the events of the day are sorted out, filtered, and solidified into memory. It is during sleep that those events which had relevance shift over from the short-term scratch drive to the long-term hard-drive to connect with the rest of your stored memories to create meaning.

If you want to teach kids the faith at the most effective time neurologically, Sunday morning needs to shift from being the ONLY faith encounter of the week to being the servant of the MOST EFFECTIVE time for meaning=making. Sunday becomes the day when you hand out the "play" for the week... to the parents AND kids together. That means a shift from the parent-less Sunday School systems we've been perpetuating to a cross-generational learning experience.

If you want to connect the MDP's with the MET's, you will ask the parents to be with the kids AT A MINIMUM at the large group opening and closing for Sunday School as you unveil the scripture, story and song of the week. At a maximum, you'll keep parents, kids and the whole community together the whole hour to get the "play" for the week. You'll learn the faith story and song and sign for the week, create engaging "show and tell" art together, and waltz right into the next hour's worship to LEAD it as part of the service. Then you'll challenge everyone to return to the theme verse seven nights that week as steps 2 and 3 in the FAITH 5.

MEP = Most Effective Practices

If there were no such thing as Sunday School and you wanted to invent effective faith education that could start on a Sunday and go home seven nights a week, why wouldn't you teach the whole brain when you unveil a Bible theme?

This is where whole-brain learning comes in. Your ears can process up to a maximum of 10,000 bits of information a second. Your eyes can process up to 7 billion bps. Scan the brain while you're sitting and listening, and you'll only see about 5% of the brain light up. Scan it when you're looking at a beautiful painting, fun prop, or engaging smile, and you'll see 35 - 33% of the brain light up. Scan it when you're singing the theme verse, signing the theme verse, creating art on the theme verse and TEACHING what you just learned to others, and you'll see MOST of the brain light up.

If all you do is bring a picture or a prop into teaching, you have a quantum leap more retentive power as a teacher. However, if you really want to connect and engage, you connect every lesson to ALL the senses.  Then you turn the kids and parents together into worship leaders every week as they share what they have learned and created with the whole faith community.

As you begin a MEP teaching session, you intentionally open the kid before you open the book. You focus on multi-sensory learning. You see, hear, touch, taste, smell and emotionally connect every lesson to life. You engage guests in the creation of the arts to share WITH the whole cross-generational faith community in worship. You get the imagination, emotions and body involved in the scripture by singing and signing and arting the theme. Then, after turning the whole faith community into worship leaders,  you send the theme home by calling parents and kids  to take five minutes a night - every night - to return to the theme 7 nights a week in their home huddle.

Put the Most Dedicated People to work at the Most Effective Times using the Most Effective Practices, you have something.

You've connected education to worship to the home. You've replaced a weekly program with a nightly process. You've replaced the Sunday School teacher with the parents in 7/8 of the faith education. Sunday has become the place that gets you started with the theme for a week of faith encounters with the people who love you.

You've brought God into the close of each day.

Now that's faith incubation of the most effective kind!

(PS - The FAITH 5 bar above is an idea from Laura Stover at 1st Presbyterian in Fort Dodge. She modifies the wrapper of a  TAKE 5 candy bar and hands them out each week to help people to remember the nightly faith component that ties education to worship to the home)

Preschool Bible Song

Hey Tanya,

Great to hear from you, and great to hear the graphics won over your husband!

Yes, I've spent a year working on preschool theory, systems, models and proto-arts-based curriculum designs. It hasn't quite made its way into Bible Song yet, but I'm anxious to get that started (after I finish my last dozen cities this fall - including Fort Dodge, IA this Sunday afternoon/evening and Omaha later on).

And yes, when the time is right, I'd love to have you consider testing.

Now, for the preschool problem: Sorry to hear the preschool kids didn't have a good experience.

If the parents and kids are together experiencing the theme opening, arts creation time, and show-and-tell closing, you have an infinitely better chance of the verse going home Monday - Saturday, and them continuing the faith incubation all week long.

The very best way to do Bible Song - and all faith education if you want it to get home and make a maximum impact - is to KILL the drop-off mentality and have parents AND kids together. That means the preschool director is NOT EVER bringing a group of 3 - 5 year olds into a strange room. That means parents bring their own kids into a fun, active, energetic space and from the safety of the parent's lap, they are drawn in to the music, motion and joy.

Imagine a preschool teacher bringing a pew full of 3 - 5 year olds into a regular worship service.

It's just not going to work.

If you have specific suggestions for what the little ones - and their parents - should have in their hands to supplement the theme materials at their cognitive level, I'm all ears.

And, if you know of anyone near Fort Dodge who needs a little Melheimian shot-in-the-arm-kick-in-the-pants, send 'em over to www.faithink.com.

Blessings, blessings, blessings!

Your servant in Christ,

Rich

________________________________________

Rich,

Again, I know you are very busy. So, I will try to make this short.  I
attended a conference in Des Moines (Plymouth Congregational) a few
months ago, purchased Bible Song and had our first Sunday yesterday.

You mentioned to me at the conference that you are in the development
stage of a preschool program but that you might be interested in a
church willing to test it and provide feedback. What are your current
thoughts on this?

Our preschool director brought kids into my first Sunday teaching Bible
Song that were from 3 to 5 years old.  (They have always been in their
own class and some have recently moved up from the nursery!)  I had kids
crying and scared and I was so disappointed because I have become quite
passionate about FaithInk, knowing it is just what our church needs.

I have made a proposal to our director to consider some other options
and wanted to know if the possibility of being a 'tester' for your
preschool program was even on the horizon.

If you have time, maybe you could let me know about that.

Thank you for using your skills to create something so relevant.  My
husband, the skeptic, looked over my shoulder as I was preparing and
said, "Wow, I'm really impressed with those graphics.  That is high
quality."  Then he spent four hours helping me get my room media-ready!!

Tanya Milledge
Oskaloosa, Iowa

Post Rapture Pet Insurance

Okay, this is funny.

http://eternal-earthbound-pets.com/

Senior High as Leaders

Planning a class for Senior high youth is really tricky these days. High Schoolers seem more like college-aged kids than they did even 5 years ago. Unless it’s THEIR idea, and unless their FRIENDS are in on it, they don’t seem to have time for one more thing. Especially at church.

I've got a 16 year old who started school yesterday, and he's worlds beyond where I was back in the... er... last millennium.

Senior high youth don't have the time for "one more program." They're programmed out. They always DO seem to have time for their friends, though. No matter how busy life gets, they make friends a priority. And they MAY have time for a significant ministry, if they were leading it, not just sitting as a spectator.

Maybe getting senior high kids to LEAD a topic each week, first in their own peer group at a breakfast, then as junior guides or Sunday School helpers would work.

Asking them to "take" a course that you teach probably won't work.

They're just too busy.

By the way, how do you become a leader?

You lead.

Scrapping V: The Real Seasons of the Church

Thoughtful comment from Randy Brant of SOTV yesterday. Here's my thought on his thought:

Whether we keep and try to tweak the RCL or conceive of something new that preaches from one end of the Bible to the other over three/four years to teach Scripture as a whole, we've got to figure out the text/context problem and connect the pulpit to the REAL seasons of our people's lives, not the artificial seasons of the church year.

TEXT/CONTEXT

If the job of the preacher, according to Barth, is to enter the pulpit with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other (text/context), then yes, any given Sunday's context has a LOT to do with the turkey on the table or the midnight sale at Best Buy. That's the people's world, so drawing their present reality into the sermon makes a lot of sense. Their present reality also includes school starting, going to the voting booth, piling up credit card debt, post-holiday depression, waiting for the first buds to pop out on the trees, waiting for the diagnosis, saying "goodbye" to their baby in a minivan loaded with college stuff, finding grandpa a nursing home that he won't wander out of in the middle of the night.

Whether the RCL is kept and tweaked or something new is created is not the issue. Whatever the text,  the preacher needs to connect the text to the context (which certainly does include the "season") in a real, refreshing and relevant way. And it wouldn't hurt of this week's lesson connected with last week's lesson and next weeks lesson AND the real season of the culture.

So, what are the REAL seasons of the year?

NOT ADVENT, BUT SCHOOL STARTING

For our culture, Advent doesn't start the new year. New Years may start the new year. But for anyone with kids, the School Year starts the new year. That means in my world - trying to help churches help families help kids, the church year starts the Sunday after Labor Day.

Today.

(I'm at First Presbyterian in Fort Dodge  helping them start the REAL church year today with a heavy dose of parental committment)

THE REAL SEASONS

After the REAL start of the year, there is the season of brats and beer (what we call Football).

This is followed by the season of shopping and cheer (what we call Advent).

Followed by the season of debt and drear (post-holiday depression, credit-card debt, seasonal affect disorder brought on by dark and cold - what we in Minnesota call winter).

Then there's the season of "I can't wait until summer is here!" (That's a long one in my house.)

And a season of budding trees and buzzing bees and expectancies.

And a season of concerts and proms and graduation parties.

And a season of barbeques and weddings and soccer and skinned knees and fireworks and maybe a week or two of vacation.

After that, it's back to the same old cycle again (brats and beer, shopping and cheer, debt and drear...)

FORCING THE ANTIQUATED AND ARTIFICIAL
(on a culture that doesn't know what you're talking about)

For all practical purposes in our culture today, there is no season of Pentecost. There is no season of Epiphany. There is no season of Lent.

We can try to keep these relics alive and teach the unknown, unpracticed seasons to our ill-attended classes. Preach them from a far-removed pulpit. We can try to make these foreign-sounding church words and non-celebrated seasons connect to their world and reality. It's a noble, if not hopeless, effort. But the fact in the mainline is that MOST people do not celebrate, understand, or live their lives any where near the seasons of the church year. They have their own seasons. If we want them to live in, with, and under the seasons of OUR church year, we're fighting a losing battle.

Most of our official church "members" are not in church MOST Sundays. (Do half of your people worship each week? You're wonderfully odd). For those who ARE in church, 90% of the adults aren't taking part in adult education. And because the RCL is set around seasons that aren't understood or practiced by our culture (except shopping season and chocolate bunny season) it doesn't appear to even our regular worshipers to have a coherent, logical understanding of Scripture as a whole or the connection between the chosen text and the actual season they're living in. 

Compoud this with the way we're teaching and preaching to a post-television culture (mostly talking AT them), and I'd guessing that 90% of the regular worshipers can't tell you what the Gospel text was last week, let alone connect it with the broader picture of Scripture as a whole.

Scripture as a Whole

Scripture as a whole. Now there's a phrase.

We need to figure out how to teach Scripture as a whole and connect TEXT to CONTEXT - the actual context/seasons of their lives - not the seasons we'd like them to celebrate.

What we're doing now, I fear, is falling through the cracks. It's not Scripture as a whole.

It's Scripture in a hole.

That's just plain lousy stewardship.

Mill stones, anyone?

Scrapping Lectionary IV: Baby and Bathwater

Some good comments were made on my first post this week on the topic of scrapping the lectionary. Yes, I stand corrected in that I see Ezekiel and the Dry Bones showing up on Easter Vigil and Lent 5A. My mistake. (Easter Vigil, however, is a service that few do and fewer attend, so for all practical purposes, I'm guessing that that particular service doesn't expose very many folks to the Dry Bones story).

Dave's comments on the RCL arising out of ecumenical conversations are valid, too. I'm wrestling with that one. Does having tens of millions of people hearing the same text preached on the same Sunday outweigh the fact that few of them remember it on Monday and apply it to their lives on Tuesday and know how last week's text relates to next week's text or where it fits in the Bible narrative?

And finally yes, Dave's point about the baby and bathwater is worth considering. The baby should never be thrown out with the bath water, although if that baby grows up and moves away and never comes home, we need to find a way of inviting the baby back from time to time - not just to watch our old home movies, but to show a particular interest in the no-longer-baby's life. Either that or we need to get busy and conceive a new baby.

When it comes to keeping the RCL and trying to make it conform to the present reality of the post-Christian-Biblically-illiterate-rarely-worshipping culture, I fear the baby has already moved out.

That leaves us with the conception angle.

I kinda like conception. Conception is messy, but it's a lot more fun.

Scrapping the Lectionary, Keeping the Seasons? (Post III)

Let's say there was no such thing as the Lectionary. (There isn’t for all practical purposes to 98% of the American populace. Let's say you're a preacher, there is no Lectionary, and you wanted your post-modern people to get a good grasp on the Bible.

What would you invent? What would you teach? How would you teach it? What would you preach? How would you preach it? What kind of a balanced set of readings would you choose that made some logical scope and sequence sense to the Biblically illiterate masses? At the Biblically illiterate mass?

If you were setting out to invent something to fill a need, the first question a prudent theologian/preacher/teacher/social systems change agent might ask would be:

A. What are we trying to accomplish? (If we don’t know where we are going, any road will take us there.)

The second question is a pulse check, and is rather important:

B. Who do we have to work with? (What is the basic starting point with regards to the people's  experience/knowledge base/frame of reference)

The third:

C. If we had to start with what we’ve been dealt – B -  what might the best ways be to bring the good folks from where they are currently to where we want them to be? Let's start with A...

THE GOAL: Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that the preacher/leader’s goal is Biblical literacy, a thorough knowledge and love of the Word and Will of God, the understanding that God still speaks today through the Word working to transform lives and bless the world in, with, and under God’s people, the church. Let's add a goal that the people are touched so deeply by their encounter with the Word that they take what is heard, learned, and absorbed out the doors and into action in the real world every week.

THE REALITY: Looking at the hand we’ve been dealt, the reality is that the bulk of the seasons of the church year are unknown, unobserved and irrelevant to our culture. Like it or not, that’s the way it is. My friend Monty always like to say, “You don’t have to live in reality, but you ought to visit it once in a while.” The reality is, the seasons of the church year are only the seasons of the church. Not of the culture. The two seasons the culture still understands are:

Advent/Christmas
Easter

They don’t really understand Lent, Pentecost, Transfiguration, Shrove Tuesday, or the day of Holy Innocents and Martyrs. (My anniversary. My wife and I still don’t know who’s who after 30 years of marriage).

If they only know Christmas and Easter, let’s keep these two seasons and treat them as “temples to the unknown god”, telling people what they’re here for and claiming them back for Jesus. So, where do we start?

Advent/Christmas

To American society, Advent starts unofficially as soon as the Halloween candy goes on sale November 1 and officially at midnight on Thanksgiving weekend on the sidewalk outside  Best Buy. Four weeks of Advent will work for the culture. Santa’s already ringing bells. Thus it will work for the church.   We can keep Advent and keep reminding the folks over and over and over that it’s the birthday of Jesus,  that our modern history is still recorded by the BC and AD (even BCE is but one step from the question “what started the common era), and that Jesus is the reason for the season and his birth is the one central, pivotal event of human history. Santa never died for anyone’s sins. He was simply and clearly a good man who honored the Almighty Baby Jesus with acts of love and charity... Not a jolly old elf.

Let’s keep Advent. Society has a frame of reference, and we can turn it into a frame of reverence.

Lent/Easter

To society, Easter starts unofficially when the chocolate bunnies and new spring line and colors come out at Walmart and officially at 4:59 pm on Easter weekend. Seven weeks of Lent don’t mean anything. More Americans can tell you what happens in New Orleans on Marti Gras than can tell you what Fat Tuesday meant or what it was supposed to launch... The fasting and penitence of a whole season to honor Christ’s suffering and sacrifice for sin.

Let’s keep Lent. Society still sees Ashes walking around on foreheads and that logo can become a new moniker for launching annual weeks of sacrificial loving and giving leading up to the Empty Tomb and a proclamation of freedom and hope.

Pentecost?

The only other argument for a church season I’d keep would be Pentecost. It’s the Birthday of the Church. People understand Birthdays. But to have a whole season of it – one that starts 50 days after an Easter that is calculated by its relationship to an astronomical full moon somehow relating to the full moon at the time of Jesus’ resurrection – I don’t think so.

Let’s keep the Pentecost Sunday celebration, and scrap the season. The WHOLE of the church year should be about new life, new growth, the power of the Holy Spirit to touch lives and the “see how these Christian’s love one another” that took the pagan culture by storm. (You can argue theology until you’re blue in the faith... Er... Face. But you can’t argue love!) Let's not have a season of Pentecost.

Let's have a church of Pentecost.

So, there you have it. I’d teach three seasons, and the rest of the year teach the Bible in a logical scope and sequence from one end to the other. Do it once a year, once every three years or how many years you think it will take to do a decent, understandable, thorough job. That part if up to you... although I have my own little spreadsheet on a three and four year lectionary that I think would be reasonably effective and rather fun to try if anyone wants to look at it.

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Insights? Threats and complaints?

I'm all for it.

It's go time.

Scrapping the Lectionary, Keeping the Seasons (Post II)

 

Here's one from Rev. Todd Hunter in Davenport that got me going:

Rich: I have had similar thoughts and agree with your analysis of the RCL.  As you know, I take seriously the pastors responsibility to make the necessary contextual connections for the assembly.  I do this through the liturgy, though I am not claiming that I have solved the problem.  I was taught in Seminary (WTS) that the RCL would keep preachers like me from going off on personal tangents.  I have been to enough text studies to know nothing keeps some preachers from dragging their personal "stuff" into a text and into the pulpit.

Here is a question for you: if I scrap the lectionary, do I also scrap seasons?  Don't texts also fit seasonal themes like hope in Advent, or repentance in Lent?  While I am sure there will be little weeping and gnashing of teeth in most congregations over the loss of the RCL and church seasons, then won't we need some kind of new paradigm for worship?

Regarding the Lectionary, you are absolutely right. It is supposed to keep preachers balanced and off their personal soapboxes, but they’ll preach on their main theme no matter what the text. Always have. Always will. Regarding the new paradigm for worship, you are absolutely right. The year 2005 was a watershed in the history of human technology. It was the year internet use surpassed television screen time among out teens. Anyone under 20 - and every generation after them - will not be satisfied to sit and listen to your show. If they aren't activists in constructing their own worship experience, they'll not sit for 7 seconds - let alone 57 minutes - to watch anything you put on. But that's a topic for another day.

Let me give you “Scrap the Seasons” question some thought.

Off hand, I’d keep Advent.Christmas, Lent/Easter and maybe Pentecost, but I’d dump the rest. I'll tell you why tomorrow.

Grandkids Teaching Grandmas

Here's a fun twist to "The  FAITH 5" from my old seminary room mate, Rev Mark Braaten at Our Saviors Lutheran in Tyler, Texas:

Hi Rich,

Just a quick update, we've started using Faith 5 with 8 test families.  So far it's going great.  One of the families had grandmother stay over and watch the 4 kids one night because the parents had to be gone.

The kids demanded that grandmother be taught how to do Faith 5 so they could do it at bedtime.  

We're also going to use some of the Bible Song materials in our Sunday school and during our Children's Sermons.  We just started, but it's going to be fun!  Thanks for your work!