The Melheimian Sabbatiblog

Weddings, Tornados and Family Time

Back at the cabin after a quick weekend wedding in Colorado. Outdoors under a thundering and threatening sky (omens) my best friend's only daughter married a wonderful young man. The blessing Arlen gave was really touching and beautiful. He choked up and almost didn't make it through. I'm so glad my kids got to hear it.

Back at the cabin now to finish the cartoons for my "Songs of Israel" book. 15 Psalms and parables intersecting. Just had a cup of coffee with the Rev. Patrick Patterson and heard something rather profound. He and his kids had to hightail it to the dark, dingey, cob-webbed basement in their 1880's house for the second tornado warning in two nights on Friday. They sat playing cribbage while the sirens wailed and the wind blew. When the all-clear sounded and Patrick said, "Okay, it's over. Let's go upstairs", his 9-year-old Aaron said, "Couldn't we just stay down here? We never get to be together like this."

Makes you think, don't it? In our over-scheduled, over-stressed, over-programmed world, our children still crave our time.

Does it take a tornado warning to get you together as a family?

Enjoying Estes Park today before our third wedding in three weekends. Went to see "Knight and Day" last night in the oldest movie theater in the US. Great flick! Enjoying the mountain scenery, a Scandinavian festival (roots, doncha know) and a hike in the mountains before the wedding.

Also enjoying advertizing which litters the scenery, like the sign at the casino in Nederland "Ribs! All You Can Eat! No Restrictions! (Must be over 18).

Lock Up

I'm locked up at the cabin working on a new book. It's the fifth of eight in the Bible Song series: The Songs of Israel.

I'm combining 15 psalms with 15 parables of Jesus and 15 pieces of He Qi art. It's a bit of a challenge, but it's coming together.

Sun rises on the lake. Silence all day long - except for the egret squawcking on the dock and the wind in the cottonwoods. I treat myself to the 5:30 news each night for the first human voice I hear each day, then back to work and Letterman for the last human voice.

Right now the 15 stories are pasted on the floor-to-ceiling windows facing the lake, staring at me as I stare at them.

Joseph called to wish me a happy father's day. He's at Camp Metigoshe on CIT week. I think of him often up there in my old stomping grounds, and pray for him six times a day to grow deeply in Jesus.

He Qi and the Prophets

My friend He Qi (www.heqigallery.com) is back in China for the summer, and asked me for ideas for his next paintings. Here's what I suggested:

Dear He Qi,

I have an idea that I think think would be very popular and enjoyed by Christian Sunday School children, and also by the Jewish Museums and Galleries who enjoy your work. I think it would be wonderful to create a whole series of art based on the "Prophets of the Old Testament."

You already have paintings of Moses, Jonah, and Elijah. Maybe you could paint the rest of the famous prophets and someday have a whole series that could turn into a show. The four most important prophets that you have not painted yet are called the "Major Prophets". Their books are the largest prophet's books in the Bible, and their stories are very important to Christian educators and to Jewish scholars. It think it would be important if you could have a painting on each of them. I would suggest you consider painting:

1. DANIEL IN THE LION'S DEN (Daniel 6:16-22)

The Prophet Daniel is thrown into a cave filled with hungry lions by the king. God's angel comes and shuts the mouths of the lions to protect him. The next morning the king looks down from a hole in the ceiling of the cave and sees Daniel safe, protected by the angel from the hungry lions. Here are some ideas from Google.


2. EZEKIEL AND THE VALLEY OF DRY BONES (Ezekiel 37:1-14)

The Prophet Ezekiel has a vision of a great valley filled with bones. The wind from God sweeps over the valley and turns the bones into a great nation of people to serve the Lord. Here are some ideas from Google.

3. ISAIAH'S VISION OF GOD (Isaiah 6: 1-8)

The Prophet Isaiah has a vision of God sitting on a great throne. Angels with six wings each fly up and down, attending to God. Smoke fills the temple. Hot fire coals are sitting on the altar of God, and an angel takes coals from the fire and touches the lips of the Prophet Isaiah to make his mouth speak for God. Here are some ideas on Google.

4. JEREMIAH'S CALL (Jeremiah 1:1-13)

The prophet Jeremiah is called from the womb to be a prophet to the nations. When he grows to a teenager, he is called to start preaching. He says "I am only a boy! I do not know how to speak!" God says, "Do not say 'I am only a boy! I will be with you."

This is a very wonderful story for Sunday School teachers and children. God can use everyone, even the young! I could see a painting of God's hand coming down (verse 9) and touching the mouth of a baby still in the womb! Some other images/symbols in the painting could be the branch of an almond tree (verse  11) and a boiling pot on a fire (verse 13).

There are not a lot of famous images of this Bible story, but Chagal did one: Jeremiah.

Maybe your painting could be the most famous!

I hope you like these ideas. Let me know what you think.

Blessings,

Rich


We'll see if He Qi likes these ideas, and I'll post his first sketches here if he does so you can follow his progress.

Bodies, Cells and Dis-Ease

If the family is the fabric of society, some say our fabric is wearing thin. If families are the cells in the body of a culture, some say that our body is under attack; or at least, in a state of social and ethical dis-ease.

It doesn’t take an expert to see why. Parents are over-stressed, over-committed and under-communicating when it comes to transmitting faith and values. They have little or no regularly scheduled time set aside to talk about things that really matter with their children. An entire generation is being raised by electronic baby-sitters. Children are bombarded by a myriad of messages, many of them violent and negative. They know millions of stories, but they do not know their own parents’ stories. 

At this same moment when our children need the gifts of time, attention, and wisdom the most, the elders of our society are increasingly segregated from them. The Builders who weathered the Great Depression and WWII are soon gone. Mainline churches are withering. Social programs are constantly being down-sized even as our cultural problems are being super-sized. The vehicles that have provided the foundation of faith and values in America since the Pilgrims landed are losing their social significance, membership and cultural clout.

If the body (society) can be no healthier than its cells, we must find new and effective ways to bring health directly to the cells.

avalanches

How do you cause an avalanche? You don’t. You can’t.

You can only set the conditions in place under which an avalanche might occur. You must put the right levers in the right places in the right order with the right pressure at the right time. After that, an avalanche will either happen or it won’t. You can’t force it, but you can work to improve the odds.

How do you cause an avalanche of positive social change? You don’t. You can’t. You can only set the conditions in place that better your odds. The right levers, the right places, the right order, the right pressure, the right time – these create the right conditions.

The Police, the Media and the Schools

Jack Welch studied revolutions before taking the reigns of GE in the 90s. He said any fool can start a revolution, but it takes the control of three things to maintain the revolution: the police, the media and the schools.

If you're hoping to create a faith revolution to revive Christian education and secure the future of the church before the last kid walks out the door forever and the church dies, you've gotta ask yourself:

1. Who are the police in my church, and how do I get them on the side of the revolution?

2. What are the media, and how do I harness them?

3. What are the main schools, and how do I maximize them to achieve the creation and sustaining of the revolution?

POLICE

To enlist the police, you must first find out who they are and what they need. The police will need to know your heart and your head - both your passion and your plan for the future. They want order. They want stability. They want life. They want a future and a hope. You can't simply start a revolution and hope they take your side. They've got to know the "why" behind the "what" of your plan, or they will sink you. Fast.

MEDIA

To enlist the media, you must first ask "how is information most effectively transferred around here" and  "who has the influence around here?" and "who listens to whom?" and "what motivates people to make something a priority?"  It doesn't take long in a church to understand that the bulletin is nearly worthless as a means of information/motivation, a generic announcement from the lectern saying "everyone is welcome" actually means "no one needs to show up", and people aren't sitting around waiting for you to give them one more thing to do. Media that truly entertains (en=into, ter=their land, tain=hold) captures their attention and gets into their land (the world of their needs) and holds them. In a world where we are bombarded by noise and commercial messages trying to sell us something, about the ONLY media we listen to is honest, sincere people telling real stories about their lives and sharing realy testimonies of what matters to them. If you're going to enlist the media, you'll do nothing better than enlist people to share their hearts and stories with people.

SCHOOLS

And then there's the schools. The home is the first and most influential school you'll ever have. Mommy lap or daddy's knee* is the most powerful place we'll ever learn. You can't fix a broken system by ignoring the MOST IMPORTANT piece of that system. You'll never pull off a faith revolution without the parents.

Period.

If your Christian education system is not recruiting, training and motivating the parents to BE the primary faith mentors, teachers and role models for their own kids, you will fail to reach MOST of the kids.

Period.

You'll also never pull off a faith revolution without enlisting the pulpit. Like it or not, they majority of adults will never attend any adult ed. The only adult ed. you can hope they'll attend will be worship. The only cross-generational learning most people will ever attend is worship. The only possible place you can get the whole family on board with a single, clear message to equip them for the week is the pulpit.

That makes the pulpit both the primary school and the PRIMARY school. Without proclaiming the centrality of the parent's role from the pulpit - and hitting it again and again and again - you'll never pull off your faith revolution. If you have a choice between sending the kids to Sunday School and the parents to worship (or coffee), or closing the Sunday School and keeping the family together in a blurred worship/learning environment, anyone with half a brain would kill off the Sunday School and keep worship.

How's that for revolutionary?

(SIDEBAR: Ever wonder about the words "genuine" and "genuflect" - and what they have to do with each other? Here's dictionary.com's info: 1620–30;  < ML genūflectere  to bend the knee, equiv. to L genū-,  s. of genu knee  + flectere  to bend.

A "genuine" child was one who was welcomed and accepted on the father's knee.

Soccer

Yeah, a tie in soccer is like kissing your sister.

Here's a fun little diagram on how different nations plan their soccer plays.

I'd like to see one on how different denominations plan their evangelism strategy.

Any takers?

Here's an idea: Rather than spending the summer recruiting age-specific Sunday School teachers to teach someone else's kids the faith, why not recruit Christian parents to be Christian parents?

Spent the last 2 days after my niece's wedding with my sisters and their families getting sunburned on a Wilmington, NC, beach. Water was clear as glass. Sun burning down.

All the world's races were lying leisurely on the beach, bobbing in the surf, and picking up shells. Cute little fresh-skinned toddlers slathered in 50 sunblock. Old Lazrushian leathered skin, wrinkled as an alligator bag. Everything in between.

I followed a jellyfish for a half hour. It was surrounded by tiny fish working to stay as close to it as possible for protection from larger fish. Staying close to it made them seem bigger. They swam like one unit.

Dreamed last night about tiny fish escaping aquariums in a room without windows. I'd catch them and throw them back in their jars, but they would just float out again... back to danger.

I wonder what that says about youth ministry and/or parenting?