The Listening Ear

What's Great About Confirmation

I know that I have spoken before about how much I enjoy our confirmation ministry. Admittedly, there’s work that needs to go into this ministry, preparing for learning events, leading the confirmation team (along with the great help I get from Helga Calkins), writing letters for parents and mentors. There are a lot of details that need to be managed.

Last night I met with the students and their parents. We acknowledged that pressures on adolescents have grown and that the support systems for our kids have weaken in many ways. We try to carry out a ministry to our confirmands that fosters relationships—with their peers, with significant adults, with the church and most importantly with Jesus.

I’ve said many times, if we don’t accomplish anymore that teaching kids how to pray regularly, we’ve made a significant impact on their lives. Jesus becomes real to them, someone with whom they can have a significant relation.

Of course, we try to do much more than that and one thing that’s important to us is to try to enlist parents in our efforts to encourage faith in our kids. A simple activity that can yield a host of benefits is something we call the home huddle.

Basically we encourage parents and youth to covenant with each other to spend 10-15 minutes each evening with each other. During that time, we encourage them to talk about their highs and lows for the day. What’s the best thing that’s happened and what’s the worst thing that has happened.

We also encourage them to reflect briefly on a verse of Scripture. Finally, we ask them to pray together—to thank God for the highs and to ask God to help with the lows.

This is a simple process, but if it is done over time, it can yield great benefits. It draws parents and kids closer to each other and to God.

We tell parents, you don’t have many years anyone that your junior high youth will be living in your home. The next years will go by quickly. Why not make the most of the time you have and one way to do it is to have the nightly home huddle.

Small Group Ministry

I met with the new Small Group Ministry team for the first time last night. The purpose of the team is to support and encourage small group ministry in our congregation. I don’t really know a better way for Christians to grow in their faith than being part of a small group Bible study.

Most people have a high regard for the Bible, in theory at least. Yet, I recently heard about one survey that found that in a given year only 6% of the members in an average congregation participated in any kind of Bible study and that only about half had ever participated in a study of the Bible.

If the Bible is to have any real impact on our lives, we need to be reading the Word and learning from it on a regular basis. Small groups are an excellent place for this to happen.

A new Small Group Ministry team has begun making plans to encourage small group participation this fall. Beginning September 13, I am planning to do a sermon series on the book of James. The Small Group Ministry team is suggesting that as small groups start meeting this fall, that they consider using a study focusing on James. Samples of materials on James will be available for people to look at to make sure the material fits their group. A couple of choices will be offered.

During the sermon series (and probably after it is finished), I plan to lead a larger group study of James during the Sunday school hour. The study will take place in the church fellowship hall. I am looking forward to what we can discover in this somewhat neglected book for the Bible.

The Small Group Ministry team would like to know which small groups are already planning to begin meeting this fall. If you are part of a small group that is planning to start meeting again this fall, please let the church office know and give us the name of a contact person for the group so the team knows where to send small group information.

The Small Group Ministry team is also looking for individuals who would be willing to host a new small group either in their home or at the church. If you are interested, please contact the church office about that as well.

Have Your Heard About The Girl Effect

Garr Reynolds recently used his blog to highlighted a Youtube video that demonstrates the power of a presentation that uses text as its only images. We often heard that a picture is worth a 1000 words; this presentation demonstrates how text elements can also have great impact in a visual presentation.

Nevertheless, what I appreciate most is the actual message of the video. Here’s the video if you want to watch it.

I am happy to say that the Western Iowa Synod has working with our Companion synod, The Southern Diocese of the Lutheran Church in Tanzania, to implement this approach. In 2005 I had the privilege to be there when our two church dedicated the site of a new girls school at Igumbilo in Tanzania. Each year more girls are able to attend secondary school there. The Southern Diocese has the philosophy that if you educate a girl, you change a family, a village and eventually the nation. I am glad that St. Paul Lutheran has been supporting the girls school as one of its Tanzanian projects.

Another Taylor Mali Video

I have already featured Taylor Mali on one of the videos on my blog, but here’s another that makes perfect sense to me. He is entertaining, insightful and speaks with great conviction. See for yourself.

The Value Of A Teacher

Marko has been on a role lately, featuring some great videos on his blog. This is the best so far. It contains a powerful message on the value of good teachers. (It does have a hand gesture and a single swear word at the end that make it PG, but it is still worth hearing.)

One of my favorite blogs is Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed. Lately Scot has been featuring a series of posts on a book by Kevin Bain titled What the Best College Teachers Do. Scot’s description of the book has put it on my to-read list. (I can’t get to it yet because there are too many other books I already have to read.) Here’s a snippet of McKnight’s take on the theme of the book:

Less successful teachers see students as tanks ready to be filled. Good teachers see students as model constructors who need help in reconstructing the model that is already at work in their head. Learners undergo deep-seated transformations and affect heart and mind and lead to continued growth. So, good teachers see the classroom as a place for intellectual development instead of just absorbing information from the teacher/master/scholar. (Find the complete post here.)

That description fits my notion of teaching. I’m not sure I realize that ideal as much as I would like, but it is my goal to do so. I think that this approach has a lot to say about how one functions as a preacher and a teacher in the church. Let me give two examples

The first is confirmation ministry. When I went through confirmation instruction, the ‘fill the tank model’ was what all that was practiced in church. We were required to memorize passages of Scripture and everything in Luther’s Catechism besides. We were expected to recall the details of significant stories in the Scriptures. We were told what we should think about the faith, not how we could think for ourselves about faith.

I want to say that this approach wasn’t all bad. Memorization, for instance, is an under-utilized discipline for personal growth. It can be helpful when we want to internalize a passage of Scripture or a particular insight into the faith. But memorization is most effective when the learners decide on their own to memorize something to make this piece of information, this insight something they can retain.

The goal our confirmation ministry team has adopted is much more relational in its focus than the confirmation instruction I experienced. We seek to foster stronger relationships and deeper conversations between students and their peers, with adult mentors and parents, and hopefully with Christ. If we can help kids experience prayer in a way that it is really means something to them, we believe we have accomplished something important.

I think that this approach to teaching can also be fruitful in preaching. Some time back I did a video where I described the way I had been using a dialog approach for our Grounds For Thought coffeehouse worship service. I start with a text—so far we used one of Jesus’ parables. I first ask worshippers to discuss in small table groups, what seems strange about this text. That’s an attempt to recognize that the Scriptures are from a different time and culture. Once the groups have chewed on that a bit, I invite them to report on what they see in the text. We talk about that.

Then I ask other questions:

• What are some possible meanings to this story? What might it mean for us?

• What do we think is the most important meaning the story has for us?

• How might someone different from us hear this story differently—if they were poor, non-Caucasian, or woman, for instance?

• And finally, we return again to what we think the story means for us in our situation today.

All through the dialog, I am holding up insights that seem particularly important and interjecting things I have learned from my own study of the text. But the meaning that we finally come up with for ourselves is a product of the dialog the goes on as the whole group of worshippers think and talk about the text together. Often we come up with new insights that I hadn’t discovered on my own.

In many ways, I find this way of preaching much more stimulating for myself and others, than the typical sermon as presentation model. The typical model is one where the preacher simply tries to fill up the worshippers tank for another week.