Archive for the ‘Community’ category
October 20, 2018
WORDS FROM W.W. October 20, 2018
Entitlement detoured leads to rage!
This week a 49 year old man was enraged by the fact that another car was traveling too slow in the left hand lane. He raced around the car, pulled in front, and stopped. The man got out of his car and approached the other vehicle. A man who had been seated in the front passenger seat got out and explained that his daughter, who had been driving, was learning to drive. The 49 year old was upset that she had been driving slow in the fast lane, to which the father replied that she had done nothing wrong.
The 49 year old began to physically assault the father. The daughter, who had taken a picture of the man’s license plate, was then assaulted by the man and his wife!
What put a guy over the edge? His sense of entitlement! He believed he was entitled to drive like a maniac in the left lane and someone else was keeping him from doing that! It probably meant that he would arrive third seconds later at his destination than he felt entitled to!
I discovered this statistic. In 2016 road rage was involved in 10% of the automobile fatalities in Colorado!
Entitlement is the new rage and the new form of snobbishness! It says that what a person wants is more important that what is reasonable and appropriate.
Entitlement is surfacing all over the place in our culture. It’s in the little things and the big situations. Yesterday I needed a bag of Winterizer for the lawn so I went to Lowe’s. There was a space fairly close to the store that I pulled into. When I came back out of the store a woman in her fifties, parked in the first space, was putting her purchases in the back of her vehicle. She had a cart full. After she emptied the cart she pushed it two feet, half onto the rocked area and half still on the parking space. All she needed to do was to push it another ten feet to the front of the store or thirty feet to the cart corral. I wanted to ask her if that was what her mom had taught her? I thought about taking the cart back for her, but that would have been just as insulting since she had already decided to leave it halfway on the curb.
I know, I know! Such a little thing! But it points to the bigger issue. What helps keep rhythm in our community is not as valued as what a person wants regardless of its impact on others. That lady made it difficult for someone else to park in that spot until the cart was moved, but she didn’t care. It was someone else’s problem!
Entitlement has shoved the importance of “being community” to the side. Community requires mutual respect and concern.
In the book of Acts there’s a description of the early church, a group of Jesus followers who met in the Jerusalem temple courts. Acts 4:32 describes the group this way:
“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.”
An incident that is told in the very next chapter of Acts revealed that “community” can be a very fragile existence when personal gain enters the picture, but for a while the first church, despised and persecuted by many, depended upon its sense of community for its very existence.
Perhaps that sense of needing one another, no matter how we might differ, can be rediscovered before our rage over the ridiculous curses us.
Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Freedom, Grace, Nation, Parenting, Pastor, Story, Teamwork, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: Acts 4:32, automobile fatalities, concerned citizens, entitled, entitlement, helping each other, helping one another, helping others, Lowe's, mutual concern, mutual respect, physically assaulted, road rage, the early church
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October 19, 2018
WORDS FROM W.W. October 19, 2018
I’m mostly a happy person. I smile a lot, and frown mostly at middle school students who are being doofuses!
A few weeks ago my next door neighbor’s father passed away and they traveled from Colorado to California for the funeral. Their lawn needed to be mowed, so I did it! No biggie! When they returned from their trip they expressed their gratitude for taking care of their yard.
I replied. “Happy to do it!” (He edges my sidewalk and driveway a couple of times each summer!)
I didn’t feel like I HAD to do it. I didn’t cringe about spending an extra 30 minutes cutting his grass after I mowed my own yard. I was happy to be a good neighbor in their time of sorrow.
It made me think about Jesus and his acts of service for others. The gospels include a lot of them…healing the blind man, touching the leper, restoring the paralytic, feeding the five thousand, calming the waves, raising the dead, turning water into wine…I could keep going!
In all of Jesus’ miracles, all of his acts of service, I don’t sense that he felt obligated to do any of them.
Okay! There is the exchange between him and his mom at the wedding in Cana where she seems to be saying to him, “Jesus, do something! They are running out of wine!” Jesus says that his time has not yet come, like “I do this and the cat’s out of the bag, Mom!”
I don’t think that Jesus walked around smiling all the time, but I believe he was happy to serve those in need, those who were afflicted, and those who were seen as being the unimportant and disposable.
There’s a distinct difference between feeling obligated and feeling blessed to serve. It’s noticeable in most stores and businesses where face-to-face encounters with customers are at the core of the purpose. We notice when an employee goes above and beyond for us, and we also notice when someone who is on the time clock seems like he doesn’t really want to be there and we’re more of a nuisance than a customer in need. Recently Carol and I ate at a restaurant where the hostess/greeter escorted us to a table and then said, “Your server will be…” By the end of the meal it became apparent that the “server” hadn’t read his job description!
I’ve visited churches where the attitude of the members has been “I’m here for 60 minutes and then I’m out of here!” and I’ve visited churches where the attitude has been “Can I help you find where the coffee is, the nursery is located, or be of service in some other way?”
Jesus was happy to serve, to restore broken lives, and care for those who needed a shepherd.
Today perhaps I’ll be allowed to serve someone who is in a tough spot and I’ll be happy to do it!
Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Freedom, Grace, Humor, Jesus, love, Parenting, Pastor, Story, Teamwork, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: Community service, happy to serve, helping others, Jesus' healings, obligated, obligations, required to help, restaurant server, servanthood, serving, serving one another
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October 14, 2018
WORDS FROM W.W. October 14, 2018
Years ago an amazing woman named Jeannie Dohner came to our church and talked about “The Negative Fast”. Jeannie had dealt with cancer on two different occasions and in the midst of our struggles she had noticed how negative her viewpoint had become about many things that were really blessings. During that second bout with cancer God impressed upon her the idea of “fasting” from the negative. She would not say that the negative fast cured her, but it did set her mind and attitude in a better direction.
There are plenty of people in this world who feast on the negative. They can see the bad in anything and anyone. They would have found something to gripe about when Jesus fed the 5,000! They get tired of days that are sunny and 72 degrees. Everything in the world is too expensive, even items in the free pile!
Negative people consume our energy; they dent our zest for life. I’m not sure how they got that way. Perhaps some of life’s problems and struggles pounded them for so long that they could no longer see anything positive. Maybe they’re a spitting image of either their mom or their dad! That is, their negativity is a learned behavior. They may even complain about how negative their dad was!
In our political climate there is a buffet of negativity. How many of us have grown tired of the negative political ads that paint one candidate as being the incarnation of evil and the other candidate as the new messiah? Don’t you just want to grind your teeth when one of those TV ads comes on?
And yet those ads are effective in changing people’s minds! That’s why there’s a never-ending flow of them! “Negative Nellie” wins more times than “Positive Peter”.
Which points to a sad truth! That we are more effected or influenced by the negative than we are by the positive! We tend to believe negative news more than upbeat stories.
What if we took a fast from the negative this coming week? What would that do for us? What would that do for the people around us? Perhaps, just perhaps, it might even cause the naysayers to stutter on their thoughts.
Maybe, just maybe.
Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Faith, Freedom, Grace, Jesus, love, Nation, Parenting, Pastor, Story, Teamwork, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: fasting, negative ideas, negative thoughts, negativity, political ads, positive ideas, positive thoughts
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October 13, 2018
WORDS FROM W.W. October 13, 2018
“My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry…” (James 1:19, NIV)
Yesterday I substitute taught for a 7th Grade Language Arts teacher. The lesson plan for each class consisted of taking attendance and then taking the class to the school library (now called the LMC, which stands for Learning Media Center). The school librarian would then tell the students about a few new books the LMC has and they would spend the rest of the class period silently reading.
Tough day! What did I do? Read some and did some rewriting on my book manuscript…plus, made sure the students were reading, not goofing around- a task that required considerable energy!
Libraries are not the same as they were…45 years ago. When I went to the Briggs Public Library in Ironton, Ohio you could hear a pin drop…and that pin better not drop again! It was quiet, studious, a fine place to locate one of the back wrenching volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica and do research on such interesting subjects as the Hoover Dam, mollusks, and the North Pole.
Libraries today are gathering places, social settings in the midst of books and magazines, and gaming rooms. A place in Colorado Springs where I do much of my book writing is called Library 21C. It’s a great place…as long as you have earbuds! A few weeks ago I was sitting in one of the seats at the long window counter on the lower level. A man three seats away was doing a job interview on his cell phone. Good Lord! The librarian at Briggs Public would have grabbed him by his ear lobe and marched him to the door.
Things are different! Silence is no longer golden! It’s been devalued!
One of the 7th Grade girls, who is energized by the social aspect of life, didn’t seem to be reading the book in front of her yesterday.
I’d scan the room and when my radar caught sight of her she would suddenly look down at her book. Thirty minutes into the class’s silent reading and she was on page 2. I walked over to her and said, “Hey! Let’s get busy!”
“What?”
I glanced at her book. “You’re on page 2!”
“No, page 3!”
“Okay! Page 3 and we’ve been here so long you should have read the book and written a book report on it already!”
Her eyes opened wide. “We have to do a book report!”
“No, no, no! I was exaggerating, but if you had really been reading you’d be further along than page 3.”
“I can’t think!”
“Why?”
“It’s too quiet in here!”
“What?”
“It’s too quiet! I can’t concentrate when it’s too quiet!”
“Are you serious?”
She nodded, and I realized that we were realizing- Okay, maybe I was realizing!- one of our generational differences. I read while I’m sitting in the swing on our back deck, or in my study, or at bedtime…all places where quiet and peace can follow me. This young lady operates in a world of chatter, instant communication that could better be named instant distraction, and noise.
Noise has replaced silence as the new golden. Silence is now an indication that something’s wrong. Silence also indicates that we’re listening, and in a noisy world we no longer listen very well.
And so what do I do in the midst of a culture that now values loudness and multiple mouths speaking at the same time? What do I do? I put my earbuds in and listen to the rhythmic noise of music to block out the noise of the other voices. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that it is my new silence.
Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Freedom, Humor, Parenting, Pastor, Prayer, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: Briggs Public Library, chatter, Encyclopedia Brittanica, language arts, library, middle school, middle school girls, middle schoolers, noise, quick to listen, quiet, quiet moments, quiet time, Seventh Grade, seventh grade boys, seventh graders, silence, silence is golden
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October 10, 2018
WORDS FROM W.W. October 10, 2018
At the middle school where I coach and substitute teach there are a few students who are like fertilizer. When you have them in class you can feel the gray hair growing in abundance!
They are the students who don’t function well in a structured classroom situation, or relate well to teachers and authority figures. They are the ones that consume 90% of a teacher’s attention during a class period, but refuse to do more than 50% of the assigned work.
It’s not that they’re bad kids and prepping to be juvenile delinquents. They just don’t have a problem with being the problems!
When I substitute teach in a class where there is a student who falls into this category I don’t go easy on him or her. I’ve sent a few to the office or had them join me for lunch that day away from their peer group. BUT…I always seek to greet them in the hallway in a welcoming manner. In other words, no matter what their transgression has been they’re still kids to be valued. The educational journey with some students just has a few more bends and curves in it than the rest! Some students don’t slide easily from A all the way to Z!
In the last few weeks I’ve noticed some of these students who scowl each morning as they arrive at school…hanging around after school! When the 80% of the student body who aren’t involved in after-school activities has exited the building and headed quickly away as soon as that dismissal bell sounds, these few students DON’T leave! An hour after school, if they can avoid notice, they’re still roaming the hallways or hanging out somewhere on the building perimeter. For kids who dread entering the building at 7:30 in the morning they seem to have a hard time exiting by 3:00.
They hang around.
I’ve gotten to know some of them, their histories and stories. The story is never the same. It would make for a good read if all of the personal episodes were combined together. There are students from single-parent families and students who would be going home to an empty house. There are students who live in two different households, one week with dad and one week with mom; and there are students whose parents would prefer that they stay at school for as long as they are allowed so that the parent doesn’t have to deal with them at home.
School has become their safe place and their place of consistency. In a good way it doesn’t change. It can be counted on when the rest of their lives are in chaos.
The teachers that they seem to enjoy terrorizing during class periods after 3:00 become the trusted adults that they gravitate to. A teacher that one of the “hang arounders” wouldn’t add two plus two for in class suddenly becomes the teacher the student is willing to run errands for, wipe down classroom tables, and share a snack with.
I don’t have any substantiated research data for this statement, just a feeling…an inkling…that school is where they feel valued and safe, that school is the place they can count on in their worlds where they’ve been disappointed and discarded too many times.
And so they hang around for an hour, an hour and a half, not wanting to leave and, oddly enough, in a few hours not wanting to come back.
Well…come back for class, that is! There’s work to do, new gray hairs to create!
Categories: children, coaching, Community, Freedom, Grace, Humor, love, Parenting, Story, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: difficult students, discipline problems, latchkey kids, middle school, middle school boys, middle school girls, middle school students, middle school teachers, middle schoolers, problem child, safe places, safe zones, single parent homes, split families, substitute teacher, substitute teaching, teaching, undisciplined kids
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October 7, 2018
WORDS FROM W.W. October 7, 2018
We were sitting in Cracker Barrel enjoying an unscheduled dinner out after a hectic day of substitute teaching and coaching (me) and watching the grandkids (Carol) for our oldest daughter and teacher, Kecia, who had parent-teacher conferences. Our conversation traveled through the wanderings of our days…the things the kids said, the players for the 8th Grade basketball team that I was deciding on, and national news items.
And then she was up!
A table of three sat behind us and to my left. I had noticed people sitting there on our way in, but I hadn’t given it another thought. Carol had! She went back to their table as they were finishing their meal. They were three senior citizens, one in a wheelchair, one with a cane, and the third now pushing the wheelchair as they began to leave. I heard conversation and thank you’s, but I didn’t know what exactly was happening.
And then Carol brought their meal check back to our table and put it on top of our own check. “We’re paying for their meals!”
“Okay,” I agree, knowing that it really isn’t a vote that she’s asking for. It is just how it is!
The three people are hobbling out as I say to Carol, “Well, I’d better go pay this so they don’t think they’re trying to sneak out (An impossibility taking into account their lack of speed and that they have a wheelchair!). I’ll be right back!”
The three thank me again as I come up behind them. The looks on their faces are priceless. Someone had done something really, really nice for them that had taken them back. I could tell that they’d be talking about it for the rest of the evening.
My wife is like that. She is spontaneously kind. She’ll give a quarter to a kid who is short on change for the candy he wants to buy at 7-11. She will ask someone who looks like they might be confused or lost or both if she can help them in some way. When our daughter calls at the last minute to see if Mom can watch one of the grandkids who has suddenly become ill Carol is out the door before she ends the cell phone call.
Her kindness is sometimes scheduled, but, more often than not, is spontaneous…lived out in the doings of the day. She would tell you that the Lord led her to pick up the check for those three people. It just happened. In the midst of eating her bacon and eggs God cleared her vision to see what she needed to do.
When I say “cleared her vision”, what you probably don’t know is that she had a cornea transplant operation thirty years ago because of a disease called “Keratoconus”, which is a gradual deterioration of the cornea. Her vision will never be good. She now plans her driving trips with “an eye” on when sunset is scheduled to occur because she does not like to drive in the dark anymore.
Side note: Her vision at sporting events is always 20/20 however! She sees things that the officials miss all the time!
Spontaneous kindness! It’s who she is! She will open doors for people, and always say thank you to someone who opens the door for her. She’s also not afraid to give a piece of her mind to a middle school student who has someone be kind to him, but does not acknowledge it.
And the thing is, I see that tendency towards spontaneous kindness filtering down through the next two generations of our family. Kecia goes over and above for her third grade students and her school. I remember David, our middle child who is a restaurant chef, stopping at Chick-fil-a one morning on his way to work and buying a bag of chicken breakfast biscuits for his cooking staff just to say “Thank you!” Lizi, our youngest, works with families whose children qualify for Head Start and other resources.
And now the three grandkids are showing tendencies towards being kind, not coerced to do so but rather out of the doings of daily life.
The three people walking out of Cracker Barrel with smiles as full as their satisfied tummies is just the latest blessing from the woman I married, and for the woman I married!
Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Faith, Freedom, Grace, Grandchildren, Humor, Jesus, love, marriage, Parenting, Pastor, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: being led by the Lord, being led by the Spirit, charitable, charity, Chick-fil-A, Cracker Barrel, generosity, generous, generous giving, helping others, modeling behavior, paying it forward, paying someone's bill, picking up the check, spontaneity, spontaneous
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October 6, 2018
WORDS FROM W.W. October 6, 2018
It’s a dilemma that is rapidly becoming a problem! Someone has been sitting on my stool at Starbucks, the last stool on the right at the counter that looks out towards Pike’s Peak!
It’s where I almost exclusively write my blog post! It’s my space to create, my stool to be cool!
What should I do? The man who has been sitting there doesn’t understand the history. It’s like the three bears coming home and finding Goldilocks eating their porridge!
I’ve thought about yellow caution tape wrapped around the seat, but, of course, the Starbucks corporation would probably frown on that idea. I wouldn’t want it to become another national news story about putting someone in his place…that is, anywhere that is not my space!
I mentioned it to one of the baristas who knows of the guy’s error in java judgment. She knows that stool is where I sit and gives me a look of disbelief and sympathy each morning it happens.
“Can you tell him to move?”
She looks at me with concern and compassion and says, “No.”
“Well, what time did he get here this morning?”
“I don’t know,” she responds. “He was here before I got here!”
Perhaps that’s what I’ll have to do…arrive earlier, be standing at the door as Starbucks opens at 4 A.M. Then I could take note of when the trespasser arrives and snicker! Of course, I’d have to go to bed about 8:00 the night before and Carol would be asking what in the world is going on with me?
“I’ve got to get to Starbucks when it opens. There’s a guy who’s been sitting on my stool!”
Carol will look at me like a DMV license renewal clerk. “What is this, Bill? Some kind of coffee version of Black Friday? Are you going to rearrange your whole life around the need to sit on a certain stool at Starbucks?”
“Yes!”
“Just find a different stool!”
I gasp at the idea. “That’s like me telling you to find a different husband!”
“No, it’s not even close, but if you go looney over a coffee shop stool it might be a possibility! Doesn’t this sound a little bit like when one of the grandkids is playing with a toy that one of the other grandkids wants to play with? All the one without can think about is that one toy, even though she’s surrounded by a roomful of other toys.”
“No, doesn’t sound like that at all.”
So I guess I need other options! Perhaps I could carve my name into the wood on the counter with the words “Space Reserved For” etched in before it.
Here’s the thing! I’m substitute teaching 3 to 4 days a week, so I’ve become inconsistent in my occupying of my spot. I’ve just come to expect that it will be there when I’m there, like a college student returning home on break and expecting his old room to still be the same, and to be his!
Next week, however, I’m teaching Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Wednesday is the only day, except for the weekend, where I can get to my stool. HE will probably be there, and I’ll sense the creative juices draining some my existence.
We humans are creatures of habit, some good habits and some bad…and some just plain weird!
Categories: children, Community, Freedom, Grandchildren, Humor, love, Parenting, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: behavior, Change, coffee, comfort zone, disliking change, habits, person space, personal space, Starbucks, trespassing
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October 2, 2018
WORDS FROM W.W. October 2, 2018
Carol and I were driving to Simla on Sunday morning. I was scheduled to speak to the Simla Saints, as I do many Sundays. I was ready to tell them the story of Simon Peter, who, after a night of catching no fish, is told by Jesus to cast his nets one more time. I went through the message in my mind as we drove down the road.
And then the flashing lights appeared behind me.
“I wasn’t speeding was I?”
“I don’t think so,” encouraged Carol, as she reached for the car registration.
The law enforcement officer approached my vehicle. “Good morning! Sir, you’re driving with tags that have expired. I checked a couple of places and it came back the same result.
I looked at him with bewilderment and a quick search in my mind for understanding. I went into the vault of my memory to find some evidence that I had taken care of the renewal that had expired at THE END OF MAY!…exactly four months in the rearview mirror!
Seriously, I did not remember getting the reminder card that they send you in the mail. Perhaps it got mixed in with the political ad recycle pile, or perhaps the U.S. Postal Service was to blame! Yes, that’s probably what it was!
Or perhaps I was just stupid and didn’t do it!
Innocent or ignorant, didn’t matter! It was time to pay the piper disguised as…the DMV!
My personal list of dislikes is not that long…arrogant athletes, itching hemorrhoids, speeding BMW’s, seventh graders who think they are entitled, and…going to the DMV! It’s the adult equivalent of after-school detention!
It is my penance for negligence, for being totally clueless to the fact that I hadn’t noticed something I should have for 120 days!
The DMV looks like a crowded airport terminal where several flights have been delayed. An expressionless lady greets me…kinda’…at the front counter and asks me why I have come to the DMV on the first day of October with the masses that have gotten there before me.
“To renew my tags, ma’am!” She gives me a number. I look to see if it says, “Come back tomorrow!” It doesn’t! Instead, it says that I’m number 658. I’m not quite sure what that means until I see the lit board on the wall that could double as a Bingo number board. They are now serving number 560. I’m only a hundred away!
But there are other numbers on the board as well! There’s 131, 322, and A8. It could be that I’m four hundred away, but they are trying to fool me into believing I’m close. It’s another part of the punishment strategy of the DMV. I’m convinced they have goal-planning retreats to dream up new ways to inflict pain on the mental and emotional state of those who enter its doors. In the backroom I’m envisioning their mission statement in bold script writing:
“Our mission: To test the patience of our customers who have no choice but to sit and wait!”
And so I wait! I find a seat wedged between a hefty guy wearing Old Spice and a young man focused on playing a game of some kind on his cell phone. I’m the traditionalist who has brought a book with him, Patterson and Clinton’s The President Is Missing. Ironic that I’m reading this book in the DMV, a place that is missing compassion and concern because I was missing that little sticky tag.
Two hours later my number gets called by the automated Bingo caller and I make my way, number 658 in hand, to counter number 19 where a middle-aged woman gives me a suspicious look. She reminds me of my third grade teacher who was suspicious of anything any boy in her class ever did. The memory makes me shrink into a moment of confession.
“My tags are expired. I don’t remember ever getting a card in the mail!” I plead in a pitiful way. She looks at me with disdain. I have a memory of being sent to the principal’s office and wonder if there is also such a place in the DMV. Perhaps it’s another room where you take another number and are told you can’t eat lunch that day. (I’ve noticed a sign with big bold letters as you enter that tells people that no food or drink is permitted in the DMV! People leave the place dehydrated and nutritionally depleted!)
She takes my information and tells me the total. I repeat the total to her as I begin to write my check.
“$160.43?” That’s not bad I tell myself.
“No.” She repeats the figure again. I’m $300 off! “$460.43!”
“Oh!”
I swear I hear a chuckle resonating from her. I think I see her lips whisper the words, “Sucks to be you!”
The total includes a fine for being ignorant and negligent, and to make sure you never come back to the DMV ever again!
And, you won’t believe this!…in the mail that afternoon is the renewal notice for our other vehicle. It needs to be renewed by the end of October.
I immediately renew it on line! The DMV has taught me my lesson!
Categories: children, Community, Grace, Humor, Parenting, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: car registration, Department of Motor Vehicles, forgetting, guilty, license plates, negligence, negligent, patience, penalized, penalty, penance, renewal tags, take a number, the DMV, waiting
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September 25, 2018
WORDS FROM W.W. September 25, 2018
At our middle school, as any other middle school, there has been a lot of information and discussion about bullying- what it is and what to do if you are the person who is being bullied?
This school year there has been an initiative to have students and teachers think about doing the polar opposite of bullying. It’s the idea of being kind. Teachers and administrators wear t-shirts that say “Be Kind” on the front. (I’ve got one of the t-shirts!) Since school is only into its seventh week it’s hard to make any “kind” of determination on the effect or non-effect of the initiative yet.
Students ARE influenced by slogans and sayings, images and symbols, but I’m not sure how well a school can teach kindness. It’s on a different plane than learning algebra, what the functions are of the three branches of government, or the different body parts of a grasshopper are.
From my Christian faith, kindness is one of the results that emerges in the life of a Christ-follower as he/she allows the Holy Spirit to take up residence in his/her life. Kindness, along with other characteristics like perseverance, self-control, and peace are called “fruit of the Spirit.” That’s not to say that someone who isn’t a follower of Jesus can’t be kind, but I’m more comfortable with the belief that the Spirit can develop it within my life than in the idea that it can be taught to be a part of our human nature.
Middle school students are a bizarre community of many things- kind and thoughtful, self-centered and obnoxious, unorganized and wrinkled, understanding and supportive. Perhaps teaching and emphasizing kindness will cause a number of them to think about what they say and do before they do it, but I’m hesitant to believe it will change them for a lifetime. It may simply make this school year a little more tolerable!
I’m not so naive as to believe that if someone is a Christian he/she is automatically kind. I know a lot of people who identify themselves as Christians who are simply jerks! I wouldn’t let them date my granddaughter or walk my cat (if I still had a cat)!
Jesus modeled kindness for his disciples. His disciples were a bit clumsy in how they showed such a practice, but it finally sunk in. Early followers of Christ were known for their kindness. It grew out of their spiritual relationships and from the life of their community.
Can schools teach kindness that has sanitized from anything resembling Jesus? Time will tell, but it may end up being more like a “kinda’ kind!”
Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Faith, Freedom, Grace, Holy Spirit, Humor, Jesus, love, Nation, Parenting, Pastor, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: be kind, being kind, being led by the Spirit, fruit off the Spirit, Holy Spirit, kindness, middle school, middle school students, middle school teachers, middle schoolers, showing kindness, teaching morality
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September 23, 2018
WORDS FROM W.W. September 23, 2018
I’ll be driving out to Simla, Colorado this morning to give the morning message at First Baptist Church. Since I retired from pastoring at the end of 2015 I’ve made the 50 minute easy drive to Simla on most Sundays, even Sundays I’m not scheduled to speak.
As I reflected on my new place for preaching 36 years of sermons I discovered why I enjoy Simla so much.
It’s simple!
First Baptist Church in Simla is about as uncomplicated as you can get. On a well-attended Sunday morning there may be 20 people crowded into the sanctuary that seats over a hundred. Years ago the church was filled, or close to it, and then the main industry in town closed and people moved away, or died, or became more interested in something different on Sunday mornings. No one seems to have moved down the block to the Methodist Church. They are as lean in numbers as the Baptists.
Simla reminds me of a simpler time, and probably the most enjoyable time I had in my years as a pastor. It was when I went to pastor the First Baptist Church in Mason, Michigan. Although it was my first experience as the pastor of a church, having served as a part of the pastoral staff in two previous places, the congregation of Mason helped me as I learned and didn’t threaten execution when I failed.
I remember the people…Durwould and Elsie Collar, Ken and Ardis Bystrom, Russ and Freida Vincent, Harry and Phyllis Smith, Marie Lyons, Lorraine Demorest, Tim and Karen Chora, Ed and Pat Myer, Eva Collar, Eleanor Hart, Otto and Mary Heikkila, Harold and Carol Anderson, Howard and Kyoto Wandell, Katherine Every, and Ivan Heincelman. Each name conjures up memories and conversations that chiseled me a little closer to being a good pastor.
It was a simple time. That is, church seemed more like a summer picnic in the country than a week of meetings and responsibilities. It seemed like we enjoyed one another a little more and treasured moments like sitting in a booth at A&W and eating lunch together or having a Saturday morning men’s bible study where we ate donuts and drank coffee.
We didn’t have social media. Our media was a mention in the Ingham County News weekly newspaper…maybe! Our biggest crisis during those years was when a couple left the church because we weren’t nearly as spiritual as Jim and Tammy Bakker.
Simla brings back memories of those days, days of joy, peace, and community. This morning as I travel on Highway 24 it’s like I’m going back to what was and maybe what still can be.
Categories: Bible, Christianity, Community, Faith, Freedom, Grace, Humor, Jesus, love, Pastor, Prayer, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: being community, congregation, congregation needs, congregational life, helping, simple
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