Paul L. Escamilla is Senior Pastor at Spring Valley United Methodist Church in Dallas, Texas, and the author of an intriguing new book, Longing for Enough in a Culture of More.  It’s worthy of small group study, with a free downloadable study guide, and addresses a timely topic - - how to “escape the lifestyle and attitudes of a weighed-down world.”  That’s not my primary reason for recommending it, however.  I think it’s worthy of attention here because it’s relevant for educators as persons. 

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This Sunday my church will have it’s “Recovenanting Sunday.” (You know, the service which marks a new year without really being a new year because the church year starts with advent and the calendar’s New Year’s starts in January!) One of the many things we will do this day is give a bible to the children who just started second grade. We give them the Abingdon’s NRSV Children’s Bible. Starting this year, we are also going to give their parents Abingdon Press’s recently published Discovering Together: A Parents Companion to Abingdon’s NRSV Children’s Bible by Joyce Brown.

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During my late high school and college years I drove a Royal Crown Cola truck delivering RC Colas (no moon-pies!) in Beaufort County, South Carolina. My daily routes led me into the backwater areas of the lowcountry. Every Friday I sold drinks on Hilton Head Island. This was back in the days before the island was heavily developed. On the main road and tucked away on dirt roads beyond the paved road on the island were juke joints (small buildings with space for serving drinks, snacks, and dancing) that turned to life in the evenings and weekends for the locals. I was always amazed by the numerous drinks the locals purchased for use in their highly-valued social routines.

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The following is from the book Myths: Fact and Fiction about Teaching and Learning by Israel Galindo. How well do you know fact from fiction?

MYTH: Trees are critical to earth’s survival because they provide most of the earth’s oxygen through photosynthesis.

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The final book in the Harry Potter series was released June 21st. I have followed the series since book one although I confess that I came in after four of the books had been released so I only waited around for three of them. After reading the first book, I was hooked. It was well written and I made a lot of theological connections. Those connections and my fascination with Harry have not stopped.

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A church member sent me this question:

“I have a question that has come up in our Sunday school classes and wanted a professional educator’s opinion. This past week we were studying the passage where John the Baptist baptizes Jesus and then the spirit descended upon the earth “like a dove.” Now of course, any story that I have heard says that the spirit descended and it was a dove. But one of our teachers was offended because the Bible doesn’t say it was an actual dove but “like a dove”. [My husband] and I have been having this discussion because how would you teach this story to a 1st-5th grader about an abstract thought. Would it be better to tell them it was a dove since that is very concrete or tell them about this abstract thought of the Holy Spirit?

”The teacher’s thought was that we shouldn’t tell them one thing when they are younger and then teach them something totally different later on down the road. What is your opinion?”

Here’s what I think. For starters, it is appropriate, and desirable, to “just tell the story” without interpretation to younger children. And it’s o.k. to be concrete—Adam and Eve were “real” persons, the Garden was a real place, there were animals on the ark, Balaam’s donkey talked, and, if you like, it was “a dove.” Children really just need the story—not our (adult) interpretation of it.

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I just bought a new bible. Not that I need it. Like most clergy cum seminarians I have about a dozen of them, including my “first bible” given to me upon entering fourth grade. I have my ordination bible, a couple of study bibles (including one dog-eared, marked up, annotated, and ratty-edged study bible my wife had re-bound in thick leather after it started falling apart). I have some de rigueur foreign language bibles, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, including two of my dad’s Spanish bibles and one Portuguese. And the collection is rounded out by a nice balance of older (KJV) and modern translations (GNB, NEB, NREV, NCEV, NASV, NIV, etc.). Any paraphrased bibles I had I’ve given away or gotten rid of long ago, finding those less than satisfying and some actually irksome in their attempts are relevance and winsomeness.

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When I was an elementary school principal at a Christian school parents would often ask about the reason for why we required the children to memorize Bible verses (by fourth grade they were memorizing whole chapters as well as a repertoire of classical poetry). Actually, they weren’t really asking for an educational rationale as much as mildly expressing their frustration at having to spend time at home helping their children memorize the verses (and triangulating me in on their anxious relationship with the kid’s teacher). This may seem strange coming from parents who chose intentionally to send their children to a Christian school but for two things. First, adults tend to develop amnesia about children’s cognition and their experience of the world. When that cognitive shift in the brain happens sometime during adolescent, most adults lose the capacity to “think like a child” (thank goodness), but also to lose the capacity to appreciate how a child thinks and learns. Second, tragically, schools and churches often are delegated responsibilities for educating children in both culture and faith from parents too lazy, too busy, too reluctant, or too irresponsible for taking the responsibility that rightly belongs to them as parents.

My response to those parents usually included comments about the facility children have to memorize, and the necessity for insisting that they do. Nancy Ammerman has a great article in the current issue of The Christian Century titled “Memory Verses: Teaching Children the Bible.” She provides a good corrective to liberal and moderate-minded Christian educators who tend to shy away from pedagogy they regrettably have allowed more conservative Christian educators to co-opt for all the wrong reasons. Well worth the read, and well worth “taking to heart.”

A handout on “understanding parables.” May be used for a Bible study about parables or on a particular parable. Share your stuff. <%media(20070207-Understanding Parables.pdf|Handout: Understanding Parables)%> (.pdf, one page)