So the time is finally here. The season most of our folks long for and the children actually pine for is here but are we as a church ready to fulfill those longings? Recently I sat in a team meeting where the focus wasn’t on planning for the Advent season but it did come up. My sense was that as a church we really weren’t ready for this moment.  By that I mean we were not ready to educate our congregation about the meaning of the season.

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Although I no longer serve as pastor of a congregation, invitations to preach come my way from time to time.  The latest instance was yesterday when I helped a Presbyterian congregation surprise their pastor with the opportunity to worship among them, free of leadership responsibility.  The occasion was the thirtieth anniversary of her ordination and the tenth anniversary of her ministry in that place.  Not knowing what the lectionary for the day was, I was pleased to learn that they were accustomed to hearing their pastor preach from it.  I love the tussle with scripture that pushes me to stay grounded in its teaching while saying something useful about its bearing on our lives today. 

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It has been a few weeks since I posted – (the week on the beach at Hattaras was divine). I thought that I might toss out a discussion starter to tap into our collective scripture & historical expertise. The article below addresses a question that I hear often: Why do Catholic Bibles have more books than Protestant Bibles? The article is the Catholic response with additional input from me at the end. I am curious to see samples of Protestant responses to this issue.

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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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