We’ve all experienced moments when we’ve misheard something which led to misunderstanding. Like the young boy who was sitting in church with his father when he noticed the flags on each side of the altar. He asked his father what the flags were for.

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Some things should be obvious, but often we require someone to point out the obvious to us. A man walks into a doctor’s office. He has a cucumber up his nose, a carrot in his left ear and a banana in his right ear.

“What’s the matter with me?” He asked.

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I finally got around to watching a DVD from Netflix that’s been sitting on the coffee table for about a month (thank goodness for that “no late fees” policy!). The movie was House of D. In the movie a thirteen-year-old comes of age through loss, grief, and escape. As an adult, and a father, he returns to the place of his childhood in order to reconnect and move on.

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If you have ever talked to someone about the Christian Year who isn’t familiar with it, then you may recognize the blank stare on their face that you get in return. Use the Seasons of the Spirit’s “The Seasons of the Church Year” poster, and you have a great starting point for this discussion.

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It’s hard to imagine but there are still churches that have no child protection policies in place. That’s just a tragedy waiting to happen. One related issue is that many congregations have adopted child protection policies but fail to ensure oversight for compliance. In the press of circumstances it’s often easier to lean toward what is convenient rather than what is expedient.

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I recently led another parenting workshop for a group of suburban parents. I’ve been doing this workshop for about fifteen years and it’s gotten to the point that I know when to pause to wait for specific questions. No matter the city or the crowd, when I pause at certain points I can anticipate the questions the parents in the room will ask. This time it was no different. At a certain point in the presentation I just paused and waited. A woman raised her hand and asked the question I anticipated. It’s an interesting phenomenon.

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One of the things my wife asked for Christmas was the missing volumes to her series of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, that outrageously (and refreshingly) “dark” children’s books. While many adults enjoy the wry humor in Snicket’s prose, the more significant aspect is children’s response to a cycle of stories that have no happy ending and exploits children’s worst fears (the children in the story are orphaned in the first book, and then it gets worse from there). Kids are eating up this series of stories.

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Our church’s youth group has about 5-6 active youth. When I first started working with them, I tried to schedule everything around everyone’s dates. I wanted to make sure to include everyone. I thought, “How hard could it be with such a small group!” Big mistake!

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In preparation for an upcoming presentation I’ve been examining the dynamics of emotional process and anxiety as they relate to leadership. Since my orientation for this study is Bowen Family Systems Theory (BFST) my definition of leadership is related to a person’s functional position in a relationship system (a family, a corporation, an institution, etc.) rather than a narrow organizational definition.

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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?

Fiction: Christopher Columbus sailed to the new world on the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.

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