The central thesis of Marjorie J Thompson’s Family: The Forming Center. A vision of the role of family in spiritual formation (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 1996), is that, for good or evil, the home is the primary context in which spiritual formation takes place. Spiritual formation can take place through intentional teaching and practices, or it can take place through modeling and unconscious attitudes, but it will take place. Spiritual formation is likely the most foundational formation that takes place in a child’s early life, overlapping with mental, physical and ethical formation. The question for parents is what kind of formation is taking place? The answer for Christian families is that they should be formed to the image of Christ and not the world.

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In the midst of preparation to lead a retreat this weekend, with “Home for Christmas” as its theme, I’ve been reminded of the old adage about how the more things change, the more they remain the same.

The idea for this particular retreat came to me as “the holidays” were drawing to a close a year ago.  I had taken a hastily scheduled trip to Portland to spend a week with my younger sister, as she prepared to begin radiation and chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer.  That ordeal was to begin in January.  Meanwhile, we were to have a week of “sister time,” the week we usually had in August, but this year August had been consumed by our joint effort to connect, or reconnect, cousins - - her children, my children, their children - - whose homes are on opposite coasts.  That was before the cancer changed everything.

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Soul Cakes: A November Family Faith Activity

One ancient tradition is the Soul Cake. It is where the modern day term “Soul Food” originated.

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One of those “Aha!” moments came to me twenty-some years ago while staring at the blank computer screen where Sunday’s sermon should have been making its appearance.  Unfortunately, my thoughts were elsewhere; I had been dealing with the parent of one of our confirmands-to-be, who was convinced that I was not doing enough to impress on his son the significance of the rite he would soon undergo.  Sometimes his critique seemed to be that I didn’t make these 6th and 7th graders suffer enough (they thought they suffered plenty) and sometimes it was clear that the father was actually expecting the confirmation process to fill all the spiritual gaps left in the child’s life by church and home.

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As a former principal of a private school I suppose I can be accused of being biased on the issue of private “vs.” public schools, parental choice, vouchers, etc. The school I served was in Miami with a 93% minority student population and a 99.5% minority faculty (we had one anglo faculty and three anglo staff persons). The students consistently scored an average of 1.5 years ahead of national standardized scores across the board, with many grades consistently averaging two years ahead of the national norm. The families that made up our school were not affluent. They were low income, blue collar, to middle class whose only commonly shared value was a commitment to their children’s education and a will to do whatever they needed to ensure they got it.

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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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I continue to be fascinated with how people are enamored with the idea of mentoring. It seems to have a romantic hold on people’s imagination. I recently received an e-mail from a friend who is a college program director. She was asking some questions about a program for college students being created at her college. The program design looked pretty good, though it included a “mentoring” component. I sighed and cautioned my friend about the tendency to misapply “mentoring.” Much of what people do under the rubric of “mentoring” isn’t appropriate to their goals, aren’t applicable to their audience, ignores the significance of context, and isn’t designed to be mentoring at all.

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Over this past summer, our music minister enlisted the help of our children to chime the hour. Some children are able to use a handbell while others use a chime. It has been amazing, and a true testimony to the importance of having children in worship. Take for instance this past Sunday.

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Remember the good ole days? As a young lad growing up as a sand-lapper in Beaufort, SC I have fond memories of mosquitoes, Spanish moss, red bugs, marshlands, and even that strange Gullah dialect that was embedded in the people in the backwoods of the estuary. These were days when we left our doors unlocked, rarely made appointments for anything, shared our resources, trusted neighbors and strangers, and lived a relatively simple lifestyle.

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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: Penicillin kills bacteria.

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