Feeding the Soil

A few months after I compiled my list of 100 Things Every Child Should Know Before Confirmation, I brought it to my Christian Education Committee. I was nervous. I had already been serving there for several years, and had grown to value the way they shaped and built their Sunday School curriculum for children.  Was it possible that it wasn’t working?

We sat at that meeting and compared my list to the three year curriculum cycle we they had been using for almost nine years at that point. If the goal of our children’s Sunday school classes was to nurture them in preparation for Confirmation, then it looked like we were doing that. If a child attended EVERY Sunday over our 36 week program for three years, they would have mastered all of the items on my list. 

Well, we all knew that wasn’t happening. 

So began two conversations. One - how can we better equip parents to be their own child’s Christian Educator? Two - how can we shape our classroom curriculum and experiences to be more mindful of how we use each moment that we do have children at church to shape their experience and formation? 

When I originally blogged through this list, I didn’t spend a lot of time reflecting on this second question. My aim was to help parents feel equipped for this work. Equipping my congregation was a natural offshoot of the ongoing conversations and adjustments that we made together. But when I sat down to collect this list and these ideas together in a book, it seemed appropriate for each item to give tips on how we can use the classroom to teach these topics, to reinforce concepts, and even, in subtle ways, to prepare children to progress on their faith journey. 

For each item in the book there is a section labeled Feeding the Soil, continuing with the image of helping our children grow in their faith. These sections are primarily targeted  to Sunday school teachers, volunteers, Christian Education committees and Christian Educators. I will be the very first to say that there is nothing earth-shatteringly innovative in these sections. Mostly they are commonsense solutions and suggestions born out of ten years experimenting in the classroom. These sections don’t present a lot of theory, but more straightforward and simple practice. For example:

• Children learn how to use the Bible by actually using the Bible in the classroom. So resist the temptation to always ask ONE volunteer to look up and read that day’s story. They should all use a Bible every time they are learning about the Bible.
• Children learn the iconic pieces of scripture by hearing and reading them often. Choose which Psalms you want to make sure children know, and use them as opening and closing prayers in the classroom.
• Most parents do feel equipped to teach their children some of the most basic stories of the Bible (Noah’s Ark, Moses in the Bullrushes, etc.). So use children’s time in the classroom to dig more deeply into those stories or to encounter the stories surrounding them.

A couple of months ago I participated in a large conversation with  local faith leaders on how to develop resources to work with children on interfaith relationships and education. After the gathering one of the Christian Educators from another local Presbyterian Church approached me to talk about how she was using my book to help her Christian Education committee rethink their curriculum and Sunday school programs. They weren’t creating curriculum based on the book, but rather were using the book as a tool to think about what they want their programs to look like and how they are connecting the pieces in all the work that they do. 

It was exciting to hear about the book being used in that way. Here are some other specific ways the book could be a helpful tool in your congregation: 

• Use the list (summarized in the appendix) to identify what your congregation’s essentials are. This is my list. It is not perfect, and there are many, many more things that I would want children to learn and know over the course of their Sunday school experience. Brainstorm together what YOUR list would be. 

• The list is also a great way to talk with Sunday school teachers and volunteers about how the work that they do even on ONE Sunday morning impacts the larger picture of a child’s Christian education and journey. In a moment when we no longer have teachers in our congregations committing to a full year of teaching week after week, it is essential that teachers understand how they are connected to what is happening EACH Sunday in the classroom.

• The book can also serve as the framework for the resources and educational opportunities that you create for parents. While it can feel overwhelming to think of all of the things that go into a well-rounded and holistic Christian education plan, walking through this book with parents is a great way to show them how equipped they already are to do this work. 

It has been fun hearing how folks have begun to use the book in their congregations. I would love to hear from more of you, especially if you have found interesting ways to use the suggestions in the book to impact the shape of your Sunday school curriculum. 

If you haven’t gotten your copy yet, or if you want to know more about the book and how it came to be, click here. 

Broadening the Sunday School Canon: Ten Texts for Teenagers

Much of the time and energy I spent this past year working on my forthcoming book was devoted to revisiting the items I had chosen to be on my list of 100 things a student should know before Confirmation class. 

Most of my choices for the list were inspired by years of teaching Confirmation classes and working closely with Sunday school curriculum curricula. But the final list came together one snowy winter night during our 2011/2012 holiday vacation. In that moment the list was one part brainstorming, one part venting, and one part pipe-dreaming. 

Even though I spent two years blogging through this list, I didn't sit down to look at it as a whole until I started working on the book. With each chapter I wrote, I struggled with all of the things that were not included in the list:

Why am I including all three parables from the 15th chapter of Luke (the lost sheep, coin, and son) instead of including the parable of the Unforgiving Servant?

Do I include the story of Zacchaeus instead of the raising of Jairus’ daughter? An iconic passage from Isaiah, but not one of my favorites from Micah?

How do we put limits on what we read or know or explore in the Bible?

Counting the Children

Several years ago I remember very off-handedly asking one of the ushers in my congregation how, if they take the attendance count when they are collecting the offering, do they count the children who have left before the sermon?

The answer was simple. “We don’t count the children.”

I gently suggested that the ushers might try to find a way to change the point in the service at which they take the count, so that the children could be included in the numbers.

This time the answer was a little different in a big way: “The children don’t count.”

I asked for him to explain to me why the children shouldn’t count in the statistics that we keep about how many people were in worship on any given Sunday. 

“They are not members.”

I explained to him that they actually are what in our tradition we call “baptized” members of the congregation, even if they are not “adult” members. Then I asked him if when counting adults they are careful not to count any visiting or guest adults who could also be given the label of not a member. Of course he counts them...but it did make him pause.

We actually talked quite a while about it, with him repeating to me that same phrase, “the children don’t count,” far too often for my comfort. 

After a few more conversations together, we did start including children in that worship count.

The Life of the Early Church: The Final 5 Things (out of 100) That Your Child Should Know Before Confirmation Class

After two years of blogging through this list of the 100 Things That Your Child Should Know BEFORE Confirmation Class, I find myself here at the end with the topics that I always cover at the very beginning of this year of preparation for students choosing to become adult members of the church.

While an important part of being Confirmed is making a declaration of faith in Jesus Christ, just as important is making a choice to live out that faith in the context of a particular Christian community. 

Two weeks ago, I shared some of the questions that students are asked to answer in my Presbyterian tradition related to their declaration of faith. Here is the final question they are asked:

Will you be a faithful member of this congregation, share in its worship and ministry through your prayers and gifts, your study and service and so fulfill your calling to be a disciple of Jesus Christ?

While it may sound heretical, this question is just as important to me as all of the others. 

The Christian experience is rooted in community from its very start. To be a Christian outside of community means losing an essential part of how the Bible models faith expression and the practices of faith. 

Moments in the Life of Jesus: 5 Things (out of 100) That Your Child Should Know Before Confirmation Class

In Confirmation Class a primary objective is for students to affirm their faith in Jesus Christ. The liturgy that we use on Confirmation Sunday reflects just that.

Trusting in the gracious mercy of God, do you turn from the ways of sin and renounce evil and its power in the world?

I do.

Who is your Lord and Savior?

Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.

Will you be Christ’s faithful disciple obeying his word and showing his love?

I will.

Will you be a faithful member of this congregation, share in its worship and ministry through your prayers and gifts, your study and service and so fulfill your calling to be a disciple of Jesus Christ?

I will.

It took me a couple of years to figure out that I needed to do a better job prepping students as they prepared to answer these questions - certainly they are nervous standing in front of the entire congregation. There is also some kind of weird thing that happens when you expect 10 teenagers to respond spontaneously and in unison. Everyone expects the other to be the loudest voice, I think. 

And so as we prepared and practiced for worship, we went over the questions and answers and in particular their answer to “Who is your Lord and Savior?” For some reason it took a few tries for the answer to just roll off their tongues. 

Iconic Stories of the Gospels: 5 (out of 100) Things Your Child Should Know Before Confirmation Class

Samaritan Woman at the Well - He Qi

When I was just past Confirmation “age,” I attended a large national youth convention. It was memorable for me for two reasons. One, because, though I didn’t recognize it at the time, it was when I first sensed a call to ministry in the church. Two, because, even more importantly, it was the first time a story from the Bible really came alive for me and significantly impacted my faith. 

In all of the posts in this series, I hope that I have been able to convey the ability of a fruitful confirmation experience to help students experience the Bible and the church in a new way not just for that one year, but for the rest of their lives. Yes, as children and younger youth, we teach them the stories and we help build on their own personal experience of the church, but in Confirmation they are able to ask questions of the Bible, apply the Bible to their own experience, and even gain an appreciation for the beauty that is in scripture and be moved by it. 

All five of these iconic stories from the Gospels are moving and meaningful in their own way, and in Confirmation class we can dig deeper into them to reveal a beauty that goes beyond a Sunday school version of the story. 

It was the story of the Samaritan woman, or “the woman at the well” (#67 in this list) that I experienced and understood in a radically new way at that conference. The story was told through liturgical dance (something that if done well can be very moving), and I for the first time could see myself in the scripture as though it was me who was experiencing this good news of Christ’s living water. 

12 Developmental Steps for Children & Youth in the Life of a Congregation

I usually write about the things that our children and youth should know and how we can teach it to them at home and at church. But I have been thinking more recently about all of the things that we need to teach our children to be able to do as they grow in maturity as a member of a community of faith. 

So I thought through the ways that children develop in their capabilities as members of the community and came up with twelve markers (based on age and area of competency) to help us all think about how we are nurturing and encouraging children in their role as members of the church. 

This is not intended as a critique of children who have not yet taken these steps, but as an aid to examining how we share our expectations with children and youth and the opportunities we give them to meet or exceed those expectations.

In my experience, children and youth are ready for many of these things much earlier than we would think. They are simply waiting to be asked to rise to the occasion. 

The World Religions: 5 (out of 100) Things Your Child Should Know Before Confirmation Class

I have written a few times before about being part of a family that is “inter-religious.” You can find these posts here, here, and here. Obviously, we are motivated to talk in our home about what it means to be a part of a religion that is not Christian. 

prayer beads from my brother

Of all the conversations that we have together with our son, these are the ones that seem to repeat most often. For example, no matter how many times we explain what it means to be Jewish, he will ask the same question again a month or so later.

Interestingly, he hardly ever asks about being a Buddhist. He only knows one, and I think he just trusts that his uncle knows what he is doing, so he doesn’t worry about it. 

When I work with students in a middle school, high school or Confirmation class, I instinctively want to teach them to respect and even appreciate other faith traditions. And yet, most youth these days have a decidedly post-modern perspective on the world, which means that they are already comfortable with differences and differences of opinion. They don’t usually need me to teach them respect...they need to hear from me why is I have chosen and why they may choose to be a Christian in the midst of a diverse religious landscape. 

The History of the Kingdom of Israel: 5 Things (out of 100) that your child should know BEFORE Confirmation

A couple of years ago our family spent a weekend in a lovely cabin in the woods and brought along one of my son’s friends to share the time with. When Sunday morning came I felt slightly guilty that these two boys were missing out on a Sunday school lesson for the day. After realizing that the owners of the cabin were avid movie fans, I popped in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark for our morning activity and hoped that they would glean from it a little bit of the tumultuous history of the Kingdom of Israel (and World War II).

As we were watching I chuckled at the irony of Dr. Jones chiding government agents who were seemingly too clueless to grasp the significance of the Ark of the Covenant and its role in the history of Israel. It’s my favorite line from the whole movie: “Didn’t you guys ever go to Sunday School?”

Most Sunday school curricula these days hardly touch on the history of the Kingdom of Israel. The lessons tend to stop at the slaying of Goliath, and then maybe pick up again with stories from Daniel. A lot of this history is either too complicated to grasp in a 45 minute Sunday school lesson or a little too racy or violent for us to feel comfortable teaching it to our children. Or maybe it’s just a little too boring for us to work it into a craft project or a song.

Beyond "Mothers" Bible Study

I should have seen it coming. 

A new friend asked me if I would be willing to help a woman at one of the churches we have been visiting to start up a new “Mothers” Bible study. They will be meeting in my neighborhood, so how could I say no?

“You don’t need to lead it, just support and encourage her as she leads it for this group of young mothers in the church and neighborhood.” 

On one level that sounded great: no responsibility, no preparation, just encouragement. 

And then she gave me the book that she wants to use with these new mothers. More on that in a moment.

I should pause and say that one of my favorite parts of my job as a pastor was leading and participating in Bible study with other women. Single generation, intergenerational, mothers, widows, wives, stay at home moms, retired saints of the congregation - these all describe the different women and groups with which I was privileged to study scripture at one time or another during ten years of pastoral ministry. 

Over the course of so many years, it was inevitable that we used some books and curriculum that I was less than excited about, and even some that I regret using. But we all tried to keep the long view of study, remembering that this is a lifelong endeavor. We also tried to become more comfortable disagreeing in love with any given author/scholar, and with each other.

But the curriculum (written to be used by groups of women) that I had just agreed to be encouraging of is a few ticks past where I would typically draw the line. Admittedly I have not read it cover to cover, but I did spend one evening reading the notes of inspiration that the author had placed in the margins. They included advice about reclaiming one’s virginal purity, making sure to let the guy make the first move in a relationship, and tackling the important work of submitting to my husband’s authority. 

Iconic Characters of the Old Testament 5 (out of 100) Things Your Child Should Know Before Confirmation

The only time I have ever had a student drop out of Confirmation Class was on a

day we talked about Jonah. 

Samson with a distinct Grecian
look about him.

Biblical stories, especially the ones we teach in Sunday school, can take on a real air of mystery and meaning for children. We teach them that this is the Word of God, and they believe us. Unfortunately, we don’t always teach them what it means that this is the Word of God. In many Christian traditions, what it means is that the Bible is the dictated words of God which should be read both literally and as absolute historical fact.

In other Christian traditions (such as the one in which I teach) we believe that the Word of God is inspired by the work of the Holy Spirit. This means that we believe that human beings, inspired by God, wrote down their experiences of God, their religious practices, and the stories of their tradition. Imbued in their words is a Word of truth that we continue to seek after today.

In my experience (and in my specific tradition), much of the Bible study we do in Confirmation is about helping students make this shift from a literal and factual  reading of these stories of the Old Testament to a more literary and theological reading  which helps them seek that biblical truth for themselves.

Christian Denominations: 5 (out of 100) Things Your Child Should Know Before Confirmation Class

Because I am Presbyterian and my husband is Mennonite people always assume that we have a lot of disagreements about religion, that we have phenomenally interesting conversations over the dinner table, and that there must be a lot of tension in our family. I am never quite sure why people think that, because the people who make these assumptions usually don’t know much about the differences between Mennonites and Presbyterians to begin with.

I am pretty sure that they are not referring to the horrible period of time during the Reformation when Anabaptists were martyred for their refusal to baptize their children, sometimes by those who would eventually call themselves Presbyterians. (I am also pretty sure that they don’t know too many Mennonites, who for the most part tend to be the least confrontational people you will ever happen to meet.)

These days, when we talk about our Presbyterian and Mennonite differences it is usually because we are trying to teach our son about what it means to identify as both at the same time. Not an easy feat.

The Liturgical Year: 5 (out of 100) Things Your Child Should Know Before they Start Confirmation Class

Just a few weeks ago I sat down with a fresh new group of Confirmation students and their parents to review all of our expectations for the year ahead. I will confess to running a pretty loose ship when it comes to our life together as a Confirmation class. There are just a few things that I expect from them: I expect them to come to class being present in body and spirit. I expect them to do their homework. I expect them to respect me and to respect each other. All pretty easy to swallow.

But I do have one other expectation that is a little more fussy - I expect them to be active participants in our worship life as a congregation during the year of study.

The Sayings of Jesus: 5 (out of 100) Things Your Child Should Know Before Confirmation Class

I spent last week accompanying a group of teenagers at a youth conference in the mountains of North Carolina. Every day one of the adults in our group would pack the youth a lunch, and every day he would include a scripture reference for them to look up to help inspire them for the day.

One morning I came down to breakfast as he was writing that day’s note, and he asked me if I could tell him the reference for the New Testament verse that says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

I couldn’t, but I had my trusty iPad under my arm and would be happy to search for it in my Bible concordance. Now, the tricky thing about a Bible concordance is that if you know a verse in one translation, searching for it in a concordance that references a different translation can be a little frustrating and time-consuming. But after about 10 minutes of searching while eating my breakfast, I found it: Philippians 4:13.

A few minutes after passing out the lunches with the notes, one of the boys walked through the kitchen, pulled out the note, saw the reference, turned back around to the adult leader and said - “Hey! I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Great verse! Thanks!”

The Church We Mean to Be

Part of who I am as a Christian, and who we are as a family, is connected theologically and historically to particular Christian denominations - in our case the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Mennonite Church (USA). But the reality is that while being a part of these communities both locally and nationally might be important to us, as a nation we are moving more and more toward what is sometimes referred to as a post-denominational environment.

Families with young children do not typically join my PC(USA) congregation because it is a PC(USA) congregation. In fact, they will frequently "church shop," looking at a variety of churches born out of disparate Christian traditions with wide-ranging theological priorities and governance styles, which begs the question of whether or not teaching a child to identify and embrace a particular denomination/tradition is something of a former generation.

Why Working with Teenagers Makes Me a Better Parent (I Hope)

One of the benefits of being a pastor in the same place for so long (ten years this winter) is that I have watched several groups of children and then teenagers grow up and move on to be adults, get married and even have children of their own.

While many folks get burned out on youth ministry after a few years, I have found that sticking it out just a few more makes all the difference, as you have the privilege of watching and being a part of a child’s/youth’s entire process of growing up.

Considering that I started working with youth when I was 26 and am now 36, I sometimes feel as though I have grown up with them. I especially feel lucky (on the days when they are not making me crazy) to have been given a unique window into the life of the modern teenager We often talk about inter-generational youth ministry as a chance for youth to connect with older/retired members of the church, but I see even more benefits for myself as a thirty-something, and I continue to believe that working with youth in the church helps me to be a better parent to my own young son.

Here are some of the reasons why:

The Stories of Genesis – 5 things (out of 100) your child should know BEFORE Confirmation Class

The Ark of Noah by artist He Qi

While this is the second post in what will be a series of about 20 on the foundations that a child should bring to Confirmation class as a teenager, it is the first in a long string that will relate to biblical literacy.

It is overwhelming to think of an 8^th grader having mastered all of these stories. I don’t know many adults who have mastered them. But mastery is not the goal. Acquaintance with the most familiar and foundational stories and basic biblical knowledge are the goal.

Our task in Confirmation class is twofold: we look more closely at some of these stories to appreciate their beauty and pay attention to the details, and we discuss what they teach us about who God is and who we are as people who claim these stories as our own. These are the first real lessons they get in biblical interpretation.

The practice of hearing and telling these stories throughout their life helps a child and then a teenager think of them as their stories, their tradition, their history. This is a feat that cannot be achieved by reading them for the first time sitting around a table (circle of beanbag chairs) in a Confirmation class, no matter how much homework I assign them.

The 100 Things Your Child Should Know Before They Start Confirmation Class- Bible Basics

One of my favorite parts of my job (and one of the most time-consuming) is teaching Confirmation Class each school year for our 8^th graders.

In a perfect world Confirmation is, among other things:

·         Time for students to consider their baptismal identity and “confirm” the answers to the baptismal questions that were answered on their behalf when they were babies – or even for a student who has yet to be baptized to understand what it means to be baptized and to receive the sacrament at the end of the class.

·         Time for them to explore the particulars of their Christian tradition – what does it mean to be Presbyterian, Lutheran, Catholic, etc?

·         Time to move beyond the Bible “stories” to biblical theology, looking at themes of sin, forgiveness, grace, exile, calling, hope, resurrection, discipleship, etc.

·         Time to prepare to take on the role of an adult member of a congregation, discerning the gifts that God has given them and how they will use them to contribute to the community.

In the real world, Confirmation often is:

·         A course in the basic stories of the Bible

·         An introduction to being a Christian

·         A corrective to misunderstandings or misconceptions of church life

·         An obligation that students take on to make their parents/grandparents happy

There are a lot of ongoing conversations about how Confirmation has turned into the real-world scenario I have described and what we can do about it – improving children’s education programs, having students move through Confirmation at an older age, or better equipping parents to teach their children more basics at home.
There are also many conversations among church leaders and pastors about how busy children’s and families’ lives have become with school, sports and other extracurricular activities. Time that in the past had been set aside to participate in education at church is eaten up by other activities, and it is rare that a family spends intentional time at home reading the Bible or talking about faith together. Yet the desire for children to participate in Confirmation programs does not waver.

In my congregation we have batted around a hundred different ways to deal with these issues, and none of them seem to be a perfect solution. In an attempt to wrap my head around my disappointments with what happens in Confirmation, I have compiled a list of 100 things that I wish students knew BEFORE they stepped into my Confirmation class, and I will be sharing them here over the next few months. Click here to see the entire list.

In my own context, this may result in shifts to how and what we teach children in our Sunday school programs. Maybe it will mean that we choose to delay Confirmation until students can grasp all of these pre-requisites. Maybe it will mean that parents will need to have these conversations/teach these lessons to their children in the home.

Because this blog is oriented toward equipping parents (and other adults) to talk to their children and teach them about faith, I will move through this list (in groups of five) in that context, sharing ways that either through simple conversations or a habit of cracking that children’s Bible together at bedtime, parents can greatly improve their child’s experience of Confirmation.

THE 100 THINGS YOUR CHILD SHOULD KNOW BEFORE THEY START CONFIRMATION CLASS.

Bible Basics
1. The Bible is made up of many different books with different authors.

This might seem obvious (be prepared for a lot of these to be obvious), but it is good to start with the most basic. Honestly, just sitting down for 15 minutes with a standard Bible in any translation, it is fairly easy to see that the Bible is broken down into multiple books. The problem is that we often don’t sit down with a regular Bible (not a children’s picture Bible) and look at the table of contents with our children. My son is now at the age where he is doing his first “research” project, and this afternoon it took him all of ten minutes to learn how to look something up in an index. I am pretty sure he has now mastered the skill. Teaching a child how to find something in the Bible is just as simple.

In Confirmation class this topic is taken to the next level as we talk about different types of biblical literature like Histories, Laws, Wisdom, Prophets, Letters and Poetry to name a few. In a successful class we also talk about issues of authorship and how the faith community decided to put the books that are in the Bible IN the Bible.

2. Much of the Bible comes from ancient oral tradition.

It is hard to teach a child the subtle difference between facts and truth, which is something that we try to do in Confirmation class, but it is helpful if students already understand that ancient stories in the Bible developed in ways similar to other ancient stories that they have learned in school.

When we talk about stories from the Bible with children and youth we can always remind them that we tell these stories because generations of people before us have told these stories about God, and that even before they were written down people made sure to tell the stories to one another so that they had a way to understand God together. By the way, this applies to the stories in the Gospels as well, since we know that stories about Jesus were told for at least a generation after his death before the Gospels we have in the Bible today were written down.

In Confirmation class we talk about what it means that the Bible is inspired by God and how we can understand its importance as a guiding influence for our life of faith.

3. The Old Testament is the story of the Israelite people.

Again another obvious one, but it is still clearly an important lesson. Students can be confused  because they know that Christians trace their roots through the Jewish tradition and they know that there are still Jewish people today, but they don’t make the connection that we share these stories – that they were Jewish stories before they were Christian stories. In the same way that you can sit with your child and look at how the Bible is put together, you can take your child to either a map inside a Bible or just a world map and look together at where Israel is/was. Look together at its proximity to Egypt and remind them of the stories of the Exodus.

In Confirmation we talk about the first-century Christians, some of whom were Jewish (including Jesus) and some of whom were not, and how they struggled to work out those differences.

4. The New Testament is the story of the life of Jesus and the early Christians.

Every student should know that a Gospel tells the story of Jesus’ life. I am much more forgiving when it comes to working out the Book of Acts, the Letters of Paul and all of the other New Testament literature, but the Gospels are a must.

In Confirmation we learn about the origins of the Gospels, their unique voices and how they each tell the story of Jesus’ life and teaching in slightly different ways.

5. There are many different modern translations of the Bible.

The first step is to explain to children that the Bible was written originally in Hebrew and Greek, so clearly anything they are able to read is a translation. Depending on your tradition, you may prefer to teach your child from one translation over another, or your church may prefer one over another. I can remember when the New Jerusalem Bible translation came out and my Dad bought or received a copy (I don’t remember which) and how cool it was to have a different translation in our home. I also remember finding among my parents’ books the popular 1970’s paraphrase called “The Way,” which seemed so radically different to me that it begged to be read. Introducing different translations can be a great way to motivate children to read the Bible more carefully.

In Confirmation class we talk about how different translations can serve different purposes (study, devotion, etc.) and how for those who are not able to read the Bible in the original languages, using multiple translations can help us think differently about what a passage might say by hearing it in different ways.

So, five down… 95 to go. I have a basic outline of what I expect the rest of the list to include, but I would love to hear what you think should be on the list!

Mountain Top Experiences: We Get to Carry Each Other

Last week I spent my time with 13 teenagers from my congregation at a youth conference for young people in our denomination in Montreat, North Carolina. I had planned to write an entire entry on how being banished to the boys house up the mountain had actually given me some monumental insights on how I am raising my own son, and what he might be like himself as a teenager. It is a unique gift to be able to work with other people's children, and I treasure the things that they teach me about being a parent.

BUT...we had an actual mountain top experience, so I thought that this might be more important of all the things I could share from my week. First, let me say that one of the blessings of my life is that the young men and women that I get to work with in our youth group were just little children when I first met them. The kids who went on this trip together range in age from 14 to 18, which means that when I first met them and became their pastor some of them were still in preschool.

The very best part about working in the church with teenagers, is that you can accompany them through very interesting and sometimes liminal moments in their life. You can see how they draw upon their faith in times of crisis and how when they are actually on their own to make decisions on how they will "be" in the world, they draw upon the lessons taught to them by their parents, the community and the Bible.