Friday, July 17, 2009

who's telling our story?

An excerpt from New Monasticism by Johnathan Wilson-Hartgrove. I made bold a few parts that really hit me.

Teaching in our local church and talking to pastors and friends in other churches, I've been convinced that you can learn what a church really believes by asking what it teaches its children. This is why God said to Israel, 'Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise' (Deut. 6:6-7). Deuteronomy says that the way we really believe a story as a people is by talking about it at home and on our way to other places, when we get up and when we go to bed. If that is true, then I think it's fair to say that the TV tells us our story more than the Bible. With a TV in the Living room, the bedroom, and increasingly in the car, kids hear the stories that advertisers sell them when they sit at home and when they're on the road, when they lie down and when they get up. Of course we often acknowledge that this can be bad for children, and parents limit TV time. But if Deuteronomy is right, this is bad for all of us. God's law is not on our hearts when we're not impressing it on our children. (Incidentally, I think this is true whether you have biological kids or not; if we're a people, they're all our kids.) It seems that we don't tell the story of God's faithfulness enough to convince ourselves or our Children that it's true.

On this topic he referenced an encouraging movement in Christian education called Godly Play ("an imaginative method for presenting scripture and stories to children"). check it out.

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