Street Pastors Tackle Disorder

From the BBC

"Street Pastors" are a great idea. Where do I get my blue cap and jacket?

The idea for the street pastors originated in Jamaica when churches joined forces to take their values into the streets and tackle the growing tide of gang culture, guns, drugs and violence.

It was pioneered in London by the Reverend Les Isaacs in 2003 and since then has been set up in Birmingham, Leeds, Leicester, Southend and Wrexham with some interesting results.

Figures from the Ascension Trust, which was set up to co-ordinate the project, show a 74% reduction in street crime in Peckham, south London, since the street pastors began their patrols and a 95% reduction in Camberwell.

Image courtesy BBC

Jesse Remington High School Blog

The students at Jesse Remington High School in Candia, NH are at it again.

At the urging of their headmaster, they're now sharing their thoughts with the world through the Jesse Remington Blog.

Check it out. If I lived anywhere near Candia, NH, thats' where I'd want my children going to High School!

Why Are There So Many Orphans In America?

Anthony Bradley has a thought provoking post on the incidence of orphaned children in foster care. He posits: "America Only Has A Dozen Or So Christian Families, Right?" Obviously if we had really Christian families, these orphans would have homes by now?

Here's more:

Giving money to homes is good but actually taking in orphans, which was a regular practice in the early church (when people were poorer), is the BEST
context for orphans. Adoption is the best option for multiple reasons (John
14:38; 15, Rom 8:23).

Leaving children as orphans is not necessary in America. A group home isn't better than a family. Again, what happens to the kid at 18-years-old? The Christian church could probably put an end to the foster care system in America in about 2 years.

We need long-term solutions: covenant families engaged in personal, sacrificial mission to their local community out of their local church.

Christians in the first centuries of the church believed that they should rescue children left exposed to the elements or hungry animals to die. That's why the church grew so fast too. These infants were raised as Christians. Why? They practices James 1:27 - "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world."

The Micah Fund is one organization that "provides financial assistance for qualified adoptive parents for the payment of fees to those agencies who are committed to providing quality services to birthparents, their children, and prospective Christian parents." This defrays the often prohibitive cost of an adoption.

It's service area is limited to Minnesota.

One like it is needed in every state.

But even more - Christians who see Christian parenting as a "ministry" are needed in every church!

I think Dr. Bradley hits the nail on the head when he says that if reformed Christians spent the same time, zeal, money and anguish on this issue as they have attacking the theological hobby horse de jour the problem would be well on the way to being resolved.

Photo courtesy Anthony Bradley

Family Integrated Churches

Dr. Voddie Baucham, Jr. helps lead Grace Family Baptist Church - a Family Integrated Church. Dr. Baucham is a reformed baptist.

Here he answers the question... "What is a Family Integrated Church?"

Read the whole page to see how this works out in dealing with both families and singles and how it affects church programming and evangelism.

In general this is a sound approach and very reformed in its emphasis. The family is to be redeemed. As they note, planning for singleness and broken families is essential because of the fallenness of this world and the fact that our Lord warned that the Gospel and allegiance to His Lordship would, in fact, separate families.

He puts it like this: While we believe the ideal family involves two loving, godly parents, we do not consider single-parent families inferior to traditional, nuclear families. We understand that many people find themselves raising children without the help of a spouse for a variety of reasons beyond their control, and we embrace these families (Deuteronomy 10:18; 16:14; 24:19-21).

Because we are sinners, it is essential that we remember that this method of ministry like all the others are subject to idolatry.

It's easy to be smug when we recognize the Big Church's idolatry towards its building and lust for the biggest Dog and Pony show they call "worship".

But there's also a very subtle idolaltry related to feeling oneself to be "family centered" though I believe they can make a much better case for it than the mega church can for theirs.

The "family centered" approach CAN wrongly be used to justify single family house churches that have no connection to other Christian families around them. I've seen this breed isolation, exclusiveness, and an actual self-excommunication because the family assumes all the prerogatives of the church for itself, including the sacraments. Such families can - in the name of "protecting their family" - become heretical (theologically by wackiness and not just socially isolated) because it's just "them and the King James Version" or really their favorite far away profit who exerts no personal pastoral ministry to them at all . I've also seen that some men who consider themselves "family centered" do so to justify not any form of legitimate fatherly leadership but to justify tyranny, arrogance, and an unwillingness to listen to any "Preacher" who might disagree with their novel idiocies. There is also a tendency when such families are isolated from the church and never rub elbows with families that are less "perfect" to look down on others, try to keep their kids "pure" to the point of Pharisaisim, and so forth. At least that's what I've observed.

Dr. Baucham's model with its church centeredness is not the subject of my concern. It's the isolated families downloading sermons and considering themselves autonomous from the larger Body of Christ that are my concern.

Dr. Baucham's model should be more widely implemented in the church. The extremes I've noted are not the result of Baucham's model. They are caricatures - albeit factual ones - of this valuable model! And these caricatures are merely the opposite and miniscule extreme of the larger problem in our society of fatherlessness and the larger problem in the church of male passivity, homes not practicing the Christian faith Monday through Saturday, and the church's programming aping whatever the secular educational hierarchy suggests. (We must remember that professional education as a secular profession had the goal of alienating children from their families and the church because they "knew best". The church has betrayed its mission by failing to proclaim the Lordship of Christ over all education and allowing secularism to gut education of any transcendent content - but that's another posting or hundred. )

Here's another quote I agree with: One of the biggest distinctions of a FIC is the absence of age-graded ministries. We do not have segregated youth ministry, or children’s ministry. First, these ministries are not part of the biblical church model. The Bible is clear on whose job it is to disciple children... parents. Second, these ministries can work against the biblical mode. Parents who are relieved of their discipleship duties tend to become dependent on those who have taken over the job. Finally, these ministries have failed. We are losing 75-88% of Evangelical teens by the end of their freshman year in college. And as Dr. Alvin Reid has noticed, “The largest rise of youth professionals in history has been accompanied by a decline in youth evangelism effectiveness.” Ouch! But it's true isn't it... the more we've hired "youth ministers" with goatees, the less get's done because we're trusting the youth minister and abdicating parental responsibility!

People do grasp at such caricatures of "family centeredness" though to minimize the importance of implementing the things we should be learning from Family Integrated Churches.

Note: Rev. Anthony Carter's blog brought Dr. Baucham's work to my attention.

FormingFaith.com - Excellent Resource For Family Ministry

Pastor Greg Priebbenow of FormingFaith.com is an Australian Lutheran minister who specializes in family ministry.

His site specializes in helping Christians pass on the faith to the next generation and includes the weekly pamphlets the congregation he serves - St. Paul's Lutheran in Box Hill - distributes to their church family.

Family ministry has been growing in Lutheran circles thanks to 2 things I can discern... a reemphasis on catechesis is the first. Luther's Smaller Catechism specifically enjoins the parents to instruct the children at home. In Anglicanism this was a task reserved in the Prayer Book for presbyters... they were supposed to assemble the children Sunday's for catechism. The parents were never mentioned. Luther gets this right in his catechism. Plus it has the advantage of being short and focused on the essentials of catechesis in the Western Tradition... the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Sacraments along with some simple prayers and a table of duties.

The Anglican Prayer Book catechism is simple enough but the parents are not specifically encouraged to join in... Christianity must start in the home!

The reformeers did better in following Luther but their major catechisms are all rather tedious for instructing children - even the wonderful Heidelberg Catechism.

The reformed doctrine of the covenant that undergirds reformed baptismal practice jibes well with the content at FormingFaith.com if you're not a Lutheran.

The second impetus to the current Lutheran interest in passing the faith on to the next generation is, in my opinion, the work of Merton Strommen author of "Passing on the Faith to the Next Generation."

FormingFaith.com distills the teaching of Strommen et al into simple terms for reference and puts it in action through the weekly hand outs. I use them for inspiration and perhaps you might too?

An excellent resource awaits you here. Strommen's book is well worth reading too!

Deliberate People(tm) Daily Prayer Guide

The Daily Audio Bible has reached 2.5 million downloads on iTunes.

They also sell a helpful Bible Reading, Prayer Guide and Journal "in one" called the Deliberate People(tm) Daily Devotion Journal.

This prayer guide is excertpted from their free downloadable Bible Reading Guide to let you see what's in it.

The Bible Reading portions are simpliar to those found in "One Year Bibles" with daily readings from the Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs. This is a good plan though what I plan to use in 2007 Lord willing is the M'Cheyne Bible Reading Plan except I'll drop M'Cheyne's Psalm readings (giving me only 3 chapters to read some days) because I aim to read the pslams morning and evening anyway. You can find it online here or as an RSS feed in your favorite translation (hopefully) here.

Daily Prayer Guide

Praying the way Jesus taught - Matthew 6:9-13
1. Worship the person of God (Praise, Thanksgiving, Singing)

A. “Our Father in Heaven” (Affirming our identity as
children of God)

B. “Hallowed be Your Name” (Praise God for who He
is and what He has done)

2. Pursuing the Purpose of God

A. “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth
as it is in heaven”

1. My life (Daily surrender of every area, asking for
fresh filling of the Holy Spirit)
2. My family (family members, friends)
3. My church (Pastors, leaders, events)
4. My world (Body of Christ, spiritual and political
leaders, city, state, nation, world, revival, awakening,
harvest)

B. “Give us this day our daily bread” (Pray dependently,
consistently, specifi cally and expectantly for physical,
emotional and spiritual needs)

C. “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors”

1. Receiving God’s forgiveness for ourselves (Confession
and cleansing)
2. Releasing God’s forgiveness to others (canceling
their debt)

D. “Do not lead us (allow us to be lead) into temptation
but deliver us from the evil one”
(Take particular areas of temptation before the Lord,
surrendering to God’s strength and protection, as well as
taking authority over the enemy, committing to resisting
his attacks)

E. “Yours is the kingdom and power and glory forever”

1. The Kingdom – Resting in the knowledge that God’s
rule and dominion is working in us and around us.
2. The Power – Relying on the dynamic, abundant,
mighty, miracle-working, creative power of God.
3. The Glory – Refl ecting God’s excellence, honor,
beauty, majesty and splendor to the world.

MTV Style Youth Ministry Is Out Dude!

MTV Style Youth Ministry is OUT... the Bible is IN says the Christian Post.

We could never compete with Disney anyway, but we preachers are good at making fools of ourselves. So why not try that too?

Thankfully the teenagers are smarter than we'd give them credit for. But, then, by definition, they'd have to be smarter than we thought if we assumed "ministry to teens" meant trying to answer the question "What would Beavis and Butthead do while wearing a W.W.J.D. bracelet?"

One surprising finding that Fuller Seminary's Center for Youth and Family Ministry revealed in an ongoing study was that teens attend youth group because they like their youth pastor and to learn about God. Those reasons were listed by the majority of the surveyed students. The Barna Group found the top reason listed among teens for attending church was to "understand better what I believe."

Students also said they wanted to have more time for deep conversation and also desired more accountability in their youth groups. Games or other activities were not a desired priority. (emphasis added).

Sadly, by the time we figured this out, a generation may have gone down the drain.

The question is: will we challenge youth to be more than "slogan Christians"?

A local church in our presbytery had a youth group who got sick of giving toys at Christmas. They kept getting asked for "Xbox's" and "Playstations" and they didn't own them themselves. So their youth director wisely got them involved helping some people who really needed help and who appreciated getting clothes and food for Christmas. That became life changing and helped the kids peel off the middle class materialism and ingratitude we tend to suffer from.

Reformed University Fellowship has done a good job helping college age youth reconnect with the great post-reformation hymns set to new music, complete with occasional archaic language retained. In the process, they have learned the theology of the hymns.

Forever Grateful Music has put 80 to 100 scripture passages to modern tunes to aid scripture memorization.

I find that most Christians - even ones who've been in the church "all their lives" and are no longer teens - need to reconnect with the rich history of the Christian Faith in general and their own church's tradition in particular. Ministers to all ages need to help people learn a Christian worldview for the first time and break out of the dumbed down sentimentality that passes for the faith of the apostles, prophets, and martyrs in our churches.