Second Church Steps

Parental confession:   my children did not grow up on Mr. Rogers.   They just didn’t fall into that group. They were more Barney and Sesame Street.   This bothered me for a VERY long time.   It bothered me like, how “we ought to be going to church, but we aren’t” bothers some other parents. Is watching Mr. Rogers the same as going to church?   No.   Words matter and Fred Rogers was carefully and fully inclusive; he never spoke of “God” or “sacraments,” but his neighborhood was a study in formation, children’s radical formation where all are welcome, feelings are named, and children are respected. I think it is Kingdom work to facilitate those same things being found at church.   No, not just at Sunday School – which is usually story telling focused and appropriation tasked.   I mean, at church: At coffee hour where there are tables for their size among the adult-sized tables.   At worship where there are “movement breaks” and we...

Spelling is not my strong suit.   In college I had to convince my Russian Language professor that yes, I studied for my weekly vocabulary quiz.   It wasn’t that I didn’t try to learn the words.   I can’t spell in four languages! Two sets of words I can spell, in English, are “desert/dessert” and “angel/angle.” I learned them with the help of very good teachers in elementary school.   An “angel” is Ever Lasting versus an “angle” that is LEft or right.   A “dessert” is something of which you would like SecondS; a “desert” you only want one.   That teaching tool only works so far.   I have found myself in more than one desert; so whether I like it or not, deserts seems to come in seconds (and thirds). Luckily, however, there are angels—messengers of God. God sent a tree in the desert to shelter Jonah.  From "An Invitation to the Desert."   Some of the families at Second Church are wandering in the desert with a family spiritual pra...

Almost two years ago, Second Church asked me, “What’s next for Sunday School?” I've been considering it ever since. Then yesterday, in the middle of Presbytery Meeting, I was transported to the mountains of North Carolina.  Actually, I was transported to a specific instance in the mountains of North Carolina.   Christian Educators, recreation leaders, pastors, and prophets  gathered at the Arts, Recreation and Worship Conference at Montreat Camp and Conference Center, May 2016.  We  played, pondered and prayed over how the future of the church will reflect the past and then move beyond it.  Every participant wrote down an aspect of church life that needed re-imagining. The words were written onto strands of material; then we put these silk wish-bands into a hat. Later in the worship service, every participant was given or drew out one. We were charged to envision “what’s next” for the concern we received.  I got “Sunday School;” the cloth ...