Breaking the Bubble Wrap
I’m not a huge Brian McLaren fan, but this article in the July issues of Sojourners is worth spending some time digesting. It asks questions that many of us working with k-35 year olds within mainline Christian denominations have been wondering. Since the demise of “Christian education” in seminary curriculum many congregations have turned to evangelical or fundamentalist publishing houses that have continued to publish materials that persons use for teaching. Is it any wonder that “personal salvation” has become the norm rather than reconciliation of community? This article highlights the necessity for a new paradigm within Christianity and the need to make the biblical stories alive, wonder-filled, and not sanitize the complexity of human existence nor the search for the divine. A few paragraphs and a link.
Breaking the Bubble Wrap
by David M. Csinos and Brian McLaren | July 2012Clearly, we need another perspective of childhood, one that acknowledges children’s full humanity and recognizes their capacity to do wrong and to do good, including seeking justice. While we want to keep kids safe, we also want them to follow the way of Jesus, which is sometimes downright dangerous. While we want our kids to be good, true goodness only develops through a struggle against what’s wrong—both inside them and around them. This perspective helps us affirm children’s inherent agency, their ability to make sense of the world around them and to express themselves.
CHRISTIAN PARENTS, grandparents, and educators today need to ask what we and our churches are showing emerging generations about what it means to be followers of Christ. Many of us, whether Catholic, Protestant, or from other backgrounds, live within traditional paradigms that increasingly don’t fit.
In both pietistic and institutional paradigms, traditional churches have worked hard to teach children Bible stories and Christian virtues; many of us wouldn’t be the adults we are today if it weren’t for the great start we got in the churches of our childhood. But in today’s world we need to rethink what it means to, in Paul’s words, raise new generations “in the nurture and instruction of the Lord,” including the social, economic, and political dimensions of that instruction. How can we shape our kids’ characters to help them become Christ-followers who are both contemplative and activist? As we imagine what this might look like, a few questions come to mind. Click here to read more.