Project Paddington Video

We HAVE to help our children have compassion for refugees

How do you think your children feel about the current refugee crisis?  Have you thought about it?  Have you spoken to them about it?  Have you helped them to understand what the Bible calls for us to do as a result of it?

I was shocked to hear of some of the responses from some in our community to the current crisis.  Whilst many are filled with compassion and are desperate for a way to share their care and concern.  Others are hard hearted and strongly opposed to any efforts to support any of the refugees.  There are lots of reasons for this which I don't want to get into.  But in conversation with my own children it is obvious they are aware of these competing views, they have friends who hold them and so they tend to keep quiet when the issue comes up.  But we need to be equipping and enabling our young people and children to stand and be compassionate, to be advocates against the misinformation and misunderstandings of children who unthinkingly have adopted what mum and/or dad say, or what their friends has parroted to them.

As the church we cannot assume children or adults know what the Biblical response is, we need to teach on this and now, not when it next come up in our preaching series.  As churches we need to be rational in explaining what the need is and how it has come about.  We need to be clear what a refugee is and why they are fleeing from their homeland.  We need to be theologically robust in showing how our Father feels about the refugee and how as his beloved rescued and redeemed children grace compels us to feel and act.  We also need to be practically providing ways to respond to the crisis, getting involved on the ground as we can (see Home for Good's website where you can sign up to temporarily foster an unaccompanied minor refugee, contact your local authority and encourage them to take refugees) and fund raising for those we cannot reach to touch but can support in other ways (Open Doors have a great project).

In terms of involving children Project Paddington, which you can find on Facebook, is another way of doing so.  It helps provide children with a tangible way they can show their care and do their bit to help.  It also helps them see that compassion is not inactive but practically reaches out to meet needs.

Who will be king?

A great resource for explaining the gospel to children is 'Who will be king?', it is basically two ways to live adapted for children.  Even better there is an online version at: http://www.matthiasmedia.com.au/2wtl/whowillbeking/

XTB

Last night with the two oldest boys we started reading Acts using the Good Book Companies xtb bible study notes. It had activities for them to do and helped them think about the promise of God with the Holy Spirit. It was a positive beginning.

We felt we needed something new, we've read various Bibles with them which have been very good but they needed something more interactive. I'll blog about it again as we get more into it. But it is well worth a look at, we did it together with me reading and them discussing it before I wrote the answers.

Sex education in schools

The government is currently carrying out a consultation on sex education in schools, you can have your say by clicking on this link: http://tinyyrl.com/mqehj7 and downloading the PSHE questionnaire.

The proposals include teaching sex education from the age of 5 and the Sex and Relationships Pack mandatory for primary schools. This pack contains one activity for 7 year olds on sexual language where they have to match the sexual act described to the right name.

It is particularly important that we lobby for PSHE not to become statutory, and for parents to be allowed to maintain the right to withdraw their children from sex and relationships elements of the sex education.

Teaching our Children to pray

One night a sleepy little boy knelt beside my bed
He smiled and looked into my eyes and this is what he said
Daddy, my daddy, you've taught me lots today
So daddy, my daddy, teach me how to pray.

You brought me home a brand new kite showed me how to fly
And there ain't no wonder kid who's dad can knock a ball so high
I'd like to thank God for you, but I don't know what to say
So daddy, my daddy, teach me how to pray.

I'd had to turn and leave his room, he began to cry
I didn't want my boy to know but so did I
His best pal forsaken him but what was there to say
For daddy, yes daddy, had forgotten how to pray.

(Daddy, my daddy, teach me how to pray.)...

Jim Reeves Teach me how to Pray

Reading what our children are given to read

I have spent the last year or two undertaking to read some of the books that our young people are given to read in schools to see what was being recommended and influencing the minds of teenagers in schools. It has been interesting.

There are great books like the Alex Ryder series, of which Stormbreaker, was made into a film last year. In it Alex plays a young spy recruited by MI5, these are just good fun books. Another series I've enjoyed are the Eragon books, of which a third is out later this year - again good stories about dragons and elves, good versus evil. There are of course the Harry Potter books, which have provoked a lot of debate but which again are about good verses evil and contain many potential discussion points about Jesus and God.

But then there are books which are altogether more worrying. Not least among them is Philip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy which will soon be coming to the big screen. I didn't really enjoy the books, but they twist reality so that the church is an evil agent of a perverse God who wants to keep mankind trapped. Christianity is viewed as an expensive mistake which wastes the lives of its victims. The Third book in particular attacks the church and God, as Lyra the heroine takes on the role of the second Eve destined to free man from God's clutches. In The Times (18 Oct 2000), Sarah Johnson described His Dark Materials as ‘the most savage attack on organised religion I have ever seen.’ And therein lies its danger it is written as a novel for children and teenagers espousing aggressive atheism.

It is a challenge for us to engage with such books, maybe even to read them ourselves and be equipped to discuss what they say and why they say it. Are our own children reading them? Or those in our church or youth group? How can we help them to examine the ideas behind the story?

In contrast to what Pullman maintains the evil in the world around us is not the result of God but of our rejection of him, the answer is not to overthrow him, down that road lie the further consequences of Romans 1:18-32. In fact it is telling that in the century when society did leave God's laws and standards we have definitely not bettered ourselves.