Rescued, the Movie

Get your copy, it looks excellent.

http://rescuedthemovie.com/

G. Mark Sumpter

Little People Made in God's Image

Part of a powerpoint presentation on education of children

G. Mark Sumpter

Kids Sounding Off With Answers

Kids and Catechism: Sounding Off Back and Forth with Bible and Theology

“Catechetical training is as basic as asking good questions and expecting good answers. Quite simply, catechizing is the asking of set questions and the listening to set responses. There is not a lot of glamor to it, is there? However, when you press the concept a bit, you will find some encouragement. Most people associate catechism with instruction that comes through asking questions out loud.

The word catechism derives from the Greek word katecheo, which provides us with another helpful image. Indeed, it is a word with some beauty as an image for training our children in the faith. It is the combination of two Greek words. Kata is a word that generally means ‘down’ or ‘down towards’ You probably recognize the other word, echeo, meaning ‘to sound.’ We are familiar with the English word echo, which indicates a sound that repeats itself as it resonates.

This is exactly how the catechism works. You ask a theological question, and then you wait for your child to sound back the answer. This is a hopeful idea when it comes to teaching our children. Isn't this exactly what we want? Don't we want the truth of Scripture to echo in the hearts of our children? As we ‘sound down’ the truth of our Lord, we hope that this same sound will echo back in the hearts and lives of our covenant loved ones. Isn't that great! We want the truth of God's word to resonate in the souls of our children.”

For the rest of this article on Kids, Catechism and Character, see New Horizons magazine
 
We have the tendency to treat catechism class in our reformed churches much like a needle point class. Yawnsville. What about hand motions? What about Paste the Pastor? What about rhyme? What about a song? What about relay races? What about Pen, Lose or Draw? What about Catch-it, Cat?
 
At the end of the day, our goal is to have dialogue, sounding back and forth, with children about God’s truth. Different forms of communication, along with games and fun can set the stage for conversations and learning.
 
G. Mark Sumpter

Children and Worship

Friendship between God and Man—in worship, we go back and forth with dialogue

The great need is for the church to provide education for both young and older people as well as the children. All members of the Christian household need to know the meaning and methods of acceptable Christian worship.

              Robert G. Rayburn in O, Come Let Us Worship

We must be sure that what we do in worship nurtures the kind of people we want our children and ourselves to be as Church…All kinds of other things are being tried in the attempt to urge young people to get involved in our congregations’ worship. Why don’t they? Simplistically, youth don’t participate in worship because they don’t understand it.

            Marva Dawn in It is a Lost Cause?—
            Having the Heart of God for the Church’s Children

Ten and fifteen years ago, I would have jumped up and down screaming about the importance of OPC evangelistic and short-term mission teams as the means of discipleship and nurture of our covenant children and young people. I still jump up and down with enthusiasm about such things, but with less animation nowadays. Why? God sat me down as a pastor and parent to instruct me on the importance of worship.

OPC Pastor Larry Wilson reviewed with me somewhere between Seattle and Portland, driving home from a Presbytery meeting, the importance of capturing and making use of the dialogical principle of worship. I had known of and practiced such things before, but there are those times when truth is a providential trip wire. Fathers and mothers, you might explain it to your children as the friendship principle in public worship. God speaks to His people, and then, we respond. God and His people take turns in speaking and listening. He’s the living God: He welcomes us; He tells us Who He is and What He has done, and we get to return thanksgiving and adoration expressing words and actions to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Isaiah 6:1-13 provides the pattern about this. Note the taking of turns between God—with His angels of the heavenly realm—and Isaiah the prophet. Clearly, there’s dialog between God and man. But there’s more on the pattern.

Guide your children to see and join in these parts of worship:

First, there’s the call to worship—we receive God’s welcome to praise Him: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

                              We lift up our hearts to Him, and we remember that He is present with us.

Second, in order to be fit to pray, sing, read and commune with Him, we confess our sins and He promises forgiveness. Doug Wilson uses the figure of speech saying, we wipe our feet at the door of God’s house. With forgiveness comes the liberty to approach God to sing to Him, offer prayer and listen to preaching from the Bible, and in these ways, we are renewed, we are consecrated, for daily living.

                           He ministers to us with the words of the Bible, we respond with songs, prayer

                           and open hearts.

Next, after the sermon, we show our unity as church family by saying together words of what we believe, and then we receive nourishment at the Lord’s Table. This is communion.

                         He gives spiritual strength for our faith.

Last, God blesses us with His benediction; these are words of His goodness, kindness and favor. We leave commissioned to serve Him in the world.

                        We have been renewed in our relationship with God to live for Jesus Christ.

Children will catch on to your modeling, parents. They watch you and me like hawks. They watch to practice. One child, maybe a 4 year old, a little boy that I know, loves the Gloria Patri and Doxology. He mimics what he hears and sees. Since we sing these each Sunday, he’s grown to hum them, sing them and take part with the congregation. He knows his part! The other recitations shape his understanding too. In this way he’s being nurtured. One mom mentioned to me recently that she has grown to appreciate how dialogical worship calls for participation—you’re not to sit passively. Worship is not a spectator sport. She values the fact that she, her husband and children are engaged, active and share in the responses to the Lord.

G. Mark Sumpter

Classroom Teachers Who Home-carnate the Truth

Are we making gains in what Adams addresses? Are we getting the Home back into the School Classroom?

“…But today, there is no close affinity between the home and the school. We must, therefore, learn how to close the gap (1) through the development of new communication opportunities and methods, (2) in discipline, (3) in teaching and (4) even in the sort of personnel who are selected to function as teachers. Essentially, we must answer in the most practical terms, ‘How can we get the home back into the school and the school back into the home?’”

Adams goes on: “Among the many considerations that will have to be faced is the selection of teaching staff on a widely different basis than most of the present teaching qualifications require. Teachers must be appointed not simply because they are competent in a particular subject area, but because, in addition to that, and in addition to their competence in theology, they show promise as parent-teachers. If the familial father/son discipling method, rather than the Greek, head-packing academic model of teaching be accepted as the biblical method (which it is), then we must also consider the ability of the teacher to exemplify (or model) that which he teaches, along with his academic credits. It is, moreover, crucial for him to incarnate the truth he teaches in life as a parent would for his child. He will be, for the first time, genuinely en loco parentis.”

Back to the Black Board, p. 72, by Jay E. Adams, his emphasis, (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1982).

Adams goes on to speak of ways to reduce or eliminate the professionalization of teachers, and as well, the institutionalization of the traditional day-school classroom setting. He aims at getting rid of: homework, report cards, parent-alone parent-teacher consultations, and other forms of professional and institutional expressions. He also, positively, stresses that parents must: support the authority of the classroom teacher, make plans to step into the class and assist in the teaching and learning process, and take on an active role of listening to students read, and to help with writing, as examples. Adams dreams too—“ The world is the classroom for teaching by discipleship. Students will be in contact with adults and with many sectors of life in the process, not merely with their peers in cloistered halls.” I am committed to his dream.


We can imprint the classroom with a home-like climate even more: teachers telling stories relative to academic content and illustrating points with slices of everyday life, taking students outside for lectures and lessons, making use of communication forms with purposeful informality through dialogue, rhyme, rhythmic lines of feedback, chants, poems and quips, presenting comparisons and offering contrasts using common place matters, setting up interaction about a day’s lesson with a DVD clip or news article and other visuals, and starting a written or oral dialogue—and expecting students to finish them employing pertinent facts and applicatory features.

Community in the classrooms—the involvement of a variety of adults, with a mixture of age and life-experience—needs our attention as well.

Helping the class to be home-like takes work, but it is the method of education that reflects Deuteronomy 6.


Do our classrooms show a commitment to putting in place such teachers? Do you know teachers who teach to incarnate truth, who home-carnate truth?


G. Mark Sumpter

Horton's Do Hard Things as Part of the Rebelution

Michael Horton Showing the Way in Youth Ministry

“The year I was twelve things began to change in my life—not all at once, but gradually. I had been involved in family devotions and Bible reading, but suddenly the Bible sprang to life for me. The book of Romans began to shatter many of my earlier notions about reality. Every time I read from Romans I found myself searching for a deeper understanding of God’s purpose and grace.

After playing baseball each afternoon, I would come home, and pick up Romans, and go through it again and again. What I found in Romans had me mesmerized, and I began to share my discoveries with anyone who would listen.

My parents were owners of a nursing home, so I had a ready-made congregation. I began conducting weekly services that lasted, with brief interruptions, for six years (up to my senior year in high school). People who were not even residents attended the services to hear about God’s effective grace.”

From Horton’s Mission Accomplished, pp. 13-14

Young people are the church of today, not merely the church of tomorrow.

G. Mark Sumpter

Quick Take on When Sinners Say I Do

Boiling Water, Where's  the Tortellini


“Many marriage problems could move toward resolutions if husband and wife actually lived as if they were ‘sinners’ who said ‘I do.’ Sinners who are humble are growing more knowledgeable about their hearts.”

I skimmed a couple of the chapters; after reading the rest, I paused at many of them attempting to catch the author's message. I definitely say here's a solid piece to recommend to pastors, elders, counselors—most assuredly, to those preparing for marriage, for those married. The focus, patterned after the title, “When SINNERS,” aims at helping readers carry out necessary self-examination regarding one's own unquestioned contribution to messy relationships.

The vivid word pictures by Harvey color his illustrations.... “...couples can treat confrontation like a hand grenade--pop the pin, let it fly, and run for cover. But biblical reproof is not some kind of commando raid.” Here's another... [on the matter of an exchange when the husband interferes with his wife's plans already made; words like]: “Dear, could you... become his fingernails on the chalkboard of your [her] agenda for the day?” These are fun.

My biggest negative about the book circles around Harvey's bringing the reader’s knowledge of his sin to a boil. The pan is on the stove, the water is boiling—so very good; but I was waiting for the pasta to be added, and then the browning of the meat, the simmer of the butter and veggies, with the seasoning mix of the person and work of Jesus Christ, who is Lord and Savior. I wanted him to prepare a winsome, biblical dish with the doctrine of the sinner's union and communion with Jesus. We get the chapter on STUBBORN GRACE, Harvey's work on Titus 2:11-14; but where’s Being Raised in Him, Being a Sinner Seated w/ Christ and more. My concern is like what another author said about the absence of good, popularly written books on the doctrine of Christ's life, death and resurrection, something like..., “the professing church suffers from Ascension Deficit Disorder.” Harvey's positions, thesis and practical helps would look like a Major League MVP homerun champ if he knocked the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, His fruit for the believer, out of the park. When Sinners Say I Do calls for counter-balance of When the Savior Said I Did.


—G. Mark Sumpter

Homeschooling Continues to Get House in Order

Sanctification in Homeschool's Living Room

We’ve been waiting for more and more of the corporate sanctification for homeschoolers. We made more progess on getting a start this past week. It’s hard, but it’s great.

We’re still 1) walking through the questions about classical education models and applications for homeschooling, 2) walking through the unity and diversity questions of the local church and the varied callings of families and their application-of-choice—traditional classroom, public or Christian, and one-day co-ops or one or two-day class involvement with public school, Christian school or home-school. No question, we, the local church, with her elders, pastors and parents, have made progress the past 5-6 years on these matters. This has been the kindness of our God and Father.

We’ll keep walking through the doctrinal distinctives—and recently Answers In Genesis experienced this. I trust that there’ll be more to come.

It’s about time for us, as Homeschoolers, to learn how to home-school our own home. We’ve been learning the rules for engagement on the nature and calling of the family and the same for the local church, now she needs to learn how to fight and be good on other areas of doctrine and practice. Ken Sande’s work will help us. Maybe the folks at Monument Publishing need to provide helps on taking up the positions between Mr. Inns and Mr. Ham. Get the high school students grounded in the positions and turn us loose on learning and grappling to help with progress in our sanctification. It’s a good time to debate; it’s a good time to help contribute to our own house’s order.

We can look ahead for more growth in sanctification regarding positions in things like: Christians and filmmaking, Christians and Entrepreneurial Home-based endeavors, and Christians, Homeschoolers and their Role in Worship-leading in the Local Church.

Homeschoolers are learning to wade through positions on socialization and courtship and dating; let’s continue to get grounded in these other positions too.

G. Mark Sumpter

How Young is too Young?

Nurture little ones in God's truth and life

Mike is a father who wonders “I have a two-year-old boy and another about to turn three, but most materials seem to be written for older kids. When should I start?”

It’s never too early! All you need is a book with good pictures. You can begin talking about the pictures, even with a one-year-old. Over time, you can explain more and more. Your children will begin to love those books and want to learn more.

First impressions are often the image that last a lifetime, so make them count.


Many good books are available, even reprints of old books. The New England Primer, used by the early Puritans in America, allows parents to teach serious biblical truths along with their ABCs. Newer books, geared for young ages, include the alphabet books A is for Adam and D is for Dinosaur (by Ken Ham).


Check out catechisms for children. Ask your pastor or church librarian. Depending on your denomination, check out the background and history about catechetical nurture HERE. At bedtime, ask simple questions:


Who made you? God made me.


What else did God make? God made all things.


Why did God make you and all things? For His own glory.


Who is God? God is the maker of all things.


Who made God? No one.


Was God ever not there? No.


Has God always been? Yes.


Will God always be (alive)? Yes.


Did God have a birthday? No.


Will God have a funeral? No.


Can you say this another way? Yes, God is eternal.


With very young children, repetition is key. Although they aren’t ready for long discourses, they’ll repeat to you simple phrases and sentences. That’s how God made them to respond at this age. As they mature, you can add additional explanations and move on to more extended questions and answers.


Of course, teaching time doesn’t always need to be formal. Wanda, mother of three-year-old Susan, takes advantage of every teachable moment: ‘When we’re pulling weeds, I mentioned that we wouldn’t have to do this if Adam hadn’t sinned. When our cats leave dead animals at the house, I talk about the bad news (why things die) and the good news that we can live forever in heaven, the good gift from God that we receive by faith in Jesus.’


Whatever method you choose, do teach. It’s never too early to begin with the truths of the Bible with the little ones entrusted to you!


Read below what OPC pastor Edd Cathey conveys at this one particular time of baptizing an infant—he provides excellent points about God’s early start with little ones:


"Since before he was born and received his name, little Graham has been in a developing relationship with [his parents] Megan and Behn. He heard their voices every day. When he was born, that relationship was intensified with hugs and kisses and touch and sight along with more words of love. He is learning to trust them through all these things. He is a person and his family members are persons- expanded recently to aunts, uncles, grandparents, and others. He is a person receiving communications of love from persons.


In Holy Baptism he is about to be embraced in an intense way by Another who loves him and calls him by name. The one God in three persons is speaking to Graham.

Just as he did not at first comprehend those earlier voices and touches completely, he does not fully comprehend the gracious Triune God who embraces him with covenant love. Nevertheless, God is calling his name and saying “Graham, you are mine, follow me, I am your Savior, I put my name on you.”

My son, Toby, offers great quotes about using the question and answer method, something that can be used with little ones:

“The word 'catechism' derives from the Greek word katecheo which is found in several places in Scripture. The most familiar is Luke 1:4, where Luke explains why he wrote his Gospel: 'that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed [catechichized].' Like many Greek words katecheo is put together from two words, in this case kata, meaning 'down toward,' and echeo, meaning 'to sound.' Katecheo is 'sound down.'"

From Donald Van Dyken, Rediscovering Catechism, 12-13


And again:


“We teach first the Bible and then the confessions, the Bible because it is God speaking to his people, and the confessions because they are the church speaking to God, answering his Word."


From Donald Van Dyken, Rediscovering Catechism, 56


Our Faith Presbyterian congregation has been using the children’s catechism and the Westminster Shorter Catechism in a memory program, see one HERE, and it’s been great for our young children, students and their families. The reinforcement, modeling and grounding in truth has been gold.

Ideas for this post are taken from Answers magazine, (April-May 2008), Great Commission Publications (the publishing arm of the OPC and PCA), the book, Rediscovering Catechism (from Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co.) and the Catechism for Little Persons (by Jim Dennison, an OPC minister and professor at Northwest Theological Seminary in Seattle).

G. Mark Sumpter

Marriage Seminar This Friday

Paul Tripp Hits a Triple, Drives in Three Runs

This coming Friday and Saturday, Faith OPC/Grants Pass is hosting the DVD presentations from Paul Tripp on his latest marriage series, What Did You Expect? We're grateful. There are about 14-15 couples signed up.

Tripp shovels grace upon our self-centered ways of promoting our own aims for comfort at all costs—better known as self-sufficiency—and hammers away on us with the gospel. This excerpt is some of his finest Napa Valley-like wine:

“God’s grace purposes to expose and free you from your bondage to you. His grace is meant to bring you to the end of yourself so that you willing finally begin to place your identity, your meaning and purpose, and your inner sense of well-being in him.

So he places you in a comprehensive relationship with another flawed person, and he places that relationship right in the middle of a very broken world.

To add to this, he designs circumstances for you that you would have never designed for yourself.

All this is meant to bring you to the end of yourself, because that is where true righteousness begins.

He wants you to give up.

He wants you to abandon your dream.

He wants you to face the futility of trying to manipulate the other person into your service.

He knows there is no life to be found in these things.

What does this practically mean?

It means the trouble that you face in your marriage is not an evidence of the failure of grace.

No, these troubles are grace.

They are tools God uses to pry us out of the stultifying confines of the kingdom of self so that we can be free to luxuriate in the big-sky glories of the kingdom of God.

This means that you and I will never understand our marriages and never be satisfied with them until we understand that marriage is not an end to itself.

No, the reality is that marriage has been designed by God to be a means to an end.

When you make it the end, bad things happen.

But when you begin to understand that it is a means to an end, then you begin to enjoy and see the value in things that you would not have been able to enjoy before.”

From his book, What Did You Expect?, pp. 51-52.

G. Mark Sumpter

HT: From Justin Taylor, Crossway Publishing, Wheaton, Ill.

Homeschool Mothers, Shaping A Cult of Domesticity?

Have you seen this August 6, 2009 article about homeschoolers here?

Here’s one reader response to it that has a little kick…

…I see many women who have lived wild lives themselves come into the homeschool fold. I also know a couple who have taken their child no further than his 8th grade year and he is ignorant and lazy.

I agree that peer pressure in today's society, the drugs, and the bullying are enormous. But I think more universal educational standards need to be imparted on homeschoolers wherever they are. We as a society shouldn't be making it easy for parents to teach at home; we should be holding them to as high a standard as we do our educators. Yes, that system is flawed but I believe that studies will prove in the future that many of these homeschooled children of today are too sheltered from the world to be able to function well within it.

The mothers need to get a clue, deal with the fact that education is just that, and let their children help shape their own lives. In every case (except for a few women that were just lazy), homeschooling mothers whom I have met are in charge of their husbands, their families, and even speak for their children. It is a situation where they are shaping a new "cult of domesticity" and you'd think the 1970s Feminism is long gone. Forget the coastal influences, this is the reality of the American heartland and these people vote and they are increasing in number with their "babies for Jesus". Rather scary, don't you think?

This last thought: Mothers...shaping...a cult of domesticity….hmm. Two comments.

1) I have been aware of the susceptibility on the part of Christian homes to have a practice of a cultish-expression about the family. It’s idolatry of the family. This is when patriarchy of the home collides with the eldership of the local church. Why a collision? I believe because my generation of evangelical pastors has upheld the Word over the Sacraments. Rather than Word and Sacraments, it’s been Word over Sacraments. When we reduce the understanding of the faithful purpose and practice of the sacrament of infant baptism, when we reduce the importance of it or do away with it altogether, we lose sight of the role, support and mutually complementary function of the church and home. The practice of infant baptism keeps children before us; and it also keeps the mandate of their godly nurture before us. Lose infant baptism, and both the home and the local church lose. We lose and draw swords on the matter of the responsibility of the child's nurture. Conversely, when we practice infant baptism and take hold of its import, and the family and the local church take up and seize the covenantal context of a mutually beneficial role and function of each sphere, then we can keep working out the saving call of nurturing our children with fear and trembling. Infant baptism helps to draw the lines for the two spheres of the home and church and helps to advance the discussion and practice of nurture. Without infant baptism and it's reminder of our roles, it’s a free for all.

2) Fathers, reflect on this woman’s commentary above. There’s the on-going danger about our passivity or abdication regarding our charge to be shepherds in the home. Genesis 3 reminds us of our susceptibility to neglect the Lord's will about this. When God asked, “Adam, where are you?,” He addressed the man about his locality and proximity. As Steve Farrar reminded us years ago in his Point Man, we have to be creative with our faithful presence in the home. It might be early hours or late, a lunch hour, a Saturday morning, a Sunday evening, or maybe, it’s one morning a week you go to work late, or we take a child with us to work for a half-day, etc., etc. Men, we cannot be everywhere at the same time; we are limited by our finitude. We need a sound theology and practice of delegation, but we also need an intentional practice of domestic shepherding, of being there. We have to plan for it. Some weeks, we’ll hit homeruns and do well; and other weeks not so. Keep working at your kingly role, right alongside of your queen. Admit to her that you struggle with being torn between work outside of the home and your work within. Sort out your strengths, and harness them, to emphasize them. Make adjustments, ask for prayer and stay at it. Mothers are gifted nurturers, but they are not the head of the home. Praise God for faithful wives and mothers—they do have an eternally significant role in the lives of our children; they are builders for righteousness in the home. Let the world deride or pity the role of faithful Homeschool Moms, as this response above colors things. But men, we need to be there; we need to be present around our children as much as strength and schedule will allow. It starts with re-kindling vision.

G. Mark Sumpter

Lessons Galore

This entry from Tim Challies, a blogger. Years ago, our family read these. The author is Paul White. Great fun, great stories, plenty of fun talk, and lessons galore on gospel faith and life. I used to sell these at Evangelical Bible Book Store on the campus of Westminster West. Get ‘em while they’re piping hot. Read on. HT: Mr. Challies.

Epidemics, Drug Dealers, Witchdoctors, Wildlife… vs. The Gospel

...epidemics weren’t the only battle the doctor faced. Satan used drug dealers, witchdoctors, and menacing wildlife in an attempt to choke out the doctor’s Gospel message. Yet Paul, clearly a gifted communicator, effectively shared God’s love with Tanzanian families in a unique way that made complete sense to them. If your family likes read aloud books, know that these are some of best, for there is much to discuss in nearly every chapter. From the idiosyncrasies of the Australian language and how diseases are spread to the dark side of unbelief, each volume is an education in itself. First published in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Jungle Doctor series has been translated into more than eighty languages, including Braille, and is newly reprinted for another generation.


G. Mark Sumpter