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Traveling Thoughts: Koinonia and Agape in Athens

April 24, 2012 by Mark Woodward

 On Sunday, those gathered were from Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Switzerland, Ukraine, Russia, Australia, South Africa, Iran, Iraq, and Texas.  We used three different songbooks and the Greek, Cyrillic, and Roman alphabet.

The Lord’s Prayer was prayed simultaneously multi-tongued. The Spirit interceded in an unutterable language according to St. Paul in Romans 8, to make the thoughts of our hearts known to God.  Regardless of country of origin, the bread was broken in Ƙoinonia (Fellowship) and the cup was taken with Agape for the One who bought His Church with His own blood.

I preached twice yesterday in Athens at two wonderful congregations. I told them that their services at first reminded me of the Tower of Babel, but as I thought about it, I realized that God had used different languages to drive men apart in that story because of their haughtiness and pride.  Jesus, of course, came to break down the walls and unify people,which is why we could all sit together in one room. Our different languages are the remnants of punishment for our pride, but what seems today like a barrier is, in fact, the hope and promise of feasting with all the nations at the banquet of the Lamb.

These multi-national churches are like a taste of heaven!

And why is this?  Not so long ago, I reminded you of what St. Paul said in this same city two thousand years ago, when he had the opportunity to talk about the Unknown God with the Athenians:

From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 

God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. Acts 17:24

We visited with four Muslims who will be baptized next week. We talked with a Christian Iraqi preacher who fled with his wife and three children because of death threats.  We heard about twenty-five Africans in Athens training to be preachers.

Greece is considered unreceptive! Churches in America will not spend money in Europe because post-Christian Europeans don’t want to listen to American missionaries!

But what about the rest of the world that is in Europe? What about the nations?  What about all the world? What about God’s Spirit being poured out on all flesh?  What about God putting people in the exact place where they should live so that they will seek Him and find Him?  What about the peoples that God has put in Europe?

Maybe that’s too many rhetorical questions, but just come to Athens and see.  Visit the islands, enjoy the ruins and biblical sites, but don’t forget to see the nations!

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Traveling Thoughts about Ternopil–not Chernobyl!

April 21, 2012 by Mark Woodward

The Church of Christ in Ternopil, Ukraine, meets in property next to a huge city park that celebrates Ukrainian war heroes, most of whom died in 1944. The church that worships in that nearby building celebrates every Sunday One who is alive.

Of all the eastern European countries that opened up after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine seems to be the single one where Churches of Christ are not just thriving, but growing with a post-Pentecost fervor.  Much, if not most, of what Eastern European Missions does is in Ukraine; other “eastern European” efforts now locate most of their work in Ukraine, whereas 15 years ago they would have been active in several other countries.

I’m not saying that there is not good work in Russia, Romania, Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Serbia, not to mention Kazakhstan and Croatia. While most of these countries have excellent works, they have become slow and difficult in comparison to how it was in the early years after the Wall fell, and so the fervor for those countries has waned among American churches in general.

Not so in Ukraine, especially eastern Ukraine!  Schools of preaching, television evangelism, school programs, along with strong national leaders, all are resulting in new churches being planted throughout eastern Ukraine, as I understand the reports. You still hear about American churches sending preachers, teachers, and others to Ukraine—and when you do, you can be 99% sure they are going to Kiev and eastern Ukraine.

The one exception might be Ternopil, however, which lies in western Ukraine!

Part of the reason why we visit new LST sites is to determine how healthy the churches are who have invited our teams, so we also ask about their history to determine the path they have taken to be where they are today.  This church has followed an especially unusual path—and I’m not even sure they know it.

Their history as a congregation starts after the borders opened, when Stephen Bilak returned to his own country to continue preaching the Good News. He had been doing it by radio for many years before he was permitted to re- enter the country in person.  Thereafter, Christians in Michigan made Ternopil their personal mission site and came on their own many times.  The church grew, and about twelve years ago, bought property. With their own hands they constructed a wonderful facility with an unusually large auditorium, offices, and classrooms, but also with a large apartment—two sleeping areas, two full bath/showers, great kitchen. The apartment itself is not so unusual , but that they built it for the people who would be coming to help them was extraordinarily unusual and unselfish faith on their part!

Since then Brady Smith, missionary in Lausanne, Switzerland and Stephan Bilak’s son-in-law, has continued to come regularly to teach and serve this church.  The Minter Lane church in Abilene has sent many to Ternopil and see themselves as a mentoring church to the Ukrainian congregation. Professors from Abilene Christian have come to teach and train.

Are you getting the picture?  A lot of Christians with many and varied resources have come and worked with and served this single congregation over its twenty-year history!

The amount of attention paid to Ternopil is highly unusual. There is no church in Lviv, for instance, which is the much larger city into which one flies going to Ternopil, which is about a two-hour drive on a very bad road away! Why Ternopil and not Lviv?

When I try to come up with an explanation for eastern Ukraine’s mission efforts thriving as opposed to western Ukraine’s single thriving effort, one correlation appears to me especially obvious, that is, where many workers have gone for many years and where American churches have provided strong financial support, the churches are thriving.

Where individuals have worked with little support, either in personnel and/or financial resources, the work seems weak.

Or even worse, that area has been deemed unreceptive! 

Many people know missions in Ukraine better than I, so there may be other factors and explanations.  I know the work in Kiev has been a rollercoaster ride, with lots of good things and lots of disappointment. I’m pretty sure that is because from the first days of the work in Kiev by Churches of Christ, there was division among the churches over a whole slate of issues.   It was sometimes a little hard to know that we were Christians by our love for one another!

I’m so thankful for the church in Ternopil, for the strong and faithful leadership, for their fearless desire to grow the kingdom in their hometown.  And I’m thankful for all those partners in the Gospel over many years who have supported and mentored and served this church without making it dependent nor stealing its great passion for Christ.

And, who is willing to start a work in Lviv?  LST will help!

 

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Traveling Thoughts: Don’t Missionary Kids Know Better?

April 19, 2012 by Mark Woodward

Why would missionaries’ kids become missionaries when they grow up?

Haven’t they seen how living in a foreign place makes you weird?  Haven’t they experienced the long, heart-rending absences from family, baseball, and apple pie?  Don’t they know how insecure they have lived their whole lives with their parents’ income entirely based on the charity of people they hardly knew and who hardly knew them?  Don’t they know how much better they could have lived if their dad had had a real job?

But everywhere we travel in the world, including Scotland where we are today, we meet our frontline missionaries, and an unusually large number of them are the kids of missionaries.

Today Sherrylee and I spent several wonderful hours with most of the members of the mission team in Falkirk, Scotland.  About eighteen months ago, they began arriving to plant a new work in this small but important city which lies about in the middle between Glasgow and Edinburgh. One dad and mom with four kids are on the team, two single women, and two young married couples.

Currently, about 30 people gather weekly in Falkirk—which is the sign of a blessed work among western European church plants.  Among their latest attempts to reach out to those they live among is to invite an LST team for this coming summer.  The Scots do speak English, but many of the immigrants and international students in Scotland do not, so this team sees them as an opportunity—and I think they are right.

One of the characteristics of growing mission churches throughout the world, as I have observed, is that they are not jealous of their national identity, but rather have completely open doors and open hearts to whomever God brings them.  This team loves the Scottish people, but they also love the Polish people and the Chinese, and the many other nationalities that God has brought to Scotland.  They believe and are acting upon Acts 17:24

 From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.  God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.

Robin and Chrissy Vick are members of this wonderful team. Robin is the son of missionary parents, and his love for the mission of God is evident. He talked about his commitment to Scotland, that he declined opportunities to join mission teams to other places, that he and Chrissy prayed and prayed for team members to join them, but were committed to go without others if so called.

Why do missionary kids become missionaries?  Here are a few of the reasons as I see it!

  • They learn very early in life that God loves the whole world, not just the U.S., not just the western world, not just the free world, not even just the Christian world, but the WHOLE world!
  • They learn the special skills that are needed to navigate foreign places. They know that languages, dialects, accents can be learned and used appropriately. They understand about visas, and negotiating foreign airports. They are not put off when their money is not green and the coins have pictures of foreign rulers on them with holes in the middle.
  • They are not afraid of other systems. So what if their kids go to European schools! So what if they have socialized medicine! So what if their country has a parliament and a queen instead of a president and a congress.
  • They know the answer to the question that so many potential American missionaries hear: why do you need to go over there? Don’t we have plenty of people here that need to hear the gospel?  They know that not only does Nashville have plenty who still need to hear the gospel, but there are thousands of Christians living in Nashville with huge resources to do that work.  And how many are living in Falkirk? And what are the resources.  That’s why they choose Scotland!

Not all missionary kids become missionaries.  But many do—and we should all give thanks for them and for their parents!

And some of you young parents might want to think about moving!!

 

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Traveling Thoughts: Losing Control on the Way to Scotland!

April 17, 2012 by Mark Woodward

I understand why some people just refuse to travel internationally! CONTROL!  The fact is that when you are traveling long distances and to foreign countries, you are forced daily to realize that you are not in control of your life at all!

Sherrylee and I are traveling in Europe for the next couple of weeks.  Virtually every year since the beginning of Let’s Start Talking, we have made what we call “site visits.” Typically, these are either visiting with missionaries/churches who have strong interest in inviting LST teams, but with whom we have had no previous relationship.  In other words, they don’t really know us and we don’t really know them. Rather than risk sending a team to a host that is not what they appear to be or who does not really understand how we work and what an LST team needs, we have found it essential to see these new sites and meet the people to whom we may send teams.

Our first stop this year is Scotland!  Several churches in Scotland have FriendSpeak programs which have proven to be very effective with the immigrant population in Scotland, but this is our first invitation to send an LST team.

Tomorrow night then I leave for Ternopil, Ukraine, for a couple of days, then to Athens, Greece, where we have just begun working in 2012, and then to Italy where we will meet with three different sets of workers near Florence and Rome.

We sandwiched this trip between work we had to do in Mississippi and Tennessee and more work in Washington and California, where we will go after Rome.  Then we fly back to Nashville, where we started our international travel twenty-four hours ago, to pick up our car.

We stayed at a particular hotel near the Nashville airport because they agreed to let us park our car there for a month without extra charge.  I was just slightly skeptical about this arrangement being too good to be true, so I checked with the desk person when I checked in and was completely reassured.

As we were checking out again, I thought I would just remind the new person at the desk of our arrangement . . . at which point she says, “Well, that will be $7/day and have you filled out the paperwork!”  That was the first reminder that we are not really in control!

The second incident was just as unavoidable. Flights from the U.S. to London often arrive earlier than scheduled because the jet stream speeds the flights going west to east. On this day when we had a fairly tight connection at London Heathrow, our plane was put into a holding pattern for twenty minutes because of congestion at the airport.

Then, with just barely time to make our connection, the British version of TSA pulled my carry-on off the conveyor because I had a Kindle in it.  The innocent bag sat there, waiting to be hand inspected for about 15 minutes. Then they take everything  out, swab it for explosive dust, run all my electronics through the scanner again—as they are calling out our name at the nearby gate for final boarding.

We missed our connection to Edinburgh!  A very nice BA agent was able to rebook us for about two hours later.

One of the things we have learned over the years is that most things that go wrong in international travel can be fixed without much damage—not everything, but most things. With a little friendly conversation, the hotel agreed to waive the extra charges because of the misunderstanding, and the re-booking agent at Heathrow gave us breakfast vouchers which he didn’t have to do!

Such kind gestures should remind us that we are not in control of the good things that happen either! In New York City of all places, we had a four-hour layover at JFK before we boarded our British Airways flight to London. A very nice BA agent broke all the rules and invited us to spend those hours in the First Class lounge! Then she gave us vouchers for a free supper in the lounge, and then she asked if she could take our boarding passes and try to get us better seats!

She just joined the Travel Agent Hall of Fame!

So being out of control works both ways, which is something those afraid of losing control often forget.  Sure, things go wrong—but perhaps if we also gave up taking credit for all the good things that happen to us, we’d better realize the pleasure of being completely in the hands of our sovereign, loving  God.

If He is in control, then what have I to fear?

 

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Tips for Traveling With Your Spouse–Successfully!

April 12, 2012 by Mark Woodward

Yesterday, April 11 was our anniversary—and this year it was the first day of a month of traveling together for LST. I can’t say for sure, but it is probably not the first time we have been traveling on our anniversary.  The blessing is that Sherrylee and I have done most of our traveling together over our forty-one years of marriage.

 In fact, we traveled together quite a lot while we were dating. We started dating in the summer/fall of 1969 and that Christmas we drove together from Fort Walton Beach, Florida,–her home—to my home in Fort Worth, Texas, 775 miles, spending one night with her uncle Richard’s family in Gretna, New Orleans on the way.  Within the next 12 months, we drove to Atlanta, to Missouri, to Searcy, and back and forth from Oxford, Mississippi, where I was working, so from the beginning, we have enjoyed the road.

Since then we have driven and flown uncountable miles, and certainly 90% of them have been together, so surely we have something to share about traveling with your spouse—or just traveling together and making it work!

  1. 1.       Traveling together doesn’t mean you travel the same way. Sherrylee and I pack differently, so we always opt for two small suitcases instead of one larger one. We have an understanding that we don’t pack into each other’s suitcases unless there is no other choice.  It just makes things work better.
  2. 2.       Sherrylee is more spontaneous, so I decide where we are going to spend the night, and she works out what we do along the way.  That satisfies my need to know where we are going and hers for having surprises along the way.
  3. You never have more time to talk about your life than when you are on a long trip. Every major crisis or decision in our life has taken hundreds, if not thousands, of miles to talk through.
  4. Don’t start the deep talking in the first hour of your trip. It takes a little time to decompress from packing up and getting out the front door before you are really relaxed enough to start taking on heavy topics.
  5. Road trips are great places to share audiobooks.  In the states, we have used Cracker Barrel book rentals, but now you can just rent online, download into your MP3 player and listen in the car.  Podcasts are also something that we listen to together in recent years. We especially like News from Lake Wobegon by Garrison Keillor—which is a free subscription.
  6. I’m OK when she wants to sleep for a couple of hours, and she’s OK when I want to listen to a ballgame. She usually reads magazines while I listen, and I usually think while she sleeps. (I know that makes me sound weird, but I’m basically an introvert with a very active interior life!)
  7. Our one big area of conflict after all these years has to do with someone’s definition of SHOPPING as recreation! Smartphones with lots of apps are an answer to prayer! I find a place in almost any kind of store and entertain myself while Sherrylee shops.

As you have noticed, most of these suggestions have to do with road trips—which we both strongly recommend to you. But traveling by air has its own set of lessons. For instance:

  1. Trust your spouse to have brought her passport/ID and don’t keep asking about it.
  2. You can get aisle seats across from each other, so everyone gets the seat they want.
  3. You can get lots of reading done at the gate, while your spouse browses the Duty Free store.
  4. Sometimes one of you is a little more anxious about ticketing, security, customs, and immigration  (me!) than the other (Sherrylee), so you might need to give them a little more space during those moments!

After all the miles, we love each other more and would always choose to travel together rather than apart.  As you can read between the lines, we’ve had our meltdowns while traveling—like the time Sherrylee threw the map out the window because I wasn’t following her instructions!  Now she doesn’t take it as personally because I don’t always do what the navigation system says to do either!!

So, go jump in the car and go somewhere with the one you love the most. It’s great for your marriage! And if you find yourself on the road on your 41st anniversary, may you be as happy as we are!

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Traveling Thoughts

April 11, 2012 by Mark Woodward

This week, Sherrylee and I are beginning one month of travel inside and outside of the U.S..

As always, I will try to share thoughts and let you make the trip with us, but regularity can be a problem when traveling (don’t snicker!), so I beg for your patience. 

Posted in Traveling Thoughts | 1 Comment »

Should Your Kids Go To Haiti?

April 9, 2012 by Mark Woodward

On Easter Sunday, I visited with two families about doing an LST project this year and both discussions revolved around children of various ages going with their parents, so let’s talk about that again.

As I am writing, I want you to know that our seven-year-old grandson Carter is on a mission project to Haiti with his parents. Three other grandchildren are scheduled to go to Rwanda with their parents for two weeks this summer—so that pretty much tells the story of where our family stands about how important it is for children to go.

Let’s start with the good reasons for either staying at home until your kids are teenagers or leaving the kids with grandparents for a couple of weeks and going alone.

  1. My kids are too young and won’t even remember the trip, so it is not doing them any good. That is all true, but they will look at your pictures and see themselves and when they are old enough to remember, it won’t be the first time for them, so they will be more confident.
  2. Kids will just slow us down in what we can do! That’s true too! But they will add a completely new and full dimension to your work, i.e., people are attracted to children, AND they are often willing to trust parents of children more readily!
  3. It’s a lot of trouble to take kids. That’s true! But older kids are not necessarily less trouble than small children. Also, you can make it less trouble by deciding the kids don’t need all the paraphernalia they get at home—starting with portable beds, chairs, swings, etc for small kids up to DSes and rechargers for young teens.  Go primitive! Simplify for two weeks! It may change your life forever J
  4. It costs a lot more to take kids.  That’s true. It’s an investment in building their faith, so what is it worth to you?
  5. My kids have summer activities! That’s true, but if that is the reason for staying home, what are you teaching your kids? That T-ball is what life is about, that swimming lessons are more important than missions, or that the whole family’s spiritual calendar is built around their schedules?  I don’t think you believe any of that, so you really don’t want to leave a different impression, do you?
  6. The kids don’t want to go!  The worst reason of all! So your middle schoolers are deciding what is spiritually good for themselves? God gave kids parents for a reason!

As you can see, all of your reasons for not taking your kids on a mission trip are true reasons—but they really don’t reflect your own values, so . . . let’s take the kids!

Look at the great things that are going to happen:

  1. Best family time ever!  Even on vacations you probably will not have as much time together, nor a context for the best conversations ever!
  2. Best lessons that you can teach your kids about serving God!  Mom and Dad really love God and are willing to do special things for Him; I want to be like Mom and Dad.
  3. Best way to take your children’s focus off of themselves.
  4. Best way to show your children how others live differently!
  5. Best way to help your children want to believe and share their faith with others.

 Research (The Gospel According To Generation : The Culture of Adolescent Belief (Lewis, Tippens, and Dodd) has shown that summer mission trips correlate at the top of those adolescent experiences that help secure faith in your children!

Last year, Let’s Start Talking sent 58 children on mission trips with their parents! Some went to Chicago and others went to Beijing, but all those parents made it work!  And all those children were blessed. What we generally hear is that the children want to go again and again!  OK, so you want your kids to beg you to go to Disney World or to Haiti?

Your reasons to hesitate are all valid concerns—but  choose to let God merge your desire to serve Him and your commitment to your children. Let Him blend them into one and the same!

Your two greatest commitments with those you love the most in the same place – that’s powerful!

Posted in Christian Missions | 1 Comment »

WWJD: Would Jesus Retire?

April 3, 2012 by Mark Woodward

Sherrylee and I attended a wonderful celebration yesterday for Dr. Ken Adams and his wife Lindy at Oklahoma Christian University. Ken is retiring after serving forty years as the choral director and as professor/mentor for literally thousands of students.  About two hundred chorale alumni came from all over the country to participate in a final concert last Sunday in his honor.  Hardeman Auditorium was packed—and profoundly moved by the beautiful music of Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace,  written in 2000 for the Millennium celebration.  If you appreciate classical music, let me strongly recommend you order a copy of this piece immediately!

One of my strongest thoughts as Ken masterfully directed the full orchestra and the two-hundred voice choir was why is he stopping now?  This may have been one of his greatest performances, so he is not suffering from diminished capacities!  He is not old! (Somewhere I read that Baby Boomers don’t think a person is old until they are around 78.) He is not ill!  So why does one retire from doing what one still loves and can do so well?

According to the statistics that I just found, only 20% of Americans between 60-64 are still in the workforce.  In the UK, it is only 10%, and these cousin nations rank far above most other industrialized countries. Austria, Belgium, France, and Italy have only 1% in that age bracket still employed, and Spain has ZERO per cent!

Spain is #8 in rankings for life expectancy (80.9 years) and the US is #36 (78.3). In fact, all of the above countries have a higher life expectancy than the U.S.   But even without quibbling over a few months, on the average most of us have 15-20 years of life left after we retire!

Retirement, as a social policy, is just a little over a century old, so Jesus was never faced explicitly with this issue; however, those commissioned to take his words to the world did sometimes live longer.

I’m thinking about the Apostle Paul—most likely in his sixties–writing to Timothy and saying, “Well, I’ve been working now for over thirty years, so I’m thinking about retiring so I can do things that I’ve been wanting to do—travel, visit my relatives in Tarsus, just hang out with Peter’s grandchildren.  I’m just tired of the constant pressure to produce, the hassle from the brethren, even just the burden to write all these letters.  No, I’m just ready to call my own shots –while I’m still healthy and can enjoy life.”

What’s wrong with this picture?

Our confusion regarding retirement, I’m convinced, occurs when we confuse retirement from employment with retirement from our life, our passion, our purpose, our commitment, yes, retirement from our faith and from faithfulness.

If Jesus had been a carpenter for thirty or forty years, he might have stopped at some point in life, but, whether he was 30, 60, or 90 years old, He would have never stopped being the Son of God. He was the one who said, “As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work” (John 9:4).

Paul might have closed his tent-making company down at some point in his later years, but he would never stop going to the synagogues to speak on Saturday or down to the river where the prayer group was meeting, searching for Seekers.

And Ken and Lindy will always be great servants. They won’t stop being who they have been because of retirement. If anything, they will likely find even better ways to serve God and those around them.

I want to retire someday too—but what I really, really want is to write as my last words what in his last days Paul wrote to Timothy:   “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

Jesus might have retired—but He would never have quit! 

Posted in What Would Jesus Do Series | Tagged , , | 3 Comments »

Preparing Young Children for Easter Without Rabbits!

March 30, 2012 by Mark Woodward

For our children, Easter has become more about baby chickens, bunny rabbits, and egg hunts and hardly anything about Jesus! Part of the reason is that the story is sad, brutal, and gory. We have sanitized the lives of our children to the point that the real Easter story just doesn’t work.  We need a Disney version for our young children.

On the other hand, my 8-year-old, 7-year-old, and 5-year-old grandsons have all seen Star Wars, and some of them have seen at least the first episode of Lord of the Rings. They have all seen the Narnia movies—and they have all been to funerals.  I think they can handle the basics of the passion story.

I’d like to just suggest to you today a schedule of possible readings and activities to do with your young children. You are the best judge about what age is appropriate to participate, but I think you can start younger than you probably imagine.

Each day will have four primary activities:

1.            Create a timeline and put it on the child’s wall or in a place where you do activities. These can be a sheet of paper for each day, or, if you can easily find it, a roll of paper that you can write/draw on.

2..           Read the story from the Bible, if appropriate. You can try the Children’s Bible version or some other easy-to-read version. You also can substitute a storybook version if the children are very young, but use the real Bible if at all possible.

3.            Have your child draw a picture to go with the story that they heard. Talk to them about their picture, letting them explain it to you.  Listen, don’t talk too much.

4.            Do the suggested craft or activity with your child/children and be sure to connect it to the story for the day.

I’ve arranged this so that you can start on Monday, even though the triumphal entry was on Sunday. This will give us an activity to do on Wednesday which was a day of retreat for Jesus.  I hope this adjustment doesn’t bother you. We will keep the timeline we make accurate.

Day Story/Scripture Activity
Sun Entry into Jerusalem  /Matthew 21:1-11 Child should sense joy—doing things that make God happy. Cut branches/tall grasses/have one parent be the donkey and let the child ride while the other parent or other children wave the branches.
Mon Cleansing of the temple/Matt. 21:12-17 Help child understand that Jesus was mad about people disobeying God, but he was not trying to hurt the people! Set up tv trays with coins or other objects “for sale” and let the child go through and knock them over.
Tues Widows Two Mites  /Luke 21:1-4 Your child can learn early to give “all” because you gave them to him/her. Give your child two pennies. You or other children then should drop 10+ pennies into a jar. Your child drops 2 and then you ask who gave more!
Wed (This happened Tues. night, which is Wed on Jewish time. Judas Betrays Jesus for 30 pieces of silver/ Matt. 26:1-5 & 26:14-16 Not only are you telling the story but you are teaching your child that money takes its moral value from how it is used, not how much one has. Bring out the two pennies from yesterday and then bring out 30 dimes or 30 quarters and put them in a sack or bag of some kind. Then ask the child which money was used for good and which for bad.
Thurs Last Supper /Luke 22:7-38  You can talk about how much Jesus loved his disciples. Eating together should be happy, but the one empty chair should be ominous, not mysterious.  Jesus knows what Judas is going to do. Find a recipe on internet and bake unleavened bread together.  If you want, get grape juice and have a little meal together—but leave one chair empty. One of Jesus’ friends with 30 pieces of silver got up and left—what is he going to do?
Friday Crucifixion / Matt. 27:33-50 What you are wanting to convey here is the sadness, not the grimness of Jesus’death. This is tricky and depends on your child/children. I suggest you find a small room which you darken as much as possible, then  light six long-life candles. Take the child in each hr and put out one candle. When the last candle goes out, explain that Jesus died—and it was dark!
Saturday Jesus was buried on Friday, but was in the tomb all day Saturday. The Tomb   John 19:30-42 Just make the point that Jesus was dead and in the grave just like all the dead people in the visited cemetery. Nobody really expected what was going to happen. It would be great to go to a graveyard and just walk for a while, reading what is on the tombstones. No need to make it heavier than the child will.
Sunday Resurrection/  John 20:1-18 Your goal is to create excitement that Jesus is not dead. He is alive! If possible, use the previous room that went dark. Just as the child wakes up on Easter morning, take him/her into the room, bright with sunlight and, if possible, lots of lit candles!

Even if you don’t use these exact activities, perhaps they will spark some ideas. I’d love to hear your ideas for sharing the Easter story with young children.  Let’s pool our ideas and reclaim Easter for Jesus!

This is a repost from 2011, but many new readers will be seeing it for the first time. 

Posted in Christian Culture | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

WWJD: Would Jesus Wear A Hoodie?

March 28, 2012 by Mark Woodward

Cases like the Trayvon Martin killing which occur because of profiling, whether it is racial profiling, class profiling, ethnic or religious profiling, reveal the unspeakable horror that results from looking at the outside of a person rather than the inside.  With what ease we wag fingers, however, then turn around and immediately form our own opinions about people by what they wear, how they talk, or what size they are.

I just heard this morning on ESPN about a defensive line coach that is having lap band surgery because he doesn’t think he will get a head coaching job unless he loses weight.

The movie didn’t bring it out as much, but the book Moneyball  by Michael Lewis (2003) revealed the almost insurmountable tension between the traditional baseball scouts and the new statistically oriented management over what potential ballplayers looked like.  The scouts were choosing future draftees on the basis of their appearance as opposed to their real performance. It was enough to kill someone’s future in professional baseball to just say, “He doesn’t look like a ball player.”

Another video from Britain’s Got Talent has gone viral, although it is the same story, third verse!  Contestants who are unattractive show amazing talent that shocks their mockers.  You may remember Paul Potts, the mobile phone salesman and then Susan Boyle, the frumpy forty-seven year old housewife;  well now there is Charlotte and Jonathan, an unlikely teenage duo who even bring Simon Cowell to his feet in applause.  (Click on these links if you want to see what happened.)

The triumph of these people who do not look like stars always brings tears to my eyes, but I’m embarrassed at the same time that I am one of those who might not have even given them a chance.

I also wonder why this happens often in the UK, and could it ever happen on American Idol?  

Hoodies aren’t that big of a deal! I saw Paris Hilton in a pink hoodie on an airplane from Los Angeles a couple of years ago.  I actually asked for one at Christmas this year—not because of Paris Hilton—and received a nice Under Armour brand hoodie which I wear a lot in cooler weather.

But apparently, if you are the wrong color in the wrong neighborhood, hoodies can be dangerous because we judge people by their hoodies.

Jesus looked at the right-wing terrorist and saw a disciple; he looked at the hated IRS guy and saw a disciple; he looked at some pretty simple fishermen and saw disciples; he looked at outcast women and saw disciples; he looked at cripples and beggars and saw disciples.  He looked at Pharisees and saw disciples.  He looked at foreigners and saw disciples.

If we look at a person and see anything other than a person whom Jesus loves and died for, then we are moving toward the camp of profiling, of bigotry, and of hate crimes. 

We might actually be looking at Jesus with his hoodie on—and never see him!

Posted in Christian Culture, What Would Jesus Do Series | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

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