The Warren & the World is the weekly newsletter from the Story Warren team. You can get it a day early by subscribing in the sidebar. Next week, I’ll try especially hard to not send it out with an errant subject line. Oops.
Around the Web:
Teaching Kids the Bible:
Sally Lloyd-Jones has a great post at The Resurgence about how to read the Bible to kids. It’s the sort of stuff I need to read over and over again, so I commend it to you, too.
These children think they have to keep the rules or God won’t love them. They think if they mess up God will stop loving them. These children are in Sunday schools. They know all their Bible stories. And they have missed what the Bible is all about. They are children like I once was.
Screen Rules:
Elizabeth Foss shares some helpful rules for electronic devices. As my kids get older (and they’re still pretty young), this is getting more and more important.
Don’t say anything online or via text that you wouldn’t want someone’s parents to read or that you wouldn’t want a college admissions officer to read. Both those scenarios are likely to happen. You can be a kid, just be sure to be a good kid
Youth Who Don’t Leave the Church:
I’m always skeptical when I read a headline like this. But, this article about common traits of youth who stay in the church was actually really good.
How many of us are preaching to “unconverted evangelicals”? Youth pastors, we need to preach, teach, and talk—all the while praying fervently for the miraculous work of regeneration to occur in the hearts and souls of our students by the power of the Holy Spirit! When that happens—when the “old goes” and the “new comes”—it will not be iffy.
Is the Internet Really Changing Everything?
I got a great laugh out of this. Have you read a pile of articles about how the Internet is changing everything? So has Alan Jacobs, and he’s calling the authors of those articles out. And it’s awesome!
And the lofty heights from which they address us, the vast wooly abstractions they use to describe “our” condition! “Technology is shifting our way of seeing the world.” “The internet really has changed the world completely.” Pray tell, what is “the world”? Seriously, I want to know what people mean by this.
Read more. (ht Justin Taylor)
The Arts and the Church:
Jeremy Bouma writes a great run down of some of the major issues covered in an intriguing new book called Outreach and the Artist. I’m looking forward to reading the book. Check it out.
Around the Warren:
Build and Be Merry, For Tomorrow It Falls
S.D. Smith pens a good post about the joy we are to find in life.
The pattern of life is pretty simple. Nothing you build lasts. Everything is fleeting. Life is super-duper hard. As Wesley says in The Princess Bride, “Get used to disappointment.”
And there’s hope… Read More.
The Love of a Thing
Carolyn Givens provides a beautiful reminder of how genuine love for a thing attracts other people to love it.
I say trying to play baseball because here’s the thing, we never had enough players. Even when we got the annual kids to come along, finding eight or ten (much less 18) who were the right age was a challenge. But Phil wanted to play. So he made it work, even when he could only convince Sarah and me to play with him. He gave one of us the bat and set the other on the pitcher’s mound, and then set himself to play all the other positions with his whole heart and as much dexterity as he could muster.
And suddenly, I want to go watch the Blue Jays. Read more.
It Was Most Likely the Beginning of the End of the World
Rebecca Reynolds has a great silly poem — and it’s a contest! Have your child draw an illustration from the poem and post it to our facebook page. There will be a prize!
The bumblebee tumbledthe Wallaby pie,
the grasshopper grumbled,
then sneezed on a fly.
Something to Try with Your Kids:
Build Your Own Kite that Really Flies:
Yep, you read that right… build your own kite, one that won’t fall apart when you try to fly it.
And Something Fun to Watch
This is fun AND educational: Fun facts about the US / Canada border.
Thanks for reading! We’re on your side.
- Tumbleweed Thompson Comes Home - October 15, 2024
- Mice that speak and the language of imagination - July 26, 2017
- The Warren & the World Vol 4, Issue 40 - October 8, 2016
LOVE these newsletters…. but I did not agree with Alan Jacob’s piece on so many different levels. That silver maple tree may still be standing… but children are no longer climbing on it, because they are too busy playing their video games and communicating via social media. There are fewer people painting that silver maple and fewer families enjoying picnics under it. And the author must be the exception when he talks of still enjoying Sir Thomas Browne. There are so few people that I know of that I can discuss real books and poetry with anymore…but tv shows and movies? Yes, of course! Technology has saved lives, to be sure.. but it has also created a giant disconnect with face-to-face contact with our world and the people in it.
Hey Tracy — I get where you’re coming from. I think Alan Jacobs would too. I think what he’s decrying is more the “The Internet Has Changed Everything” article that has no specific thrust. I’d wager that if you wrote a “The Internet Has Changed the Way I Enjoy the Silver Maple Tree” article, he’d probably be for it. But I may be wrong, too!
Thanks for the shout out. Con’s book is a good, needed one!