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An Interesting New Website

We encourage congregations of Christians to worship with vocal music only, just like the early church did. The New Testament church, when under the guidance of the inspired apostles, sang psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, making melody in their hearts, but they did not use instruments.

Those are the opening words from the title page of For A Cappella, a new website dedicated solely to teaching folks about the New Testament’s command to sing without the instrument.

The site is still very new and does not contain a large amount of material yet, but this could be a good thing. Sometimes, when visiting a site, the amount of available material can be overwhelming. Seeing this site in its “infancy” may help people get more out of it.

Take time to visit http://www.foracappella.org/.

A special thanks to Phil Sanders for posting a short article recommending this new site. He often writes about instrumental music on his blog, so, if you are interested in that subject, his would be a good site to add to your favorites.

Videos about Creation Museum

The following news stories will show you some of what is inside the Creation Museum in Kentucky, and you can see the founder and co-founder.

The Week before Maywood

MAYWOOD CHRISTIAN CAMP is the result of prayers, dreams and numberless hours of works of love. In 1963, Howard Mays, at that time a Deacon but later an Elder of the Hamilton, AL congregation until his departure to a “better Campground” in May, 1979, offered to Jerry Jenkins, the preacher, 40 acres to develop as a youth camp. A general invitational meeting was called, with a large group coming from many places. A Board of Trustees was tentatively selected, work plans drawn up, and a large donation of cash and materials made. The first “work day” saw nearly 100 people in the woods. under the leadership and inspiration of Jerry Jenkins, E.R. Bruce, and L.L. Moore, ground was cleared, roads built, a ball field appeared, then buildings began to rise up. There were many hours of work donated by the Marion County Supervisor, Mr. Rich, and his men.

The first session was held in 1965. A most wonderful 3 weeks were enjoyed by and
attendance of about 50 campers and staff per week, under the direction of E.R. Bruce. Brother Bruce passed away in 1993. In 1966, the 5 sessions averaged about 70 per week. It has grown each year as more and more people, both young and old, have come to appreciate the influence of MAYWOOD CHRISTIAN CAMP in their lives.

Campers and staff have come from the far corners of our country, as far away as California. Some have attended at least one week each summer since its beginning, or from the very earliest age they could attend. Numbers have obeyed the Gospel, learned to pray, preach, know what real Christian association is, and even found a lifetime companion among the fellow campers. Many have been encouraged to attend Christian colleges because of the influence of counselors from these schools. A much deeper realization of what it means to really worship God has been the result of the nightly devotional under the stars, standing in the “very center of God’s creation — in our own Garden of Eden”.

The young people from 9th Avenue (and other congregations) will go to Maywood Christian Camp beginning Sunday. Many hours of preparation have already gone in to making this year wonderful for our young people, and many more hours will be put in this week.

I know that several young people in our youth group read this blog, and I wanted to take this opportunity to remind them of Maywood. It’s going to be a great week of Bible classes, singing, crafts, swimming, fun…and Terry Gillim!

Young people, if you have not made up your mind to attend Maywood this year, there are still several spots available for our session. Visit the Maywood website (listed below) and print out an application. If you have decided to attend, I’m looking forward to seeing you there.

It’s going to be a great year! See you Sunday in Hamilton.

Maywood Christian Camp website

Creation Museum Opens

Recently, we ran a short article about the opening of the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Yesterday was the big day, and the museum opened with great reviews and great protests. As you can imagine, the protests continue today as media outlets tell their version of the grand opening.

In all, over 4000 people attended the opening yesterday. Some were amazed and happy by what they saw, while others thought the displays were an outrage. Many others gathered across the street to protest the museum.

As you can guess, I think this museum is a great thing. It is needed and will help teach many people. It will also be a good thing if it causes people to debate the historical accuracy of the Bible in an open way. I hope to be able to visit the museum sometime. I think, besides being a great faith-builder, it would be intellectually stimulating.

Here are a couple of selected press releases that discuss the museum from both a positive and negative perspective:

ITV (from United Kingdom): Science Ignored at Creation Museum

Associated Press (as published on San Fransisco Gate): Ky. Creation Museum Opens to Thousands

Just for a Moment

Tomorrow, our nation will remember. Memorial Day is a time of reflection and remembrance. For those who have lost loved ones in battle, it is a very important day. For those, like me, who have had family members fight for our freedoms, it is still a day of reflection, even if our family members were lucky enough to survive death in battle.

As with so many other things, though, there are dozens of distractions on Memorial Day. Major League Baseball plays many games throughout the day and makes sure many are on TV. The NCAA always hosts the men’s lacrosse national championship on Memorial Day. Others take time to shop, fish and cook out with family.

While none of these things is bad, we don’t need to fill our day with so much that we fail to remember.

And how often are we reminded of much the same thing when we worship; especially in the eating of the Lord’s Supper. Brother Steve Sanders has written a excellent, albeit brief, article making this comparison. Please take a moment to read it by clicking here.

Enjoy the holiday. Rest, relax and visit with or talk to family. But don’t forget the reason for Memorial Day. Take a few moments and remember. You’ll be glad you did, and you’ll be thankful for our nation.

One More Week

Next Friday, June 1, will be the launch date for the new financial blog for Christians, “Where Your Treasure Is.” The four writers: Wes Hazel, James Dalton, Joey Sparks and I are all looking forward to a successful launch.

We hope this blog will be of some help to you. We all struggle with money in one way or another, and we sincerely pray that this effort will help us all come closer to the Biblical way of using our monies and possessions.

If you have not done so yet, please bookmark the site, Where Your Treasure Is.

Also,

• If you are a member of Technorati, there is a link on the blog for you to add Where Your Treasure Is to your favorites.
• If you have not done so, please pass along word about the blog through emails or word-of-mouth.
• Check out the article Joey Sparks wrote on his blog about the launch.
• Go to the blog and click on “subscribe to: posts (atom)” to get updates about articles as they are added.
• Most importantly, pray for this effort. We certainly are.

We hope to see you in one week on Where Your Treasure Is!

Defining "Dirty" in Seattle

One of the major issues facing Christian teenagers is dancing. School dances, quite simply, are not a Christian place. So many adults cave in and say that young people should be allowed to go because, “I got to when I was young;” “Everyone gets to but our kids;” or “There are adults present.”

But what are those adults allowing? Recently, Seattle’s Ballard High School announced that it was outlawing “freak dancing” at school dances, including their upcoming PROM. What is “freak dancing?” Most of us would recognize it as the type of dancing done in rap and R&B videos.

The school, though, decided to actually try to define what was “over the line” and what wasn’t. Please take the time to read the following article, written by Huan Hsu, as posted on May 16th on Seattle Weekly (all bold emphasis is mine, ADF):

At Ballard High School’s winter formal this year, Miles Rydinski was living the dream. He and his date were getting down on the dance floor, grinding along to some hip-hop, lost in a moment of teenage euphoria. But about 30 minutes before midnight, a chaperone broke into the circle Miles was dancing in and tapped him on the shoulder. Miles and his date were forced to leave.

The same thing had happened at homecoming a few months before, giving Miles, an otherwise well-behaved, college-bound senior, the dubious honor of going two for two in getting kicked out of school formals. “Everyone was breaking the rules,” Miles says. “It’s way more fun when the girl’s getting wild.”

Efforts to curb freaking—which most students just call “dancing,” drawing no distinction between the two—in Seattle schools aren’t new, and barring a sudden rise in the popularity of contra dancing, likely won’t end anytime soon. But in the thick of prom season, high schools are trotting out new strategies.

For its upcoming prom, Cleveland High School has hired DJ Super Dave, who specializes in school events. “I can tell if they want to freak before they do,” says Super Dave. “So I’ll get on the mike and remind them to keep it clean, or put on some old-school stuff like MC Hammer or Vanilla Ice. It’s just a sixth sense. I know what songs to pick and what not to pick.”

At April’s spring tolo, Inglemoor High brought in Dance Dance Revolution games, for which freaking isn’t one of the moves. And the school will hold its prom at the Experience Music Project, hoping the exciting exhibitions will distract students from riding dirty. “We’re trying to think of some alternatives to just dancing,” says Sally Barnum, Inglemoor’s activities coordinator for the past 34 years.

In 2005, Seattle School District’s chief academic officer, Steve Wilson, issued a memo prohibiting freak dancing, but left it up to individual schools to both define and police it. In practice, Seattle school administrators define freaking a bit like they do pornography—you know it when you see it—but there are some general prohibitions: dancing against a wall, grabbing ankles, hands below the knees, the use of chairs or other furniture for impromptu lap dances, pantomiming of sex acts, trains, or contact between any areas that a bathing suit would cover. Ingraham High School has even created a mnemonic device to help its students remember:
“Face to face and leave some space.”

“It sounds horrible to describe,” chuckles Amy Baeder, a science teacher and senior-class co-adviser at Cleveland. “It’s just as embarrassing for the adults as for the kids.”

The guidelines don’t always do the trick, though. While patrolling Ingraham’s dances, Traci Huffer, the school’s activities coordinator, sometimes catches her student-government officers leading the freaking. “They can’t help themselves,” she says. “They’re like, ‘Sorry, Mrs. Huffer.'”

Huffer prefers to use school staff rather than parents as chaperones. “What a parent might think is so unacceptable, we kind of go, ‘No, it’s about right,'” Huffer explains.

Two years ago, Ballard administrators received enough complaints—from staff as well as parents—to try to contain the problem. Activities coordinator Kevin Wynkoop urged student leaders to come up with a reasonable plan to present to the
administration. “If you don’t,” he advised, “they’ll just come down very hard. It’s much easier for them to just cancel the dances.”

So instead of adopting a rhyming reminder, the students discussed what was obscene and what was extreme. “We all agreed that a girl bent over, touching the ground, that’s inappropriate,” says Wynkoop. “So the question was: When does it become appropriate?”

The school eventually adopted the “45-degree rule”: Anyone whose torso was more than 45 degrees from perpendicular to the ground was too low and risked getting kicked out. (No, adults don’t patrol the dance floor armed with protractors.)

“Certainly, the rule doesn’t stop all dirty dancing, but it’s something we can define,” says Wynkoop.

Last year, Ballard also added a penalty box. Students who didn’t follow the dancing guidelines were forced to sit out the rest of the song, as well as the next one. But that, according to Wynkoop, proved to be a logistical nightmare, requiring a separate room (far enough away from the dance so students couldn’t hear the music),
someone to supervise the room, and also tracking how many strikes each couple
had. “It was just cumbersome,” says Wynkoop. The school scrapped the idea after
the school year.

At Ballard’s homecoming dance this fall, so many students were removed that the ones who were left had little incentive to stick around. “Teens will jump on perceived injustice faster than anything else,” says Wynkoop. “So everyone else said, ‘This dance is lame, so we’ll dance nastier than ever, and get thrown out and go home.’ Then there needs to be additional punishment, so we added lunch duty.”

Cleveland’s Baeder says it’s been more than a year since any of her school’s dances reached its scheduled close. Instead, school officials have had to shut down the dances once the freaking got out of hand. After a debaucherous homecoming dance this fall, the school tried to make a statement by canceling the winter formal, leaving Cleveland with just two dances for the year. “I don’t think that really works,” says Baeder. “From the kids’ perspectives, that isn’t a way for them to change. They just get frustrated and wonder why there aren’t dances.”

Canceling dances also eliminates a major revenue source for student groups, which can make thousands of dollars in one night by putting on a dance. Each class typically gets to host a dance, and banks the profit to help pay for things like a prom when they become seniors. After the homecoming dance got out of hand this year, Franklin High School canceled the next two tolos, meaning the junior and sophomore
classes lost out.

This year, at least three Seattle schools are requiring students to sign a contract, when they buy their tickets or at the door, promising to abide by dance guidelines. That effectively serves as their warning, and if they don’t honor their contracts, they get the boot. When Franklin canceled the two tolos, it also instituted contracts for last week’s prom. Everyone abided by the terms, says Gen Saechao, a Franklin senior and student body representative. “Nobody got kicked out.”

Students attending Ballard’s prom next month will have to sign contracts as well, though the formal clothing tends to discourage freaking. “Maybe I’ll let them get a little further than I normally would,” says Wynkoop. “I’m not going to jump on someone as soon as they hit 46 degrees. But we also have to be consistent, or else you can’t have rules.”

The students, of course, don’t see what the big deal is, claiming that their dancing merely reflects the times. “I just think of it purely as fun when I’m doing it,” says Libbie Martin, a Ballard senior who was dismissed from the homecoming dance. “I get both sides of the story. To think that women have come so far and here they are bent over for the guy, it’s crude—I understand that. But this is part of our culture, and the kind of music they play encourages this dancing. If waltzing was in, I’m sure that’s what I’d be doing.”

Miles says he plans on attending the Ballard prom and won’t hold back. He simply hopes that if he decides to get freaky, an adult won’t be watching. “It’s not like I’m going to [tell my date], ‘Please refrain from bending down and straighten your back,'” he laughs.

Did you notice that school officials have limits, but aren’t going to “strictly” enforce them? Parents, I know this is in Seattle; I know it’s in a big city; I know it’s on the “Left Coast;” but it happens at every PROM!

Christian parents need to stand up and say “no” to their children.

Young people, you need to stand up and say “no” to school dances. They are not the place a Christian teen should be.

Book Review: "Walking with Those Who Weep"

Many congregations, especially in the area where I live, have had one or both of the Williams brothers to come and conduct a “grief seminar.” Ron and Don Williams do an excellent job at these conferences helping both those who are grieving as well as those are care-givers, friends and acquaintances.

Their book on the subject, Walking with Those Who Weep: A Guide to Grief Support, is an excellent summary of the information they give in the weekend seminars. Helping those who grieve is, in many ways, an art-form. Just saying “something” isn’t what is needed; saying the right thing (or nothing) is needed. This book helps the grieving, but may serve a better purpose for those of us who are near the bereaved.

As one who works with young people, I didn’t know if this book would be of a great deal of value for my work. But one entire chapter (and one of the best, in my opinion) deals with how to help children during times of loss. While it is geared more to parents and guardians, the information and suggestions could be utilized by anyone who has a hand in helping with the youth.

This book is a quick read and will cause you to stop and think about your own mannerisms. It will cause you to really stop and think about what you say and do for a grieving family. If you are grieving, this book may be of some help, too, as it written in such a way that will help you understand that the feelings you have are, most likely, normal and, in many ways, healthy.

Pick up this book from the Freed-Hardeman bookstore for just $9.95 by clicking here.

A New Look and a New Feature

We hope you like the new look of our blog. This template was chosen because it is a little more stream-lined (in my mind, anyway) than the old one. This is especially true with the items on the right-hand side.

Also, we have added a new feature to the bottom of the page. Please check it out and click on the ads (I have read the “terms and conditions” and I can ask you to click on these ads just this one time throught the medium of this site). It won’t cost you anything, but it will help us earn some money from the blog. If you have a blog/website and add these ads, please let us know and we will return the favor.

Again, enjoy the new look. Please let us know what you think, and continue to pass the word along about the blog!