Archive for Category: home school

Doodling in Church

Posted by D Anderson in church, home school, house church on November 18th, 2011

I was noticing earlier today in our Sunday home church meeting that several participants were doing something with their hands as we sat together. One was knitting, another holding an electric bass guitar which (thankfully) wasn’t turned on. Me, I was stroking the sleeping cat upon my lap.

I thought momentarily of the dinner meeting in which someone was “leaning upon Jesus.” John 21:20.

I also remembered hearing of a study from awhile back which concluded that doodling, in its several forms, was actually beneficial in maintaining attention. I believe this to be so if not done in a way which might show disrespect of disinterest toward the person(s) speaking.

Sure enough, I found an account of this research in Time magazine from 2009. It highlights another plus for the informal house church format.

Why does doodling aid memory? Andrade offers several theories, but the most persuasive is that when you doodle, you don’t daydream. Daydreaming may seem absentminded and pointless, but it actually demands a lot of the brain’s processing power. You start daydreaming about a vacation, which leads you to think about potential destinations, how you would pay for the trip, whether you could get the flight upgraded, how you might score a bigger hotel room.

These cognitions require what psychologists call “executive functioning” — for example, planning for the future and comparing costs and benefits. Doodling, in contrast, requires very few executive resources but just enough cognitive effort to keep you from daydreaming, which — if unchecked — will jump-start activity in cortical networks that will keep you from remembering what’s going on.

Doodling forces your brain to expend just enough energy to stop it from daydreaming but not so much that you don’t pay attention. So the next time you’re doodling during a meeting — or twirling a pencil or checking the underside of the table for gum — and you hear that familiar admonition (“Are we bothering you?”), you can tell the boss with confidence that you’ve been paying attention to every word.

http://time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1882127,00.html

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4 McCains

Posted by D Anderson in christianity, family, home school, house church on June 16th, 2009

The paths of President Obama and his former rival John McCain recently crossed at the Naval Academy graduation. The latest McCain grad was the fourth.

Let this encourage us to teach our children and grand-children well and, by grace, see them onto the spiritual battlefield, aka the real world, in the Lord’s army under our conquering commander in chief, Jesus Christ.

Where some brave ones say: “Country first” (which I applaud) – let the saints declare “Kingdom first.”

John McCain’s grandfather and father would become the first father-son team to reach the rank of four-star admiral.

“My father spoke of him to me often, as an example of what kind of man I should aspire to be,” John McCain recalled.

Halsey biographer Potter wrote that “there were few wiser or more competent officers in the Navy than Slew McCain.” The Navy honored him in 1953 by naming a new destroyer the USS John S. McCain. Slew McCain is buried next to his brother, William Alexander McCain, a cavalry officer known as “Wild Bill.”

Bill McCain, who graduated from West Point, chased Mexican insurgent Pancho Villa with Gen. John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, served as an artillery officer during World War I and attained the rank of brigadier general.

In his 1999 book, Faith of My Fathers, McCain details his Scotch-Irish roots, noting that his great-aunt was a descendant of Robert the Bruce, an early Scottish king. On this continent, McCain’s roots date to the American Revolution.

An early ancestor, John Young, served on Gen. George Washington’s staff. After the family moved to Mississippi, a number of McCain’s ancestors fought in the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy.

source: azcentral.com
I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: 2 Timothy 4:7

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Pat Summitt on family

Posted by D Anderson in church, family, home school, house church on May 2nd, 2009

House churching, or whatever your preferred terminology, presumes a (hopefully somewhat stable) family. After all, church is family. And family is the cradle of society, too.

Here is a short audio clip released earlier this week by my fellow Tennessean and award winning coach of the UT Lady Vols. Pat has observed kids for more than 40 years and has now concluded: 

… parents are too concerned to be the child’s friend rather than the child’s parent …

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Classroom size with respect to intimacy

Posted by D Anderson in church, ecclesiology, home school, house church on December 17th, 2008

Colleges and universities are rated on a number of criteria. A high rating comforts parents as they write out the checks each semester. One criteria is the faculty to student ratio, supposedly a measure of teacher/student interaction and intimacy. Another rating consideration is the average class size. The lower the ratio and smaller the class size, the better the rating.

Obviously, there is a parallel to small Christian groups such as house churches.

(In fairness to the traditional churches, it should be duly noted that Sunday Schools also allow and encourage intimacy.)

Cheers to the Lamb in whom are hidden the treasures of wisdom and knowledge!

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Any Christian dynasty builders among us?

Posted by D Anderson in christianity, family, home school, house church, theology on January 17th, 2008

A home church generally emerges from a Christian home. True, there are frequent exceptions. Consider, now, the historical footprint of one Jonathan Edwards:

Edwards, one of the greatest Preachers of all time, was married in 1727.

He and his wife Sarah had 11 children and are an excellent example of two people who built such a spiritual family dynasty: 173 years after their marriage, a study was made of some 1,400 of their descendants.  

By 1900 this single marriage had produced 13 college presidents, 65 professors, 100 lawyers, a dean of an outstanding law school, 30 judges, 56 physicians, a dean of a medical school, 80 holders of public office, 3 United States senators, 3 mayors of large American cities, 3 governors, 1 Vice-President of the United States, 1 comptroller of the United States Treasury. 

Members of the family had written 135 books, edited 18 journals and periodicals. They had entered the ministry in platoons, with nearly 100 of them becoming missionaries overseas.

http://worldviewweekend.com/articles/ChristianResponse.shtml 

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