Emerging Parents

Let’s get this going again folks.As I follow some of your other blogs I know you all are busy, but I feel a need for some of your thoughts and ideas on parenting in this day and age.I personally would like to get your thoughts on parenting in a vacuum of church and community. Is [...]

According to Brian McLaren Dave Csinos at McMaster Divinity College is currently doing important research about spiritual formation for children in emerging churches. He’s also written a great paper on children in the Bible, available here. I can’t wait to see what he finds.

Okay everybody. I might as well be up front and say that I am obsessed with the idea of intergenerational worship. So if I sound a bit intense or even close minded, please forgive my charisma and know that one day it will grow more mature and maybe even mellow.
By “intergenerational worship,” I mean corporate [...]

I’m very interested to hear everyone’s thoughts on this month’s topic of children’s ministry, so I thought I’d share a few of mine in hopes to get things rolling.Let me preface by saying that I am not a children’s pastor and I have very limited experience in children’s ministry. I am interested in this topic [...]

“I’m bored.”

No, not me. My 6-year old.

He’s bored.

Keep in mind his room is filled with a decent supply of toys… not like mine at his age, because my parents were on the extravagant credit card kick whereas my wife and I enjoy the simplicity of debit cards instead. Nonetheless, he’s doing pretty good there, has [...]

I was reflecting the other day on some of the social niceties that we teach out kids – out of habit more than anything – for instance, saying “please” when we ask for something. Alfie Kohn, a well known writer on issues of parenting, education, and human behavior, has pointed out that in most cases [...]

This is is obviously not about Holidays…I was just listening to Jim Wallis, on “Speaking of Faith” portray his parents urgency for him to be saved at an early age of 6. He retold the story of an evangelist coming to tell him and other children that if Jesus returned their parents would go to [...]

I just wanted to share this quote with folks here for your reflections and reactions:
“The future of our movement may be less in convincing the established system that we are legitimate, and more so in showing our spouses and children that we represent a genuine alternative to the hypocrisy we’re frequently critical of. If emergent [...]

Some may be interested to read this review of a delightful book by Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson and his granddaughter Solveig. It certainly offers one model whereby we can engage in conversation about ‘theology-stuff’ with kids. And let’s be honest, who doesn’t want to do that. Some of them are our best theologians!

At the Emergent Gathering we decided that we need a space to interact on emerging parenting ideas – hence, this blog. So there’s not much here at the moment, but it will get developed soon. We hope this can be a safe place to discuss how we can follow Christ as parents, integrating [...]