Moving to tumblon!

For the past several months, I have been maintaining two personal blogs, this one, and (without any publicity) my tumblon blog. That time has come to an end, as I will now use the tumblon blog exclusively. Why am I making the switch now?

1. Integration.
• Tumblon is integrated with Elisabeth's developmental milestones.
  
• Tumblon integrates stories and photos (and soon video) in one service.
  
2. Security.
• Tumblon has 3 tiers of security for every milestone, memory and photo: private, friends & family, and public. Now I don't have to be nervous about publishing because I control the content - and I can write for each audience.
  
• Tumblon uses a static url (mine is http://scharf.tumblon.com). Registered friends see all the friends & family content, while unregistered folks see only the public posts.

There are lots of other benefits of tumblon over blogger, but these two are the reason that I'm making the move now. So, reset your feed readers to the new blog, and feel free to email me at leavened (a) gmail.com to request an invitation to see all of our friends & family content there.

For the sake of full disclosure: I am co-founder and community manager of tumblon, and so I'm very excited to share the service with family and friends. We are making many improvements, and adding many new features as we move toward a public beta (very soon), and then a public launch (in a few months). So you will get to see many of those improvements and features over the weeks and months to come. If there's something you think would make tumblon better, you can email me, or use the support email on any of the tumblon pages to let us know how to meet the needs of parents.

UPDATE (Nov 3, 2008): Our public beta is going well, and now includes video!

"The orcs have been here"

Families who share literature together have a rich history and vocabulary with which to communicate depth of feeling, as Gladys Hunt captures well:

"When we went to visit a favorite spot and saw that much of hat we remembered as beautiful had changed, our son said, 'The orcs have been here,' and we didn't need to say more." (Honey for a Child's Heart p76)

That expression alone captures for me the power of literary allusion.

The privilege and responsibility of parenting

I love reading with Elisabeth. That discovery has been one of the greatest joys of parenting. Gladys Hunt captures well my sentiments:

"Children and books go together in a special way. I can't imagine any pleasure greater than bringing to the uncluttered, supple mind of a child the delight of knowing the may rich things God has given us to enjoy. Parents have this wonderful privilege, and books are their keenest tools. Children don't stumble onto good books by themselves; they must be introduced to the wonder of words put together in such a way that they spin out pure magic and joy." (Honey for a Child's Heart p17)

I would nuance what she has said to state that it is the privilege and responsibility of parents to teach children to delight in God and His gifts. For she is surely right that children don't stumble onto good books by themselves. Yet that in no way negates or diminishes her point that it is a tremendous privilege to discharge this responsibility. Our job as parents is to enjoy the goodness, truth and beauty of God in all things, and to introduce our children to this delight. That is a gloriously happy responsibility.

Not a compelling vision

A recent letter to parents from our principal closed with these words:

"Reading, writing and math are lifetime skills we should all continue to sharpen."

It struck me that those words, while true, are not at all a compelling vision of education. What teachers, to say nothing of children, get excited about the mechanics of reading and writing, or the ability to perform mathematic procedures? Those skills are the means to meaningful ends, and when they are employed to meaningful ends are exciting. Using math to solve a real problem provides satisfaction; using words effectively to persuade someone to stop littering is gratifying; reading literature that provides a compelling vision of what is good, true and beautiful is a delight.

I pray that we, as parents, would be gripped by a compelling vision of truth, goodness and beauty (rooted in the gospel) that shapes our understanding and pursuit of education - and our dialogue with those who are intellectual descendants of John Dewey.

Environmentally friendly parenting

My friend Jennifer is blogging this week about environmentally friendly parenting. She has some very helpful and concrete suggestions. And although her target audience is admittedly moms, most of what she has to say here is just as germane to dads.

So read, reduce, and enjoy!

The trickle up effect

Lesslie Newbigin, explaining the theology of Augustine, states:

"Thus love creates order first in the family and among neighbors and then, by extension, in the city and the nation." (Foolishness to the Greeks p104)

Love creates order, beginning first in the family. Where parents love their children by calling them to love Christ, the proper order of all things is established: 'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.' Then the second commandment falls in place, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' As Augustine says:

"Consequently, since he is ordered to love his neighbour as himself, he advises his neighbour [and children] also to love God." (ibid. p104)

Thus, notes Newbigin, "It is love that creates justice."

As a parent and educator, I marvel at the divine wisdom of this 'trickle up effect.' It begins in the home, in every home, where faith works through love. Love establishes order in the home, by which justice reigns, and character is formed. Those who experience such love and justice in the home are there prepared, by faith, to love their neighbors. The neighborhood is thereby infected with the love and justice of God through faithful parenting. And as the leaven works through the dough of society, love for God creates order "by extension, in the city and the nation."

The establishment of justice in society is not distinct from, but must flow from, faith in Christ shown in love, beginning in the home. Of this justice, John Owen rightly says,

"The greatest mercies and blessings that in this world we are made partakers of, next to them of the gospel and the covenant of grace, come to us through this channel and conduit ['the proper work of magistracy' i.e. good government]" (Overcoming Sin and Temptation p352).

In this season where all eyes are on presidential candidates, it is wise to set our hands also to the work that we can do in the home that is the gospel way to the just governance of the next generation.

Discipline pays dividends

Tonight I had a conversation with a friend in which he asked me, "Are you still enjoying fatherhood?" My answer was an emphatic yes.

I've been particularly conscious lately of just how worthwhile the difficult discipline of the second and third years has been. Now when I give Elisabeth a direction, I know that she will do it without the directive being repeated. When she disobeys, she knows that the way out is confession and repentance. It is the exception, rather than the rule, to hear a request not accompanied by please. And when she comes to me with a complaint about another child, I know that she has already tried to talk with the other child about it. All those things make fathering a delight.

So when we go to the playground and I see parents frustrated that their four-year-olds (not to mention the older kids) won't listen to them, I am all the more convinced that setting and enforcing clear expectations early has made parenting a joy for us, and has allowed Elisabeth to blossom.

The Easter Story

Yesterday I read aloud Lilly's Big Day in Elisabeth's class. I also gave her teachers The Big Picture Story Bible to preview the sections on the Easter story. I explained that I wanted to be able to share with the class what Easter is about through a book written for children. I want them to understand that it isn't about bunnies and eggs.

After previewing the book, they declined (although the teacher's aid was riveted by The Big Picture Story Bible and I left it with her to read). It was a good reminder to me of where tolerance ends. As Lesslie Newbigin states:

"But if we are talking as the Bible talks about God, who is Creator and Governor of all things, who acts in specific ways, and whose purpose is the criterion for everything human, whether in the public or the private sectors, then there is an inevitable conflict." (Foolishness to the Greeks p67, emphasis mine)

The death and resurrection of Jesus call the entire modern world into question. I could not read it to the kids as a nice story (it can hardly be called 'nice'), or even merely a good piece of literature (and I think it is excellent children's literature). I would be reading it as the true story about the defining event in the history of the world - and that is a dividing line.

So I look forward to sitting with the teachers privately, away from the kids, and talking about this event that defines all of human existence. And I pray that the nonsense of the Gospel will penetrate their hearts, and give them life.

You're not a child!

Elisabeth turned to me yesterday in worship and said,

"You're not a child!"

Several times when we have talked about being children of God, she has been confused and said, "You're not a child. You're a grown-up." Her perplexity is understandable. Where else do we ask grown-ups to be children? Yet this is precisely where I am humbled in her presence and have to say,

"The only way for Daddy to enter God's kingdom is to become like you. There is no room for grown-ups in the Kingdom. God only accepts people who receive His Kingdom like children. That's the way that I need to be a child - and the way that you need to stay a child."

Web 2.0 parenting

I have loved spending the past two and a half years with Elisabeth and watching her explore and develop on a daily basis. I have loved taking thousands of pictures and keeping this blog to be able to record our memories. Learning how she is developing, and finding appropriate ways to encourage and stretch her has been a delight.

As I spent hours perusing book lists, searching the shelves of libraries and bookstores, and wandering (mostly frustrated) through toy stores, I wondered if there was a service that told you what skills your child was currently developing, and recommended great books, toys and activities for each developmental stage - in short, a service to make parenting simple, so parents could spend more constructive time with their kids.

So I looked, and came up empty. There are lots of lists: lists of milestones, lists of books, lists of toys, and lists of activities. But no one had pioneered web 2.0 parenting, by providing parents a simple, customized, interactive environment to learn about and support each stage of their children's development.

At the same time, my childhood best friend, Jonathan, had seen that although parents (like me) take thousands of digital pictures, and there are many services for printing and sharing photos on the web, no one seemed to realize that the rate of computer replacement by home users would mean that parents needed a better and more reliable way to store their memories and photos for the long haul.

Thus tumblon was born. We could provide parents a simple, customized, interactive environment in which parents could learn how to support their child's current development and save those memories in stories, photos, and videos. It would be an interactive online 'baby book' so that grandparents (and other friends and family) could enjoy all the memories 24/7 - and for many, many years to come.

As an educator, I believe that parents are the key players in the education of children. I also believe that their greatest responsibility lies in the first five years of life (thought it certainly doesn't end there), as those early years mold the character, shape the personality, and even affect the intellectual capacity of children. So the prospect of creating a service that enabled parents to fulfill their responsibility, celebrate all of the milestones along the way and create a rich archive of memories is a dream come true.

In the not-so-distant future, that dream is going to come true when we launch tumblon. There is a teaser site up now, where you can sign up to learn more. And I'm posting on the founders' blog as we get closer to launch. Before too long, I'll start posting on my new tumblon blog, so you'll know that the transition has arrived, when this blog redirects you there!

Teaching Truthfulness

A friend just sent me an article on Learning to Lie, which presents fascinating research on the rate of lying in children, and the reasons they lie. Two of their observations especially impressed me:

1. Parents teach their kids to lie. The way we confront infractions can incite a child to lie. If we burst out, "Did you do that?" a child is inclined to self-protect by lying. But we can be even more outright in our incitements to lie, particularly in how they respond to receiving and undesirable gift.
   
2. Lying is a pattern that builds. The author puts it this way:

   Many parenting Websites and books advise parents to just let lies go—they’ll grow out of it. The truth, according to Talwar, is that kids grow into it. In studies where children are observed in their natural environment, a 4-year-old will lie once every two hours, while a 6-year-old will lie about once every hour and a half. Few kids are exceptions. (source, emphasis mine)

   New York magazine is telling parents the dangers of letting their children lie! Now if we jump on the bandwagon because "studies prove . . ." that kids grow into lying, then we've missed the point. Research is behind the curve in parenting advice. Teaching your children not to lie, and modeling integrity, have been wise in every age and every place.

After reading this article, I was all the more grateful that Elisabeth regularly comes to me (unsolicited) and says, "Daddy, I did _____ [that was forbidden]." O how I would rather have an honest child who repents than a seemingly flawless child who is a liar!

Packed up and ready to go

We have two friends who have recently given birth to children with congenital heart defects. One child has hypoplastic left heart, and is about six months old, and the other has trisomy 18 (one of the effects of which is hypoplastic left heart). It has been hard and good to love and pray for these families as they love their children.

The second family, the Fahmers, know that their son's time is likely very short; only 5% of children with their son's condition live past their first birthday. They have started a blog about their experiences, which I hope will bring Light to parents of terminally ill children - and parents of healthy children.

Last night as Rebecca and I talked about these two hard situations, I thought of J.I. Packer's words in his introduction to A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of Christian Life:

"[T]he Puritans have taught me to see and feel the transitoriness of this life, to think of it, with all its richness, as essentially the gymnasium and dressing-room where we are prepared for heaven, and to regard readiness to die as the first step in learning to live . . . . [T]heir medicine and surgery were rudimentary; they had no aspirins, tranquillisers, sleeping tablets or anti-depressant pills, just as they had no social security or insurance; in a world in which more than half the adult population died young and more than half the children died in infancy, disease, distress, discomfort, pain and death were their constant companions. They would have been lost had they not kept their eyes on heaven and known themselves as pilgrims traveling home to the Celestial City. . . . Few of us, I think, live daily on the edge of eternity in the conscious way that the Puritans did, and we lose out as a result. For the extraordinary vivacity, even hilarity (yes, hilarity; you will find it in the sources), with which the Puritans lived stemmed directly, I believe from the unflinching, matter-of-fact realism with which they prepared themselves for death, so as always to be found, as it were packed up and ready to go. Reckoning with death brought appreciation of each day's continued life, and the knowledge that God would eventually decide, without consulting them, when their work on earth was done brought energy for the work itself while they were still being given time to get on with it. (pp 13-14 emphasis mine)

I think families like the Fahmers can be contemporary Puritans to us, helping us to live daily on the edge of eternity, "packed up and ready to go," whether we and our children are robust and healthy, or terminally ill. May God grant us grace to see His face and live with vivacity, hilarity and energy while He gives us breath.

The subversive act of prayer

We are blessed in this season of life, with many wonderful friends. For the first time in our lives, several of those close friends are not Christians. As we frequently invite friends to join us in our home for meals, I'm forced to cross a new bridge: how/if to give thanks to Christ for food before we eat. In general, I explain our practice of praying before meals to our guests, and ask if they would permit me to pray before we eat. So far we haven't met with refusal, but it has opened my eyes to how subversive that action is.

In praying to God through Christ before we eat, we are speaking with the living God in front of people who don't know Him, who are by nature (as we were) enemies of God. We are bowing before the One to whom we owe our very existence, when our guests may not acknowledge His existence. Furthermore, if I was invited into the home of a friend who invoked another god before sharing a meal with us, I could not, in good conscience, participate. But that is exactly what I am doing in inviting our guests to pray with us: to participate in speaking to God in Christ.

If I am not mistaken, that 'small' action is potentially very threatening (in both good and bad ways) to our guests. We are calling them to acknowledge a Reality that they deny, by humbly pausing before Him. Regardless of their religion, prayer challenges the most basic assumptions of what is, and what is real. And that can be very threatening - in a way that causes people to clam up in fear, or in a way that opens the door to authentic, transparent communication about the Gospel.

I am finding that in crossing that culture gap, particularly with friends who have young children, it is wise and helpful to invite them to join us, to explain what I'm about to do (so it doesn't seem hokey-pokey, or ritualistic), and to pray - and silently pray that the Spirit would awaken them to the glory of Christ.

Seminary of Church and State

"A family is the seminary of Church and State. If children are not well principled at home, then everything miscarries! A error in the first mixture is not mended in the second! If youth are ill-bred in the family, then they will be ill-mannered in Church and society. It is in the home where making or marring of one's character first takes place, which early character is the early presage of their future lives (Proverbs 20:11)." [Thomas Manton, quoted in The Family Worship Book p109]

I find it hard to disagree. Therefore there little more important to Church or society than to equip and hold parents responsible for this high duty.

Early lessons

"Let us look upon every brother who tries or vexes us as God's means of grace, God's instrument for our purification - an opportunity for our exercise of the humility Jesus our Life breathes within us." (Andrew Murray in Humility)

I tend to think of these kinds of insights as only for adults, but they are not. If we teach our children these lessons early, they will be less tried and vexed - and more happy and free. The great challenge of parenting, as I see it, is to communicate these things in language that 3 and 4 year olds can understand - and to manifest the reality in our own lives.

Come Ye Sinners

Recently we have begun including singing in our family worship time (despite the fact that I still can't play the guitar). Our CD player does a much better job than I could.

We started out using one of the songs from the Seeds of Praise album, Praise the Lord (from Psalm 148). I thought that this would be a good fit for Elisabeth as it is Scripture set to upbeat music. However, after about a week of Praise the Lord, she picked up one of my CDs, Indelible Grace, and asked if we could sing Come Ye Sinners, a great old hymn set to new music.

So for the last week or so, we have been singing Come Ye Sinners every night, while Elisabeth follows along the lyrics with her finger. That experience has made me even more grateful for rich hymns and the context that they give to explain and impress the truth of the Gospel. Each verse is an exposition of that great and glorious truth: "not the righteous, not the righteous; sinners Jesus came to call."

What better way to plant the great truths of the Gospel than through song?

Bad parents

"I cannot suppose that you are such a stranger in England as to be ignorant of the general complaint concerning the decay in the power of godliness, and especially of the great corruption of youth. Wherever you go, you will hear men crying out about how bad youth are. But indeed the source of the problem must be sought a little higher: it is bad parents that make bad children! We cannot blame children so much for their unruliness, for the greater weight of the blame lies in our own negligence in their education." (Thomas Manton, Epistle to the Reader of the Westminster Confessions of Faith and Larger and Shorter Catechisms, reprinted in The Family Worship Book p109)

It appears from Manton's comments (circa 1647), that the problem of parenting is not a new one, and that then, as now, society was slow to locate responsibility with parents for the education and formation of their children. So his statement is very bold: "it is bad parents that make bad children!" I dare say it is more bold now than then to make such a claim, but no less true. Further, I think that his approach is right not to point the finger at others, but to frame it as confession: "the greater blame lies in our own negligence in their education."

Nor did Manton stop with confession and wallowing in the bad condition of parenting. The Epistle was bound with the Westminster Confession and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, because he was convinced that the application and use of these by parents was the remedy for their situation. I think we would do well to learn from him on all three levels: acknowledging the failure of parenting, confessing our sin, and repenting by taking hold of the resources provided for the instruction of our children.

The Family Worship Book

Before reading Family Driven Faith, I hadn't thought much about the difference between family devotions and family worship. Voddie Baucham primed the pump so that when someone offered to buy me a book for Christmas, I knew precisely what kind of book I wanted. Through some helpful reviews on Amazon, I found The Family Worship Book, which I am pleased to commend just as strongly as they did.

For those who are unconvinced of the importance not merely of Biblical instruction in the home, but of regular family worship, this book provides a helpful and brief overview of why Christians in generations past have considered it indispensable. The author, Terry Johnson, is quite forthright in tracing his heritage to the Westminster Confessions and Catechisms - and provides explanation for why he leans on them so heavily (which you will probably see popping up in my quotables in the days to come). I think his argument is compelling for those who are already sensitive to the issues (as I was), and I think would be very challenging to someone who has not considered the responsibilities of family worship.

Many books are good at casting vision without providing any practical resources for doing so, and I am pleased to say that such is not the case with The Family Worship Book. The author is diligent to outline what he sees as the important elements of family worship, and then offers a sample liturgy for how to conduct family worship. In addition, he includes:

• two catechisms, sans proof texts (including the Westminster Shorter Catechism)
• a great list of hymns and psalms (sadly without scores, although he recommends several CDs that have numerous of the psalms and hymns on them)
• a list of 50 important passages for memorization (including great OT texts)
• a family reading record that uses a harmonization approach for reading with young children
• a great selection of Scriptures for call to worship, and confession (reprinted, so you don't have to look them all up)
• the Apostles', Nicene, and Westminster creeds
• and a recommended pattern for introducing (and reviewing) psalms/hymns, memorization passages, and the creeds.

With a few bookmarks, this is a rich resource for beginning to practice family worship rather than just talking about its importance. I haven't yet found a better book to call and equip parents to lead their families in fellowship with Christ.

Core curriculum

Is it or is it not the case that every human being exists for the joy of eternal fellowship with God and must face the possibility of missing that mark, forfeiting that prize? If it is the case, it ought to be part of the core curriculum in every school. It will not do to say that the determination of character by the structure of the DNA molecule is a fact that any child must learn to understand, but that the determination of all proper human purposes for the glory of God is an opinion that anyone is free to accept or reject. The question of which is the real word simply cannot be permanently evaded. There can be no genuinely missionary encounter of the gospel with our culture unless we face these questions. (Lesslie Newbigin Foolishness to the Greeks p67)

I love reading Newbigin. He has the ability to make clear what our culture sees as murky - and helps me think though what is involved in raising children to see that DNA can describe a great many things, but cannot explain them by giving them purpose.

Little churches

"The families of Christians should be little churches."
(Richard Baxter in his Christian Directory, quoted in The Family Worship Book p17)

As I am reading through The Family Worship Book, I find Baxter's claim ringing true. If the family functions as a little church in regular worship, confession, prayer, reading, instruction and catechism, would not the church benefit greatly?

If it would not only benefit the church, but is in fact the responsibility of parents, then what greater service could the Church offer than to equip parents to lead its "little churches"? The Church would be rightly shifting the responsibility for spiritual nurture back to parents and equipping them to fulfill that responsibility.

I see the consequences spiraling:

1. Parents realize the gravity of parenting.
2. Parents pray daily with their children and for their children.
3. Children grow to understand worship as a daily, not weekly, activity.
4. Children daily see their parents confess sin and worship Christ.
   
5. The worship of many families (on Sundays) mirrors and reinforces the worship of the "little churches."
6. Suddenly children's "programs" are not as critical.
   
7. Children participating in Sunday worship (rather than going out to their programs) is more normal, because they are learning to worship every day of the week.

I can't think of a negative consequence!