The Dirt On Learning

The other day i finally finished The Dirt on Learning by Thom & Joanie Schultz, and it was really good. If you're a big fan of Bible Bowl or Bible quizzing, beware - they have some strong cautions. But they seem to be well founded - along with most of the rest of the statements in the book. The Schultz' disect the parable of the sower, but instead of seeing it as a fatalistic tale of inevitable ministry ineffectiveness due to poor soil, they place all the blame for bad soil solely on the shoulders of the sower. It may be a bit harsh, but they do have a lot of convincing support for what they say. Each of the maladies of the soil is commonly caused by something we do at church in our sowing efforts, whether bribing kids for good behavior, focusing on detail retention only, or using boring, confusing, and/or irrelevant worksheets as teaching tools. They might stretch the metaphor a little too far, but it's a good read and important material for any teacher to understand.

Big and Little People

Today finds me back at my alma mater for a few days of on-site classwork for my master's. It's been an emotional roller-coaster - i'm so attached to this place but it's changed so much. It's been another humility workout too - I want to say i'm the smallest youth pastor in the group but that shows how wrong i'm thinking - i'm the youth pastor with the fewest teens in my group. And despite how much it feels like it, that doesn't make me small. The thing i've been having to tell myself today is that God doesn't need a few people to do huge things, he needs a million people to do the right thing. And if my place in the grand scheme is to just do a good job with a handful of students, that doesn't make me less important and it certainly doesn't make me a failure. It's just part of me is so ingrained in the thinking that I can be somebody "big," and so if i don't become "big" then i've missed my potential and it's a huge shame. But at the same time, I don't want to settle for ministering to a few students if i could help more. I'm supposed to care about all the ones who don't know Jesus at all -right? It's just so hard to want growth for the right reasons. And to keep from playing the "i'm just as good as they are so why don't i get to do that cool thing that they get to do?" game.
I must have a lot of humility to learn - i seem to be getting this lesson often. But it's good.

More hits

I'd probably get a lot more hits if i'd post more often. But i have no time! So in desperation i resort to petty tactics like posting about not having any time to post. It's a shame, i've got some good material lying around . . .

And We Charge it to Jesus' Credit Card, Amen

I wonder if a good way to understand the "in Jesus' name" concept would be to think of it as an account that Jesus allows us to "charge" our requests to.

Fastest Beef Stew

Ok, another non-philosophical one - but i'm thinking there's gotta be another busy youth pastor out there who could use this one. It takes like 10 minutes and my husband loves it.

1 can cream of *something* soup (i've used mushroom, potato, and celery with good result)
1 can whole baby potatoes
1/3 small bag baby carrots
2 frozen hamburger patties
2 packages brown gravy mix
2 cups water
Crock-Pot (I use a medium-sized round one)

Pour the cream of whatever soup into the bottom of the crock pot. (Don't worry about spreading it around.) Then put the hamburger patties in on top of that. Then the potatoes, then the carrots. In a separate dish, mix the brown gravy mix and water, then dump that in on top. This should come pretty close to covering all the ingredients with liquid.

Turn the crock-pot on for 8-10 hours on low or 4-5 hours on high, or some combination of the two (each hour on high counts for 2 on low). Serves 2.