Evan Almighty

I'll admit I did have many apprehensions about this movie. After all, Brooklyn's nursery was Noah's Ark and I had a whole house of Noah's Ark stuff. I had read the book, the story books, the Bible, the other book, the children's book. I know the story.

But the secular world took our story, a Biblical story and did what we sometimes do on Sunday morning. They took a theme and twisted it to get an environmental, feel-good point across. Many churches do that on Sunday morning. Sometimes our object is emotion, sometimes it is look at the world, but we take a secular theme and usually twist the logo and use it to get our point across.

There were so many themes in this movie. I don't want to spoil it for those of you who haven't seen it, but it covered the environment, time spent with family, power, husband/wife issues, God, God's sense of humor, regret, world changing, kindness and humility all in one movie. It was very touching.

This movie is getting some poor reviews. I wonder if people don't like to think about their humanity or their issues? I pray that God continues to use this movie to make people think.

Family Game Night

What story are you telling your child? Is it a story of running from place to place "spending" time with each other? Is it a story of dad in the bedroom watching the game, mom in the living room watching HGTV and the child or children in their room "cave" watching Nickelodeon?

Or are you telling them the family story? The story of picking a TV show together and watching it together or better yet an activity or game played together.

For the past three weeks (I only have Brooklyn every other weekend so this has spanned six weeks) we have initiated family game night. Brooklyn actually starts planning it on Monday and tries to figure out what we can do so everyone will participate. The first two weeks we played Boggle so Mike would join us. Mike likes word games. This Sunday we are considering geo-caching. It's an activity that will get us out of the house. We will have to use our brains, we will need to learn our area and hopefully we will laugh together.

If your child is spending a lot of time as a recluse in their room is it because you are spending too much time on the computer or watching only what you want to watch on the TV. I fear in the future when our kids don't visit and we are wondering why, we might think to the relationship we want and realize we should have built it when they were younger.

And building relationship doesn't mean it costs money. It could be tossing a frisbee or ball in the yard. It could be sitting on the porch at dusk talking about your day sharing a glass of tea or lemonade. You could just take a walk around the park or push your child on the slide.

Spend time together it is an investment that will pay off in huge dividends when you are old!

Fabulous Volunteer Friday

Thank you Stephanie, Paula, Allison, Amos & Sherrye. You guys could have taken the summer off but you chose to continue serving the families in our church and all the visitors that visit during the summer after moving to our area each Sunday morning in our preschool area. Thank you for loving our children, for telling them that God made them, God loves them, and Jesus wants to be their forever friend.

You guys are great and I appreciate you tremendously.

Worth Nothing!

I just found out according to Technorati that my blog is worth $0.00. http://bobfranquiz.typepad.com/bobfranquizcom/ blog is worth $49,114.98. How do you place value on blogs? Readership, comments, content, number of posts or just random? I'm not sure. Hopefully, I'll revalue next year (because I might need to insure my blog) and it will be at least worth $1 at that point!

The UPRISING

SAVE
THE
DATE

Pizza, bon fire, silly string fight, games, prizes, bingo, movies, popcorn, smores, breakfast, and more fun

Family Worship Experience

I've had the pleasure of working with our Worship Planning Team this past month as we prepare for July. In July, our elementary children will be worshiping in the Worship Center with their family. The sermons have been scripted to be family friendly. We are providing a Family Worship Experience Home Edition guide for parents to use with their children that reinforces the sermon they heard. There are activities, family bible reading suggestions, games, ideas for prayer time, and a family mission project included.

Please use these ideas and your own to reinforce the message learned on Sunday!

Not without help

I couldn't get it all done without help. Caleb Bagamary came by today. His mom, Julie was going to help him wash the toys in the nursery and swiffer the nursery floor after she finished her other commitment. He was sitting in the hall waiting so I decided it would be fun to spend a little time with him and help him myself. We washed all the toys (in antibacterial palmolive) and then we dried them and put them back on the cart and he wheeled it down to the room.

He put the swiffer together, then he let me use it while he got another swiffer pad and he got on his hands and knees and did the other part of the floor. He wanted to be done before his mom was so he could show her he didn't need her help and that he could do a good job. He really did.

And Caleb is a sixth grader.

Thank you Caleb. I appreciated your help today. I can't wait to see you helping your mom in the nursery on Sunday morning.

Hallowest

Mark your calendars for our yearly celebration on October 31. This year things are changing and Jim Sanders has put a lot of thought into the theme and changing the event. Yes, we will have inflatables, yes, we will have food, yes, there will be glow-in-the-dark putt-putt and there will be a boat load (or should I say troughs full of) candy. All the dentists in Asheville will run around screaming!

We will need many volunteers that night to help with food, games, crowds, shuttles, etc. So go ahead and mark your calendars, tell your neighbors to mark their calendars, tell you family, and tell your co-workers. It will be a great event!

Wow, it's Friday already

This week has flown by. I'm amazed at what all is happening in the world of our children. Right now there are about 20 (many left early today for vacation) kids downstairs making a craft for their dads. I watched them during song time before their "FLIPT" lesson. What an honor it is to do summer camp for these children.

Last week watching them walk through the doors and seeing how they had grown up so much over the past year. Watching the seasoned campers welcome the new campers. Watching the struggles of the new children let go of their moms and go to camp. It is such a blessing to serve and have fun at the same time. And while Amy runs camp, it puts a smile on my face to run downstairs and see those children having a good time at "church"!

Amy, you do a tremendous job with camp. I don't know what I would do with out you.

Devin & Jordan - thanks for your commitment this summer. I pray you will find your place in the kingdom of God and will be stretched this summer as you lead your groups and teach these children about God.

Drama Danelle

The past two weeks all the Elementary kids have been combined in room 109 on Sunday morning for Drama Danelle (inside game). What fun it has been to see them learn how to be actors and control their bodies, their voices, their imagination and to cooperate. They have learned each other's names, they have worked together, they have done human juggling and they have laughed.

It is great to see the children share their ideas and they have many, many ideas.

This week we did an abstract recreation of the story of Jesus calming the storm. How amazing to watch the groups work together to find their place in the story.

We are lucky to have Danelle leading with Tierney, Leanna and Ashley helping the children through this process. They are phenomenal to watch together.

Stuffitis

Today I went yard perusing. There might be a more common name for it, but that is what I call it. My purchases equalled $5 and I probably spent $6 in gas.

I was searching today for pictures or wall decorations for our house. We've lived here 15 months and I have some decoration; however, I find it to be so expensive I thought yard sales might be an option. We have 9 foot ceilings so curtains have to be longer (meaning you can't buy them at Wal-mart) and pictures have to be larger to cover enough wall to not look dwarfed.

I actually purchased an organized for my scrapbooking addiction ($1) and a movie ($2) and game ($2) for church.

I had a yard sale about a month ago. It was amazing to me at how many professionals there are out there. One couple told me they have three storage buildings full of stuff. He was trying to talk her into buying a purse, but she told him she has about 10. He said occasionally he takes a load over to the flea market and sales it. He buys to resale but ends up keeping most of it.

So why are we fascinated with stuff? I remember being about six and standing up to sing in church with my one and only pair of patten leather church shoes and thinking about how Krista Crowe has a different pair of shoes for each week and when I'm older I'll be just like her (and I do have a boat load of shoes). Not realizing my foot was still growing and going to church three times a week didn't necessarily mean I needed more than one pair of church shoes.

I think this scripture http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206:19;19:21;%20Luke%2012:33 says it well because as a nation we are truly storing up "treasure" on earth and then trying to sale it for a profit to buy more stuff.

I'm as guilty as anyone of doing this. I think a mindset of living more simply with less stuff would be beneficial to so many. Maybe our challenge should be to store up treasure in heaven and store up memories on earth?

Would I sacrifice my child

Last night I was on the phone with a friend (I'll keep her anonymous) and she was telling me all about how she enjoys homeschooling her child. The conversation progressed to how the government tries to "control" homeschooling, etc.

She was commenting on how the children at church behave much worse than her homeschooling group. One of the children in the youth group had been busted for cocaine use (thank God they are in the youth group - maybe they will rally around them and help them). My question is how many haven't gotten busted? I mentioned that I had experienced the opposite with homeschooling children that seem to not be able to function in groups.

Then I posed the question of if we continue to take all the christian children out of public schools and put them into either christian schools or home school them how do we expect our public school system to get better? She chimed right in and said I will not sacrifice my child because of other parents lack of discipline with their children (that is a paraphrase, but I think I am close).

I am so glad that God chose to sacrifice His child for us. I don't know that by sending my child to public school I am sacrificing her. I think I am giving her skills that she will need to excel in a work world where most people weren't home schooled.

And I attended "Christian" school. The boys had a way to climb into the ceiling from their bathroom and peep into the girls bathrooms. They also had a system in place to wipe out the Lance man while he was filling our snack machine. And most of my friends that went to school there weren't so pure and innocent. Just because a school says Christian doesn't mean the children inside always portray Christ.

But back to the point of what if God had decided not to sacrifice Jesus for us? That is what He did. Would we be here? Would we still be sacrificing animals for atonement?

I am so thankful for the ultimate sacrifice. Thank you God for sacrificing your son. Thank you for my daughter. Help me know how to educate her so she can know how to behave around others that aren't of the same mindset.

Cultural Relevance

Debates about using culture in church abound. Debates about being relevant to our society abound.

Today, I attended my daughters Awards Ceremony for fourth grade. The fourth & fifth graders had their ceremony together and the fifth graders will leave for middle school next year. I was astounded at the different approaches taken by the music teacher and the art teacher.

The art teacher, Mr. Pisano actually used a lesson from college to teach his students this year. They love art. He taught them how to make books, they even bound them with awls. They experimented with making whistles and if they didn't work - he called them paperweights. Out of the box teaching. Use your brain. He even said they did a drumming exercise.

The music teacher (to remain unnamed) had three songs for the students. The first one was a patriotic song with hand motions. It was pretty, but you could tell the fifth graders hated the hand motions. But then, the intermission song really got my attention. It was about manners. There was an attempt to add a coolness factor by rapping in the middle of the song. I asked my daughter about it and she said it was corny. They had to learn it, but felt like first graders singing it. Then the last song was a "rap" song that the fifth graders sung about staying in school. Again very corny and not in keeping with culture at all.

The talent show at my daughters school was all popular culture music. No one attempted to rap or make a song written for first graders into a song for fifth graders.

I remember chorus in school. We learned Penny Lane. That song wasn't popular at the time but had a nice feel to it and didn't make us feel like babies.

So, on Sunday mornings are we still attempting to reach 4th and 5th graders using a model that works for first graders or even younger and is hated by fifth and sixth graders? I question do we continue and let them lose interest or do we change our approach - not compromising the message but changing it's delivery? Something to think about.