Children’s Ministry and Culture

See Henry Zonio’s excellent blog post about criticisms about some questionable pictures of Miley Cyrus that will appear in a future Vanity Fair. The child singer is obviously positioning herself for a singing career as an adult. That strategy has included dropping the Hannah Montana character when not performing for pre-teens.

I was surprised, when at my church’s children’s retreat this weekend, that the fifth grade girls were aware of the upcoming photo shoot. I’m saddened that so many child singers feel the need to emphasize their sexuality to reach an adult audience.

Much is made about Millenials and Futuristics being natural multi-talksers. I walked into the front-room and witnessed my son playing the piano (well, I might add) while listening to podcast through his Ipod.

Call me old school, but I put my foot down.

I’ve been oddly fascinated by the recent spate of 20/20 News pieces on a spying camera showing what passers-by would do when a visibly drunk person tries to drive, when kids are berating an overweight woman, or when a child is visibly lost (http://abcnews.go.com/2020/WhatWouldYouDo/story?id=4709538&page=1). These all try to assess the level of cultural readiness to intervene. They ask good questions and seek pretty routinely to reward those who DO intervene.

Now I have to say that my life experience is divided on this. In Minnesota, we are ALWAYS prone to intervene in public because there is a shared sense of values. Growing up in California there was NOT a shared sense of values and in fact a heightened sense of that independent spirit that rewards creativity and a sense of differentness. Intervene? We build fences around our homes in California. Are the neighbors are a little creepy? Well we’ll just move to a gated community and MAKE them clean up their yard.

So you can imagine how interesting it is for me to see these 20/20 segments and cheer when our culture is now applauding the Minnesota norm rather than the California trend.

In one of our counties, Ramsey, we have an amazing community service approach called the Wakanheza Project (http://www.co.ramsey.mn.us/ph/hb/wakanheza.htm). It is “a community-wide effort that provides tools and strategies to help us effectively respond in these every-day situations and prevent them from happening in the first place, by creating welcoming environments for our children, young people and families.” What are “these every-day situations”? Have you ever been in a public place like a grocery store, a library, or a mall and seen a parent struggling with their children, trying to keep them in line and well behaved? Have you watched that situation escalate? Did you wonder then, and are you still wondering, what you could have done? Have you ever BEEN that parent?

This is really remarkable! We are seeing a trend that promotes LESS privacy and isolation and is encouraging MORE involvement! I’ve been in California for the past three days and have had many conversations with ministers who have seen LESS parental connections outside their church and a rise in gang behavior, anti-social anger and other community killing behaviors. What they need is to join the rest of the nation to get MORE involved, not to circle the wagons and wail and moan in our fortress churches!

A profusion of online programs that can track a student’s daily progress, including class attendance, missed assignments and grades on homework, quizzes and tests, is changing the nature of communication between parents and children, families and teachers. With names like Edline, ParentConnect, Pinnacle Internet Viewer and PowerSchool, the software is used by thousands of schools, kindergarten through 12th grade. PowerSchool alone is used by 10,100 schools in 49 states.

Read the very interesting article in today’s New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/fashion/04edline.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1209880996-WARzW93J0o5AkKGzqKXq+w)