Missional Motherhood (6)

I was going to publish a post today about what I've learned about 'missional motherhood' this year. But I've decided to publish that one next week (even though it will be December then!), because I discovered this quote yesterday when I was reading a book called Miniskirts, Mothers and Muslims (yes, interesting title!).

I'll probably review the book properly soon, because I am REALLY enjoying it, but for today I'll just share this part of the book that is relevant to 'missional motherhood'. The author, Christine A. Mallouhi is an Australian Christian who married an Arab Christian (from a Muslim family). They have lived in a number of Arab countries. In the book she does a lot of thinking about how to live an Arab culture in a way that glorifies Christ. In this section of the book, she is thinking about motherhood and the opportunities it creates to obey the great commission.

The recent pattern of daily life where the woman is alone in the house with young screaming children to care for, while the man is out all day earning a wage, is not a common model of the family in world history. Missionary marriages also crack under the stress of this behaviour - quite apart from the stresses of cross-cultural living. A common factor is the unhappiness of the women. "Who am I?" and "What can I do that counts?" are painful questions for many young Christian mothers. Whether women are living overseas or at home in the West, many spend years feeling frustrated that they can't be "out ministering" because they have young children at home to care for.
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If the real way to serve Christ is only street-evangelism and teaching the Bible, then Christians should get full-time help for the house and the children. But, since God made motherhood and desires responsible parenthood, as well as the fulfilment of the Great Commission, God must have a plan for mothers.

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The home and children are not in the way, keeping women from "ministry". They are the ideal vehicle for a ministry to families and every woman in the church has the opportunity for this kind of full-time work. Family ministry is so badly needed in the West with the breakdown of the family unit. So many young people have never experienced a loving family and have no models.

In Arab culture. raising children is not something you do in your own home away from the community. There are many Western full-time mothers caring for young children at home all day and struggling with depression because they lack adult conversation. Let's not transplant unhealthy Western patterns. Mothers don't need to be alone and depressed. This is one area Western Christians can really celebrate in Muslim societies. Local women don't stay home alone with their small children. They raise their children with other women's children. They send the day with their sisters or friends, and while the children all play together, the women spend hours talking. Let's celebrate this wonderful advantage in cultures that love babies and small children. Children are a perfect bonding mechanism. If you have small children you should never be lonely. (pp. 120-122)

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Advent calendars (5)

Another entry. This time from Meredith:

In my preparations for Advent this year I made a wonderful discovery about the Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones. For those not familiar with this children’s Bible, it covers key stories from the Old and New Testament and each one a has paragraph or two explaining how that part of the Bible points to Jesus. So what’s the discovery? There are twenty one stories presented from the Old Testament that will paint on Old Testament backdrop to the birth of Jesus and then the Christmas story is presented in three episodes. That makes twenty four superb readings to do with our children during Advent.

These would make great readings for an Advent calendar! Just pop a note in each day’s pocket directing the children to the reading for the day. And if you have older children maybe you could also nominate who is going to do the reading for the day.

We do our Advent calendar activities after dinner in our household and we won’t actually be using the Jesus Storybook Bible readings at that time. Instead we’re planning to do these readings in the morning after breakfast each day. We don’t usually manage to do Bible reading at breakfast in this house but we are going to put in a big effort for Advent. We think this will be fun and hope that it will be the beginning of an Advent tradition in our family. In a year or two we will graduate to some other text when our boys are older.

So why aren’t we going to make use of my big discovery in our Advent calendar?

Well, here is another wonderful Advent calendar idea. We aren’t using these readings because we don’t put our Advent calendar together. Every year we receive readings, activities and treats for our calendar from our children’s godparents. They gave our first son the actual physical calendar for his first Christmas and every year they supply the goods for the pockets – their gift to their godchildren. So if you have godchildren, nieces and nephews, grandchildren or some other special child in your life who needs to hear the gospel, this is a beautiful gift to give them every Christmas.

Four more days to go to enter the competition. You can still email me your entries until Monday morning (winners announced Monday night).

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How to encourage your kids’ Sunday school teachers

On Sunday mornings, I come to church wearing two hats: parent and Sunday school teacher. Drawing on my experiences from both roles, I thought I'd put together a few thoughts about how parents can encourage our children's secondary ‘disciplers’ (in this case, their Sunday school teachers) to keep doing the job with perseverance, diligence and joy. It's a somewhat random list based mainly on my own frustrations and joys over the years. I'd love to hear your additions to the list...

You can read the list at The Sola Panel today....

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Missional Motherhood (6)

Back in August I got an email from Rachel who was thinking about ways she and her friends could get involved together in evangelism in the local community and wanted input. There were some great suggestions that were given in the comment thread which I summed up in this post. Rachel and her friends also met together and put a list together of ways they could evangelise their local community together. In this missional motherhood post she shares what they came up with:

Before I share the list, I thought I'd give a bit of background about the meeting. We gathered a group of women who have pre-school age children and who recognise that this particular season of life presents particular opportunities for evangelism to other women with pre-school age children. We also see the value in working together to do this. In order to be more effective at doing evangelism together we recognised that we need to make changes in the way we currently build relationships with non-Christians. We could see that we need to structure our lives in ways that promote building relationships with non-Christians and work together to do this as well as provided structured activities or groups for building relationships with non-Christians. The ideas we came up with are grouped together below:

Relational Changes

• Evangelism prayer triplet. Christians meet together to pray for non-Christians friends and be intentional about meeting each others' non-Christian friends - ie. if you are going to the park you invite your non-Christian friends as well as your prayer triplet buddies and they invite their non-Christian friends;
• Meet your neighbours and invite them over;
• Deliberate relationships and get-togethers - similar to prayer triplet, but not as structured;
• Small groups working together - similar to prayer triplet;
• Living near each other - Get in the same Mum's group, Kinder, School as other Christians from church;
• Meet in a child-friendly cafe once a month - good for meeting with kinder or school mums;
• Family Picnic - to incorporate dads as well, do on a weekend, easier than having people in your home.

Structured programs

• Playgroup - pre-schoolers do activities and craft together at the same venue each week;
• Playground group - similar to playgroup but you meet at indoor and outdoor playgrounds instead of doing craft inside. This could suit older or more active children;
• Mainly Music - similar to playgroup but structured activities involve singing and music;
• Book Group
• Craft Group

One-offs (events, courses)

• Winter dinner
• Parenting courses – Focus on the Family (general), Raising Boys course, toddler seminars - self-care, marriage tune-up
• Church Family Picnic
• Outings
• Pool Party
• MOLDI dinners - Meaning of Life Discussed Intelligently (Ben Pfahlert developed this idea) - go out to dinner together (without kids!) with group of Christians and non-Christians who know each other (ie, school or kinder parents) and have a facilitator who facilitates a meaning of life discussion. Different to a dialogue dinner in that it is neutral territory and the conversation is not lead by anyone.
• Why Baptise/Christen? Course

Some families (mine included) are deliberately going to the same school so that they can get to know each others' friends. One of the mums is going to be an RE (scripture) teacher too which may provide extra opportunity for spiritual discussions. We are also getting the playgroup leaders together for a Bible study at a different time to playgroup. We are hoping then that if any of the playgroup mums are interested in reading the bible we could invite them to a group where they already know a number of the women from playgroup.

Thanks Rachel for encouraging the rest of us to think deliberately about the opportunities we have to share the gospel in the communities we live.

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The Book Thief

I just finished reading The Book Thief. Everyone I had spoken to who had read it had raved about it so I considered it a 'must read'. And I found when I read it that it is beautifully written, and it attempts to tackle some pretty important themes and looks at some major events in world history.

But would I be a complete Philistine if I admitted to you that I didn't really enjoy it very much? I had to make myself persevere with it, when normally I can't put a good book down. For 3/4 of the book, I struggled to explain to myself (or whoever else cared to listen!) the reason why. It wasn't because of the book's troubling subject matter - I love depressing novels. And, as I said, it was beautifully written, so it wasn't the quality of the writing. In the end, I think it was all to do with the tone of the novel, which is set very decidedly by the narrator, who is Death. I couldn't get beyond the fact that the 'voice' in the novel was 'Death' which bothered me on two levels - 1) it attempted to turn an abstraction into a speaking subject; and 2) in personifying death, it humanised it. It seemed to me that death's power was kind of trivialised. In giving Death human qualities, Death became less abhorrent. Here's an example:

Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly born. I even kissed a few weary, poisoned cheeks. I listened to their last, gasping cries. Their French words. I watched their love visions and freed them from their fear. (p. 373)

Great writing, and I can I see what he's trying to do by using Death as narrator, but it just made it hard for me to empathise with the characters. The other thing that bothered me was the 'need' of the main character had to steal books in order to deal with the (very real) pain in her life, but maybe I'm just getting a little petty now!

Having said that, by the end, I was pleased I had persevered. I did feel that I had a glimpse into what life might have been like in Nazi Germany for ordinary German citizens. This is a story that has not been told much, and I appreciated hearing it for that reason.

Have you read it? What did you think?

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Advent calendars (4)

I'll be announcing the winners of the Christmas giveaway next Monday night, so you have until next Sunday to enter the competition! All you have to do is send me a photo of your advent calendar/Jesse tree /or whatever else you do, and tell me a little bit about how you use it in your family. The idea is pool our ideas so that we gain a bit of inspiration from each other. Every person who sends me something goes in the draw to win a Christmas decoration (pictured) from harrysdesk.

Today's entry is from Wendy, who has also blogged about her advent traditions on her blog. Her idea of using noodle boxes is simple, but very effective. You can still do something like this even with a week to go! Here's an edited version of what Wendy has written about her advent traditions (for the full version, check out her blog).

We started out having a cardboard Christmas tree with numbers attached to it, which each had a verse on the back, which matched up with the special verses in the Advent Tree material in Disciplines of a Godly Family, by Kent and Barbara Hughes. Last year, I got more detailed with little numbered boxes each containing a bible verse and a special treat, still using a form of the Advent Tree, although quite edited by me. This year we are still going with the boxes - they were a big hit last year - and they can fit enough in them (but not too much!).


I have written my own material this year - for the last three years we have done a biblical theology of Christmas, a 'Genesis to Jesus' if you will. This year, we are focusing on the events around the birth of Jesus. We have 25 readings mainly from Luke and Matthew's gospels, so we can really spend time thinking about when Jesus was born and what it means for us today. Each day there is a bible reading, some questions to think about, a special verse and some optional extras - something to draw, a song to listen to, a craft to do, etc.

In each box there is a verse for each of our 3 children. The verse in full is written out for M (aged 6 and a confident reader), then a simplified version for Z (age 4) which she should be able to remember bits of, and the same for A (age 2 - she will remember nothing, but we have to include her!).

Thank you Wendy! And don't forget, there are 6 more days to go before I announce the winner. I would love to hear from more of you before then. The idea doesn't have to be complicated, and it can be something that's already been shared. It's just nice to hear what other people do at the time of year!

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Missional Motherhood (5)

This post is from Ruth who shares a story about an opportunity she had recently to talk about Jesus with her hairdresser. She originally published this on her own (private) blog and I was so encouraged by it, I got her permission to re-publish it here. While her blog is private, she is happy to have more readers join in. If you're interested, you can email me and I'll pass your details on.

I had a haircut yesterday. I only have about two haircuts a year. I very much enjoy them. I just don't like spending money on things like that - and I go to a very cheap hair dressers!!

So, I've been going, twice a year, to the same place since we moved - and they all know me there - because, apparently having five kids makes you known in hairdressers! The women there are all positive about the five kid thing. My husband has gone there a few times too - so they like that they've met the minister with five kids too!

Yesterday, the woman cutting my hair asked me - are you the minister's wife with five kids or the one with seven? Apparently she cant tell us apart!! (I have no idea who the minister's wife with seven is - but apparently she's pregnant with her eighth!)

Anyway - I seemed to have asked the right questions yesterday, because this lady pretty much told me her life story, and my hair kept getting shorter and shorter as she told me about her husband walking out on her when she had a one week old baby, her trying to understand why he did that, her turning to God for help and answers, and her realising she needed to forgive her ex husband regardless of getting answers to his behaviour.

It was a sad and fascinating conversation.

And my hair was getting shorter and shorter...

She asked all sorts of questions about God.

Then she told me that her younger child (she had a two yr old when the baby was born), told her she wished her dad were dead so that they wouldn't feel like he rejected them - and because then they wouldn't be wrong in divorce - or something like that - I assumed they were catholic, later she affirmed that.

Towards the end she just stopped cutting my hair, was crying as she was pouring out her worries to me, and we chatted for an hour!

On the way out she told me she reads the Bible everyday, and her children read theirs too. She just flips it open to any page and expects God to speak to her, and apparently he always does.

I told her about my boys waking up this week to read their Bibles, and how I'm reading through Matthew because I felt like it was good to keep reminding myself of Jesus - as he is God. This seemed to astound her - reading systematically through a Bible book?!?! Novel idea to her. I should have suggested she give it a try, but I didn't think of it. And basically I wanted to encourage her to keep reading her Bible, cause that's great, even if she's using a flip method. Then she asked me about what Bibles the kids use etc - and was quite keen to find answers. I was thinking I might drop by an XtB book for her now 9 year old, and maybe 'The Big Picture Story Bible' for her 6 yr old..... I think she'd appreciate that.

So, now I have very short hair, won't need another haircut for quite some time, but it was worth it.

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'At Castlewood' by Emily Bronte

Like a number of other poems by Emily Bronte, this one is about death. The speaker views the prospect with a kind of sullen defiance. Death is 'eternal rest' - not in the Rev 14:13 sense, or in the sense that the phrase carries in the Catholic requiem mass - simply in the sense of blackness, extinction, oblivion.

It's a powerful reminder of the complicated mix of despair and pride into which the message of Jesus' resurrection comes as both a promise of deliverance and a command to repentance.

At Castlewood

The day is done, the winter sun
Is setting in its sullen sky;
And drear the course that has been run,
And dim the hearts that slowly die.

No star will light my coming night;
No morn of hope for me will shine;
I mourn not heaven would blast my sight,
And I ne'er longed for joys divine.

Through life's hard task I did not ask
Celestial aid, celestial cheer;
I saw my fate without its mask,
And met it too without a tear.

The grief that pressed my aching breast
Was heavier far than earth can be;
And who would dread eternal rest
When labour's hour was agony?

Dark falls the fear of this despair
On spirits born of happiness;
But I was bred the mate of care,
The foster-child of sore distress.

No sighs for me, no sympathy,
No wish to keep my soul below;
The heart is dead in infancy,
Unwept-for let the body go.

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Book of the Week: 'Safari Adventure', by Willard Price

I only chose Safari Adventure as 'book of the week' (as opposed to one of the other 14 adventure books written by Willard Price) because this happens to be the one Jacob has been devouring this week. On previous weeks he has also worked his way through Amazon Adventure, African Adventure and quite a few others at a feverish pace.

I actually haven't read any of them - but they were favourites of Dave's when he was a boy. He thought to borrow one for Jacob at the library a little while ago and we haven't looked back - in fact we've run out of Willard Price books to borrow now!

Willard Price was a naturalist who worked for National Geographic and wrote a number of non-fiction books before writing his adventure series for kids. The series for kids is all about teenage zoologists, Hal and Roger Hunt.

The books alternate between racy, boys-own adventure-story prose and gobbets of non-fiction information about all sorts of wild creatures and exotic places. The language and perspective are both somewhat dated at points (and the attitudes to people of other cultures can be a bit condescending) but there is still a lot to like about the books, some good conversations to be had, and a whole lot of stimulus to further learning and discovery.

Willard Price wrote, shortly before his death:

My aim in writing the Adventure series for young people was to lead them to read by making reading exciting and full of adventure. At the same time I want to inspire an interest in wild animals and their behavior. Judging from the letters I have received from boys and girls around the world, I believe I have helped open to them the worlds of books and natural history.

Admittedly, Jacob was already quite interested in animals and reading before he read these books, but Price has definitely succeeded in capturing his imagination lately. Last Saturday, he and his sisters planned a 'safari adventure' of their own to our local creek with Dave. They came back full of excitement and proudly listed off for me the various animal sightings they had made: some ducks and ducklings, four large skink lizards, some galahs, some noisy mynahs, a wolf spider, some tadpoles, some fish and a dragonfly.

setting off - with their backpacks all packed

team botanist...

and artist...

and team photographer

whoops, lost one of the team - oh there he is (if you look carefully you can see a hand waving)

All this is a long way of saying I really recommend these books - particularly (though not exclusively) for boys aged 7-12 (depending on how confidently they can read).

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Advent calendars (3)

Those of you who are not so keen on craft will be relieved to find out that today's entry in the Christmas giveaway is not 'crafty'. And those of you who feel that an every day advent commitment is a bit much will like this too. Here's what my friend my Amy Butler has to say about her advent plans:

Each year I am inspired by all the advent calendar ideas. As simple as many of you promise them to be, I am just not the crafty type. I also struggle with doing something everyday. So I wanted to share with you this year’s advent program in the Butler household. My husband’s birthday is exactly six weeks from Christmas Day so this is a good signal for us to start doing something in preparation for Christmas. Every year we listen to Handel’s Messiah around Christmas. I love introducing my kids to the classics and love the theological richness of the lyrics. So I have chosen six Bible verses which are sung in the Messiah. We are doing a simple A4 page each week where I write the Bible verse and Ella, my four year old, decorates it. We have then placed it on the mantle piece along with a few of our favourite Christmas books (The Nativity, illustrated by Julie Vivas & Wombat Divine by Mem Fox). We are memorising the Bible verses together and reading the Christmas books. When we listen to the Messiah, we get really excited when we hear our memory verse in the lyrics. We talk about the context of the Bible verses and how they relate to the Christmas story. It is working for my family. Here are the Bible verses I’m using.

1. Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight (Matthew 3.3)
2. For unto us a child is born... (Isaiah 9:6)
3. Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29)
4. We all like sheep have gone astray… (from Isaiah 53)
5. I know that my redeemer lives… (Job 19:25)
6. And of course… Hallelujah (Revelation 19:6)

I love it Amy - thanks for sharing your Advent plans with us!

We've had some wonderful entries already, but I would love to see some more. Remember next week is the last week of November, so time is running out to both prepare your Advent calendar/readings or enter the competition. Please email me if you'd like to share your ideas with the rest of us and be in the draw to win one of these beautiful decorations made by Ally.

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