Online Safety for Families

A little too long ago, someone had asked me if I would be willing to teach a seminar on Internet safety for families. It got back-burnered, as many good ideas do (like this blog, for example...), but I'm realizing for a lot of reasons the need for just such a thing. While I'm working up details, and preparing for kids of my own, I just wanted to share a few principles with you that will aid in managing your family and the computer.

Disclaimer: My parenting experience is limited to pregnancy at this point, so please don't think I'm telling you how to raise your kids. I'm new to the parenting stuff. But I have been around computers my whole life. No, I can't help you fix your laptop/iPod/XBOX/VCD/8-Track, but I have been around the Internet and computers enough to pick up on a few things.

1) Access goes both ways. The ability to reach out across vast distances has opened up a great wide world to our kids. It's also opened up them to that world. It goes without saying that your two year old isn't ready to cross the street yet, and your eight year old isn't ready for that solo trip to the mall. The Internet is a lot like the mall, actually. You have access to all kinds of cool and interesting and fun stuff. But that access goes both ways. And just the same as you monitor your child's access to the street/public places/car based on their age and maturity, the same should be true of Internet access. Your first line of defense is limiting the devices they have access to. It's very easy to get on line with a wide variety of gadgets besides the family computer now, including cell phones, video game systems (such as newer versions of the Nintendo DS, which I see almost everywhere now), and even some music players. Know what devices can get to the Net, and limit your kid's access to them. And remember, although your kids may be better at figuring out the equipment, you're still the one with the mature decision-making processes.

2) Be your kid's best friend. On the site Failbook (caution...not always clean), a Facebook conversation was posted where a teenager had uploaded a picture from a wild party they had been involved with. The first response was priceless. It was the kid's mom saying "ISN'T THAT MY KITCHEN???" While parenting books say that being your kid's best friend isn't the best way to parent, being connected to their various social sites IS. By being their friend/contact/whatever, you have access to what they're posting, who they're chatting with, etc. It gives you a chance to monitor what's going on. Some sites allow parents to moderate their kids interactions (chesskid.com is a good example). To be honest, you should probably have your kid's password too, because not every interaction is posted where the public or even friends can see it. If you don't want to deal with Facebook, your kids don't need to be on there either.

3) Learn to love privacy. Every online service worth it's salt has privacy settings, that control how much of your information is available to whom. When your kids get onto a service like Facebook or Twitter, these settings should be your first stop. Some services start out with everything, from birthdate to home address, out in the open. Others default to only allowing your friends access to these things. Dig in, and turn those things down to the bare minimum. It's surprising how easy it is to get information on others through social sites. Be the boss of what people can and cannot find out about your kids.

4) Those who don't learn from history... All browsers (the program your computer uses to access web sites) keep a record of the sites you have visited, called a History. Dig around in the settings and find it. And it IS possible to delete or get around it, so look for odd gaps, as well as for what's there. It's not foolproof, but it's a good way to overview activity.

5) Be careful, little mouse, what you click. This is just a general tip. Never click a link that seems fishy. If your Facebook-loving grandma just sent you a video of supermodels in swimsuits, you might want to reconsider clicking it. Viruses can get into email and social services via such methods, and then send out the same link/video/picture/slide show to your friends to spread the problem around. Even PowerPoint presentations can contain malicious code that could affect your computer. If someone sends you something that's suspect, don't click it to investigate. Email them and see if they meant to send it to you or not. Or just delete it.

I leave it in your hands to decide how to apply these things, and with what ages. There's a fine line to tread with your kid's privacy, and every parent has to make their own decision about whether or not to read that open diary on the bed. The same is true about monitoring their online interactions. Be too invasive, and they just learn to get better at hiding it. Leaving it all in their hands has it's own dangers. Cultivate an air of open accountability in your family (that sounds vaguely Methodist...), and build an understanding with them early on that you are helping them to learn to navigate the bigger world. At some point, your 16 year old can probably cross the street by themselves, but that's because you've taught them how to make sure it's safe first.

The Internet can be a great place to meet new people, expand your horizons, and learn all kinds of cool stuff. It also, like real life, has it's back alleys and sketchy neighborhoods. Your best tool is not to know all the latest gadgets and services, but to understand the basic principles they all work on.

I hope this helps you in your journey...

The Balance of Self-Discipline

As I find myself sitting down here in Leesburg, FL, at the Methodist retreat center, waiting for my turn to go before the Board of Ordained Ministry, I am pondering a single word: Discipline. Not the kind of discipline where you put your kid in a corner if they are bad. I'm talking about self-discipline.

I imagine many of you have made Lenten commitments or New Year's resolutions recently, to make positive changes in your life. And while we often start out with rather fabulous intentions to loose weight, give up sugar, spend more time with our kids (my own personal New Year's resolution), etc, it takes self-discipline to carry the thing out. Self-discipline means to create an intentional effort, often in repetitive ways, to do or not do something which you hope to achieve/eliminate. You choose to work out three times a week, set a weekly date with your son or daughter, put a reminder on your calendar to call your sister, make a promise to yourself to read your bible daily.

But self-discipline is a tricky thing to maintain at times. It is a balance between extremes. You are choosing this thing of your own free will. OK, maybe your wife wants you to quit smoking more than you do, but if you're doing something about it, you are exercising your free will. At the same time, you often have to put some structures in place, we call them "boundaries", to make sure these things happen. The alcoholic avoids bars, the Bible Reader sets the alarm clock a little earlier, or turns off the TV after dinner, the jogger meets up with a friend to have accountability. Each of these help us to move in the direction of self-discipline.

Now, as with any balance, there are two ways to fall off this particular bicycle (especially if your commitment is to ride your bicycle every Saturday). Take a look at this line below:

Legalism     Rote    Habit   Discipline    Excuses    Rebellion    Chaos
<---------------|--------|-----------|-------------|------------|---------------->
Harder                                                                         Softer

Let me explain this little diagram, Which side you run risk of falling off of probably depends as much on your personality and circumstances as anything else. But essentially, it boils down to this...you either become hardened, or softened.

Here's how you get hardened. You set a discipline. You maintain it for a while, push yourself intentionally to start (or stop) this thing. And it's hard work. But after a while, you start to be able to coast. You don't have to be as intentional about it. It has become habit. You wake up to read your Bible at 6am, even if the alarm doesn't go off. You're in the groove now. And you're not in trouble yet. But now that you don't have to be as intentional, as driving about the thing, here's where the danger lies. Habit is discipline without intention. You don't have to think about the thing...it's just like breathing. But then it becomes Rote. Rote is Discipline without intention or purpose. You started jogging to get in better shape. Now you do it because you're supposed to. You started going to church to get in touch with Jesus. Now you do it because that's what a Christian is supposed to do. Now you're treading tentative ground...because the last phase is legalism. You do it, you insist others do it, and to do anything else feels downright sinful. You've lost the purpose of why (church attendance again comes to mind), but by gosh, you're going to do it, because you're supposed to. The Pharisees frequently fell into this trap. They forgot the purpose of the Law, and it became a burden to them, and they passed that burden on to others as well. The thing you started out trying to do is still a good thing, but it has turned a very dark corner.

How about the other direction? It starts out with excuses. You get sick one week, and can't make prayer meeting. You have a lot to do at work, and don't feel you have time to go jogging. You have a major deadline, and it takes precedence over time with your kids. Circumstances will happen. There will be mornings you get a cold and simply can't drag out of bed. But like bad pennies and dirty dishes, excuses can pile up if left unchecked. Suddenly, a month has gone by, and you've not been to church. It's been weeks since you called your old roommate. You can't remember the last time that you prayed.

Then rebellion kicks in. Maybe this is a different fork of the same problem, but it's worse by far. Because it raises a note of doubt as to the merits of the discipline in the first place. In 6th grade, I had a teacher that made us read 18 fiction books every 9 weeks. That's a minimum of 200 pages a week, on top of other homework. In 6th grade. I was always a voracious reader as a kid. But when I was *required* to do it, that note of resentment crept into my heart. I started counting books I had read last year. I finished only just in time to meet the requirement. And all along is in my head...if I can get through this grade, I may never read again. Rebellion. When we see the thing that we wanted, that we loved, that we were intentional about, as an intolerable burden, and we drop it like a hot rock in August.

Which brings us to the end of that side of things: Chaos. We loose the voice of our original purpose in doing the thing. Things fall apart. Our discipline doesn't hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon our lives. (Thank you Yeats!) We give up...we surrender. "It's too bad...I really wanted to loose weight...it was just too hard."

Grim pictures both. But here's the rub. Remember what made self-discipline doable? Intention and boundaries. The excuses erode our boundaries, lead to self-justifications and such. The loss of intention brings codification, "it has always been that way," and becomes a burden. But if we keep both...we have what we need. And that takes a lot of work on our part.

So what can we do? (1) Revisit the point of the thing in the first place. Why were we going to quit smoking? Why'd we start reading the Bible? Get back to the point, to revitalize your passion for it. (2) Hold your boundaries. Ruthlessly refuse to accept excuses from yourself. "I've been doing so good," is not a reason to let your guard down. Neither is "It's too hard."

You might need some help along the way. And that's why we have each other. The point of things like Church, like Small Groups and Sunday School classes, is that we were never meant to walk this line alone. We need others around us, who can see through the rationalizations and justifications, and who can remind us of our purpose along the way. That's why we gather together on a regular basis, by the way. Which is itself a kind of discipline.

So if you're not already meeting together with other believers, I cannot recommend it highly enough. You will draw encouragement, strength, and purpose from those around you. And in the process, you'll find yourself moving forward in life, in faith, in ministry, and in your relationships. It's a Discipline worth practicing. No time? That's an excuse. If you really want to grow, you'll make the time. So why not try it? Not because it's what you're supposed to do...but because deep down, you know you want it.

Blessings on your journey, as we walk this road side by side.

Bear with me...

Hey there, folks who somehow find it in your hearts, schedules, and RSS readers to follow these sparse musings. I'm midway through 80 pages of waxing theological for the UM Board of Ordained Ministry, and hopefully working my way to full ordination (If you don't know the Methodist system...think of this as finishing residency). So I've not been in much of a mood to blog theological beyond reposting my newsletter articles. I've also got some possible 2nd blog kinds of ideas in the works, for stuff that really doesn't fit here. So come October, or maybe November, expect to see some new content. But for now, be content with following me on Twitter, or just holding out hope that I might yet again post something to these here digital pages. Until then, keep questioning and seeking, and keep your faith!

You Feed Them

My wife and I have both been working our way through 2nd Kings in our devotional times lately, and happened upon a great series of stories about the prophet Elisha, which parallel in some ways many of the miracles of Christ (although His decidedly out-class Elisha's). One in particular, which I don't think I had noticed before, was a miracle in which he makes 20 loaves of bread feed 100 men. (2 Kings 4:42-44) Not quite as impressive as Jesus feeding first 5,000 (Mark 6:34-44) and then 4,000 (Mark 8:1-13) with much smaller initial quantities. And let's remember, that's only 5000 guys that were counted. We don't get a count of the women and children, though we're told they are there. So figure more like 8K and 10K people. So Jesus' miracle is 1000 times more awesome than Elisha's, which it should be, But it is interesting as one looks to recurring patterns in Scripture, and what they tell us about the nature of God.

Depending on which version of the 5,000 story you read, you get various sources for the food. Some say it was a small boy, others just say the disciples have it collected somehow. Probably, one eye witness missed the boy, the other saw him. Anyway, this kid offers five loaves and two fish. And that doesn't seem like it would make it around the table at home, much less to a multi-thousand crowd. But as the story goes, Jesus makes it work, in such miraculous portions that folks can take home doggie bags of leftovers.

If you're familiar with the accounts of this miracle, it can get easy to gloss over it as one more story about Christ's power over the elements of nature. But don't miss the crucial detail of this incident... Jesus puts the initiative into the disciples' hands. He doesn't just pray to God and call down bread from heaven to feed the people, as God did for the Israelites in Exodus 16. He doesn't summon fish to jump out of the sea, which He seems to do for the fishermen to get their attention time and again (Luke 5:1-11, John 21:1-14). He says “You give them something to eat.” Tough words, especially since the disciples are the ones raising the concern to Him in the first place. You can almost hear their minds whirring and clicking with that one... ”Us? Feed them? Uh, Jesus, we haven't done that one yet. Yes, we cast out demons in Your Name, and even healed some sick people, but you haven't taught us how to feed people. Maybe you could show us how that one works next?” But nevertheless, despite the possible misgivings of the disciples, they come up with the food, and then the miracle begins.

Recently, our church has been partnering with a local ministry know as Gleaners Dispatch, or simply the Gleaners. This ministry does a lot in the way of food distribution in the area, from bread and produce on Monday afternoons, to Wednesday night dinners that are currently feeding upwards of 200 people each week, both up at the Nassau County Fairgrounds. (When they started this past May, they had 50 coming to the dinner. You do the math.) This ministry is a incredible benefit to our area during these hard economic times. Our work with them in June was an amazing time for all parties. And although we are not “officially” partnering with the dinners at the moment, I know several of our members have continued to help serve on Wednesdays, and we're considering some additional financial backing.

But let me tie back into the Scripture here. We pray for the economy. We pray for people's jobs. We pray for those who are unemployed, and we ask God to provide for them. And although He has been known to echo the miracles of Exodus, bringing food out of thin air for people who are earnestly in need, most often He calls to us as He once did to the disciples: “You feed them.”

It can be overwhelming to consider the needs in our community, especially as this downturn flows out to further and further layers of our population. And we look at the masses gathered before the table, and look at our meager food stores, and turn to Jesus and ask how. But if you are willing to offer what little you have, a few dollars, an hour of your time, a home cooked dish, then you will be amazed at how far Jesus can make that little bit go.

It doesn't take great acts of heroism to show Christ's love. Sometimes, all you have is a dinner-for-one to offer. But if you submit those things to Him, whether through ministries like the Gleaners, or our food pantry and contingency funds, or other outlets, then He can do great things with them. If you'd like some more information on these ministries, let me know. But I strongly encourage you, if you have something to give, even if it's only a little, offer it to Christ. It could feed 10, 200, or 10,000. But it will, as we pray during the offering, be more in His Hands than it could ever be in ours.

Survivor, Chess Strategy, and Ritual in Today's World

There has been a trend in the last generation or so to move away from traditional worship. There is a sense that the traditions and rituals of the church are a thing of the past, remnants of a by-gone era, and barriers to new seekers finding Christ. There is almost an anti-traditionalism in many churches. One church I was a part of, the Contemporary Service had no order in the bulletin...only a note that we followed the Spirit's lead for that service. It just so happened the Spirit led about the same every single week.

But as I look at the culture around us, I see some signs that the ritual may be making a comeback. There is a particular group, that meets together every Thursday night, that follows a particular liturgy every week, led by it's pastor. In fact, this group of faithful numbers around 20 million every week. See if their rituals look familiar to you...

"Want to know what you're playing for?"
"In addition, the winning tribe will send one member of the losing tribe to Exile Island. Worth playing for?"
"Survivors ready. Go!"
"______ wins reward!"
"[Losing tribe name]: I've got nothing for you."
"We now bring in _____, returning from Exile Island. We're now ready to get to today's challenge. First things first..."
"On my go."
"_____ wins immunity!"
"I'll go tally the votes."
"______th person voted out of Survivor: Gabon is.... The tribe has spoken. ...Grab your torches, head back to camp."

Every week on Survivor, Jeff Probst (ironically enough an ordained pastor) leads a small group through this rite, and is followed faithfully by an extensive home viewing audience. Probst does not deviate from this formula in the slightest, except to insert personal/tribal/locational names as appropriate. Watch for a couple of weeks, and see what I mean. People eat this stuff up, even though he's been doing this for 9 years (with only a few changes, such as the addition of Exile Island). And if your a fan of ritual, like me, you even get a little chill at certain phrases, especially "the tribe has spoken" (usually followed by the sound of a digeridoo). So why, when 20 million people participate in this liturgy every single week, do we believe that ritual is a thing of the past?

I've got a theory. Because, you see, there are two types of ritual, and a particular rite can move back and forth between these two categories on any given day. There are those that have meaning, and those that exist for their own sake. Ritual is meant to serve a purpose. In our case, to point believers and seekers alike to Christ, to guide them through the worship of God in meaningful and practical ways, and to facilitate the communal life of the congregation. It's a container, as it were, for things of God.

But there are times that ritual becomes an end unto itself. Whenever it begins to be done a certain way "because it has always been that way," then the signs are apparent that it's sliding (or has lept) into the self-serving category. Rather than creating meaning and guiding worship, they take up space, time, money, personnel, and give nothing back in return. They cause us to serve them, rather than benefiting us through their practice.

In Survivor, the rituals make sense. There is a flow to every episode. You can set your watch by it. It allows the story to progress, and provides the challenge and drama for the players and viewers alike. It means something. If Jeff decided one week to just say "The Tribe has spoken," and snuff out a torch, but never actually asked anybody to leave ("we voted because we always do"), the game would devolve rapidly. But every week, Probst provides a sense of order, and acts as a guide through what would otherwise be a complicated clash of diverse personalities in a stressful situation with limited resources. Kinda like some weeks at church...

So what can we do with our rituals? In chess strategy, there is such a thing as a "bad bishop". A bad bishop is stuck behind a bunch of other pieces, with no room to move, no open lines for attack, and serving no actual purpose. It is taking up space, and providing no benefit. It may even be hindering you by being a target for your opponent to attack, which you have to commit resources to defend. So two courses of action are recommended if you have a "bad bishop." (1) Sacrifice him to gain some other advantage, perhaps in trade for an opposing piece or to clear some space, or (2) get him out from behind the other pieces somehow, into the open, and give him purpose again.

What does that have to do with traditions? Well, if they're serving no valuable purpose, we either need to (1) get rid of them, in order to free up space/time/money/personnel for other more beneficial ventures, or (2) rediscover their purpose, their meaning, and put them out in front where they can do some good in pointing us to Christ.

This involves asking some questions...How did this ritual start? What was it's original purpose? Is that benefit still needed? Is there something that would better accomplish that goal? Have we added or changed it's meaning in order to justify it's presence? Does everyone understand why we do it this way, or only key people? How can we share that meaning with others?

To paraphrase what many say about technology...Tradition is great...when it works. And it's goal is to take the collective wisdom of previous generations, what's worked, what hasn't, what's provided benefit, what's created meaning and guided purpose, and use that to inform our daily lives with Christ. Whether it's candles on the altar, or the practice of Lent, we should be habitually (haha) reexamining our rituals, our traditions, and making sure they serve the purpose of pointing us to Christ. Because if they exist for their own sake alone, we either need to light a new fire within them, or remove their torch entirely.

The pastor has spoken. May God bless you on your journey with Him this day.