China’s government has intensified its crackdown on Christianity in recent months, including its enforcement of a law against the conversion of children and teens.
“One of the rules that have always been in their law is that you cannot proselytize or you cannot convert somebody under the age of 18,” Eric Burklin of China Partner told Mission Network News.
Previously, he said, “People were having their children come to church and many churches started what we would call Sunday school classes. They would use that time to teach children Bible verses and teach them Christian songs and so forth.”
Now, though, “any churches have been notified by [China’s] Religious Affairs Bureau heads that you can no longer conduct Sunday school classes in your churches.”
“They even put signage up in the entrance of some churches to indicate that,” Burklin said.
Regardless of how churches can rephrase and reframe their mission statements, this is the mission: to go and make disciples. The American church is not called to make converts. In fact, to lead people in a prayer without offering them a pathway and companions for the journey is irresponsible. The American church is not called to make leaders. In Jesus’ view, the first would be the least. This doesn’t sound like western leadership. It sounds like discipleship. The American church is not called to make volunteers to staff the weekend services. In fact, to reduce the ministry of the church body to guest service roles is an affront to the New Testament church. The American church is not called to draw crowds. The American church is not called to build buildings. The American church is not called to make money. We are called to make disciples. (You can read more of the article here)
Can I say this? Volunteering/serving, in a guest services role at church, week after week, is exhausting! And to top it off, having fellow church members treat you like you are “the help” is demoralizing. I get that volunteers are needed to keep the church model we use moving forward. But I’ve also noticed that it is always the same people serving. I often wonder what it would be like to just get up, go to church, and not serve just like everyone else. Yet, I believe in being the hands and feet of Christ even when no one else wants to… but something seems broken with the church model we use.
I had been meaning to talk with Tabitha about our evenings. I felt like we, as a family, had gotten into a bad habit of not interacting / watching television every night. Some of our passivity I understood, the Texas heat zaps you. Summer needs to end! But I felt like we could be more purposeful with our time.
Tabitha ended up approaching me first with the idea that we needed to turn off the TV. I had to have surprised her when I agreed. We then sat down and hashed out how our evenings will look moving forward. During the week:
Boardgames
Drawing lessons
Playing
Reading aloud
Family Devotions
Anything else non-electronic we can do together
We agreed to reduce our family television time down to one night a week. The weekends, we decided, will be more lax with screen time. Sunday afternoons are tailor made for movies and/or video games.
The Game of Life – Pirates of the Caribbean edition… Tab and I picked this up at Walt Disney World on our honeymoon. Game features ship-to-ship battles and a solid piratey theme. Makes the regular version of Life seem boring.Somehow we ended up with a pirate themed game night. Loot (the card game above) was different.
Our first week was a success! We set aside a night for family devotions (10 minutes); we dove into some different boardgames (evidence above).
I picked up the first book in John Flanagan’s Ranger’s Apprentice series to read aloud with Wyatt. We read two to three chapters a night before Wyatt heads off to bed for his own reading time. I’m trying to introduce him to new authors/series to feed his voracious reading appetite. Wyatt has also always loved Tab and I reading aloud to him (I hope this never ends). If I have learned anything as a dad, you can share your love of reading with your children. Just gotta read!
Love this. Reminds me that I need to start up Boy’s Club again with Wyatt. Be purposeful.
When I was growing up a man in my church gave me perhaps the greatest gift I have ever received…weekly, uninterrupted, quality time. Mr. Zechman was a busy guy. He had four busy and successful daughters of his own. He was involved in our church and community in all sorts of ways. He had a demanding job and was a public figure in our town. He was the kind of guy who should not have had time for a goofy ninth grade boy like me. And yet he made time.
I had wondered about this when I saw the non-detaching Joy-Con design on the Switch Lite. Awesome, Nintendo.
When the Switch Lite was announced, some worried that the similarly designed analog sticks on the miniaturized console would be susceptible to the same issue. While no plaintiffs who have purchased Switch Lites have been added to the lawsuit (PDF via Polygon), five online accounts of drift on the Switch Lite posted since the Switch Lite’s September 20 release date have been added to the class-action complaint. “I can’t believe it, my Nintendo Switch Lite is already drifting,” reads one complaint posted on September 24. “I tried to calibrate and update the controllers but it was still the same.”
JohnnyBGamer 