ie:missional

A California District Court handed down a ruling this week declaring home schooling in the state to be unconstitutional. From the article:

“California courts have held that … parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children,” Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling issued on Feb. 28. “Parents have a legal duty to see to their children’s schooling under the provisions of these laws.”[...]

The ruling was applauded by a director for the state’s largest teachers union.

“We’re happy,” said Lloyd Porter, who is on the California Teachers Association board of directors. “We always think students should be taught by credentialed teachers, no matter what the setting.”

Of course, Lloyd.

Our three children have never been in a public school for classroom instruction. When our oldest was about nine, she was invited to be the guest of a neighbor child by doing the reading time for his class. The teacher was shocked at how well she did. Of course, she’d been reading the newspaper since she was 5.

Our middle child, Timothy, recently opted to try for the GED. On his evaluation test he scored as a high school graduate in each section. When we sat down with the instructor for the explanation, he began with the reading scores first saying, “I always start with the reading scores first. Unfortunately, we still have people go through high school who are functionally illiterate.” Astoundingly, functional illiteracy does not seem to be a problem with home schooled students.

Our youngest probably reads 300 books a year (no exaggeration), most of which have to do with some aspect of world and US history. She usually greets each new section of history with, “Oh yeah, I read about that in ______________.”

Like most kids, each of them have areas in which they have excelled and each of them have had areas where they have struggled. They weren’t (and aren’t) perfect as students, nor are we as teachers.

Though many homeschoolers can be virulent and even insolent about their position, most that I have encountered came to the decision after lots of thought and prayer. Most do not claim Deuteronomy 6 as their basis, but simply what is best for the family in a given situation or distinct period of time. Our original decision was made because we had two options for our kindergartener: drive 40 miles cumulative daily taking her ourselves or put her on a K-5 through 12th grade bus at 7:15 am and let her be dropped off at 5:00 pm. Neither situation was right for us, so we opted to homeschool.

Most homeschoolers do not get a tax break for purchasing their own textbooks, workbooks, study guides, tests, beakers, bunson burners, modeling clay and the rest. At the same time, most pay property taxes to furnish everyone else’s child with all the same equipment. We pay for the public system and yet receive no compensation for our homeschool expenses. It is an inequity that most willingly accept for the option of making sure their kids are not overwhelmed by a 180-day a year education that ignores or mocks the existence of the biblical God.

Another statement from the judge is equally as troublesome. Citing a 1961 case, Judge Proskey wrote:

“A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.”

Uhm…educating children is not on the menu? The educational system in the United States of America, circa 2008, has absolutely nothing to do with “protecting the public welfare.” It has to do with getting the almighty tax dollars allocated to the various states and school districts via the No Child Left Behind legislation. The 1961 ruling could surely have been updated to reflect the new reality that “The primary purpose of the educational system is to brainwash school children in bad philosophy, materialism and subservience to the state and nation as a means of prolonging the public fealty.”

The U. S. government educational experiment has been (with some exceptions) a dismal failure and (as my Momma used to say), “Anyone with one eye and half-sense can see that.” I hope that California parents are successful in getting this ruling overturned either through lawsuit or legislation. I also hope that the U.S. supremes, if given the opportunity, leave it as an issue for the states to decide rather than pulling another Roe v Wade.

Ah, California. The state likely to let a parent kill a child, but will not let them educate it once it is born.

One eighth of the GBC Evangelism Conference is today at Midway-Macedonia Church in Villa Rica. LifeWay research guru Ed Stetzer co-author of Breaking the Missional Code and the soon to be released Compelled by Love (co-authored with Philip Nation) will be speaking this afternoon.

Check the GBC site for times.

I don’t have any.

If you haven’t read Art Rogers’ post today entitled, Maybe this will help…, I would encourage you to do so. Good job, Art.

In case you don’t live in the southeast and, therefore, may not have heard, it hasn’t rained much here in a while. At a time of year when Atlanta would have normally received 50 inches of rain, we are some 26 inches shy of average. In fact, almost all of north Georgia, over 50% of Alabama, about 50% of Tennessee and parts of North Carolina are in the midst of an “exceptional drought,” the most dire category in the annals of weather prognosticators, meteorologists and other record keeping peoples. With a warm, dry winter predicted for the upcoming season, things are not looking any wetter…or better.

If it were a lack of rain alone, then it might not be a story. But, Atlanta is the largest metropolitan area in the US being served by a watershed area as small as the Chattahoochee River Basin. Combine that with the lack of planning by state and local municipalities who have issued building permits like there is no tomorrow and we have a situation in which the primary energy and drinking water source for the city of Atlanta, Lake Sidney Lanier, has dropped to near (if not to) an all time low and continues to drop at an alarming rate. Entire marinas are nothing but mud, surrounded by boats having no chance of floating.

As if this weren’t enough, the Corps of Engineers which is in charge of releasing water through Buford Dam is charged by the EPA with releasing about 3,000,000 gallons of water each day more than is necessary to support the continued life of freshwater mussels in the Appalachicola River. (See info about the Apalachicola, Flint, Chattahoochee basins.) Add to that the ongoing GA-ALA water dispute and you have the makings of a real crisis, which is what we are facing.

Enter the leadership of Georgia churches. During our periodic drought times, which have been increasing both in length and in frequency, area pastors always call for prayer that God might intervene and send rain to our parched earth, both providing replenishment for our drinking, car washing and bathing supplies and to help our already federally subsidized peanut farmers. This year our Governor, Sonny Perdue, himself a believer joined in the call. News reports mentioned 300 people gathered to pray on the Barrow County Courthouse steps, which was followed by a steady drizzle and then two days of precipitation. The leaders of the Georgia Baptist Convention have joined in citing a tie between repentance and physical blessing as observed in 2 Chronicles 7:14.

In times such as this, my question has always been, “Should we pray for rain? We pray and pray and pray for God to intervene in people’s lives, to bring revival to ‘the land’ and cause spiritual awakening, what if the drought is His way of getting the attention of people who should acknowledge their dependence on Him. Are we praying against the very method that God is using to answer our first prayer?”  I don’t know, so I join in prayer with everyone else.

This is what I’d like to see: during one week of November, the Muslims implore Allah for seven days of rain. During a second week, the Hindus talk to Krishna about the crisis, during a third week the Jews pray and during the final week, Christians pray and the God who answers by a seven day period of steady rain is the true God. We could even allow the atheists to assign the weeks to ensure no cheating or advantage.

Yeah, I know, but at least my idea is biblical (1 Kings 18).

I received this from a friend:

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country, but don’t really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the country if they could find the time and if they didn’t have to leave Southern California to do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country, and did a far superior job of it, thank you very much.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren’t too sure who’s running the country and don’t really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don’t care who’s running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country, but need the baseball scores.

10. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure there is a country or that anyone is running it; but if someone is, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped, minority, feminist, atheists, provided of course, that they are not Republicans.

11. The St. Petersburg Times is read by people who have recently caught a fish and need something in which to wrap it.

Safely home, thank you, Lord.

A couple of corrections from the previous post which, obviously, was written in haste: The TAM flight that crashed last Tuesday killing all aboard and some on the ground had landed at a domestic airport in Sao Paulo. My flight, Delta 105, landed at the international airport a few miles away. Indeed, our connecting flight to Campo Grande was on a Fokker 100 both ways, not an Airbus as I originally thought. The Minister of Defense (whose responsibility it is to oversee commercial aviation) was sacked in the middle of the week for failure to address the inherent dangers in having a full airport in the middle of a residential area as Congonhas is. I hope that those issues will be addressed quickly for the sake of all air travelers in Brazil.

Our return was a tension of late flights and a missed connection. Following the fatal accident, the domestic airport was closed during rains, while flights were being canceled and diverted and a few instances of pilot refusal to land at the domestic airport while rain was falling. Add to the mix that there are no strong competing airlines for domestic Brazilian air traffic and you get delay, delays and more delays. We were not even close to making our 10:55 pm flight to Atlanta on Tuesday night; we had to stay an entire day. Our return flight was completely uneventful, however, and we were happy to hit the ground at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport at 8:10 or so yesterday morning.

My purpose for this trip was to assist a friend of mine, Todd Wright, who was doing a leadership conference at the FBC in Campo Grande, which is about an hour and 40 minutes northwest of Sao Paulo (by air; we don’t want to talk about the bus trip that others had to take), as well as for me to learn more about the cell groups that are a vital part of the church’s ministry. Todd and I were hosted wonderfully (pampered would be a more accurate term) in the home of youthful and energetic Senior Pastor, Gilson Breder, his beautiful wife, Vasti, and his gifted 23 year old son, Yuri. They live on the 15th floor of a downtown condo providing an astounding view of the city, especially at night.

It did not take me long to find out two things about Brazilians: they have great personalities with humor that is much like ours and that they like to eat meat-heavy meals late at night. We never even made an effort to eat the evening meal before 10:00 pm and usually it was around 11:00 pm. We left one restaurant at 11:45 and passed several open air eateries that were still packed with customers. And speaking of meat…

If you are a carnivore, you probably ought to try Brazil at least once. On multiple visits to a style of restaurant that we affectionately called a “bar-b-que” it went something like this: Warm greeting, seating at an appropriate table, order a drink (always, always, Guarana Antartica–anything else would be a sin), a plate(s) of steamed rice, a plate(s) of yucca, a plate(s) of fried bananas and then the meat. Long skewers of prime rib, filet mignon, pork ribs, sausage, chicken, other pork, cupine (sp? anyway the Brahma bull hump) and a few more. Servers just return to the table over and over until you finally put up the stop sign. It was about the equivalent of $12 plus drink. All the meat is cooked over open flame, salted pretty heavily, but, oh, so good.

I was quite surprised upon arrival to find that the Pan American Games were taking place in Rio de Janeiro at the same time. Americans, by and large, don’t even know what those are, much less pay attention to who is participating (it’s like the Olympics of the Americas, instead of the entire world). While Brazilians were watching in restaurants and bars, ESPN.com did not even have a link to the results or the medal count which America is leading with Brazil a strong, but distant, second.

Soccer, or futbol as it is known in the rest of the world, is the national sport. Most men play 2-3 nights a week at indoor or outdoor fields, though the average person has no access to the large world cup size fields and is not really prepared to play on fields that size. The indoor game is like arena footall–fast and exciting. I was drafted to play goalie for 4 or 5 games lasting ten minutes each. I was shown for what I am: an old, slow, white guy who had never played soccer before. Or, at least, not since elementary school. It would not have been so bad if the same 13 year old had not scored on me 5 times, turning around each time to mutter, “Sorry.”   We played so long that we were late to the evening session of the conference; Pastor Gilson just laughed and nobody else seemed to notice.

Next Up: The spiritual side of Campo Grande

In case anyone was curious, we were not on the TAM flight that overshot the runway and crashed killing all on board.  We did, however, land at the same airport and, upon our return, will be flying TAM into the same airport on the same kind of plane.

All prayer next Tuesday will be greatly appreciated.

Apparently a very well respected preacher from the southern part of Brazil was on the flight; please pray for his family when you get a moment.