Barna on Spiritual Maturity

The Barna Group recently released some research about spiritual maturity. In it they identify five challenges to facilitating people's spiritual maturity.

1. Most Christians equate maturity with following the rules.

In my denomination, I can definitely vouch for this. Growing up, when people said "faithful Christian" they meant that person attended worship services. As though the mere act of attending somehow meant the person was growing in the Lord and seeking Him in their daily lives.

2. Most churchgoers are not clear what their church expects in terms of spiritual maturity.

In my experience, this is true as well. Our church talks a lot about bringing everyone to maturity but I have only a very fuzzy picture of what they actually mean by this. I think in part they don't want to be viewed as legalistic and therefor don't want to have a "checklist" for maturity.

3. Most Christians offer one-dimensional views of personal spiritual maturity.

I have to admit I will have to sit and think for a minute to answer that question. I think I would have to fall back on my landscape architecture background and look at plants. Plants are considered mature when they bear fruit. Fruit being something that is able to reproduce the first plant. So evangelizing would be one aspect. Jesus also says in John that we are to remain in Him where we will bear much fruit. So seeking the Lord and doing what he is doing would be another aspect of maturity. Seeking involves effort. So in would come the spiritual disciplines. And, of course, using the Bible and listening to the Holy Spirit for everyday decision making like parenting, money, career choices, etc. A willingness to look honestly at their lives and change to fit what the Lord calls them to. Not holding sin close and being willing to confess sin to actual people also comes to mind.

4. Most pastors struggle with feeling the relevance as well as articulating a specific set of objectives for spirituality, often favoring activities over attitudes.

Not being a pastor, I can't really comment on this. I did find it interesting that Barna mentioned that most pastors did not think spiritual maturity was a problem in their churches.

5. Pastors are surprisingly vague about the biblical references they use to chart spiritual maturity for people.

This might anger a lot of people, but here I go. I would say that this is because many pastors are not very spiritually mature themselves. For example, my dad was a minister at our church when I was growing up. But I would say that he wasn't a very spiritually mature person. (For those of you horrified that he might read this. . . My father passed away a few years ago.) I loved him a lot, but spiritual maturity was not his strong suit. He was hired because he had all the right certificates and degrees and could speak well. Often elders are chosen because they have been going to the church for a long time and don't have a history of being abusive or drunkards and are decent businessmen in the community. This does not necessarily mean that they are mature in Christ. Sadly, in my denomination spiritual maturity has been neglected for so long there are often whole congregations without any mature people in them.

I know that I have a long way to grow myself. Maturity is something I will have to continue to seek many more years. I don't think that it is something that we ever fully arrive at. But each year I hope that the Master continues to prune me and make me more fruitful for his kingdom.

Just What Your Teen Needs-- Tax Payer Funded Shot Glasses

A high school in Pennsylvania gave out shot glasses as the prom souvenir. The principal blames low budget and vague orders for the questionable gifts. At least he promised it won't happen again next year.

Are you ready to homeschool yet?

National Day of Prayer

I am glad that our country still has a National Day of Prayer. I would like to encourage you all to pray a prayer of national confession today. National confession is simply coming before the Lord and admitting all of the wrong that we have done as a nation whether we have participated in the wrong as individuals or not. Here is an example:

Lord of all creation, I come before you today confessing that as a nation we have glorified the creation via extreme environmentalism instead of you the Creator. We have glorified killing innocent babies instead of godly mother and fatherhood. We have glorified greed and materialism instead of generosity and charity.

Especially troubling to me, O Lord, are the millions that die and have died before they had a chance to breathe their first breaths. God, we have become so desensitized to the killing. Help us to care enough to act. Help me care enough to act. Help your church be involved in the prevention of abortion through prayer, abstinence education, and godly parenting. Help your church support those who choose parenting or adoption instead of killing. Help your church bring healing to those that made a bad choice and are now mourning the loss of their child.

Another thing that is heavy on my heart is the disregard many Christians have for the complete authority of Scripture. It shows up in combining evolution and creation. It shows up in agreeing with same sex "marriage". Help us know that truth is found in Your Word. Help us trust that you are telling us the truth. Help us know that the Bible is a miracle not the mere work of men.

I ask all of these things in the holy name of Jesus.

Zechariah 1:3-4 Therefore tell the people: This is what the Lord Almighty says: 'Return to me,' declares the Lord Almighty, 'and I will return to you,' says the Lord Almighty. 4 Do not be like your forefathers, to whom the earlier prophets proclaimed: This is what the Lord Almighty says: 'Turn from your evil ways and your evil practices.' But they would not listen or pay attention to me, declares the Lord.

Department of Education

I had a dream in which I was President and closed down a whole bunch of departments saying the states could do fine without a federal department. One of these was the Department of Education. I realized this morning that I don't know much about the DoE. So I went to their website. Here is there overview statement:

ED was created in 1980 by combining offices from several federal agencies. ED's mission is to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access. ED's 4,200 employees and $68.6 billion budget are dedicated to:
• Establishing policies on federal financial aid for education, and distributing as well as monitoring those funds.
• Collecting data on America's schools and disseminating research.
• Focusing national attention on key educational issues.
• Prohibiting discrimination and ensuring equal access to education.

Here are my thoughts.
"Federal financial aid for education" is code for we will give you money with all of these strings attached. I think we would be much better off with all of that money under local control to begin with. Now I can hear the "what about the poorer states" crowd. To them I answer, "Many countries that are poorer than the United States have better educated children." Money spent does not equal educated children.

Collecting data could be done by a private researcher for probably a lot less money than the federal government spends on such things. States probably already do research on their own schools.

I am not sure what this "focusing national attention on key educational issues means". It smells of a propaganda machine to me. I did find this website that lists the key issues in one report from 1997.

The critical issues in education that the report examines are:
the interrelationship between public schools, democracy, and free enterprise.
the position that vouchers threaten the fundamental mission of public education.
the impact of vouchers on schooling.
the impact of choice and school type on student achievement.
which fundamental improvements are needed in public schools.
how national and local indicators suggest reforms are beginning to work.

I will skip the first one and move on to number two--vouchers. Here is the summary according to the website linked above. I added the bold.

Public schools don't serve the public, the report states; they create the public. Private school vouchers, maintains the report, would undermine public school education by:

diverting attention from the drive to improve the public schools. Helping a few students to attend quality private schools would not help the majority of students, who need quality public schools.

adding to the public cost of education. A voucher system would provide public money to pay private school tuition for children already enrolled in private schools, thus adding to the public cost of education.

reducing accountability. Private schools are run outside the oversight of public school authority and have no public accountability to taxpayers.

forcing private and parochial schools to become less private. The influx of public dollars into private and parochial schools under a voucher system would cause greater demand for scrutiny of such schools.

possibly violating state and U.S. Constitutions. Channeling public tax money to pay tuition at private religious schools might violate the constitutional separation of church and state.

The report concludes that "private school vouchers are too small, too costly, and too divisive to have any potential for improving the public school system."

I agree that private and parochial schools might well be under the thumb of the gov. if they start accepting money. But it is clear that the main reason that the DoE doesn't like them is because they like the power of filling little heads as they see fit.

UPDATE: OneMom mentioned Arne Duncan in the comments. He is following this anti-voucher theme. Here is an article in the Wall Street Journal today about his support of dicontinuing vouchers in Washington, DC despite the DoE admitting significant (nearly half a grade to more than a full grade ahead of their peers) academic gains (in a non- press-released statement). Here is a quote from the article:
Mr. Duncan is not only preventing new scholarships from being awarded but also rescinding scholarship offers that were made to children admitted for next year. In effect, he wants to end a successful program before Congress has an opportunity to consider reauthorizing it. This is not what you'd expect from an education reformer, and several Democrats in Congress have written him to protest.

As to the last item, I am pretty sure that the states have anti-discrimination laws in place and could enforce them just fine.

So why do we really need the Department of Education? Would we really be worse off without them?

100+ Days of Change

OK. I know I am behind the times, but I just got around to watching FRC's "100 Days of Change" video. It was pretty good and shows how widespread Pres. Obama's change is.

Texas Senate and Pro-life Legislation

HT: FreeMarket

The Texas Senate passed the Ultrasound Bill (20-9). They also passed a bill allowing a Choose Life license tag. Now we shall se what the House does with them.

Faces of Lawsuit Abuse

There is a website I found recently called Faces of Lawsuit Abuse. It shows the depth of frivolous lawsuits by highlighting real life people that have been sued (some of them hundreds of times) over silly things. These kinds of lawsuits are ruining many small businesses. I encourage you to check out the site.