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This week we take a break from our series in Hebrews. We got such an encouraging word from Olivia Mulerwa, president of an organization called Mission One, which is an organization we have given to for years now.  Mission One exists to partner with the Global church in making communities more like the Kingdom of God. They envision a world where every community is transformed for the glory of God and the honor of all peoples. She shared with us a word of the sort of Kingdom work we are all called to, while giving us eyes to see what God is doing through our brothers and sisters in other countries. 

As a lay leader of Traverse City Presbyterian Church, Linda Racine and a team of enthusiastic congregants prompted her church to start on a journey toward effective climate action. You can read about their commitment to creation care and learn about their 3 bright ideas for reducing carbon emissions in this congregation-led video. Traverse City Presbyterian took advantage of tools like the Interfaith Power and Light Carbon Assessment to understand their own energy use.Learn more about how Linda's denomination, the PCUSA, has committed to climate solutions in their Earth Pledge.Linda is also part of the Michigan Citizens Climate Lobby, which has local chapters all over the country.Many thanks to Linda and all the other terrific people who graciously hosted us when we visited Traverse City!Linda RacineTRANSCRIPTLinda Racine In 2022, there were multiple policies or overtures passed focused on creation care, and it really put out an alarm, saying “It's serious, folks, the Earth is really in trouble. So we need to take strong action.” And they were encouraging all churches to reduce their carbon emissions by at least 25% in the next four years and get it down to net zero or net positive by 2030.Debra RienstraWow. That's ambitious.Linda RacineVery ambitious. But a group of interested folks at church looked at that and said, “Let's do it. Let's go for it.”Debra Rienstra Welcome to the Refugia Podcast. I'm your host, Professor Debra Rienstra. Refugia are habitats in nature where life endures in times of crisis. We're exploring the concept of refugia as a metaphor, discovering how people of faith can become people of refugia: nurturing life-giving spaces in the earth, in our human cultural systems, and in our spiritual communities, even in this time of severe disturbance. This season, we're paying special attention to churches and Christian communities who have figured out how to address the climate crisis together as an essential aspect of their discipleship. Today, I'm talking with Linda Racine from the Presbyterian Church in Traverse City, Michigan. Linda happens to be Michigan co-coordinator for Citizen Climate Lobby, a role she adopted after a long career in academia. But I'm talking with Linda today in her role as a lay leader at the church. Traverse City Presbyterian, in many ways, is an ordinary congregation, but they are doing extraordinary work, integrating climate action into every aspect of church life. They have heat pumps, solar panels, native plantings, a pocket forest, educational programs and more. Their story demonstrates the importance of active pastoral and lay leadership, broad community buy-in, and denominational commitments. Linda will tell us their story. Let's get started.Debra RienstraLinda, thank you for talking with me today.Linda RacineOh, glad to be here.Debra RienstraIt's great to be here in your beautiful home, here in Traverse City. Thank you for your hospitality today, and I'm really excited to talk about the work of Traverse City Presbyterian Church. So I know you've been involved in the church for a long time. Maybe tell us a little bit about your personal background and how long you've been involved in the church.Linda Racine Oh, I think I joined about 25 years ago. We used we had been members at the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church just down the street here, and it was actually our oldest son who was in high school at the time, going through confirmation class, and a lot of his friends were going to the Presbyterian Church, and he really wanted to go, and for a variety of reasons, we said, “Let's check it out.” And we've been members since. That was 25 years ago.Debra Rienstra Yeah, so you have been around for all of the adventures that your church has had in their creation care work. Yes, so let's start with that spark point. We're really interested in finding how these things begin with a church. So can you think back to the moment when something happened at the church that people began to work in earnest to respond to climate change as a community. What was that spark point for Traverse City Presbyterian?Linda Racine The thing that really kicked it off was Laura Jacobson, who manages/schedules things for our Wednesday night adult education, came to me because she knew I was really involved in Citizens Climate Lobby, which is a non-partisan volunteer organization. And, “Would you do a session on climate?” I wanted to, but I was also a little hesitant, just because, sadly, climate has become so politicized, and our church has had a long history—we're a purple church, check your politics at the door, and I was concerned about how people might receive it. So, I put together a presentation very thoughtfully about “How do I make this as non-political as possible?” But the heading for it was “Caring for God's Creation: a faith based approach to climate change.” I wasn't sure how it would go over. And at that time, we were getting maybe 20 people coming on Wednesday nights. 65 people came. The room was packed. So clearly there was a lot of interest.Debra Rienstra What year was this?Linda Racine It was like January of 2020, right before Covid hit.Debra Rienstra Goodness.Linda Racine So anyway, the evening went really well. Kind of started with a very broad based, here's what Scripture says. Here's what—oh, we did the Katharine Hayhoe video, which—she takes such a broad view of every faith tradition has something important to say about our responsibility to care for creation and for one another. So Katharine Hayhoe, then the Pope, and you know, went through some different traditions and how they're responding. And then did some information about what PCUSA was doing, which was new to me. I didn't really know what all our denomination—because it had never been talked about in our church. So went through that and offered the idea that our denomination has a certification process for creation care teams. And by the end, people were saying, “Let's do this!” There was an impromptu—somebody grabbed a piece of paper and pen, and “Who wants to be a part of the team?” And we got, I don't know, eight or 10 names on that list. Quickly got together and said, “Well, what do we want to do? Let's pitch it to our session.” So February's meeting, we had a proposal, and they all said, “Absolutely, let's go for it.” So that's what started it.Debra Rienstra What do you think prepared people to be that enthusiastic after one session? What was going on in the church? What are the congregation members like that makes you look back on that and say, “Yeah, we were somehow primed or prompted or ready for that moment.”Linda Racine I think that's hard to say. Our church has always—I guess what drew me to the church initially is it was really clear this was a community that really walked the talk. It wasn't coming on Sunday to check a box, but really genuinely living their faith. And people of faith were called to care for creation. And so I think that was a strong ethic that people had anyway. And clearly, by 2020, we're seeing, “Oh my gosh, this earth is in trouble.” That was pretty clear. And so, just to have a topic on—let's gather on Wednesday night and talk about it. I think people were ready.Debra Rienstra Fascinating, yeah. And I wonder if, because up north here in Michigan, this beautiful area of Michigan, people are very aware of the outdoors. So many people care a lot about the natural world around here and enjoy it. Summer up here is so beautiful. So I wonder if it was just a little bit of a more natural leap there.Linda Racine I think you've got a point there. People are drawn to this area because of its natural amazingness. And so there is a strong environmental ethic here. I mean, look at the land conservancy: all the explosion since that launched back in the 90s, I believe. The number of just natural areas that have been preserved, the whole Sleeping Bear sand dunes could have been development, but that has been preserved. There is a strong environmental ethic here. No question.Debra Rienstra Yeah, yeah. So what happened next? How did you go about inviting the whole congregation into a process that—you didn't know what was going to happen next. You have this spark moment. But then what happened?Linda Racine I think the structure of the certification process really drove that. It's so solid. When a church decides to do that, you're committing to really look at how you manage your facilities, how your worship embraces this, how your education programs, and advocacy—that's always been the toughest one. But those four areas. First you assess, where are we now? And then, what are your church's goals? And so that involved, in order to do that and to get all the committees in the church involved: what are you doing currently, and what would you like to do? What would you like to see happen in the next year? So every committee was involved in setting goals. The pastor support was critical. Oh my gosh, without that, this wouldn't have gone anywhere. Pastors have been, right from the beginning, very supportive. One Sunday, the whole church read the pledge.Debra Rienstra The Earth Care Pledge from the Presbyterian Church, okay.Linda Racine Yeah, yeah. So people were aware that that was going on. And then people have different interests. “I'm really excited about this piece of it or that piece of it.” So always open to anyone who wants to jump in and get involved to do that. But I think it's the discipline, the structure and the discipline, of that certification process that keeps us on track.Debra Rienstra Okay, yeah, and it sounds like you were able to get that certification pretty quickly, because you've had it since 2020, so pretty quickly you got the certification.Linda Racine Yeah, I think that first year, we filled out all the forms and sent goals, and then you submit that and get the certification, they review it at the denominational level,Debra Rienstra Yeah. So it seems, from all the conversations I've had with church folks this weekend that the physical plant aspects became a big part of it, first, as well as the landscaping and grounds aspects. So talk a little bit about the processes of those things happening.Linda Racine Well, one of the first projects that first year was converting pieces of ground. We had a bed out front that was dying. Some of the bushes were dying. And a couple of our church members, Gary Richardson and Cheryl Gross, were aware of a National Wildlife Federation grant opportunity. And so Gary was a member of Building and Grounds and took the idea to that committee, and they were all supportive of it. So we submitted the grant. We got $1,500 to get us started. And so work crews showed up. We ripped out the old plants. Then that also connected to the education piece. That's one of one of those other four areas. Our children's education person was absolutely passionate. So the Vacation Bible School that summer focused on pollinators. So we did a whole education piece on the role of pollinators and their importance, and then the kids helped plant the new pollinator garden.Debra Rienstra Yeah, awesome.Linda Racine Yeah. It was fabulous.Debra Rienstra So it sounds like what we need is enthusiasm across the leadership. Yeah. And the leadership working together.Linda Racine Absolutely.Debra Rienstra And I think you folks at this church have so many—not only enthusiastic, but really skilled leaders. You have organization experience. You have Cheryl, who does native plants as a passion. I had a wonderful tour today with Randy, who was excited about boilers and transferring those to heat pumps, which was so delightful to hear about. And at some point, the church made this wonderful video, which we'll link in the show notes, explaining the goals—the three bright ideas, goals. So talk about how that happened.Linda Racine That was triggered by our denomination's policy, where, as a denomination, delegates meet every two years to look at policy for the church. And in 2022, there were multiple policies or overtures passed focused on creation care, and it really put out an alarm, saying, “It's serious, folks. The earth is really in trouble, so we need to take strong action.” And they were encouraging all churches to reduce their carbon emissions by at least 25% in the next four years and get it down to net zero or net positive by 2030.Debra Rienstra Wow, that's ambitious.Linda Racine Very ambitious. But a group of interested folks at church looked at that and said, “Let's do it. Let's go for it.” So you need to start—understand where you are first before you can reduce something. So we use the Interfaith Power and Light carbon assessment. And Chris Wendland, who you met, really drove that train, and she and Randy both worked with staff to gather all the—here's our electric bills and our gas bills and all the stuff needed to submit that. And so then we got this feedback about, “Here's where you are.” And then it was, “Okay, now what do we do?” And so another church member said, “Let's talk with Tim Pulliam,” who was—he's the owner, executive, I don't know what his title, but he runs Keen Technical Solutions who, for I don't know, 25 years have been really focused on clean energy transformation.Debra Rienstra This is also a member of the church?Linda Racine Tim Pulliam is not, but it was a church member who recommended him. So Tim brought a team of folks in and looked at all this stuff, and they said, “Well, the thing you could—that would make the biggest impact the quickest would be changing all your lighting to LED.” So that seemed like a no brainer. We also had this ancient boiler that was ready to die any minute, and people were starting to panic about that. And so, okay, we got to do something there. And then there were a lot of people in the church saying, “Can we put solar panels up?” Because there's so many great things about the solar. Not only is it good for the clean energy, but it's also a public statement. It really is a public witness, and it helps normalize, because there's still so many people out there who think, “Oh, this is Northern Michigan. You can't— solar is worthless here.” Well, actually, it's not.Debra Rienstra Actually, it's not, especially because we have such very long summer days.Linda Racine Yes, yeah. And so anyway, there was a lot of enthusiasm around that. So kind of gathered after Sunday, after church on Sunday, anybody who wanted to come and talked about, “Well, here's what the report said, and what do we think?” And so there was interest in all three of those ideas. So we created task forces. People said, “Yeah, I'll work on this.” And everybody, the groups, had about three months to do their homework, come back with, “Here's what we think the options are and what it's going to cost.” And that in about April of that year, we heard what people had to say, and people wanted to do all three.Debra Rienstra Yeah, that's just amazing. Was there resistance at all? Were there people who were resistant?Linda Racine I'm not remembering that. Maybe they weren't showing up at the meetings. Are they quiet? I don't know. I don't remember. I mean, there's always questions about, “Well, will solar really work?” There were questions about, “Well, can we afford it?” And that was maybe the biggest concern. But people had done quite a bit of research on that, and between the very low interest loans that our denomination offers—that was huge, the potential for grants. And we did end up getting an $80,000 grant from our local utility. And then at that time there were IRA dollars available. That's a question mark right now, but the combination of that, and then when you look at the energy savings, it's like, “Okay, what we're going to save in electric bills is probably going to be pretty darn close to covering our monthly loan payment.” So when people saw that, it was like, collective, “Okay, sure, this is doable.”Debra Rienstra So at that point was the video made at that point?Linda Racine Yes, because the next step was, “Okay. So we've got maybe 50 people in the room. We've got 600 people in the church. How do we get everybody involved?” So putting together a strategy for really getting everyone enthused about it. And so the idea for the video came up. And Ray Starkenberg and her dad are professional videographers.Debra Rienstra Once again, talent in the congregation.Linda RacineOh my gosh. And so they took that project on. And you've seen the video, it's just amazing. The storytelling is so well done.Debra Rienstra It's playful, it's persuasive, it's full of facts. And I love the theme, you know, “the time is now” is the theme of the video, and the involvement of kids in the video saying their piece, saying, “This is about me and my future. Please help.” It's just—and that combined with the playfulness, it's just brilliant.Linda Racine It's a good balance, isn't it? Yeah. And a couple things about that. One member of the church, after seeing the video, said, “If this was just about buying a new boiler, I wouldn't be that enthused. But this is about the future. There was so much enthusiasm in the church after really hearing the whole story and the possibilities there. I do want to mention, that theme, “the time is now,” that's right out of the overture that was passed by our general assembly.Debra Rienstra Yeah. Once again, that denominational leadership is so important.Linda Racine Yeah, that was in that very first overture in 2022 talking about how serious this moment in time is and the time is now to act.Debra Rienstra Hi, it's me, Debra. If you are enjoying this podcast episode, go ahead and subscribe on your preferred podcast platform. If you have a minute, leave a review. Good reviews help more listeners discover this podcast. To keep up with all the Refugia news, I invite you to subscribe to the Refugia newsletter on Substack. This is my fortnightly newsletter for people of faith who care about the climate crisis and want to go deeper. Every two weeks, I feature climate news, deeper dives, refugia sightings and much more. Join our community at refugianewsletter.substack.com. For even more goodies, including transcripts and show notes for this podcast, check out my website at debrarienstra.com. D-E-B-R-A-R-I-E-N-S-T-R-A dot com. Thanks so much for listening. We're glad you're part of this community. And now back to the interview.Debra RienstraSo how was the video used and disseminated?Linda Racine We started doing some meetings, just in homes, small groups, eight or 10 people. Showing the video, and then having a discussion. And that was the first step, and getting people's questions answered, and then Sunday morning it was in the service. And, wow.Debra Rienstra So it worked, so to speak, yeah.Linda Racine And then it's been on our website ever since. The thing is that video has gone—I wouldn't say viral, but it has been broadly, broadly disseminated.Debra Rienstra Oh, I can see why. I think every church should imitate it as best they can. Yeah, I mean the statistics—the numbers are specific to you folks.Linda Racine Yeah, the storytelling though, the power of that, are things that other churches can use, yes.Debra Rienstra And it stars many people from your church. So the stars of the show are your fellow congregants.Linda Racine And they're all people who have really stepped up and wanted to be and are a key part of this.Debra Rienstra So at this point you have—the heat pump system is well underway. Solar panels are sitting on the roof waiting for installation when the snow melts. You have education programs going. Maybe we'll come back to that. Quite a lot of landscaping work, quite a lot of native planting done, really neat native gardens. You have a pocket forest going. So as far as the four things, the four elements of earth care congregation: it's the building, the landscaping...Linda Racine Well, those are kind of together, so how you manage your facilities.Debra Rienstra Okay, what are the other three again?Linda Racine Worship. And pastors lead that, and they do that beautifully. That first year that we received certification, we had a kickoff celebration in the prayer garden that was just lovely. And so that theme gets worked into the worship by the pastors.Debra Rienstra Yeah, give some examples of how that happens in worship. Are there sermons? Is it in the litanies, in the music?Linda Racine Hmm, probably all of the above.Debra Rienstra Yeah. Okay, and you have two worship services. So this has to be done in two different ways, so it requires a little creativity.Linda Racine Yeah, although often in the spring, especially around earth— there can be combined services. We do a combined service once a month anyway, and so there have been a couple earth care themed services, that way it was one service.Debra Rienstra Yeah. And then do you have anything special for Earth Day or Season of Creation?Linda Racine Usually, yes, on like Wednesday, well, that would be more the education piece, but usually on the Wednesday nights, we've done something big related to earth care. This year, we're telling our story. We've got a thing planned for that Wednesday of Earth Week. We're inviting every church in the region to come and hear the story. Our contractor will be there to answer questions, and resource people, the Light and Power folks will be there. So if they have questions about, “Well, what programs do you have?” And there are other churches in the area also that are doing similar things. So it'll be a good chance to share stories also and learn from one another. So we're doing— that's the plan for this during Earth Care Week.Debra Rienstra So just to make the refugia connection there, as Traverse City Presbyterian is operating as a refugia place, a refugia space, doing their work, modeling that work, with this idea of getting other churches together, you're creating those corridors and creating that whole network to let these life giving capacities spread and grow. That's brilliant. Really great idea.Linda Racine Another thing that we've done, we've got a racial justice task force that has, over the last several years, made a very focused effort to build relationship with the local tribe. And so the last, I think, three Lent seasons that we've had a Lenten series where inviting tribal leadership into talk about the—to educate us about the history of the tribe and practices and beliefs, and whereas much of that is focused on caring for the earth, caring for Mother Earth, it's central, yeah. So we've learned a lot and helped make a connection with that.Debra Rienstra I noticed in your bulletin, there's a land acknowledgement. And also I noticed you have a garden specifically co-cared for with the indigenous folk around.Linda Racine Not yet.Debra Rienstra Okay, that's in the plans.Linda Racine Yes, it's on the plans to—because in one of the sessions where a tribal leader was talking about...it was right after the land acknowledgement had been created. And the talking through that, someone at the end asked, “So, what's next?” You know, we really, our heart is in this land acknowledgement, what's next? And her response was, “When you care for the earth, you care for the Anishinaabek and what we believe in.” So that sparked this thing in my head of, “Oh my, here's a beautiful opportunity.” And we followed up, thinking, if we could learn from tribal leadership on how to create a healing garden, we'd love to do that. And so we have had one of the tribal leaders come and help educate us about a healing garden, what all it involves. And we've created a space. It's all smothered and ready to go. And the first thing that we would like to plant there is a plum tree. Because what we learned from her, I had no idea, but apparently, the plum tree is a has a very special place in the Anishinaabek story, where—my understanding is that plum trees were very prevalent in the Grand Rapids area, and when the Dutch came and settled that area, the plum trees were taken out. And so, in fact, it was hard when she came to meet with us, she had brought a plum tree as a gift, and we didn't have a place to put it. Broke my heart. But we so would love that to be the center of this healing garden. So we've got, you know, ground is all ready. We weren't even sure where it ought to go. And so anyway, so we've got a spot, because she helped us find a place for the healing garden. So as soon as we can reconnect, and they have the time, though, we're going to get that garden launched.Debra Rienstra Wow, that's beautiful. And will it be medicinal plants?Linda Racine That's the thought, yes.Debra Rienstra So healing plants, but also healing a relationship.Linda Racine Both, yes, all three, yeah, all three things.Debra Rienstra Beautiful. So a lot of churches struggle with—I've been sort of calling it the “boutique issue” problem, which is to say, you have, you know, your creation care folk, and they have a green team or something, and they kind of do their little thing off to the side, and other people have other issues that they're dealing with, and it's really hard to get that creation care work to infuse through, to diffuse through the whole congregation's life. And it sounds like that happened fairly organically. So what advice would you have for other churches that struggle with that boutique issue problem?Linda Racine Well, I think the strength of the PCUSA certification process is what allowed that to happen or fostered that. Because when you've got—you're required or expected to set goals in very comprehensive list of how the church functions, it really requires everybody to be involved. And so right from the beginning, pretty much every committee was asked to look at, what are we doing related to creation care, and what do we want to do? And every year that gets repeated. So there's a clear—we've got a pace of it. It's built into the planning structure. Every fall, the committees are looking at their goals around everything but creation care is on the list, and they're looking at their budgets to submit for the final reports and what happens next year. So it's really built into the fabric and structure of how we operate. So if it weren't for that, it would be a committee off to the side doing whatever it does. But really, everyone in all committees are involved.Debra Rienstra So it sounds like that answers my next question too, which has to do with the problem of “fade.” So by that, I mean everybody gets excited. You replace the boiler, you replace the LED lights, or replace lights with LED, and then...yeah, this enthusiasm sort of fades. But it sounds like that annual goal-setting process with an indefinite horizon, like there's no end point to that, right? So that annual goal-setting process also helps with that fade problem.Linda Racine I think it's key.Debra Rienstra One last question, what has been most challenging and most joyful about the transformation that Traverse City Presbyterian has gone through in a mere five years?Linda Racine I don't know that anything has been particularly hard, but oh my gosh, the joy. Ah. Just so many examples. When we decided that there was this huge section of lawn that was totally unusable as lawn, let's turn it into a pocket forest. And we were able to get a local tree trimmer to donate the wood chips to smother it. And we have this huge group of people with two truckloads or three, I don't know how many truckloads of stuff. We're out with the wheelbarrows spreading stuff. We're having so much fun. Jordan is sliding down it like it's a ski slope. We're just having a great time, and I'm looking around and thinking, “I absolutely love this community.” They're so committed to being the best stewards of creation and one another. Yeah, it's not hard, it's just wonderful.Debra Rienstra Linda, it's been such a pleasure to talk to you. There's been joy in this conversation, too. Thank you for your time. Thank you for all that you do and blessings on Traverse City Presbyterian.Debra Rienstra Thanks for joining us for show notes and full transcripts, please visit debrarienstra.com and click on the Refugia Podcast tab. This season of the Refugia Podcast is produced with generous funding from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. Colin Hoogerwerf is our awesome audio producer. Thanks to Ron Rienstra for content consultation as well as technical and travel support. Till next time, be well. This is a public episode. 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OCT. 23, 2025Sittin' pretty in Jesus!"God, who is rich in mercy... raised us up...and made us sit together in... heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Eph 2:4, 6 NKJVFor many years Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse pastored Philadelphia's Tenth Presbyterian Church. One Sunday morning a twelve-year-old boy in the balcony was transfixed after hearing him speak about the length and breadth and depth of God's amazing grace.Barnhouse closed his sermon by summarizing many of the great promises from Scripture in one impressive sentence: "Our sins are forgiven, forgotten, cleansed, pardoned, covered...blotted out as a thick cloud, removed as far as the east is from the west, cast behind God's back." At the end of the service when Barnhouse went to the back to greet people, the boy approached him, tugged at his sleeve, and said, "Good sermon, Doc! We're sure sittin' pretty, aren't we?" That glorious phrase "in Christ" speaks to the redemptive miracle God performed for us through his Son (See Ro 8:1; 1Co 1:2; 15:22; Co 5:17; Eph 2:6-13). The word "in" assures us that just as our natural birth positioned us in Adam, our forefather, at the new birth God deliberately and precisely positions us in Jesus, our Redeemer. Think about it: "God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses...raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Eph 2:4-6 NKJV).Note that we're seated together in heavenly places in Christ, not beside Him. And it gets even better! We're seated there so closely identified with Jesus that we're inseparably and eternally one with Him! Now if that's not sitting pretty, tell us what is!Sittin' pretty in Jesus!Forgiven, forgotten, cleansed, pardonedShare This DevotionalSend us a textSupport the showChanging Lives | Building Strong Family | Impacting Our Community For Jesus Christ!

One of the first people that I saw healed was when I was a very young pastor and evangelist in England. Shortly after finishing college, I left the church I had pastored as a student, in Dorking, Surrey, and I was called to take over a church in Harrogate, North England, and prepare for an evangelistic crusade. I was only twenty years old. Soon after arriving, Mr Corker, one of the men in the church, 73 years old, became ill. He refused to go to the doctor until it was too late – they had to rush him into hospital where they diagnosed terminal cancer. He was so sick, they took away most of his stomach, gave him a catheter to pass the water, and a colostomy – and sent him home to die. The doctors expected him to live for just three weeks. As his pastor, I went many times to his home to pray with him and I discovered that although he had a difficult very blunt ‘Yorkshire' character, this man loved God from the bottom of his heart. I saw him in a new way, not just as a dying man, not just as a difficult deacon in my church, but I saw how much he loved the Lord. One Sunday morning, I brought a group of people from the church with me to his home. I asked the others to join hands in a circle with me as I laid hands on him. I was only young and with not much knowledge about faith or healing in a practical way, but I commanded the sickness to go. I still remember how I prayed: it wasn't an instant miracle, but it's one of the most amazing stories of my life. For weeks after that, as I continued to visit him, I watched as day after day the catheter tubes would get blocked – only afterward I realised that I was seeing the cancer in small pieces come away from his body!

My Story   Talk 29  Travels in Asia and Africa My first trip outside of Europe or America was in 1986 when I visited Pakistan, India, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. It came about in a quite remarkable way. One Sunday in 1985 I was reading an article about India in a Christian magazine when quite unexpectedly I had the distinct impression that the Lord was going to send me to India. I told Eileen about it and we agreed to wait and see what would happen. The very next Wednesday evening we had a meeting in the College chapel where the guest speaker was Ray Belfield who had come to challenge the students about overseas missions. After the meeting Ray came round to our house for a hot drink before making the return journey back to Wigan. As we prayed together just before he left, I found myself praying that the Lord would show us how best we as a College could support the work of missions, and the moment I had finished Ray said to me,             I'll tell you what you can do. You can go to India. I had told him nothing about what had happened the previous Sunday, so this seemed to be a real confirmation of what I felt the Lord had been telling me. But how would I raise the airfare? Shortly after that, Bob Stevenson was the speaker at a similar Wednesday evening meeting, and at the end of his message he totally surprised me. He said to the students, Now the Principal doesn't know I'm going to do this. In fact, I haven't asked anyone's permission to do so, but I want us to take an offering now. It's for your Principal's airfare to India. And the airfare was covered. The following January I went to India. In fact it was not just India. That month I visited Pakistan, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia as well. I travelled first to Pakistan and preached for a weekend in Karachi. This was my first experience outside of Europe or America and the culture shock was massive. And it wasn't helped by a severe attack of sickness and diarrhoea! I was so grateful that my friend Dr John Tonge had told me to pack some Imodium tablets! As a result, I was able to preach but sadly unable to eat any of the wonderful food they offered me. On the Monday I flew on to India with an empty stomach but soon recovered very quickly. I landed in Bombay (now Mumbai) and flew on to Coimbatore in the province of Tamil Nadu where AoG missionaries, Lawrence and Margaret Livesey, had planted churches decades earlier. It was truly wonderful to see the results of their sacrificial labours. I spent a little over two weeks there, preaching, teaching and visiting orphanages and schools run by the churches. David Prakasam and Lawrence Arumanayagam had both been students at Mattersey and were now training others to plant churches. One of the greatest thrills of my trip was to visit some of the many churches that had been planted by the students of our students. I saw very clearly that what we were doing at Mattersey was following Paul's instruction to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:2. The rest of my trip was spent in short visits to Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. I was based with Cyril and Barbara Cross, British AoG missionaries in Singapore, who looked after me very well. Before I flew back home I had the privilege of preaching in Bible College chapel in Kuala Lumpur, a large AoG church in Singapore, and a very lively house group led by an eighteen-year-old girl in Medan, Indonesia. If I had ever had doubts about women's ministry in the past, that girl's anointed leadership gift was more than enough to change my mind. My final trip to countries beyond Europe while we were still at Mattersey was to Burkina Faso in the year 2000. Several of our students at Mattersey had come from that part of Africa, formerly known as the Upper Volta. Like our students from India, most of them came on full scholarships which we provided for them. The first of these was Guetawende Roamba, the student I mentioned earlier who had recognised that a woman speaking in tongues in a College rally in Manchester was speaking in Moré, his own native language. Another, who came a few years later, was Philippe Ouédraogo who when he first arrived at Mattersey couldn't speak a word of English. I remember picking him up at Retford Station and speaking to him in French, giving him his first English lesson on the ten-minute journey back to College. Passing a field of cows, I pointed at them and said, les vaches, en anglais, COWS. Not that that piece of information would be much help for his studies at Mattersey! But it was a start, and Philippe became remarkably proficient in English in just a few weeks. It was through him that we received the invitation to visit Burkina Faso in November 2000. Eileen was very much looking forward to coming with me but unfortunately was prevented from doing so at the last minute. Eileen had retired in 1999 after serving as College Matron for 21 years and was at home in the utility room doing some decorating. As she was putting up a frieze she climbed onto the washing machine to help her reach the top of the wall and losing her balance fell off it backwards onto the hard floor, breaking the top of her arm close to the shoulder. On hearing the news I was home within minutes – our house was in the College grounds – and rushed her to A&E who confirmed the fracture and strongly advised her not to make the trip to Africa. And when I arrived there a few days later and experienced travelling on their bumpy roads, it was clear that we had made the right decision. The leaders in Ouagadougou were so impressed that she had let me come that they sent me home a few days earlier than planned. The highlights of the trip were preaching several times in French at the National Pastors' Conference, having a meal with, I think, seven of our former students, and being taken to visit some of the villages in the surrounding area. I shall never forget a lady giving me one of her chickens as a thank you for visiting her humble home and being taken by Philippe to a pool inhabited by several alligators. One of them, about eight to ten feet in length, was basking in the sun on the edge of the bank. Although they were wild animals Phillippe persuaded me to approach it from behind while he threw it a chicken.  He then encouraged me to pick up its tail and I, not liking to appear not to trust him, cautiously did as he said. And there was no reaction from the animal! So I was able to tell the grandchildren what I had done and show them a photo to prove it, warning them never to anything so foolish! But actually it wasn't quite as foolish as it sounds. The alligators were indeed wild, but as Philippe explained to me, the people who were not yet Christians worshipped these animals and regularly brought them food. As a result they had become relatively tame. There was, of course, an element of danger – you never know what a wild animal might do – but they were, oxymoronically, tame wild animals! I am so grateful to the Lord not only for the privilege of visiting so many different countries and cultures, and for so many opportunities to be a blessing to so many people, but also for the fun I've had in doing so. And this was to continue for years after my retirement from Mattersey. But before that could happen a very important decision had to be made. Who was to be my successor? Next time I'll tell you how that decision was made.

David and Brad sit down with John Geoghegan, a former conservative warrior from the Gingrich Revolution days who's done a complete political 180. What starts as a nostalgic trip down memory lane—reminiscing about the old cable access show "One Sunday"—quickly turns into a spirited debate about government ownership of private companies, the Russia investigation, lawfare, and whether political prosecutions are ever justified.John argues that Trump represents a dangerous departure from conservative principles, while David and Brad push back on the manufactured Russia collusion narrative and selective application of legal standards. The trio wrestles with tough questions: When does government investment in companies cross the line into socialism? Was the FBI's handling of the Russia investigation a legitimate concern or partisan witch hunt? And why do political tribes selectively apply their principles depending on whose ox is being gored?From the banking bailouts to Intel warrants, from Mike Flynn's prosecution to Trump's fraud cases, this episode examines how both sides weaponize institutions when it serves their purposes—and how intellectual consistency has become the rarest commodity in modern politics. Whether you think Trump is democracy's savior or its greatest threat, this conversation offers a master class in how former allies can end up on opposite sides of the political divide while still managing to have a civil (kind of) conversation about it.

In the fall of 2021, Derick contracted Covid-19. At first, he thought it was just a bad cold, but his condition quickly deteriorated. For days he was weak, unable to walk to the bathroom without carefully planning each step. At night he was plagued by nightmares of darkness and despair, praying desperately for God to spare his life.   Eventually, Derick was admitted to the hospital for four days. One Sunday afternoon, as sunlight streamed through the window, he turned off the TV and sat in the quiet. What happened next would radically change his life...   Have a copy of the written blog delivered to your inbox every time a new episode is released. Subscribe here.

One Sunday a year, we pause and reflect on all that the Lord has done, and look forward to what is to come. There is something here for everyone. Take your next step by joining a group or team today. Speaker: Brad Bell

Preacher: Suzy Silk Title: The Knowledge of the Holy One Sermon Series: God's Wisdom for Everyday Life Text: Proverbs 30:1-4 (NIV)

One Sunday a year, we pause and reflect on all that the Lord has done, and look forward to what is to come. There is something here for everyone. Take your next step by joining a group or team today. Speaker: Brad Bell

On this special episode, we recap the madness that was week 1 of the college football season and discuss relevant games and players as we look ahead to the rest of the season. Then we break down the SUNDAY DFS slate for Week One of the 2025 CFB Season. We go game-by-game and tell you everything you need to know about the teams and players on the slate, and give advice on how to build your DraftKings and FanDuel lineups for the day!00:00 Week 1 Recap13:00 Sunday DFS PicksUse code MCONNOLLY88 on UnderDog to get your first deposit matched!https://t.co/FXNtrz6ZBpLink to Patreon: https://t.co/oKODToDCdOFor all of the best offers and promo codes for DFS sites, Player Props sites, and Sportsbooks, use my site at https://signupexpert.com/mikespicks Link to the Fantasy Corner Discord: https://discord.gg/bUCB6aqQed

One Sunday after church, I stood by my car before getting in and looked around me. Young parents busy getting their tired kids buckled in didn't give me a second thought; their minds on home and lunch and naps, all in short order. As cars and vans drove away, hands waved and I heard voices ring out, “So long!” and “Have a great rest of your day! Single in my 20's, in a new career, a new town and a new church, I felt okay, mostly. Life was full and purposeful, but lonely on occasion. I wondered why families didn't ask me over for Sunday dinner. The Bible says God sets the lonely in families. (Psalm 68:6) I was lonely. I needed to be set somewhere. I got tired of waiting. Listen to what I did and what you can do, too, if you are singng the Parking Lot Blues. PS Please feel free to send my your stories of feeling lonely in a crowd. I'd love to share it on the podcast or in the newsletter. It can remain anonymous.   Email me: sue@welcomeheart.com  Some gems from the parking lot blues: Mom's hospitality radar, in good working order on most days, placed itself on high alert each Sunday morning. I needed family so I gathered some folks. Sometimes you just have to make it happen and not wait for someone else to pick up the phone or send a text. Loneliness is the feeling that no one is thinking about you, much less cares about you and what you're going through. We feel shame with loneliness and we know where shame comes from. Shame comes from the pit and God's children are not pit people. When these ladies met with me it was like Jesus looking through the window of my Toyota Camry to say, “Hey Sue, I see you and I'm coming over and we're going to make some changes where changes need making.” If you are feeling lonely at times, you are not alone. Make that call. I'll give you my recipe for apple crisp. It's a killer—for loneliness.   Mom and Aunt Joy at Sunday dinner (not lunch, not supper.)   Trishie's Best-Ever Apple Crisp   In a 7 1/2 x 11 glass casserole, mix together the following: (Trish says: “Mix in the baking pan and save washing a dish.” I wholeheartedly agree.) 5 large apples, peeled and sliced 1 t cinnamon 1/4 t nutmeg 1 t to 1 T lemon juice, depending on tartness of the apples 1 cup water   Topping In a medium bowl combine: 1 cup sugar 3/4 cup flour Cut in until crumbly: 1/2 cup firm butter (I use pastry cutter or box grater)   Spread topping over the apples. Bake at 350 degrees for an hour. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream. Comfort food, simple and delicious. A welcome home is a fragrant home.

Thank you for joining us online for 5-for-5 Sunday. One Sunday every year, we have the privilege of hearing from our Dream Team of what God is doing in their lives. Each service, we have 5 different speakers bring a PACKED message of faith, encouragement, and stretching. Lean in and receive from people who are tangibly making a difference at EC! If you are wanting to know a little bit more about EC, your own giftings, and how you can get involved here we invite you to take our Next Steps course. It's done entirely online and you can find all the information you need at https://experiencechurch.ca/next-steps​​If you would like to partner with EC in making a difference by give financially you can go to https://experiencechurch.ca/give​​FOLLOW US online and stay in the loop with what is happening at Experience Church! ►Instagram | www.instagram.com/experience.church►Facebook | www.facebook.com/ECCalgary►Website | www.experiencechurch.ca __ #5For5Sunday #ExperienceChurch

Thank you for joining us online for 5-for-5 Sunday. One Sunday every year, we have the privilege of hearing from our Dream Team of what God is doing in their lives. Each service, we have 5 different speakers bring a PACKED message of faith, encouragement, and stretching. Lean in and receive from people who are tangibly making a difference at EC! If you are wanting to know a little bit more about EC, your own giftings, and how you can get involved here we invite you to take our Next Steps course. It's done entirely online and you can find all the information you need at https://experiencechurch.ca/next-steps​​If you would like to partner with EC in making a difference by give financially you can go to https://experiencechurch.ca/give​​FOLLOW US online and stay in the loop with what is happening at Experience Church! ►Instagram | www.instagram.com/experience.church►Facebook | www.facebook.com/ECCalgary►Website | www.experiencechurch.ca __ #5For5Sunday #ExperienceChurch

Thank you for joining us online for 5-for-5 Sunday. One Sunday every year, we have the privilege of hearing from our Dream Team of what God is doing in their lives. Each service, we have 5 different speakers bring a PACKED message of faith, encouragement, and stretching. Lean in and receive from people who are tangibly making a difference at EC! If you are wanting to know a little bit more about EC, your own giftings, and how you can get involved here we invite you to take our Next Steps course. It's done entirely online and you can find all the information you need at https://experiencechurch.ca/next-steps​​If you would like to partner with EC in making a difference by give financially you can go to https://experiencechurch.ca/give​​FOLLOW US online and stay in the loop with what is happening at Experience Church! ►Instagram | www.instagram.com/experience.church►Facebook | www.facebook.com/ECCalgary►Website | www.experiencechurch.ca __ #5For5Sunday #ExperienceChurch

Thank you for joining us online for 5-for-5 Sunday. One Sunday every year, we have the privilege of hearing from our Dream Team of what God is doing in their lives. Each service, we have 5 different speakers bring a PACKED message of faith, encouragement, and stretching. Lean in and receive from people who are tangibly making a difference at EC! If you are wanting to know a little bit more about EC, your own giftings, and how you can get involved here we invite you to take our Next Steps course. It's done entirely online and you can find all the information you need at https://experiencechurch.ca/next-steps​​If you would like to partner with EC in making a difference by give financially you can go to https://experiencechurch.ca/give​​FOLLOW US online and stay in the loop with what is happening at Experience Church! ►Instagram | www.instagram.com/experience.church►Facebook | www.facebook.com/ECCalgary►Website | www.experiencechurch.ca __ #5For5Sunday #ExperienceChurch

Thank you for joining us online for 5-for-5 Sunday. One Sunday every year, we have the privilege of hearing from our Dream Team of what God is doing in their lives. Each service, we have 5 different speakers bring a PACKED message of faith, encouragement, and stretching. Lean in and receive from people who are tangibly making a difference at EC! If you are wanting to know a little bit more about EC, your own giftings, and how you can get involved here we invite you to take our Next Steps course. It's done entirely online and you can find all the information you need at https://experiencechurch.ca/next-steps​​If you would like to partner with EC in making a difference by give financially you can go to https://experiencechurch.ca/give​​FOLLOW US online and stay in the loop with what is happening at Experience Church! ►Instagram | www.instagram.com/experience.church►Facebook | www.facebook.com/ECCalgary►Website | www.experiencechurch.ca __ #5For5Sunday #ExperienceChurch

Thank you for joining us online for 5-for-5 Sunday. One Sunday every year, we have the privilege of hearing from our Dream Team of what God is doing in their lives. Each service, we have 5 different speakers bring a PACKED message of faith, encouragement, and stretching. Lean in and receive from people who are tangibly making a difference at EC! If you are wanting to know a little bit more about EC, your own giftings, and how you can get involved here we invite you to take our Next Steps course. It's done entirely online and you can find all the information you need at https://experiencechurch.ca/next-steps​​If you would like to partner with EC in making a difference by give financially you can go to https://experiencechurch.ca/give​​FOLLOW US online and stay in the loop with what is happening at Experience Church! ►Instagram | www.instagram.com/experience.church►Facebook | www.facebook.com/ECCalgary►Website | www.experiencechurch.ca __ #5For5Sunday #ExperienceChurch

Thank you for joining us online for 5-for-5 Sunday. One Sunday every year, we have the privilege of hearing from our Dream Team of what God is doing in their lives. Each service, we have 5 different speakers bring a PACKED message of faith, encouragement, and stretching. Lean in and receive from people who are tangibly making a difference at EC! If you are wanting to know a little bit more about EC, your own giftings, and how you can get involved here we invite you to take our Next Steps course. It's done entirely online and you can find all the information you need at https://experiencechurch.ca/next-steps​​If you would like to partner with EC in making a difference by give financially you can go to https://experiencechurch.ca/give​​FOLLOW US online and stay in the loop with what is happening at Experience Church! ►Instagram | www.instagram.com/experience.church►Facebook | www.facebook.com/ECCalgary►Website | www.experiencechurch.ca __ #5For5Sunday #ExperienceChurch

Thank you for joining us online for 5-for-5 Sunday. One Sunday every year, we have the privilege of hearing from our Dream Team of what God is doing in their lives. Each service, we have 5 different speakers bring a PACKED message of faith, encouragement, and stretching. Lean in and receive from people who are tangibly making a difference at EC! If you are wanting to know a little bit more about EC, your own giftings, and how you can get involved here we invite you to take our Next Steps course. It's done entirely online and you can find all the information you need at https://experiencechurch.ca/next-steps​​If you would like to partner with EC in making a difference by give financially you can go to https://experiencechurch.ca/give​​FOLLOW US online and stay in the loop with what is happening at Experience Church! ►Instagram | www.instagram.com/experience.church►Facebook | www.facebook.com/ECCalgary►Website | www.experiencechurch.ca __ #5For5Sunday #ExperienceChurch

Around the turn of the century in rural Texas, an old man, crippled with arthritis, was very faithful in his attendance at a local church. Twice on Sunday and once on Wednesday night, a little girl watched from her bedroom window as the old man, with cane in hand, painfully and slowly made his way down the street to the church building on the corner. One Sunday morning, following an unusually strong overnight winter storm, the little girl ran to her window, looked out and exclaimed to herself, “Surely the old man won't go to church this morning!” But there...Article Link

Lux Radio Theatre || One Sunday Afternoon | August 24, 1936Plot: A small town dentist has the opportunity to kill his old rival as he sits in his dental chair. Jack Oakie sings "I Can't Play The Banjo With Susannah On My Knee." Jack Oakie's mother is interviewed, as is actress Agnes Ayres (Rudolph Valentino's leading lady).Starring: Agnes Ayres: : : : :My other podcast channels include: MYSTERY x SUSPENSE -- SCI FI x HORROR -- COMEDY x FUNNY HA HA -- VARIETY X ARMED FORCES -- THE COMPLETE ORSON WELLESSubscribing is free and you'll receive new post notifications. Also, if you have a moment, please give a 4-5 star rating and/or write a 1-2 sentence positive review on your preferred service -- that would help me a lot.Thank you for your support.https://otr.duane.media | Instagram @duane.otr#dramaclassics #oldtimeradio #otr #radiotheater #radioclassics #luxradio #cecilbdemille #gunsmoke #oldtimeradioclassics #classicradio #crimeclassics #duaneotr:::: :

One Sunday morning in 1997, a security guard noticed the front fence at Loomis Fargo in Charlotte, North Carolina, was ajar. So was the warehouse door. And the vault inside was fitted with a suspicious time lock. When authorities finally opened the vault the next day, they found it completely empty, the target of one of the largest cash thefts in US history. The manhunt that followed would grip the nation as authorities raced to track down the inside man who they believed vanished with millions. "Crimes of the Centuries" is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab exploring forgotten crimes from times past that made a mark and helped change history. You can get early and ad-free episodes on the Grab Bag Patreon page.  DON'T FORGET ABOUT THE CRIMES OF THE CENTURIES BOOK!  Order today at www.centuriespod.com/book (https://www.centuriespod.com/book)! Follow us on Instagram and Twitter: @centuriespod Episode Sponsors: Hiya Health. We've worked out a special deal with Hiya for their best selling children's vitamin. Receive 50% off your first order. To claim this deal you must go to hiyahealth.com/COTC. This deal is not available on their regular website. Cornbread Hemp. Right now, Crimes Of The Centuries listeners can save 30% off their first order and enjoy free shipping on orders over $75! Head to cornbreadhemp.com/COTC and use code COTC at checkout.

MAMA Annie and MAMA Sam reminisce on how fun going out used to be before we met our fucking husbands. Oops! One Sunday, we didn't even know it was our LAST Sunday morning debrief after a night out. We didn't even know. Because I foolishly went on hinge and met "the one" and introduced Annie to her husband a week later. IDIOTIC. Anyway, these are the kind of fun thoughts you have when you're postpartum - romanticizing a hungover morning in your cockroach infested apartment. I miss those roaches. Those roaches were my boyz. 

ALBERTA - A two-part series. One Sunday in Medicine Hat, AB, a little boy peered through the window of a neighbour's home and discovered a scene so horrific it would shock even seasoned police officers. As a frantic search began for a missing 12-year-old girl, the case took an even darker turn.* Additional content warning: this episode includes the death of a child. Please take care when listening.The intention of this series is to take a look back at a shocking crime sensationalized through headlines and explore how it impacted the community. Some names have been changed to respect the privacy of those involved.Part 2 of this series will be released to everyone in a week.Look out for early, ad-free release on CTC premium feeds: available on Amazon Music (included with Prime), Apple Podcasts, Patreon and Supercast.Canadian True Crime donates monthly to help those facing injustice.This month we have donated to the Calgary Homicide Support Society.Full list of resources, information sources, credits and music credits:See the page for this episode at www.canadiantruecrime.ca/episodes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

These Three Are One - Sunday Morning Service - May 18, 2025 - Pastor James

In this episode of Pastor Matters, Dr. Alistair Begg shares insights from his 42 years of pastoral ministry at Parkside Church in Cleveland, Ohio. He discusses the importance of endurance in ministry, balancing family life with church responsibilities, and the lessons learned over a lifetime of ministry. Dr. Begg also offers practical advice for young pastors on sermon preparation. His reflections provide valuable guidance for both seasoned and aspiring leaders in the church. We hope this episode is encouraging to you today! Let us know how this episode encouraged you or share any feedback you have by emailing us at pastorscenter@sebts.edu. Pastor Matters is produced by Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Find out how Southeastern can equip you to GO by visiting sebts.edu.

Mark Hart is the chief innovation officer at Life Teen International. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Hart is a blogger, podcaster, and international speaker. He is a research fellow at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology.He is an award-winning producer of Bible study DVDs and the author of more than twenty books, including the topic of our conversation today One Sunday at a Time: Preparing Your Heart for Weekly Mass for cycles A, B, and C published with Ave Maria Press.

One Sunday morning in Georgia, a family walks into their Pentecostal church ready for worship. They're unaware that outside something life changing is about to unfold. During the service, ICE arrests a man just outside the church doors while his family sits inside. A moment of worship and community suddenly turns into a moment of fear and uncertainty. This is the reality for many facing immigration enforcement in unexpected places today.  This week on Spirit and Power: Apocalypse Now - how Pentecostal and charismatic Christians are making sense of the Trump administration's long promised mass deportations. For some families torn asunder, it feels like the end of the world. For others, it's just the beginning. Dr. Leah Payne does a deep dive into stories of immigration and deportation with Dr. Jonathan Calvillo and Dr. Lois Olena. This episode features contrasting interpretations of the Pentecostal faith, and who is on the side of good and evil when it comes to deportations, family, and public policy.  Resources & Links: “Fear grips immigrant communities as ICE ramps up arrests; community journalist responds,” 11 Alive News “Tenía un proceso de asilo: detienen a inmigrante hondureño al salir de una iglesia en Georgia,” Univision “When ICE Comes to Church,” Christianity Today, by Andy Olsen Migrating Faith: Pentecostalism in the United States and Mexico in the Twentieth Century, by Daniel Ramírez When the Spirit is Your Inheritance: Reflections on Borderlands Pentecostalism, by Jonathan E. Calvillo The Saints of Santa Ana: Faith and Ethnicity in a Mexican Majority City, by Jonathan E. Calvillo“Fear grips immigrant communities as ICE ramps up arrests; community journalist responds,” 11 Alive News Join Leah & many other scholars, activists, and artists considering music the rise of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity at the 2025 Summer Institute for Global Charismatic & Pentecostal Studies at Candler School of Theology at Emory University, May 21-23 in Decatur, GA. Registration is free! Spirit and Power is produced by the Institute for Religion, Media, and Civic Engagement. Created by Dr. Leah Payne Producer: Andrew Gill Executive Producer: Dr. Bradley Onishi Audio Engineer and Music: R. Scott Okamoto Production Assistance: Kari Onishi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gemilut Chasadim is one of the mitzvot for which Hashem rewards us in both this world and the next. It is so precious to Hashem when we go out of our way to help others. The Chafetz Chaim writes in his sefer Ahavat Chesed that after 120 years, when a person stands in judgment before Hashem, he will see that most of the mitzvot he performed were not done with all the required halachic details. However, if he was a ba'al chesed in this world, Hashem will judge him with chesed as well. Even if he doesn't fully deserve it, his mitzvot will be accepted, and he will receive their full reward. Gemilut Chasadim is not only about giving money—it is about giving time and energy. Whenever we go out of our way to help someone, we should be mindful that we are fulfilling the mitzva of Gemilut Chasadim . And no matter what, we always gain from it. A man, whom we'll call Reuven, shared the following story: In 2013, Reuven was living in an apartment with about $7,000 in his bank account. One Sunday morning, he received a call from someone asking if he could help make a minyan for a person who needed to say Kaddish . At first, his yetzer hara tried to convince him otherwise. "It's raining outside, it's cold, I'm sure they'll find someone else." But he overcame the struggle and went to join the minyan . After tefillah , the man who had asked him to come thanked him and mentioned that he was getting involved in something called Bitcoin. Reuven had never heard of it before. The man encouraged him to buy one coin. At the time, the price was $50 per coin. Reuven listened to his advice and bought one. Very quickly, the price doubled to $100. Excited, Reuven called the man to thank him. The man told him, "Buy more. I'm certain it will keep going up." Following his advice, Reuven bought more coins—and as the price rose, he kept buying. Today, his Bitcoin holdings are worth millions, with each coin valued at around $100,000. Of course, in the Next World , his act of helping someone make a minyan will be worth infinitely more than millions of Bitcoins. But he is also happy to have seen a side benefit from the good deed he did. Sometimes we are asked to help others, and we don't think we can. But Hashem is interested in the effort , not just the results. If He wants the person to be helped, He will bless the efforts. A real estate developer, whom we'll call Shimon, shared his own experience: One day, he received a request from someone who needed an urgent appointment at the Cleveland Clinic. The waiting list for this particular appointment was extremely long. Shimon was very involved in helping people, but this time he felt he had no connections at the Cleveland Clinic. He initially told the person that he didn't think he could help. But after hanging up the phone, he told himself, "I have to at least try." He searched for a list of hospital contacts and decided to call the vice president. The secretary answered, and Shimon introduced himself. Thirty seconds later, the vice president was on the line. "Are you Shimon Cohen, the real estate developer?" the man asked. Shimon replied, "Yes." The vice president continued, "I've been on a waiting list to get a condo in one of your buildings in Florida. I heard there are only a couple of units left, and multiple people are trying to get the last one." Shimon told him, "Let me see what I can do for you." The vice president then asked why Shimon had called him. Shimon explained that he had a friend who urgently needed an appointment at the hospital. The vice president immediately replied, "Consider it done. You help me, and I'll help you." Afterward, Shimon reflected, "What were the odds that the one person I called would be someone who needed my help at that exact moment?" Because Shimon had a sincere desire to help, Hashem orchestrated the zechut for him to do so. Every effort we make to help others is precious to Hashem. And the more chesed we do, the more chesed Hashem grants us in return.

Hour 1: The Tara Show - “Canadians Booing the US National Anthem” “Marco Rubio Gives One Sunday Show An Education On WW2 Germany!” “Ryan Wrecker Talks With Sally Pipes About Pharma Costs” “How Do We Lower Housing Prices?”

Laurence Torr Leaders Meeting -  Sharing One Sunday 15th December 2024   Visit Our Website http://www.graceloveandtruth.com/ Visit Our YouTube Channel Here http://www.youtube.com/laurencetorr

Ken talks with Mark Hart “One Sunday at a Time: Preparing Your Heart for Weekly Mass – Cycle C” (Ave Maria Press) and Father Nathen Cromly “Coached by Paul the Apostle: Lesson in Transformation” (Scepter Publishers). Mark's book available at: https://www.avemariapress.com/products/one-sunday-at-a-time-cycle-c and Father Cromly's book at: https://scepterpublishers.org/products/coached-by-paul-the-apostle-lessions-in-transformation?_pos=2&_sid=ab810584e&_ss=r&variant=44218634764465  Follow Mark at: www.biblegeek.com and https://www.facebook.com/MarkHart99/ Follow Father Cromly at: https://www.saintjohninstitute.org/ L'articolo Meet the Author with Ken Huck – January 16, 2025 – Mark Hart “One Sunday at a Time: Preparing Your Heart for Weekly Mass – Cycle C” and Father Nathen Cromly “Coached by Paul the Apostle: Lesson in Transformation” proviene da Radio Maria.

January 9, 2025Today's Reading: Catechism: The Third CommandmentDaily Lectionary: Ezekiel 3:12-27; Ezekiel 4:1-11:25; Romans 2:1-16The Third Commandment: Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.“What makes you so special?” That question could be taken as Law or Gospel, depending on the context. Both are helpful to us as we reflect on the Law of God laid down in the Third Commandment and the Gospel promise He offers apart from it.“What makes you so special?” an honest friend asked a young church worker. After years of schooling and moving and sacrificing for others, the young church worker was convinced that a getaway weekend was deserved. So it was planned, miles away from any church. “After all,” they explained to their friend, “the Sabbath is not a literal ‘day' for the Christian who finds his Sabbath in Jesus.” While true, this attitude betrayed a dangerous misunderstanding of Christian freedom. One Sunday away from church may not break a believer's faith, but intentionally spurning the Word of God will lead to rejection of the faith received at Baptism; this is most certainly true. There are no exceptions; no one is so special as to be immune from the Law. There is no vacation from God nor rest apart from Him. There is no portion of one's life that can be kept for oneself. All things belong to the Lord, who commands us to worship Him. The words of Ezekiel are a warning to us: “Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God?” So the honest friend asked: “What makes you so special?” The words were like a shot through the heart, as the Law so often is. The young church worker knew they had despised God's Word. They repented and found a place to worship, even on vacation.Brothers and sisters in Christ: gladly hear and learn the Word of God. Come to worship as regularly as you can. This is in keeping with God's good Law; it is His good and gracious desire for you to hear His Word, that it may convict you of your sin and bring you to repentance. As the Holy Spirit works within your heart, you will hear the same Word of God, but it will take on a new and glorious meaning– for the Law has been fulfilled in Jesus!True Sabbath rest is His free Gift to you! “What makes you so special?” now has an answer: Jesus! In His Word, He declares you so special that He forgives your sin!In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.O Lord, we are men of half faith, of cloven faith, half given to You, half saved up for ourselves. Forgive us, Lord. Teach us, O Lord. Teach us to walk as Your Son walked on earth through ministry to death, through death to life and glory at Your right hand. Through Him we pray. Amen. (adapted from a prayer “To Live by the Word of God” by Martin Franzmann, in “Pray for Joy,” CPH: St. Louis, MO, 1970)-Rev. Donald Stein, pastor of Saint Andrew Lutheran Church in Rockton, IL.Audio Reflections Speaker: Pastor Jonathan Lackey is the pastor at Grace Lutheran Church, Vine Grove, KY.What makes a church "good?" Come join the fictional family as they test out eight different churches in their brand-new town and answer this question along the way. Will the Real Church Please Stand Up? by Matthew Richard, now available from Concordia Publishing House.

One Sunday a year, we stay home with our families and enjoy service from the comfort of our living rooms! This past Sunday we joined the Manna Fayetteville/Ft. Liberty family and folks along the Military Highway for the “Service in Your PJ's”! Watch now and be inspired to start the New Year knowing you have nothing to fear with God's everlasting love!  Join us this Sunday for the first service of 2025 and the beginning of a new series! To learn more about our church, visit the Manna Church Stafford/Quantico website at mannastafford.church.Looking for a church in Stafford, Virginia? We would love for you to visit us onsite. Get directions to our church at mannastafford.church/visit-manna-church-stafford-quantico/Connect with Manna Church Stafford on Facebook at facebook.com/MannaStafford and on Instagram at instagram.com/manna.stafford.

One Sunday a year, we pause and reflect on all that the Lord has done, and look forward to what is to come. We are excited to share all that is to come with our Kids, Students, Young Adults, and the launch of Valley College.  Speaker: Brad Bell

One Sunday a year, we pause and reflect on all that the Lord has done, and look forward to what is to come. We are excited to share all that is to come with our Kids, Students, Young Adults, and the launch of Valley College.  Speaker: Brad Bell

Recap....No Politics....Terry....

One Sunday morning during service, Rick died at the back of the church. The power and unity of the congregation's prayers brought him back to life.

One Sunday morning during service, Rick died at the back of the church. The power and unity of the congregation's prayers brought him back to life.

One Sunday morning during service, Rick died at the back of the church. The power and unity of the congregation's prayers brought him back to life.

One Sunday morning during service, Rick died at the back of the church. The power and unity of the congregation's prayers brought him back to life.

Whooping. Spanking. Beating. Whatever you want to call it, corporal punishment was a central part of Lee's upbringing. Growing up, he was made to believe that it was a Black custom but as an adult he began wondering if it ended up doing more harm than good. In this episode, Lee speaks with Dr. Andrew Garner, a pediatrician who has studied the effects of corporal punishment on children, and how the nervous system is altered by it. Later, Lee speaks with Geoff Ward, a Professor of African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, to discuss how corporal punishment has extended beyond the home, and into schools.TranscriptWe wanted to give a heads up that this episode includes talk of abuse, and acts of violence. You can find resources on our website, WhatHappenedInAlabama.org - listener discretion is advised.Hi - this is Lee Hawkins and we're about to dive into episode seven of What Happened in Alabama. This conversation is about corporal punishment in homes and schools. Beating, spanking, whooping, whatever you call it, that's what we'll be talking about. This is very personal to me because it's how I and so many of my peers were raised. We were taught that it was not only normal, but necessary. Today we're going to get into the short and long-term effects of corporal punishment on the physical, mental, and emotional development and well-being of children, often following them into adulthood. It's a heavy and important topic But you'll get a lot more out of it if you go back and listen to the prologue - that'll give you some context for the series and this episode. Do that, and then join us back here. Thank you so much. In February 2019, I had my final interview with my dad for this project. We talked for over 3 hrs. I had a deadline to hit, and because I had so many interviews already recorded I did one final interview with him, just to get specific questions answered without having to go back through all that tape. He did the final interview – and he answered some extremely difficult questions, with compassion, regret, and especially grace.Lee: And so how did you get into the whooping thing? Like you beating us with your belt? What made.. Like, where did you get that from?Lee Sr: That I can't say. I don't know, man. It was just a, some kind of a stress that I had, evidently. Lee Sr: it's hard to say how this shit went man.Asking my dad directly about this I realized that families often repeat certain patterns and cycles from generation to generation, without understanding why or where they come from. That four year process of interviewing my father about his upbringing in 1950-era Jim Crow Alabama shined a powerful light on why I was raised the way I was. But while I had gained a better understanding of some of the historical factors that shaped my upbringing, I still needed to understand the forces that prevented my father from breaking the cycle of belt whipping when we were kids. Lee: But what were the stresses that you were going through? Lee Sr: Things that I had seen my mom had to go through with people and shit and that was hard to push it. And so when I thought you guys did something, that was when I would, you know, get out of control like I did man, because that is out of control. I don't give a fuck how you put it. It was validating to hear Dad declare that hitting children with belts was wrong, and something that he profoundly regretted, and was genuinely sorry for, because I struggled for my whole life to understand the sentiment that Black children – especially – need to be beaten, even as I accepted it. I didn't need much more than to hear my dad acknowledge that no, we didn't deserve it – Black kids or not. Lee Sr: If it was up to me and the way I feel about things, I would've never done nothing like that. But I don't know how I got out of control like that. Something was back there in my life that did that and I know it.My mom told me that there were nights that my dad came to bed and cried after those interviews. Though I never saw those tears, it doesn't surprise me. Revisiting painful memories that led my father to try to whip us into perfection out of deep love and concern was obviously excruciating for him. Despite my belief in “honor thy mother and father” and occasionally unnecessary guilt, I didn't feel obligated to shield him from the pain he caused my sister Tiffany and me at times. I accepted that the burden of his actions was not mine to carry. Expecting a victim to accept the blame for a perpetrator's actions, fearing that a grown man might cry, just isn't fair.I was determined to lead my dad down the path to finally put these generational demons to rest, for both of us and for future generations of our family. If he cried, he cried. When I heard that dad cried, I saw it as a sign of empathy but not a reason to quit researching. As children, I wept, and Tiffany wept, through the hundreds of belt whippings we received. In fact, our mother would tell us: “Stop crying or I'll give you something to really cry about.” I now realize that perpetrators rarely recognize the extent of a victim's pain because they aren't the ones being beaten.My father's tears didn't change the reality of what they had done to us. His crying may have meant he finally grasped that his childhood impacted mine more profoundly than my parents had ever acknowledged. Our pain stung so much more than the feeling of a belt to the behind.Social justice activists talk so often about how violence impacts Black bodies, but my research, and my memories of my own childhood, have shown me that violence–including within the Black family and community– can also have potentially devastating effects on Black minds—especially the minds of children.With my mental health journalism training, I now understand why I was always on edge, like my parents. They feared the world, and I feared them. Sometimes I'd go to bed fully clothed, with three layers of clothing on for extra padding, preparing for the possibility of being pulled out of bed for a forgotten chore. This made me high-strung and hard to stay calm. Around age eight, I started blinking excessively when nervous. One Sunday in the choir stand, I couldn't stop blinking. After church, one of my Dad's friends mentioned it, "I think Lee Lee's got some kind of nervous tic." Dad dismissed it as teasing, ranting to my mom about it the whole ride home.But his friend was right. My nervous system was firing like crazy. Though I excelled in spelling and reading, I struggled in math that year. My parents thought I was clowning in class and believed more beatings would improve my scores. They'd yell, "You're being the class clown for all those white friends of yours." They didn't realize I needed extra help from a teacher or tutor. Instead of focusing on math, I'd sit at my desk and worry about the belt whipping I could get for writing down a wrong answer, which made me blink even more.Neither my father nor I connected my nervousness to the beatings. We saw the belt as temporary pain. But it hijacked my entire system. As an adult, I've dealt with stress, but nothing compares to the constant stress I carried as a child. I don't know how I never developed an ulcer. Imagine an adult experiencing the unpredictability of being overpowered and whipped several times a month, then having to perform at their best the next day. That's what I went through… as an eight-year-old.What broke my heart as a child was that my mother told me that she gave my teacher permission to hit me if she wanted to. My teacher never did, but she clearly knew I was getting the belt at home. That trend of many schools failing to protect students from violence, or even exacting violence themselves, impacted me in so many ways. One clear way was the reality that my Dad rarely if ever got hit by his parents, but he did get hit plenty of times at school, which, I believed normalized the idea of child beating in his mind at a young age.And today, Alabama is one of seventeen states that still allow corporal punishment in K-12 public schools, with the schools mostly striking Black children and those with disabilities. In 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the UCLA Center for Civil Rights Remedies reported that Black boys are nearly twice as likely to be hit compared to white boys, and Black girls are struck at over three times the rate of white girls. This, all despite the fact that Black students behave similarly to white ones. Today, hitting school children is legal and most prevalent in states where enslavement was legal. Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas represent over 70% of all corporal punishment in U.S. public schools, according to the SPLC. Children at some schools are hit nearly twice a month. Notably, during the 2015–16 school year, one Mississippi school reported 871 instances affecting 57 students, averaging 15 times per student. Another school in the same state noted 60 instances for just four students, also averaging 15 times per student. A few years back, before my dad died, my Dad and his sister, Aunt Toopie, talked about the beatings they received at school while growing up in Jim Crow AlabamaLee: Did they whoop the kids in school, was it a strict thing?Lee Sr: Yeah, we got our ass kicked every time we were late, I know that. Aunt Toopie: And stand in the corner.Lee Sr: And when you did something in class you got your ass kicked.Aunt Toopie: They had belts in school in them days.Lee Sr: They had that board of education. If I was late for school, you'd go right to the principal's office, and he'd tell your ass up about three times with that paddle, with holes in it. That paddle was a piece of oak wood, and it had varnish on it and it had holes. They had drills holes in it. It was custom made. It said board of education and he'd have you bend over and man, that thing, them holes in that thing, would leave little dots on your ass.” Being hit at school burned a permanent memory in my dad's brain - he normalized it when he became a father, handing down the Alabama-born anxiety to another generation, to me. After the conversation with my dad where he apologized for whipping my sisters and me, I tried to have a similar one with my mom. But it went very differently. "We didn't beat you,” she said. “We spanked you."I was disappointed to hear her deny how severely she and my dad beat my sister Tiffany and me. But I also understood why she would say what she did. There's almost a collective agreement in society that so-called spanking is supposedly lighter than a beating…kinder and gentler and never abusive or harmful. It's much easier to stomach the narrative that there are acceptable forms of violence to use against children; even though that same violence would never be acceptable to use against an adult. Which is why I give my dad so much credit for being honest and not trying to minimize what they did.My dad finally understood the full spectrum of damage the American whip had caused generations of our family. We often think the worst of corporal punishment are the welts and physical pain. But through my own experience and my research, I know the real pain is from the belt's access to the victim's mind. My parents didn't know these beatings and the mental stress of having to constantly look out for danger all around me, made it harder for me to focus, triggering my nervous system into fight or flight, causing bouts of anxiety that followed me into adulthood. This led me to find experts on the effects of corporal punishment on the body and mind.Dr. Garner: The thing that separates kids from adults is they're still under construction. Their brain, their physiology is still under development. And so what happens in childhood doesn't stay in childhood. That's Doctor Andrew Garner. He's a primary care pediatrician in Ohio who has studied the effect of corporal punishment on children. I wanted to talk to Dr. Garner to understand the physiological changes that occur in children when they are hit. Whether you hit them with your hand, a belt, a paddle, regardless of how hard or how often you hit them, it's all corporal punishment. I'm someone who refuses to get nostalgic about the beatings of my childhood. I would never high-five my friends and say I needed it, I loved it, or credit it as the reason I stayed out of trouble or became a productive citizen. It's not funny to me, mainly because it took me years to rewire my system. But I don't want to unfairly judge people either, especially those who don't have the information. Once I delved into history, I gained a deeper and clearer understanding of why so many people I've known—especially Black and white people from the South—have often celebrated and even laughed fondly about the use of corporal punishment. Many have no idea that, when we really look closely at America's historical foundation, hitting children is akin to setting up a system of white supremacy or a mini plantation in their living room. Later in this episode, I speak with Professor Geoff Ward, a Professor of African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, to discuss how corporal punishment has extended beyond the home into schools across the South, mainly the states and counties where slavery was legal and lynching was most prevalent. We talk about the institutionalized use of corporal punishment and how deeply ingrained it is in our history. But for now, let's get back to Dr. Garner.The conversation mentions violence and abuse against children, sensitive listeners please take care. [break]Lee: I think there are many people who believe, well, if I just hit the kid a few times on the butt with my hand, that's a spanking. If I hit a kid with a belt that's a beating, or if I don't if I hit a kid with a belt, but I don't hit them hard..as hard as the guy up the street who's hitting his kid with the extension cord, then that's not a beating. Dr. Garner: That's all violence. Right. So, you know, corporal punishment is a negative consequence, for unwanted behavior. But that negative consequence is the use of force and is intended to cause pain or discomfort. So that's violence. So, you know, whether or not you're trying to split hairs between, a spanking or a beating, it's still the use of violence to coerce, and control and modify another person's behavior. And we know that in order to continue changing that behavior, the violence needs to escalate over time. So it's a slippery slope. I can recognize this slippery slope in my own life. My parents started out with a few hits when I was little and over the years it escalated to something much more serious, to the point where getting hit with a leather belt for five minutes was normalized. In fact, their punishment increased to slaps across the face and attacks that were even more severe. And this was from two parents, who, like most of the parents we knew, felt like, if they truly loved their children, they needed to kick it into high gear and show us that life wasn't going to be fair and that nobody was coming to save us, especially because we were Black. I can see how this happens. Dr. Garner: You may think that in the short term, you're doing a good service to your child because you're trying to teach them something. But in the long run, we know the outcomes are worse. There's clear data, you know, increased risk of child abuse, because you have to eventually increase the negative stimuli to try and change the behavior. Part of the problem with corporal punishment, it's a double whammy. In addition to the anticipation, like you're saying what bad thing is going to happen to me? There's also the loss of safety, because one of the things that the the one of the ways that we buffer adversity is through relationships. And now there's, there can be a loss of trust, in the, in the relationship. And that to me is really interesting that, it's not just the, the, the fear of the pain as you were talking about. It's also the loss of trust that when is this going to happen. Where when am I safe? When am I safe? Lee: Well, never. I was never really 100% safe in my home or outside in the world. Never. There was never a time that I felt safe. And I also feel like my parents did that by design. I don't think they wanted me to ever feel safe, because I don't think they believed that a Black person in America is ever safe. So I believe that they wanted me to feel the hyper vigilance and the hyper cautiousness that they, in the generations before them, felt because they didn't believe enough in the system of America. Another thing is that when you said you have to increase the punishment if you're going to use this system, that's exactly what happened to me. And I know my dad. I know that he…lost control and did not know what he was doing. And I think at that time he got to a point where he realized, what have I done? What have I become? Dr. Garner: I think where we break down sometimes is trying to decide what's more important, you know, is it the connection or is it the structure? Well, they're both important. You need to have connection. So kids trust the instruction you're giving them. But the way I think about it is it's a lot easier to teach a kid what they should do than to keep from doing something you don't want them to do. Lee: But it's also forcing us to understand that children are multiple times smaller than adults. And so we if we apply some empathy here, we have to understand that even if you're hitting a child once or twice, you're still multiple times larger than the child, and the child may not have a bruise. Or the bruise may go away. But it's really this person who's supposed to be taking care of me, who is the only thing in this world I love, and this person who is providing meals and food and shelter for me is hitting me. Oh, he's going to hit me again. But for some reason, children have a different standing in society. They're the most vulnerable in the society, but they have the least protection. Dr. Garner: Yeah. It's crazy. The thing that separates kids from adults is they're still under construction. We know if there is significant adversity, and there aren't opportunities to turn off the body's stress response that can result in a thing called toxic stress. Right. So toxic stress is this inability to turn off the stress response. And it can literally change who we are at the behavioral, at the cellular, even at the molecular levels. We know that adversity can sort of become biologically embedded and and changing the way our genomes work. Lee: And this is just even with just hitting a child once or twice occasionally. Right? Dr. Garner: Absolutely. I mean, that's the point, is that we have to understand the way brains develop. Brain development is an experience driven event. It's the experiences that happen that drive brain development. And so the question is, what are those experiences in childhood, are they adverse in the sense that they're leading to expectancies of bad things and always being on edge, or are they nurturing to the extent that people get me? I have agency and things are going to be positive in the future. So those early experiences are truly foundational and they can influence the way we see ourselves and the way we see other people and the way we see our future.For me, belt whipping taught me not to ever trust anyone, including and especially my parents. I loved them, but I never fully trusted them and rarely confided in them. And that turned me into an adult who simply refused to trust another human being. Despite the active social life I've always had, my childhood groomed me to be a rugged individualist, putting all my trust in God and myself. I never put even an ounce of faith in the idea that another person would not be capable of betraying or letting me down. And in relationships with girlfriends -– especially if they wronged me in any way – I developed the very unfortunate ability to be able to walk away from them and never look back and never miss them. And I often wanted to be able to be vulnerable and feel some level of paralysis or regret, but I always could just keep going.The beatings also made me perfectionistic. My mantra became, “if you want something done right, do as much as you can by yourself, because most people will almost always fall short and disappoint.”At a very young age, I just adopted the posture that I was on my own, and that I should not count on anyone or expect anyone to come up with a net and try to catch me if I fell. And also I also believed that you should always keep people out of your personal business, because in most cases, they'll take your plans, your confiding in them about your most vulnerable feelings or moments, or the smallest mistakes and weaponize them to try and hurt you. And that's how my father was. And yes, he came from a family of Jim Crow survivors and had family members murdered, but I believe a lot of this view of the world I've seen in my family, especially in my case, came from being beaten as children. These beatings – and yes, I have finally given myself permission to call them abuse – just wreaked havoc on my capacity to receive love without skepticism. Even now, I mean, speaking this, I'm wondering if this revelation will somehow be used against me by somebody down the line. But at least I can recognize it now. My new mantra is, “I'm free and I'm safe.” And to be fair, I'm a lot better than I used to be, and I can't say that the skepticism hasn't helped me a great deal – especially in the media business – but I wouldn't wish that level of steel-heartedness on anyone. I asked Dr. Garner to break down what happens to a child's nervous system when they get hit or know there's a possibility they're about to get hit. He said there are three biological pathways. Dr. Garner: The most simplest and the most evolutionarily, primitive is freeze, right? So you may see that the deer in the headlights type thing. Right. And so the first temptation is to freeze, if I be small and don't move, maybe the threat will go away.The second, which you might recognize, is fight or flight. Dr. Garner: And that's where you have a release of all kinds of biological mediators. Cortisol and epinephrine, that basically make your blood pressure high, make you ready to fight or run away. Those hormones are very useful in the short term. So if you see a bear, you can run away fast. But if that if that stress response isn't turned off through the presence of safe, stable, nurturing relationships and that constant bathing in those physiologic mediators of stress is there that results in changes. Changes at the molecular level, changes at the cellular level changes the behavior that really can change who we are. And we call that toxic stress. The third response is to affiliate, that means our ability to collaborate with others, to seek help when there's a threat. It's part of the reason humans have existed so long as a species. But Tiffany and I didn't have that support. There was no escaping the belt. Dr. Garner: Where are my friends? Who's going to help me through this? The problem is, for a young child, the friend is the person who's beating you. So you've really sort of lost that that ability to turn off the stress response from an affiliate response. You're really stuck in flight or flight, and if you're constantly bed with those hormones, again, that's going to lead to a child who's going to be more defiant, more aggressive. Not be able to think things through, not be able to think about the broad perspective because you're. Constantly in fight or flight mode. You're constantly in survival mode instead of relational mode. Lee: Right? Yeah. And if you can think about this to bring some empathy in here for people to understand, if you were hitting a dog and a dog who depends on you for everything, is experiencing this toxicity in this toxic environment, you can actually see a lot of times when dogs are abused because you'll go to pet them and they kind of squirm. Sometimes they might bark, sometimes they might even try to bite you. And that's because they've been abused. Children are the same, right? I mean, children can have some of the same effects that we see, in dogs, that we empathize with. Children who are treated the same way in their home. Can have that same impact. Dr. Garner: But here's the good news. And this is the really fascinates me, is that the more we learn about the biology of adversity, the more we learn about toxic stress and how adverse experiences become biologically embedded and really affect life course trajectories. That same biology underlies how positive experiences get embedded. Right? And that that is the good news, right? So adversity is not destiny in any way, shape or form. In the last few years, there's been a really interesting thing called biobehavioral synchrony, which is a big phrase, but what it means is in those moments of magical connection that you have with another being in particularly between parent and child, there's literally an alignment of the brain waves of the autonomic functions of hormone levels and behavior. Right. And so we sort of know this intuitively that emotions can be contagious. Right? So, if a child's crying, the sibling mates are crying and specters may join an angry mob so it can go in the negative way, but can also go in a positive way, in a sense that engaged and trusted caregivers, they literally have the ability to hack in remotely and turn off the child stress response. Dr. Garner explained that you can see this in action if you look up the still face experiment on Youtube. It's a famous psychological study that was first conducted in 1975 by the psychologist Edward Tronick. Dr. Garner: Basically they take a young child about a year old, and usually it's a mother, and they bring him into the laboratory and they have three two minute blocks. The first two minute block is engaging, so they're just playing back and forth. It literally they call it serve and return - the baby coos the mom responds. And it's really this biobehavioral synchrony. You can literally see it happening for you. And then they tell the mom to turn away and then turn back and to not engage for two minutes. And if you watch the video it is viscerally painful because the child noticed there's a rupture in the synchrony and does everything they can to try and get back engaged, everything they can to get back engaged. And then they tell their mom to turn back again, and now to start to repair. And it's palpable. The children's relief immediately. Oh, we're back again. You're back again? I'm safe. You got me. The important thing is, is there repair, right? And the most recent evidence suggests that it's the latency to repair that's associated with secure attachments and distress tolerance, that ability to say the goodness is coming. We're going to get back together again. It's really, really important. And so, again, that's great news for parents. We're not going to be perfect. We're all going to make mistakes as parents. We can't always be perfectly engaged. The important thing is it's all about repair. It's the ability to come back and become back engaged and basically be saying that, child, your perspective is important to me. The relationship's important to me. And it's way more important for me to be kind than right. Lee: Yeah. And I think that that's one of the challenges for me as part of people from the African-American community who had my experience. For me, knowing that my parents loved me and knowing that that love could be shown, but then the next minute I could be being beaten with the belt. And then they're loving me again. And then I'm beaten with the bel,t going back and forth. I do wonder…I do believe that there were there were some kind of protection outcomes that came from the love that was shown, but the unpredictability of it was, was very difficult because the relationship to violence was weird. Like it because violence was almost framed as love. Dr. Garner: Yeah. That's one of the one of the big paradoxes, I think, of corporal punishment is that having been a victim of corporal punishment, that increases your risk of being a victim of other physical violence down the line, which is sort of counterintuitive. But I think it gets at what you were saying there is that leads to what those expectations of what love are.And throughout my research, I found disturbing instances where enslavers used Bible verses to justify corporal punishment and enslavement. This deeply troubled me as both a Christian and a Black man. I've often heard the phrase "Spare the rod, spoil the child," which, contrary to widespread belief, isn't even in the Bible. And even still, this metaphorical use emphasizes guidance and care rather than punishment. Dr Garner's wife is a Methodist pastor, and I talked to him about how people have often manipulated and weaponized scriptures and proverbs to justify and advance slavery, whipping, and their own agendas. As a result, generations of people have come to believe that it is moral, righteous, and holy to beat children. Dr. Garner: I think it's very upsetting when, these scriptures are being used in a way to propagate violence, when clearly that is not what Christ's intention was. He said, bring the children to me. Bring the children to me. Right. He didn't say, bring them to me so I can whip them. Right. Said, be like a child. Be be like a child. Be empathic. Be full of wonder. Right. And somehow we sort of lost that. So, discipline, you know, comes from the Latin word to teach. Right? So it doesn't mean to punish. Right. And of course there are multiple types of punishment, which actually runs the spectrum right from, a loss of privileges, right. So, you know, if you, you lose your driver's license, if you speed too much, right, to possible incarceration and then all the way to physical harm and even even death. Right? So punishment is the, are those negative consequences. They're imposed for undesired behavior. But punishment is only one form of discipline. And the more we know about it, the more we know it's actually not as effective in the long term and actually can cause potential harm. Lee: And what I love about this research that you've done in everything that you're sharing with us today, is that you're showing that a child's brain is being wired as we go, right, that we're creating the future adult every day when we're working with that child. What do stress toxins do to the body in terms of health? Dr. Garner: Toxic stress, which can be precipitated by any number of different forms of adversity, is associated with basically all of the leading causes of death. Right? So if you want to look at, asthma, you want to look at cancer, do you want to look at suicide and mental health issues. You want to look at obesity. You want to look at substance abuse. Right. So I mean, there's no doubt that, when we are programmed to expect adversity, that we're going to find ways to try and cope. And so if you think about it, you know, people overeat and abuse substances and, are promiscuous for a reason. In the short term, they turn off the stress response. But in the long term, the worse health outcomes down the line. Right. And so, yeah, I mean, I think your point, though, that the brain is, is being made over time is really important, and so are the relationships. And so one way I think to try and frame all of this is affect regulation, how we handle our emotions. Because if you have an angry parent who's spanking a child, the message to the child is when you get angry, it's okay to hit right. And so, that's not what we really want for our kids in the long run. We actually want them, to learn that it's okay to have strong emotions. It's okay to be angry. It's okay to be frustrated. But when you have those emotions, what can we do with them? How can we channel them? Dr. Garner has worked with parents and treated children as a Primary Care Pediatrician for more than two decades. He co-authored the book "Thinking Developmentally: Nurturing Wellness in Childhood to Promote Lifelong Health" and the American Academy of Pediatrics' Policy Statement on Preventing Childhood Toxic Stress and Promoting Relational Health. As a speaker, he focuses on early brain and child development, preventing childhood toxic stress, and promoting early relational health, and he considers himself to be an advocate for all children and their families. Lee: And what do you tell parents when they bring their children in to be treated about corporal punishment? Dr. Garner: One, to heal any wounds that they've had as a parent? Because we've talked before, parents tend to parent the way they were parented. So, I'm going to want to know, what the stressors are in their life with, what the stressors were when they were kids. What a good question often is, what, did your parents do that you want to make sure you do for your kids? But then also, what are the things your parents did that you want to make sure you never do for your kids? As kids get older, I'm going to help them understand, that it's really not the behavior you want to focus on. That a child's behavior is always telling us there's something they need or something they want. And what we need to do is trying to interpret it and help them figure out a better way to have that behavior met. And so this starts really early, you know, with temper tantrums in 3 or 4 year olds. It's really not about the behavior. It's the emotion that's driving the behavior. And if we can help parents understand that, then we can help parents help their child say, look, you're allowed to be angry. You're allowed to be frustrated, allowed to be disappointed. But when that happens, we're not going to yell and scream. We're going to do the things that bring us joy. We're going to try and, spend some time doing some Legos or some coloring, teach them how to cope instead of just saying stop. The problem with, with corporal punishment and all punishments is it's basically saying, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. And then the child, then in, in sort of in their own mind, thinks there's something wrong with me. Because I feel this way and the message needs to be, you're allowed to feel that way, but when you feel that way, do this instead. If the parent is able to say, I'm so sorry I lost it, I'm so sorry I used those harsh words. I'm so sorry I was demeaning. I'm going to try better and we're going to work together to build this relationship. Then that's what those kids are going to do someday, right? I mean, I tell kids that empathy is a superpower. It is an absolute superpower. Not everyone has it, but we can teach it. And when you have it that allows you to repair, that allows you to have relationships. After speaking with Dr. Garner I want to believe that if more well-meaning parents knew hitting their children can also harm their brains and emotional health as opposed to just being temporarily painful, fewer would do it. However, in a country where hitting children is part of a centuries-long pattern of violence, and amid a system that offers the smallest people the least protection, I understand why many believe hitting children is beneficial, especially for Black children.But now that I'm out of that situation, I do view it as abuse and a legacy of my country's legal system and culture, and the enslavement and torture of my people. And it's not just in the home - in 17 states across the U.S. corporal punishment is legal in public schools. Most of these states allow educators to hit students three times in the rear with a long wooden board. And in all states except for just a few, corporal punishment is allowed in private schools.To help me understand it more I reached out to Professor Geoff Ward at Washington University in St Louis. He's a historical sociologist and the director of the Washington Slavery Project. Some of his work connects the dots between the history of lynching in southern states with the modern usage of corporal punishment in schools today. I've had a couple conversations with Professor Ward, the first time was about 2020. I spoke to him again more recently to learn more about the logic of racial violence, how it intersects with our judicial system and how we can break the cycles of racial violence. Lee: You know, before when we talked, we talked a lot about racialized social control. Can you give us a definition, to hold on to here? Prof. Ward: I think a good place to start would be is to recognize that we live in a racialized social system, a society where rewards are allocated along racial lines, where meaning is constructed along racial lines, things like, you know, reliability or, beauty, or intelligence, morality, are riddled with racial logic because we live in a society where race has sort of been infused in the way we relate to and understand each other, the way the society has been organized. And in that context, social control becomes racialized. And social control generally describes the definition and enforcement of norms. And social control can be informal, you know, a sideways glance or a disapproving look. But we also have systems of formal control. And that brings in the State. And our regulatory systems, our courts, our criminal legal system and so forth that are part of the system of social control. And, you know, all of that complex is racialized.I remember reading Professor Ward's work and being shocked by his citation of a 1901 Alabama constitutional debate over the legality of whipping prisoners, in which a county official remarked that “everybody knows the character of a Negro and knows that there is no punishment in the world that can take the place of the lash with him.” And he noted, that juvenile court records from 1930s-era North Carolina reveal that court-ordered whippings were reserved almost exclusively for Black boys and girls, given “widespread feelings among white county juvenile court judges that whipping is the most effective way of handling delinquent Negros."Another court official noted a common diversionary practice of “sendingdelinquent Black boys downstairs with a big police officer to have themflogged” prior to release.Prof. Ward: So this was a an example we, we used from the historical record in the article I mentioned where we examined how histories of racist violence, particularly lynching, relate to patterns of corporal punishment in contemporary public schools. Where we found that, that net of other factors, every additional lynching in the history of a county increased significantly the odds that a child would be corporally punished in a school in that county. This was after accounting for things like how, the funding of the school, the racial makeup of the school, whether it's urban or rural, how experienced the teachers are, how religiously conservative the residents of the county are, and so forth. And in that article, we used the story you're referring to to provide some context for how this relationship could come to exist. How is it that contemporary schools, likelihood of using violent strategies of school discipline has anything to do with the history of slavery or lynching in in that county? What is the story there? What are the mechanisms that connect the past to the present? And we cited that example because it speaks to the racial logic of corporal punishment, the idea that African-Americans are not fully human, are not sentient beings, can cannot be, influenced through, you know, appeals to things like morality or decency or logic, you know, white supremacism historically asserted that that Black people could not think deeply about anything. And so you and so this what this judge is saying in this case and we found numerous examples of this, judges, legislators, you know, rationalizing corporal punishment. And was saying that, you have to appeal, you have to reach, you have to address African-Americans through pain. Lee: Yeah. Prof. Ward: Because, because the you can't reach them through the brain. Lee: Yes. And and what I love about your research is that you've really just blown the doors off of this and shown that the public record is full of governmental rationalizations of violence against Blacks, even after emancipation. you show that African-Americans have always been framed as warranting more violent control strategies. And this is deeply rooted in the idea that we are not fully human. Is that something that you just have seen all through your research? Prof. Ward: Well, yeah, it is, I know it has to also be said that that, you know, racialized social systems are contested. You know, this this idea, this attempt to dehumanize African Americans, never actually fully succeeded. It resulted in a tremendous amount of oppression and pain and violence and death and so forth. But, simultaneously, you know, my research is also showing that Black communities and their allies are countering these measures. But even with respect to the juvenile justice system in my book, ‘The Black Child-Savers' is mostly about how generations of Black women organized, beginning in the 1890s, to dismantle this Jim Crow juvenile justice system. And, they were fundamentally motivated by their own recognition that Black children and people were, in fact, fully human and fully capable of realizing the benefits of a more enlightened approach to social control. One that focused on, on child welfare and development. You know, the system that was being developed for white kids, who were not being subject as much to this, yeah, this brutality. And so they did create, you know, other kinds of institutions and practices that also have to be kept in mind as we think about the sort of how this history unfolded. Lee: You talk about the connection between corporal punishment and the history of lynching, which is really an incredible contribution to this body of work. Lee: Are you still seeing the trend in which, historical areas where lynching was the most prevalent tend to correspond to the amount of corporal punishment that's being done in a particular school district? Prof. Ward: There certainly have been study after study showing that that that histories, area histories of lynching and other racialized violence, predict contemporary patterns of of conflict and violence and inequality. Things like, Black victim homicide rates today and, patterns of vote suppression and white supremacist mobilization, you know, and, white political conservativism, things like Black infant mortality or racially disparate infant mortality, differences in heart disease. I mean, all kinds of contemporary outcomes have been shown by social scientists to be associated with histories of racial violence in, in specific areas. So I would I would imagine that, you know, that that the relationships we saw with respect to corporal punishment in schools, have not suddenly gone away. Understanding how governmental institutions have historically ensured that Black children are subjected to corporal punishment, including in schools, helps me see why my parents feared they had to use violence to protect me. They were conditioned by a system of legal white supremacy to equate violence with love. Like agents of the state, they and generations of Black parents saw violence as a necessity, convinced that nonviolent reasoning wouldn't work with a Black boy.As a result, while my parents were opposed to police violence, they turned our living room into a whipping station, becoming indirect agents of the very police brutality our people protested. Each generation in my family had a hypervisible white police officer who symbolized the need to beat Black children. For my father's generation, it was Birmingham's white supremacist "Commissioner of Public Safety" Bull Connor. In my generation, it was the officers who brutalized Rodney King, and epithet using Officer Mark Fuhrman from the O.J. Simpson trial. For Millennials and Gen Z, it's Derek Chauvin, who murdered George Floyd. It felt as if my parents unconsciously partnered with America's most racist police elements to enforce violence and keep their Black son in line.As I delved deeper, I saw similar patterns among some Black educators and religious leaders. Despite the disproportionate use of corporal punishment against Black children, many administrators and school board members advocated for its use. Legendary psychiatry professor Alvin Pouissaint once told me he once traveled to the South to lobby for the repeal of corporal punishment, only to find that Black educators and leaders were some of its most vocal proponents. One of the school board members who once adamantly advocated for corporal punishment in Mississippi was also a prominent pastor in the Black church. He was one of the many people I'd studied who used the Bible to justify their pro corporal punishment stance Prof. Ward: I think one of the issues here, which relates to what we're talking about in terms of Black religious leaders, is there's an issue here of a kind of sovereignty where local community figures in a context of generally diminished power, economic power, political power, are holding on to a form of power that they do have, which is in the home, through the church, and saying, look, don't, let this, you know, social research fool you. And don't listen to these people who aren't from here and don't know our ways and aren't part of our church. We know what works, we've been whipped and we're fine, and listen to me, and I think there is a fair amount of, you know, manipulation on this issue that is about really about power. About holding on to power, holding onto power in community context, but also asserting power, as you mentioned, in the context of the home. In a society where, you know, there is so much humiliation and alienation, and and refusal of influence on things like, policy and practice and so forth. We commemorated Doctor Martin Luther King Junior, and I was part of an event at my university where we specifically focused on his theme - beloved community. And, our conversation is making me think about, you know, some of the basic, you know, fundamental, tenets of this concept of beloved community, which include that we are stuck in a society marked by, you know, a chain of violence, you know, where we're just in this situation where violence is seemingly a constant. It's almost how we communicate. He talked about how our society is organized by fear and resentment and that fear, you know, the politics of fear and resentment... We for good reason often in that in that context, think about, you know, white reactionary politics. But but our conversation today is also about how fear and resentment contribute to other communities and, and their politics and that are, that are part of this larger chain of violence. If we're ever going to realize this idea of a beloved community, you know, that is a community organized by mutual understanding and universal goodwill. And King, King stressed that to get there, we'd have to reckon with these realities of how our politics of difference breed violence, breed fear and resentment. We'd have to get to a place of mutual understanding and goodwill and, and, you know, for example, to see our to see how, we have common interests in an issue like corporal punishment, whether it affects us directly or not, we have interest in creating a society where we aren't, reifying a culture of violence starting in the high chair, or assuming that there is also going to be an electric chair. How do we get to that place where we collectively disavow, violence as a means of social organization? Lee: Geoff Ward, thank you so much. This has been powerful. And we'll keep the dialog going. But thank you for the wonderful work that you're doing. Fabulous. Keep up the good work. Prof. Ward: Thank you. Lee, it's great to talk to you again. Lee: All right, brother.For years, I had an inner voice that told me, "My parents hate me." So much around us in America, from Black comedians who entertain and electrify crowds with their jokes about beating Black kids, tells us that there is often great contempt for Black children – that they hold the lowest standing in society and therefore should be violently punished with impunity. It takes a countercultural, conscious Black parent to see that every Black child deserves life, liberty, happiness, and positive reinforcement every day.These interviews helped me understand that the first step towards breaking this toxic belief—that violence with Black children is a necessity—is recognizing that they possess bodily integrity and innate intelligence and are neither superhuman nor subhuman, even if the broader society doesn't always see them in that light. We must be careful about internalizing the historical belief that Black children are built differently than white children and can endure more pain. The reams of science proving that corporal punishment has harmful long-term effects apply to them too. I believe that my parents and others unconsciously internalized these classically American beliefs about Black children. We have experienced every facet of America, from its deepest injustices to its greatest achievements. Because of that, it is easy to embrace the prevailing philosophies of this country that we played a heavy hand in building—we are deeply interwoven with its history and its belief system. But those who continue to advocate violence against Black children in homes and schools must reject those racist beliefs and instead embrace a new paradigm that sees and nurtures the full potential and worth of our children.There's a gospel song that says, “He saw the best in me when everyone else around could only see the worst in me.” We need more Black parents and communities to take the lead in seeing the best in our children. I hope that, armed with information about the generational and ongoing cycle of governmentally codified violence against our children, combined with the ever-evolving neuroscience showing that even the anticipation of being beaten can trigger the brain in ways that lead to anxiety in adulthood, more parents—Black and of all races—and school administrators will make a conscious decision to retire the hand, tree branch, belt, and wooden boards of the slavery and Jim Crow eras. We need to breathe life and affirmation into all children, ensuring they grow up with the support and validation they need to thrive, both at home and in society.If corporal punishment was designed to protect Black children, did it really help when it came to growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood? Black kids and the American Dream - that's the next episode of What Happened In Alabama…CREDITSWhat Happened In Alabama is a production of American Public Media. It's written, produced and hosted by me, Lee Hawkins.Our executive producer is Erica Kraus. Our senior producer is Kyana Moghadam.Our story editor is Martina Abrahams Ilunga. Our lead writer is Jessica Kariisa.Our producers are Marcel Malekebu and Jessica Kariisa. This episode was sound designed and mixed by Marcel Malekebu. Our technical director is Derek Ramirez. Our soundtrack was composed by Ronen Lando. Our fact checker is Erika Janik.And Nick Ryan is our director of operations.Special thanks to the O'Brien Fellowship for Public Service Journalism at Marquette University; Dave Umhoefer, John Leuzzi, Andrew Amouzou and Ziyang Fu. And also thanks to our producer in Alabama, Cody Short. The executives in charge at APM are Joanne Griffith and Chandra Kavati.You can follow us on our website, whathappenedinalabama.org or on Instagram at APM Studios.Thank you for listening.

You're sitting across from your teenager at the kitchen table. Now that you finally have their undivided attention, you want to talk about an important issue they are facing. Unfortunately, things get tense quickly. Their eyes roll, you get frustrated, and soon they are looking for an escape from this conversation. You sit dumbfounded thinking, "How do I raise my teen to love Christ in a world that is doing everything possible to pull them away?"In this episode of Candid Conversations, host Jonathan welcomes back Melissa Kruger, Vice President of Discipleship Programming at the Gospel Coalition. Melissa is also an accomplished author, having written multiple books, including “Growing Together,” “Walking with God in the Season of Motherhood,” and the popular children's book “Wherever You Go, I Want You to Know.”During this conversation, Jonathan and Melissa discuss her latest book, “Parenting with Hope: Raising Teens for Christ in the Secular Age.” The book provides practical guidance and biblical insights for parents navigating the challenges of raising teenagers in today's culture. Melissa shares her personal journey and the inspiration behind writing this important resource.Listen to this Candid Conversation as Melissa Kruger sheds light on parenting teens with hope, faith, and wisdom. Whether you're a parent, grandparent, or youth leader, this episode offers valuable insights for nurturing the next generation.To ask Jonathan a question or connect with the Candid community, visit https://LTW.org/CandidFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/candidpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/candidpodTwitter: https://twitter.com/thecandidpodTRANSCRIPT:This transcript recounts Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef Episode 248: Parenting with Hope:  Raising Teens for Christ in the Secular Age: Melissa Kruger.[00:06] Jonathan: Well, today I have a repeat guest. It is Melissa Kruger. She is the vice president of discipleship programming at the Gospel Coalition. She is the author of multiple books, including Growing Together; Walking with God in the Season of Motherhood; and the popular children's book, Wherever You Go, I Want You to Know, which we have gotten for our son, and then we've had his teachers write inscriptions each year, whoever his teacher is. And I think you have a special book that allows for that.Her husband Mike, who has also been on the podcast, is the president of Reformed Theological Seminary. And they and their three children are in Charlotte, North Carolina. Melissa, thank you so much for coming back onto Candid Conversations.[00:52] Melissa: Great! Thanks for having me back.[00:54] Jonathan: Okay, you've got a new book out called Parenting with Hope: Raising Teens for Christ in the Secular Age. Now, I imagine this book is flying off the shelves, and you've probably shattered sales records.[01:12] Melissa: I don't think so, right?[01:14] Jonathan: It should. I think this is something the church hears a lot about and it's always so helpful to have books that are written from a helpful, biblical perspective and giving people the foundations and the equipping and the reminders that we can often forget.So tell us a little bit about the journey on Parenting With Hope. What got the start of the book?[01:48] Melissa: I was approached by a publisher who had read my book, Walking with God in the Season of Motherhood, and they said, “We'd really like you to take some of these principles and apply it to parenting teens. And we want it trade book form, Walking with God in the Season of Motherhood, is a Bible study for women, I wrote that one for a friend, for her baby shower. It wasn't intended for publishing; I was writing it for her. So this one really they came with the question and I was very unsure of myself. I've raised three teenagers, and so it was kind of that, ooh, and I was just out of the season. But what I realized when I did Walking with God in the Season of Motherhood, I couldn't write that book now, I think, because I'm not in that moment. The teen years are very fresh to me. I saw tons. I still have one teenager, she's 17. I have a 17-year-old, a 20-year-old, and a 23-year-old and so still it's fresh to me. But I also realized no one's sixty who can write about what they did about cell phones because they didn't exist. They can't talk about what did they do with social media. They can't talk about some of these sports and activities because it was totally different twenty years ago. And so I realized, okay, it's probably a good thing to have someone fresh on the season. And I also realized, the second thing, I was a high school math teacher in I always say my other life, and so I had taken a lot of teen development classes. And I realized this really did help me in the parenting of teens, like there's a lot of common grace insights by people who have studied just what works and what doesn't, and I've realized I had those things in my back pocket. And we do that a lot with young children, we read all the developmental milestones, we know what your 2-year-old should be doing, what your 3-year-old should be doing. When's the last time you read a developmental milestone about your 9-year-old or your 10-year-old? And we stop being learners of what kids are able to do and what they should be doing and so I wanted to put some of that in the book as well.[04:15] Jonathan: Okay, so I love how you break down the book. So it's broken down into three parts. You give the basics, which you call “The Foundations of a Christian Home”; The Battle: Fighting for the Better Portion”; which we'll get into that. And then “The Blessing: Cultivating a Home Where Teens Thrive.” Talks us through a little bit of the Part 1.[04:44] Melissa: I might come off as, well, we all know this, right? [04:48] Jonathan: Right. If you're in the church, you should know and understand that. But—[04:51] Melissa: Exactly. Exactly. And in a lot of ways this is being a Christian 101. But I remind parents of it because I think sometimes we get so bogged down with all the things we're not doing as parents that I want to remind them the most important thing you do as a human is be in God's Word, be in prayer, and be in the church. Doing that is going to already set you ahead of parents all around the world. I mean, that is such a gift to your child to be a parent who is regularly in-taking from the Bible. Why? Because the Bible is not just another book on the shelf; it's actually divine wisdom. We have the ability to tap into divine wisdom. And then secondly we have not just divine wisdom, we have divine help because we can call on God to do what we cannot do, we cannot save our child, we cannot change our child. We cannot make them do really much of anything, but God can work in ways that we can't understand.And then the community of the church is just something that, I mean, I think we're seeing with the epidemic of teen loneliness and anxiety and isolation, all these things. The church is this institution that, guess what, it answers that. It's this welcoming place where you have 80-year-olds and you have 8-year-olds. And so I don't think we can talk about parenting without talking about what's the foundation of our hope. It's actually that God's Word is true, and living in light of God's Word is hopeful, and we're not left alone on the journey. So that's the Battle. The battle really talks about our battles. And again, this is a book about being the parent of a teen. It's not a book about how to make your teen perfect. If that book exists, that's the—[06:54] Jonathan: If it does, you should burn it.[06:56] Melissa: Yeah, that's the Holy Spirit's job is to change us and make us different. And so the second part is the battle, I think we often think is sex, drugs, rock and roll or some other things we're trying to prevent our teen from. I would say it's actually good things robbing us of the best things. The battle is with our own idolatry. As parents, we are all coming into this game with hopes and dreams for our kids, and sometimes those dreams turn idolatrous. I focus on scholarship and achievement, on sports and activities, and then on social acceptance. I think those are the cultural idols we have in the West that are pressing upon us as parents, and we have to battle about all of those.[07:38] Jonathan: And that's what I love about the book is that it's not prescriptions, right? When people are struggling with their kids, what do they want? Just tell me what to do so that this will stop or so I can take this away, right? And I think the way that your book is written is that it's not about if you do A, B will happen. Now, there's a little bit of element of that because you just mentioned the foundations earlier, which is, well, you really need to be doing these practices, but you don't necessarily think, oh, being in church and being in the Word and being in prayer, you don't necessarily feel the direct correlation to your parenting, but it is there.I have friends who have raised their kids the exact same way and one rebels and the other one is a blessing to their family. And then it's like, what did we do wrong? Your husband was speaking yesterday about the paradox of God is sovereign over all things, and yet we're still called to be good parents. And so there's that. We don't fully understand the mystery of that, but we know what we're called to, and so we have to walk it out.[09:14] Melissa: That's right. As a parent, I am called to fight my idolatry. I'm actually not called to control my child. And so often what you see if we go into control mode when we're fearful, and the Bible says trust and obey. And I would say obey and trust. And so you follow God's call and then you trust. You trust that you're doing everything you can to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel in front of the Lord and in front of your kids, and then you have to trust. And you will only have the ability to trust if you're building on the foundation. So this is where it always goes back to that foundation. And I'm talking about how to be a human, honestly. I mean, if you want to know how to succeed in your place of work, oh, you need the Word, you need prayer, you need the church. If you want to know how to be single in the life of the church, you need the Word, you need prayer, you need the church. But I think I say it again and again because it's Psalm 1. Yeah, I mean, “Blessed is the man who doesn't like in … who doesn't sit …” all that stuff. Oh, what does he do? “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on it he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by a stream. Whatever he does prospers.” This is wisdom for life. And so I definitely think we have to start there, and then we have to be battling our own idols.And then the last section on the blessing is how do we create homes of acceptance, availability, and affection? Those words have to be in our world today. Acceptance does not mean an acceptance of sin, but it means an acceptance of who they are. And what I mean by that is we see a lot of curated children. And what I mean by that is parents trying to make the perfect child who plays the sport, who plays the instrument, who has an amazing GPA, who gets into the Ivy Leagues and all this stuff because that's a representation of me is what we're really trying to do.[11:12] Jonathan: Right. It's a reflection, yeah.[11:13] Melissa: So rather than saying, you know, my kid's not that great at school, but I can teach hard work. Even if they're not going to be a lawyer or a doctor, that's okay. And so that's what I mean by acceptance, accepting who the Lord is creating them to be and letting that glorify Him, whatever it might be. [11:33] Jonathan: Yeah, there's a lot of this element of caught versus taught, right? So especially as you think about the idolatry and what you prioritize in your life, your kids are by default looking at you, watching you. You're one of the greatest sources of influence on them, and so they are going to model themselves after what mom and dad prioritize. And the funny thing is that when parents look down the track they say, “Why are they like this?” And it's like, sometimes it's a little bit of look in the mirror. You know, what were they catching, even if you were teaching in a different trajectory and direction. Okay, so acceptance. What about availability?[12:17] Melissa: Yeah. I talk about this. I say you want to be available but you want to understand your limitations. Look, I mean, parents cannot be at everything. And I actually believe it's helpful for our kids to know that they are not the center of our universe. They do not have the gravitational weight to bear us, I like to say. Like the Earth cannot support the Sun revolving around it, it was never intended to, we are not created to revolve around our children. We are created to revolve around God, and we are helping them do the same. And kids who grow up in a home where the parent is rooted and grounded in the Lord, that takes an amazing burden off of them. You've heard the phrase “You're only as happy as your least happy child.” I think that is like poor least-happy child. No. My contentment and joy, where are they supposed to come from? They're supposed to be rooted in the Lord. Why are we supposed to be content with what we have? Because He has said, “Never will I leave or forsake you.” That's where our contentment rests. And we have to be people fighting for that as parents, to free our kids up from our own maybe tendency to put our hopes and dreams in them.[13:36] Jonathan: And then affection. A home of warmth.[13:39] Melissa: I read an article somewhere recently. I can't remember where it was; it was in the secular paper, and they said, really what you do as a parent doesn't matter, but if you love them, that makes a difference. And I was kind of like, huh. That's really interesting because I do think there's a lot to that. I think, you know, it's a little bit empty because I think love—[14:03] Jonathan: Well, one's usually reflected in the other, right?[14:05] Melissa: Yeah. Exactly. And you need truth to guide what love is, so there's that. But I did once hear—this was on the Oprah Winfrey Show a million years ago when that show was still on—she was interviewing I believe it was Toni Morrisson. And Toni Morrisson said one thing she had learned when a child walks into the room, she said, light up when that child walks in the room. And she said what kids tend to get when you walk into the room is your critical gaze. They tend to get, huh, your shirt's not tucked in. Hey, make sure you're getting ready for this. And this gets even worse in the teen years, because look, they're cute when they're walking in at two, so you might light up just because they're so cute.[14:50] Jonathan: It's worn off, yeah.[14:52] Melissa: Yeah, when they're walking in pimply and smelly and dirty, and they haven't showered in a week, you still need to light up when they walk. And I think there's something about that that will translate for the rest of their lives. That they know “I am deeply loved.” Light up even when they've done something wrong. Our correction should not be coldness. Our correction can still be full of warmth. And so we want to light up when these people walk in the room because they're made in the image of God. They have been given to us for this time to raise, and so we want to shower them with affection. And there can be wrong views of affection like trying to buy them. There are wrong ways. But I'm just talking about genuine love and interest in a person; that's always going to be a great basis for a child to go into the world with.[15:42] Jonathan: Okay, let's talk a little bit about how the gospel shapes our approach in parenting. What are the biblical principles that should guide us as we're raising children?[15:58] Melissa: The first is that I'm the oldest sinner in the room usually, so I'm expecting my 12-year-old to have their whole act together at twelve. Wow, that's pretty ungracious of me, right, because here I am at fifty and I don't have my act together. And so I think that one of the ways that parents can lead is to be the first to apologize. I always say my response is my responsibility. And so if I—let's say a kid's done something wrong, but I manage their wrongness by yelling and losing my temper and being impatient and unkind, I've got to own that. That's on me. I can still hold them to a standard while holding myself to a standard, and so we have to do that.And so I say one way grace-based homes begin is by being the chief apologizer in your home. Own it. And you know what? The kids will learn. They will learn from that and they will be able to give good apologies in their life. And you will benefit from it. I've had all of my kids come to me and be like, “Hey, I'm sorry I acted that way about that.” They did it on their own accord. I think it just became the conversation of the household that was safe to do. It was going to be met with love; it wasn't going to be met with the silent treatment, all of those things.And so I think a home with grace is going to be a home with apologies. It's going to be a home that accepts that failure is going to happen. I mean, the Lord's Prayer presupposes, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” so there's going to be sin. We're living flesh on flesh in these homes. And so it presupposes that we're going to need grace, but it also presupposes that there is a standard. So we do not lower standards. We keep the standards, but we offer correction when the standards has not been kept, and we offer love and grace in those moments as well.[17:57] Jonathan: Well, and it's a requirement of being a disciple of Jesus is being a forgiver. And yeah, why not start at home—not just forgiving, but asking for forgiveness. And I think you're right, it sets the tone for the family. But I think we can get caught up in, well, I'm the parent and I've got to be the one in control and in charge and I'm just giving directives to the little ones. It's hard, right? I mean, it's hard to admit to a little child that you've wronged them. Because you just want to say, who are you? Who are you to hold me accountable? But it's the Lord's holding us accountable.Let's elaborate a little bit on principles of prescriptions. We've talked a little bit about that, but as that relates to parenting.[18:52] Melissa: Yeah. I definitely think your principles in parenting can stay very much the same as kids go from two to twenty, meaning certain principles like, oh, my child is a sinner in need of grace. That's a principle. My child's a sinner and needs correction. That's a principle. Now, how I go about the practice of that correction is going to change greatly when they're two from when they're twelve, and if we don't make those changes, we're going to find ourselves with very frustrated teenagers.And so one example I like to say is when your 2-year-old makes a mistake, normally you need to offer correction right away, so if they do something wrong, they need it immediately because they're not going to remember tomorrow what you're talking about.[19:36] Jonathan: That's right exactly.[19:37] Melissa: They're in a different little universe where every moment is a new moment. Whereas with your 12-year-old, when they come in hot, and you know we all see 12-year-olds come in hot, they're slamming doors, they're in a mood, their hormones are going whatever. Right then is probably actually not the best time to offer correction or even confront them with, hey, you were really rude to me.I like to say if my friend came in and slammed the door my first question would not be like, “Hey, that's disrespectful to me.” My first question would be, “Hey, how are you doing? Is everything okay?” Or if my husband came in. Like I'd ask a question. And I think our teens need that from us. They need us to live with them in an understanding way, and often we're real caught up in our pride and how we deserve to be talked to. And that's just very us-centered versus, “Hey, is everything okay?” And maybe even to just say, later in the day, like 6:00 PM, 7:00 PM, when they've had some time to cool off, to go in and say, ‘Hey, you came in, you seemed upset today. Do you want to talk about it?” They may say yes, they may say no. And then later on, things will soften. They will soften to be able to say, “What would have been a good way to come in today?” That's a better time to have that conversation. And it may even be the next week. That's a better way to have that conversation than right away. So I think we had immediate kind of discipline when they were young, and it's really about applying wisdom to how and what we're going to correct. Thankfully, we do not have someone following us around all day correcting every little thing we do. I think sometimes parents of teens think, I've got four years left. I've got to get this kid all sorted.[21:20] Jonathan: To be ready for the world.[21:21] Melissa: You don't. If you saw my teen's bedroom, you'd be like, “Wow, she's a terrible parent. They are a complete and utter wreck.” And I just chose that was a battle I wasn't going to fight. But certain things, I wanted them to be truthful with me, I wanted them to have character, I wanted us to be able to have conversations. And if that meant I had to deal with messy floors, I was going to deal with messy floors on there. And they are. They lived up to that low expectation.[21:48] Jonathan: I'm sure they love hearing that. So you've introduced a topic that I wanted us to discuss, which is those stages of development and how do we parent differently when they're children versus teens. At what age is there a transformation? So when your child is little, you're really in kind of a protection mode in terms of what they consume media-wise or literature, whatever it is, right? We have a responsibility for protecting them and not just exposing them to all the horrible things out there.But as they get older, you and I talked about this in the beginning, but parents can tend to lean into one or the other camp, which is keeping the hyper bubble wrap around their child and never letting them be exposed to anything, or essentially letting them go out to the wolves at twelve, thirteen, whatever, and they are kind of almost drowning in “I need help. I wish someone would have kind of held my hand a little bit here.” That's a nuanced question, I know, but if we could talk about it in some generalities—and you can even use your own children as an example. Help parents who are at the tween period in their kids' lives. How do they navigate that helpfully?[23:21] Melissa: Yeah, I think that transition is tough and it's full of bumps and bruises. I called it in the book, I likened it to driving a stick-shift car. You have to be letting off the clutch the same time you're pressing the gas, but as you're learning, we're all going to stall and that's pretty normal. But I would just say as they're heading into these years, teens still need our involvement, but they do not need our over-involvement. And so as a parent, I think we really have to step back and say, “Okay, I'm going to be involved. I'm going to make sure they're not out drinking; they're not out doing illegal activities that could actually harm them. But I am not going to check their homework online.” Okay, see this was not even an option when I was a teacher—I don't know why parents are doing this. So I always think back to when I was teaching the parents never saw the grades until the grades came out. We had a midterm grade thing. I have people in my life who are checking their kids' grades constantly, and I'm like—[24:36] Jonathan: I didn't even know you could do that, actually. I've got little kids, so I'm, yeah, we're not in that camp yet.[24:41] Melissa: Well, come the teen years, they're finding out their kid missed one homework assignment and then they're all over them about it. I'm like, just let them bear that consequence. Let them bear the consequence of a zero. [24:52] Jonathan: That's a little bit of the helicopter/lawnmower parent mentality, right?[24:57] Melissa: That's right. And what happens is then that child never knows what it's like to deal with failure, and they actually need what I call safe failure. Because guess what? We all fail at things. Like we all make mistakes, we all do dumb things along the way. You want to protect them from huge failure, like you're going to go to jail for this.  But even things that we know are particularly damaging for their souls. So we want to protect them as best we can and have good rules in our home; we don't want rule-less homes; but the over-correction of being so over-involved.If you have teenagers, they should be packing their own lunch. They should be getting themselves—I don't wake any of my teens up, never have. They get themselves up, they knew to be at the family table for devotions at the time we always met. They could be responsible for them. And I never regret letting them be responsible for them. And so some of that is letting go of control and letting them, like again, like their room. Their rooms. Sometimes they did have to clean them.[26:09] Jonathan: You've got to live in it. They're the ones who have to live in it, right?[26:11] Melissa: And they have to … And they really will own it if we let them. Another big thing was we started early with our kids having them do chores and clean up the kitchen every night. But what Mike and I had to do, we had to leave the room, because yes, they would argue. Yes, they would get mad at one another. Yes, they would say, “I don't want to do it this way. Yes, it was excruciatingly slow and not well done. And I'd come in and I'd look at the counter and I thought, yeah, you'd feel the grit still on the counter, kids, and then do it again. Y'all get it right. And then we'd walk out because I couldn't handle the slowness at which they did it, but if I had not given them the space to do it and fail and not do it perfectly, they'd never learn. Where now they come home and they all know how to clean the kitchen. They know how to—and that's a gift when they go to college because they [overlapping voices] because my kids are like, “My roommates”—[27:04] Jonathan: And their future spouses.[27:06] Melissa: Yeah. “My roommates don't know how to clean the kitchen.” [27:09] Jonathan: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, let's steer into some of the battle things that are taking place. We, without having to explain, we live in a secular culture. How can parents maintain hope and raise their teens to follow Christ in just the age and day in which we live where there's the social pressures on sexuality and defining truth and those sorts of things. How do you kind of help navigate that water?[27:53] Melissa: Yeah, I think the earlier you can begin, the better. And some of this starts by having conversations about faith with your kids as young as you can. Mike and I were big believers in the catechism. There are different versions. We use the children's catechism. And every night at the family table we did it. What I love about a catechism is the kids talk; it's not just the parents talking. So it's about who made you? God. What else did God make? All things. Why did God make you and all things? For His glory. Okay, you've already set their framework in such a better place than most kids walking into elementary school just because they know they're made in the image of God and that they're made to glorify Him. So these things can start early. I think having those conversations along the way, and just, again, this is what we valued in our homes. We have to start valuing them young because if you start coming to your kid with, “Hey, God's Word is important” at age fifteen by you haven't modeled that by the way you live your life or by how you've been in it yourself, it's going to be hard to convince them that they should follow this ancient book. So I would say the best way to combat culture is to have the culture that Scripture encourages us to in the home. And to really know that what's happening in your home is actually what has the greatest impact on your kids, not the world, not their teachers, not their friends. Actually the studies show over and over again parental—what we do, which is kind of terrifying, we all should own it—what we do in the home is the biggest impact on how they are going to view certain things. It does not mean they will all come to faith. You can do everything right. We know it's the Spirit only that awakens people's hearts. But that—[29:48] Jonathan: Which takes a little bit of the pressure off in that category.[29:52] Melissa: Yes, exactly. But there are things we're teaching them like hard work and doing a job, knowing how to do a chore. Those are things that even non-Christians know how to work hard, and even non-Christians can live in certain outwardly moral ways that we can be trying to shape and mold our kids into, in prayer that the Spirit would make their hearts alive in a lot of ways.So I think we can be really fearful of culture. I think there's a lot to be concerned about. But what I will say is that when the Spirit opens our eyes, they can see, wow, culture is really empty. So my kids, I think they grew up in Christian school, but they've both been at large secular colleges and they just haven't been attracted to some of the worldly things because I think they know that, hey, the fellowship, the friendship of true believers is way better than this false, oh, I have to be drunk and do all these things for you to be my friend. Yeah, I don't think it's been as enticing because they've actually experienced good fellowship with believers throughout their lives and they've seen the benefit of that. So I always try to say fight the bad by giving them the better.[31:09] Jonathan: Yeah, I love that. Okay, two more areas I want us to just quickly dive into. One is navigating technology and social media, which again is one of the battles. And the other one is dealing with doubts. And so let's talk about, I mean, technology is everywhere. Social media abounds. How do we navigate this? Maybe some practical tips, setting boundaries, that sort of thing. How did you and Mike do it?[31:41] Melissa: Yeah. I mean, the first boundary is yourself. If you're glued to your phone, okay, your kid's going to be glued to their phone. So that's the first one. Let's just go ahead and say it. And I will say this: I think it's a lot harder for you raising kids now. When I had young kids, I didn't have a smartphone. I mean, can you imagine the difference? I could not, at a restaurant, just take my little cell phone and say, “Here, watch whatever show's popular.”[32:07] Jonathan: Yeah, keep ‘em busy.[32:08] Melissa: Yeah. And so I'm so thankful. We had to deal with those awful restaurant moments when they're losing their minds and having a fit.[32:20] Jonathan: That's why we don't go to restaurants.[32:22] Melissa: Or just not go. Sometimes it's like fast food because that's where you can easily…[32:28] Jonathan: In and out.[32:29] Melissa: And so I think to be aware that what you're doing with your phone and devices in the young years is greatly going to impact the older years. And then the other thing I would just say, as the statistics have come in—And the hopeful thing I have for your age, I think by the time your age, those kids get to high school, I think there will be new rules in high schools. It's hard right now. I view the cell phone and social media like smoking. The high school that I went to had inner courtyards, and you were allowed to go out and smoke during the middle of the day. Not when I was there. By the time I was there, inner courtyard, there as no smoking. I mean, think about it you know, airplanes, you used to be able to smoke on them, right?[33:11] Jonathan: I've been on one of those planes, actually, when I was a kid.[33:13] Melissa: Exactly. And now they've realized, oh, these aren't innocent—[33:19] Jonathan: It affects everyone in the plane, whether you want it or not, and the curtain's not going to keep it back.[33:24] Melissa: Exactly. And they would no more let a bunch of kids be sitting in the inner courtyard of a high school smoking now. Well, I believe, I really do believe what the studies are showing us, how bad it is for kids and their mental health. I believe one day cell phones are not going to be allowed in school—hopefully by the time your kids get there. I think they will not be allowed in middle and high school, so it might help parents.But today, parents have to navigate those waters without help from culture, and it's really hard. And so what I would say for every hour your kids spend on their cell phone or device, they will be less happy, and you have to reckon with that. The studies are in. Every further hour they spend on a device, they will be that much less happy. They will be more lonely, they will be more depressed, they will be more anxious. And so we've got to deal with that reality as we parent, and the most loving thing we can do is to help our kids not be glued to their phones all the time.[34:21] Jonathan: Yeah, I would imagine it fosters more of that comparative, yeah, right. My friend's picture's on whatever social media platform and I'm comparing myself at a constant rate, versus when I was a kid or teenager, it was like just what you could see in front of you.[34:40] Melissa: Right. You didn't know that you were actually left out of the party until a week or two later. Now instantly you're sitting home on a Friday night and you see the party that you weren't invited to.[34:54] Jonathan: I can only imagine navigating that. Okay, doubt. That's … This is a period in kids' life where doubt is more prevalent, more frequent. How should parents be dealing with questions—and I heard Mike give a great answer to some of this yesterday. But how do we address the question without dismission it, but also not wanting to just give the answer straightaway is kind of what Mike was saying yesterday.[35:37] Melissa: That's right. I think so often we hear a question and we jump to fear. Fear leads to control. So rather, the kid says something like, “Yeah, I'm not sure I believe that.” And then we hyper jump on that and give them a three-point outline of why they should believe what we believe. That is not a conversation and that is not what your teen needs. What I would say when they say, “Yeah, I'm not sure. It's seems really … That view of whatever seems really mean,” “Okay, tell me why you think that. Tell me where you hear that. What do your friends think about it?” Be curious about them. You already know actually what you think about whatever the thing is, but what they need to hear from you is that you actually are willing to listen as they're trying to sort it out. And it's going to make sense. Kids have really small perspectives on things. I did. When I was that age, I had all sorts of bad ideas about things. They're working through it, so work through it with them but don't … I just don't think it's very helpful to lecture them at that point. I think it's good … We want to have a conversation is what I keep saying. A conversation will allow more availability to give your opinion when you are curious about what they are thinking rather than just jumping in. And the reality is, again, me lecturing them is probably not going to prove my point. But as we have conversations, I'm going to start to understand where they're struggling, what they're struggling with, and we can keep having that conversation and it makes them a lot more receptive.[37:26] Jonathan: Yeah. I found that helpful. Mike was saying yesterday his tendency was to just give the answer straightaway. He's got the PhD and all of the qualifications and credentials, but kids don't really care. It's like, “All right, Dad, just chill.” And I get your point. And I think he said this yesterday, which is about let them kind of sit in the doubt for a little bit. Rather than just giving the quick, immediate response, let them wrestle with it, because this is probably the early formations of them moving out of the family faith and into a personal faith. And I think you've hit it on the head there with opening the dialog so it can be an ongoing conversation so that when they do go off to university or whatever it is and they are presented with ideas and philosophies, they can say, “I've already talked about that.” And I realize here all the fallacies or issues that come up with that, I think that's really helpful. But you're right, I think we do, we tend to go to fear and we start thinking down the track what could happen if I don't resolve this immediately. [38:43] Melissa: And to realize that conversation continues. It doesn't—[38:45] Jonathan: Yeah, right.[38:46] Melissa: All of our kids have called us. They normally call Mike, and they'll Facetime. I mean, Emma has been on the Facetime with like ten of her friends, and they're like, “We have a Bible question for you, Dad.” And I think because it felt like a conversation they actually continued the conversation.And I'll also say this. It's okay to not know. Because I get it. Like, look, it's really convenient when you have a husband who is a New Testament scholar and can answer some of these questions.[39:14] Jonathan: We all  just need Mike's phone number.[39:15] Melissa: Exactly. But I will say this. There are plenty of times he's like, “Yeah, that's a really confusing passage. I'm not sure what that means.” I mean, they are wildly unimpressed with his knowledge base sometimes, and so it's always nicely humbling.But he's very comfortable saying, “I don't know.” And I think we all should be comfortable saying, “I don't know,” and saying, “Hey, let's find out together.” Look, there are pastors out there who are waiting for calls like this. They have to deal with really hard issues sometimes, but they went to school to answer your biblical questions, and so a lot of times pastors are really eager to say, “Oh, I can help you with that.”[39:52] Jonathan: I get those from time to time, and sometimes there are the ones where, especially from little ones, and I think, how do I take what I know and put it in a way that you'll understand it. That takes some work.[40:07] Melissa: That's the best theological classroom you can ever be in right there.[40:10] Jonathan: Exactly. So we've asked some parents of teens to submit some questions that they're wrestling with, so we'll do a little lightning round of questions here. [41:06] Jonathan: This ties us back to what we mentioned earlier. This is kind of a newer thing. I mean, it's always been around, but it's more prevalent probably post-COVID, post-invention of the iPhone where kids are isolated. They are less relational than you and I would have been because that was all we had was relational collateral, personal interaction. Now kids can interact digitally and immediately and so there's probably a heightened level of self-consciousness, and that includes just appearance through social media and that sort of thing.So now going into a new setting with real people and real interactions must be a challenge. So what is some advice for the parent who's struggling with a teenager who's going through that?[42:08] Melissa: The first thing I always say is it's good to offer sympathy to them, “Hey, this is hard. I can remember what it was like to go into the lunch room and it be super awkward. Like who am I going to sit with?” We all have that. I still have that feeling sometimes. I'm in situations many times where I'm the only woman in a scenario, and I'm like, hmm, which table of all men … am I going to sit at? And it feels awkward.And so sometimes just them knowing that you feel it too is helpful. But I think it's also helpful to equip them and to say, hey, when you're in a situation like that, other people are probably feeling nervous too, and so it's good to go in with three questions so that you have them on your mind when you're walking into an awkward situation. It can be a question like, hey—let's picture the school lunchtime—what's your next class after this? That anybody can answer. It's pretty easily, yeah, whatever.Second one, you know, hey, where do you live? Or something like that, maybe something I'm thinking as I'm thinking in a business context, where are you from? But just some easily accessible questions that kids can answer. It could be, Are you going to the game this weekend? Whatever it might be so they feel equipped to actually reach out to someone else with a question and that can help conversation start.[43:27] Jonathan: This one's sort of on a similar vein but on a different level. “How do our teens manage the social rejection when you are following Christ?”[43:44] Melissa: Yeah. I think it is really helpful to put before our kids that we are stranger and aliens in this world. And you know my kids go to a … they were blessed to go to a Christian school, so they did not have to feel it at the level certain kids are going to have. But they did still get teased. All, especially, for being, oh, you're the professor's daughter. When she's in Bible class, even the teacher looks to her. “Well, would your dad agree with this?”[44:14] Jonathan: Oh dear. I had a little bit of that, too, with my father being a pastor. What would your dad say?[44:18] Melissa: It's the awkward … you have to be the super-spiritual one in every instance. And we just talk some about feeling a little bit like you don't belong is actually a good sign. And that means we're not home yet.[44:36] Jonathan: Great reminder.[44:37] Melissa: Yeah. When we talk about home is heaven, it makes sense.[44:43] Jonathan: Oof. “How do you parent a child that doesn't realize their friends are unhealthy for them?” These might all have a little bit of a sigh.[44:54] Melissa: It's tough. I'm a big believer in question-asking rather than telling. So hey, it seems like John did this and this and this. Do you think a good friend would be like in this scenario? What would you want him to do in that scenario? And then sometimes they can start to uncover, hey, this isn't the best type of person. But it always good to  maybe pause and ask why are they turning to this kind of friendship? And I mean, yeah, again, praying that the Spirit would waken their hearts to see the destructiveness. Always be praying. In every one of these scenarios, let me just say—[45:37] Jonathan: It starts with prayer.[45:38] Melissa: It starts with prayer. [45:39] Jonathan: I'm with you. This is good, and this question actually comes into one of your chapters in your book. “How do you prevent sports from becoming an idol, especially in regards to travel?” [45:58] MELISSA: Yeah, it's tough. I would manage it very carefully and just remember as good as your kid is, they probably will not play in college, and even more likely are they to create a career out of this. But you do want them to create a career and a life out of being a church member. So guard your church time. It doesn't mean you never miss. We've all missed church for various reasons, whether it's travel or just vacation. You couldn't get to church for some reason. You could say if you're traveling it's a great opportunity to take your kid to other churches. My kids really benefited from seeing other church traditions when we traveled. So it was great for them. One Sunday we went to a Baptist church, and they had grown up Presbyterian, so they only saw babies get baptized. It was Easter. It was spring break, so we were traveling, and they had this full-immersion baptism. Well, my kids were on the edge of their seats, and they were like, “what is happening here?” So for them it was great. It was a great conversation to say, “Oh, this is how they do it.” Those are great conversations to have. [47:05] Jonathan: “Courtship dance. How to handle it now.” There's not a lot of Scripture on dating. How do you all navigate that with your kids?[47:59] Melissa: We have had very little experience in this, not because we have had rules, not because of any other reason than our kids have just not dated. I think the benefit of maybe going to a small school is they're like, we've known these people since we were five. I'm not going to date them. My daughter is getting ready to get married, and she is marrying a guy she knew all through college. They met at Chapel Hill and were friends for three years and their senior year starting dating. I will fully admit, it was as easy as it could have been, and he is delightful and we're so glad they're getting married.So what I would say with my lack of experience is I do believe that rather than have rules it's better to have conversations in this area. And so when your kid comes home to you at fifteen and says, “I really like this kid,” one, be glad they're willing to talk to you about it. Secondly, say, “What do you like about them? Tell me what's great about them.” Be curious rather than controlling. If I could impress anything, be curious about your kid rather than control them. And so I would just say it's good to have standards. When you're talking about sexuality standards, you need to have those conversations whether they're dating or not. So that should be happening well before they're dating. way before the teen years. So I'm just assuming that in these conversations those have happened beforehand.But then I think modeling good friendships. If your kids are developing good friendships, it's a big precursor to developing a good and strong marriage and good and strong dating. But I think the main thing you want to do is keep the conversation open. Hold your tongue and listen.[49:45] Jonathan: Keeping a distraction-free family. Sort of like no cell phones at the table kind of thing?[49:57] Melissa: Yeah. You know it's just funny. We didn't have some of those rules, I guess. It was just understood that that's what we were doing. And I would say a big thing I would probably highlight is if you're going to watch a movie, all watch the same movie. And so, yeah, that means you're going to watch a lot of movies you don't really want to watch as a parent, but I'd rather have all five of us in the den together watching a movie that maybe everyone had to compromise on, than all of us in separate rooms, watching what we want to watch.[50:32] Jonathan: And I know Mike's favorite movies are horror films, right?[50:35] Melissa: No, he has to watch those alone. He's not allowed to watch those with us.[50:39] Jonathan: I was going to say. Here's a good one. “How do you balance contentment and complacency and still encourage hard work?”[50:50] Melissa: I think contentment goes right alongside with hard work. But complacency is a little different. So I think you know your child. Some children are going to need to be told, hey, you need to slow down. Some kids are going to need to be told, you need to speed up. And that's okay. But you're going to have to know your individual child to know if they're not living up to who God has made them to be or if they're trying to prove something to the world. You're going to have to know that better as a parent, so it's probably going to be different for every kid.[51:27] Jonathan: This is similar to different types of child, but “How do you parent the high-achieving, focused child, how to best support their talents?” And then we'll do the other side of that.[51:37] MELISSA: Yeah. I think with the high-achieving, focused child, it's really good to make sure they're not putting their worth and value in their performance. And so you're going to have to just work with them on that and walk through that with them and encourage them that they are beloved not because of what they do but because of who they are in that. Because they're going to fail one day, and then how you deal with their failure and mistakes is really important because those kids aren't going to be used to it, and they really need it. They need to feel what it feels like to fail sometimes. And they're going to be really uncomfortable in that moment. And so walking through that with them graciously is really important.[52:20] Jonathan: Flip side, I suppose, is “How do you parent the low-achieving, unfocused child?”[52:27] Melissa: Yeah, I mean, that's a really hard one, I have to admit.[52:30] Jonathan: Yeah, because it's different.[52:31] Melissa: It's totally different, especially if it's a child like “I know this child can do things.” One, if it is a boy, let me just say they really will get it together eventually. A lot of boys, their frontal lobe—great book called The Teenage Brain. You should read it. It's written by a neuroscientist who had two boys. It's great. I mean, their brains really are taking long to develop. I taught high school, and let me tell you, the boys were not winning in high school. They forgot their stuff, the reason they had B's rather than A's was not because they were not smart enough, it's because they did not turn in their homework.They really will, by their junior and senior year, developmentally get it together. It's the girls are just developing earlier. Some of the front-lobe stuff is connecting earlier. It's biological. So yes, have expectations, but just know that with your son you might have to remind him five times, “Hey, did you pack your lunch today? Did you pack your lunch?” Don't pack it for him, but you might have to remind him more on those things.[53:35] Jonathan: “When they experience rejection or seek acceptance from the wrong sources, how do we navigate that?” And I think that's one of your … that's one of your chapters.[53:47] Melissa: Yeah, I think that different again this one is just going to have to be prayer. Because it shares a little bit about where their heart is leaning. I mean, you can see this in some kids. Some kids just always want to be on the edge, and you can see it. I think this is where you pray and you do trust that the Lord will somehow use this season in their life.But also I think to ask questions like, “Hey, why do you want to do that? What's going on? Why is that attractive?” And it's difficult if you're not that type of personality to even understand. Like I don't want to get burned, so I stay way, far away from a fire, right? But some people are just drawn to the fire and they want to get close up to it. So sometimes it's good to just ask, “Hey, why do you want this? What's going on?” Again, I think with each kid it's going to be a little bit different, so it's important to ask what's going on with their hearts and to keep probing and keep praying.[54:50] Jonathan: Yeah. All right, I'll make this the last one. “What is the Kruger's' take on how much we are requiring church attendance, devotions, spiritual practices versus giving teens the freedom of choice?”[55:03] Melissa: That's interesting. So you're saying how much we require it versus how much we just let them make that choice.[55:12] Jonathan: In terms of family devotion. Churchgoing I guess is part of the question. [55:22] Melissa: That's a good question. That makes sense. So I'm totally fine with “you're going to go to church on Sunday” just because I don't make school a choice. If you can go to school all day, you can go to church, so that's just fine with me. If they don't believe, I'm like, “That's fine, you don't have to believe, but you're going to go to church because we go to church, just like you're going to go to school,” and I'm okay with that.When I comes to family devotions, that was again just something we had always done, so it was never a new thing. It would be like my kids saying, “Oh, all of a sudden I don't want to brush my teeth.” “Huh, really? You've brushed your teeth since you were two. You want to stop now.” Some of these habits, when you can start them young, they just don't know any different. My big hint to young parents is they only know the home you make normal for them. And so they don't know that no other family's having family devotions. When it comes to personal Bible reading, that was something I did not force at all. We gave our kids Bibles, they saw our habits and our practice, and I watched as each of my kids became interested in the Bible on their own.We did not say, “Hey, you need to read it every day.” When you're putting them in church and you're having devotions, you're showing them what you value and at some value they've got to start picking up on those personal habits. That felt much more like the very relational, intimate walking with the Lord, and I wasn't going to try and force that on them. So there are spaces, I think, where you say, “Hey, this is what we do as a family,” like go to church or have prayer time before breakfast. That's just our family rhythm, and yes, you need to participate. But when it came to their own faith and their own growth, by the teen years I think that's starting to be put in their hands.[57:04] Jonathan: All right, before we go, encouragement for parents who are feeling overwhelmed, discouraged—which is probably every parent.[57:13] Melissa: Yeah. Exactly. If you're feeling overwhelmed, this is where I'm always like go back to the basics. Read the Bible. Be encouraged. God is with you and He is parenting you while you're parenting your teen. Be in prayer, ask for His help, and be around the people in the church. And so again, that makes life a lot more simple, right? Read your Bible, it will change you, it will change how you parent. Prayer will give you hope that God can change your child. And the church will give you the community you need. And then say no to a lot of other things, but simplify your life so that those things can be a priority. [57:56] Jonathan: Well, the book is Parenting with Hope: Raising Teens for Christ in the Secular Age. Melissa Kruger, it's always so fun, and you've knocked out the lightning-round questions and I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to be on Candid Conversations.[58:14] Melissa: Thanks for having me. It was fun.[58:16] Jonathan: Absolutely. Pleasure.   

This week, we are distracting ourselves from the freezing cold weather with a game of Burden or Delight. Our panelists are Adora Namigadde, WBEZ metro reporter and host of the morning episodes of the WBEZ podcast The Rundown, and Erin Allen, host of The Rundown in the afternoons. We discuss the end of certain comedic road signs and the ethics of a husband's hidden trust fund. Then, we head to a basement bar in Chicago for a Silent Book Club! One Sunday a month, the lesbian bar Dorothy fills up with book lovers reading alone together. We hear from attendees about what makes Silent Book Club nights so special.]]>

One Sunday in February, in a northern Italian town called Ivrea, the facades of historic buildings were covered with plastic sheeting and nets. And in several different piazzas, hundreds of wooden crates had appeared. Inside them were oranges. Oranges, the fruit.Over the next three days, 8,000 people in Ivrea would throw 900 tons of oranges at one another, one orange at a time, while tens of thousands of other people watched. They would throw the oranges very hard, very viciously, often while screaming profanities at their targets or yowling like Braveheart. But they would also keep smiling as they threw the oranges, embracing and joking and cheering one another on, exhibiting with their total beings a deranged-seeming but euphoric sense of abandon and belonging — a freedom that was easy to envy but difficult to understand.The Battle of the Oranges is an annual tradition in Ivrea and part of a larger celebration described by its organizers as “the most ancient historical Carnival in Italy.” Several people in Ivrea told the writer Jon Mooallem that as three pandemic years had passed in which no oranges were thrown, they grew concerned that something bad would happen in the community — that without this catharsis, a certain pent-up, sinister energy would explode. And on that day in February, three years of constrained energy was due to explode all at once.This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.