Oprah had a show on “The Pursuit of Happiness”, and the website includes a quiz. If you take the quiz, you can find out how happy you are. (Here’s the link by the way: click here , I scored a mid-way 27.)
I often hear in speeches and in company that all that any of us want is to find happiness. I wonder though, “What is happiness”? What is it to you?
(edited to fix link and formating)
Hello all,
I have been meaning to take a minute to introduce myself for weeks now, but life is so busy. I am a stay at home mom with three children ages 3, 2 and 5 months. I am very interested in the emerging church movement and am involved in the planning of a new gathering which we call The Village. The vision of our group is to focus on missional living and drawing those that have been hurt by or are for some reason suspicious of the church into our midst and showing them the love of Jesus. Our core group is all members of the local United Methodist Church, but we are meeting at a local funeral home for our weekly gathering. No, there is not any reason for us meeting at a funeral home other than the owner liked what he heard about what we were trying to do and offered us the use of the space for free. Ideally we would love to eventually have a warehouse sort of a space that we could have complete creative freedom with, but for now we are feeling happy and blessed with the space that we have.
I am not a great writer, but I do post on my blog often. I do not know how often I will end up posting here, but I am happy to have the ability to do so if I think I have something that is of some quality to add to the conversation. I am an artist and I often post my paintings on my blog. I usually post updates of what I am working on as I am working on it. Today I posted the idea for my next painting. The idea was born from a situation that our spiritual family is dealing with at this time. Please feel free to comment on my blog at any time!!!
I enjoy reading everyone’s posts here and love knowing that there are other women out there that have similar thoughts and questions about the church and Christianity.
God Bless,
Liza
With yesterday’s solstice, summer is in full swing (at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere). Emerging Women are traveling the world, splashing in pools with their kids, and tending their gardens. I’m enjoying reading through the blogs and seeing the joy in life lived.
Here are a few posts of note from this past week. As always if you have a post that you would like to nominate for our Weekly Round-up (including your own), send it in to emergingwomen@gmail.com.
I recommend reading Makeesha’s recent rant.
Jemila wonders aloud about the differences in public reaction to babies and toddlers.
Jan writes on assumption vs. what it really takes to be a leader.
and I wrote about the Jubilee USA Grassroots Conference I attended last weekend.
I just received word that Larry Shallenberger, author of the new book Divine Intention, will be giving away one free copy of his book every month for the rest of 2007. To register for a chance to win one, sign up for his newsletter here.
I signed up for the newsletter and thought some of you might be interested as well. If you’re interested in reading an excerpt from the book, I recently published the first chapter in two sections at The Ooze. The first half of the chapter is available here and the second half is available here.
Glad to join in the conversation with other emerging women. I hope to re-connect at the Midwest gathering with those of you who were at the women’s gathering last year (?) in Indiana. Lots has happened for me since that time–a book coming out in September (The Wide Open Spaces of God through Abingdon Press) and an interim associate pastor role at a mainline church. I am bringing some folks from my church with me to the Midwest gathering. This will be a first for them! Look forward to seeing those of you who will be present.
Gratefully, Beth Booram
Re-posted from Mike’s blog –
I just heard (thanks Rebecca) that several houses in Shane Claiborne’s Simple Way community and the surrounding neighborhood in Philadelphia burned down last night – including Shane’s own home and all his belongings. Eight houses burned in all, including the Simple Way’s community center where they ran their “Yes! And…” creative arts program and the building and equipment for their Cottage Printworks microbusiness. Though over 100 people were evacuated from their homes, thankfully nobody was hurt.
Many of you will know Shane from his book The Irresistible Revolution. He and his fellow Simple Way members are at the leading edge of a new movement of neo-monastic intentional communities – i.e. small groups of typically young Jesus radicals who move into urban areas among the poor to live intentionally in transformational community. Shane has been especially inspirational to me (I wish I had the courage to live as he does) and our church is actually reading his book together this summer.
Anyhow, while I know that Shane and his friends place no value on material possession and will likely emerge from this crisis more passionate than ever, even still it is a setback for them and their ministry. If you would like to contribute to the Simple Way Rebuilding Fund or to the Kensington Families Fund (for their neighbors who also lost their homes), click here and scroll to the bottom of the page for instructions on how to do so.
In the discussion on Children’s Books, Amy wrote -
Julie, you mentioned staying away from the reward/punishment style of raising children. What do you use instead and do you have a particular way you church applies this to its children’s programs? I’ve noticed recently that our kids ministry uses a lot of candy/sweet rewards, especially to offerings. It’s a competition of boys vs. girls. Not that a little candy is horrible thing, but I wonder if there’s a more effective way of teaching our children to give just because it’s the right thing to do, or out of true compassion for missions, etc.
For those of you who have never heard of the debate about rewards and punishments let me give a bit of a background. This is a discussion that is popular in alternative parenting circles, some education circles, and is making its presence known in Children’s Ministry settings. While there are many people writing about the subject, the most well known author is Alfie Kohn. His book Punished by Rewards is the most prominent treatment of the subject (and the source of much emotional debate). Here’s the brief summary of the book to help give a framework for this question -
Our basic strategy for raising children, teaching students, and managing workers can be summarized in six words: Do this and you’ll get that. We dangle goodies (from candy bars to sales commissions) in front of people in much the same way that we train the family pet.In this groundbreaking book, Alfie Kohn shows that while manipulating people with incentives seems to work in the short run, it is a strategy that ultimately fails and even does lasting harm. Our workplaces and classrooms will continue to decline, he argues, until we begin to question our reliance on a theory of motivation derived from laboratory animals.
Drawing from hundreds of studies, Kohn demonstrates that people actually do inferior work when they are enticed with money, grades, or other incentives. Programs that use rewards to change people’s behavior are similarly ineffective over the long run. Promising goodies to children for good behavior can never produce anything more than temporary obedience. In fact, the more we use artificial inducements to motivate people, the more they lose interest in what we’re bribing them to do. Rewards turn play into work, and work into drudgery.
Step by step, Kohn marshals research and logic to prove that pay-for-performance plans cannot work; the more an organization relies on incentives, the worse things get. Parents and teachers who care about helping students to learn, meanwhile, should be doing everything possible to help them forget that grades exist. Even praise can become a verbal bribe that gets kids hooked on our approval.
Rewards and punishments are just two sides of the same coin — and the coin doesn’t buy very much. What is needed, Kohn explains, is an alternative to both ways of controlling people.
This approach forces us to rethink discipline, competition, and parenting strategies. I first encountered these ideas when I was studying methods of Children’s Ministry. The discussion there revolved around two main issues. One was the tendency to use rewards/bribes to get kids to do things in church (memorize verses being the most prevalent). We saw the impact that such systems had on actually reducing love and respect for the Bible and its utter long term ineffectiveness in retention of those verses (much less basic understanding thereof to begin with). We also explored how the language of behaviorism has infiltrated of presentation of the Gospel (mostly in evangelical settings). Often people are asked to follow Jesus in order to receive the reward of heaven or avoid the punishment of hell. Long term studies that track and compare how people are called to faith (behaviorism influenced decisions or gradual inclusion into the family) have shown that the psychological issues and faith struggles are much greater in those who were given a reward/punishment option. (not that heaven and hell are not real, but that they should not be what manipulates us into choosing to follow God).
Most people don’t like to discuss this issue because it forces them to consider different parenting/ministry styles than what they grew up with. The logic is that, it worked for me/I’m okay why waste energy trying to change things. But studies have shown that such a system of behaviorism does more harm than good. I like the idea of rethinking our strategy for motivating people, but I fully admit that I am still trying to discover practical strategies for implementation. I have started to evaluate what the ultimate goal of all of my interactions with my child is. Am I encouraging her to be the kind of person I want her to be (good, kind, loving), or am I using my power over her by giving or witholding my love in the form of rewards and punishments in order to get her behavior to be the way I find most comfortable?
Before I mention a few suggestions Kohn gives as alternatives, I would like to here from you all. What is your reaction to the rewards/punishment issue? What do you see as good alternatives?
