The lathe turned round and round as the tool did its finishing cut into the soft brass weight.   I had flipped the switch that put the last fine cut in, now it was time to polish the part with a nice fine grit piece of sand paper.

This was my fifth try at making the perfect plumb-bob with three different types of metal.  The center weight of the plumb-bob was made from brass which was machine tapped on both ends.  On the narrow end was a carbon steel tip honed to a sharp point that screwed into the brass and pointed to the ground when suspended by a string, at the top of the bob was a knurled aluminum handle that screwed on as well.  The string would be threaded through the aluminum top.

The idea behind this tool was that when suspending the weight from a string it would help you to find a true vertical plumb.  This is used when up-righting walls and other things that need to be vertically plumb.

I had to do this five different times because I could see the imperfections in my tool.  I knew where I had cut the threads too deep on one end of the weight causing the steel tip to go on tight.  I saw the radius cut on the top of the weight that had a .5 radius when in fact it should really have been a .378 radius.  I knew that the other 4 were flawed.  Now, of course, no one else could tell by looking, but I was a journeyman machinist.

I was also the technical trainer for my squadron and had to be able to use these cutting tools with high precision.  I had plenty of time to fine-tune my skills in the past few months while earning my rank as a Staff Sergeant at Charleston Air Force base.  I had done over four years of active-duty and now I was a reservist at the Air Force base.

It was an interesting job labeled ART for Air-Reserve-Technician.  I had come on right after serving active duty and the deal was that I would have a reserve commitment with the Air force served there at the base one weekend a month and 2 weeks out of the year, but I was also employed full-time there as a civil service employee performing the same work.

My job was called an Aircraft Metals Journeyman Technician.  I was responsible for welding and machining aircraft parts and engine components.  I have to say that it was one of those jobs that I did not get good at over night.  It took me nearly four years of doing it to get to where I felt comfortable saying I could do it. 

So, you could say I was just getting good at it.  This was 1990 and the war with Iraq over a small country called Kuwait was just starting.  I had no idea what any of it was about, but I waited to hear the news with much anticipation.

They had already sent our fellow reserve unit from North Carolina over there and we were wondering when they would decide to activate us and send us over.  Despite what you might think, we were all pretty excited about the possibility of war.

Imagine spending 8 - 12 hours a day, practicing to do your job, but never really getting to do it.  Now do that same practice for 4 or more years.  Then all of the sudden someone comes along and says that you finally get to do your job.  As you can imagine we were all pretty ecstatic. 

Finally we would get to do what we had been training to do for years.  Making the perfect plumb-bob seemed pretty silly until you realize that many of the techniques and tools used to create this small item were actually some of the most primary activities of a machinist.  Lathing, threading, knurling, cutting, polishing, precision measuring, radius cutting, testing and much more went into machining engine components used on our aircraft.

I remember the days leading up to the war and when it all started.   Our base was a SAC (Strategic Air Command) base.  We hosted hundreds of C-141s.  The C-141 is a carrier plane designed to move troops and equipment long distances. 

One of the more interesting tasks we had to perform on a C-141 was to climb the mountain of ladder stands all the way to the tail section in order to walk out on the tail section and remove screws from some of the sheet metal panels that were either stripped or headless because of rough removal.  I had to wear a harness to do this, but it still was kind of scary way up there in the air. 

It was at this time that I got to see the Air Force at work, one at a time and one after the other C-141s were clearing our runway like I had never seen before.  It was amazing to see so much activity on the flight line and on the runway.  It seemed as if we would never run out of aircraft.  These planes were headed to our sister base in North Carolina to pick up Marines and take them over seas.  It was all pretty amazing.

Anyway, just as the war was really starting up, my job transfer came through.  I never got to see what happened to my unit, because I moved to Houston to take a job as an engineering technician with NASA at the Johnson Space Center.  I had to withdraw from the reserves because there was no reserve unit near me in Houston.

It’s strange how things worked out.  I would only work for NASA for 6 months before getting laid off and having to make a severe life change (go back to college), but that’s another story.

I want to continue telling you about this book that I am reading called Children in the Worshiping Community, by David NG and Virginia Thomas.  So far it has been informative and interesting in my venture to know more and more about this thing called Intergenerational Worship.

So, the next chapter in this book (Chapter 2) goes in to the theology of including children in the gathering by listing systematic statements to further develop a theological case for inclusion.  Here are those four statements with brief explanations:

1.        “Everyone can hear the good news.” (18) 

The Bible really is all inclusive in its reading.  With lines in it like “All God’s children,” and “For God so loved the world,” and “All talents are gifts from God,” the Bible does not differentiate between the old, the young, or the in-between.

2.        “Everyone can belong to the Body of Christ.” (20)

Everyone who gets baptized gets baptized into the body of Christ.  There really is no age limit.

3.        “Everyone can worship together.” (22)

Corporate worship is not really corporate if it does not include the whole community, so it needs to be available and accessible to children as well.  The book speaks of the need for corporate worship by all people by saying:

“The church can be broad - it can encourage individuals to practice spontaneous or informal worship.  Thanks can be given for food, prayers can be offered at bedtime, petitions can be voiced in times of fear or need.  But, such worship supplements  corporate worship - it does not replace it.  For all the opportunities that children or other people may have for worship, we all, together, still need to participate in the basic activity that defines the church: corporate worship.” (25)

4.        “Everyone can see the pictures of grace.” (27)

Many children are discounted or excluded from receiving baptism or communion because adults believe that they do not understand these two mysteries and therefore can not appreciate them.  Truth is, it is doubtful whether any adult fully understands these mysteries, or they would probably not be considered mysterious.  So, even children can grasp ideas like baptism or communion - sometimes better than some adults can.

Another great quote in the book is at the end of chapter two in relation to this last theological statement and so I will leave you with this part of a “so far so good” book:

“Properly speaking, we do not ‘observe’ the sacraments, we ‘celebrate’ them!  We celebrate grace freely given, received by unworthy but grateful people.  Baptism and communion are joyous, happy occasions.  It could well be that children, who are good at celebrating, will lead us in our participation in the joyful feast.” (30)

________________________________________________________________________________________________
Notes:
Ng, David and Virginia Thomas.  Children in the Worshiping Community.   Atlanta: John Knox Press.  1981.

“And who am I to question what those before me have offered? Who am I to ask questions? But these questions nag at me. If this thing is not right, then what about that? Good people are asking great questions. And we’re not doing it because we want to be jerks. We sense a deep dissonance within our own hearts about the story that we have been told. And the more we ponder the dissonance, the more we begin to listen to those who are asking the same questions and coming to decidedly different conclusions. And these conclusions begin to resonate.”

“…I’m rejecting the wholesale approach to blindly accepting everything I’m told. I’m not a child anymore.”

“I don’t want to just talk about Jesus, which is what we seem to do. I want to follow Jesus. Show me that.”

-Johnathan Brink, from a post called The Emotions of Deconstruction

So, I have been reading a bit and this is probably one of the first times in awhile that I have such a small selection of books to read.  No, I am not complaining.  The books I am reading right now are Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer, and Children in the Worshiping Community by David Ng & Virginia Thomas.

It’s always a little strange on my psyche reading more than one book and it often times makes for some very interesting dreams.  For instance I could dream that we were doing a whole new thing at our church that involved intergenerational worship in the gathering that includes all age groups as well as vampires.

Not that vampires are normally excluded, but you see what I mean.  So, let’s put aside discussion of the vampire novel and expound a little on this book about Children in the worshiping community.  I thought it would be helpful if I did a somewhat surface review of the book to help folks determine the quality and relevance of the information given therein.

Children and Worship: Problems and Possibilities

The book starts off like many others on the subject with a light discussion on the reason for including children in all church activities.  One of the things I like is that rather than merely listing observations of children in a typical service or talking figuratively, the book describes multiple scenarios of actual children participating or not in multiple church scenarios and their reactions as well as some of the adult reactions to them in the service.

These seem to be real examples and they illustrate the unique ways in which children think, act and respond to different church situations.  At the end of the chapter they list several conflicting answers that many people in and out of the service have about children in this regard:

“Children are an important and loved part of this household.
Children do not belong with us.
Children are cute and entertaining.
Children are capable of profound understanding.
Children have nothing to give.
Children can contribute and enrich our worship.
Children bother us.
Children’s concerns are ours.” (15)

The first chapter ends with a challenge to the body of Christ to embrace this idea of including children in the worship community:

“Beyond the problems and tensions of all ages joined together lies the exciting opportunity to be the body of Christ.  In a unique way we can use the gifts of each member to enrich the worship of all.  We can develop a vital and enriching interplay between grown-ups and children in the presence of God.  We can respond to our call to worship God with the voice of the whole people of God.” (17)

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Notes:

Ng, David and Virginia Thomas.  Children in the Worshiping Community.   Atlanta: John Knox Press.  1981.

Pretty good article here from Brian McLaren, about why he votes (not WHO he’s voting for).

A few choice bits to whet your appetite:

“…in my travels in other countries it has become clear to me that even though our system has a lot of problems (and that was a gentle understatement), many other nations are far more corrupt, far less transparent, etc. If we in the U.S. don’t try to make our system work, we’re setting a pretty poor example.”

“I don’t expect any candidate to be perfect. In fact, my theological beliefs tell me that I will always be choosing between the lesser of two evils — or more positively put, the better of two less-than-perfects.”

“I believe there is much to protest in our current system. But noninvolvement, it seems to me, generally empowers those who are in control. So non-voting becomes a kind of passive vote for the people in power.”

Lots more good stuff over there, so go and read the whole thing.

What do you think?  Agree?  Disagree?

Just ordered two books that may serve to shed more light on this interesting adventure we are considering when it comes to our gathering.  This after already reading a primer on the subject called:  Postmodern Children’s Ministry: Ministry to Children in the 21st Century Church by Ivy Bechwith.

The new to me books are called: 

Children in the Worshipping Community by David Ng and Virginia Thomas and
Family-Integrated Church by J. Mark Fox

We have been talking more and more about integrated gatherings and I am pretty psyched about the possibility of correctly integrating our children into our gathering.  I still have much to learn on the subject, so feel free to throw some resources at me.

I’ve got to say, I’m pretty psyched to have a “group blog”.

That’s it.

Nothing profound to say for now, I just wanted to post, even though I had nothing to say yet 

So I ran into this video the other day that starts out with two cute kids lip syncing to the song A Bad Day, and if I never watched it all the way to the end I probably would have thought it somewhat unremarkable.  So watch the video and let me know what you thought.  Remember to watch it to the end!

Okay,

Shall I say it?  Here we go again.  There I said it.  Okay, we have tried blogging as a collective community when it has been more directed and specific.  We have tried specifically chatting about church and Sundays and stuff like that.  So this little experiment in blogging is different in that you can blog about whatever kind of crap you want!

Yes, I said it.  Whatever!  Just talk, write, do what you do and let us do it with ya here.  Okay sorry for the informal style of writing there, but that is EXACTLY what we are going for.  We lack formality and love authentic face-to-face experiences in person, so lets do the same in our writing here.  Unless of course you are being authentic by being formal.  Okay, you get it.  See you folks later.