M is for Mommy

Ralph Moore , the original Hope Chapel guy, has seen tons of churches planted. He says in his book, Starting a New Church , "A new church can be a magnet that attracts disgruntled Christians who have a history of conflict in other churches. My observations over the years tell me that more new churches fold from an inability to confront disruptive people than from any other cause." (p. 37) MORE THAN ANY OTHER CAUSE OF CHURCHES FOLDING--wow that's serious. So, how do we train our people to deal with conflict? How do we train them to confront the disruptive among us? My husband is thinking of developing a curriculum for training church planters. Has anyone run across a source for a class on this topic? Also, an admonition to those of you training church planting teams--don't leave this important instruction out of your "curriculum"--however formal or informal it may be.

Well, I've made the plunge! Thursday I became not only a soccer mom to Blake , but a Suzuki mom to Parker . No, I didn't buy a very expensive 4-wheel-drive station wagon. No, I didn't buy him a tiny little motorcycle. What is a Suzuki mom ? The Suzuki method of music education is a method geared toward the very young. From the reading I've done, you're apparently supposed to begin at about 4 months gestation. The method adopts the principles used in language-learning to the learning of music. It uses LOTS of repetition and LOTS of listening. Basically, the child learns to play by ear. Parker and I are terribly excited. My Little Twinkler and I go every Thursday morning for a group music class, where 8-10 2-4-year-olds sing scales and songs, dance, and bang away on children's instruments. Parker loves it. On Thursday nights, we'll go to concerts and see older children play "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" OVER AND OVER AND OVER. . . At home between ...