Time 2 Talk

Well, here we are.  We are back in the routine of a new school year, a new football season and a new season at the Springs.  With the new beginnings come a new resource from the INTAKE blog.  The resource is called "Time 2 Talk" and it's designed to help parents take back the discipleship process of their families.  For too long, church-goers have relied on the church to disciple their families and we won't stand for that any longer.  When Christ came and died and rose again, he made a way for us to come to Him.  We don't need the clergy to get us to God any longer.  We don't need the priests to make sacrifices on our behalf.  For our families, we need to take responsibility for ourselves and our families.

Download Time 2 Talk here.

Download the "Made for Eternity" message from 8/7/08 from Cameron Simmons, Lead Pastor.

Time 2 Talk is a resource that will help you do just that.  The resource consists of 5 sections.  First, a devotional section for you personally.  Second section has discussion starters for a conversation between adults - spouses or maybe older children.  The third section is the family centerpiece designed for you to sit down at the dinner table one time in the next two weeks and discuss with your children.  Section four is an experience for your family to participate in together.  The final section is a full listing of our 30 core competencies.  You can complete each section at different times during the two weeks after our gathering.  We have given you ideas, but you know your family better than anyone, so take this tool and use it to enhance your family's gatherings.  Just start talking!

Time 2 Talk takes the message from our Sunday gathering and delivers it straight to your family.  The kids will no longer bring them to you, but you will take them home from the gatherings to your kids.  We have done this to help you as parents.  Every Monday morning, we will post the current Time 2 Talk here and you can print it out here.  You can also subscribe to this blog's RSS feed to retrieve every post made on this site.

If you would like the t2t delivered by email to you every week, please email Brad Gartman and ask to be added to the t2t email list.

Honoring Fathers

Sunday, our kids decorated toolboxes for Dad during the service. It was interesting to see what my boys decided to put on the box: logos from all my favorite sports teams, and praises like "Dad Rocks," which is the ultimate compliment in their world. Some of my favorite toolboxes of the day were the ones decorated by the smallest kids: just scribbles of various colors. I'm sure those scribbles mean a lot those kids' dads.

I heard a comment on the radio this past week from someone who had been shopping for Father's Day cards. They noticed that half of the cards on the shelf made fun of dad in some way. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I think that's a sad commentary on our society. Dads are easy targets, I suppose, and there are probably enough people with "dad issues" to create a market for cards that avoid honoring him. Whatever the reason, the simple commandment to honor your father had been largely lost on what is supposed to be his special day.

We are determined that Mother's and Father's Days at the Springs will always be positive and encouraging. Mother's Day is not a day to preach from Proverbs 31 and make the moms feel guilty for not being perfect, and Father's Day is not the day to hammer the dads for not being better spiritual leaders in the home. Sometimes we just need to honor people without any strings attached.

This Father's Day, you may have found it difficult to honor your father, your husband, or the father of your children. I heard a lot more stories from friends this weekend about the struggles they had with their dads than I did about the great memories they had. But interestingly, the biblical command to honor our fathers doesn't come with any condition that they be honorable men: "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you." Exodus 20:12 TNIV. It's the only commandment that comes with a promise that obedience to it improves the quality of our lives. Without it, we tend to hold on to a lot of bitterness.

How did you honor a dad in your life this week? What prevents you from being able to honor a dad, even if you don't consider him worthy of honor? Leave a comment and let the community learn from your experience.

It's a Family Tradition

This Sunday we'll be talking about the impact of family traditions, and it would be a big help to us if you would share some of your favorite family traditions. It may be a tradition you've started with your spouse and kids, or something your family did when you were growing up that has always been special to you. It could be a holiday tradition or something that happens daily or weekly in your home. Whatever it might be, let us know about it, and what it means to you.

Priority of Time v. Time Management

Yesterday, my message was entitled Marginal Time :: Creating Space in a Crowded Schedule.  As I was planning out the message over the past couple of weeks, one thing that struck me is not that we need to learn how to manage our time better, but how to prioritize our time better.  All of the tools to help us manage our time better will do us absolutely no good, unless we are better "prioritizers" of the time we've been given.  If I tell you I don't have time to go to the mall this afternoon, then it's because going to the mall is not high enough on my priority list to go.  If I come to your birthday party, then I discerned that your birthday party ranked higher during the hours of 5-8 on that day than anything else in my world at that time.

I once heard a teacher say, "If Satan can't make you bad, he'll make you busy."  I'm not sure Satan is the one making me busy all the time, but I can allow busyness to consume me if I'm not careful, thus ruining my effectiveness for kingdom purposes.  If I practice the core Christian practice of "giving away my time" then I must have time to give, and if I really belief that "everything I am or own belongs to God" then that includes my time as well.  These priorities ought to shape my calendar.

If you came yesterday looking for a quick fix solution to your calendar problems, I am sorry if you walked away disappointed.  My intention was to go beyond the surface quick fixes (that don't seem to really work anyway) and get to the root issue of managing time - How did God set up our time and why does it matter that we pay attention to it?

If you weren't at the Y for the message, I encourage you to stop reading and listen here.  When you are finished come back and join the discussion.

The ancient Hebrews constructed their days according to a divine day-timer.  Their days began at sundown, not sun up.  They placed significance on what you and I might call the "end of the day."  For them it was the first part of the day, and for the Hebrews, "first" always carried a sense of sacredness to it.  In the evenings they would share a meal together with family and friends and enjoy good conversation over the course of the evening.  Their bodies were adjusted to the natural light patterns and they would begin to "shut down" after the sun set.  Did you know we actually have a light-sensitive gland in our brain that tells our bodies when it's time to shut down?  After a good nights rest, they would wake up ready to finish the day strong.

You may be asking what the big deal is about this, so let's dig a little.  Why I believe it's so important to understand this is because we either believe that the time between our work and our sleep is sacred or left-overs.  If you view it asleft-overs then it's easy to check out on your family or waste it away everyday going from event to event.  If you view it as sacred, then you will protect that time rigorously and save it for family and friends.  It's a priority issue not a management issue.

Our goal as Christ-followers is to replace our priorities with God's priorities over the course of time.  Our journey on this earth is full of small priority shifts that slowly transform us into His likeness.  When our priorities are right, then our "time management" begins to take care of itself.

So, if you buy into what I'm saying about the sacredness of the after-work hours, primarily between sundown and bedtime, what will look different about your schedule?  You tell me?  I have some ideas, but I'd really like to hear from some of you that have made the transition and are seeing positive strides in your scheduling as a family.  Here is one big one to get you started, though:

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University released a study in 2005 indicating benefits of family dinners.  Here are 10 benefits they found in kids regarding family dinners.

The survey notes 10 positive trends for teens who eat dinner often with their families:

• Less likely to smoke cigarettes
• Less likely to drink alcohol
• Less likely to try marijuana
• Less likely to have friends who use illicit drugs
• Less likely to have friends who abuse prescription drugs
• More likely to get mostly A's and B's at school
• More likely to say they would confide in one or both parents about a serious problem
• More likely to report that their parents are very proud of them
• More likely to report lower levels of stress and tension at home
• More likely to talk to their families during dinner and have the TV off during the meal

Those findings come from comparing teens who have five or more family dinners per week with those who have three or fewer weekly family dinners. (In the 2006 release, findings weren't any different.)

Because of our belief in the sacredness of evenings, coupled with our learnings from this report and others like it, we have set aside our evening for family dinners.  It's easy for us right now, but we are setting precedent for years to come that our family table is central.  Now we may share family meals with friends and/or family, but it's very high on our priority list.

So...let's hear some of your opinions and thoughts on the sacredness of our after-work, after-school times?  How do you demonstrate this in your family.