Children As Political Footballs

Doesn’t surprise me, I’m afraid:

Study reveals stressed out 7-11 year-olds | News crumb | EducationGuardian.co.uk

In the 1980s when I was a civil servant, we were one of Maggie Thatcher’s political footballs, kicked everywhere to score cheap goals in Parliament. Later administrations have done the same to teachers. But the Thatcher government instituted tests that made children the ongoing political footballs, along with the teachers. League tables. SATs. Subsequent Prime Ministers have not had the inclination to withdraw the SATs. They play to the gallery of pushy, ambitious parents. Isn’t this something the church should speak up about? This short book helps with ministry to ‘tweenagers’, but as well as minister to (with?) them, we need to advocate their cause in society. We campaign about other forms of abuse: what about this?

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Interactive Preaching

As someone who enjoys preparing and delivering a fairly ‘traditional’ style sermon, it’s been fascinating to read some well-argued material on interactive preaching. There is a series of four articles under the heading ‘Alternatives to Monologue Preaching‘ on the Anabaptist Network site. The are:
1. ‘A Theology of Interactive Preaching‘ by Paul Warby;
2. ‘Interactive Preaching‘ by Stuart Murray Williams;
3. ‘Preaching As Dialogue‘ by Jeremy Thomson; and
4. ‘Throwing a Hand Grenade in the Fruit Bowl‘ by Jonny Baker.

Having just read those, this week’s Leadership Weekly email arrived, complete with an article on the same theme: ‘Glimpses of Glory‘ by Skye Jethani.

There are big challenges in these articles. Apart from the very obvious ones to preachers, there are major ones for congregations. For instance, many complain that sermons are boring, yet one logical step would involve changing the classic seating pattern from rows of pews or seats that imply passivity in response to the one(s) leading from the front.

It’s a bit late at night now for me to type any more, so I’ll throw this open for thoughts and comments.

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