There is a wise saying in Korea that goes something like this “The school dog will begin to recite literature after three years being there” which means even a dog can master something after years of being around school. I find this to be true in everything in my life whether I pick up a hobby or try to learn a new instrument. But when it comes to parenting, it’s a totally different issue. I’ve been a father for more than six years now but I am nowhere near “mastering” parenting. I took many classes in seminary on parenting and family matters but whatever I learned and read for the classes don’t seem to help me out much when it comes to parenting my own children. My wife and I often talk about our kids’ behaviors and try to come up with ways to handle them wisely but we don’t seem to have all the answers.
As Ryan begins to talk, understand and express himself, we are finding out that he is completely different from Reina when she was at his age. For the most part, Reina was a very complacent child. She used to sit in her exersaucer for a long time while her parents took care of chores around the house. She was very good at following orders and receiving correction when she did something wrong. However, Ryan is so different from his sister. My wife and I tried to correct Ryan’s misbehaviors through many different methods but what used to work with Reina is not working with him. After all, I guess it’s true that boys are tougher to handle than girls when they are young. The more time I spend with my kids, I realize how difficult it must’ve been for my parents to raise three children in an environment so much worse than now. Don’t get me wrong, my frustration with Ryan is not because he is totally defiant and messed up. In fact, my wife and I both agree that Ryan is so much sweeter than his sister at this age.
The reason why I decided to share about Ryan is because I had an incident this past week. Ryan did something wrong and I was giving him a “time-out.” Since Ryan is still very young, he is not so good at staying still even during a time-out, but I wanted to make sure that he knew that he was being disciplined for something he did wrong. So I put him in a corner and made him face the wall even as he resisted and giggled thinking I was playing a game with him. After a long battle of keeping him against the wall, I realized how silly I was as I sat there trying to teach him a lesson in that manner. I clearly knew it was my pride and ego wanting my young son to know that I am in charge. Ryan ended up saying sorry and hugged me which felt good but I had mixed feelings of whether I am being a good father to my son.
That night, I went to a leadership meeting at church and we talked about God’s characters and read Psalm 103:8 “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.” As soon as I read that verse, I couldn’t help but think back to my incident with Ryan that I had before I came to church. We went on to talk about how our own children establish their view of the “Father God” through their earthly father. I had to repent for what I did to Ryan earlier. Even though he deserved punishment for his wrongdoing, I could have displayed the characters of God instead of being so easily irritated. If parenting is all about displaying godly character so my children can see the Father God through me, I certainly am far away from mastering it. I am so determined to do my best to be the best father I can be for my children so they will not only have a good image of me, but God as being compassionate, gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love.  

From Pastor Brian’s Heart
June 2, 2013

My wife attended a week-long mediation training course last month in order for her as a judge to effectively mediate settlements among adversarial parties to reduce trials. She shared a very interesting statistic regarding church that came up incidentally in her training. During one of the sessions the instructor was discussing the notion that people have certain biases that influence their future behavior. For example, people are conditioned with certain (usually negative) attitudes towards police or lawyers based upon a prior personal experience or what they see on TV. So a good mediator should recognize that people may come in to a settlement conference with pre-conditioned attitudes.
The instructor opened up the discussion by asking the class if anyone could give an example of a circumstance where people are already pre-conditioned to act a certain way. Apparently someone raised their hand and half-jokingly answered “church.” Surprisingly the instructor said not only was it a very good example, but he went on to add surveys have shown that church was the most frequent response. In other words, church service is the number one place people are most often conditioned to TUNE OUT! When my wife told me that it made me just shake my head. Gee, I know pastors will occasionally make a self-deprecating joke that no one may be paying attention when they preach but I didn’t realize the actual harsh reality of it.
I’m not offended or upset about it. I assume most people by and large are actually listening. I may be a little frustrated but if some people are tuning out during a sermon, we as pastors need to at least acknowledge this dynamic without getting judgmental or condescending. Many seminaries now train their students on contemporary church issues such as this. As a culture we are in a post-modern age of mass communication and information. Internet, smart phones, tweeting/texting and Facebook are all common media by which we divert most of our time and energy. Our attention spans have been reduced to short sound-bite snippets of information and then we’re quickly on to the next thing. Prolific online sermons of famous pastors and Bible studies place even less emphasis on the local pastor. We are therefore conditioned to receiving information in a very condensed impersonal manner. Studies have even been conducted on the human brain confirming that the average attention span is about 10 minutes. Needless to say this does not lend itself well to a pastor standing in front of a Sunday congregation and preaching to them face-to-face for 45 minutes.
So where does this leave us? As a congregation apparently some of you are already eyeing the door (or your smart phones) by the sermon opening before the pastor even feels like he’s just getting going. You may even be reading this column while I’m preaching today’s sermon. sigh.
Your response to all of this might be that people would be willing to stop and listen and respond more if the pastor was simply better at preaching and teaching. I agree the spiritual gifting will vary from pastor to pastor and that some may have a greater ability to preach than others. But my frustration in all of this is that it seems a tad unfair for this one-way judgment to always be pointed towards the pastor. I know I have a relatively short experience in the pastoral ministry and a much longer experience as a lay congregation member.  But my (kind and gentle) pushback as a pastor is that God forbid, no amount of entertaining bells and whistles that the media world feeds us ought ever distract from a Gospel message that sustains, comforts and provides with eternal gifts of Love and Faith. Perhaps wishful thinking on my part, but the Sanctuary could be just that- a safe harbor sanctuary of peace and communion with the Lord, free from distractions of this world. Amen to that.

From Pastor Mark’s Heart
May 26, 2013