MondayMorningInsight.com > Cedarville Protest, Goodbya Sanjaya, Glorifying a Killer, Barna’s New Book on Parenting & More!

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Cedarville Protest, Goodbya Sanjaya, Glorifying a Killer, Barna’s New Book on Parenting & More!

Orginally published on Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 7:26 AM
by Todd Rhoades

Today's a big day at Cedarville University (my alma mater)... it's the day that the Soul Fource, the pro-gay religious group, visits the campus. That's just one of the things I've got on my mind this morning. Also today, the glorifying of a killer, Goodbya Sanjaya, and more...

Cedarville Pro Gay Visit
A gay Christian rights group brings its national bus tour to Cedarville University today to protest the Baptist college’s policy that expels students for homosexual behavior. The nonprofit group, Soulforce, is based in Lynchburg, Va. It protests homophobic doctrine and “spiritual violence — the misuse of religion to sanction the condemnation and rejection of any of God’s children,” according to its Web site. Cedarville’s response to the visit is the best of any of the college’s I’ve seen so far. They plan to use today to engage their culture in a positive discussion on Biblical sexuality. You can see their plan of action here; or read today’s article in the Dayton Daily News here. I’m very proud of their response. Unlike Bob Jones University, who I understand, locked the group out of their campus. (I thought the gates were only there to keep people in!)

QUESTION: How would you respond if Soul Force showed up at your church this Sunday?

Goodbya Sanjaya!
Finally… Sanjaya was voted off last night! ‘Nuff said.

QUESTION: Anyone here SORRY to see Sanjaya go? Who do you think will win this year’s Idol?

Glorifying a Killer
Tim Sanders had a great post yesterday about all the media coverage of this Cho guy who killed all the people at Virginia Tech. What he said made perfect sense yesterday. Today, it’s even more profound…

Cho Seung-Hui’s face doesn’t deserve to be on the home page of Yahoo, the New York Times or next week’s Time magazine. To put his picture there guarantees the creation of new school shooters. When you can get this famous by killing people, it creates inspiration to vent your depression/frustration/anger with violence.

He follows up today with:

The video proclaims that “I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people.” And he gets airtime and webtime to spew this? I can’t believe how irresponsible media sources like NBC and a host of online portals are being. Once let out of the bottle, this newly minted rock star will use the power of sight sound and motion to further his cause after death. If I were NBC I would have squashed it. Give it to the authorities and never show it. They won’t show the footage when Steve Irwin was killed, too distrurbing. But the media and online publishers cannot resist this video. Do they think that they are generating incremental page views or eyeballs for ad revenue? Ridiculous! No advertiser (like Netflix on Yahoo) gets ANY value from this association. In my experience, ad buyers never want to associate with tragedy.
Do you remember when the media finally wised up and stopped showing planes flying into the towers????

Don’t be surprised when we see copycat shootings over the next days and weeks; and a big part of it may be because of all the airplay and publicity focused on the shooter. Some people out there will sympathize with him and it may be just enough to push them over the edge as well.

You can check out Tim’s writings here and here.

QUESTION: Do you agree or Disagree?

Barna’s New Book on Parenting
The title is bold: Research Shows Parenting Approach Determines Whether Children Become Devoted Christians

And I love this disclaimer: (from Barna’s press release) “Reluctant to add to the glut, the award-winning author nevertheless produced his latest book because his research among children and parents produced such significant results that it seemed inappropriate not to publish the work.”

Anyway, George came up with this from his polling:

In Revolutionary Parenting, Barna notes that there are three dominant approaches to parenting currently operative in the United States.

Parenting by default is what Barna termed “the path of least resistance.” In this approach, parents do whatever comes naturally to the parent, as influenced by cultural norms and traditions. The objective is to keep everyone - parent, child, and others - as happy as possible, without having the process of parenting dominate other important or prioritized aspects of the parent’s life.

Trial-and-error parenting is a common alternative. This approach is based on the notion that every parent is an amateur at raising children, there are no absolute guidelines to follow, and that the best that parents can do is to experiment, observe outcomes, and improve based upon their successes and failures in child rearing. In this incremental approach, the goals of parenting are to continually improve and to perform better than most other parents.

Barna found that revolutionary parenting was the least common approach. Such nurturing requires the parent to take God’s words on life and family at face value, and to apply those words faithfully and consistently.

Perhaps the most startling difference in these approaches has to do with the desired outcomes. “Parenting by default and trial-and-error parenting are both approaches that enable parents to raise their children without the effort of defining their life,” Barna explained. “Revolutionary parenting, which is based on one’s faith in God, makes parenting a life priority. Those who engage in revolutionary parenting define success as intentionally facilitating faith-based transformation in the lives of their children, rather than simply accepting the aging and survival of the child as a satisfactory result.”

QUESTION: Is this brand new, cutting edge stuff? How much do you think your parenting approach determines whether your children become devoted followers of Christ? Are you surprise that parenting style might have something to do with it?

More here from Barna...

Amazing Churches: New Psalmist Baptist Church in Baltimore, MD
Recently, my friends Warren Bird and DJ Chuang had the opportunity to attend New Psalmist Baptist Church, an African American church in Baltimore, MD. Warren recently wrote about his experience here. It’s an interesting read.

OK… enough of my rambling today. Tomorrow’s Friday!

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There are 6 Comments:

Posted by

Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 1:32 PM

I for one believe that his name should never be spoken and his face not seen. When I see the (what I consider) pathetic attempt to gain viewer share in any medium I turn it off. I believe it is completely irresponsible to give any kind of prominence or publicity to a completly sick individual, Unfortunately it probably will lead to copycats, (and no I am not talking about American Idol).
Posted by kent

Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 2:51 PM

I on a Barna break, I do not know how long this will last. But it will be for a while.

I have been an American Idol break for a few years now. don’t see that stopping anytime soon.

I agree take that man of the covers of everything.
Posted by bnpositive

Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 9:30 PM

This is how a sister-school of my alma mater handled the situation when Soulforce came to their campus. I believe the response and comments from Soulforce members confirms this was the best way a visit of this type could be handled.
Posted by

Friday, April 20, 2007 at 7:19 AM

I’m on a Barna break too. I want the hours of my life back I wasted reading “revolution”.

I agree about the whole shooter thing. It’s amazing how that has touched me up here in Western PA. I used to live in the town he and some of the victims were from. My nephews have friends who are DEVASTATED by the loss of of two of their closest friends. One of the victims is from a town right down the highway here.

I don’t do reality TV… at all…

I think we woud reply pretty well to “Soulforce” myself. Maybe we’ll get the chance to find out someday.
Posted by

Monday, April 23, 2007 at 3:14 PM

My daughter’s campus (small university in Seattle area) was visited by SoulForce recently. Parents were notified by the university of their visit and how they planned on handling it (very well, in my opinion). When I called and asked my daughter about it she responded, “Mom, that is so far off my radar right now that it’s not even funny.” In other words, to her and most of her friends, SoulForce was a “NoForce”, but I was glad to hear that the university welcomed them onto the campus in a loving and non-confrontational way that fostered discussion more than defensiveness...it just didn’t make much of a difference to at least one student (my kid!).
Posted by

Monday, April 23, 2007 at 5:11 PM

Cedarville seemed to handle this well. I’d like to think our church would as well.

“Harmonious Dissimilitude” What a beautiful phrase for a Christian community.

Harmonious: Exhibiting accord in feeling or action. Having component elements pleasingly or appropriately combined
Dissimilitude: dissimilarity, diversity, divergence, variety

What a beautiful concept, that we can have different views and opinions, and still exhibit accord in feeling and action. That our diverse elements can be pleasingly and appropriately combined. That we can be different and yet still be one church in Christ. We hear the phrase “One Nation under God”, how about “One Church under God”?

I John 4:20 says: If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

Who’s Sanjaya? Also not an Idol watcher.

I agree that the perpetrator of such atrocities as VT should be referred to as little as possible in the media and when mentioned should be referred to as the pathetic loser or like terms.

It just seems that lately Barna is really reaching. Not cutting edge, not new, not particularly interesting or thought provoking.

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Hi... I'm Todd Rhoades. I'm a Christ-follower, husband, father and I love to connect leaders with other leaders. Hopefully you'll find something here at MMI you like and will return often. If you want, you can find out more about me or follow my every step on Twitter.