YUGE Announcement! After consulting with our close friend, Al, the CongreGate Team is taking a break through the rest of the summer. We'll be returning in mid-September with new shows and a new "seasonal" format. So, please subscribe to the newsletter at congregatepodcast.com and don't miss any important updates or announcements! And don't unsubscribe! We'll be back soon!

  Thanks to all the men and women who've been faithfully listening and providing encouraging feedback over the last year and a half of the show. We love hearing from you and your encouragement to us is what makes us want to keep making the show for you!   Talk soon! Cue the music...

We’re back after a couple of weeks of travel! This week we are catching up on a variety of topics including basketball; the Supreme Court; and Mark’s trip to Moldova, Berlin, and Prague.

Micah brags about his sports prediction skills (he correctly guessed which team LeBron would sign with…), while Mark and Shawn make fun of him.

We talk about the Supreme Court and some of the chatter surrounding what might happen with another conservative judge added to the group.

Mark shares his impressions of Prague and his talks about his ministry opportunities in Germany and Moldova, Micah talks about his father-son camping trip, and Shawn briefly complains about the heat wave in upstate NY last week.

What have you guys been up to this summer? We’d love to hear from you!

Do you know anyone with a "boomerang child"? You've probably heard about the 30-year-old man that was recently ordered by a judge to leave his parents' home after refusing to leave for months. How does this relate to children respecting adults in the current culture?

Lack of respect has turned into a mental health crisis for children. We chat about an article from one of our local newspaper contributors who says giving children power in their relationship with adults weakens, rather than strengthens them.

Children benefit from boundaries, both emotionally and physically. Early enforcement of our expectations helps our children to build respectful and trusting relationships with us. How are you helping your children to learn to respect authority in a loving and gentle way?

Mark & Cindy are headed to Moldova to teach and disciple church leaders there. Please keep them in your prayers!

Links and Recommendations:

New York man, 30, is ordered to vacate parents' home after refusing to leave for months - Fox News

Tucker Carlson on Michael Rotondo

Respect for Adults is Good for Kids' Mental Health- John Rosemond

Building Leaders in Moldova - previous episode

 

Did the Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling go far enough? The Supreme Court ruled on the Jack Phillips case last week. The ruling in favor of Jack was a win for religious freedom. If you haven't had the chance to talk with your family about this important case, we encourage you to start a conversation with your older kids and wife around the dinner table.

We've been listening to and reading many analyses of the ruling and a couple of things really stand out. First, don't believe the narrative that the ruling is as narrow as the media would like you to believe. The court goes out of its way to say that lower courts must respect American's rights for religious expression as much as they respect the rights of the LGBT community and others. Second, the court has set a precedent that a business owner can refuse service on the grounds that the service violates their religious beliefs. Though there are other similar cases in the queue, this is a very meaningful decision that will impact future rulings.

Let's be encouraged by the small steps in the right direction. This is an important decision that continues to protect the religious rights of Americans. We encourage you to continue praying for the Supreme Court and others that are leading and making decisions for our country.

Before our comments about the Supreme Court ruling, we speculate about how the meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un might go. You don't want to miss Micah's thought about how a thumb war might decide the outcome of this meeting...😜

Links and Recommendations:

Cake Bakers and the Rest of Us- The World and Everything in It

Jack Phillips' big win- The World and Everything in It

The Briefing: Supreme Court sides with Colorado baker, sends very clear signal that religious convictions of American people cannot be trampled upon- Albert Mohler

Alliance Defending Freedom

Today's episode is a casual conversation about some recent news, Mark & Shawn's recap of the homeschool conference, and a little bit about family worship and our new family worship resource page.

Mark led 2 workshops at the conference. His first talk was about time management for men. He notes that there are often time management workshops specifically for moms, but not usually for the dads. In his workshop, he addressed how to prioritize the important things over the urgent things, and shared some practical tips and habits that have been helpful in his experience. He also led a workshop about how to conquer the fear of public speaking (which he has been speaking about for 20 years now!).

Shawn shares his experience as a first-time speaker and vendor. He talks about setting up a booth in the vendor hall with his wife and gives a recap of how his workshop on family worship went. We talk a little bit about family worship in general and about some of the confusion people at the conference seemed to have about this topic.

If you would like to hear Mark & Shawn's workshops in their entirety, you can find the recordings at NCHE Thrive! (the cost is just $4 per talk).

 

Links and Recommendations:

NCHE Thrive! Conference Recordings

Pretty Nerdy Press

Todd Wilson - The FamilyMan - we didn't get to mention it in the podcast, but Todd's new FamilyMan ball caps were high-quality!

Family worship resource page - CongreGate

What would Jesus fly?: Six televangelists under Senate investigation frequent luxury corporate jets-and they are not alone- Warren Cole Smith for World News

Louisiana televangelist seeks donations for $54M private jet- Fox News

This week we catch up on some basketball and add a few thoughts to our previous episode about family activities. We spend a few minutes talking about our family mission and vision before moving on to the main topic of this episode, making disciples together as a family.

Scripture commands us, in Matthew 28, to "go and make disciples." Is it enough to live your life as a "good example"? Nope! Paul said "To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldlyto proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak." (Eph 6:18-20)

We share some ideas about how we work together as families to evangelize and make disciples together. We have opportunities to speak boldly to our neighbors and others in our community. Many of our children have caught the vision and participate in conversations about the Lord with unbelievers. Maybe some of your children are involved in activities where they can be intentionally speaking about things of the Lord to their teammates and friends.

We'd love to hear about some of the ways your family works together to minister to people in your community. How are you making disciples together?

 

Links and Recommendations:

Join us at the NCHE Thrive! Conference

Pretty Nerdy Press

It's graduation season! Graduation speeches often have similar themes and are filled with cliché catchphrases. Are any of these typical graduation platitudes actually helpful? What should we be encouraging our graduates toward?

It seems we are preaching a different message on graduation day than we do in church every week. (We mostly attend graduations for homeschool and Christian school students...) You can do anything, you can be anything you want to be, follow your dreams....why are these NOT Biblical messages? Because they are contrary to what Jesus taught—deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus.

What if instead of encouraging our graduates to dream big dreams, we encouraged them to pray big prayers? It's okay to have dreams and it's good to work hard, but are we really preparing our children for life by leaving out the parts where life is hard and dreams change and God calls us to do things we don't enjoy?

And while we're on the topic of platitudes and trite sayings, we chat about the ridiculous messages we see on church signs around town. Poor doctrine and trite sayings do not seem to attract visitors. So what are churches trying to accomplish with their signs? We don't really know, but at least you'll enjoy laughing at a few of our favorites!

We open with a couple of weird news stories...but today we are talking about evaluating family schedule and activities. We listened to a great talk by Jen Wilkin on FamilyLife Today regarding family activities and overscheduling. Jen says the number one issue that children are struggling with today is depression and anxiety due to exhaustion and overscheduling. She talks about how Christian families should be different from the world in this area and how we can evaluate what our family priorities should be from a Biblical worldview.

As parents, we have the idea that our children need to have a broad range of opportunities and experiences in order to be "well-rounded adults. We don't want them to miss out, but does this mindset come from fear of missing out? Are we making decisions about how our family spends time because we fear they won't be fully developed adults without their activities?

We also talk about what role social media plays in our decision making. People don't post about the things their kids are missing out on or share their failures regularly. This can factor into our decision making because we see what all of the other families around us are doing well, but we're missing the full picture.

We talk about the things we're actually missing out on when our kids' activities consume your family time. We miss time to sit and talk and build relationships with each other. We miss family dinner. We miss the flexibility to be hospitable and build relationships with other families.

Mark encourages us to be careful about how we speak to others about our children. Do we only mention their successes in activities and academics? That can easily create a performance mindset in which our children believe their value comes from what they do rather than who they are.

We encourage you to sit down and discuss your vision and priorities for your family. Our children are eternal spiritual beings and we need to keep that in mind when we choose which activities to be involved in. How are you stewarding your most precious assets?

 

Last week we talked about free-range parenting. One of our friends commented that we have very different ideas about the definition of free-range parenting. Maybe we missed the mark? He says free-range parenting is the exact opposite of helicopter parenting, where parents set no boundaries and have no rules. He says the parents are motivated by laziness, not by an intentional plan to give them space to explore and be creative. So, we talk about the difference between intentional free-range parenting and free-range parenting that is motivated by laziness.

We also chat about the motivation for lazy parenting. Why has this become a problem? There have always been parents on both sides of the spectrum, but it seems that more young parents take a hands-off approach. Parenting requires self-sacrifice and people are naturally selfish. Is this the root of the laziness? What about the "experts" that are telling parents that saying "no" is harmful to their children's self-esteem.

We also failed to address the fear that drives parents to hover over their children and "helicopter parent." Some parents don't allow their children freedom because they fear the children will get hurt or get in trouble. We think it's healthy for kids to take risks, learn things for themselves, and understand the consequences of their actions by making their own mistakes.

Both extremes, free-range parenting out of laziness and extreme helicopter parenting out of fear, can be sin issues. How can we address the sin and encourage parents that struggle with fear? We need to encourage them to teach their children to be wise and then trust the Lord to protect them. We realize this isn't as simple as it sounds and discuss some ways we can encourage parents that struggle with fear in all areas of their lives.

As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts! 

 

A listener recently asked us what we think about free-range parenting. How much freedom should our children have to play and explore independently?

Should responsible children have the freedom to play outside or stay at home alone? Utah recently passed a law to protect parents that allow their children this type of freedom. Fifty years ago, kids were free to ride their bikes around town and stay home after school alone. A recent news article talked about how children that do not spend free time outside struggle with sensory issues and coordination.

We want to raise children that can think for themselves and be self-governed. Giving them opportunities to try things and explore without always jumping in and doing it for them helps the kids learn to think for themselves.

What are the cons of free-range parenting? Can kids have too much freedom? We need to make sure the kids understand there are boundaries. We don't want to send kids away so that we can disengage as parents. Free-range parenting doesn't mean kids are left alone all the time with no oversight. We spend time teaching them and then allowing them the freedom to learn cause-and-effect and explore their ideas with age-appropriate boundaries. Boredom is not the enemy. We think kids should have down time so that they can learn to be creative.