I grew up in a reading family.

My mother read often, my father read often, my grandmother read often, so, it was passed down to me. I read a lot.

Not as often as I did when I was younger, but I still tend to average one book a month. And while I enjoy fiction (Stephen King is my favorite), the past few years I’ve leaned more and more toward non-fiction. Specifically, religious non-fiction. Theology, methodology, Christian living, etc. – you name it and I’ve probably either read it or, at the very least, own it (I’ve got a few stacks of books to work through).

But I digress.

Back to my childhood and teen years.

I thought I was the poor kid in school, because we shopped at Walmart instead of the mall; because I wore Levi’s, Lee and Wrangler’s instead of Girbaud, No Fear and Mossimo; because I was still using a cassette Walkman when everyone else had a CD Walkman.

I didn’t realize it then, but I was actually privileged.

I had a mother who hounded me on my grammatical and spelling skills and pushed me to read everyday. She would limit how much time I could watch TV, forcing me to do things that actually stimulated brain activity (reading, writing, playing guitar, having discussions, etc.). It wasn’t until my freshman year in college that I realized just how privileged I’d been.

Do you remember, in grade school, that kid in class who, when called upon to read aloud, would act like they were having problems reading? And yet we all knew they could read just fine?

There were several of those in my English 101 class at ULM.

Or so I thought.

It wasn’t until our professor tried a little experiment that the truth came out. Our professor split us into groups of four or five and had us exchange rough drafts of a paper we’d all been working on, so we could grade each other. I and three other students in our group were graduates of local high schools. The fifth student in our group was an exchange student from a country in Eastern Europe (I can’t remember which one). After class our professor pulled me aside and asked about the papers I’d read. All I could tell her was, “The exchange student, who can barely speak the English language, has a better understanding of writing it than the others in that group.”

I’m not joking.

The guy who could barely speak English could read and write better than several “English as a first language” students in our class. What’s worse is I couldn’t even finish one paper because I literally could not decipher what words the student had attempted to spell, and it wasn’t a handwriting issue! HOW DO YOU MAKE IT TO HIGH SCHOOL, LET ALONE GRADUATE, IF YOU CAN’T READ OR WRITE YOUR NATIVE LANGUAGE!!!

Why am I harping on this subject nearly ten years later? Because, sadly, things haven’t improved. I know teens who actually believe leet speak (the version of shorthand originally used in instant messaging programs, AKA text speak) is part of the English language!

On top of that, I’ve seen some reports and statistics lately that were a bit intriguing. Some were good…… and some were downright scary. Here’s some to read over:

• Long-term studies have shown that mentally stimulating activities (reading, writing, crossword puzzles, board & card games, group discussions, crafts and playing music) lead to a 30 to 50% decrease in the risk of developing memory loss compared to people who did not do those activities. Those same studies show that participating in mentally stimulating activities at least twice a week leads to a much lower risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s. – from Preventing Dementia: Mental Stimulation
• Delays in learning to read result in delays in the accumulation of reading volume. This places the child behind his or her peers in developing cognitive skills such as vocabulary, background knowledge, and familiarity with complex syntactic structures. – from Can Reading Make You Smarter?
• “In studying reading volume over against more general abilities such as IQ, it was found ‘that even when performance is statistically equated for reading comprehension and general ability, reading volume is still a very powerful predictor of vocabulary and knowledge differences. …and is not simply an indirect indicator of ability.”’ – from Can Reading Make You Smarter?
• “Students who get off to a fast start in reading are more likely to read more over the years, and, furthermore, this very act of reading can help children compensate for modest levels of IQ by building their vocabulary and general knowledge. In other words, IQ is not the only variable that counts in making a child smarter. Those who read a lot will enhance the IQ that they were born with; that is, reading will make them smarter.” – from Can Reading Make You Smarter?
• Reading books is an active mental process, improves your vocabulary, concentration, focus, creativity and memory. – from 10 Benefits of Reading!
• “The educational careers of 25 to 40 percent of American children are imperiled because they don’t read well enough, quickly enough, or easily enough.” – Committee on Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children of the National Research Council
• “It is estimated that more than $2 billion is spent each year on students who repeat a grade because they have reading problems.” – U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• “Since 1983, more than 10 million Americans reached the 12th grade without having learned to read at a basic level. In the same period, more than 6 million Americans dropped out of high school altogether.” – A Nation Still At Risk, U.S. Department of Education, 1999
• “Over one million children drop out of school each year, costing the nation over $240 billion in lost earnings, forgone tax revenues, and expenditures for social services.” – McQuillan, 1998
• “It is estimated that the cost of illiteracy to business and the taxpayer is $20 billion per year.” – Illiteracy: A National Crisis, United Way
• “More than three out of four of those on welfare, 85% of unwed mothers and 68% of those arrested are illiterate. About three in five of America’s prison inmates are illiterate.” – Washington Literacy Council
• “Approximately 50 percent of the nation’s unemployed youth age 16-21 are functional illiterate, with virtually no prospects of obtaining good jobs.” – U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• “44 million adults in the U.S. can’t read well enough to read a simple story to a child.” – National Adult Literacy Survey, U.S. Department of Education
• “60 percent of America’s prison inmates are illiterate and 85% of all juvenile offenders have reading problems.” – U.S. Department of Education
• “U.S. adults ranked 12th among 20 high income countries in composite (document, prose, and quantitative) literacy.” – Educational Testing Service
• “More than 20 percent of adults read at or below a fifth-grade level – far below the level needed to earn a living wage.” – National Institute for Literacy
• “Children who have not developed some basic literacy skills by the time they enter school are 3 – 4 times more likely to drop out in later years.” – National Adult Literacy Survey, U.S. Department of Education
• “46% of American adults cannot understand the label on their prescription medicine.” – Journal of American Medical Association
• “21 million Americans can’t read at all, 45 million are marginally illiterate and one-fifth of high school graduates can’t read their diplomas.” – Department of Justice
• 1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. – Para Publishing
• 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college. – Para Publishing
• 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year (2007) – Para Publishing

HT: Donald Miller and Kari Calhoun

In 2005 Donald Miller started The Mentoring Project, an organization that helps churches start mentoring programs and pairs mentors with boys in need. Don’s work with the fatherless led the Obama administration to invite him onto the president’s task force on fatherlessness and mentoring. In 2006 Donald’s book To Own A Dragon: Reflections On Growing Up Without A Father was published. The book is Don’s reflections on growing up without a father (whom he didn’t even meet until he was 35), and the struggles it caused him. In April 2010 To Own A Dragon was reprinted with new chapters and a new title - Father Fiction: Chapters for a Fatherless Generation.

I bought a copy of To Own A Dragon when it came out, but I still haven’t made it all the way through. Not that it isn’t a good read; on the contrary, I love Don’s works. But as someone who, for the most part, grew up without a father and having confronted those demons and made peace with my father, To Own A Dragon is, for me, more of a guide in helping others who are fatherless than helping myself. However, I do plan on buying a copy of the reprint for the new chapters.

Anyways, I’ve been following The Mentoring Project for a couple years now and the statistics Don presents in To Own A Dragon and A Million Miles In A Thousand Years are staggering. Twenty-seven million kids are currently growing up without dads, teens who grow up without a father are more prone to suicide, dropping out of school, drug use, unwanted pregnancies, abortion, divorce and crime. Eighty-five percent of the U.S. prison population grew up fatherless. Coincidence?

Big Brothers/Big Sisters has a thousand boy waiting list, but no waiting list for the girls. That’s a national average for cities across the U.S. There’s 360,000 churches in the United States – what if each one partnered with The Mentoring Project? The goal of The Mentoring Project is to take that waiting list all across the country down to zero through the church. According to Don, “we could potentially mentor all the fatherless boys in America within twenty years, effectively shutting down prisons, curbing teen pregnancy and abortion, curbing the divorce rate…. all those issues would be taken care of through the church.”

Also in the interview, Don highlights the successes they’re already seeing through The Mentoring Project. Imago Dei, one of their partner churches in Portland, Oregon, was recently asked by the Portland Independent School District to provide 500 more mentors for their students!

I should also clarify Donald’s definition of “growing up fatherless” isn’t exclusive to those who were raised by a single mother or orphans and foster children. Absentee fathers are just as big of a problem. Absentee fathers are men who, while still maintaining a home in the traditional sense (husband + wife + children = family), neglect their children, aren’t good examples of what a husband and father should be and therefore aren’t good examples of what a man should be. I was listening to an interview with Donald and he made a good point: the issue isn’t just a fatherlessness issue, it’s a masculinity issue. We have a crisis of masculinity. To quote Donald:

We have a problem where men really don’t know how to be men or what being a man looks like. So you have passive men and then you have the over-macho shouting man, and something’s wrong with both of those pictures.

As Mark Driscoll once said, “we have a lot of boys who can shave”. A lot of men aren’t really men, but boys trapped in a man’s body, clinging to adolescence and not knowing what it really means to be a man. To quote Driscoll:

The sweet-spot is like 18-34 for demographics, because what they do is they know that you guys don’t know what it means to be a man and so they tell you that being a man is defined not by what you produce, but by what you consume.

“Drink this beer, you’ll be a man!”
“Drive this truck, you’ll be a man!”
“Play these video games, you’ll be a man!”

Really?
Seriously?

All too often we’re told our manliness comes from what we consume, but the truth is, when you die, no one is going to care how many women you slept with or how many times you drank your buddies under the table.

What people will remember is what you gave back – what you produced.

So, in honor of Father’s Day, I’d like to thank those men who have been my mentors. Just to clarify, I love my father. And he loves me. He knows he hasn’t been the father he wanted to be. He knows his poor choices in life led to consequences such as divorce and my fatherlessness. And I’ve forgiven him for that. To all reading this, if your father is still alive, make sure you have some type of contact with him on Father’s Day. Whether he was there for you as a child or not, make the effort to show him love. As for the men who have mentored me and at one time or another stepped into that father figure role, thank you. I’m far from perfect, but I don’t even want to know where I’d be had it not been for all of you. I’ve listed their names below as a sort of public thanks (alphabetical order):

Mark Bennett, Allen Boehm, Ron Brown, Lee Haynes, Chad Hays, Mark Leonhardt, Jeremy McCaa, Kenny McCaa, Joey Metz, Arvil Ogle, Phil Parker, Brent Stephens and Troy Wold.

Links:
Donald Miller
The Mentoring Project
Catalyst Interview With Donald Miller
Father Fiction: Chapters for a Fatherless Generation
A Million Miles In A Thousand Years
Mark Driscoll on Adolescence

I was checking Facebook this afternoon and noticed a link that Scott Thomas (Acts 29 director) posted with the caption,

John Piper is taking 8 months off to examine his ministry, marriage and family. Pray for Pastor John.

Now, I don’t know about you, but the first thought that came to mind (God forgive me) was moral failure.

Thankfully, I was wrong.

After reading the entire blog post from Pastor John, I’m actually speechless. Here’s an excerpt:

I asked the elders to consider this leave because of a growing sense that my soul, my marriage, my family, and my ministry-pattern need a reality check from the Holy Spirit. On the one hand, I love my Lord, my wife, my five children and their families first and foremost; and I love my work of preaching and writing and leading Bethlehem. I hope the Lord gives me at least five more years as the pastor for preaching and vision at Bethlehem.

But on the other hand, I see several species of pride in my soul that, while they may not rise to the level of disqualifying me for ministry, grieve me, and have taken a toll on my relationship with Noël and others who are dear to me. How do I apologize to you, not for a specific deed, but for ongoing character flaws, and their effects on everybody? I’ll say it now, and no doubt will say it again, I’m sorry. Since I don’t have just one deed to point to, I simply ask for a spirit of forgiveness; and I give you as much assurance as I can that I am not making peace, but war, with my own sins.

By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org

Wow.

I don’t always agree with Piper’s teachings, but those differences are with secondary issues. I pray God raises up more pastors and leaders like John Piper. Leaders who aren’t ashamed to admit they are human and as such have flaws that they allow God to reveal to them and then work out of them.

Click here to read the full article.

Today is Halloween and to be honest, it’s my favorite time of year. There’s always a horror movie at the theater, local drama troupes stage productions of “Dracula” or “Frankenstein”, all the TV networks are breaking out the classics (and not so classic), there’s a dozen haunted houses to choose from and, of course, ya gotta have candy ready for trick or treaters.

C’mon. I know some of you wish you were still a kid just so you could dress up.

Yet, it’s also the time of year I get slammed the most by other Christians. 

“Halloween is All Hallows Eve”

“It’s a Pagan holiday”

And so on. 

You know what?

I agree.

So I won’t use this space to try to justify my celebration (even if that only amounts to watching a movie on TV), nor will I use it to judge those who overindulge in celebration.

However, I do want to ask a couple questions of those who disapprove of celebrating Halloween.

Why is the celebration of our Savior’s death and resurrection called Easter?

Why do we celebrate our Savior’s birth in December when most theologians agree that Jesus was probably born in September or October?

Are there any Christmas or Easter traditions that Christians have that are not of Christian origin? 

By the way, don’t comment unless you include answers to at least one of those questions. They’re pretty easy to find.