Lesson from a linguist

Recently Estee and I had a conversation with a couple friends of ours. He, Mark, works for Quicksilver and she, Lori, is a Ph.D student in linguistics. 

Lori shared with Estee and I that in the world of linguistics, there are two types of people. There are syntacticians who even though sound like people who are very tactical with their sinning, are actually people who are somewhat focused on the correct rules of language. These are the people who are going to correct you when you use whom when you should use who or ought instead of should. If you will these are the letter of the law sorts of people. 

There are others who study language and are less interested in the rules of the the language but are more interested in how people put words together. While the syntactician will correct your grammar, this second group (and I have forgotten their name!) will hear an odd turn of a phrase and say, "that is really interesting that you use those word(s) in that way." If you will these are the people who are interested in how language is actually used by people.

Both groups see/hear a language anomaly but have different responses to it. One is seeking to be corrective and the other is seeking curiosity. 

It got me thinking about Christianity. When you and I come across someone who is practicing the faith in a non-traditional way, do we take corrective steps or curious steps? 

Are we interested in ensuring the tradition stays constant and uniform or interested in discovering the ways in which people's lives are being influenced by the faith and the faith is being influenced by their lives? 

Are we corrective or curious? 

Prize Linked Savings - Great economics, poor theology

I came into contact with the idea of "Prize Linked Savings" (PLS) through a Freakonomics podcast. The PLS is an idea that invites people to put money into a savings account with a slightly smaller interest rate (say .5% smaller than a traditional savings account). The bank then pools together all these .5% interests from many accounts in order to generate cash prizes for the participants. So it functions like a raffle that in order to play you have to save money. The beauty is that even if you do not win the raffle, you still get to keep the money in the savings account. So damn brilliant that it has to be illegal, right?

Right. The PLS is illegal for banks (with some rare exceptions) to do because it 'cuts into' the monopoly of the state run lottery.

This aside, All  I can think about is how the UMC can use our connectional system to create a financial institution to help establish an economic floor. Why the UMC is not creating a KIVA like gig or why we are not set up to work as credit unions I am not sure and I hope one day my dream of the "Jubilee Bank" will be realized. PLS is another option the connectional UMC might consider creating real change for peoples' lives if we were focused on helping repair the world.

Beyond the legality of the PLS and what the UMC could do to help fight for the legality of such a program, it dawned on me that many of my Christian brothers and sisters view religion as a PLS for the afterlife.

If we are Christian in order to "win" a prize down the road (heaven), if we are choosing a religion based on which one we think gives us the greater chance to get this prize, if we are religious in order to save up crowns in heaven in order to reap rewards in the afterlife - then I wonder if we are not just viewing religion as an elaborate PLS.

Children's Sermons - reconsidered

Children's sermons/Children's time is something that plagues many a congregations (and I am not alone in this assessment - see Bishop Willimon). We want to help our children and let them know they are important in worship, but the best we can come up with is a 'moment' in worship when we tell the children some silly story, over their head object lesson, or many times use them to get a laugh.

I am sure there are people who do this moment very well - and you are few and far between.

Teaching children in worship - if only given one moment in worship - can be a tricky thing and I have been thinking about it for a while now (this post made one reader sick).

As Estee and I consider our move to a new faith community, we have batted around the idea of having only 52 pre-set children's sermons that repeat each year. Each lesson would focus on a spiritual discipline with the purpose of helping the kids learn practices that form them in the faith.

For instance, we might have the first Sunday in January we would talk about breath prayer. The second Sunday in January would focus on icons, while the third Sunday in January would look at lighting candles, and the fourth Sunday would look at alms giving and so on and so on. The lessons would repeat again come the next January and once again the kids would hear about breath prayer, icons, candles and alms giving.

In just a few moments sent on this we have about 30 ideas.

We would look to rename it from Children's time/sermon to something else, but we don't know what yet.

What do you think?