My Part of the Conversation

I found this article on Yahoo News today. I subscribe to a Youth Specialties update, which includes links to interesting internet articles that deal with the lives and spirituality of teenagers.

It produces some pretty compelling information on how teenagers don’t function at their best early in the morning.

Shock! Gasp! Horror!

Intrigued? First time you ever heard something like this? It shouldn’t take a scientific study to prove that. We already know it. However, let’s look at when schools start, and when high school students need to catch the bus. Here in Baton Rouge, many are on the bus before 6:30. No, that’s not a typo. I said before 6:30. AM. They are sharing buses with elementarly schools, and need to finish in time to pick up elementary kids, who would actually function well at those early hours.

So, I read this, asking why we don’t evaluate this stuff more often? Why don’t we look at what it would take to be more effective, rather than just do things they way we’ve always done them? Baton Rouge public school scores are rather low, which I believe is due to many factors, but starting so stinking definately isn’t helping anybody.

We constantly need to be evaluating why we do things the way we do. Sometimes the situations change, and other times the original plan wasn’t very thought-out in the first place.

And ending on another “evaluation” note-

Why do we plan our weekly worship service at 8:15 AM?!!!

Barna has some great research on how many Americans have what he calls a “biblical worldview”.  A biblical worldview, in his research consisted of these points:

A person

• Believes that absolute moral truths exist
• That such truth is defined by the Bible
• Jesus Christ lived a sinless life
• God is the all-powerful and all-knowing Creator of the universe and He stills rules it today
• Salvation is a gift from God and cannot be earned
• That Satan is a living force, not just a symbol of evil
• A Christian has a responsibility to share their faith in Christ with other people
• The Bible is accurate in all of its teachings

According to the article, 62% of Americans claim to be deeply spiritual, 88% believe to be “accepted by God”, but only 4% maintain the Biblical Worldview that he described.

There’s a lot more in the articles.  Check them out!

 Most Adults Feel Accepted by God, But Lack a Biblical Worldview

A Biblical Worldview has a Radical Effect on a Person’s Life 

Thought I’d continue my trend of providing a little light reading.

Blaine

It seems that the greatest sin of today is intolerance. Except that it’s okay to be intolerant of intolerant people. It’s so frustrating.
Can we as Christians, as people, as humans ever say something is wrong that people might disagree with and might hurt their feelings?

The Bible clearly says homosexuality is wrong. I don’t get around it. Sin is wrong. Cheating on your wife or husband is wrong. Telling lies is wrong. Can’t we say it?

It doesn’t seem safe even in among Christians to call something sin. Or call someone who participates in it a sinner.
Hey, I’m a sinner too. I’m not looking for a chance to exert superiority over anyone. I just want the Church of today to stand up against Satan’s subtle and alluring lies that all is okay.

This isn’t the most earthshattering post I’ve had in a while, but I wanted to pass on this link. It’s a site for a PBS Frontline special for on the teenage brain. It has some really diagrams and information. You can even watch the entire program online for free! You don’t even have to register for anything! Pretty sweet deal for some good information. I’ll be passing this on to my class for parents of teens.

It really has good information on areas where teen brains are different from adult brains.  Aside from obvious developmental differences, teen brains actually process some information differently.  In one experiment conducted by Deborah Yurgelun-Todd, a picture of a woman with a particular expression was interpreted by adults and adolescents while being monitored with an MRI.  All the adults saw an emotion of fear being expressed.  Many of the teenagers saw shock or anger. The MRI’s showed that each group was using a different part of the brain when trying to interpret the picture.

This is really a pretty deep site with lots of links.  I haven’t spent a lot of time with it, but what is there looks pretty good!  I highly recommend that you check it out!

Dave has been helping me compile a timeline of adolescent internet usage based on popular sites. For example, “the thing” now is Myspace or Facebook. Only last year, Xanga and Livejournal were all the rage. Over the last few years, what do you remember being “it” among teenagers? Here’s what Dave’s come up with so far:

2003-2005: MySpace

2003: Friendster

2001: Blogger

2000: Hot or Not, Rate my…

1997-1999: AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, ICQ

1994-1996: HTML/Java based chatrooms

Dave says of these dates: “The dates chosen are the dates that the software/site/etc. experienced its highest registration and overall usage. This is obviously incomplete, but a decently completed list could be of benefit to those of us who work with adolescents as we continue to develop methods to educate families on technology and its overall effect on children.”

Anything missing? Anything dates off a little? I’d love your help on this! It’s actually interesting to think back on this little experiment called the “internets”.
Blaine