Tiger Mom strikes!

Amy Chua

Yale law professor Amy Chua created a firestorm of controversy with the publication of her new memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Well, I think it was less for the book than it was for the exerpted portion printed in the Wall Street Journal recently under the title, "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior."

If Chua was looking for publicity, she got it. The provocative WSJ article has led to op/eds and blog posts all over the country, as people have weighed in on the traditional Chinese parenting techniques Chua describes using on her two daughters. Many Westerners would regard the "Tiger Mom" approach as extreme, as Chua well knows. (Making her girls practice violin and piano for 4 hours per day, banning play dates and sleepovers, and threatening to burn stuffed animals are among the most eye-opening.)

Commentators have predictably acted horrified, while Chua for her part says she's been misunderstood: Her memoir is just that - a memoir - written in a subtly self-deprecating manner and not intended to be taken as a parenting guide.

I look at the Chua Effect in my new United Methodist Reporter column. I'm less interested in how much Western parents should be shocked by Chua's parenting style, and more so in how much parenting insecurity she has uncovered in our culture.

When Amy Chua describes "Western parenting," she's doing so with broad brushstrokes. But she also points to a lot that I think is fairly accurate: The obsessive desire to protect kids from a sense of failure while constantly trying to boost individual self-esteem; the reluctance to expect too much of children and desire for them to "just be happy"; and the rapid decline of any use of parental discipline over children, which often results in parents giving in to repeated demands by their kids and failing to correct them in an effective way when they misbehave in a significant way.

These are, in fact, significant facets of the "Western parenting" that I see around me everyday. And if Chua's readers are getting defensive by some of the implicit criticism she's lodging against this parenting approach, I think it is only because Western parents are pretty insecure about whether the common approach of today actually does a good job helping children develop in the right way over time. As a new parent myself, I think about this kind of thing a lot.

Christians should think about their parenting as Christians, of course. Our faith should cause us to see every aspect of our lives through it, child rearing included. And the Christian faith teaches us that we are not likely to do well on our own, absent intensive guidance in a particular kind of virtue. We need God's grace to be healed of the sin resident within us, and our calling as parents is to participate in the redeeming work God is doing by forming our children's lives in such a way that they will be prepared to continue receiving that grace throughout their lives as disciples of Jesus Christ. We simply don't take that as seriously as we should in our hands-on parenting, probably for any number of reasons: impatience in an ever-busy world and uncertainty that we really know what we're doing, probably chief among them. But the fact that we don't think nearly enough about parenting as Christians looms over the whole.

It's good that Chua is provoking us to think about parenting approaches, and I hope that we Christian parents will use the opportunity to think about how we really should be raising our kids. As I state in my column, the right parenting doesn't require a tiger for a mother -- but it does call for something more than the Western approach currently on offer.

"The Challenger just blew up..."

Twenty-five years ago today, I was sitting in Mrs. Betty Hoyer's fourth grade class at Baldwin Elementary School in Paragould, Arkansas.

The date was January 28, 1986. At some point around 11 a.m., a teacher knocked on the door and Mrs. Hoyer answered. The teacher had tears in her eyes. She told us to turn on the classroom television, saying, "The Challenger just blew up."

For what seemed like the rest of the day, we watched TV news coverage of the disaster. I can remember how surreal it all seemed. I was 9 years old, and I had been reading about the upcoming Challenger flight in the Weekly Reader that our school distributed each week. The Challenger flight was a big deal for kids at the time, because one of the astronauts was to be Christa McAuliffe, a schoolteacher from Concord, New Hampshire, who was going to teach lessons from orbit via satellite link.

In an e-mail earlier today, my brother remarked that this was the most defining cultural moment of our generation. I think that's right. It might not quite compare to the Baby Boomers' experience of President John F. Kennedy's assassination as a singular event, or the Boomers' larger experience of the Vietnam War. And it didn't cause the kind of seismic political changes as the pivotal moment of the Millennial Generation's  childhood - the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. For Generation X though, it was a moment when innocence was lost. The relative comfort of growing up in the America of the 1970s and 80s gave us all a false sense of security that was reinforced by our nation's preeminent status around the world. The Cold War was still going on, but for a generation that never knew a military draft and enjoyed broad economic and political stability, that seemed like a distant threat at best. Then a rocket ship tumbled from the sky, and all of a sudden invincibility was replaced by uncertainty.

Speaking to the nation in a speech later the same day, President Ronald Reagan said, "We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye, and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God."

Reagan's eloquent statement was a paraphrase from the poem, "High Flight," written by American aviator John Gillespie Magee, Jr., who was killed while flying with the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II. The poem is beautiful and bears quoting in full on this tragic anniversary:

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark nor even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

CNN has a page devoted to remembering the Challenger anniversary, which you can access at this link. And Weekly Reader - which is still being published for schoolchildren - printed an article for its younger readers that can be read here.

Great Youth Ministry Resource

I want to let my readers know about a new Youth Ministry resource that could change the way youth are formed as disciples of Jesus Christ in the church.

Holy Things for Youth Ministry: 13 Practical Sessions is a new book just out from Pilgrim Press that is edited by my friend, Brian Hardesty-Crouch. It is a collection of thirteen lessons that can be implemented in your church's youth ministry, designed to ground youth in the basics of the Christian faith and grouped into four areas: "Book" (meaning the Bible), "Bath" (meaning baptism and the baptismal life), "Table" (meaning Holy Communion and the eucharistic life), and "Time" (meaning life patterned by the rhythms of liturgy and the Christian calendar).

BACKGROUND ON THE BOOK: Holy Things for Youth Ministry is the practical companion to a book written by Fred Edie a few years ago, called Book, Bath, Table, and Time: Christian Worship as Source and Resource for Youth Ministry. Dr. Edie is a professor at Duke Divinity School and the faculty director of the Duke Youth Academy. His work frames youth ministry within the worshiping life of the Christian church, and the sessions contained in Holy Things for Youth Ministry offer practical sessions on how to take that theological commitment and begin to form youth by it.

The way the chapters of the book are organized really provides the reader with what I would call a "holistic approach" to teaching in a youth ministry setting. The chapters provide biblical and theological background on each topic, and the reader is invited into an attitude of preparation through prayer, reflection, and practical organizing. There is plenty of guidance offered for how to take the material of each chapter and present it as a practical session in a youth ministry setting. There are also suggestions for further reading and further practical exploration for any topics that grab the interest of either the the youth leader or the youth themselves.

In sum, I recommend this book highly. We live in a time when there is a great need for strong curriculum but a significant lack of good available resources. Holy Things for Youth Ministry helps to fill that need.

BACKGROUND ON THE EDITOR: Brian Hardesty-Crouch is a youth minister and spiritual director who heads a ministry in Texas called Holy Moments. I've gotten to know him over the past few years on the staff of the Duke Youth Academy for Christian Formation. In fact, the different lessons in Holy Things for Youth Ministry were all written by folks who have served on the staff of DYA over the past few years. (I wrote a chapter for the book that looks at reading the Old Testament theologically; the chapter is titled "Echoes of Jesus: Old Testament Anticipations of the Coming Messiah" and can be found on pages 47-64.) Brian's involvement in DYA at Duke goes way back, and he was instrumental in developing the curriculum that the Youth Academy uses each summer. That also means he was a particularly good person to lead the project that resulted in Holy Things for Youth Ministry.

LINKS FOR RESOURCES: If you are a pastor or youth minister or lay youth worker in need of a good resource for your youth ministry, I hope you'll check this book out. To obtain a copy of Holy Things for Youth Ministry online, click here for the Amazon link and here for the Cokesbury link.

If you'd like to know a little more about the Duke Youth Academy, you can check out any number of posts I've done on it through this website. I've archived them by label, so you can access them easily by clicking on this link.

Grafting into the Tree of Israel

Today is a day of great joy for my family. Later this morning in the midst of the congregation of the faithful, Alice Elizabeth Thompson will be baptized, signifying the washing of her sin and her incorporation into the body of Christ.

The sacrament of Holy Baptism grafts us Gentiles into the tree of God's holy people Israel. And it does this through the One "who came preaching peace to us who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father" (Ephesians 2:17-18).

And thus, like all those of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus, after today little Alice will no longer be counted a stranger and sojourner, but she will be a fellow citizen with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Of this household Christ himself is the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and by whom it grows into a holy temple in the Lord. And now she will be knit into that blessed company, the church, and in her will be a dwelling place for God the Holy Spirit.

If God himself is for us, who can be against us? Today is a day of rejoicing.

Thanks be to God.

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"Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his." (Romans 6:3-5)

"For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise." (Galatians 3:26-29)

"From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold the new has come!" (2 Corinthians 5:16-17)

Significance of clergy leadership

"The United Methodist Church ... needs a revival of ministers captured by transformational personal discipleship, women and men compelled to share the Good News and to motivate other Christians to do the same."

That provocative statement comes from Derek Maul in a recent op/ed column. He reports on what he finds when sitting down and talking with pastors in the UMC, and he focuses especially on a conversation he had not long ago with well-known pastor and author James Harnish. It's a great article and you should check it out.

"Leadership" is a big catchword in the church these days. Its easy to take trendy terms or ideas and turn them into fetishes. But we need not do that if we look at why such concepts have gained traction in the first place. In the case of pastoral leadership, it is because there is a widespread recognition on the need for strong leadership in order for congregations to grow and thrive. So leadership is an essential idea and one that I think we can do a great deal more theological work around.

And after all, it shouldn't surprise us that we are recognizing how important leadership in the church really is. The word "pastor" is simply the Latin term for "shepherd," and that's exactly what a pastor is supposed to be. As the shepherd over a flock, a pastor has got to be a good leader if he expects his sheep to follow him.

A Razorback Recap

It was set up like a storybook ending in the Sugar Bowl on Tuesday night.

Trailing 28 to 10 at halftime, the Arkansas Razorbacks came charging back in the second half against Ohio State. The defense looked completely different after halftime, playing with energy and confidence. The Buckeyes could only add a 3rd quarter field goal and were kept out of the end zone entirely in the final two quarters. Arkansas' offense, on the other hand, finally seemed to click with that balance of running and passing that made it so dominant in the final few games of its regular season.

It wasn't a perfect performance after halftime, to be sure. Receivers kept dropping balls, which was troubling (there were 5 or 6 drops by Arkansas' best receivers that were simply hard to explain). And QB Ryan Mallett was not at his best, which always seems to be the case when an opposing defense gets pressure on him. But the offense kept putting points on the board, even if they often had to settle for field goals by clutch freshman placekicker Zach Hocker. Standout RB Knile Davis kept chewing up yards on the ground, allowing the Hogs to control time of possession in the second half.

But of course, you don't have to play perfect football. You only have to play better football than your opponent. For awhile in the second half of the Sugar Bowl on Tuesday, it actually looked like the Razorbacks were playing so much better than the Buckeyes that they would be able to overcome that steep 28 - 10 halftime deficit.

Then, in the span of a couple of minutes, the Hogs delivered both unbelievable excitement and excruciating letdown.

Trailing 31 - 26 with a little more than a minute to go, the Hogs forced the Buckeyes to punt from deep in their own territory. A ferocious rush resulted in a blocked punt, and Arkansas fell on the ball at around the 18 yard line. (They could have easily picked up the blocked punt and run it in for a TD, but players are taught to jump on a loose ball and it's hard to fault the Razorback defender who recovered it.) So with a minute left, Mallett had the chance to put the ball in the endzone, win the Sugar Bowl, complete a stellar college career with a signature win, and give the Hogs their best bowl win in decades.

The electricity could be felt all the way from the Superdome, and I was watching the game on TV from about 900 miles away. A first down pass from Mallett to D.J. Williams fell incomplete. A few seconds ticked off the clock. And then, on second down, Mallett ... threw an interception. The Ohio State offense promptly trotted back onto the field and downed the ball to end the game. What looked like an improbable win-in-the-making turned out to be just another gut-wrenching loss.

I don't want to take anything away from the Razorbacks' 2010 football season, which was great on the whole. Coach Bobby Petrino has made huge progress with the program in his three years as head coach. This year the Hogs showed signs of moving into the upper echelons of the Southeastern Conference. But for Mallett & Co., the loss will leave a bad taste for the next few months. As good as he was, Mallett never really showed that he could step up and take over a game in the highest pressure situations. (He is widely expected to enter the NFL draft in the offseason, though there is a small chance he could return for a final year.) The Hogs still seem to suffer from a certain bridesmaid quality: When they do make it to a big stage, they have a hard time acting like they fully belong there.

For Coach Petrino, the challenge next year will be to take another step forward and continue to instill confidence in his players that they can hang with the big boys of college football. And that's the perennial consolation in football anyway, isn't it? There's always next year...

Pour some sugar on me

After a strong regular season that saw the Hogs finish 10-2, the final game of the 2010 season will be played tonight when Arkansas takes on Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl.

Arkansas' 2010 campaign also included a 6-2 record in SEC Conference play, good enough for 2nd in the ultra-competitive Western Division. I chronicled the season game-by-game, and you can read those posts by clicking on this link.

This season certainly had its share of ups and downs, though there were definitely more 'ups' than 'downs.' The Hogs' defensive unit was much improved, making the team more competitive in conference play. QB Ryan Mallett had a strong season, as did his stellar corps of receivers (though the loss of WR Greg Childs to a season-ending patellar tendon injury was unfortunate). Senior TE D.J. Williams had a great final season, capped off by winning the Disney Spirit Award and the Mackey Award. The offense became more balanced after RB Knile Davis emerged as the go-to back in the middle part of the season, and Davis looks to be a premier SEC running back heading into next year if he can stay healthy. That balanced offensive attack was only possible because of a strong O-line, of course, anchored by OT DeMarcus Love.

The Hogs also showed an improved ability to win on the road, beating Georgia, South Carolina, and Mississippi State on their home fields and beating Texas A&M on a neutral site location. Arkansas finished the regular season by beating LSU in the annual Battle of the Boot, always a tough contest. All in all, it was a successful regular season by any measure.

So now we come to the Sugar Bowl, where the Hogs will square off against Jim Tressel's Ohio State team that seems to make it into a BCS bowl on an annual basis. This is Arkansas' first ever BCS bowl, so there's a bit of an 'unknown' factor in thinking about how the Hogs are going to handle the Sugar Bowl's big stage.

Now's not the time to shy away from standing behind the Razorbacks, though, so here's my prediction:

Hogs 35, Buckeyes 20

I'll check back in after the game to comment on how it turned out. Until then...

Go Hogs Go! 

       Wooooooo Pig Sooiee!!!

The New Year: Renewing the Covenant

On this first day of 2011, it is worthwhile to remember and renew the covenant with God established in our baptism. Here is the Wesleyan Covenant Prayer as printed on p. 607 of the United Methodist Hymnal:

Holy God,
I am no longer my own but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt,
   rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things,
   let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things
   to they pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
   thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
   let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.

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I wrote about covenant renewal services last year on this blog, which you can access at this link.  There is also an excellent article on this part of the Wesleyan tradition written by Amy Forbus, which you can find here.

Happy New Year!