It has rained from the moment I woke up this morning, and is still raining right now. I have actually enjoyed it. I have two huge windows in my office and this morning I opened the shades in order to see the rain, and the blooming trees that sit right outside. It was nice… especially without the sun glaring in and burning me alive, which is the case on sunny days. I really hate it when at the end of the day I realize that I did absolutely nothing all day long, but can’t figure out how I got by with 13 hours of nothingness. I accomplished nothing today. No work, no school work, nothing at all. In fact, it really aggravates me! What a waste.
I did get to take a peek at the DVD for this summer’s VBS, “Rickshaw Rally.” I am going on a mission trip in June where we will be conducting two vacation Bible school’s in two different parts of Wyoming, and getting a Christian camp ready that is located up in the mountains. I was under the impression that I was going to be leading the music and so I wanted to see the motions to the songs. Later in the day Scott (my pastor) came in with some excellent news, I am going to be the VBS Pastor for that site and I will not have to lead the music. WOO! Please excuse my sudden outburst of excitement. Summer for me looks pretty crazy. On the 4th of June I will leave for Wyoming and return to Missouri on the 12th. On the 13th of June I will go to the SBC in Indiana and won’t come home until the 16th. Then I will leave again on the 18th to take our youth to Denver, CO and won’t be back home until the 26th. I think I will be using my two weeks of paid vacation this year! Shew! I am really excited about both of these mission trips this year. I can’t wait.
On another quick note, I did start working on a new post tonight dealing with the characteristics of scripture. I want to focus on the inerrancy of scripture and why I believe the bible is inerrant. I know I won’t have that post finished tonight… just a heads up to you that I am working on it. Right now, however, I am going to turn in early and go to bed.
Pressed - “The Sluggard”
hey, we all need down time. I think it’s really important to have unallocated time to just chill. The temptation is to fill every 15 minutes with some activity or meeting, but there’s only so much you can demand from your body, you know? Better to make the time you spend on tasks really count, rather than to count the time you spend on tasks.
sorry. that wasn’t a bad idea, but I presented it in a really annoying trite way.
Tomorrow, I’m sure, you’ll do the work of twelve men.
It is tomorrow, and I have yet to do the work of twelve men.. *sigh*
http://www.baptists4ethics.com/article_detail.cfm?AID=3429
http://www.geocities.com/reconsideringrickshawrally/
you sure you want to use Rickshaw Rally? i wonder how members of your church will respond to this…if i went to your church, i would be dismayed.
(and yes, that link is from a legitimate church)
Oh, Joseph is back. The one who disagree’s with everything. I am sure we will do it anyway, but I will take a peek at these website and see what all the fuss is about. However, I do not make the decisions concerning VBS and therefore I do not have control in that arena.
pressed, i dont know anything about the demographic makeup of your church’s congregation, but in any case…i go to school with a lot of Asian Christians. the majority of them find the “rickshaw rally” curriculum offensive and demeaning.
again, i don’t know if your church has any Asian people, but how would you feel if an Asian member of your church saw this curriculum and was deeply offended by it? what if they left the church or decreased their involvement significantly in the church because this curriculum was being used? you guys were so mad last year when i was posting about how Martin Luther wasn’t the great guy everyone says he was and when i was talking about Protestantism. why did you get so mad? because Protestantism and some of Luther’s beliefs are at the core of who you are. one’s ethnicity is no different. would you really want other people to get mad and to have issues with the church because of a stereotypical VBS curriculum?
After actually seeing some of the material from Rickshaw Rally, I guess you could be offended if you were offended by Disney’s Mulan.
This reminds me of the big mess about last year’s VBS Theme, the Kingdom Caper. The English were so upset that they were being portrayed as drinking tea all the time, being Sherlock Holmes, and always living in a thick fog. Wait. That didn’t happen. My bad.
okay, christopher, but the difference between the Kingdom Caper and Rickshaw Rally is that a lot of Asian Christians have been offended and made upset by this. there is plenty of evidence on the books which proves my point. did you check out those links? they’re from Christian churches who find this curriculum offensive and demeaning.
Joe sent me a link to this.
What troubles me about most Caucasian Christians’ responses to the objections by Asian American like myself is that there is no love displayed. We, as Asian American Christians, are hurt that our brothers and sister in the Lord would go ahead and promote something that we believe is offensive to our culture.
I am not surprised that many of you would not understand why the VBS material is offensive. We all need to be educated in learning to be respectful of all cultures. It is out of our Christian love that we Asian Americans are imploring the Southern Baptist Convention to stop producing such offensive material; we worship a God who is God of all nations, tribes and tongues–therefore, as the church, we ought to respect everyone and also teach each other how we can respect each other better.
Part of the reason why you do not understand why it is offensive is because you did not grow up with the experiences that many Asian Americans grow up with–being called chinks, slanty-eyed, Bruce Lee, ching-chong-ching, etc. Do you really believe that it is right for Asian American children to grow up with this type of experience? Is it right for the Southern Baptist Convention to continue to promote these racial stereotypes and implicitly promote such racially offensive behavior?
You might want to try stepping out of your comfort zones and make friends with people who are different from yourselves. Joe is an example of someone who has many Asian American friends and is concerned with caring for them and respecting them in the way that Christ calls us to.
Yes I did read those links and I have commented on them on another site.
In all seriousness, I do think that some material in the program is stereotypical, and was put together without much thought of how people would think about it, however, the mission videos are pretty well done and have none of the things that people are complaining about.
Was this theme well executed? I would have to say no. I hope LifeWay learns from this. However, I will not be calling for them to pull it from the shelves.
I think that there could have been a few things done differently that would have improved this theme, however I agree with Christopher that it isn’t time to stand up and demand that this be pulled off the shelf. However, instead of complaining about it how about giving some examples or ways that this material could have been made better? What should have been done with this material? Thoughts?
Correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t see ‘chink’ anywhere in this material. Understanding that this is certainly a window into your culture, especially for kids who do not know much about Asians what would your suggestions have been for this material? I am not seeing the racially offensive behavior being promoted by this material… but maybe it’s just me.
Oh, and I need to address the Martin Luther deal. Nobody was mad because you said anything about Luther not being the great guy that people supposedly say he was. It was the fact that you came in questioning everyone’s intellegence by claiming that you had some higher knowledge of Luther that most Christians don’t have. You made the assumption that everyone, including myself, knows nothing about Luther’s life except for all the ‘good’ stuff. It was your arrogance that was the problem, not what you said (even if you didn’t mean to be arrogant, that is still the way you come across. You may just be arrogant for all I know and since I don’t know you personally I won’t make that call.) I’m saying all this to say that you need to get your facts straight before you start blurting out all of this nonsense about how we were mad because of what you said.
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