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27Aug, 2010

The Call for Radical Parents

Posted by Scott

Yes, the bloggcation continues… and has actually become a real vacation as well… I’m writing from Southern California where it is sunny and the local temps are in the 80’s.

Anyway, I’ve spent part of my morning here reading Kenda Dean’s Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church.  It is a follow-up on the NSYR research but has a clear sense of Dean’s analysis and diagnosis.

All of this is to say that CNN did a profile story today on Dean and the book and I wanted to break the self-imposed silence to share it with you.  For me, the money quote of the article addresses: “What can a parent do then? Get ‘radical,’ Dean says.

She says parents who perform one act of radical faith in front of their children convey more than a multitude of sermons and mission trips. A parent’s radical act of faith could involve something as simple as spending a summer in Bolivia working on an agricultural renewal project or turning down a more lucrative job offer to stay at a struggling church, Dean says.

But it’s not enough to be radical — parents must explain ‘this is how Christians live,’ she says. ‘If you don’t say you’re doing it because of your faith, kids are going to say my parents are really nice people,’ Dean says. ‘It doesn’t register that faith is supposed to make you live differently unless parents help their kids connect the dots.’”

10 Comments »

  1. Hey Scott, funny that I posted a blog entry on this very thing today, highlighting something a little different from the CNN article. Take a look if you’d like.

    http://tiny.cc/dwr7o

    Comment by John Rinaldo — Friday, August 27, 2010 @ 4:14 pm

  2. “as simple as spending a summer in Bolivia…” ?? Looking forward to reading the book, but spending a summer in Bolivia doesn’t sound all that simple to me!

    Comment by Chris Weber — Friday, August 27, 2010 @ 4:16 pm

  3. Good to know some of my fav people are online on a beautiful Friday afternoon as well. I just finished Dean’s book this month and have started to re-read it because it was that big a deal to me. She’s convinced me that parents aren’t just important, they to kids what the .exe command is to software. Without them, we got nuthin.

    Comment by Barb Legere — Friday, August 27, 2010 @ 4:29 pm

  4. Twitter Trackbacks…

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    Trackback by Anonymous — Friday, August 27, 2010 @ 4:47 pm

  5. Chris – - I agree, a summer in Boliva might not be simple, but replace it with a summer’s week in downtown Davenport or East St. Louis, and I bet it is the same difference.

    Comment by Scott — Friday, August 27, 2010 @ 5:05 pm

  6. Kenda Dean wrote a follow up to the CNN interview. It helps clarify some statements that were made by the author.
    http://kendadean.com/307/cnn-response/

    Comment by Michael — Saturday, August 28, 2010 @ 10:07 am

  7. This article def. has me rethinking what I want to say at my beginning of the year parent meeting – worth thinking about.

    Comment by Marissa — Saturday, August 28, 2010 @ 7:47 pm

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