Rite of passage: Camp memories
One of the casualties of social distancing this summer is the cancellation of church camps. Tens of thousands of students across America will not experience a week at church camp, and here in Oklahoma, one of the most famous camps in the world, Falls Creek, has been canceled. When I was growing up, church camp was the highlight of my year. Churches from around the community would bring their young people in old, beat-up buses and...
Rite of Passage: Automatic flushers
I know this is a delicate subject, and I want to have some dignity in addressing this issue, but when did Americans become so lazy that we can’t flush our own toilets? It seems as though we are no longer capable of pushing down a lever. Instead, we have electronic sensors that determine when the toilets need to be flushed. Everywhere I go, I run into these motion-sensing devices. For many years, we have seen them on automatic door...
Rite of passage: Generation gap
For a number of years, Beloit College has produced the Mindset List, a reminder that the worldview of today’s new college students is significantly different from the previous year’s. It will be interesting to see how COVID-19 will affect this generation of students in years to come. Many of us grew up in the beginning of today’s technology revolution. We were there when televisions appeared, along with hair dryers, telephones, air...
Rite of passage: Fear not
You may recall that I recently shared about the demise of our grandsons’ little swimming pool. It developed a leak, and I fixed it with some tape, but the adhesive came off the tape and embedded itself in their hands and feet. It took me the greater part of a morning to scrape the gunk off. To celebrate the grand reopening of their little pool, I bought some cupcakes with plastic shark fins sunk into blue-and-white icing. Since Tulsa...
Rite of passage: Old school
Titus the Honorable is just two months shy of 7 years old. Oh, how the time has flown! Your children grow up fast, but your grandchildren zoom by faster than a small-town parade. During my 47 years of working with students, I have noticed different classes or groups of them, based largely based upon their personality and their Creator’s design. First are the “rushers.” These are the students who have more compassion than they know...
Rite of Passage: Village people
One of the things I have missed most about being retired, and now with COVID-19 limiting travel, is engaging with unreached people groups. Even though I am no longer the head of a mission organization, I can still do mission work. Some of my best times on the mission fields have taken place while living in remote villages. I became a student of their ways and learned what happens when all of modern society is stripped away. On my...
