Church...

We're still talking about 'church'.  Why we're doing what we're doing and where it is going.  Will we ever go back to a corporate church?  Possibly.  Will we stop doing what we are doing presently?  I hope not.

We are not content to just show up on Sunday morning and sit for an hour or 2 putting in our time.  We want to be able to ask questions when they come up, to add to the lesson.  This is what we can do in a less formal setting, this is what we are doing as a family, together.

We do not want to be age-segregated.  What good does it do to separate families? 

When we used to attend a church, we would get in the car after services and I'd ask the kids what they had studied.

Most. Of. The. Time.  they could not give a good answer because they had spent the hour trying to pay attention amidst all the distraction that the other kids brought to the class.  Daniel even went so far as to talk to his teacher after class one Sunday and asked him to please exert more control over the class.  To stop the horse-play and cutting up.  (This was a class of guys in the 7th grade and up).

This is in the same category as homeschooling.

We believe that it is our responsibility to:

1. Train up our children in the way they should go. Proverbs 22:6
2. Talk of these things when you rise up and when you sit down. Deuteronomy 6:1-9
3. Teach the younger women to love and respect their husbands. Titus2:3-5
4. Teach them to be self-controlled.  Titus 2:6
5. Teach them to fear the LORD.  Proverbs 1:7
6. Teach them to be hard-working and productive citizens.
7. Teach them to love their country and stand up for what is right.
8. Teach them to think for themselves and make decisions that will glorify God regardless of what the world says.
9. Teach them to honor and obey their elders.
10. Teach them in a way that they can learn and grow.  If it takes focusing on a math concept for 2 weeks to get it, so be it.  If we come to a list of spelling words they already know, then skip them and move on. 

Homeschooling gives us the freedom to teach our children in the way they need to be taught.

Home churching does the same thing for the whole family.  I cannot tell you how many times we have started with a question that has turned into a 2 hour investigation of what God's Word says.  This is not a lecture by Dad, though we have those too!  But it is an open discussion with everyone adding their questions and thoughts to the mix and with all 4 of us learning something.

Because we have chosen to home church for at least a season, some people are concerned about us.  Kinda like they were when they learned we were going to homeschool.  Thank you for your concern..  We have not gone off the deep end and written God out of our lives.  We have discussed this together and come to the decision that for this season of our lives we need to be at home.

We will in the future return to a corporate church.  We will continue to meet with other believers to fellowship and strengthen each other.  We will continue to pray and grow together as a family.

We will continue to seek His face.