I\u00a0got to the soccer field five minutes before the end of practice, in time to hear the closing strains of a plaid-skirted mother\u2019s rant to her friend about the way they teach math these days: \u201cSo I said, why are you beginning with centimeters? How hard is it to carry the ones?\u201d (I\u2019m just reporting what I heard, folks, not trying to make sense of it.)<\/p>\n
At first annoyed\u2014get over it<\/em>\u2014I then dropped my stone and let it roll away, for I\u2019ll admit it: I do the same thing. They did everything <\/em>better when we were young.<\/p>\n Take teaching a kid to play the saxophone.<\/p>\n My seventh-grade son plays the professional model saxophone my parents bought for me my senior year in high school, when they thought I was going to college to study music. That purchase was a few months before God started messing with my life, eventually inviting me to become a preacher. I played that saxophone for nine months; my mom thinks God still owes her $2,000.<\/p>\n But now my son plays the instrument. And I can\u2019t believe how they\u2019re teaching him to play. First, all the other saxophonists hold their horns between their legs, but I won\u2019t let him. My <\/em>son is going to position the thing to the side of his body, the right<\/em> way\u2014the way I <\/em>was taught.<\/p>\n And don\u2019t they teach kids to speak rhythms anymore? When I try to help him with a tricky rhythm, I say, \u201cSpeak it with me: 1, trip-l-et, 3-&, 4\u2014da, one \u2026<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n And he looks at me like it\u2019s time to chat with his mother about my fitness for fatherhood.<\/p>\n The stone I drop hits my sore toe and tumbles a few feet away.<\/p>\n And we do the same thing in the church too, don\u2019t we? It\u2019s not just the schools that used to do it better.<\/p>\n I recently saw an article skipping through the fields of Facebook entitled, \u201cHymnals Are Back to Stay,\u201d and all the people I know who know<\/em> that singing out of hymnals is the right way to do it\u2014the way they did it back when people still came to church\u2014were smiley-emoji-ing the heck out of the comments section.<\/p>\n None of us, of course, can remember the time when hymnals were the new technology, and I can only imagine what the nostalgia-prone set was saying then. It might have gone something like this: \u201cRemember when we all used to have the same seven hymns memorized, and we sang them over and over again? How unfortunate for the kids these days\u2014they\u2019ll have to sing something new almost every week!\u201d<\/p>\n And now, having recently commemorated the 500th<\/sup> anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, I can\u2019t help but think how much better Christianity was back in the 16th<\/sup> Century, when Protestants really believed in sola scriptura <\/em>(none of this consulting-experience-to-figure-out-the-truth stuff), and justification by faith alone was still fresh and exciting, and we actually killed the people we disagreed with rather than merely crucifying them online. I\u2019m getting misty-eyed just thinking about it.<\/p>\n We all do it, I\u2019m sure, about one thing or another\u2014reminisce about how we used to do things\u2014so maybe we should all drop our stones.<\/p>\n And while we\u2019re at it, maybe we should toss away the stones in our other pocket as well, the ones we\u2019re saving for those poor, misguided people who actually think the way we do things now is just fine, even better<\/em> than it used to be\u2014however unimaginable that seems to some of us.<\/p>\n The soccer practice was wrapping up. The coach was giving the final pep-talk to the girls circled around her, and that gave the plaid-skirted mom time for just one more complaint, this one about the teacher\u2019s eschewing flash cards in teaching multiplication tables.<\/p>\n \u201cShe just thinks they can use a calculator! And so I went out and bought flash cards, and I\u2019ve been quizzing Suzy every night because I want her to know them like this,\u201d she says, snapping rapid-fire to indicate the speed with which she learned her multiplication tables as a child. \u201cWhen she sees \u20188 \u00d7 3\u2019 I want her to think right away: \u201816.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Ah, those were the good ole\u2019 days, weren\u2019t they?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Rev. Dr. L. Roger Owens is associate professor of Christian spirituality and ministry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and teaches courses in the MDiv, Doctor of Ministry, and Continuing Education programs. Before coming to PTS he served urban and rural churches for eight years in North Carolina as co-pastor with his wife, Ginger. He has written multiple books including <\/em>The Shape of Participation: A Theology of Church Practices which was called \u201cthis decades best work in ecclesiology\u201d by <\/em>The Christian Century.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On the Field I\u00a0got to the soccer field five minutes before the end of practice, in time to hear the closing strains of a plaid-skirted mother\u2019s rant to her friend about the way they teach math these days: \u201cSo I said, why are you beginning with centimeters? How hard is it to carry the ones?\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-theological-reflection"],"yoast_head":"\r\nIn the Classroom<\/h1>\n
And in the Church Too<\/h1>\n