​I know there are responses to such a statement as this, but I call your attention to the only in parentheses.  Yes, I realize that the football program is a great source of income.  And yes, I know much of the school spirit comes from a strong football program, especially in our band of the country.

Speaking of band, does the football team ever attend cheerleading or band competitions?  Do the players ever don their uniforms and lug all of their equipment to one of these to support the students and teachers who support them under the Friday night lights?  It just doesn't happen.

Do the patrons attend basketball and soccer contests as they do football?  Do they equally cheer for the girls' teams as they do for the boys?  Are elementary and middle school functions equally important?
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Do administrators and school boards spend as much of the budget to support the drama program, the academic team, or the science fair?  Is transportation provided to these, or do parents pay the bill separately?  Does anyone rally the media and the business community to charter buses to support other programs in the school with the same exuberance as the football program?

I'm not just asking; I know the answers to these questions as much as the next guy.

Yeah, I know the answers, and I get it.  It's just like our economy:  it's survival of the fittest, supply and demand.  If you brought in as much money, community support, interest, and excitement as the football program, you would get the same love the football team gets.  If there was more demand for your non-football program, you would get more supply in return.  Yeah, I get it.

But that doesn't mean I like it.  I'm just saying that the underdogs need some attention, too, and we just don't give it to them.  Other programs need accolades, too.  Other kids need to feel like winners when they are winners, too.  I could go off on sports in general, but that's not what this is.  In a world where self-esteem is supposedly so important, how are successful kids with different skill sets supposed to feel when it is only the big guy with the shoulder pads who gets lifted on the team's shoulders?

We should do better.

​The church of Christ in Carthage, Missouri, is conducting an adult class about church history.  We're calling it FIRST2000, because this class is about the first two millennia after the death of Christ.  This post is intended to be a supplement to the class and the handouts.  Below, you will find mostly visual aids and links.  Feel free to look in on our live class at the church building.

There are others, of course, who nudged the Reformation along during this century, but it was not until some realized that reformation of church dogma as it had become could not be adequate until restoration of the church of the First Century was embraced.  Things didn't need to be rearranged.  Some concepts and practices needed to be eliminated altogether, and others needed to be restored to their original intent and practice.  The best thing to do was study the Scripture, allow the Bible to interpret itself.  We, in the church of Christ believe in the following:

​The church of Christ in Carthage, Missouri, is conducting an adult class about church history.  We're calling it FIRST2000, because this class is about the first two millennia after the death of Christ.  This post is intended to be a supplement to the class and the handouts.  Below, you will find mostly visual aids and links.  Feel free to look in on our live class at the church building.

In this section of our study, we will look at three men who stand out as wanting to do better.  The claims of Peter Waldo, John Wycliffe, and Jan Hus stand to say, No more!  Their ideas of returning to Scripture and the way the church was "before" are pivotal in inspiring others (and especially the Reformers) to act against error.  But there is a difference in what these forerunners to Reformation and the Reformers themselves do and restoring the Lord's church to the original design in the Bible.

The crusades of the Middle Ages confound us today.  Often we do not understand much beyond the mythology behind King Arthur and Robin Hood.  Sometimes we romanticize the period with images of knights on white horses and jousting reenactments at local Renaissance Fairs.  But there really were crusades, much referred to as holy wars, and that is where the confounding lies:  how could "holy" men fight such brutal battles in such barbaric fashion?

It's not that simple, and there are plenty of rabbits to chase in a study of the period.  Today, however, let's remove some of the basics to look through them and get more of an understanding of what was happening religiously during these, the times surrounding the Dark Ages.  Much of what follows is simply visual aid and video support for our class, and for full explanations attendance in our adult class would be beneficial for the curious in this regard.

​First, we study the Great Schism that divided adherents to Easter Orthodoxy from the adherents to what becomes Roman Catholicism in and round the year  of AD 1054.

​The division of language at this time is also worthy of mention, as the Eastern Orthodox was a Greek-based religion and the Roman Catholics transfer to a Latin-based presentation.

Islam was also on the rise, and the Crusades are fought to squelch the influence of an aggressive religion.  We will break these down a bit more in class, but I will plant a video here that might help us along.

​I can't stand the smell of coffee.  Well, can't stand is probably a little harsh, but let's say I find it nasty smelling.  I don't know why anyone would pour something as foul as coffee over their taste buds.

But that's not what this is about.

I just find it in bad form for a teacher to do a recess, cafeteria, or a dismissal duty while also sipping a beverage - coffee or otherwise - from a cup in hand. First, did you bring enough for everyone?  Second, how dependent are you on the drink really?  And third, can you fully devote yourself to your duty, which often requires two hands.
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I understand having a comfortable (appropriate) beverage parked on your desk, but I don't think you should be so casual in the more "public" areas of the school.  It seems to send the wrong signal to parents and students. Sometimes we are too casual and don't consider the way things look to others.

It just something to consider.

Today marks 30 years since the bombing of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.  While three decades may have passed, my proximity to the event remains at at just under five miles.  I try not to forget the events of that day when I was the lead teacher in an elementary school with no principal in the building.  

When we finally knew what was happening in the downtown area, we did what we needed to do.  Thankfully, we had some miles separating us from the action, so we were just close enough to hear it and feel the concussion of the explosion.  Technology allowed us to have only one television in the school - on a rolling cart and kept in the library.  

We locked the building down - not letting anyone out for recess.  Some parents made their way to the front door, where I let them in to hug their children or take them home.

Teachers were nervous, and I did my best to comfort them.  We didn't know much about what happened. Throughout the day, there was more from the news, and I finished that school year as a stronger man, a more compassionate teacher, and a more methodical thinker.  While teaching in Joplin, Missouri, starting the next year, I told my story every year to fourth graders.  If you're interested in hearing it for yourself, I put together a 12-part presentation during COVID lockdowns:

When I was in middle school, junior high, and high school, my teachers wanted me to remember dates.  Historical dates.  International history.  State history.  Dates, dates, dates.  These were mostly dates that held no context, and they certainly didn't seem to have any relevance for me personally.  They were the kindling for tests, and they burned into smoke when the test was over.  Gone and forgotten.  It is probably easier for us to remember eras, approximations, and proximities than specific days, months, and years.

Dates of historical significance are often like that.  Memorizing them for a test means nothing to us.  But there are dates that live in our memories because of how they occurred during our lifetimes, because of the personal impacts we felt or shared.

It happened 25 years ago, in Oklahoma City, a month before I moved to Joplin, Missouri.  I shall never forget.

We remember dates.  We remember events.  All of us have moments when we remember where we are when a certain thing happened.  For me, those events go something like this:
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• July 20, 1969:  I know I was watching television in my living room.  The image was blurry and in black-and-white. Walter Cronkite narrated as man stepped onto the moon for the first time.  My fourth birthday was still a month away.

 

• August 16, 1977:  I was in the back seat of the family car, just 9 days from my 12th birthday.  We approached a traffic light near the DeVille shopping center in Oklahoma City when a person announced on the CB radio that Elvis Presley was dead.

 

• March 30, 1981:  It was my sophomore of high school in Tuttle, Oklahoma.  I was in Mr. Dan Kennedy's writing class at the end of the hall  when the news came over the radio that President Ronald Reagan had been shot.

 

• January 28, 1986:  I was student-teaching in a speech classroom at Yukon (Oklahoma) High School.  One of the girls returned from using the restroom to inform the class that the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after taking off.  My dad was laid off of his job on the same day.

 

• September 11, 2001:  I dropped off my fourth graders at Music and passed through the office at Cecil Floyd Elementary in Joplin.  A parent came to the counter to ask the secretaries if we had seen the news of planes hitting the Trade Center Towers in New York City.  My wife lost her job on the same day.

This list really highlights the news of the day.  These events are all ones that I could read about, listen to, and watch through media outlets.  But the real events that are closer to me are the ones I could walk outside my door to see.  Obviously, one of those events occurred on May 22, 2011, when we walked out the door and saw the devastation an EF5 tornado that destroyed much of Joplin and took the lives of our friends and neighbors.  

The first of our huge, dated, walk-out-the-door, personal experiences for me (outside of marriage and baby births) happened 25 years ago today:  April 19, 1995.  At 9:02 a.m., as I was giving a spelling test to my class of second graders some five miles away, domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh's truck bomb exploded in downtown Oklahoma City.  I heard the boom.  I felt the shockwave.  None of us knew what it was.

As the lead teacher at Buchanan Elementary, I was responsible for the safety of students and staff.  Shortly after the blast, I delegated a parent to watch my students as I locked the school doors and counseled the staff.  With only one television (located in the library), information was sketchy.  I stood at the front door and let parents in when they wanted to hug their children or check them out of school for the rest of the day.

One of my students, SAMANTHA, attended a few of the memorials in the coming weeks as we ended our school year, and our class dealt with the subject honestly and openly in the remaining days.  Oklahoma City was rocked to the core.  But just as Joplin experienced following the 2011 tornado, people stepped up.  One evil act triggered countless good deeds and innumerable prayers.

​The church of Christ in Carthage, Missouri, is conducting an adult class about church history.  We're calling it FIRST2000, because this class is about the first two millennia after the death of Christ.  This post is intended to be a supplement to the class and the handouts.  Below, you will find mostly visual aids and video links.  Feel free to look in on our live class at the church building.

It is important to note that councils such as these and religious conferences or gatherings today do not determine the direction for either the individual Christian or the church.  Our guidance comes only through the Holy Spirits guidance upon the men who wrote the chapters and verses in our Bible.

These Middle Ages are the time when the state became involved in religious practices.  The central figure in the icon (below, left) is royalty - Constantine (with a condemned Arius in the bottom of the icon).  Before these councils, the church was not Catholic or Protestant.  As much as the church may have strayed from truth by this time, it is not until now that lines begin to be drawn, and this is the beginning of the need for some to call for reformation (more than a millennia into the future).  This is where the spark is ignited for future denominations to be established in the name of religious liberties and personal preferences. 

Much of the artwork portraying the Council of Nicaea is made during the Medieval Period and displays the men looking very Roman Catholic, with large hats and ornate clothing in a fancy setting, the Ninth Century image here (below, middle) is more accurate (Click on each to enlarge.).

We peer in on three of the seven "ecumenical councils" of the Middle Ages: