After hearing from a few of the members and seeing the wide variety of people represented here, I'm thinking that setting up a more structured posting schedule might be the best thing for conversations at this blog. More structure would allow us to focus our discussions and provide space for various viewpoints to be fully expressed. It will also help us dig deep into various topics instead of just skimming over them again and again.

So for now we are going to experiment with having themed months on this blog. Each month the main, but not only, conversation on this blog will be structured around a particular theme. The idea is that at least twice a week one of the blog members will put up a post on that month's topic. Posters would sign up in advance for the day(s) they want to post. This will allow us to (hopefully) get a variety of perspectives on the theme and allow for various facets of that theme to be explored in depth. Other topics, questions, resource recommendations, and fun stories are of course still welcomed to be posted at any time, but this structure will help guide our conversations. I will keep a list of the upcoming month's topics as well as posting calenders linked on the sidebar so we can easily keep track of what will be posted when.

So to outline where we will be going over the next few months -

November - let's jump right into the tough stuff (and get conversations going) and talk about discipline. So if you have some thoughts on discipline please sign up for a post this month. These could include funny anecdotes, your personal history with discipline, a theology of discipline, advice on techniques, or a historical look at how Christians have approached discipline. It's up to you to contribute what you think will benefit the conversation.

December - this month we will focus on the holidays (and I didn't say just Christmas...). Tell family stories or talk about favorite traditions. What do you celebrate, why do you celebrate? What about commercialism? What do you do about gifts? How do you tell the stories? Do the Pagan roots of Christmas bother you? This is a wide open topic to help get us all thinking outside the box during a generally hectic month.

January - Children in church. What do you do with the kiddos? Do you integrate the kids, send them to do their own thing, or some combination? How do we be the church with kids? What programs (if any) work for you? What is your theology of children's ministry? What is the purpose of children's ministry?

February - Education. Public school, private school, homeschooling, unschooling? Why do you do what you do? What has work, what has failed? What are your thoughts on homework, or tests, or grades, or competition? Prayer in schools? Creationism? This is an open time for us to gather a variety of perspectives on this topic.

I know these are all big topics, but I hope we can learn from each other and start seeing new ways to live holistically as parents. I'm sure we will return to various aspects of these topics, and there are numerous others we can address. These I hope will be a good start.

So what I need from you all is first feedback. Does this structure make sense? Do you think it will work? And then assuming we go ahead with this, I need people to volunteer to post during these months. Just reply here or email me at julieclawson (at) gmail (dot) com to let me know what day(s) you want to post on. I hope to have at least two posts per week on the theme, but more would be great. And remember all sorts of posts from stories, to advice, to theologies are welcome. Let's see what happens!

Labels: Blog stuff