CPYU, Download, and Cultural Soup

 I love what the people at CPYU are doing. It is especially helpful for youth pastors like myself. If parents would take advantage of it, it would be for them also. After all, CPYU does stand for Center for Parent/Youth Understanding.

Recently I took our teenagers through their neat little study called "Download."It is a 3(D) approach on using your mind to guard your heart. The three D's stand for Discover, Discern, and Decide. It was a great study in which Walt lays out a clear cut plan on discerning what media we should be taking in and also avoiding as followers of Jesus. The coolest thing about it is that it's not just for music. His principles (or "D's") apply to all media including TV shows, advertisements, movies, internet intake, etc. Learn more about this little three week study here.

In one of the latest blog posts from CPYU's founder, Walt Mueller, he identifies 8 ingredients of today's "cultural soup" that our teenagers and children are swimming in. The more I think about what he has laid out, the more I realize how true it really is. The article is full of amazing insights from this "student of culture." It is really a zoomed out view. He hits the broad topics, some of which you may have never thought of as influencing who your children are turning out to be. He has really informative things to say about each one. I hope he develops each one more fully at a later date. But for now you and I can learn a lot from what Mueller has identified. You will definitely learn something from this. Check it out here.

Home Alone

Over the Christmas break (or rush, whatever you want to call it), I had just a little bit of free time. So, I decided to be intentional about giving some of it to my son. Little did I know, I would be wishing for some of it to have never happened.

I thought I would be a cool dad and watch a funny movie with my son. I even thought maybe we could start some sort of tradition by watching the same movie every year. Naturally my mind starts playing through the Christmas movies I watched as a kid. (If you have read my post about Santa, you would guess that movies about Santa, Frosty, or Rudolph were pretty much thrown out right off the bat. lol!) All of the sudden, I think of that hilarious, innocent child who outsmarts the robbers in very clever ways.....Kevin McCallister. Little did I realize how long it had been since I watched that movie and how little I remembered about it.

I'm almost certain my face looked just like Kevin's did above when we got just a little bit into the movie. The entire movie was filled with what is unfortunately today's young child. He called his mom a "dummy." He was very rude, disrespectful, and irresponsible (imagine that). The entire movie continued with this as a theme, including the young Kevin cussing the robbers in the scene where he has set up all the traps.

Although the robbing scene is pretty violent and has that one cussing part, I would have to say that is the cleanest part of the film (it is definitely the funniest), especailly when you take into account Kevin's attitude and his family's attitude toward him. 

Needless to say, Home Alone will not become our father/son Christmas movie tradition!