Parenting
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Give Your Kids More Heroes Than Celebrities
We live in a celebrity culture. It seems that everyone wants the proverbial 15 minutes of fame. Attention spans are short, but the financial stakes of fame are still high, so people will do nearly anything to reach celebrity status. And, sadly, our culture eats it up. We care about the latest gossip from Hollywood. We tune in to watch our favorite singers and stars talk about themselves. We follow, retweet, like, and favorite nearly anything they produce on social media. But I want my children to understand the difference between celebrities and real heroes. Heroes may not get the wall-to-wall coverage, but they are the types of people I…
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A One-Step Process to Become a Superstar
At some point, almost everyone has dreamed of being a superstar. While very few people achieve celebrity fame, almost everyone has thought about it. And a whole lot of people really wish they could be famous. Today, I want to give you a simple one-step process to achieve superstardom. But, before I share it, I have to add one caveat; one disclaimer. This one step will not make you a world-wide phenomenon. This process won’t get your name in any newspaper or on the headlines of famous websites. You won’t get any interviews on TV or radio. You won’t be asked to write a book and go on a tour.…
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Episode 128: Christian Scruples & Respect for Truly Spiritual Teachers
https://media.blubrry.com/faughnfamily/content.blubrry.com/faughnfamily/Legacy_Podcast_128.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS (Player not displaying or working? Click here to listen.) In this episode of the podcast, Adam and Leah tackle a difficult question sent in by a listener about listening to contemporary Christian music, using it to talk more about teaching our kids about scruples. Then, they share some thoughts about how we often struggle to listen to truly spiritual teachers, instead too often looking at youth and exciting personality as the main thing. Resource “A Tale of Two Teachers” [Will Not be Taken] More from A Legacy of Faith To subscribe to A Legacy of Faith by email for free click here. Subscribe…
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What Makes You a Winner?
Friday night football in small towns is a great event. I remember spending lots of Friday nights watching the Dexter (MO) Bearcats play and enjoying the pre-game and half-time shows by the band. A couple of weeks ago in southeast Missouri, the Jackson Indians played the Cape Central Tigers on Jackson’s home field. The game was really hard on Cape Central and the final score proved it. The final score was 35 – 0. Games like that are hard to take. You practice (in a lot of heat, I might add) and you travel to the town of the opposing team. Your hopes are high. The stands are full of fans. The cheerleaders are leading cheers…
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Episode 127: Parents, Teach Your Children Compassion
https://media.blubrry.com/faughnfamily/content.blubrry.com/faughnfamily/Legacy_Podcast_127.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS (Player not displaying or working? Click here to listen.) After a little podcast hiatus, Adam and Leah are back. This week, they talk about how parents need to instill the concept of kindness and compassion in their children and why that is valuable for spiritual reasons and for reasons even the world recognizes. Resource “I Raised 2 Successful CEOs and a Doctor — Here’s One of the Biggest Mistakes I See Parents Making” [CNBC] More from A Legacy of Faith To subscribe to A Legacy of Faith by email for free click here. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes Subscribe via rss Find…
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Welcome, Grady!
Today [Wednesday, ADF] was a special day. For the first time since Lyssabeth, a new baby was born into our family. Jeremiah’s niece, Lauryn, and her husband Chayce, welcomed little Grady to the world today. It is so fun to see those 10 perfect toes and sweet little lips and cheeks! And, we are thankful for modern medicine as Grady has had to have a little help keeping his oxygen up today. If you know me personally or read my posts, you know that my mind tends to spiral quickly. I was thinking about the joy of Grady’s coming and then the thought hit me of what a hypocritical world…
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Thank God for Squirming Kids: Why Congregations Should Reconsider Children’s Church
It seems to be happening in more and more places. It is about time for the sermon to begin, and a boatload of parents carry or walk their precious children to a different part of the building and then return for the lesson. The kids are in “children’s church” and the adults are in what is sometimes jokingly called “big church.” Today, I want to urge congregations to rethink this approach. Typically, when people want to start (or defend) “children’s church,” they give the same couple of reasons. Admittedly, both are understandable, but both also need to be thought through carefully. Some suggest that children’s church gives young people a…
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What Is a “Real Man”?
Recently, I was asked to speak on the following topic: Rearing Boys to be Men As I prepared the presentation, I thought that it might be a good idea to define some terms. One of the words that, obviously, was pertinent to the discussion is the word “man.” It seems to me that we have let our society define that word in ways that are, in no way, helpful. It is my contention that, in particular, the entertainment and sports community have fed us a lot of lies about what a “real man” is. As part of my research (and as a part of the presentation), I considered a couple of…
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Roots to Fly
I know many of you are thinking that I have messed up two well-known, and related phrases about raising children. The adage says “There are two gifts we should give our children. One is roots. The other is wings.” As you may have realized by now, the Tatum household is about to change. Our oldest is headed to college this weekend so we are doing a lot of reflecting on the short 18 years we have been blessed to have him in our home. He is the first of his generation to leave the nest and, as with many firsts, there is a lot of trepidation. Granted, we are sending…
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In My Father’s House
Sundays are important. For my entire life, I have been able to count on Sundays. I knew every Sunday morning and evening my parents would be taking me to worship. Over the years this meant different worship locations and sometimes a different drive to get there. Once I got married, my wife also being a Christian, the only thing about Sundays that was primarily different was that by this time I was also given the duties of preaching. But we still drove to worship. And as the kids came along a new tradition was born… I decided that on the way to worship we would sing a few songs of…
