Family Strategies

From: the Vision Forum website


To Survive and Prosper: It’s Time to Think Strategically

About Your Children, Your Household, and Your Family Culture!

strat-e-gies: The art of devising or employing plans or stratagems toward a goal.

If you are a Christian parent living in the twenty-first century, you need to think strategically about your family. Settling for the priorities and practices of the world is a proven formula for disaster. As parents, we must do more than settle. We must self-consciously choose. This requires strategic biblical thinking. It means self-consciously building your family culture. And whether the subject is entertainment choices, home décor, travel, music in the home, or dealing with antagonistic relatives, it means that wise, Scripturally-informed parents must think creatively as they aggressively engage impediments and obstacles to success.

A 20-Week Energy Boost of Strategic Thinking and Encouragement from Doug and Beall Phillips

Family Strategies: An Invitation from Doug and Beall from Douglas Phillips on Vimeo.
Family Strategies: An Invitation from Doug and Beall from Douglas Phillips on Vimeo.

1. How to Organize Your Home to Promote Family Unity
2. How to Cultivate a Love of Reading with Your Children
3. How to Make Mealtime Meaningful
4. How to Prepare for a Year of Home Education
5. How to Take Children Safely Through an Airport
6. How to Involve the Whole Family in Family Worship
7. How to Address the Plague of “Jive Talk” in Your Home
8. How to Encourage Masculinity in Sons
9. How to Encourage Femininity in Daughters
10. How to Handle a Social Worker Visit
11. How to Wage War on Sibling Rivalry
12. How to Use Household Decorations to Teach Character
13. How to Talk to Your Children about Miscarriage
14. How to Involve the Whole Family in Hospitality
15. How to Build an Entrepreneurial Spirit in Your Children
16. How to Watch a Movie As a Family
17. How to Cultivate a Love of Meaningful Poetry with Your Children, and Why Doing So Is Important
18. How to Prepare Your Children to Listen to a Symphony
19. How to Take a Road Trip with Your Family
20. How to Select the Best Locations for Family Vacations

As the parents of eight children and the founders of Vision Forum Ministries, Doug and Beall Phillips have spent the last decade collecting and implementing helpful strategies for building a strong, safe, and visionary family culture.

Now, beginning Tuesday, March 1, Doug and Beall will be sharing some of the most practical and proven strategies for building a vibrant family culture through their new 20-week, 30-minute episodes audio series called Family Strategies.

Listen to Audio Samples:

How to Organize Your Home To Promote Family Unity

How to Cultivate a Love of Reading with Your Children

How to Make Mealtime Meaningful

Receive a New Family Strategies Message in Your Inbox Every Tuesday!

Get your new Family Strategies message every Tuesday morning.
Beginning March 1, every Tuesday morning for twenty weeks you will receive a link to your new downloadable message from Doug or Beall, hosted at Vision Forum’s partner website BlueBehemoth.com. To access your first download, simply create a free BlueBehemoth.com account and then follow the easy instructions in your weekly emails to download your messages at no additional charge.

Listen to the messages at your convenience on your computer, iPod, or other portable MP3 player. And, don’t worry if you miss a week due to travel. The messages will be there waiting for you.

Order by March 1 and save $10, plus receive two bonus messages as our gift.
At $85, Family Strategies is a 20-message series sent directly to your inbox each week for less than $5 per message. But make sure you order by February 28, as that price will go up! With your order confirmation email, we will also send you coupons to download two important, family-affirming bonus messages for free: Victories: Moments Small and Large Which Define Christian Parenting, and How to Evaluate a Suitor.

A weekly energy boost for the price of a fancy cup of coffee.
For about the price of a fancy cup of coffee, you can get a real energy jolt — a weekly encouragement boost from Doug and Beall in which they share their favorite and best strategies for building family unity.

Limitation of this Product: Due to the restrictions of international copyright law, customers without a billing address inside the United States, and a credit card compatible with that address, are not currently able to download from BlueBehemoth.com. If you are an international customer, we are sorry you will not be able to join this course. We regret this present inconvenience, and will continue seeking options to better serve our valued customers abroad.

Can We Trust the Bible?

Can we trust the Bible? The answer is yes.

True Wisdom

From Scott Browns Blog :

My friend Mike Metarko recently resigned his post as principal of Hanover Elementary School in Bethlehem, PA.

His resignation letter tells the story of why he would do such a radical thing and abandon what has been his livelihood for many years.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is with strong conviction that I write this letter as my formal resignation effective Thursday, July 1, 2010 from my position as Principal of Hanover Elementary School, where I have devoted the last five of my 14 years in the Bethlehem Area School District. Though there is no job at present to which I will be going, God has clearly persuaded me through His Word and through my research into the foundations of our educational system that I must end my career in public education.

For the last fourteen years, I have worked diligently to be the “salt and light” spoken of in Matthew 5:13, but I have realized that while I am plugging up pinholes in the dike that holds back the tumultuous waters of public education, the improperly laid foundation has been eroding beneath our feet. God states, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7a). This means that neither God nor moral character can be separated from true education; in fact, the glorification of God and the building of Biblical moral character must be the basis of true education. In the words of Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, “We profess to be republicans [in form of government], and yet we neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government, that is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by the means of the Bible. For this Divine Book, above all others, favors that equality among mankind, that respect for just laws, and those sober and frugal virtues, which constitute the soul of republicanism.”

But what have we done? We have thrown God, Bibles and prayer out of our schools based upon an inaccurate interpretation of the “Separation clause”, while openly proselytizing the religion of Secular Humanism (Smith v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County, Ala). We have divorced morality from education and focused only on what special interest groups perceive as the “right” content knowledge. We manage the masses at the expense of the individual. As with most educators in the system, I have been sincere in my efforts to apply the doctrines of those we call the founding fathers of education, but I have realized that I have been sincerely wrong. My research into the real philosophies and beliefs behind men such as Rousseau, Dewey, Hall, etc. has opened my eyes. I am now aware that not only have I not been working for God, I have been working in complete opposition to Him. I mistakenly thought I was on neutral ground: there is no neutral territory.

That said; let me assure you that my argument is not against those I have worked with for the past 14 years. I have a love for my colleagues and friends; most are wonderful teachers of a curriculum they have been given, most truly love the children and will do anything for them, most sincerely try to improve our children, our city, our nation. But we have all taken our eye off the mark of what the chief end of man is. The nation’s statist system of public education is the real issue.

The Bible is overwhelmingly clear in that the primary responsibility in educating a child rests with the parents (Deuteronomy 6, Ephesians 6:4, etc.). We need parents to be parents once again, families to be families once again, fathers to be the father and leader, mothers to be the mother and nurturer. It does not “take a village to raise a child”; it takes a family entrusted with the Word of God. Our children are not to be wards of the State; on the contrary, they are creations of a God of love, justice, and redemption who loves us so much He sent Christ to die for us so that if we believe in Him and profess Him as Lord and Savior, He will grant us eternal life. He does not need us, but we need Him. He has given us the roadmap to life and to education: the Bible. I pray that He may manifest Himself in your life as he has clearly done so in mine.

Respectfully,

Michael J. Metarko

It Snowed!!!!!

It snowed in San Antonio TX!  The Snow Dogs

The Shed

My Moms Twin Uncle Greg

The House. Me Casa

Our Road

 The Sunrise

The Trio In the Snow!  Hopefully I could post some videos later. Our windows live movie maker is not cooperating.

Isaiah 55:10 

 For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: