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Dear Brothers,
First of all, welcome Anthony Liang to our fellowship! We were also joined first time by Pastor Steve's men's group (7 of them came)! Praise the Lord bringing us together with another opportunity to learn and share with each other.
We give thanks to David leading us singspiration with Norma playing the piano. A special thanks to Michael Ho for translating the whole workshop given by Pastor Steve.
We were blessed to have Pastor Steve giving us a talk on the subject of "How to Commuicate with Our Children". General feeliing is that father is not important but the Bible gives us a different view. Paul addressed that father is the servant leader. Training children in the Lord is the responsibility of the father. So what is important? Communication is the key. There are always challenges, especially for the first generation Chinese parents in America, with generation gap, culture difference, lanuage difference.
Dad needs to be more active. How? We need to spend time with our children. Even in this age of high-tech, still nothing can substitute face to face time. There was a survey done on the average of time spent with the children per day: 15 to 20 minutes per day, and with a recorder put on, there is only 37 seconds in talk time! We can talk to them verbally or nonverbally. Non-verbal means listening. Find out about their hope, their dream, their frustration. Do not lecture them. This would discourage them from talking - that's why they don't talk to you :-). Ask open ended question such as "how do you like about your new teacher?" instead of "how was school" which they would just say "Good". Draw things out from them. Observe your children - expression, posture. Instead of lecturing, do it by example. Pastor Steve gave an example of one time going out to a resturant and they were looking at both the adult menu and children menu. Most things are about the same except the price. The children menu is for age 12 and under, but since his daughter just turned 13, he could have just ordered from the children menu saying she was 12. Pastor Steve decided that he cannot lie so they ordered from the adult menu. His children would see the action he took and would get molded by his honesty. We can even share our feelings sometime so we can become vulnerable to them so they can feel more comfortable opening up too, and they can learn how to handle emotion.
When do we find good time to communicate? There are formal and informal times. Formal time can be to provide training and instructions. Pastor Steve and C mo did devotions with their children. Devotion should be age appropriate, fun & interesting. They did them before bed time for 5 to 15 minutes consistently til they went off to colleges. Informal time can be dinner time, which is a very good time to share with the family (with no TV on), or just when driving them around.
What do we communicate? There was a study with a top 3 answers: 3rd - Be quiet, 2nd - Can't afford it, 1st - Too tired. We need to communicate "posession", that they belong to us, they are an integral part of the family. Children feel uninsured if that is not communicated well. For a typical Chinese family, we don't tend to show love and affection, unlike an American family. Pastor Steve gave an example during the time he went off to college and when his father dropped him off, he saw other families hugging and kissing, but his father just shook his hand with him and took off :-). God gave an example of this from Mark 1:11 - And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son (posession), whom I love (affection); with you I am well pleased (affirmation)".
Afterward, the group followed up with many good questions on the topic. We then splited into our regular 3 cell groups with some brothers from Pastor Steve's men's group mixed in. Besides more sharing on the topic, we also exchanged and shared ideas/experience between our 2 men's groups. Pastor Steve's men's group has been meeting for the past 15 years! They usually meet every other Wednesdays. They usually read from a book and do the sharing. We also shared with them on our format. May God continue to use our men's groups to become good servant leaders.
Thanks to Toan, David and Norma who brought us delicious desserts!
In addtion to our regular meeting next month, we will also have SunRise worship on Saturday September 24. Elder Jack will lead us a talk on top of the mountain. Please reserve that morning from 6:00am to 9:30am.
-Brother Billy
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