IPC Messenger 2017 May 2017 | Page 3

Choir Tour Trip April 21-23 Music Ministry Just a few facts you need to know about our choirs: Handbell Choir is taking a break until fall. The Chapel Choir (2 nd grade-5 th grade) will attend Summer Waves on Jekyll Island on May 20. The cost is free if you have been regularly attending Chapel Choir, otherwise the cost is $19.95. If we go with 15 or more, the cost goes down to $15.00. The children will need a towel, lunch money, a bathing suit, and sun screen. Lunch is available on site and will cost $10-15. We leave church at 9:00 a.m. and return at 5:00 p.m. Practicing for Sunday morning at Sovereign Grace Presbyterian Church The Chapel Choir will sing for the last time this spring at evening worship on May 21. The Youth Choir will sing for the opening of Point Pleasant on May 28. They will be singing during our usual hymn singing time at 5:15 p.m. The Youth Choir will rehearse on Sunday, May 21 at 4:00 p.m. The Sanctuary Choir will continue to sing through June. However, Wednesday, June 3, will most likely be our last rehearsal until August. In Christ’s service, Kathryn Van Eck T he W ell -O rdered H ome from page 1 environment for children. The first has to do with driving over a bridge that has no guardrails. What does nearly everyone tend to do? he asks. Answer: we all tend to drift to the middle. Why? When a bridge has guardrails, do we use them? Of course not. We don’t drive by Braille, bumping the rails to identify our position. Rather, the rails define the space. We gain security from their presence though we don’t use them. Borders are comforting for us. The other illustration he uses comes from the schools-without-fences educational fad of the late 1960’s. The theory was that fences were bad. Fences limit. Fences restrict. Fences confine. Fences stifle creativity. Open schools were proposed MESSENGER as the answer, schools without fences. As the fences were removed, school administrators were shocked by what they found. When the fences were up, students would fill the campus open spaces right up to the fences themselves. When the fences came down, the students huddled in the middle. The lesson, he urges, is that children (and youth) need routines and rules that define their freedom and its limits. These “fences” provide secure borders within which they may safely live. The fences form part of their identity: we are a people who thrive within these parameters, enjoying life within, not traveling without. Response? Plan to have regular mealtimes. Aim to gather the family MAY 2017 for two mealtimes every day, probably breakfast and dinner. Plan for the family to have devotions every day at a set time, morning or evening. Plan to read to the children daily. Plan to be at church every Sunday AM and PM. Plan to observe a Sunday Sabbath. Plan to attend all of the children’s special events: ball games, recitals, awards banquets. Plan to discipline every infraction of household norms. Pick up, straighten up, clean up the house. Let everything have its place. Your “ardor for order” will go a long way toward providing a safe, secure, and happy environment for the rearing of children. More importantly, it will provide the time and circumstances to “set before them a godly example,” and to “bring them up in TLJ PAGE 3