2009 HEAV Conference: Saturday

Saturday (June 13):

The morning keynote was Voddie Baucham on "Cultural War." His text was Acts 4:18-21.
He chided churches and pastors for "educational antinomianism"—that is not taking a stand in the pulpit in encouraging Christians to leave "government" education.

He noted three factors in our culture today:

1. Religious relativism;
2. New Tolerance. Here he cited the illogical stance of those who say that have tolerance for everything except intolerance.
3. Philosophical pluralism.

At the close he said that some say they want to go back to the way things were in the 50s and noted that was not so good for his people. He then said some want to go back 150 years—that was even worse! He noted that we cannot recapture some ideal that never existed. Instead, we have to strive now to place all things under the crown rights of King Jesus.

Llew and I spent the rest of the morning in the exhibition hall and used curriculum sale getting books for next year. My best find on the religion table was a copy of Lelan Ryken’s Wordly Saints: The Puritans as They Really Were (out of print) for only a few bucks.

In the afternoon I went to Joel Salatin’s workshop on "Working With Your Kids So They Will Want to Work With You." Salatin is a farmer who runs Polyface Farms outside Staunton, VA. He and his family were pioneer Christian homeschoolers in VA and he has also been a pioneer in the home grown food community.

Here were his ten points:

1. Integrate your children into every aspect of life.
2. Inspire them to love work. Don’t ever give work as punishment. Make work task oriented and not time oriented.
3. Give them freedom to work and even to fail.
4. Create investment opportunities for them.
5. Encourage your child to have a separate small business.
6. Maintain humor with kids.
7. Pay the children for their work. Don’t give allowances. No one should be paid for breathing!
8. Praise! Praise! Praise!
9. Enjoy your vocation! Children generally warm up to your heart’s passion. If you enjoy your work, they will enjoy theirs.
10. Back off from your personal domains and delegate to them while you do other things.

I so enjoyed Salatin that I stayed for his second seminar on turning your home and garden into a profit center. Salatin is an interesting man. He said the home grown food movement is where the homeschool movement was 30 years ago.

Till next year's meeting!

JTR