The Melheimian Sabbatiblog

Meet Crash (And follow our preschool of the performing arts launch this summer with him)

I'd like too introduce you to Crash!, the super hero alter ego of an imaginative little boy named Patrick Isadore Patterson (PIP) and his dog Ump. PIP is the main character in an ensemble cast of kids/adults who attend the fictional "Preschool of the Performing Arts" where they learn all of their lessons in song, dance, theater and art.

 

Four Violet Dogs

 

After four years of studying how preschoolers learn best, a pile of crazy writing retreats, musician retreats, cartoon designing sessions and the production of 360 songs (with spelling, colors, numbers, etc., embedded), we're finally ready to invite REAL children to enter the story of PIP and learn along with him as the Preschool Incubators Project begins its first set of tests in June in:

1. Trinity Lutheran in Stillwater, MN  (yeah, I'll be on the floor with 4 year olds for seven weeks for our suburban test)

2. Frontline Ministries in Orlando, FL with Arto Woodley, Jr. (urban test), and

3. Little Beginnings Preschool in  Cook, MN with Nancy Glass and Nancy Reing at (rural test).

This is brain-based learning on an arts-based platform. 360 fun learning songs (like the Dog spelling song above), and as many dances, art projects, and acting bits to go along with the learning theory. We'll do the shake-down cruise in these four settings this summer, then polish everything based on the feedback and begin a second series of tests this fall. By next summer we'll be ready to hand it over to a couple dozen regionally selected churches and ministries. We have formed a new non-profit Rising Star Workshop and a for-profit cartoon company that will double tithe profits to subsidize low income areas and bring "access to excellence to the poorest of the poor". 

If your ministry would like to look into applying to be a test site and run a "preschool summer arts immersion" with our stuff in the summer of 2013, I'm happy to fill you in on details.

Take a look at the "PIPD(Small)" week pdf and you'll get a sneak peak of what each week entails. Then, if you'd like to know more about the brain-based/art-based learning theory and how we apply it to the early learning environment, download "Designing with the Young Mind" or the more detailed "Neurology of Early Learning". 

I'd love to have your feedback.

Download PIPD(Small)

Download Designing with the Young Mind

Download Neurology of Early Learning

Faith Inkubators Korea

Download 01 GospelBroadcastKoreaMelheim

Here's a recent interview done with the Gospel Broadcasting Company on FAITH 5.

Vineland, Vineland, Vineland (What's in a name?)

Len Sweet posted today that in 1507 our country was named by a German professor, in a French college, for an Italian navigator, in the service of the King of Portugal. Made me think.
My ancestors actually named this continent Vineland 500 years before the rest of Europe got messed up in the naming game. It just didn't stick.

As semioticians, we believe in the power of symbols, signs and names. Names have a shaping power all their own. The entity often takes the identity of the label. That being the case, I'm wondering what our country would look like today if the name "Vineland" had stuck? What would our reputation be to the world? Our place? Our status? Our image? All in all, I'm guessing the "United States of Vineland" would probably be a bit of a happier place and enjoy a more welcomed position in the world. See if you don't agree:

"O beautiful for spacious skies
For verdant fields of vines
Thy purple grapes ferment and flow
To make champagnes and wines
O Vineland, Vineland, Vineland
God shed his grapes on thee
And crowned thy vines
With table wines
From sea to shining sea

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
A-stained in purple hue
Who stomped and trod
The Grapes of God
To make the Old World new
O Vineland, Vineland, Vineland
God fill thine every glass
Confirm thy soul in self-control
Thy liberty with class

O beautiful for heroes proved
In libations, not strife
Instead of war, the wine they'd pour
And raise a glass to life
O Vineland, Vineland, Vineland
May God thy grapes refine
Forgive thy sins
With Ports and Zins
And peace, thy frame of mind

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the days
Pinot, Merlot, Marsala sweet
O Queenly Chardonnays
O Vineland, Vineland, Vineland
God shed his grapes on thee
And crowned thy vines
With table wines
From sea to shining sea"

Neurology Meets Theater in Christian Education

Just turned in my "A Neurological Case for Designing Performance Arts into the Core of Christian Education in the Post-Gutenberg/Neo-Google World" paper. It's the basis for all future Faith Ink materials, but also for the preschool incubators project.

Download Melheim_dmin546_essaylong3

Download ApplicationB

Download AppendixC.1

FAITH 5 App

In an effort to get families to set aside a few minutes of sacred space each night, I'm in the final stages of polishing a little free FAITH 5 app. I'll be giving this away to encourage families to do their nightly check-in around the "liturgy" of five steps - share, read, talk, pray, bless. It'll be handed in as part of my DMIN dissertation artifact for with Len Sweet and company. Here's what the app icon will likely look like. Any interested testers out there for version 1.0? I'd enjoy the feedback before I hand it in at the end of May.

Go to Hell

GoToHellwithRichMelheim2

Go to Hell

Now there's a sermon title for you. I challenged my doctoral cohort to preach on it this week: Jesus descended to hell, and if we're his followers, maybe we should go there, too, and do a little rescuing.

Our cohort chuckled and bantered about the possibilities on Monday, and that was that... or so I thought. Over the last few days it occured to me that we all go to hell from time to time. Some make it out. What would it take to have such resiliance as a young person so that you could make it out of the hells? I arrived at St. John in Grove City knowing I was going to preach, and when I saw the bulletin I found my DMIN SF10 buddy Pastor Scott Ness had taken the liberty to title my sermon "Go to Hell." Sooooo.... that's what I preached on.

If you're jogging or driving anywhere this week and have about a half hour to consider something, may I invite you to go to hell with me?  And Teddy Roosevelt? And Franklin Roosevelt? And Winston Churchill? And Jesus?

 

 

Psalm 22: "He Has Done It!"

As you prepre to read the last words of Christ, you might consider what may have been said inside Jesus head... but not heard.

The "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" Psalm 22 ends: "All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord and all the families of the nations shall worship before him... to him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him." I kinda like to think that Jesus whispered the end of that Psalm to himself before giving up the ghost.  And the very last line in Psalm 22? "Future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it!"

Here's a song I wrote with Pastor Mike Lee a few years back in Colorado, arranged and sung by Robert  Robinson of the Twin City Gospel Choir. Use it if you like it, and let me know how it goes.

 

 

MV0258HeHasDoneIt

Download PS0258HeHasDoneIt

 

Good Friday Closing - Looking to Jesus

Here's a soft song from Hebrews 12 for Good Friday. Consider using it as you empty the altar and close the doors and walk away in silence.

MV0108LookingtoJesus

Download PS0108LookingtoJesus

Designing with the Young Mind in Mind

Download Designing with the Young Mind



Attached is my philosophy for redesigning all early learning as brain-based learning on an arts-based platform. We begin our tests of a model that's 4 years in the making this summer in LA, Orlando, and Minnesota. Please feel free to download the PDF, give it a read, share it with whomever you think might be interested, then let's talk.