Spunkie's Book Club

Spunkie & family were delighted to find this brilliantly clever and insightful, yet humorous work in the Christian Inspiration section of our local Barnes & Noble. It is a must read for all Christians--A Field Guide to Evangelicals & Their Habitat by Joel Kilpatrick. For those of you Christians who appreciated Spunkie's sense of humor, this read should be quite a treat for you. For those of you Christians who felt perfect and sinless enough to judge the Spunkie clan and deem their humor inappropriate and "un-Christian", perhaps this book will help you reconsider your position and understand that Spunkie was only trying to point out, in a light-hearted and somewhat mocking way, some idiosyncrasies that evangelical Christians can sometimes have. And for any non-Christians who may be reading this, we are most enthused to have you join us. We acknowledge that sometimes we Christians veer away from the thesis of our faith (which is Christ, who was perfect and without sin, died in order to be a substitute for all humans, none of whom are perfect and are full of sin, in order that we might not perish, but live eternally with our Maker), and focus more on petty issues (the "correctness" of homeschooling and the "wrongness" of public schools being just one of many thousands of them). In other words, we would like to acknowledge that sometimes the Christian community can "major" in minor things (again, methods of schooling would be an example of one of the minor things). We are sure we owe some apologies for the obnoxious and abrasive way that Christians can come across. Sometimes the best way to reveal our flaws is through a little humor and satire; that is often the best way for our little human minds to see the absurdness in certain things that we are doing.

Spunkie & family say "kudos" to Joel Kilpatrick for putting together this book, in which the absurdness of what we evangelicals can sometimes do is compiled in a manner in which we can laugh out loud. And, because Spunkie focuses predominatly on the issue of education, we want to make sure you read Chapter 10 "Evangelical Education". To read the mostly positive reviews given of A Field Guide..., click here (scroll down to Spotlight Reviews and Customer Reviews).

We quote some of the best reviews right here:

"...If you're an evangelical, reading this book is like seeing yourself on video for the first time -- you'll realize you're not as attractive as you thought. Even so, you'll find yourself laughing way too much and you might even shed a tear and determine to change the way you go about living out your faith. I highly recommend this book, as it is challenging and funny." --A reviewer on amazon.com

"Having grown up in the church and attended a Christian college, it's scary how right on Kilpatrick is in his field guide. I laughed out loud several times in recognition, and shook my head in embarassment as I noted truths about myself and friends of mine. This is a must-read if you are an evangelical with a sense of humor."--A reviewer on amazon.com

Spunkie believes that humor is important for Christians. That's just the way it is.

Happy reading! Please comment and let us know what you think of the book once you've read it.
And we'd like to close with this quote from the classic Christian philosopher C.S. Lewis...
"Only the devil cannot abide to be mocked."

'Twas the Night Before Christmas

'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the nation

Some teachers are being light

A very Christ-like sensation

Some youngsters enter the classroom with much discord

God loves them so much, but they don't know the Lord

These children sit in their desks with great feelings of instability

While godly teachers love them with a supernatural ability

The teachers without fail and the principal with a nod

Still begin every morning with "one nation under God"

Christian parents work hard and pray to the Lord

That the teachers and students will see the truth of His Word

While homeschooling parents who don't know these schools

Write mean things on their blogs and think they're so cool

When what to my wondering eyes should appear

God does hear our prayers and he's in our schools here

So with the wink of an eye, public schoolers can derive

There is a God; He is alive

In Him we live and we survive!!!!

By Spunkie

To Our Readers

For the time being, Spunkie Public School is no more. The sidebar content will remain for now, as we feel it is an excellent resource for anyone who is interested in programs and ministries that are pro-actively serving our public schools.

First of all, we would like to apologize if we offended anyone. While we were hoping to get a reaction from our readers, we assure you that spiteful offense or hurt feelings were not our goals.

However, if you were offended, take this opportunity to truly think about your reaction: much of the phrasing and logic on our blog was similar (and in some cases indentical) to that of the blogs we were attempting to parody. If your reaction to our blog was so visceral, how would you expect, for example, an atheist attending public school to react while reading many of the homeschooling blogs on the internet that make equally wild assertions, "“prove"” them with scripture, and expect to be taken seriously? Such extremism is harmful to Christianity as a faith, and such detriment is not something that we felt we could sit by and idly watch. Parody was simply the medium we chose to open minds (and, hopefully, we got a few laughs along the way).

Unfortunately, we do not know exactly what rumors and accusations are being passed around behind our backs, and, as such, we are not able to respond to them directly. We have, however, received indication that a considerable amount of gossip is going around in an attempt to discover who is running this blog, and most of it is wrong. We would like to remind you that "gossiping" over the internet and accusing a Christian brother/sister of an offense without first going to him is unscriptural. We are aware circumstantial evidence might seem to point to some particular individuals, but we would like to remind all of you that the internet is a land of numbers and proxies, routers and computers: things are not always as they seem, and making absolute identification of an individual person sitting at a specific terminal is almost impossible. Keeping this in mind, we hope you will not make an ungracious assumption about any blogger without first speaking to him or her.

And, with that, we are going to end our little blog. We hope that you had the happiest of holidays and pray that you will all have a blessed 2006. However, we are still here and have not lost the ability to read and write: if ideas as extreme as the ones parodied in this blog continue to circulate, do not be surprised to hear from us again. Let's remember that our Christian brothers and sisters reside in all segments of the educational community: public schooling, private schooling, and homeschooling and let's keep our eyes and our blogs focused on Christ, the all-sufficient Savior who is indeed very present in all our schools.

And with that, we must sign off for now.

- Spunkie Public School