Family Integrity Promotes Father - Son Workshop

Family Integrity, a support group for families, is sponsoring a Father - Son workshop designed for Christians in Palmerston North for Saturday, October 2. Craig Smith, spokesman for the Palmerston North-based organization, said Family Integrity is bringing Geoffrey Botkin, a father of seven, from Christchurch to tackle such issues as “The Lost Tools of Father-Son Discipleship”, “Mistakes Fathers Make in Raising Sons” and “Preparing Sons for Marriage”. “The workshop promises to be a landmark experience in people’ s lives,” Mr Smith said.

Originally from the USA, Mr Botkin shifted his family to New Zealand about six years ago. Having previously produced or executive-produced more than one-hundred documentary films, television productions and other media projects, he and his older sons made some significant contributions to the Family Television Network of New Zealand. As a research journalist, church pastor, political consultant and lecturer in world views, theology and philosophy, Mr Botkin has thoroughly researched the issues. Combining that with the fact that he and his wife Victoria have home educated all their children, Mr Botkin can offer wisdom from both the study of the theoretical and the in-depth personal experience of the practical.

Pointing out that because most of us fathers have been distracted with pursuing an income or lifestyle “just a little better” than what we’ve got, Mr Botkin says common mistakes we make include not watching our sons’ hearts and not shielding them from danger and defilement. Although we fathers are fully adequate to train our sons as potential leaders and vital contributors to the good of the church, society and the family enterprise, we often simply don’t plan to do this and by de fault let them be mentored by secular “experts”: teachers, guidance counsellors, society trends, TV and sports heroes, etc.

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>