Jon Acuff's Blog, page 100

The easiest way to write a country song.

I laughed approximately 82 times during this 8 minute video. It’s from a musician named Andy Gullahorn. He and I did a youth retreat once together for a church out of Florida. Years later, I found this online and knew that although it focuses on “the easiest way to write a country song,” Andy Gullahorn had created a masterpiece that belonged on the list of “Stuff Christians Like.”

In the video he says, “There’s a formula you plug a country song into and then you’re crying at the end.” So his friend challenges him to write one and gives him a title,

“They danced alone.” Immediately he writes a song where two kids at a junior high school dance, “dance alone.” And then the second verse is about them dancing alone at their wedding. Then in the third verse, well Andy has to kill one of the people in the song, so he can “dance alone.”

This is brilliant. Hope you enjoy it as much as me.

 

Not making a Christian version of “50 Shades of Gray.”

Dear Christian Community,

Can you and I please agree to never make a Christian version of the book “50 Shades of Gray?”

Can we come together, maybe even do life together, walk through a season, perhaps avoid a slippery slope and promise each other that we won’t publish our own version?

It’s going to be tempting. It’s sold millions and millions of copies. There will doubtless be a movie version that has Hollywood’s Brian Dennehy in it. We could definitely co-opt a lot of momentum by sliding in, adding some Bibly flavor and creating a Christian edition.

As a reader named Bryan pointed out last week, the title even writes itself, “50 shades of grace.” According to Amazon the lead character in the trilogy of books is even named “Christian!” The books are number 1, 2, and 3 on Amazon right now and my local bookstore was stocking 600 copies a day and couldn’t keep them in stock. The first book has over 7,800 reviews on Amazon which is approximately 7,600 more than my book Quitter.

But, fight it. Resist the temptation to do what we did to the fine folks at the milk association. Before the milk mustaches had even cooled on their “Got Milk?” campaign we had rushed to the presses with “Got God?” shirts. And stickers. And mugs. And candles that smelled like sandalwood.

Now, I’m not an unreasonable man. I’m willing to make some compromises. If you agree to not make a Christian version of “50 Shades of Gray,” I will in turn, give you other popular books you could Christianize instead. Such as these:

“What to Expect When You’re Expecting” = “What to expect when you’re expecting a really awesome quiet time.” (Whole book is about picking out a good journal.)

“Unbroken” = “God Spoken.” (This one is nice because it’s just the Bible with a new cover. That’s all you have to do.)

“The Catcher in the Rye” = “Catcher in the Sky.” (This book is about God placing all the stars in the sky.)

“The Great Gatsby” = “The Great Saulsy.” (Not going to lie, that name is clunky, but inside the pages, this book has a heart of gold. Think about it, an out of control king, trying to get people to love him and respect him. What did the people see in David that they didn’t see in him? He built an empire in his name, only to lose it all… the great Saulsy!)

“A Game of Thrones ” = “A Game of Throne. There’s only one true king and therefore, one throne.” (This one is perfect because all you have to do is delete an “S.” Boom! Cover is done.)

I could do this all day, but the point is, we don’t need a Christian alternative to 50 Shades of Gray. (And I can speak from experience, having created this blog as an alternative to another one.)

We can do this Christian community. I know we can. Don’t let me walk into a Christian bookstore in six months and see a book called “12 tribes of gray.”

Sincerely,

Jon

Question:

Do you agree? Do you think we need to avoid making a Christian version of “50 Shades of Gray?”

10 Types of VBS Volunteers

(It’s guest post Friday! Here’s one from Stephen Pepper. You can check out his blog here.  You can also follow him on Twitter @youthworkinit.  If you want to write a guest post for SCL, here’s how!)

10 Types of VBS Volunteers

At Youth Workin’ It, we’ve worked with many different youth workers and volunteers over our time in youth work and youth ministry. Seeing as it’s Vacation Bible School (VBS) season, we thought we’d give some tips on identifying 10 types of VBS volunteers.

All these essential helpers make up a team of VBS volunteers who can take on the world and, at the end of the week, still raise their hands in the air like Rocky:

1) The Servant: These are the people who answer the Falter Call. What’s a Falter Call? It’s when the pastor warns during church announcements, “We need some additional volunteers to help with VBS, otherwise the program will falter and won’t be able to go ahead.”

2) The Megaphone: When your calls for the children to be quiet go unheeded, this person is unleashed. Their naturally booming voice will override the screaming so effectively, children playing three neighborhoods over will be quiet and apologize for making so much noise.

3) The Cleaner-Upper: This person can be found perpetually picking up candy wrappers, plastic cups and glitter.  Honestly, trash at VBS is like the flour and oil from the story of Elijah and the widow – it simply doesn’t run dry. You need VBS volunteers like the Cleaner-Upper if you don’t want to end up having your church grounds looking like the streets of Times Square on New Year’s Day.

4) The Cling-On: There are two types of Cling-On parents. The first type would break into cold sweats if they left their child at VBS, so they volunteer so they can always be around them.

The second type of Cling-On is worried their child will get into trouble, so stay on hand to make sure they behave. Either way, be grateful for an extra pair of hands.

5) The Cling-To: This is the opposite of the Cling-On. They’re desperate to leave their child at VBS and get some downtime, but their child just won’t let go. They therefore become a volunteer by default, although you’ll have to give them tasks where they’ll be within a 2-foot radius of their child.

6) The Goofy Old Person: Every VBS has one of these volunteers. To look at them, you’d think they’d prefer to be in a rocking chair outside Cracker Barrel. But the moment VBS kicks off, they’re up front doing the wildest gestures to Bible songs, like someone slipped 5 Hour Energy in their cod liver oil.

7) The Sports Coach: Seriously, where do they come from? Does every church have some kind of miracle tree that sports coaches grow on, as every VBS manages to have one in their ranks.

The Pray-er: You can always rely on this person to single-handedly cover the VBS in prayer – at pre-VBS meetings, before kids show up each day, before worship, after worship, before snacks, after activities, at the end of VBS, etc. (This is the VBS volunteer I wish I was, but sadly am not).

9) The Youth: These can also be split into two types. The first type are youth who choose to be there – they want to become teachers, childcare assistants, etc.

The second type of youth are there begrudgingly because their parents told them to be. By the end of the week, though, they’ll be singing and dancing with the best of them, having the children sign their T-shirts and sticking glitter over their face; they’ll also be the first people to sign up to be VBS volunteers next year because they ended up enjoying it so much.

10) The Office Manager: This VBS volunteer is crucial. In the same way that the Pray-er takes care of all the praying, the Office Manager single-handedly takes care of all the admin with military precision. Their spiritual gift is organizing parental consent forms and any other paperwork-y stuff no one else wants to do.

Question: What other types of VBS volunteers have I missed?

For more great writing from Stephen, check out his blog.

Feeling compelled to tell Sunday school teachers why your kid has been absent the last few weeks.

Whenever we miss a few weeks of church, I feel compelled to explain the absence to my daughter’s Sunday school teacher, or anyone else who will listen for that matter.

If we’ve been out of town for a few weekends in a row, I’ll make sure to use some not-so-subtle sentences that tell the teacher where we’ve been when I drop off my daughter at the door.  “Here’s L.E.  She can’t wait to tell you about the beach.” Or, “L.E. is excited about Sunday School and wants to share all about her trip to the mountains, where we were last week, and not worshipping Satan somewhere if that’s what you assumed by our absence.”

Why do I do that? Part of the reason is that, at our church, there are so many kids that they have to carefully assign headcount to certain rooms.  And there’s a big chart of sticker nametags hanging on the door.  If you miss too many weeks, they remove your kid’s name from the wall.  Like that scene in Back to the Future where Michael J. Fox disappears from the photo, your kid no longer exists in that room.

It doesn’t stop with Sunday School, though. I’ll catch myself trying to explain why we missed church to random people who happen to sit in our same section week after week. I don’t know their last names, but I still feel compelled to let them know we had perfectly legitimate reasons not

to be at church for a few weeks.

Maybe it’s a pastor’s kid thing. Church is what we did every Sunday morning. Not attending was out of the question.  That would have been like giving both God and my dad the middle finger, so we went. Maybe it’s a fear thing too. I think people who are regular church attendees have a closer relationship with God; and in case I ever come up in their conversation with him, I want to make sure they have the most accurate attendance information and can pass on my excuses directly to him. Or maybe I think God is up there with a checklist like Santa Claus, and when he sees me miss church, that’s like a huge black mark.

It’s probably a potpourri of all three things, which stinks a little, but I’ll work it out next week, at church. Which is where I’ll be. If God asks you, please let him know I’m going pretty regularly. Except when we’re at the beach.

(This originally appeared in the Stuff Christians Like book.  If you want to pick up a copy, click here!)

Happy Fourth of July!

I hope you’re doing something awesome today, whether you live in the US and this is a day off or whether you live abroad and this is a Wednesday.

Regular Stuff Christians Like will return tomorrow!

Cheering when God is unexpectedly mentioned in a summer blockbuster movie.

If you haven’t seen the Avengers, this is a spoiler alert:

Captain America is in the movie.

That’s not a spoiler? He’s on the poster and in all the trailers? Fair enough, but if you did see it and you’re a Christian, you undoubtedly cheered in your seat at a certain scene.

You know the one I’m talking about.

Scarlet Johannsen, the criminally unarmed female lead (seriously she’s standing next to the Hulk and Thor with a tiny handgun), warns Captain America about getting in between Loki and Thor. She tells him he’s over his head because they are both “gods.” And Captain America responds with this:

Cue quiet cheer in my seat in the theater. Yay! A God shout out! Way to go movie. Or Marvel. Or Stan Lee. Yay all of you!

Granted, I didn’t think much was going to come of that. I didn’t anticipate an altar call at the end of the movie, me maybe baptizing a few people in the soda fountain in the lobby, popcorn raining down on us like delicious manna.

I’m not that silly. I know that’s not going to happen. I went on watching the movie with nary a thought about the Christian implications. Until …

that other scene with the Hulk. You know the one I’m talking about. It’s the one I watched 100 times on YouTube. I think I might have even stood up a little in the theater when he muttered “Puny gods.”

Granted, the Hulk didn’t then say, “There’s only one Alpha and Omega, He gives and takes away, blessed be the name …” but it’s close enough for me.

Is that enough to turn the Avengers into a sermon series, a la “The Matrix” and “Gladiator.” Maybe not, but there’s definitely enough in there for a Vacation Bible School Avengers theme.

Question:

Have you ever cheered when God was mentioned unexpectedly in a movie.

The Christian Hunger Games

Last week I was in Panama City Beach speaking at BigStuf, an amazing camp for teenagers. While we were there, we went and got some airbrushed shirts that would make your head spin they are so awesome.

During the hour we waited for them to finish the shirts, we looked around the store. That’s when I saw it, a shirt I should have known would be coming. A shirt who’s arrival was set in motion from the very first moment we created the “Lord’s Gym” shirt. (His pain, your gain.)

I give you …

The Christian Hunger Games!

I posted it on Instagram. (If you’re not following me on Instagram at JonAcuff, the delightfulness you are missing is almost criminal.)

The comments from you guys were hilarious. Now clearly, as someone who took a popular secular idea and turned it into a Christian idea, I can’t really spend a whole lot of time debating the merits of our need to create original works of art. (We should, argument over.)

But funny captions? Funny fake plots for the Christian Hunger Games? We can do that all day.

Think about the possibilities:

“Two star crossed loves, Ruth and Boaz, find themselves locked in a battle for manna …The Christian Hunger Games.”

So that’s what is up today.

If you were going to caption this photo or write the tagline or trailer for the The Christian Hunger Games, what would you write?

How to avoid getting caught looking at the lyrics during praise and worship

(It’s guest post Friday!  Here’s one by Amber Woodard. You can check out her blog here.  If you want to write a guest post for SCL, here’s how!)

How to avoid getting caught looking at the lyrics during praise and worship

So maybe you’re like me and didn’t grow up with a “church home.” You attended sporadically but usually didn’t commit to one particular place for some inane reason, such as “they don’t have a coffee shop” or “their youth pastor looks like a walrus.” But then, something clicked, and you found the church of your dreams. You started attending regularly and started enjoying yourself, even looking forward to going to service every week with one tiny exception.

Praise and worship time (henceforth referred to as p & w and pronounced as “p and dub” should you choose to read this aloud to all of your friends and family).

I’m not knocking p & w. It is the only time that you can sing at the top of your lungs without fear of retribution and mockery of your, shall we say, tone deaf voice. However, p & w separates the church men from the church boys; it’s when you really get a sense of who has grown up in a church and who was a little late to the party.

A lot of newfangled churches have planned for this by putting the p & w lyrics on screens that surround the praise team. This is all fine and dandy, but if you’re trying to get in good with the lifers, you don’t want to be caught reading the screen. If that sounds like you, then you’re in luck.

Over the course of many years and many churches, I have developed a few methods that  allowed me to look at the lyrics for the p & w songs without being busted by my new friends…or making it seem like I’m intently studying members of the praise team.

The “look to the heavens” method: In this one, you flick your eyes upwards, as though looking to the heavens because you’re so overwhelmed by God’s goodness. This gives you the benefit of looking super spiritual and letting you sneak a peek.

The “locking eyes with the praise team” method: Performing in front of people is nerve-wracking, even for the best p & w pros. Sometimes a reassuring smile from a member of the congregation can give them a boost and let them know they’re doing a good job. So what if you just happen to be able to study the lyrics for a second? You’re encouraging someone, and doesn’t that matter more than anything else?

The “study ahead of time” method: This one involves doing a little prep work, but the payoff can be big. Before you start attending a church regularly, begin listening to your local Christian music station.

I live in Nashville, which just happens to have two of these stations. Try to contain your jealousy. If you don’t have a local station, listen to one of Nashville’s stations online. Once you’ve listened to the radio a couple of weeks, you’ll start realizing that you sort of know the lyrics to some of the songs. Once you start attending church, you’ll realize that they use some of the songs that you already kinda know the lyrics to.

You can mumble your way through some of the songs and still come out okay. Also, most churches use a Chris Tomlin song at least once a week (mine used two during last week. Two! That’s 66% of our p & w time!), so learn a couple of his big hits, and you’re golden.

The “choosing the church that has released a praise CD” method: Again, this one involves prep work, but if used with the last method, you can come into the church looking like an expert. Buy the church’s CD and start listening to it whenever the Christian radio stations have a commercial break.

The “join in December” method: This one is pretty self-explanatory. Most churches will rely on a heavy dose of Christmas-themed praise and worship songs during the month of December, so if you join then and consider yourself a Christmas music aficionado, you should be able to coast into the New Year without any problems.

If you use one or more of these methods, you’ll be a p & w pro faster than you can sing the chorus to “Our God is Greater”!

For more great writing from Amber, check out her blog.

 

Wishing you had an easy job, like working at a church.

Don’t you wish you worked at a church?  That would be such a dream job!

I’ve never been blessed that way, but my assumption is that, other than Sunday, a church job is kind of like having a really long quiet time.  You probably get to read the Bible all day and take long breaks in your prayer closet and spend eight hours a day growing your own spiritual life.

I’m sure the phone rings sometimes, like when someone needs a casserole of hope after a death in the family or a youth group van breaks down. But for the most part, I imagine the average day is filled with a lot of “me time.”

And God is your boss.  How cool is that?  There’s no politics or in-fighting or gossip like at the average corporate job.  It’s just a collection of people, a family really, living out of the gifts God has given them.  Loving on each other.  (You actually work at a place where “love on” is an acceptable verb!)  Everyone is all on the same page, pouring out to each other the love that God is pouring into them.

I bet there’s always an acoustic guitar being played somewhere in the office.  (Do they even call them an “office” at church?  Let’s call it a “happy holy spot” instead.) And when you go to make copies on the printer, you’ll hear the acoustic guitar and probably join an impromptu sing-along right there in the mailroom and make up a song.

Is it even really a full-time job?  Seriously, other than maybe a few hours on Sunday morning, what else are you doing?  Praying? Worshipping? Holding car washes to raise money for mission trips?  What’s that take, four hours tops? How do you spend the rest of the week?

Being loved on, I bet.  See, there it is again!  That’s the kind of thing that is constantly happening if you work at a church, but good luck saying that at a real job.  If tomorrow in one of my meetings at work I said, “I really need to love on these third-quarter budget estimates,” I would immediately get “laughed on” by my co-workers.  Not if you work at church.  They support each other!

Plus, they’ve got an entire congregation full of people that love them unconditionally.  Imagine having hundreds of people that are fans of what you do and how you do it.  People that are going to wholeheartedly accept what you do and never write mean emails no matter if they disagree with your decisions.  Me?  I read negative opinions from our customers all the time.  People that work in churches?  They’re opening thank-you notes and sunshine emails and gift baskets with delicious cheeses and spiced meats all day long.

Someday, if they ever sunset my job (a fun-sounding euphemism we’re actually now using to replace the word “eliminate”), maybe I’ll get a church job and get to live the sweet life.

(This originally appeared in the Stuff Christians Like book.  If you want to pick up a copy, click here!)

The 1 question I ask when I’m afraid.

I’m pretty confident on the outside. But on the inside, I’m pretty fearful.

I think psychologists call this scientific state, “being human.”

And when I’m afraid of something, I don’t just casually fear it. I go all in, marshaling every degree of creativity I possess as I dress up the monster hiding under the bed. (If you ever doubt you’re creative, just look at the exquisite colors and words you give your fears.)

When I face new decisions, like say writing a new book that I may have turned in a few weeks ago to the editor, I often feel like I am one mistake from being a hobo.

I don’t fear just writing the wrong book.

I imagine losing my job in some sort of spectacular way that prevents me from ever finding gainful employment again. I don’t just get blacklisted in one industry; I manage to get barred from every industry on the planet. My family would leave me too, because I’d be a hobo, and they wouldn’t want to be part of my new drifter lifestyle.

Riding the rails and what not. I’d kick around the Pacific Northwest and try to become a glassblower or something, but that wouldn’t work either. Ultimately, I’d fall apart and people would use me as a cautionary tale of extreme potential gone to extreme waste.

Cue mournful trumpet sound.

But, lately, I’ve started to ask a really simple question when I’m afraid. It’s only 6 words, but I’ve been surprised how powerful those few words are. Here’s what I say when I’m afraid now:

“Where is God in this fear?”

Every time I ask that question, the answer is always the same, “Nowhere.” When I paint scary pictures in my head of failures yet to pass or horrors yet to be, they are always the same. There is no God in that fear. When I imagine myself losing everything I have and trying to pick back up the pieces of my life, there is no God to comfort me. When I imagine a tragedy that has crumbled my family, there is no God to reassure us. When I imagine any sort of fear about my future, there is no God present.

There’s just me. With my meager skills and abilities trying to navigate the entire world.

That should be scary. I’m wildly incapable of trying to control the world. I’ve tried. It didn’t work.

God, on the other hand? You’d be surprised how very few things get out of control when they are in his hands. Never is the word that comes to mind. You’d be surprised how many situations are beyond his ability to redeem. None is the word that comes to mind. You’d be surprised how many monsters are bigger than him. Zero is the word that comes to mind.

When I ask myself, “Where is God in this fear?” I pause long enough to realize the apocalyptic future world my fear is telling me is almost here has no God in it. But my world does. The world where he calls me son and beloved and work-of-art does.

Fear is a lonely thing because it always tries to tell you there is no God. Don’t listen to it. God is near. And fear is a liar.

Question:

What’s a fear you have right now in your life?