Jon Acuff's Blog, page 112

Surviving church as a single.

We are mere days away from Valentine's Day and I must share a brief confession.

Single adults, I have failed you.

Although I've written a handful of ideas about being single at church, I've never really done that topic justice.

So today, I created a list of all the different stereotypes and challenges singles have to navigate when they go to church. From the "get married right this second" friends to the "this guy has a pulse and so do you so maybe that's enough in common to fall in love" friends, it's all here.

And I can't take credit for it. I read your comments about real things that have happened to you at church, got ideas from my single friends, and received a great email from a pastor named Jeff. I took it all and created a point-based scorecard.

Ready to play?



The Surviving Church as a Single Scorecard

1. Your church doesn't have a singles ministry. = + 1 point

2. Your church has a singles ministry, but it's combined with the college ministry, which creates opportunities for conversations like this:

Student: "My roommate bought a microwave for our dorm room. I love being a freshman!"

Single: "My 401K is underperforming." = +2 points

3. Your church has a singles ministry, but it's a triad that combines college, single adults and divorce recovery. = + 3 points

4. Your church has a singles ministry, but it's the dreaded quad, combining college, single adults, divorce recovery and retired widowers who refuse to move to Florida. = +4 points

5. Someone pays you the world's most backhanded compliment: "I just don't understand how someone as great as you isn't married yet." = +1 point

6. Someone told you, "If you stop looking for love, you'll find it." +2 points for each time you've heard that.

7. At church, people give you weird looks if you refuse to sit in the "singles" section of the sanctuary. = +1 point

8. When people introduce you, they say, "This is Matt, my single friend." = +2 points

9. When people introduce you, they feel compelled to list out your accomplishments, "This is Sally, my single friend who owns her own home, drives a luxury sedan, and has a very, very stable job." = +3 points

10. Your friends who have been married for 15 minutes act like they suddenly don't remember anything about dating and therefore can't give you any advice. "It's been so long since I dated, and things have changed so much. I'm just out of that whole scene." + 2 points

11. People are constantly volunteering you for things because "you're single, you've got so much free time." = +1 point

12. People at church act a little surprised when they ask you, "How are you doing?" and you respond with, "Things are great right now. I love my life!" = +1 point

13. Married friends try to live vicariously through you, asking questions like, "What did you do this weekend? Road trip? I bet you went on some crazy cool, singles road trip, right?" = +2 points

14. Someone you just met for the first time said a sentence like this to you, "If you want to get married, you need to ______." = +2 points

15. Whenever married friends call you at noon on a Saturday, they start the conversation by saying, "Did I just wake you up?" = +3 points

16. You assume that if you don't get engaged by final exams of your senior year in college you'll never get married. = -2 points

17. You've secretly always wanted your own cat but are afraid that ownership of a single kitten will become some sort of gateway drug to becoming "the cat lady." = – 2 points

18. You've ever given an impassioned, enraged monologue on the injustice that men who are single get to age gracefully and be considered "bachelors," while women are instantly judged as "crazy cat ladies." = – 3 points

19. You've got a "don't perpetuate the cat lady stereotype," monologue locked and loaded at all times and have already stopped reading this post so you can put it in the comments section. = – 5 points

20. Someone has quoted the "it's not good for man to be alone" Bible verse to you. = +2 points.

21. When friends invite you to their church, they start the invite by listing both the quantity and hotness of the singles that go there. = +1 point

22. That friend was named Jon Acuff and he said, "No one in Atlanta should ever involuntarily remain single with so many awesome single people at North Point Community Church." (I've said this a lot. My bad.) = + 3 points

23. Your married friends tip toe around you during February because they think you're too delicate to handle the completely made up holiday, Valentine's Day. = +1 point

24. You are too delicate to handle Valentine's Day and have been known to describe it with a rich tapestry of words no Christian should even know exist, never mind actually say out loud. = + 1 point

25. The person who leads the singles ministry at your church got married in 1964. = +10 points for each decade they've been married.

26. Someone told you, "Maybe you need to focus on being more like a Proverbs 31 woman." = +2 points for each time it wasn't sincere encouragement.

27. You didn't know you were supposed to be unhappy as a single adult until you went to church and found the singles ministry to be akin to a support group. = +3 points

28. Upon hearing that you went on a first date with someone, your single friends at church stop inviting you to the single events because "you're in a relationship already." = +2 points

29. Upon hearing that you went on two dates, your married friends at church start telling you, "I'll be praying that this is the one!" = + 3 points

30. Your best friend of 15 years gets married and then suddenly acts like a magical gap has opened up between you and decides that, until you get married too, you can't be close again. Because you just don't understand each other anymore. = +3 points

31. To justify giving a four-week marriage sermon series to a congregation that is 60% single, the pastor throws out one blanket statement like this at the beginning of the series, "And you single people listen up to this too, this well serve you well when you get married." = +2 points

32. You set your alarm to "not going to church today" after the first week of the marriage sermon series. = – 2 points

33. The only time your married friends invite you over is when they need a babysitter. = +3 points

34. Someone throws the "Paul was never married" card on you. = +2 points

35. Friends assume that the only qualification that matters to you when it comes to finding a date is that she's available and set you up with people you have nothing in common with. = +2 points

36. You've ever said the rhyme, "I'm a bachelor til' the rapture." = – 1 point

37. During a prayer at church celebrating wedding anniversaries, the person praying says a special prayer for all the people who are still single and lonely. (True story) = +1 point

38. Your friend says that creating a dating profile on eHarmony is a sign that you might not be trusting God enough to provide a soul mate. = + 1 point

39. You've developed highly sensitive, "They're about to throw the bouquet" radar and know exactly when to leave a wedding. = +2 points

40. Instead of saying that you're "single," your friends describe you as "not married yet." = +2 points

How did you score? Did I miss any? Have you experienced some that just weren't on that list?

Singles of the world unite, post your score proudly, and when someone tries to stereotype you, tell them Razzle Dazzle, Razzle Dazzle.

(This is a Throwback Thursday post from a few years ago.)

Does God want you to be miserable?

When people talk to me about geography in Nashville, I do one of two things:

1. I nod my head and pretend I know what part of the city they are referring to.

2. I tell them, "I don't know where that is. We just moved here."

Neither one of those two responses is entirely true. Pretending I know is not true and saying we just moved here isn't true. We've lived here for 18 months. So why don't I know my way around town yet?

Because I kissed geography goodbye when I was a kid.

I decided a long time ago that I didn't have room in my head for street names or directions or addresses. I realized I had limited real estate in my brain and essentially told geography, "Kick rocks chump."

Would it be fair to say that, as a young boy, I predicted a future in which we would all have handheld GPS units? Is the term "visionary" one we should use to describe me? Tough to say, but the reality is that years ago I bid adieu to both geography and math.

As a writer, math is my Achilles' heel. The mere mention of numbers makes me cringe. I am approximately one year away from not being able to help my 8-year-old with her math homework. I hate math.

Which is why I used to think God would call me into the mission field to teach calculus.

My fear was that, if I gave God my life, if I turned over all my hopes and dreams to him, he would instantly make me train to become a "mathlete." I'd have to get an abacus and complicated calculator and spend my days doing things I hated to do.

Why?

Because I thought that's how God did things.

And I'm not the only one who thinks that way sometimes.

I do a joke when I speak to church groups. I say, "Every Christian knows that the first thing God does if you give him your life is make you move to Africa to become a missionary. You'll go zero to hut in about 4.2 seconds." And folks laugh, but there's a crazy truth behind that joke. If we think the first thing God will do to us if we come close to him is the worst thing we can imagine, then we serve the worst God ever.

If you're not wired to be a missionary in Guam, if nothing about that feels at all like what God has uniquely created you to do, why would he immediately call you to that task if you trusted him with your life?

That's an extreme example, but you'd be surprised how often I saw that happen last year. Because I wrote a book about closing the gap between your day job and your dream job, a lot of people have talked with me about figuring out what they're called to do.

And it's amazing how many people think being a Christian means doing the opposite of what you're passionate about.

A chaplain told me that one of his college students came to him and said, "I'm conflicted. I really want to serve the Lord, but I love film making. I don't know what to do."

That word "but" is such a beautiful trick by the enemy. That young man felt alive and filled with joy when he made films. In those moments, though, he couldn't imagine that God was happy about that, or enjoyed him making films or could be served and glorified through film making.

He didn't say, "I really want to serve the Lord, and I love film making." He said, "I really want to serve the Lord, but I love film making."

I don't know how exactly we got here. I think, in some ways, it's an extreme over-correction to the prosperity gospel. When you talk about how good God is, people can't wait to say, "He's not an ATM machine in the sky who magically gives you whatever you want?" But who ever said that? Who said that a life filled with the joy of God was devoid of hardship or never full of moments where you must mourn as loud as you dance?

I'm sad for a culture where there is serving God on one side, and on the other side of that is joy. Where those two things are believed to be separate. Where we are forced to take our individual talents, put them under our bed, apologize about them and try to fit the handful of "serving opportunities" that match our definition of Christian.

I think back to the conversion of Paul.

Do you remember before he became a Christian? When he was called Saul?

He was a bold, powerful, vigilant persecutor of believers. And then God met him on the road to Damascus and turned him into a quiet, meek bookkeeper who spent his remaining days in a cave alone transcribing ancient texts.

Not at all! God turned him into a bold, powerful, vigilant promoter of belief.

He didn't squelch what was inside Paul. He didn't ignore the talents he himself had placed there. If anything, he called them out in deeper, louder, more beautiful ways. He showed Paul what it really meant to be Paul!

Maybe you will be a missionary. Maybe that's the call you will get. But if it's not, please don't for a second believe that God wants you to be miserable. That he wants to call you into an adventure where your true gifts will shrivel up and die. That his chief aim is to make sure you never experience joy in his presence.

Because that's not the kind of God who would ever love you enough to send his son to die for you.

Taking a chaperone with you on a date.

There are some Christian colleges that require you to take a school appointed chaperone with you if go out on a date with somebody.

I have so many questions about that practice:

1. Do you get to choose the chaperone who goes with you? Like, what if everyone hates Brian the chaperone cause he chews with his mouth open at dinner, and he talks during movies? Do you get to refuse to have Brian and, instead, get to audition other chaperones? "Bill, I'd love to have you along on this date I'm about to go on, but it was a little pitchy for me, dawg."

2. Do they sit at the table with you while you eat, or are they sitting off in a different table? Far enough away that it doesn't feel awkward, but close enough that if you try to make out they can Matrix dive across the restaurant and shot block you?

3. If they do sit with you at dinner, do you have to make conversation with them too? If you ask your date, "Where's the one place in the world you wish you could travel?" Does Brian jump in and say, "Hawaii! Definitely Hawaii, om nom nom, smack smack while I eat my baby back ribs."

4. Would it be weirder if the chaperone talked during dinner or kept silent? I think it would kind of feel like there was a creepy serial killer at the table if the whole night he just silently took small bites of food while he watched you eat.

5. Do I have to pay for the chaperone's meal at the restaurant? If that's the case, Brian, you're drinking water buddy and ordering from the "appetizers" portion of the menu.

6. What if the chaperone hits it off better with the girl on the date than you do? The college would have to make sure the chaperones you hired had no game.

7. What if you went out dancing for the date? Do all three of you have to dance together? I'm kidding!! If you had to take a chaperone, you're not going dancing. That was a trick question!

I attended Samford University, a Baptist college, but they didn't have this practice. It's therefore hard for me to really say whether it's great or not. I will say, though, that if I have to buy Brian dinner, and he tries to order lobster, it's going to be a short date. He's going home with a black eye, and I'm going home with some sort of Charlie Sheen level of demerits.

What about you? Did your college have any rules like this? (Separate dorms, house dates, chaperones, etc.?)

The digital version of plucking out your eye.

When I was a kid, I was terrified of Mark 2:47. (If you didn't grow up in the church, that kind of sounds like the name of a robot. In the movie Short Circuit, the robot was called "Johnny 5." Maybe I'm just deathly afraid of robots with human names.)

Here's what Mark 2:47 actually says:

"And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell."

The thing I was most afraid of was the word "pluck." That is such a casual word. I had this fear that one day I'd be watching a movie, like Doc Hollywood, and all the sudden some completely unnecessary nudity would occur. My parents, who did rent that movie for me when I was young because "Hey, it's just Michael J. Fox!," would turn and say, "Oh no, I bet you saw that with your eye, Jon. Hand me my plucking shears."

Looking back on it, that seems like a pretty reasonable fear. And though I escaped adolescence with both eyes intact, I have started to see people do a digital version of the "pluck your eye out" move.

Take me for instance: I deleted my friends list on Twitter.

I still follow everyone and love doing so, but I deleted the list of 30 friends I had created.

Why?

Because, as I explained in this post, I was acting like a jealous 7th grade girl. Every time one of my friends would post some amazing tweet about the greatest night of friendship and food and life-changing awesomeness they'd ever had, I would immediately think, "Awww, thanks for not inviting me." Then I'd get jealous and all ridiculous.

So I deleted the list.

Now when I run into a friend, I don't know everything that's happened to them in the last 7 days (which is exactly how 1999 was). And then, they get to surprise me with what's going on in their lives, at which point I celebrate with them, versus being jealous of them.

And I'm not the only one that's plucking their digital eye out.

A close friend of mine deleted her entire Facebook account. Other friends of mine have taken digital fasts. Bit by bit, I've seen more and more people getting their digital pluck on.

Will that approach to social media fit perfectly for everyone? Of course not, just like not everybody enjoys corduroys as much as I do. I'm OK with that. You're missing out obviously. The pants actually audibly proclaim your arrival when you walk into someone's office. But, whatever, try to tell me you're living a full life without that experience. Whatever.

How about you though?

Have you or anyone you know plucked out a digital eye ?

Church Greeter Ninjas

(It's guest post Friday! Here's one from Stewart Conkle.  He writes a blog called Hustle and Go. If you want to write a guest post for SCL, here's how!) 

Church Greeter Ninjas by Stewart Conkle

I was raised in a very big, very popular, traditional church in Atlanta. As a child, I remember going to BIG church for the first time. I was in awe. The auditorium was cavernous. It was ornately decorated. The lighting fixtures that hung from the ceiling were gold and shiny. The carpet was burnt orange, and the choir members wore baby blue robes that really made the two colors pop.

The greeters at this church were mostly elderly people. The women wore long dresses. Usually with flower prints. The men all wore three-piece suits and heavy cologne. (Possibly a musk of some sort, an Old Spice perhaps.) That's how it used to be.

Churches have changed drastically over the years. The older, traditional churches are becoming more rare. The men and women who greet you at the door, dressed to the nines, are all but gone.

The greeters of today are like highly trained, very friendly covert ninjas. They dress to look like you and I. They prefer t-shirts and denim instead of fancy suits. They wear Chuck Taylors instead of penny loafers. In short, they blend in. Becoming one with the crowd because that's what ninjas do.

They are always mindful of visitors because first impressions go a long way. There is a subtlety to what they do. They want to make you feel at home, but they don't want to smother you. They want to give you the answers you seek, but they don't want to overload you with info. Their senses are keen, and they have eyes like an eagle. They can see a first-time visitor when they pull into the parking lot. Here are three things that give first-timers away.

1. First-timers are bewildered.

Greeter ninjas can see it in our eyes. We first-timers are looking for something but not sure what. Our eyes dart around randomly. We aren't sure where to go or what to do. This is where the greeter ninja has to act fast. Timing is crucial. Every second I'm lost as a first-time visitor equates to another reason why I won't come back. It can be a traumatic time for first-timers, and the greeter has to be our rock.

2. First-timers often come in packs.

No one wants to visit an unfamiliar place alone. First-time visitors often recruit a support group. Family. Friends. Random people in the parking lot. For the greeter ninja, the pack is easy to spot. We clump up and move together like a school of fish. We all have the same mindset. Just like point number one, if one of us is bewildered, then we're all bewildered. Again, it's crucial that the greeter ninja acts fast when they see the pack in distress.

3. First-timers are rarely on time.

There are a myriad of reasons why I might be late the first time I visit your church. It's sometimes on purpose. I'm not sure of how the church worships and that creates anxiety. Do they do the hands in the air thing, or do they sit and sing softly so that no one can hear their voice? Do they sing songs they know, or do they sing the new song that is ten minutes long, has 12 verses, and was written by the worship pastor? Those are all valid points. However, greeters rarely get the set list in advance. Sorry. You're on your own there kid.

The biggest reason we first-timers are late is that we get lost in the labyrinth of cones and cars in the parking lot. If I'm not careful, I'll circle the parking lot for eternity. This is where our parking lot greeter ninjas come in. Acting quickly, they giftedly guide and direct first-timers, one car load at a time.

We have all been first-time visitors. The greeter ninjas know how you feel. They know both the stress and the excitement of visiting a new church. Keep in mind that they, the greeters, are there for you. In the shadows. Ready to assist when the moment arrives.

Question:

Does your church have greeters?

(For more great stuff from Stewart, read his blog or follow him on Twitter!) 

SCLQ – Sexy Marriage Songs

Yikes! "Sexy" in the title. Hellooooo increased blog traffic. What? That kind of thing stopped working in 2007? Oh. Good to know.

But traffic indulging title aside, it's February, which means Valentine's Day, which means it's time for a few love flavored posts. Starting with today's.

A friend* of mine once told me something that I thought was funny. I tend to pass on funny things directly to you. (No Ticketmaster "handling charge." I send it your way immediately for free.) Here is what he told me:

"Jon (people in stories you tell always use your first name when talking to you), I used to not listen to Rihanna songs or Lady Gaga songs because I thought they were dirty. But then I got married and now I imagine that those songs are about two married people, much like myself and my wife. Am I weird?"

My first thought was maybe. But then I thought, maybe not. It's hard for me to say because I'm older than some of y'all (I can feel the rain a comin' in my knee) and tend to have songs from the 80s and 90s on my slow jam mix. Think Chris Isaak "Wicked Game" or Mazzy Star "Fade into you."

But what about you? If you're single, have you ever thought, "That song is too dirty to listen to right now, but in the context of marriage that is going on the mix tape?"

If you're married, have you ever thought, "Hello formerly forbidden music, welcome to the Song of Solomon?"

Or is my friend just weird?

 

*I know you think that there is no friend and I'm the one who thinks that about music. I promise there is a friend and he doesn't live near the Niagara Falls region. Breakfast Club reference? See, I'm old.

What our Twitter viruses say about us.

"Never offend someone who has a Rottweiler in their profile photo and is in charge of the unofficial Eazy-E fan club."

That's a lesson in Twitter etiquette I learned the wrong way. I'll be teaching folks everything I know about Twitter at the Quitter Conference on February 10 & 11, but that's a free nugget of wisdom for you.

In my defense, that terrifying gentleman with the threatening vocabulary misinterpreted what I had said about Eazy-E, the 1980s rapper.

Here's what I tweeted from @jonacuff:

Every time I see Dr. Dre optimizing computers in that HP commercial, I think, "This is exactly what NWA was all about."

I wasn't making fun of Easy-E. I was making a social commentary on the unexpected career trajectory of Dr. Dre. There's not a person alive who heard Dr. Dre in the 1980s and thought, "You know what this guy will be doing in the future? Optimizing computers for Hewlett Packard."

Next thing I know, I'm involved in a tweet battle with a guy in Compton.

Lesson learned.

But in addition to picking up wisdom like that on Twitter, I discovered something else really interesting the other day. And it came to me in the form of a virus.

Here's how viruses on Twitter work.

A spammer sends you a direct message (The Twitter version of an email.) In the message is a link. When you click on the link, it takes you to a page that looks like the login page to Twitter. You login with your name and password at which point the spammer has control of your account. They then proceed to send a direct message to each of your friends as if they were you. (You can only DM people who follow you.)

The common protocol after that happens to you is to tweet, "I got hacked!" which is not exactly true. There wasn't a Mission Impossible-type Bulgarian hacker who spent many a long hour trying to crack your password. The majority of the time, if you got a Twitter virus it means you saw a link, were curious about the link, and gave somebody your info.

So, based on the Twitter viruses you get from friends, you can start to pick up on what people are really motivated by. For instance, I got 20 virus direct messages sent to me and they reveal a curious trend.

Spammers started by trying to appeal to people's desire to lose weight. They tweeted things like: "Want to lose any weight? Go here: URL best product for losing weight."

Then they tried an appeal to people's desire to be rich. Here's a spam direct message I saw yesterday: "This woman on CNBC tells a story about how shes making money online! I just started and already made 53 dollars today!!"

I love that they chose the random amount of $53. The hope is that you'll think, "If they promised me a million dollars, I'd never believe it. But $53? That feels honest. I want $53." Click.

Finally, they tried a spam that appeals to people's sense of self worth. Here's a spam I saw today: "You seen what this person is saying about you? URL terrible things."

Guess which one worked best? Guess which one more people fall for?

The one that says "You seen what this person is saying about you?"

More than 90% of the Twitter spam I get carries some form of this message. Other versions of the same idea include:

"What were you thinking in this photo?"

"There is a rumor/blog going around about you."

"This person is using their Twitter feed to say horrible things about you."

"I just found this funny photo of you online. LOL!"

The verbiage might differ, but the meaning is the same.

"You're a worthless person. Someone is saying that online. Want to see?"

And we click. We click by the tens of thousands. Even with busted grammar like "You seen" we rush to that bad blog or bad photo of us. Critic's Math is part of it, but I think the problem is even bigger. Why do we click on something that says we're horrible?

Because we're secretly afraid it might be true.

Deep down, in the wounded part of us, we're afraid they might be right. We're unlovable. We're not enough. We're a failure. We guzzle poison about our identities even while we reject compliments.

Someone tells us we did a good job on something, and we immediately respond, "Oh that, that's nothing." We can't shake the feeling of that compliment off our skin fast enough. And so the chance to see our fear validated online? To click a link that says we're horrible and see the proof? We can't resist that. Our ego takes the bait, and our fear pushes us forward.

That's part of the reason the Bible is so crazy to me. As we rush off to find anyone or anything to determine our identity, the Bible sits quietly by with page after crazy page of truth about who we are.

Ephesians 2:10 calls us God's handiwork. His work of art.

2 Corinthians 5:17 says that anyone in Christ is a new creation.

Zephaniah 3:17 says he delights in us. Not likes us. Not tolerates us. Delights.

We are the only creation on the entire planet God put his breath in. The most amazing sunset can't say that. The mountains can't proclaim that. The deepest ocean can't declare that.

Only we can.

Maybe somebody told you that you were worthless a long time ago. Maybe a parent gave you that identity or a teacher singled you out or a boss tried to make that your title. But it's not.

Stop drinking poison. Stop clicking on links that say you're horrible. Stop listening to the voice of doubt and fear. Stop believing you're anything less than the person God loved so much he sent his son to the cross for as the only means of rescue.

SCLQ – Skits

If people are honest in Hudson, Massachusetts, they'll tell you that, in the eighth grade, I absolutely dominated our church's dramatic interpretation of Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror."

Words like "lyrical poetry" and "unstoppable rhythm" come to mind when I think about my ability to tell a story on stage with my dancing. Bottom line: When it comes to church skits, I had the moves like Jagger. I work out.

Pop culture jambalaya!

But just the other day, it hit me, "I haven't seen a church skit in years!" And they've not just gone missing from my church. I visited 20 different churches in 2011 and saw neither hide nor hair of a church skit. No couple before the sermon that is having marriage problems to set the scene. No youth group car crash "I wish we'd all been ready for Jesus" skit. Nary a ribbon was twirled nor a gloved hand was mimed.

Did I miss the memo?

Did we vote skits out of the building?

Did video kill the skit star?

Does your church do skits during service?

Wishing you could dance like they do at Greek Orthodox Churches.

Dear Baptists, Methodists, etc.,

I rewrote this first sentence 14 times because I didn't know how to break the news to you. So I'm just going to come right out with it.

We are missing out.

For years, decades, maybe even centuries, we've been getting the short end of the stick. How do I know?

Because I went to a festival at a Greek Orthodox Church, and they have … dancing.

Were you aware of this? How long have you known? Why didn't you tell me?

I'm not talking about just regular dancing either. I'm not talking about the slow motion choir side-step that we're OK with. You know the one: "robe to the right, robe to the left." This wasn't boring dancing.

This was raucous, reckless abandon, God-is-big-and-bright-and-beautiful dancing.

There were skirts that had coins tied to them that spun around and made noise. There was clapping and laughing and that color of blue you see on Greek diner coffee cups. And when the sun went down, there was fire.

Not a small circle of fire people stepped into like Johnny Cash, there was a huge ring of fire that people danced inside. They had fire! They literally danced in fire and kicked their legs and did all the fun things Footloose tried to tells us were awesome all those years ago.

I didn't get to have a first dance at my wedding because the church we were married in didn't allow dancing. No father-daughter dance. No uncle embarrassing himself to Fergie's "Fergilicious" dance.

OK, that last one was a pretty good thing to avoid, but don't make me quote the verse where David dances in the OT to get this thing in motion.

I don't know if you're reading this blog or if you ever listen to my pleas. But if you do, if you're still out there, can we take a vote? At the next convention, in addition to talking about how every church should buy the Stuff Christians Like book in bulk, can we please form some sort of Greek Dance Committee? I'll volunteer to do some more reconnaissance. We could all get nicknames like "Gyro" and "Orzo."

And then we'll hold festivals too and get Hillsong United Greece to play at them. This idea has legs, and those legs are ready to spin around in a ring of dance fire.

Sincerely yours,

Jon

Question: 

Are you with me on this?

SCLQ – Parades

Two weeks ago, I mentioned Bob Goff as someone who inspires me. And part of the reason I dig Bob so much is his undying love for parades. (If you read Donald Miller's book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, then you know about the Goff family's parade tradition.)

The short story is they started a parade in their neighborhood. And the only rule is that no one is allowed to watch, but anybody can participate.

That sounds silly, but years later hundreds of people have joined this New Year's Day tradition and discovered the joy of being in a parade with lots of lots of people you love.

This year, the Grand Marshal was a boy named Rodrick from Uganda who has an amazing story.

Bob's son Richard made a short video about the experience. I thought it was beautiful and perfectly shareable for a Saturday such as this one.