Jon Acuff's Blog, page 118

SCLQ: Caption this photo.

A few weeks ago, while I was dropping my kids off for Sunday School I saw this under the stairs. (Harry Potter fans please insert your own joke right here.)

I thought of you and immediately took a photo.

How would you caption this? What sermon series, Sunday School activity or woodsmen based outdoor activity could these collection of items possibly be used for?

Caption please:

Faith like a child.

I recently hit A-list status on Southwest.

Which means, well, absolutely nothing.

When the packet of info came in the mail announcing my new status, I kept flipping through the brochure looking for the benefits. "I already check in early, so A-status check in isn't special. But surely there's something?" I thought. Nope. There is nothing.

There's no special club at the airport that smells like lavender.

There's no first class for you to sit in.

There's no diamond, platinum or gold package you earn.

You get to receive 25% more miles every time you fly. And you can apply those miles to … nothing.

I'm fine with that, though, because that's what I love about Southwest. They're cheap. They're low priced. They give you great service and very little else. It wouldn't make sense for them to be low priced and have some blinged out rewards programs.

I get it. I do. But my oldest daughter L.E. didn't. A few weeks ago, we flew out to Las Vegas for a speaking engagement. On the flight home she asked me, "Will we get a meal on this plane?" In a classic father/daughter moment, I turned to her slowly and said, "L.E., let me tell you a little about Southwest."

We're getting peanuts. If all goes well, the peanuts will have a light glaze of honey roast. But it's just going to be peanuts. And that's OK.

During the four hour flight home, I answered a lot of other questions for L.E. She's 8, and 8 year olds are full of questions. That's kind of what they do. And in the middle of the flight, looking at L.E., I thought of one of my own:

"Why did Christ say we needed receive the kingdom of God like a little child?"

Have you ever thought about that? We often talk about "faith like a child," from verses like Luke 18:17 that says, "I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." or Matthew 18:4, "Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

Kids are interesting role models though. I guarantee you've never been in a meeting at work and someone said, "In order to hit our sales numbers this quarter, we've got to have discipline like a child." No politician has ever said, "If I'm elected, I'll run the country with wisdom like a child." No coach has ever said, "In order for us to win Saturday's game, we need to work hard like a child."

It's difficult to find another context in life where being "like a child" is held up as something to emulate. (Except for maybe the arts.)

So why then, of all the examples Christ could have used, are children the example he picked? I've heard someone say it's because kids are dependent and in need of being taken care of, and God takes care of us like that.

But I think there's an even simpler possibility.

Because kids get grace.

Grace makes sense to kids. They've got the imagination and creativity and "anything is possible" attitude that can accept the unbelievable nature of grace. We adults are the ones who have a hard time with it.

We've spent 10 or 20 or 30 years learning how "things work." There are consequences, cause and effect, A+B = C situations. Grace doesn't fit those.

We get something we don't deserve. Something we can't control. Something we can't earn. Something that makes no sense when you try to break it down logically. So you're saying that when I make a mess of my life, when I wreck everything in it, that there's a God who loves me so much that he sent his only son to die for me so that I could repent and be forgiven?

That's crazy.

But not to kids.

McRae, my youngest daughter, reminded me of this a few months ago.

While we were leaving Chuck-e-Cheese, the only place she ever picks for our daddy/daughter dates, we heard a police siren. Into the dark fall night the blue lights of a cop car sped by. In the backseat, I heard McRae sigh and say,

"Ohhhh, I love that sound."

That's a strange thing for a six year old to say, so I asked her why. Without missing a beat she said, "Because that's the sound of someone getting rescued."

Have you ever thought that?

I haven't. When I see a cop car with the lights on behind me, my first thought is "Was I speeding? Oh no, he's coming for me. There's no way I was going as fast as that other guy. I just kind of ran the red light. He really ran it!" If the cop passes me, I wonder who he's going to get. I imagine someone has broken the law and is about to be caught.

Kids? They get rescue. They get grace.

And in case I wasn't paying attention that night, God gave me another example from McRae. One day she told me about a boy in her pre-school class who was really bad last year. (Bad in pre-school usually means you're a biter.)

In the midst of telling me how bad he was, McRae said,

"He used to wear really soft and fuzzy slippers to school. Even when it wasn't pajama day. I bet his mom heard how bad he was, and she let him wear those fun slippers because she wanted him to know that no matter how bad he was, she loved him."

That's how kids think. If you're loved, you're fully loved. If you're in need of rescue, it's coming. If you're bad, you can still come home.

Kids get grace.

I think Christ wants us to get it too.

That's why I think he wants us to have faith like a child.

The flute and the 5 year old.

This is a true story. But, at times, it will feel like fiction.

It will careen over mountains and oceans, unraveling across decades, crossing closed borders and speeding through open technology.

And the whole thing starts with a small flute.

More than 15 years ago, in Australia, a complete stranger put a flute inside a cardboard box. They didn't know who would get the flute. They had no idea which home or heart that box would end up in. But they sealed the top and they sent the box out, like a musical message in a bottle.

The box and the flute traveled through the South Pacific Ocean and the Coral Sea until finally landing in Hanoi, Vietnam. There it rumbled through streets crowded with motorbikes and eventually found it's way to Hoa.

He was 14 years old and living on the streets. After leaving his village and moving to Hanoi to earn money, he had become one more teenager with a lot of life left but very little hope.

Fortunately, Samaritan's Purse operated a targeted supplemental nutrition program for malnourished kids in a Hanoi shelter. They provided food for breakfast and dinner to the people who lived there. Hoa was one of those people. And one day, in addition to a meal, he got a small cardboard box.

Fast forward 13 years, and a 5-year-old little girl in Atlanta, Georgia–my daughter–sees a photo of a starving child in a book and says, "That's pretend right? That's not real, right?" And when she says that, I hear her saying, "You're not OK with that, are you dad? Do other people know about that? Are you doing something about that dad?" And I wasn't, so I decided to do something differently.

That's when I asked you, thousands of strangers from dozens of countries around the world, to help me raise $30,000 to build a kindergarten in Vietnam.

Fast forward 18 hours, and the entire $30,000 goal is complete. In less than a day, it's done. So we decided to do it again and raised another $30,000 to build a second kindergarten.

A world away, Hoa has never heard of the blog Stuff Christians Like. Readers of Stuff Christians Like have never heard of Hoa, but their paths were about to intersect.

How?

Well, the person who coordinated the building of two kindergartens in a remote region of Vietnam was a young man in his late 20s who was once given a flute by a stranger. That small gift kicked off a life change that is still impacting Vietnam. After Hoa became a Christian, he went back to his village and introduced his parents to Christ. And then, more than a decade later in a city where Christians are .01% of the population, Hoa got a phone call in Hanoi. About building two kindergartens.

About a five year old with a question.

About blog readers with a mission.

And somewhere, in Australia, a stranger who put a flute in a cardboard box can't possibly know the difference they made.

Does a box really matter?

Does building a box with Operation Christmas Child really change the world?

Can the gospel start with a flute?

Hoa would tell you yes.

And now that I've met him and seen the kindergartens he built with your help, I would tell you yes too.

Wishing your contemporary church would go old school during Christmas.

I love my church.

I attend Cross Point Church in Nashville and absolutely love it. Allow me to count the ways:

1. There's no mysterious "e" at the end of "Point." (Not what you would put at the top of your list? Fine, we're different.)

2. Pete Wilson is an amazing pastor and it's great to sit under his leadership.

3. Our family has really found a sense of community there and made some awesome friends.

4. Cross Point is sharing the gospel in Nashville and around the world.

5. The worship on Sunday mornings is fantastic.

I could go on and on, but at some point I have to segue to the main idea of this post.

Every Christmas though, deep down inside, I secretly wish that my very contemporary church would go old school. All year long, I love how modern we are. Man, oh man, that speaks to my contemporary heart. That is my jam!

But, as I take my last bite of turkey on Thanksgiving Day, I turn into old school traditional church guy and start to long for an old fashioned Christmas church experience. This isn't unique to Cross Point either. I felt the same exact way when we attended North Point in Atlanta. (I can only attend churches that end in "Point." I'm sorry, that's just how I was raised.)

What does that mean? Old school Christmas? Well here are 9 things I want our church to do at Christmas.

1. No new Christmas songs.

If it was written in the last 25 years, let's not sing it during Christmas. I'm not even willing to make a Christmas Shoes exception for this one.

2. Break out the hymnals.

I know we've got some in the basement. Let's get them out, enjoy a little of that old school hymnal smell and sing "O' Come All Ye' Faithful."

3. Hang up some stained glass windows.

Where? I don't know. I'm not in charge of logistics. My job is awesome ideas. And nothing says old school like a 3,000 pound stained glass window.

4. Two words, "Hand Bells."

Is that one word? Maybe. Know what else is one word? Focus. I feel like you're getting distracted by grammar. The only time of year I really want to hear some hand bells is at Christmas time. You think the angels are up in heaven celebrating the birth of sweet baby Jesus with synthesizers or drum kits? Doubtful. They've got hand bells. Let's get some too.

5. Choir robes.

We don't have a choir so this one is going to be difficult. But I'm not a tyrant. I'll wear a choir robe. Just to "Christmas up" the whole place. My only request is that the robe has enough room for me to dance like the nuns in Sister Act 2.

6. Candles on Christmas Eve

If you're not handing out open flames to a room full of people wearing big, fluffy, flammable winter coats in the dark, I'm not even really sure you love Christmas. Fortunately our church still does this, but just in case they were thinking about going to little flashlights or something I had to mention it.

7. At least a cameo by a live donkey.

I'd prefer the donkey was around all month, but I'm not unreasonable. I'll settle for a cameo one Sunday during the live nativity scene. P.S. We need to have a live nativity scene.

8. At least one criticism of Santa from the pulpit.

Few things are as old school as throwing Santa under the bus. If you really want to spice it up, feel free to say something about how evil it is that people say "Happy Holidays."

9. An old man who reads the Christmas story to kids.

Next to trying to blow out every candle in a three pew radius, my favorite part of the Christmas service is when the old guy reads the Christmas story. Did you have that at your church? He had white hair, a must, and would sit at the front of the church and all the little kids would come down to hear the story. Classic.

Aren't you feeling more Christmasy already? Forward this to your pastor and they'll probably get right on this list of suggestions. Except for the donkey one. Donkeys are ornery and surprisingly good at kicking. Most churches are pretty strict about letting live donkeys roam around church. Weird.

Question:

What's something special your church does at Christmas?

SCLQ – Booty, God, Booty the Video: Part 1 – The Prayer Shot Block

I'm such a luddite when it comes to technology, but this year I want to change that. I want to post more videos, photos, etc. Starting today.

Recently I had the chance to shoot a four part video series with LifeChurch.TV. (Craig Groeschel, awesome church, Oklahoma, creators of YouVersion, wildly creative staff.)

The series is titled, "Booty, God, Booty," based on the post I wrote about that and the chapter in the Stuff Christians Like book.

For the next few weeks I'm going to post one of the videos on Saturday. (Except for Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve of course.)

I did the series as part of their Switch program for high schoolers, but the content is designed for all ages.

Check out week 1 of Booty, God, Booty: The Prayer Shot Block.

Kids' Christmas Program Field Guide

(It's guest post Friday! In order to celebrate the holiday season here at SCL, the next few weeks' guest posts will all be Christmas themed! Today's is from Amy Green, a blogger and a junior Professional Writing major at a Christian college. We're grateful she broke her vow about listening to Christmas music before Thanksgiving in order to write this post! If you would like to guest post, here's how.) 

Kids' Christmas Program Field Guide. -By Amy Green

While visiting relatives' churches around the holiday season, I've noticed something startling: there are certain kinds of kids you will find in every choir. This year, instead of cringing your way through a painfully off-key version of "Silent Night," play Choir Bingo and try to spot the following kids:

1. The Yeller

Identifying Features: All notes become the same pitch for these kids: a nice, steady, agonized wail. The Yellers can usually be found about three inches away from a microphone. They combine two very important children's choir principles: projection and "making a joyful noise." It's like they're trying to out-sing the rest of the choir, as well as the original heavenly host of Bethlehem. I wouldn't bet against them.

2. The Back-row Sloucher

Identifying Features: These are almost always fifth or sixth graders whose parents made them stay in choir. They do not sing. They growl, even at Christmas. The youth pastor already has these kids on a watch list. If you congratulate them on their singing after the program, they will either grunt or pretend not to know what you're talking about. Or punch you in the face.

3. The Director's Kid

Identifying Features: The director's kid can be an adorable, well-adjusted child who is always given solos and will play a lead role in every Christmas pageant after their graduation from the preschool sheep pen. Or, the director's kid will be an absolute terror, the one who lights things on fire with the Christmas candles, snickers when anyone talks about Mary being "with child," and claims the need to go to the bathroom about eight times during a one-hour rehearsal.

4. The Shy One

Identifying Features: If forced to go onstage, these kids will fix their eyes directly on the ground and never look up, not even once the torture of public performance is over and people are clapping. Occasionally, the director will have mercy on them and let them hand out jingle bells to the kindergarteners or play a donkey in the nativity scene.

5. The Talker

Identifying Features: The opposite of the Shy One, these kids don't understand the concept of being onstage. For them, this is social hour…and look, an audience too! A Talker will wave, chat with his neighbors, or loudly announce that his angel costume is itchy while scratching his behind. Usually, this kid has an entire camera crew of extended family recording the performance like they are filming a reality show.

6. The Responsible One

Identifying Features: There is always an older kid, usually a girl, who holds the real power in the choir. She has the most lines to memorize, and she always comes to rehearsals early. You'll see her corralling the younger kids, making sure everyone is in the right place at the right time, and getting extra-strength Tylenol for the director from the secret stash in the teacher supply room. Because she has the keys to that room, of course.

7. The Kid Who Wears Something Weird

Identifying Features: These kids stand out. Sometimes it's the five-year-old with juice box stains on his formerly white shirt. Or the girl wearing the frilly bridesmaid dress and light-up purple glitter shoes. Or the kid in the front row who forgot that everyone was supposed to dress in red or green and showed up in an orange polo with blue stripes.

Those are the ones I've seen most often. What would you add to the Choir Bingo list for this year's Christmas program?

(To find more great stuff from Amy, check out her blog "Just the Fiction, Ma'am.")

New Stuff Christians Like Daily Calendar!

100% easier to finish than your read-through-the-Bible-in-one-year plan.

77% funnier than the book of Deuteronomy.

It's the Stuff Christians Like Daily Desk Calendar!

We've talked about doing this for years and it's finally here. Each day contains a remix of one of the best posts from the site, including Serious Wednesdays.

It's portable.

It's awesome.

It's inexpensive.

It's the perfect gift for any Christian on your list. (It's impossible to Christmas shop for Christians. You either have to buy them a new Bible or a precious moments figurine. Except this year!)

But, we didn't print a bunch. It's limited edition. And not in a "drive sales with the word limited so that you can sell a lot and then print more kind of" way. We did one print run and when they sell out, we're not printing any more.

So buy one for yourself today. Buy one for your pastor. Buy one for your youth minister. Buy one for a friend. Throw one in a stocking. It's really your call.

Click here to order the Stuff Christians Like Daily Desk Calendar.

SCLQ – The Follow List

A few weeks ago, I had a meeting with Twitter.

Not the entire company all at once, but rather one particular person named Claire Diaz-Ortiz. Claire is the head of corporate social innovation and philanthropy at Twitter. She also wrote a book called Twitter for Good  about how you can change the world one tweet at a time. She's got a fascinating story, and it was fun to hear what Twitter is doing to be intentional about helping people. But Claire had one question for me, and this is it:

"Who should we put on the official Twitter Religion list?"

At the top of Twitter, there's a link that says "Who to follow." If you click on that, you can choose a topic list and see a small list that Twitter has cultivated over the last few years of interesting people to follow. If you clicked on "music," for instance, you'd see people like Chris Cornell, Eminem, Jazon Mraz, Coldplay, etc. In social media terms, it's a big deal to be on the list because hundreds of thousands of people see it and follow you as a result.

So now Twitter is going to do a religion list and asked me whom I thought should be on it? Not just from a who has the most followers or is most famous perspective, but who in the world of Christianity is tweeting amazing things, doing amazing things and living a big, loud faith online?

I gave her a long list of suggestions, including my friend @itsalandrews who everyone should follow, but I felt like you might be better equipped to answer the question than I am.

If you use Twitter, who is someone you follow that you'd love to see on the Twitter religion list?

If you don't use Twitter, who is someone you love that you'd like to see on the list?

Covet 2.0

Long before there were American Girl Dolls, shout out to Kirsten (rest in peace), there were Cabbage Patch Dolls.

They were the Tickle-me-Elmo of the Christmas craze one year. (I just used an old reference to explain an older reference. Let me try that again.)

They were the Wii of the Christmas craze one year. (Still not relevant? Last time.)

They were the Quitter of the Christmas craze one year. Everyone wanted one, much like the book Quitter this Christmas, and people got in shoving matches over these simple dolls.

The story behind them was that the dolls were born in a cabbage patch, delivered by nurses and then brought to your house via a stork. At the Cabbage Patch headquarters in North Georgia, you could actually go see the dolls born and delivered by people dressed as nurses. That sounds a little weird, but kids loved the experience and flocked there in droves.

One day, my friend and her husband brought their kids to the Cabbage Patch hospital. When their young daughters weren't looking, they bought a doll. Their plan was to hide it in the trunk of their car without their youngest daughter seeing it, then give it to her a few months later on Christmas. Bad idea.

The "nurse" who "delivered" the cabbage patch "baby" walked out to "the" (sorry got on a roll there) car to see the family off. When the nurse saw my friend's husband put the Cabbage Patch doll in the car, she freaked out.

She ran over and said, "You can't put that baby in the trunk. She won't be able to breathe!" Stupified, the dad responded, "Uh, it's just a doll." But the nurse wouldn't budge. "She won't be able to breathe," she repeated.

Finally, the dad tore an air hole in the plastic bag the doll was in, appeased the nurse and slowly shut the trunk. Then he walked to the driver's side of the car and never looked back.

Can we all agree that lady was a little crazy? I mean the kids were already buckled in the car. The "doll can't breathe" performance wasn't for them. That's at least a smidge crazy, and I should know because sometimes I think I might be crazy too.

I bumped into that possible reality recently while looking at Twitter.

I created a list of friends, so that in the melee of thousands of tweets a day, I can specifically see what 10-20 people I know are up to via their tweets.

But in the midst of doing that, I've realized something rather pathetic, insecure and crazy of me.

I'm getting really jealous of my friends. As I scroll through their tweets, here are a couple of things that pop into my head:

"Oh wow. That friend hung out with that other friend and they did something amazing together. Huh. Why didn't they invite me?"

"Whoa. That friend just announced, 'I had a great time seeing people I love in Nashville, time to fly back home.' Weird, he didn't even tell me he was going to be in town."

Then I sit in this ridiculous pity party, which eventually mutates into me coveting a life other than my own.

I want those adventures.

I want to be invited to those events.

I want to be as cool or as interesting or as funny or as anything as my friends.

I covet 2.0. And in discussing this with my wife, a few things came to light.

1. When I covet my friends, it's really hard to love my friends.

My friends aren't doing anything wrong. It's me and my insecurities. But by dwelling there, I build up all this residual frustration with my friends, and that gets in the way of my ability to love them. I want to be someone who celebrates his friends, not someone who covets them.

2. This makes me like a seventh grade girl.

My wife doesn't struggle with covet 2.0, but says she understands it because she "used to be a seventh grade girl." In the cafeteria on Monday mornings in middle school, she said it was hard to hear about sleepovers and events you hadn't been invited to. Why was it hard? Because she was a slightly insecure seventh grade girl. Which is apparently much like me.

3. This isn't how it always was.

Ten years ago, you didn't know about all the amazing things your friends were doing. No one called you and 300 other people on the phone and said, "Hey, I just saw an amazing sunset, went on a hot air balloon, got invited to a secret concert and had a brilliant lunch with somebody who won't return your calls. Just wanted to make sure you knew." The phenomenon of tracking the movements of all our friends is new. And the weird thing is that, ten years ago, I swear I never said, "I wish I knew what everyone I know was doing constantly. I could see that being really healthy for me."

4. The Internet is a "Best Life" snapshot.

When you read somebody's tweets or scroll through their photos on Facebook, you're seeing a snapshot of somebody's best life. Sure, some people share raw/honest moments moreso than others, but no one shares everything. (If you share everything and don't hold back something personal for you or your spouse, you eventually become a "performer," not a person.) People share vacations and sunsets and parties. And then you sit in your own very normal, messy life with boringness and ups and downs and think, "My life is no good."

This isn't a Twitter or Facebook issue. I am a huge fan of social media and have personally seen the tremendous good that can come from both. But right now, in my own life, I've turned my Twitter friends list into a place for me to hide and get jealous and covet 2.0.

If you're my friend, sorry about being so silly. Covet 2.0 snuck up on me, and I've spent the last few months acting like I'm in the seventh grade. And since Chess King is closed, Color Me Badd is not on the top of the charts, and I'm not wearing Z-Cavaricci's right now, I know that's not where I'm supposed to be.

Question:

Have you ever experienced covet 2.0?

We're back from Vietnam!

When you start a blog, you never really know where it's going to go or what it's going to do. But last Monday, standing in the mountains of Vietnam, in front of the second kindergarten SCL readers built it was hard to believe what had happened. Here's what I saw and what I want you to see too:

The whole experience was absolutely amazing and my wife and I are very grateful for your prayers. In the next few weeks I'm going to get permission from Samaritan's Purse to share more about the trip. Vietnam is a closed country and I have to be careful about what I can and can't say.

If you missed participating, don't worry, we'll hopefully do more stuff like this in the future. And you can always connect with Samaritan's Purse with their Operation Christmas Child program. It's not too late to build a box this Christmas.

I'll share more soon, especially about one particularly crazy thing I got to see that really threw me upside down.

In the meantime, thank you. Thank you for your generosity. I met two villages that would love to tell you the same!

Jon & Jenny