Jon Acuff's Blog, page 130

SCLQ – My favorite Katy Perry song.

It happened! After writing about how Katy Perry is my favorite pastor kid gone wild (Daniel Tosh you're silver medal!) and quoting her in a post I wrote about how we Christians mess up sex, I finally got my own Katy Perry song. Granted, Katy didn't sing it, but I still feel that she's somewhere out pretty happy about the video you're about to see. And wait until you see the word this song used to rhyme with "Acuff," a challenge as difficult as rhyming a word with "orange."

Check out the video after the jump from the brilliant guys at the Echo Conference. (This was played before I took the stage.)

 

SCLQ – We're all made out of shipwrecks.

My brother recently told me about this guy named "Listener," but apparently he's been around for years and years.

I think this song, lyrics and video are hauntingly beautiful. Capturing grace in any medium is an impossible act, but Listener takes the medium of music as close to grace as I've seen anyone take it. His line, "We're all made out of shipwrecks" is some kind of crazy beautiful. (In my wildest dreams, this is the kind of thing I'd like to do with some of my ideas.)

Watch "Wooden Heart" after the jump and let me know what you think in the comments!

Free music.

When we came up for the playlist for the Quitter Conference, there was one song I had to make sure was on it. Can you guess what it is?

I know what you're thinking, "Open the Gates and Seize the Day," from the Newsies soundtrack. Nope, wasn't that one, although that song is awesome. It wasn't Eye of the Tiger either. I'll give you a clue, the artist's name starts with "E" and ends with "l Debarge."

That's right, I added "Rhythm of the Night" to the playlist. Why? Because it's impossible to be sad while listening to that song and we couldn't find a copy of New Edition's "Cool it Now" on the computer we had.

Am I a musical genius? I guess you could say that. That's probably fair, given my skillz on the ones and twos. I love to listen to it, talk with friends about it and pretend I could make it if I really wanted to.

That's why folks call me when they find out about new bands and I got one of those calls a few weeks ago.

Here's how the conversation we had:

SB:

"This guy just came out with a new album and he posted it online for free."

Me:

"Really? The whole thing? 10 songs for free?"

SB:

"No, only 5."

Me:

"Aww man, that stinks."

Do you see what just happened there? Some musician worked as hard as he could to craft five songs. He sweat and poured himself into five songs that captured his life and hopes and dreams musically. Then he gave them away for FREE. And my first response upon hearing he gave away 5 free songs was to essentially say,

"Quit being so greedy! I deserve 10 songs for free! Not just 5!"

And there lies the great danger of free content.

It's making us incredibly ungrateful.

You would think it was the other way around. You would think that receiving something free would make you more grateful. That you'd hold it in your hands or listen to it in your ears and think, "I can't believe I got this for free! I didn't pay for it, someone gave it to me as a gift. I am so grateful!"

But that's not how it works, is it?

And not just with free music online.

The other day, I had to click through an ad on a blog to get to the content, and I thought to myself, "What a hassle! I'm so mad at this blog!" Clicking on the little close button took me approximately 0.2 seconds. They were giving me literally millions of words in free content and I was mad about the ad.

My friend put together an amazing conference in Chicago once. She decided that she would stream the whole thing online for free. During lunch, there was no content streaming because people who were attending the conference were eating lunch and therefore no one was presenting on the stage. Some guy online tore into her for not having content programmed during that hour too. How dare she!

My own kids fall into this trap with "treats" after dinner. After a few weeks of cookies at the end of each meal, they start to demand them. There have been times when we've gone to put them in bed and they've said, "Whoa, we haven't had our treat yet!"

And, you know who are the most demanding freelance clients? The friends you do free work for. The buddy you offer to build a website for will become your worst behaving client. The friend you offer to take free photos for will become Bridezilla.

I love the idea of free content. I've written over a million words of free content on this site. And I talk a lot about how you can know when it's time to charge for what you do in my book Quitter. I am pro free! I am.

But be careful that your enjoyment of free content doesn't mutate into a sense of entitlement.

Question:

What's the last free thing you got?

SCLQ – The Spank Offering

I wish I could take credit for this phrase, but I can't. The "spank offering" is such a perfect complement to the "love offering" (SCL #72) that it makes my teeth hurt a little. What does it mean? I'll allow author Beth Moore to explain it. Here's something she tweeted over the weekend:

@bethmoorelpm

Have any of y'all ever wanted to give a spank offering to someone else's child? Not really but kinda?

It immediately reminded me of two things:

1. I love Beth Moore. In addition to being amazingly kind to my family, she's got a great sense of humor.

2. This post – "Not knowing what to do about good friends who are raising punk kids."

And the funny thing is, that at some point, we've all been the parents with kids who need to receive a "spank offering." This concept isn't limited to "good parents" or "bad parents," it's "all parents."

So, have you ever wanted to give a spank offering?

Introducing the SCLQ!

I broke Stuff Christians Like. (And I don't mean in a "Breakin 2 Electric Boogaloo" kind of way.)

I didn't mean to, but it happened. I'm not sure when, maybe months ago.

How?

At some point in the last three years of writing SCL, I started to care more about the format than the mission.

I handcuffed myself to the idea that what was most important was writing 700 word essays, 5 days a week, that fit within a numbered list and answered the question, "What's Stuff Christians Like?"

If I couldn't fit an idea into that format, I didn't share it. At first this was a good thing. Staying focused on the format allowed me to be consistent and faithful to the concept.

But eventually, I started to worry about the format more than the mission.

Why do I think that?

Well, recently I've been having some amazing conversations with friends about faith. I've been going through some insane experiences that are messy with grace. And I've thought to myself, "I would love to share these ideas with the readers of SCL!"

But when I sit at my desk, all too often I've realized the idea doesn't fit the format, it doesn't belong on the numbered list and so I don't write about it. And all these ideas don't ever get a home.

Only the mission of Stuff Christians Like was never to write 700-1,000 word essays.

The mission is to clear away the clutter of Christianity so that we can see the beauty of Christ. And that can be done in a million ways. That can be a photo or a video or a lyric or a link to someone else's blog or a single paragraph.

There's a whole wide world of ideas I haven't touched on, because I was afraid to break the format, but in chaining myself to the format, I ended up breaking the mission of Stuff Christians Like. I think a big part of it was simply being afraid that if I changed things, I'd lose all the traffic and no one would ever read the site again.

Which is crazy, because I've never had a reader say, "I come to this site for 700 word posts, if you try to change or grow or evolve, I'm out of here." One guy on Twitter did threaten to unfollow me because he only wanted me to tweet "funny/inspirational tweets, not updates on my airport travels" to which I replied, "But what if I fly through a funny cloud?" But I'm not so worried about him.

So starting tomorrow, I'm going to add something to this blog called "SCLQ" or "Stuff Christians Like Quick." In addition to the essays (which I still love writing) I'm going to start posting short, no rules, no format restricted ideas. Some days SCL will have essays, some days it will have video clips, some days paragraph long ideas, some days maybe a song lyric or a single question.

My hope is that this will start a bigger conversation and open up some creative freedom to write and talk and engage on a million things that fit within the mission of clearing away the clutter of Christianity. And that SCL won't become predictable to you the reader, but will stay fresh and honest.

The fun part is, I've just started blogging. In the Malcolm Gladwell sense of "10,000 hours toward excellence," I have a long way to go.

Thanks for going with me.

Jon

The first shall be last.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret today.

This is something I've only told one other person. I've kept it a secret because once it's out, it will be harder for me to do it without other people knowing what I'm up to. And I want you to promise me you won't tell my kids about this.

What's the secret?

Well it's about Southwest airlines.

If you've ever flown on Southwest, you know that they don't assign seats. They put you in one of three boarding groups (A, B or C) and then assign you a boarding number. Then you line up when your group is called. So if you're B22, you stand by a pole that says "20-25." Once you get on the plane, you can sit anywhere you want except for the pilot's lap. Frowned upon.

The problem is, when you stand in line, you have no sense if everyone in front of you is cutting you. Maybe you're B22 and B24 rams right in front of you. And he's tied 19 bags together with a woven leather belt and is pretending that's "1 carry on." You can't just say, "Hey, can I see your ticket to verify that you're not trying to get front cutsies on me? I'm fine with back cutsies, but I just don't cotton to front." That would look weird. For years that problem has perplexed me until I discovered the perfect solution.

When they call your group, pull out your ticket, walk to the section you're supposed to be standing in and say to the people around you, "I'm not cutting you am I? I'm B22." Automatically, everyone is going to reveal their own ticket and you'll quite literally know where you stand. Instead of looking petty like you're the guy that thinks getting on the plane in front of two people is going to matter, you look like the considerate guy who doesn't want to cut other people in line.

That's what we call a win-win.

Is that shallow? Yes. Is that a trick I want you to tell my kids about? No. Why? Because as a dad, I regularly bust out the "first shall be last and the last shall be first," verse on them.

Sometimes they get really competitive with each other. On some nights it feels like they fight over air, they argue about who gets which pocket of oxygen. And when they get the "me first virus," I'm fast on the draw with a "Whoa, whoa, whoa, the first shall be last. I'm pretty sure that applies to Wii Mario Kart."

Or sometimes when we say, "Wash your hands before dinner," they hear, "The house is almost out of water, there's only enough left for one person. Please NASCAR race each other to the hall bathroom. Feel free to shove each other on the way there." And as their little feet hit the wooden floors like small bathroom-bound flamenco dancers, I'll call out, "The first shall be last."

That verse definitely applies to them, but not me. I've read it a number of times and I'm pretty sure the original Hebrew references sharing on the Wii, but not Southwest. So if you ever meet my kids, please don't tell them I've come up with elaborate/tricky ways to make sure I'm first on planes.

Question:

Did your parents ever say, "The first shall be last" to you? Have you as a parent ever said it?

 

 

Need a mentor?

Me too.

That's something that I've been thinking about a lot lately. For the last three years, a friend of mine named Mike in California has helped play that role. I actively seek out breakfast and lunch meetings with leaders I admire in Nashville. I try to learn as much as I teach when I get to speak at conferences. But thus far, I haven't had a tremendous amount of luck working with a local mentor.

I had two mentor situations in Atlanta that didn't work out, but even then could see the potential need for that in my life. A friend of mine is in the mentor group that Michael Hyatt runs and he's loved it! I've thought and prayed a lot about this particular subject, especially in the last 6 months.

But for me, finding a mentor has been a little bit awkward.

How do you possibly find a good mentor? How do you ask someone to be your mentor? Do you grab breakfast and then kind of casually say, "Hey, would you please pass the coffee, and speak into the five quadrants of my life-spiritual, emotional, physical, intellectually and financial?" Would that work? Of course not.

And I honestly believe in the importance of mentorships and how you can see them modeled in the Bible, but how do you structure one?

What do you talk about? What do you work on? How do you know it's working? Is it like Paul and Timothy and I need to find someone who will walk insanely long distances with me and actually write me letters? So many questions.

Finding myself in that exact spot was a big part of the reason I was excited to partner with LifeWay on their new book, Mentor: How Along-the-Way Discipleship Will Change Your Life.

It's a book by Chuck Lawless that offers a six week study exploring mentoring as a God given relationship where one growing believer encourages and equips another to reach his or her potential as a disciple of Christ. That last sentence is exactly what I was trying to say in the first six paragraphs of this post. And it's not just a book. There's a leader's kit you can get with seven video segments,
a playlist, a downloadable leader guide, and more. (Click here to learn more about what's available!)

From figuring out first century mentors to strategies for structuring a mentor relationship, there is a ton of great content from Chuck Lawless on the topic of mentoring.

And I even have 5 FREE copies to give away.

Want to win one? Here's how!

1. Leave a comment on this post with an answer to the question, "Have you ever had a mentor or mentored someone?"

2. Twitter a link to this post with this link: http://bit.ly/oIe32T . If you don't have a Twitter account, you can use Facebook. You can write your own or use this example. "Win a free copy of Chuck Lawless' new book "Mentor" on @jonacuff's blog http://bit.ly/oIe32T"

3. On Saturday August, 20 we will pick 5 winners. We'll announce them the following week and you can email your address if you're one of the winners.

That's it.

So, have you ever had a mentor or mentored someone?

So Blessed

(It's Guest Post Friday! Today's post comes from two 20-something Christian girls in NYC.  Follow them on Twitter at @christinepalma & @lindsayboswell.  If you want to write a guest post for SCL, here's how.)

 

"So Blessed" By Lindsay Boswell & Christine Palma

As two unmarried 20-something Christian girls sharing 600 sq. ft. of space in NYC, our primary means of keeping up with our friends back home in Alabama and Texas is online. Blogs, Facebook, Twitter – you name it, they use it. And in the three years since graduation (or would-be graduation for the fashion student here), we've seen an aggressive trend: "So blessed."

Having seen our Facebook and Twitter feeds blow up with an explosion of blessings since college graduation, we have become pseudo-experts on this emerging group of our peers. The "So Blessed" points system is modeled similarly to Google's search engine – the number of o's in our Cyber Susie Homemaker's "Sooo blessed" post is directly related to the number of blessings she finds herself in possession of.

 

The "So blessed" blogosphere really has something for everyone. The engaged gaggle about wedding planning and lots of thank you, thank you, thank yous for the men and women prepared to "stand up" beside them at their wedding.

The newlyweds really have a sweet spot on the "So blessed" space, sharing the zany happenings of freshly-made spouses ("Date night!" is a big fave), the hilarity of learning to cook meals every weeknight, and the woes of flipping a small house or apartment with just the right amount of Anthropologie-esque accessories and hipster charm.

And don't even get us started on first-time parents. Get ready for lots and lots and lots of pictures and the sudden urge to grow and make things from twine and organic fruits/vegetables. You'll see lots of pics of the bun in the oven before the kid is even at 3D ultrasound stage, too. And apparently the tankini-wearers of middle school are now totally okay with proudly exposing a popped-out belly button to the entire internet.

 

Some other "So blessed" staples:

• Photos of organic, made-from-scratch baby food.

• The reflection post – looking back on a major milestone (1st date, 1st kiss, basically any moment more than three hours from the previous reflection, etc.).

• Before and after home projects.

• Husband in ministry/church plant involvement.

• Art projects/Etsy.

• Deals/coupons/frugality.

• Dogs (the precursor to babies).

 

We have considered joining in the madness, but our city lives don't exactly translate into sentences just dripping with blessings and exclamation points. Examples: "Saw a man pooping in the subway station…so blessed!" "Just spent 80% of my paycheck on rent…so blessed!" "Lean Cuisine again…so blessed!" or "I think the doorman has a crush on me…so blessed!"

Even the actual blessings from our lives don't really work in this case. "Just went to Central Park again…so blessed!" "Macy's Day Parade outside of our window…so blessed!" What are we? Jerks? Alas, even the good posts come with a price.

Question: Any funny domestic blogging trends you have seen or even started yourself? We'd love to hear them.

Full disclosure: One of us is engaged and less than two months from walking down the aisle and into a world of obnoxious blog temptation. Rest assured the other one of us has promised to publicly humiliate her should her online interactions ever move on the scale from cynical to silly.

Full, full disclosure: The non-engaged one of us is looking for an awesome Christian guy in NYC. Preferably a tall architect-type from the South living in Manhattan.

 

(To follow the undomestic, sometimes-funny, thoughts from our less glamorous version of MTV's The City, follow us @christinepalma & @lindsayboswell.)

 

The GPS Sermon Illustration.

Recently in Dallas I was able to defeat my GPS. I wasn't trying to. That was never my intent, but despite my best attempts at navigating a city that is full of 1 million U-turns, my GPS cried "Uncle."

The lady on the machine didn't actually say that, she's far too polite to admit defeat, but I won. Or rather I got lost.

I shouldn't have, Hertz has a navigation unit in rental cars called "NeverLost." It started out that way in the morning, but by mid afternoon, the name should have been "SometimesLost." By late afternoon, "OftenLost." By that night? "AlwaysLost."

I whupped that GPS, until finally I thought to myself, "The only thing this navigation system is good for is a GPS sermon illustration."

Have you ever heard one of those? In 2009, pastors were contractually obligated to use a GPS sermon illustration. If they didn't, they lost their mustache rights. What are those? The rights to grow a pastor mustache. Growing up, my dad who is a pastor always had a mustache, I just assumed you were aware of mustache rights.

Seems pretty self explanatory, I'm surprised you had to ask given how clear that idea is. But what might not be so obvious is the GPS sermon illustration. Allow me to introduce you to:

The 3 Most Common GPS Sermon Illustrations

1. The "I wish God spoke as loudly as my GPS" illustration.

Wouldn't that be nice? You're going in for a job interview and as you sit in the lobby, the voice of God says audibly, "Please proceed to the highlighted route out of this building. Travel 0.2 miles until you are no longer interviewing at this company. It's not the right job for you." Or as you get ready to walk down the aisle, "Please make a sharp right corner at the front of this church and continue 42 miles away from this guy. He's not the one you're supposed to marry."

2. The "If you ignore the directions, you get lost" illustration.

"Last weekend, my wife and I were driving around. The GPS wanted me to go one direction, but I thought I knew better. It kept telling me to turn around but I ignored it. I drove and drove and drove, thinking I knew best. I got lost. For hours. If I had only listened to the directions, I might have saved myself a lot of time and frustrations." Segue to the book of Proverbs.

3. The "Grace is even better than recalculating" illustration.

When you take a wrong turn with my GPS unit, not to be confused with "G-Unit," the lady's voice on the system pauses for a second and then calls out loudly, "Recalculating!" That is code for "You are so dumb, so dumb, so dumb." She very clearly told you where to go and you made a mistake. You know she really wants to say, "Seriously? The sign for 40 east is the size of a whale shark. There were 14 arrows pointing in that direction. Were you texting and driving? Were you cheating on me with Google Maps on your phone?? Is that what this is all about?" Sometimes in sermons pastors will relate this to the times we fail and how God doesn't react that way. Although he wants us to "u-turn," his reaction at seeing us fail isn't, "You blew it!"

Now a lot of people are going to tell you that this list should have one more on it, the "Sometimes God takes you off the map just like a GPS" sermon illustration. I thought about that one, I did. The reality is that sometimes if you watch your little car icon on a GPS, you'll look up and realize, "Whoa, I'm driving in just a big field of green. This road is newer than the maps my system has in it. I'm off the grid. This is like driving in the Matrix." But now you're mixing illustrations, now the Matrix is involved and that's a whole different sermon.

Question:

Have you ever heard a GPS Sermon Illustration?

Skateboards, seventh graders and the return to joy.

Have you ever gleamed the cube?

Have you ever worried that Hook and his Daggers gang might burn your half pipe down right when you're Thrashin'?

Have you ever ollied?

No? Then you probably weren't like me in the seventh grade.

I was an amazing skateboarder. In my head mostly. And on my head for that matter because I had this swooping to one side, short on the other side, old school Tony Hawk haircut. I could talk skateboarding like no one else.

I also almost ripped my nose off my face, fractured my cheekbones and had to have plastic surgery to retain this ridiculous level of handsomeness I currently enjoy. (When you get a nose job, they don't let you flip through a book of celebrities and request the "Brad Pitt." That was my expectation going in, but I was wrong. And I had the plastic surgery so that I could breathe, not just for hotness. That was a bonus benefit.)

I think about skateboarding a lot because there are four boards in my office at work. One of them is a Rob Roskopp from Santa Cruz. It was part of a series in which a monster breaks out of the target. I loved that board. I rode it everywhere. I'd cut pictures out of Thrasher magazine and spend hours in my bedroom when it was raining just spinning the wheels and listening to the Swiss bearings hum.

Years later, in my late 20s, I discovered that Santa Cruz was re-releasing the classic designs I grew up with. I bought a replica of my original board. I didn't put wheels on it, I didn't use it, I just bought it.

And then I bought another skateboard.

And then I bought another one.

And then I bought another one.

And eventually I had about 10 different old school skateboard decks.

Why? Because sometimes when we're sad, we try to buy props from the times in our lives when we were happy.

If my life was a movie, then the sixth and seventh grade were pretty good years. High school was still a year away. I knew there were cliques, but they didn't define my school day yet. I was still good enough at soccer in our small Massachusetts town to think I was great. Youth group was fun and my dad's church was growing like a wildfire. And I got that amazing first skateboard.

Years later, when I hit some rocky times in my late 20s, I started to look for things that would make me happy. And I remembered being happy in the sixth grade. I started to ask myself questions. "Why was I so happy then? What was it about that time that was so great? What pieces of that time could I recreate right now to distract me from the difficulties of being an adult?"

Skateboards.

As I rewound the movie of me, the prop I saw myself carrying in those happy films was a skateboard. So I bought the same deck I had back then, with the hope that the happiness of those years was somehow intrinsically woven into it.

When it wasn't, I bought another skateboard. When I realized two skateboards weren't the key to happiness, I thought, "maybe I need another one." I kept buying skateboards, hoping that the next one would be "the one."

Eventually I owned ten skateboards and no greater degree of happiness. If anything, buying props made me sadder because I was forced to admit I couldn't buy my way back to happy.

Have you ever done that?

Have you ever looked back on a time when you were happy and tried to recreate that time with a prop? An album you loved. A vacation destination you return to with the hope that joy is waiting for you on that beach. A motorcycle you swore to yourself that when you grew up you'd buy it and it would fix everything.

Or maybe a memory isn't where you seek joy, maybe you chase it in the future, not the past.

If you get the right job, then you'll be happy.

If you make the right amount of money, then you'll have joy.

If you get the right degree, then life will make sense.

If you buy the right house, you'll be content.

But if we're honest, eventually, a prop is just a prop. It might bring a smile for a day, a week, or maybe even a year, but a prop can't hold joy any more than a bucket can hold sunshine.

Over the last few years, that's what surrender has looked like to me. Letting go of my joy props. Recognizing what they are, realizing when something in my life has transitioned from a "hobby that I enjoy," to a "hero I need to save me." Because I already have a savior. That role has been filled. And when I chase a purchase as the pathway to peace, I take my eyes off my true source of joy.

Question:

What's one of your joy props?