Jon Acuff's Blog, page 138

Quitter made the Wall Street Journal Best-selling List!

I found out an hour ago that my new book Quitter made the Wall Street Journal Best-selling books list! I've included a screen shot of the newspaper below which has the book as #3 in the hardcover business section. I have three quick thoughts about that:

1. God does big, unexpected things. When I wrote my first blog post on Stuff Christians Like in 2008 I never imagined this.

2. Thank you! Your support of the book has been overwhelmingly kind and gracious and a whole list of words that mean awesome!

3. The Quitter Conference is going to be crazy. I feel like the conversation is just starting. And unbelievable things can happen if you and I are brave and do things that are way over our heads.

Thank you so much for your help!

Jon

When you have a major reaction to your church changing a minor detail about service.

Ahh, Sunday morning. I love attending Cross Point Church. In addition to them not having the mysterious "e" at the end of "Point" they've got Pete Wilson in the pulpit. It's really not a pulpit so much as it is a small round table. That doesn't sound nearly as dramatic though does it? "They've got Pete Wilson behind the small round table."

I'm sticking with pulpit. But I love him as a pastor and the whole team is great as well. Plus, we meet in an old school church that has pews. It's like the best of both worlds, modern worship meets 1950s pew style seating, lasers meet liturgy, sermon video trailer meets classic fill in the blank sermon notes.

This is a great church, I've even gotten used to the order of service. It's different from North Point, my former church, but I'm down. I've figured it out. I get it.

And here comes the offering. They prefer the every other approach to bucket distribution. I do too. You get to guess which direction it will come from as the ushers pass it down one aisle and it u-turns down the next. It reminds me of when I was growing up and by law you could only sing even or odd verses in hymns. It was always, "Sing the 1st and 3rd verses" or "Sing the 2nd and 4th verse." I never once heard someone say, "Sing verses 1, 2 and 4. Skip verse 3. That one is horrible."

But wait, what's this? I've got a new silver bucket coming down my aisle and so does the aisle in front of me. And the lady in front is handing me another bucket. I've now got two buckets in my hand. I'll pass the bucket and give them to the guy behind me. Oh no, he's already got a bucket and refused delivery of these two. I'm double fisting offering buckets, which doesn't look like I'm twice as generous. It looks like I'm about to bolt with them and spend the cash on pretty things.

Think Jon, think! Maybe I have super hero powers now. Is that possible? These buckets are all metal and they seem to be oddly attracted to me. Is this how Magneto figured out his power? That would be way cooler than the other super hero power I often wish I had, "The ability to instantly figure out the hot and cold water faucets in hotel showers." That one is kind of obscure.

It could just be a rookie usher. First time on the job. Probably paired with an usher that's been on the force for 30 years and is only one Sunday away from retirement. He's too old for this nonsense! Or maybe they decided to change the flow of the buckets forever. They went from every other row to every row. That's a big change. Was there an announcement? Was this change heralded in the bulletin last week? Did Pete make an announcement from stage? Was there a class I could have attended in the weeks leading up to this? Is there going to be an old school every other row church service offered like how some churches add "contemporary services?"

Should I be focused on worship instead of weaving intricate thoughts about the row pattern the ushers are using to deploy the offering buckets? Probably.

Question:

Has a small change at church, in music, order of the service, etc. ever thrown you for a loop?

Please review Quitter on Amazon today.

If you've read my new book Quitter, would you please take 60 seconds and write a review on Amazon? It can be long or short, serious or funny, reference breakdancing or not reference breakdancing as long as it's honest. That would really mean a lot to me and would be awesome.

Click here to write a review.

If you were waiting until June to buy the book, possibly in triplicate because you know a lot of people who might like it and you're generous like that, always giving people books and never calling them out on their run on sentences, well today is your lucky day. It's June.

You can buy Quitter in Hardcover or in Kindle.

Thanks!

Jon

Having no clue how God will use your story.

I recently received an email that knocked me over.

I decided to post it for two reasons:

1. Somebody has a story like this and needs to know they're not alone.

2. A lot of us have gifts we're supposed to use that we can't ever imagine God doing something with and this is a testament to what happens when we try. When we do something as silly and insignificant feeling as starting a blog.

After she emailed this to me, I asked Beth if I could share her story and she graciously agreed. I changed some of the details to protect her privacy for reasons that will become crystal clear as you read it. It's time for me to just get out of the way and introduce you to the amazingly awesome Beth.

Hello!

My name is Beth and I'm from Texas. I am painfully shy. I didn't always used to be. I used to be the crazy, silly gal that everyone laughed with. But now, I am shy. I used to be NUTS! I distinctly remember going to a pool hall and crawling around under the tables pretending like I was an alligator to cheer up a friend who had just broken up with her boyfriend. I was the only one who was SOBER.

My mother was a practicing (sorta) Catholic & my father was a Buddist. Since they could not see eye-to-eye on religion, I was not baptized. My younger sister, on-the-other-hand, was born 4 months premature & in 1977, there was no surviving that. She was baptized right away. She did survive though and in our Catholic upbringing, what that meant was that all my family went through the Christian education and rituals while I constantly sat in a pew. Because I was never baptized, I wasn't able to go through church school or learn about the bible. My mom did the best she could to teach me, but she was hurt by being disowned by her family when she became divorced. It was difficult for her to teach me about Christ's love when she was having a hard time experiencing it herself.

I found Young Life in High School and thought that was great. I got to start to learn about Christ and the bible, but I was struggling with my Catholic upbringing telling me I couldn't do anything until I was baptized. I was very ashamed to become baptized at so old an age, so I always felt on the outskirts of Christianity. I used to tell people "I love Christ, but I'm not a Christian."

A few years later, I graduated from college. My friend fixed me up on a date with a friend of hers and the night ended up with me in the emergency room. When I woke up, the doctors told me they had given me Plan B to prevent any pregnancy, done an STD work-up and started pain medication and antibiotics for a broken right cheekbone. I still can't bring myself to use the word used to describe what happened to me that night. I've only used it a handful of times in counseling and with my husband.

My mom was a single mom of myself & my sister and we are 3 very strong women. I was in amazing amounts of physical pain from the damage to my face and struggling all the time an emotional crisis from letting some man do this to me. I tried to cope for 2 months. The broken facial bones and bruising were so obvious. My sister is a model, literally. It's how she worked through college. She's a tall, thin, leggy perfect model. The joke in the family was always that she was the pretty one & I was the smart one. Compared to her, I was a bit of a troll, but compared to the rest of the world, I was a normal, fairly attractive young woman. This trauma to my face was obvious and had so many people asking so many questions that I just couldn't bear to answer. One day, I gave up. I took a bottle of 60 Vicodin, curled up on the bathroom floor and waited to let it all go.

Within just a few minutes, I started vomitting everything in my gut. My mom found me and took me to the doctor. I was 8 weeks pregnant. I spent days crying non-stop. My mom & my sister thought the decision was obvious. The pregnancy was because of a rape & this is 1 of 3 times when people don't judge you considering the inconsiderable. Everything in my body told me that this baby was a gift from God and even if he wasn't conceived in love, he was given by love… the love of God. I mean, God did save my life with morning sickness, ya know.

I called this man and told him about the pregnancy. That was about the worse thing I could have done. He began all kinds of violent threats. Evil violent threats. The police were called and he was hauled away. I walked over to St. Mark and asked to speak with a priest. There was no priest available, so I spoke with a nun who lived at the convent. I think I got the bitterest, crankiest, meanest nun in all of Texas, maybe the US. I told her the situation. She told me the only thing I could do was to marry the father. I remember her words to this day "if you don't marry him, you'll be damned." I got up, threw my bible at her and left that church in a dead run. I was sure there was no redemption from throwing a Holy book at a Holy person.

I had a very difficult pregnancy and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. After a few years I decided to go back to school and became a nurse. I raised my daughter and dealt with restraining orders and her violent father for 4 years alone. I was so ashamed of what happened to me that I refused to press charges, so he was never charged with what he did. He was arrested and found to have an unbelieveable amount of drugs on him which kept him in/out of jail most of the time which was a blessing.

When Julie was 4, I started to take an interest in gaining a specialty in Hospice Nursing. I took care of a woman named Nancy. She came onto an Alzheimer's unit I was running. She was 46 years old. Her husband was so tired and so desperate for any help he could get. She started losing her memory 13 months before I met her; the day after her daughter committed suicide in their garage and Nancy found her. She was so hard to care for. She didn't just have memory loss, she had severe hallucinations, often thought she was on fire, screamed at her reflection in the mirror and cried sometimes non-stop for days at a time. One morning I got a call from the nursing assistant telling me that she was so hot that it was painful to touch her. When I got there the paramedics had just arrived. Her fever was 108 degrees.

Turns out she had a drug interaction from the antipsychotic medications we gave her that caused this syndrome to happen. So now we had a woman who was severely uncomfortable with psychotic symptoms and we couldn't treat her with any medications. She went to a psychiatric hospital for 2 weeks. Her husband was told that the only way to control her symptoms would be to completely sedate her which meant she would not be able to eat and she would die. Her husband very tearfully agreed. She was transported back to my facility on Hospice services.

The sedation didn't work and she started this syndrome again. She started having seizures. We covered her floor with mattresses and her walls with body pillows. I stayed in her room for 3 days and slept on her mattresses waking up every hour to give her medication for her pain & seizures. After 3 days, the chaplain came in. Usually when the chaplain came in, I always left the room or sometimes the building. This time, the Chaplain came in and I looked at her & asked "why won't she let go?" Tears started streaming down my face. The Chaplain offered to pray & I accepted. The Chaplain prayed for mercy and to take her onto her new home. When we said Amen, Sharon took her last breath. I broke down in sobs in the Chaplain's arms and took a week's vacation.

The next day I walked into the 1st church I could find from my house. It is an Assembly of God church I've been going to ever since. The Assistant Pastor is amazing and held my hand through my journey. I completed the Basic Christian Beliefs class and felt really good. It felt good to finally agree that I was, in fact, a Christian. I felt free and peaceful. I was baptized finally and started taking communion. It felt good… For a bit.

Pastor Bob started trying to get me into small groups. I went to a parenting small group, but I wasn't married & not about to volunteer up why, so everyone thought I had been stupid and young and kept trying to fix me up. That was too painful. So I went to a Singles small group. Pastor Jeff promised me that it wasn't a pick-up club, but a place for singles to get together. He was wrong. I tried to volunteer in the kiddos department, but found it was not OK to talk about Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter and that may even send me to hell faster than being an unmarried mother.

I used to be a barista, so I tried to help out in the Connection Center, but we covered this before… I'm shy. Apparently I wasn't outgoing enough for the supervisor lady to volunteer and slowly started seeing my name disappear from the schedule until it was gone altogether. I started taking some bible classes and really got into 1 on the book of Revelations. I look very young for my actual age and at the time, I was still getting carded EVERYWHERE I go. I was joking with someone in class about how I had been carded at a R rated movie that my sister and I went to over the weekend. The teacher called me out in the middle of the class (horrifying for us shy ones) and told me that if I would just listen to the Holy Spirit within my heart, I wouldn't want to see those movies in the 1st place. After that, I started avoiding classes.

I started going through the motions at church and lost that sense of peace and comfort. I still prayed and read my bible, but found excuses to not go to church on Sundays and quit going on Wednesdays all together. I started to believe that I couldn't believe in Christ and be a goof ball. I started to believe that I would never get my goofy spirit back. I started to believe I would always be a shell.

This went on for 6 years. Until I found Dave Ramsey. My husband is perfect. Perfect in every way. The only thing not perfect about him is the fact that he's PERFECT. He never yells. He's always supportive. He gorgeous (I know that's not supposed to be important, but he's really hot)! He's brilliant. But I'm not. I'm broken. I'm weird. I have a temper, who boy, do I ever have a temper. We were teetering on the edge. We were discussing divorce. He was completely responsible with money, I was completely crazy with money. So Financial Peace University was offered through church & I suggested that we do it. He whole-heatedly agreed because he wanted to do anything to save our marriage (again, he's perfect).

I'm a compulsive researcher. Once I learn about something, I have to learn everything about that topic. So I was looking over Dave Ramsey's website before our 1st class and I ran across you and your blog and I started reading. I read every single 1 of your blog entries. I laughed out loud. I didn't sleep for 2 days. I woke my husband up several times to read him entries I found enlightening (he's perfect & he put up with it). I bought Stuff Christians Like and that 37 book for my Nook and read those.

You know what you did for me? It was something that no one had ever told me before. You gave me permission to laugh. You gave me permission to be silly. You gave me permission to be Not Perfect. For the 1st time in a very very long time, I have started to feel like I can be a good Christian and I can also be my goofy, silly self. For the 1st time ever, I realized that the 2 are not mutually exclusive. God made me a goofball. He made me a silly, R-rated-movie-watching, crawl under the table, laugh at myself, laugh with others goofball and there is nothing wrong with that.

I was in counseling with my Pastor/Counseler at the time I found your site. He told me it was like someone flipped a switch. 1 week, I was constantly crying and the next, I was almost chatty! My husband has said several times that it is nice to have me so happy. I do housework and play with the kids and get along with my sister. He told the counselor that he feels like he's always seen this person in me and now I get to see it too.

People at work ask me frequently what happened to me. I love telling them your quote "God made laughter and when we don't use it, it makes him want to take it away, like the unicorns." I love referring to your blog and book when I try to explain why we do the weird things we do. The Chaplain who prayed over Nancy (and eventually married my husband & I) has me keep a Praise journal and not a Prayer journal. She says that it keeps me focused on the positives and not the negatives. She reminds me that we need to Rejoice in all things. I honestly write your Blog post about Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings in that Praise Journal down once a week. It lets me defend my absolute LOVE of Harry Potter without any guilt.

I've started going to church more (more importantly, I enjoy church more). I've started going again on Wednesdays and now I volunteer as a greeter. It's great for me. It forces me to practice small talk and smiling and meeting new people. Soon I'll be able to shed the "shy" label. I used to have to take anti-anxiety medication to handle the crowds at church. I don't have to anymore. For some reason, you making satire and jokes about the silly things that Christians do, allows me to relax and I don't need any medication anymore. No more anti-depressants. No more anti-anxiety meds. I continue counseling, but I think I probably will at some level forever.

So I read in your book, Quitter, today that not everyone liked Stuff Christians Like when it came out. And some gave it harsh criticism. I guess that I just need you to know that those folks are short sited. I needed the humor to move on. I needed permission to laugh in order to be a better Christian. If not for your blog & book, I would have likely given up again. I think I was about to walk away from the church again and I think I may have given up on my marriage. I believe that there are others out there just like me. As I start building my dream job of running my own company I look forward to developing a class about self-care and being about to give away whole bunch of your books and encouraging caregivers and nurses to seek humor and spiritual health.

Thank you Thank you Thank you!

What's happening this Thursday?

This Thursday, I'm going to announce something new. Something I'm excited about and nervous about. And before I tell you what it is, I want to tell you where it came from. There's a story behind this new idea I'd love you to hear.

Last December, when I was writing my new book Quitter, I posted a message about it on Stuff Christians Like. I asked people to email me if they had an "I'm a _________, but want to be a _______," story. More than 600 people emailed me.

The stories were amazing, ranging from incredibly beautiful and full of hope about what could be done in the future to incredibly sad and full of regret about what had been lost in the past.

I emailed those 600 people and asked them to share a little more of their story. 345 of them did. Out of those 345, we picked 100 people to receive the full manuscript of Quitter before it came out. We called the group the "Quitter 100" and printed their names in the back of the book. (Everyone else was given the first chapter before it was released.)

The Quitter 100 provided really valuable feedback via email and an online form. Then we had two conference calls. The calls were unbelievable. They asked a wild variety of questions:

"When will your wife write a book already?"

"I'm a stay at home mom, how do I apply the Quitter principles?"

"I work at a church, how can we use the book as a small group study?"

The questions were all over the board, but there was one consistent theme, "What's next?"

There was a great sense that there needed to be a what's next, another layer to the conversation, another step along the path toward closing the gap between your day job and your dream job. And during the book tour, that question kept coming up. I talked to everyone from plumbers to CEOs of massive companies and the result was the same.

"What's next?"

On Thursday, I'll answer the question.

Not because I'm creative and brainstormed on a whiteboard, but because you asked the question. And the chance to answer that question in a way that helps people discover who they're meant to be and learn how to live out of that is a powerfully fun adventure I think we're all about to go on.

On Thursday, you'll see what's next.

Pretending you didn't see the Hangover 2 last weekend.

Oh stop. You did. I know you did. The sense of that movie hangs like a pallor over you like a beard hangs on Zach Galifianakis. There's still popcorn on your breath and a nervous desire to tell a funny story involving a monkey and a car chase.

But if you did see the movie, which made a bajillion dollars last weekend, as a Christian you are left with only four options to explain why you did:

1. Throw the relevant card.

You saw it so that you could maintain your firm grasp of what pop culture cares about. It was more of a sociological experiment for you. Like I wrote about in the Stuff Christians Like book, how can you be expected to reach people, modern people in your community, if you're not relevant? You sir, are truly a man of Issachar, who understands the time and knows what to do in a 1 Chronicles 12:32 kind of way. I'm almost positive that's what that verse is about. The Hangover 2.

2. Explain how you saw it.

I had to cover my eyes during a few scenes that got a little nuditytastic. There was a stretch of the movie where I had to both cover my eyes and also hum a hymn really loudly to block out the audio of what was happening on the screen. And toward the end of the movie, I had to sprint out of the theater and pace the lobby for a few minutes. Definitely some questionable content but otherwise, a good film.

3. Focus on the deeper meaning of the film.

You know, if you get beyond the nudity and profanity and vulgarity, if you dig deep, it's actually got some really great core truths about mankind and hope. There's actually a pretty fascinating allegory running through the film if you look at it the right way. I didn't even notice the filth, I was so entranced with the meta narrative of man's eternal struggle to find his place in this world and fill the Christ sized hole we all have.

4. Reverse Jesus Juke anyone who questions your attendance.

I have friends who judge other Christians for not drinking beer. They'll say things like, "Oh man, that guy is so conservative and judgmental he won't drink a beer." The irony of calling someone judgmental while you judge them is like the Christian version of the movie Inception. It's a judgment within a judgment. And you can use the same technique with the Hangover 2. How? Reverse Jesus Juke people who judge you and say, "You didn't see the Hangover 2? You're so close minded and judgmental. Didn't Paul say everything is permissible? Did I edit out the 'but not everything is beneficial" part of that verse? You're so nit picky. You didn't even see it. How can you speak about something you haven't experienced? I bet you hate the environment too." It's always good to throw in something completely unrelated to muddy the waters of the argument even further. What does hating the environment have to do with not seeing the Hangover 2? Nothing, but since when is prideful judgment restricted to logic or reason?

I didn't see the Hangover 2 last weekend. I was a little thrown when one of the stars of it, Zach Galifianakis, said that it was so raunchy he asked his parents not to see the film. Of course, there's always the "I'll wait till it's out on DVD and I control the power of fast forward" approach. But you know what's going to happen right? When they release it on DVD they're going to release the unrated version. They never release the "completely devoid of obscenity" version. Probably because that would be like a 17 minute movie.

But SCL is a safe environment. Fess up, did you see the Hangover 2 last weekend?

Happy Memorial Day!

I hope you get the chance to do something fun and important and day-offish today.

To my grandfather, my friends in the service and all the troops, thank you for serving our country!

Stuff Christians Like returns tomorrow.

What's on your summer soundtrack? (A short Saturday question)

My wife and I just started building our summer soundtrack. It's a collection of songs that we'll listen to during adventures this summer. Like musical envelopes, we'll hide our memories in them from the warm months of 2011. Years later, when we hear them on the radio we'll remember the fourth of July in Blowing Rock, or going on a river walk in Franklin Tennessee.

The first song we're putting on it this year is Brett Dennen's "Sydney (I'll Come Running.)" It's impossibly happy and includes one of the best descriptions I've ever heard of what it feels like to play a show as a musician. He says, "We were in the basement, just giving our blood on stage, and pretending we were famous." (The video is after the jump)

The second song is Mat Kearney's "Hey Mama." Here's the song. (It takes 12 seconds to start.)

What song captures summer for you?

What song would you put on your summer soundtrack?

Kid-ifying wild Bible stories.

(I've got two daughters. They're 5 and 7. My wife and I often talk about different ways to encourage about exploring the Bible. But, I'm not sure my 5 year old is ready for every story the Bible has to offer. Here in a completely random, completely fun guest post, Lindsey Whitney shares one way we could adapt one particular Bible story for kids. Enjoy!)

Kid-ifying wild Bible stories. By Lindsey Whitney

Hey Pastor, Here's an Ehud poem for your sermon series if you'd like:

There was once a mean king, Eglon was his name

He lived in Moab, and great was his fame

He was quite pudgy, so pudgy in fact

He could eat a whole cow and call it a snack!

The Israelite people said "Let's get rid of this king

He's simply too mean, but how to do such a thing?"

They prayed to the Lord, and God sent to the land

A great warrior named Ehud, a sword in his hand

The thing about Ehud, it was a little bit strange

He fought left-handed, it gave him more range

Ehud went to the palace, he and the king had a meeting

Ehud brought a gift, and of course there was eating

A secret message I have, Ehud said at the throne

"Quiet!" said the king, and all left them alone

The king rose from his seat to be able to hear

Ehud reached for his sword as the king drew near

A tricky move, a left-hand stab

The sword sunk so deep it was beyond Ehud's grab

The fat closed in around the handle

The king was caught off guard by that left-handed angle

The king fell over dead, now what to do?

Ehud thought, "I'll trick his servants into thinking he's going poo"

Ehud slipped out the back, with the servants outside waiting

What's that king doing? The wait was exasperating.

They waited so long they were ashamed for the king

The servants came in — "What a frightful thing!"

The king was found dead, and Ehud was coming back

This time with an army and talking smack

The Lord defeated Moab, Israel won that day

And those bewildered servants didn't know what to say.

Question:

What's another Bible story we might have to kid-ify?

For more great stuff from Lindsey Whitney, check out her blog, Growing Kids Ministry.

Big Announcement Next Thursday!

At the core of my book Quitter is the idea that you've got to be bold and brave to step into the things you're called to. You've got to take risks and be patient and hustle on your dream so that you don't wake up at 80 and realize you lived a life without purpose or meaning.

In the last few months, a new opportunity has started to develop that I'm really excited about. A chance to do something big and fun and way over my head that helps a lot of people. And I can't encourage other people to be brave if I'm not going to be so I'm going to jump into this opportunity with both feet.

I'll announce it next Thursday, June 2 on Stuff Christians Like and on the radio with Dave Ramsey. In the meantime, get ready, because I think it's going to be awesome and I hope you'll go along with me.