Jon Acuff's Blog, page 140

Kind of, sort of, secretly wondering, "Hey, what if the world does end on May 21?"

If you're reading this right now, then the world did not end on May 21. Or it did end and you're in heaven and the official blog is Stuff Christians Like! Hooray!

But you knew the rapture wasn't going to happen on May 21. If you're at all like me, a biped with a sense of humor, you laughed a little about the groundswell of conversation about the world ending on May 21.

The minister who was predicting it had predicted this same exact thing in 1994. Now in 2011, he was back with a new wave of billboards and devoted followers handing out flyers warning about the rapture date. You didn't think it was going to happen. You knew it wasn't going to happen on that date and probably quoted the same verse I did, Matthew 24:36 "No one knows about that day or hour. Not even the angels in heaven know. The son does not know. Only the father knows."

And yet …

I cracked one slow eye on Saturday morning to see if I was still here when I awoke. I opened the blinds to see if there was anyone out and about or if I had been left behind or Lahayed Behind as I like to say. I didn't run anywhere. I promise I didn't sprint across our backyard, jump the fence and bang on our neighbor's front door to verify that we were all still here. But last Friday, as I sat in the Orlando airport reading the media coverage of it, I thought, "I'm glad I'm headed home today because if is the last day, I want to spend it with my wife and kids." And do you know why I thought that? Do you know who I blame?

Noah.

Whenever I bump into something that feels a little crazy, or outside the norm, my first reaction is skepticism. My second reaction is to blog about it. And my third is to think, "Yeah, but people laughed at Noah too."

For 120 years, he hammered away at a boat in a land that had never seen rain. For 120 years he did something silly. Forget hosting a website about the end of the world or paying for billboards, Noah spent 120 years building an ark of unbelievable scale in front of an unbelieving crowd.

Then he wrangled animals. Mammal by mammal, reptile by reptile, unicorn by, well that one did not work out, but we still got the Narwhal! For 120 years he did that while his friends and neighbors put him on blast on whatever was the Old Testament version of Twitter. (Graffiti on papyrus? Insults on chiseled rocks? Hard to say.) And then it started to rain.

Which is why I have a hard time not throwing the "Noah Card" on myself when I doubt. Did I stay up until midnight so that I could jump into the air for the rapture like the guy who could fly on the show Heroes instead of floating up out of bed asleep? No. But did I throw the Noah card at least once on Friday, May 20? Maybe.

Question:

What did you think about the whole "world is going to end on May 21" situation?

Win 1 of 25 copies of Francis Chan's new video series BASIC.

Francis Chan writes dangerous books. They're dangerous because when you read them, it's really hard to stay the same. They ask hard questions in beautiful ways and tend to change people and churches.

He's about to do that same thing with his new BASIC video series.

I got a sneak peek at this series and it is fantastic. They're shot with gorgeously simple detail and imbued with the honesty and ideas that made so many people love the book Crazy Love.

And they're brand new material, from a pastor I hope keeps turning out new material.

Today, I've got 25 copies of BASIC to give away free.

Here's how to enter:

1. Leave a comment on this post with an answer to the question, "What's one topic you'd love to see Francis Chan cover in a video?"

2. Twitter a link to this post with this link: http://bit.ly/jBUVQ8. 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 Francis Chan's new video series BASIC on @jonacuff's blog http://bit.ly/jBUVQ8 "

3. On Saturday May, 28 we will pick 25 winners. We'll announce them the following week and you can email your address if you're one of the winners.

That's it! I hope you enter. And if you want to see the trailer for BASIC, I have posted it below:

Proofreading your way through worship.

(In the Stuff Christians Like book, I confessed I sometimes find typos in the worship music. I don't want to, it just happens. But when I read this great guest post from Julia Rhodes, I knew I wasn't alone and had to share it with you. Enjoy!)

Proofreading your way through worship – by Julia Rhodes

I'll go ahead and get this out of the way up front: I'm a professional editor. It's what I get paid to do. So I'll concede that I'm pretty much a big mouth-breather when it comes to punctuation and plural possessives.

But I'll bet that even if you've got the grammatical sense of Snooki, you too have noticed a glitch in the Matrix on a given Sunday or two. There you are, in a moment of intense worship and reflection, singing along in the aisle of your mega church, holding your chai, reading the lyrics on the big screens line-by-line for comfort and security (because do you REALLY need to be reminded that the phrase is "you are holy" when you've just sung it for the eight-thousandth time?), and then all of a sudden WHAM. WHAM! Somebody spelled it "Jesus Chris." You've just been punk'd by spelling. And I don't mean Tori.

This actually happened at my church a while back. Jesus apparently had two first names, like Kevin James.

And the really awful thing was that the phrase "Jesus Christ" was repeated over and over again like a mantra, except on the screens it was "Jesus Chris," "Jesus Chris," which after a while began to sound like all of us were angry with a man named Chris.

It wouldn't have been so terrible except that the mistake wasn't corrected until the third service.

I'm sure you've been there, too. You've experienced the horror of getting mugged in a grammatical alley when all you were trying to do was to connect with God at church. You probably tried to downplay it later with your friends at Wendy's, like, "Yea, heh, did you catch that 'your' in 'You Are Holy'? I mean, puhleese! Heh." Painful crickets dying slowly. "So…wanna talk about my aunt's fungal infection?"

But let's step back for a moment. I want to give worship service producers the benefit of the doubt. I'll bet they got those Power Point slides from their 20-something worship pastor who typed them in a hurry the night before while in an intense spiritual reverie.

Plus, shouldn't we be more interested in the MEANING of the words and not get hung up on adorable little aberrations?

A few points:

1. What Would Jesus Proof?

I'm pretty sure Jesus wouldn't fashion a whip of cords to drive the sloppy Power Point producer out of the service for demeaning his Father's house. He has bigger concerns. Like the salvation of all mankind. But I'm sure he wouldn't be opposed to the correct spelling of "Ebenezer" at Christmastime either, as in "here I raise my Ebenezer," a phrase that has nothing to do, incidentally, with tiny people named Tim. (This just confuses the yule out of me — another holiday word I don't understand, and because I don't understand it will use as a stand-in for swear words when convenient.) But yea. Back to that salvation of all mankind thing.

2. Mr. Essene Monk, I Presume?

The Essenes were guys who transcribed the Scriptures meticulously in caves, and who would burn an entire scroll if they found even one letter off on any given page. A whole scroll. That they had just spent 84 hours penning with a jagged ostrich feather. Let that sink in for a moment. If the Essenes had been in charge of Power Point at your church, the whole building would have been burned to the ground long ago. Multiple, multiple times. I have only one thing to say about this: we Christians used to have standards.

So, what's the appropriate level of outrage? An important question, a question we love to ask because we evangelicals love us some outrage.

My answer is, I DONT KNOW. Wait, I DON'T no. Wait, I dunno.

Their. Reed it and weap.

What are some crazy screen typos you've seen in your worship service lately?

(For more great stuff from Julia, check out her blog, Wet Behind the Ears. 

My head becomes a delicious cake.

A few weeks ago, Jeremy Nelson, a Sociology teacher at Park Christian School in Moorhead, MN sent me an email. To celebrate the 1,000th post on Stuff Christians Like, his class of students studying the sociology of religion threw an SCL 1,000 party. I thought it was hilarious and awesome and was honored that anything I ever wrote was turned into a cake. But then my new book came out and I failed to share the photo of the event with you. Here it is:

Referencing the plague of locusts whenever two or more bugs are gathered in the same place.

Two weeks ago, I flew to Dallas. When I left Nashville, our neighborhood was quiet. It was so peaceful that you could hear a bird sneeze. (Which is adorable by the way.) But when I returned a mere 48 hours later, something was different. Even with all the windows in my car rolled up, lest I inhale more pollen, I could hear a buzzing. Like tiny chainsaws grinding away at phonebooks that keep inexplicably getting delivered to my house, there was a loud noise that permeated our entire neighborhood.

What was it?

The return of the cicadas.

Gone for the last 13 years, this collection of bugs has returned to Nashville in greater numbers than even the amount of banjos that are swarming the city right now thanks in part to Mumford & Sons.

They're black, crunchy like old Sun Chip bags and constantly under foot. There are thousands in my backyard, my driveway, and the side of my house. As I type this, one is literally clinging to the windshield wiper as we drive to Atlanta like DeNiro in the movie Cape Fear. The persistence this bug has shown in holding on to that wiper blade in the middle of a torrential rain at 70MPH is both inspiring and terrifying.

Growing up in Massachusetts, I was unfamiliar with the "return of the cicadas," but people in Nashville talked about their arrival like DC Talk was finally getting back together. "Oh yeah, they should be here this week. Remember last time? Definitely going to be here Thursday." They only hatch every 13 years, but we knew down to the day when they would come back. (I know, I know, don't call it a comeback, they've been here for years.)

And as we prepared for their return, more than one friend said to me, "Do you think this is like the plague of locusts in the Old Testament?" In response, my first answer is always, "Well, the locusts ate a lot of crops, so it really depends on if you're talking about the larval stage or the juvenile stage of the cicada. A juvenile cicada won't eat solid foods but instead consists on a steady diet of fluid from a living deciduous tree." My second answer is, well I don't usually get to tell them a second answer because they've already walked away in boredom at that point.

But I realized that whenever I see two or more bugs gathered in the same place, I think, "Old Testament swarm!" And it's not just bugs that I find myself doing that with. The other day, my five year old McRae came home with a string of frog eggs stuck to her shorts. (Don't ask, it was a "dad adventure" and those usually end with the kids pretty filthy.)

When my wife said, "Hey, quick question. Is McRae covered in frog eggs right now?" I thought, "Old Testament swarm!"

There is a chance I'm the only one who has done this and I pray that I'll never have cause to say, "Wow, this is as many boils as in the plague of boils."

But maybe I'm not alone. Have you ever seen a large collection of bugs and thought, "This is so OT?"

Orlando Quitter Event Tonight!

Tonight is stop four on the Quitter Book Tour! Join me in Orlando for a fun night of book signing, side hugging and money giving awaying. (There's a $500 cash giveaway and it felt like that needed to be a verb somehow.)

I think this might be my last time in Orlando in 2011. So make sure you come hang out, pick up a copy of Quitter and get it signed.

Here are the details:

Thursday May 19, 2011 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Books-A-Million

200 North Entrance Road

Orlando-Sanford, FL 32771

407-328-4700

Losing sight of the tweets that matter most.

A few weeks ago, there was a Royal Wedding. Not sure if you caught any of that or were aware that happened. I consider this blog to be the 37th place you turn to for the latest news and updates about what's going on around the world. So if you're reading this right now and are thinking, "Come on, spoiler alert!," congratulations, you've successfully dodged every news outlet on the planet for almost three weeks solid. (Including this site on Monday.)

You should google it though because the whole thing was pretty amazing. I especially liked the moment when the doors on the balcony of Buckingham Palace were thrown open and Kate, the princess, stepped out to the jubilation of the roaring crowd below. It was a pretty powerful moment of joy and unbridled excitement and I rewound it a few times on the DVR.

Then I sat down at the dining room table to help my oldest daughter L.E. study for her spelling test before school. L.E. has a perfect streak record, with only one less than perfect score, the week her mom was out of town and dad ran the study session. My job was to call out the words. She'd listen, then write the word down and recite it back to me. We went through a few words and then I got distracted. I started using TweetDeck on my iPhone so that I could write a tweet about the Royal Wedding. I started going slower at calling out the words for L.E. as I focused on crafting a really funny tweet. She called me a few times, "Dad, what's my next word?," and I'd look up, recite it and then disappear back into my iPhone. After a few minutes, she finally put this note in front of me.

It says, "Daddy pay atensho!"

Stomach punch.

In getting engaged and distracted with my iPhone I ignored my daughter to the point that she found a napkin and wrote me a note to "pay attention."

I don't know if you're a dad or a mom or have never had kids, but that was about as crushing as a napkin gets.

A few days later, I was talking to my wife about the whole incident. As is so often the case, she lasered into the truth of it so much faster than I did. Here is what she said:

"L.E. and McRae are the ones you really want to retweet you. When they grow up, you want them retweeting or repeating the words of love and wisdom you gave them more than anyone else."

I keep telling my wife to write a book. She keeps refusing, but she's right the napkin and her words sounded a lot like Proverbs 22:6, "Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not turn from it."

As a parent, it's so easy to get distracted by so many things. Maybe you don't tweet. Maybe you don't spend more time on facebook than you do helping your kids with their homework. Maybe work or friends or TV or a million other things are the distractions you wrestle with most.

Maybe it's the opposite for you. You don't have kids, but you used to be one. You grew up with a dad who was distant. You didn't grow up seeing the glow of an iPhone on your dad's face as he unplugged, it was the newspaper he hid behind. And you know the cost of what happens when parents aren't present.

I don't know your situation, but I know more about mine because of something my seven year old scrawled on a napkin.

When my daughter is a teenager and the world tries to wound her, I want her to retweet the words of love I spent her entire childhood telling her.

When my daughter is in college and some boy tries to convince her she's not unique, I want her to retweet the words of truth of I spent her entire childhood telling her.

When my daughter is in her 30s and some hardship tries to make her question her value, I want her to retweet the words of value I spent her entire childhood telling her.

I framed that napkin. It will sit on my desk for years as a reminder of what matters most.

I hope you never need a napkin message to remember that yourself.

Not knowing if you're supposed to clap after a slow song at church.

Wow, that was a beautiful performance. I loved that special music. Wait, is that a term we're still using? "Special music?" Did we retire that because it sounds old fashioned? Kind of how like people are not saying "Sunday School" anymore but instead say, "I went to life group" or "my community group?"

If so, is there a new term I should be using? Instead of "special music," should I say, "Song that only one person sang, who often doesn't sing, but did today and we didn't sing along we just listened to it together as a congregation?" That's really long.

Regardless, that was a beautiful song. One acoustic guitar player, one girl singing slowly and quietly. But it just ended and I'm not sure if I should clap. I want to clap, it was awesome and inspired me to clap, but does boisterous applause ruin the "we're all quietly contemplating the intimacy and tenderness of the Lord" vibe that just started?

We're all just sitting here, on the verge of clapping, you can feel the tension. Maybe I should scream out "Jesusssss!!!!" like that guy at the Christian concert? Soft golf clap? Murmur of approval? Where are we headed with this thing?

Maybe a minister who they don't let preach but always have do the announcements will jump up and tell us, "Let's give a round of applause for that performance." But if he doesn't should I start it? Dare I go so boldly into a clapless situation with my own two hands? What if I start it and it doesn't build? What if I expect other people to join me in this act of support like at the end of the movie Dead Poet's Society and no one does? If that happens I better make sure it's a fast clap, because a single slow clap is the audience equivalent of leaving 1 penny as a tip. It's better to have no one applaud then one guy in the back of the room who is slowly clapping.

But come on, we gotta clap! That song was awesome.

If we are the body, why aren't our hands clapping? Is that Casting Crowns? I bet they would know what to do in this situation. Because I don't, I really don't.

Win 1 of 50 FREE copies of Quitter!

I'm giving away 50 FREE copies of my new book Quitter on Michael Hyatt's blog. Today is the last day to enter for one of them.

Click here to read the post I wrote "Avoiding one great temptation every leader faces" and enter for your chance at a free copy of Quitter.

Reacting to the Royal Wedding

A lot of bloggers like to write about events as they happen, in the midst of people actually thinking about them and caring about them. Me? I like to wait until they've cooled off, until most of the general population has moved away and any degree of momentum has passed. Then I write about the subject. I'm smart like that.

But a few weeks ago, there was a big Royal Wedding. And as I watched Twitter and Facebook and the Christian community in general I felt like there were four ways we reacted to it:

1. The Royal Approach

A number of people used the wedding to highlight that we too are royalty. We are heirs to the throne, we are related to the prince of peace. We are, as Run DMC intoned, "Down with the king."

2. The OT Bible Approach

When I watched the party and celebration in the streets of London, my very first thought was "David would be in his underwear." That's admittedly a weird thought, but that's where I went. I immediately imagined David stripping down to his under armor and doing the robot in the streets after his victory. Just standing there saying, "Hands go up, and they stay there! All I do is win!"

3. The Jesus Juke Approach

I was seriously concerned that the Jesus Juke machine was going to overheat and explode during the Royal Wedding. The easiest juke was the one you can use anytime anyone anywhere gets excited about something: "I wish people were this excited about church."

4. The Product Approach

I took a photo of this Bible last week. In case you can't read what it says, it's the Prince William of Wales & Miss Catherine Middleton King James Version Bible. Or as I like to say, the "PWOWMCMKJV." (I call it the "P-WOW" for short.)

I'm not going to lie to you, that last one stings a little. I've long been ready for the Stuff Christians Like version of the Bible, but thus far, no one is returning my calls. It would come with a hollowed out spine so you can secretly drink coffee in church and would smell like an old hymn for those moments when you're missing the old school feel of church. Dare to dream, dare to dream.

Did you watch the Royal Wedding? Did you have a response that was different from the four I saw?