Jon Acuff's Blog, page 142

Last day for the FREE Quitter audio book!

My new book Quitter officially releases this week. That means that today is the last day you can order it on DaveRamsey.com and get the audio download for FREE. I added a bunch of extra material to the audio book that's not in the printed edition and just like the last two books, I'm the one who reads it. So, you can expect my silky baritone for 4-6 hours of audio awesomeness. (Depending on the speed you play it at.)

Click here to order on DaveRamsey.com

The 4 types of Modern Christian Songs

One morning before church started a few years ago, I heard a song being piped in over the loudspeakers. I recognized it as a song by "Our Lady Peace," a rock band that had a few hits in the 90s.

The song kind of sounded like a Christian song and I nodded my head along waiting for church to start as the following verse played:

"Down here in the atmosphere, garbage and city lights, you gotta save your tired soul, you gotta save our lives."

Amen! That's what I'm talking about. God, you gotta save our lives. Then the next verse was played:

"Hope you remember me, when you're homesick and need a change. I miss your purple hair."

Wait, what? Did Jesus have purple hair? I don't remember that particular detail from the Bible.

"OK," I thought to myself, "that's a little weird. I'm not sure Jesus had purple hair but you know, when the sun is setting just right over the Dead Sea maybe it was kind of purple. I'm still with you." And then the next line came in:

"I miss the way you taste."

Ohh, this is one of those songs where it sounds kind of Christiany. You think at first that the guy is singing to God but he's actually singing about someone else. OK. That makes sense. It's a weird thing to play at church, but once I heard the lyrics I knew firmly where I stood.

But sometimes contemporary Christian music isn't that clear. Sometimes you don't get the purple hair clue. So to save you some guesswork, I've outlined the 4 types of songs most commonly found in Christian music:

1. God singing to us.

In these types of songs it's almost like God picked up an acoustic guitar, sat down on a big log and said, "Hey Jon, come here. I wrote this little ditty I want to sing from you. Not diddy, like the rapper, who will always be Sean to me, I mean ditty like a song." The lyrics are meant to be listened to as if God is singing directly to you.

2. Us singing to God.

Table turned. This is a message from us to God. It's a cry, an act of praise, a modern day psalm if you will. A good example of this is the Brandon Heath song that's popular right now, "Your Love." When Heath sings "your love is the only thing that matters," he's not singing to a girlfriend or to you. He's singing to God. Incidentally, the song "Your Love" by Brandon Heath is very, very different from the song, "Your Love" by Nicki Minaj. Those lyrics aren't interchangeable. I promise.

3. God & Us duet.

This is where it gets tricky. In this type of song it's like a conversation between God and the listener. You have to really tune in to know which lyrics you're supposed to sing and which verses God is supposed to carry.

4. Song about love.

In this type of song, a Christian recording artist breaks away from the previous three types of songs and writes about love. As in for a significant other that he or she loves. Mat Kearney's new song "hey mama" is a perfect example of this approach. The beat of it kind of reminds me of Michael Franti. In the song, Kearney lays out his heart for a lady friend, a "Tennessee Queen." Someone he'd like to kiss who has "Cherokee eyes" and "golden thighs." Whoa Kearney! But before you get in a huff, and say "dirty lyrics," allow me to throw out … the Song of Solomon card! Boom! This song is nowhere near as physically expressive as that book of the Bible. (And it's a great song, the lyric "You're Mississippi and I'm Oregon, you're sun tanned and I'm porcelain," is brilliant.)

Hopefully we cleared up a few things today. Of course, you could always argue that "there's no such thing as a 'Christian song,' but I've heard that so many times it turned my hair purple. Like the Dead Sea or the Sea of Galilee.

What's your favorite Christian song right now?

Unbelievable video + a Short Saturday Question.

"Unbelievable."

That would be my one word review of the new TV Special the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association just put together.

The video is called "Sowing The Seeds of The Gospel." I watched it last Tuesday and it completely knocked me over. I loved partnering with them on the Vietnam Kindergartens and Operation Christmas Child, but this was the first time I'd seen a Billy Graham TV Special. Unbelievable.

From the support they've delivered in Japan, to helping child soldiers in Liberia and their work in Los Angeles, I was really taken aback. My cousin David Acuff worked on the video and I'm really proud of him. This is hopefully one more opportunity in a long list of opportunities for SCL to share the stuff they're doing.

Visit www.billygraham.tv and watch "Sowing The Seeds of The Gospel."

Short Saturday Question:

What's one area of the world or country your church supports through missions?

Quitter is now on Kindle!

This is going to be a month of sentences ending in exclamation points.

Today's is that Quitter is now available for the Kindle! (It should be on ibooks and the nook soon. And we should have more copies of the actual book on Amazon soon as well.)

Click here to order the Kindle version of Quitter.

Being Disappointed That it's Serious Wednesday on SCL.

(I had the honor to meet Stephanie Kearns a few weeks ago at an event in Greenville, Illinois. She is hilarious! She told me an idea she had for a guest post and I loved it. I begged her to write it. Here it is. Enjoy!)

Being Disappointed That it's Serious Wednesday on SCL by Stephanie Kearns

It happens every week. You click on the bookmark to take you to SCL for your daily dose of sarcasm, satire and snark. Then, while the page is loading, you have a sinking moment of disappointment because suddenly you realize…it's Wednesday.

Wednesday is a perfectly good day, except for the fact that on SCL, Wednesdays are serious.

For many of us, Stuff Christians Like is our own private playground. It's a place where we get to laugh at the ridiculous things we do within the culture of North American Christianity. It's self-deprecating, introspective and nostalgic all at the same time. It is a fun and happy place. And we hold tightly to it.

But once a week, we have to pause and be thoughtful, or self-examining, or have our toes stepped on because one of our character flaws or spiritual weaknesses is brought up. And really, who wants that???

We want the funny. We get enough of all that serious stuff from Church, or Small Groups or Bible Studies. We get enough guilt from our parents or spouses or friends. We don't want to go to our happy place, and find it there. It doesn't matter that those moments of seriousness help us just as much as the laughing does.

The two to three minutes it takes to read, laugh, then tweet, or post the link on facebook is OUR time. Like the "generation before us" wants to only sing hymns on Sunday mornings, we want only funny from SCL. We are selfish.

We forget that it's not just Christians that read SCL. We forget that there are those who are seeking Christ, and somehow find their way to SCL. Or there may be Christians that are struggling with work, or family, or money, or a recent move. It is quite possible that one of these people might stumble upon something like #687 Acting surprised when God doesn't seem close.

Wait. Hold on. That was one of the first posts I read on Stuff Christians Like. I think I might have posted the link on facebook. I'm pretty sure that I even emailed it to a brother or two. I think I might have been in the middle of a really low point spiritually when I read that. I'm pretty sure I grabbed my bible and remembered where the real solutions come from. Ugh. This means at one time I was INSPIRED by a Serious Wednesday post.

…sigh…

Let me start over.

It happens every week. You click on the bookmark to take you to SCL for your daily dose of sarcasm, satire and snark. Then, while the page is loading, you have a sinking moment of disappointment because suddenly you realize…it's serious Wednesday. But instead of being disappointed, you stop, take a deep breath and lift up a quick prayer, wondering how you will apply what you read today.

Have you ever been disappointed it's Serious Wednesday or is that your favorite day on SCL?

(For more great stuff from Stephanie, check out her blog http://spinningnowhere.blogspot.com/)

Getting excited when a Christian trends on Twitter.

British comedy is impossible to recreate for your friends. Try as you might to tell a story from the British version of the Office or Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail, it is impossible to accurately capture the pauses and awkward silences that made it so funny when you saw it. You inevitably end up saying,

"Yeah, there's this scene where two guys are arguing about an African swallow and then the one guy keeps asking questions! That's hilarious right? I guess you had to be there."

That's the kiss of death when you're telling someone a story, "I guess you had to be there." It's the official sign that you have failed to turn "there" into "here" with your storytelling prowess and should instead change the subject to something else as fast you as you can.

I find it every bit as challenging to explain what Twitter is and features that are on it. But I will nonetheless attempt to.

I tweet a lot. (I'm @jonacuff) One of my favorite parts of Twitter is the column. On the right hand side of this microblogging/conversation medium there's a list of all the topics that a lot of people are talking about. On the day of the Royal Wedding, most of trends had to do with the big event. There were trends like "They Kissed!" "Proud to be British!" or "#RoyalWedding." If you click on the trend you can see all the different tweets that referenced that exact phrase. It's a fun way to check into a random conversation and it reveals a snapshot of what thousands of people are talking about all at once.

Last week, out of nowhere, I saw the name "Francis Chan" trending. (He's a pastor who wrote the book "Crazy Love.") Instantly, I found myself getting excited that a Christian was trending. I wanted to side hug someone like we had just sent Buzz Aldrin into space and say, "We did it! We put a Christian on the Trend list!"

But that feeling of completely silly, completely unnecessary excitement was short lived because I started to worry. Often, if someone is trending it means one of three things has happened to them:

1. They got a DUI.

Very, very popular way to trend on Twitter.

2. They tweeted something controversial.

When the New Orleans Saints drafted a running back last week, their current running back Reggie Bush tweeted "It's been fun New Orleans." Guess who trended the next day? Reggie Bush.

3. They died.

I'm going to go ahead and say this is the worst possible way to become a trending topic on Twitter. The one upside is that you could probably have them carve "He trended" on your gravestone or place the little blue twitter bird or fail whale on top of your headstone.

So when I clicked on Chan's name, I was scared I was about to see one of three issues. But, it turns out that he was speaking at a conference. He was dropping some bombs from stage and people loved them so much they started tweeting him like crazy. I ended up getting to enjoy the unexpected "hooray" of having a Christian trend on Twitter, despite knowing someone would Jesus Juke me and say, "Why are we so concerned with the trends of the world?" At which point I would say, "Trending on Twitter is being in the world, but not of the world." I'd probably even name drop the men of Issachar and 1 Chronicles 12:32 just to up the ante.

But that's just me. Have you ever gotten a silly amount of excitement from seeing a Christian trend on Twitter or get posted on Facebook?

The miserable god.

I once met a Tom Selleck impersonator at a party. It was a very surreal experience because at the time I was wearing a grass skirt and a t-shirt I had made with Magnum PI's photo on it. (It was a Hawaiian Party, not just a "Jon does weird things" party. I promise.)

He had a thick Tom Selleck mustache, hair that would stay in place even while driving a Ferrari through the hills of Honolulu and he seemed like he probably had a friend with a helicopter. (Jersey Shore, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber. Felt like I was going to lose some audience with those Magnum PI 1980s references.)

But he was a photo copy of someone else and it felt like there were two Tom Sellecks in the world at that exact moment. Tom Selleck had become multiple people and that's something I'm afraid will happen to me. Not that I'll have an impersonator, but rather that I'll become an impersonation of myself. That there will be multiple me's. The person I really am and the person I pretend to be on this blog.

There's a great temptation when you blog about faith to act like you've got it all together. I'm not sure why, but I think you become afraid that if you say the wrong thing or express the wrong doubt, someone will comment or tweet, "I can't believe he doesn't understand that thing about God already! Every real Christian knows that!" When you give into that fear you become two people. Real you and blog you.

To avoid that, I want to tell you about something that happened to me on the day my new book Quitter was available for pre-order.

Two weeks ago, on a Monday morning, Quitter was finally available for pre-order. In the life of an author, that's a big day because it's the first chance to jump out into the world and say, "Here's my book! Here's this thing I wrote. I think it's special. I hope you do too." And then you wait to see if the world agrees.

I'm sure other folks who are cool and calm on days like that. I'm sure there are people who read this site who have had big projects launch, big life changes like moving over seas or big adventures like taking a new job and have been at peace the entire time.

I am not like that.

I was a mess. And in my quiet time, as I prayed that morning, this is what went through my head,

"Maybe Quitter will fail so that God can teach you an important lesson."

In the space before I had the chance to have another thought, I felt like God rushed in. It wasn't audible, it wasn't written on the wall. A bush did not catch ablaze, but in my heart this is what I felt:

Why can't I teach you in the midst of joy? In what better way could I reveal the heart of who I am, goodness, then in the midst of something good? You believe I can only teach you in the midst of great hardship and hurt. But failure is not my only laboratory. Does not a father learn something profound about my miraculous goodness when he holds his newborn baby for the first time after delivery? Does not a bride not see my glory when she walks down the aisle toward her groom? Life and lessons cannot be limited to heartache.

This is what I am wrestling with right now, the continued realization that I've made God into an emo god. I know how to cry with him, but not laugh. I know how to mourn with him but not dance. And I think the enemy wants that. He wants us to be ashamed or embarrassed by the great ways God blesses us with and reject compliments and think that God can only hold us and mold us in times of great hurt.

But when we do that, we miss who God is.

That he is the God who loves us so much he sent his son to die for us.

That he is the God who longs to be gracious to us and rises in the morning to show us compassion. (Isaiah 30:18) That he is the God who satisfies our desires with good things. (Psalm 103:5) That he is the God who delights in the well-being of his servant. (Psalm 35:27)

Does God teach us in difficult moments? Have we not been promised that in this world there will be trouble? Without a doubt.

But when we confine God's love and lessons strictly to a classroom of misery we create a miserable god.

And that's not who he is.

Win $500 at the Quitter events next week!

We're less than a week out from the first Quitter event! I'll be signing books, side hugging, doing a reading, and … giving away $500 in cash at each stop.

Below are the details. If you're in Dallas, Nashville, Atlanta or Orlando, please stop by! It's going to be a blast.

Wednesday May 11, 2011, Dallas Area

6:00 pm – 8:00 pm Books-A-Million

3000 Grapevine Mills Parkway

Grapevine, TX 76051

972-539-0636

Thursday May 12, 2011 Nashville Area

6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Barnes & Noble

1701 Mallory Lane

Brentwood, TN 37027

615-377-9979

Friday May 13, 2011 Atlanta Area

7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Books-A-Million

Discover Mills

Lawrenceville, GA 30043

678-847-5115

Thursday May 19, 2011 Orlando Area

6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Books-A-Million

200 North Entrance Road

Orlando-Sanford, FL 32771

407-328-4700

SCL10K Update + Fun Event

Last November SCL partnered with SafeWorld Nexus for the SCL10K. The goal was to raise $10,000 in 24 hours for mosquito nets in Uganda. We ended up raising more than $33,000. One of the things Matt Chambers and his team at SafeWorld Nexus are doing is sending out GPS coordinates that show you exactly where your nets went. I got mine recently and it's awesome to see the lives that were changed during that event. He is going back to Uganda this summer to finish the delivering the nets and plans to have the GPS coordinates delivered to everyone who participated by end of July.

Matt also has a fun event coming up called "Join a New Story." It's in Franklin, TN on Monday, May 9 from 7-9PM at the Factory. He's raising money to build a maternity center in Haiti with Heartline Ministries. It's going to be a pretty amazing night and I recently recorded a video for the event because I'm a huge fan of what these guys are doing. Click here for more details and ticket information.

When pop culture comes home. (Or my kid learns Ke$ha.)

The other day, my seven-year-old L.E. said something to me:

"My friend at school taught me a new song. It's called Tick Tock."

Immediately I started thinking, "Please be the nursery rhyme, please be the nursery rhyme. Come on mother goose, Daddy really needs this to be the mother goose version and not Ke$ha."

"Oh really? What are the lyrics L.E.?"

I then stood with nervous anticipation in the garage, hoping she was about to say:

"Tick tock, tick tock

Hickory dickory dock

The mouse ran up the clock"

Wouldn't that have been adorable? I would have given her a licorice whip and sent her on her way with a pat on the head.

Instead, this is what she said:

Don't stop, make it pop. DJ, blow my speakers up.

Tonight, I'ma fight
'til we see the sunlight.

Tick tock on the clock,
but the party don't stop, no ooo whoa

I resisted the urge to fall to my knees like Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes and scream, "Ke$$$$$$$$$ha!!!" but just barely.

I finished loading the car, got both kids in their car seats and then pulled my wife aside quickly. "Hey, L.E. just sang the chorus to a Ke$ha song. Let's talk to her about it in a few minutes when we've got a game plan." I then went back inside the house to grab something and my wife got into the car. At which point she found L.E. teaching our 5 year old the lyrics. (The car seat conversation between kids is the original form of social media.)

There would be no "later," we had to talk about it right away. We told L.E. that wasn't an appropriate song for kids to be singing. We didn't break down the lyrics or make it some sort of forbidden, mysterious thing she'd want to explore secretly when we're not around. I tried to ignore the lie that she'll become sheltered and go crazy in college if we actively monitor the things she digests as a kid. I'm not sure she'll reflect back on that moment as massive event in her childhood. But I will, because though I long ago committed to raising dorks, this was one of the first times pop culture had jumped into our house.

How would you have handled that?

How did your parents handle stuff like that when you were growing up?