Jon Acuff's Blog, page 148

What apps do you use?

Last Saturday I tweeted this:

Just saw 1st blue bird of spring. Thought, "I bet I could slingshot that thing into a ton of pigs." #toomuchangrybirds

I tweeted that because I realized I was playing the Angry Birds app an awful lot. Well me and 75 million other people, which is not an exaggeration but an actual count of how many people play that app.

Which made me curious, what apps do you spend the most time using?

Here are five apps I use most often:

1. Evernote – Idea capture tool.

2. Tweetdeck – Twitter app.

3. Youversion – Bible on the go.

4. Google – It's Google. Seemed pretty self explanatory

5. Amazon – Shopping.

Here are four apps I had high hopes of using, but never do:

1. 100 pushups – Part of my "get huge" plan.

2. iFitness – See above.

3. SkySafari – Part of my "get smarter" plan.

4. Apple Store – Wishful thinking that I'd have so much money some day that I would be able to so frequently buy Apple products that I would need constant access to the store via an app.

How about you, what apps do you love or use the most if you've got a phone that is app equipped?

Expecting all emails to end with a God shout out.

(I think the funniest jokes are the ones based in truth. They take a fraction of a real situation and exaggerate it comically until it's the size of a skyscraper. Of mirth. That's what Jamison Scott did today with his guest post. He took something that we all know happens and blew it up. This is a great guest post. I hope you like it as much as I did.)

Expecting all emails to end with a God shout out.

Dear Pastor Holmes,

Thank you for your thoughtful response to my last email.

Upon reflection, yes, perhaps it was a bit 'overzealous' of me to suggest that service latecomers be forced to crawl past the good and decent on-timers to the center of the row. And perhaps putting a 'Punctuality Primer' message card on all of the middle seats would be a little extreme – although I disagree that Bible verses that deal with the issue of timeliness would necessarily cause visitors to 'flee our church'. They might say "I respect a church that cares this much about the convenience of it long-time members."

But that's not actually why I'm writing.

No, I'm more concerned about the closing of your last (thoughtful) email.

As I finished reading it, I noticed, with some dismay, that you closed it simply, "Dan"

Not "Worshipping with you in Christ, Dan". Not "Yours in the Truth of the Scripture, Dan". Not "In Christ Alone, who took on flesh, Fullness of God in helpless Babe, Dan".

Not even "Totally Depraved, Dan."

Just "Dan"

Now, my first thought (I tend to think the best about people) was to think – "he just made a simple mistake. He merely forgot. Or maybe he had a long passage at the end of his email saying good things about how my Godly passion showed when I wrote a 2000 word email which highlighted the seventeen most important issues where worship at our church showed serious room for improvement, but then he was afraid that me reading these responding good words might put me in danger of the Sin of Pride, so he deleted it and, in doing so, inadvertently deleted his closing – 'Thinking you to be of extreme importance to our church, Dan'."

But then I thought, "What if it wasn't a mistake? Surely he would appreciate being alerted of his error." So, as a Christian service to you, that's what I'm doing. Please have a nice weekend and we'll see you on Sunday.

Yours seeking unity in all things no matter how trivial,

Scott

P.S. Also acceptable would have been a postscript that mentioned ANY spiritual aspect of your life today. Bible verse references would have been a bonus. But you came up empty here also.

Digital fasts.

(I'm headed to Colorado this morning with my family. We ran out of space in our suitcases so the entire family has to wear snow boots and massive winter parkas as we fly from Nashville to the mountains of Colorado where the temp will be 22 today. That's awesome except that the temp for Nashville today is 76. We will be the sweatiest family at the airport. Chances are we won't have internet at the house we're staying at, which makes this old school post feel appropriate since I might be taking a mini digital fast. Technically speaking, this should have been shared a few weeks ago as friends and family members got ready to take a Lent inspired digital fast. My hope is that the seven steps in this post were taken before they all started.)

Digital fasts.

The only thing Christians like more than the Internet is taking a break from it. A digital fast if you will, where you swear off the Internet or a particular flavor of social media for a prolonged period of time.

But how do you do it? What are the rules? How do you take a really good, really helpful digital fast? The Bible is very thin on the best way to wean yourself off of a Twitter addiction. Not once does Peter say, "Follow me on Twitter, I'm @Rock." Or better yet for all you old school rap fans out there, "@PeteRock."

So today I thought it might be good for us to review the 7 steps you need to take before a digital fast.

Step 1: Go online crazy.

Unless you're online all the time, it's really not a big, dramatic deal for you to go offline. So the first thing you're going to want to do is make sure you're online 24 hours a day. Tweet everything that happens to you, no matter how insignificant. "Just ate a sandwich. Ever thought about that word? It has 'sand' in it. That would be gross if they really have sand in them." Change your facebook status roughly every 90 seconds. Update your blog as frequent as Lowell said something dumb in the television program "Wings." (Old school topical!)

Step 2: Write a blog post about taking a digital fast.

The irony of writing online about how you are going to take some time from being online is so rich it's like a delicious sandwich spread made of boysenberry and irony. Technically the Bible says we're not supposed to tell people when we fast. Maybe posts on your blog don't count. Maybe.

Step 3: Start a Twitter countdown.

Every day, in the week leading up to your digital fast tell people how many days until you take your digital fast. Or start a group on facebook called "Friends taking a break from facebook." The goal is to make sure you get as much attention possible about your very private, very personal digital fast.

Step 4: Go offline.

For a predetermined amount of time, just log off. Don't check email or fantasy sports scores or facebook or anything else. And say things like this to your friends, "Oh man, I know how smokers feel when they quit. This is hard."

Step 5: After a week, go back online.

Make a triumphant return. Maybe write a blog with a headline from Eminem, "Guess who's back, back again? Guess who's back? Tell a friend!" Jump back online with both feet.

Step 6: Share the valuable lessons you learned while on your digital fast.

Turn three days offline into 10 days of blog material. Try to use the words, "community" and "fellowship" a lot, as if you suddenly discovered the real meaning of those during your 72 hour hiatus. If possible, post photos of you doing non digital things, like flying a kite or tickling puppies named Shadow in parks crawling with sunshine bright daisies.

Step 7: Return right back to your pre digital fast amount of online consumption.

This wasn't about learning or praying or anything like that. This was about digital showmanship. You were like an Internet David Blaine holding your breath offline for three days straight. Return to the Internet like David Blaine would return to dating models after a three day hiatus in a solid block of ice.

Hopefully these steps will help you with your first digital fast. I can't wait to read all about it online and in the email newsletter you create. Just promise me you won't do what Anne Jackson did and actually quit facebook for legitimate reasons or push pause on Twitter like Michael Hyatt or my friends who legitimately give up technology for Lent. There was no drama in either of those decisions. Where's the fun in that?

Have you or a friend ever taken a digital fast?

10 Free tickets to the NOW conference.

I'm speaking next month at the NOW Conference. The NOW conference is a weekend gathering of young adults led by 15 of the top visionary and missional leaders in the country. (Jeremy Cowart, Pete Wilson, Ben Arment and a ton of other awesome people.) We are anticipating a gathering of young leaders from across the country with a passion to take what God has given them and impact the world for change. The event is at Brentwood Baptist Church in Nashville, TN on April 15-16, 2011.

The first 10 people who click this link and fill out their information will get a FREE ticket. Hope to see you there.

Trying to order from the menu of me.

The robot named "me" was beautiful. At first.

Have you ever tried to be someone else? Have you ever tried to change who you are? To make yourself better, or smarter or just different? I have and for a whole semester it worked.

I built a robotic version of myself during the Christmas break of my freshman year of college. I didn't want to, but I found myself on social suspension for a disastrous Halloween prank, without any real friends and about to academically lose all my scholarships.

So while everyone else was being festive, I mentally constructed an entirely new version of me. I didn't have any plans and certainly didn't crack the Bible for guidance in this transformation. I decided instead to rely on what had always worked for me in the past. I built an opposite machine.

Pure and simple, I determined to be the exact opposite of who I had been the first semester. If I was a jerk to everyone in the fall, I would be nice to everyone in the spring. If had pursued questionable ladies at nightclubs, I would pursue wholesome girls at church. Never studying became relentless studying. Constant time with bad influences became no time spent with bad influences And so forth.

I just did the reverse of everything I had ever done first semester. The results? My grades went from 2.4 in the first semester to 4.0 in the second. I got straight A's and kept my scholarships. Life was great and everyone liked me. A girl captured it best one day in the library, "You were such a WORD YOU DON"T SAY ON CHRISTIAN BLOG last semester, but I really like you now." (That's not a backhanded compliment, that's a punch you in the neck compliment.) It was amazing. It worked so well, and I secretly thought inside, "Forget God, when I'm in a jam, I'll just whip out the opposite approach."

The opposite approach served me well for a while, but in the summer of 2005 I ran into problems that were just too big for that small coping mechanism. I had done serious damage to my life in some catastrophic ways. As the consequences of my actions approached, I realized I couldn't just do the opposite of what got me there. I couldn't disconnect and build a new robot. I couldn't run in the opposite direction of all the messy parts of my life. If anything, I had to engage myself in them.

Every trick I relied on to solve problems failed. And when I cried out to God about why he wasn't fixing the situation, I felt like the answer was because I kept expecting the fix to come from my menu of options. I kept, qualifying my cry of "help me." What I was actually saying to him was, "help me in one of the following ways that I'm used to and have tried before and understand and approve of."

But God doesn't work that way. He doesn't take the recipes for success I've always tried and then just add some God flavoring. That's frustrating, because that makes it really hard to manage him or life for that matter. Isaiah 55:8-9 speaks to this point: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." I used to rage against that idea, because I wanted God to be like me. To fix things like I would. To handle things like I would. In my time frame, in my way.

But the truth is, his way is always more patient and loving than mine would be. If it were up to me, extreme punishment and years of back breaking penance would be the first thing I received if I ever ran away from home. That's what I tend to feel is in order when I fail. Guilt and anger and shame are the first things that jump into my mouth when I mess up. But not God, because he's different than us. He's not restricted to the human understanding of cause and effect, action and consequence. His way is different. His way is Christ. His way is grace.

Ultimately, God doesn't just replace our solutions with new solutions from him. He replaces them with him. He knows that if he gave us a new list of action items, we'd worship that instead. When pushed into a corner, when darkened by stress and turmoil, we would seek comfort in our printed out list of instructions, instead of the instructor.

So instead he offers us a savior instead of a solution. He offers us a relationship, not a routine. Full of mystery, full of creativity, and yes, sometimes full of frustration.

Today, I'm curious, what's on your menu of fixes? When you find yourself in a hole, what's the shovel you use to dig yourself out? Is it just trying harder? Is it a "just do it" kind of mantra? Or something completely different?

The cover of my new book!

My new book is almost out. It's available for pre-order on April 4th and comes out officially on May 10th!

Here is the cover and the title:

I'm really excited about it and can't wait to tell you more about it over the next few weeks. I'll be talking about it on Twitter with the hashtag #Quitter. In the meantime, here's the rough description of what it's all about:

Quitter: Closing the Gap Between Your Day Job & Your Dream Job

Have you ever felt caught between the tension of a day job and a dream job? That gap between what you have to do and what you'd love to do? I have.

At first I thought I was the only one that felt that way, but then I started to talk to people and realized we're becoming the "I'm, but" generation. When we talk about what we do for a living we inevitably say, "I'm a teacher, but I want to be an artist." "I'm a CPA, but I'd love to start my own business."

"I'm a _____, but I want to be a ______."

All too often, when we search for an answer to this dilemma people tell us that dreaming big means you, "Quit your day job, sell everything you own and move to Guam." But what if there was a different way?

What if you could blow up your dream without blowing up your life?

What if you could go for broke without going broke?

What if you could turn your day job into a platform to jump from instead of a prison to escape from? Because no one wins in a prison break.

What if you could start today?

What if you already had everything you needed?

From figuring out what your dream is to quitting in a way that exponentially increases your chance of success, Quitter is full of inspiring stories and actionable advice. The book is based on 12 years of cubicle living and my real life story of cultivating a dream job that changed my life and the world in the process.

It's time to close the gap between your day job and your dream job.

It's time to be a Quitter.

The youth minister's secret lair of awesomeness.

"Is that going to become a post?"

This is a question friends at churches have started to ask me. Especially if I get out my iPhone and jot down an idea in Evernote. I promise you that I don't turn every church experience I have into a post on Stuff Christians Like. But occasionally, you stumble upon something so wondrous you can't help but share it with all your friends.

This is the experience I had a few weeks ago at Mariner's Church in Orange County. While following Ken Coleman into a room to watch a podcast he was doing with a guy named Bob Goff, I found myself staring into a scene straight out of the movie The NeverEnding Story, minus one Falkor. I audibly gasped because I had long heard rumors of this room but never found it before. What was it?

The youth minister's secret lair of awesomeness.

Fabled for centuries and wrapped in church lore, the youth minister's secret lair is like the bat cave. It's where everything fun they do at youth group lives when no one is at church. And its location is often tightly guarded. Why? Can you imagine the mischief students could have if they got their hands on youth minister caliber water guns? If all that fun, all that awesomeness that is carefully stored in that room ever got into the wrong hands, chaos would ensue, the very fabric of that church community would be ripped apart. Or you'd have to apologize to the elders. One of those would definitely happen.

Since I am often accused of exaggeration, I took a picture, to document my visit. To prove it exists. I've been to Xanadu. It's real. I promise!

Do you have a youth minister's secret lair of awesomeness at your church?

What would you put in it?

Missing church because of the time change.

If you ever meet my kids, please don't tell them we put them to bed ridiculously early. I don't think they know yet. On most nights we have them down by 6:30 or 7:00. Although they're young, 5 and 7, we've so conditioned them to believe 8:00 is late that one night while driving home from a party at 8:30, L.E. exclaimed while looking out the window, "What are all these people doing up right now?"

Our early to bed plans usually go off without a hitch, until daylight savings time rolls around. Suddenly, it's a lot brighter at 6:30. They can still see the sun above the horizon. They can hear kids frolicking in the streets and occasionally the ice cream man. It's a problem.

I'm not the only one who has a hard time with the time switch. Lots of people miss church on Sunday mornings when it happens. You get up at 8AM, realize it's actually 9AM and think "Ugh, I'm late, I'll catch the podcast later" and then roll back over.

But despite the ample parking spaces I saw available yesterday morning because of daylight savings absentees, there are:

4 types of people who don't miss church because of the time change

1. People married to efficient spouses.

Let me be clear about this: If I didn't marry Jenny Acuff I'd be a starving artist. Probably a drifter who was great with pastels and rode the rails with a wolf named Noah if I had to guess. I'd also never make it to church on the morning the time changed without her. Perhaps this is your situation as well.

2. Church employees.

Sunday is the Super Bowl for people who work at churches. My friends who work at churches spend approximately 25 hours at church on Sunday. If this is you, you didn't miss church because you'd never oversleep for the Super Bowl. And you were probably there at 4 in the morning because the volunteer who was supposed to build the graphics for the worship songs just Googled, "water fall stock photography" and you had to fix them all.

3. Saturday night service attendees.

If you go to a Saturday night service, congrats, there's no way the time change messed you up. Then again, you still don't have a t-shirt to wear jogging on Sunday mornings that says, "Stop judging me, I attend Saturday night services," so there's the rub.

4. Bjork.

I'm not sure if she reads this blog or not, but if the famed Icelandic singer is checking in from her wintry home, I know she's not observing daylight savings time because Iceland doesn't. Neither is Magnus Ver Magnusson, former world's strongest man and native of Iceland. He's probably throwing some absurdly heavy object over a wall or wearing a small Kia like a turtle shell right now but he's definitely not moving his clock ahead.

If you're not one of those four types of people, then maybe you missed service because of the time change. I know I have before and the funny thing is that it never works the other way.

I've never showed up to church an hour early when we move the clocks back. Interesting.

How about you?

Did the time change throw you off?

What music is moving you?

I've been traveling a lot lately. And when I hit the road, I try to pick out a soundtrack for the trip. My hope is that by listening to a particular album or song I will forever attach that memory to that music. And eventually, when I miss New York, I'll be able to pick to listen to a Counting Crows song and remember walking through Washington Square, while listening to the song, "Washington Square."

Here are four different bands I've been listening to while I travel:

1. The Temper Trap – "Sweet Disposition"

If you think this song sounds like a commercial, you're right. I first heard it in an ad and was immediately struck by the sense of "expectation" it carried in it. It's bright and hopeful without stumbling into the cheesiness so many happy songs often struggle with.

2. The Afters – "Light Up the Sky"

This song is currently every third song on Christian radio, but I don't mind because I love it.

3. Mumford & Sons – "Roll Away Your Stone."

I don't know if you've heard of this band or the friends who heard of them first and are now shaming you for liking them after their Grammy's performance, but I am wearing out this album. This line in Roll Away Your Stone about the Prodigal Son kills me: "It seems that all my bridges have been burned but you say that's exactly how this grace thing works. It's not the long walk home that will change this heart. But the welcome I receive with every start."

4. Josh Garrels

A friend tweeted me a link to this video the other day. I thought this song was brilliant and haunting and sort of reminds me of Jeff Buckley.

Question:

What music is moving you right now? Share a link, share a lyric, share a song that you're loving right now.

Intentional Community

(In college, I got rejected from every fraternity because I was a jerk at the time. After college I lived with one roommate and then moved home to live with my parents. Then I lived in a retirement community in a trailer park. Single wide, not one of those double fancy deals. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was missing out on a chance to live in an "intentional community" with a bunch of other Christians. What's that you say? Erin Kutz has the answer in a great new guest post. Enjoy!)

Intentional Community. I remember when I first heard of the concept. My now-landlord and intentional community leader (it's kinda like a camp counselor role) was looking at a house several months back and one of our mutual friends told me that he had gone to look at a house to buy so that a bunch of Christians could live there. I remember thinking that it sounded like a 24-hour youth group retreat for 20-somethings.

Maybe you've heard it explained directly and explicitly, like in Shane Claiborne's Irresistible Revolution, which highlights his "new monastic" community. (Confession: I haven't actually read it, I've just been told.)

Or, maybe you haven't heard the term in so many words, but once you take a look back on things Christians have said about their roommates or lifestyles, it all starts to come together. Once you start thinking about it, you look back at Donald Miller's explanation of his living situation in Blue Like Jazz, where a bunch of single dudes all lived together in a house, looking for opportunities for spiritual growth amid traditional roommate conflicts like someone being too noisy at early hours of the morning.

So then you start taking a look at groups of Christian singles that you know, who all live together. They show up to church activities as a unit, and refer to each other as a single name (often incorporating the same elements used in church names). They seem to do a lot of stuff together, like tutoring kids, hosting dinner parties, running Bible studies all out of that one home.

My friends, you might have an intentional community right there in front of you, maybe even in your own home. So rather, than sitting and wondering with this twilight zone feeling that you've had one under your nose this entire time, tally it up with this scorecard, which draws out some of the major highlights of living life "intentionally."

1. You have more than four people living in the house. = +1 for each additional person

2. You have separate floors for each gender. = +1

3. You have a married couple living somewhere in this community, preferably on their own floor, and they often act as the parents of group, even if they're only a few years older than you. = +2

4. Each person has a different spiritual gift as his or her strength. = +1 for each gift represented

5. You've crafted different explanations for your living situation. For example, for your non-Christian friends and co-workers, you tell them that you're renting from or living with a bunch of friends from church. = +1.

6. To your Christian friends, all you have to do is say you live in an intentional community, and you get the approving, knowing "ah." = +2

7. Regardless of your explanation, your non-Christian friends think you joined a cult. = +2

8. You invite said friends over frequently for non-Christian things like beer-drinking and TV-watching in an attempt to prove them wrong. = +1

9. Every time you watch TV as a community, you wonder if you should be praying or reading your Bibles together instead. = +1

10. You keep watching TV anyways, especially to prove to your non-Christian friends how normal you are, even when they aren't around. =+1 for each show you watch regularly as a group.

11. Your parents also think you joined a cult. = +3

12. You use the words intentional, encourage, edify, challenge, and serve more than you use each other's names. = +2

13. At any given moment in the house, at least someone is doing quiet time. = +1

14. As soon as you walk out of your room, a housemate asks you what you did and learned during your quiet time today. = +2

15. You could start a small Christian library, between everyone's stock of Donald Miller, Francis Chan, Tim Keller, C.S. Lewis, etc. = +1 per author.

16. You recycle. = +1

17. You compost. = +2

18. You have a name for your house. = +3

19. You roll up as a group to church, and the rest of the church says, "Oh look, (name of house) is here." = +1

20. You quote Bible verses about love and serving at your roommates when they aren't doing the dishes or taking out the trash. = +2

21. Your community has spread across to multiple houses on the same block (urban) or acre (rural). = +3

22. You make it a point to smile a lot at and be extra friendly to the neighbors, so they know how happy life is in your intentional community. = +2

23. You're considering getting a van so the entire house can travel places together. = +3

24. You blog about the things you do together, like pray, save neighborhood kittens, or compost, and about all that God is teaching you through these things, so everyone can know what life is like inside your community. = +3

There you have it. I recommend taking this with your non-roommate friends to see who's living the most intentionally.

Have you ever lived in an intentional community?

(For more great stuff from Erin, check out her blog)