Jon Acuff's Blog, page 148

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)

Mysterious church services.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie "Best in Show" is when the two yuppie characters explain how they met. They say, "We met at Starbucks. Not at the same Starbucks but we saw each other at different Starbucks across the street from each other."

That's funny because it's true. There are approximately 9 million Starbucks locations. There are two on every corner. Another way to say it is that there are as many Starbucks as there are churches in the south.

Growing up in Massachusetts I didn't have any idea that the South was hogging all the churches. (If you're reading this post from Switzerland and need a point of reference, I'd say there are as many churches as there are people who sell bratwurst on the streets of Zurich. Geographical shout out!)

If you don't like the church you're attending in Atlanta for instance, you don't have to "church hop," you can kind of just "church fall down." By the time you walk out of your old church and fall the five or six feet your body would travel like a chopped down tree you'll probably land in the lobby of another one.

I don't think that's a bad thing, I think that's a great thing. But it is funny because if you drive around a city like Nashville you see a whole host of different types of services. And some of them are so creative they're bordering on "mysterious." Here are three real services I saw on signs during a recent jaunt through the music city.

1. Casual Service.

This one is low on the mystery scale, but it does offer more ambiguity than say a "Contemporary Service." (Which means lasers, no hymns and you can wear jeans.) What does a casual service entail? I feel like there are probably sweat pants involved and maybe bean bag chairs. At least one person on stage is going to have an unkempt goatee and possibly refer to the whole thing as a "Laid back liturgy." I'm guessing this service occurs on the first floor of buildings without windows. A guy named Eutychus fell asleep in the very first "casual service" and fell out a three-story window to his death in Acts 20. Something to keep in mind. No on windows. Yes on sweatpants.

2. The Jazz Service.

Miles Davis. John Coltrane. Louis Armstrong. Dark rooms. Disinterested waitresses. Smoke from hand rolled cigarettes. There, I just exhausted everything I know about Jazz. Wait, "jazz hands." Forgot that one. What's a "jazz service" like? This one is a little higher up on the mystery scale. Like jazz music, do you have to pretend you understand it and like it more than you really do? Because that's what I did when I was in college. I hosted a radio show on a jazz station, which I knew nothing about. So at 5AM before anyone was listening, I would just play rap and Counting Crows. Is the service like that at all? So many questions.

3. Narthex

My first thought when I saw a sign for this service was, "Before taking Narthex osteoporosis medicine, check with your doctor because in rare cases it has been known to cause small colds or instant death." But it's not a medicine, it's part of a building and apparently also a church service. And as I spent a little time in this mystery I thought to myself, "I really hope this service some how involves a Narwhal." Do you ever forgot those things exist? Sometimes I do, and then I remember and I'm pretty happy. The unicorn of the sea. God's favorite practical joke. The only animal that might better prove God's creativity than the platypus. Is there any way that when you step inside the Narthex there's a big aquarium where a Narwhal floats around perhaps doing a choreographed routine to ? Is that too much to ask?

Chances are, you probably don't get to sit in bean bag chairs or listen to Miles Davis or frolic with a Narwhal at any of those services. That's OK, but you have to admit, it's fun to see a mysterious church service and think, "just maybe, just maybe, there is a mythical but yet oddly real sea creature inside that church right this second."

What types of services does your church offer?

Dinner is a bucket.

Recently, my 5 year old taught me something important about the playground, what it means to be a dad and why we eat dinner together. The awesome folks at E-Mealz gave me space to blog about it on their site. Check it out if you get a chance!

The bird, the letter and the job.

Sometimes I like to think I've got faith figured out. I feel like I've learned a few things, had a dramatic return to Christ after years of wandering, read some books, and can clap my hands together and say "done and done." But these last few months have been a weird time of God exposing to me how broken my understanding of his love is. How twisted and how false my beliefs are. And recently he showed me that with a dead bird, a homecoming and a single letter.

As I've mentioned 92 times, I'm reading through the Bible with some friends right now. I've joked a few times that the book of Leviticus is the "one year plan killer." It's the book that has often knocked my out of the running for actually reading through the Bible in a year. It's full of mold regulations and verses that tell you how to determine what hair color means in the middle of a sore and oh man, I stop reading. That was the attitude I took with me as we marched into the L.

But because the Bible isn't a book, but the Word of God, every line, every verse has the potential to blow you away. And Leviticus 14 did. Is it dramatic? Is it earthshaking? Not at first glance. The verses that caught me are about, you guessed it, mold regulations.

Here is what verses 49-53 say:

"To purify the house, he (a priest) is to take two birds and some cedar wood, scarlet yarn and hyssop. He shall kill one of the birds over fresh water in a clay pot. Then he is to take the cedar wood, the hyssop, the scarlet yarn and the live bird, dip them into the blood of the dead bird and the fresh water, and sprinkle the house seven times. He shall purify the house with the bird's blood, the fresh water, the live bird the cedar wood, the hyssop and the scarlet yarn. Then he is to release the live bird in the open fields outside the town. In this way he will make atonement for the house, and it will be clean."

I've read those verses a number of times before but this time, something hit me, a question I couldn't shake:

"Do you think the bird who was freed, the live bird who represented being forgiven, walked when it was released in the fields or did it soar?"

The other bird paid the price. Freedom was bought at a cost. Atonement was paid with a life. Knowing that, seeing that, do you think the second bird refused to fly when it was released? Do you think it quietly tucked its wings and scurried about the ground?

Of course not. Having escaped death, having escaped that moment, it probably could not fly high enough or fast enough into the sky. It jumped loudly into the freedom of forgiveness.

I don't. I don't celebrate God's mercy or grace that way. I am like the prodigal son, returning home to be a hired hand. I act like forgiveness is something to be earned, not celebrated. I am not an heir to the throne, I am a hired hand to the throne. But, I am wrong.

That's why I continue to come back to the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. When he returns to the farm and finds himself in the father's embrace, there is only one sentence of his plan that the father will not let him say: "Make me like one of your hired men."

I don't think he was allowed to say it because it couldn't be true. He was his son, that was his identity, not his employee.

I mess grace up so often and have confused it in my head for so many years. I finally just confessed to God, "You know how I think. You know how I've trained myself to believe for years and years. I can't rewire myself. I can't sanctify me. Only you can. I need you to transform the way I look at grace." And the prayer that came from that confession and the hope I have for you and me is simple:

"Help me live in the joy of forgiveness, not the job of forgiveness."

Those two words might feel similar, joy and job are only a single letter apart, but they are worlds away from each other. I pray we will be that bird who does not run, but instead flies. Who looks at what Christ did for us on the cross. The sacrifice, the mercy, the grace and that we will not try to earn it when we return to the farm, but will instead accept it. Fly in it. Celebrate it. And know the joy of forgiveness.

Making obscure Lord of the Rings references.

The other day I had the opportunity to grab coffee with Al Andrews. Al runs Porter's Call, a non-profit counseling center that provides free counseling for musicians and their families in Franklin, Tennessee. It's an incredibly beautiful ministry and the only way I was able to get some time with Al is because he finds my breakdancing skills so lyrical.

Actually, it's because he was college roommates with my dad and has been a fixture in our family for years. I was overwhelmed by the hour we spent together and when I tried to capture it, there was only one way to properly tweet it:

"Had coffee and an amazing conversation with @itsalandrews yesterday. It felt like stopping at Rivendell in the midst of a big adventure."

Without even thinking about it at first, I rolled out a Lord of the Rings reference, which is quintessential stuff Christians like. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized what we really like is to create obscure Lord of the Rings references.

They can't just be standard. They can't just be obvious. They need to come from a deep place of Christian nerddom. They have to be layered. Confused? Don't be, here are 5 ways to make an obscure Lord of the Rings reference:

1. Make sure the reference wasn't in the movie.

I failed on this one. To properly make an obscure reference, make sure that someone couldn't have easily, casually seen it in one of the movies. I should have said, "It was like being at Tom Bombadil's house."

2. Feel free to reference a cartoon version of the movie.

There are a handful of weird, long forgotten versions of the Lord of the Rings movies that are actually cartoons. Feel free to reference one of those. They're creepy sometimes, they're a little dorky and nothing says "obscure" like proudly quoting a cartoon.

3. Name drop your kids at the same time.

Reference your kids at the same time especially if they are named . Those are probably the two most common Lord of the Rings kid's names but there's a chance you named your kid Gimli. If that's the case, that seven year old better have a red beard. Which would be weird. And a little awesome. But mostly weird.

4. Quote the Silmarillion.

The what? Yeah, that's right, the Silmarillion. Google it. It's obscure.

5. Make the reference while wearing Hobbit feet.

Preferably homemade. I mean I'm sure you can buy these, but you really want to go obscure and deep into the lore of the Lord of the Rings? Make all your references while wearing big, canoe-sized hairy Hobbit feet.

I hope these will help you on the road to obscure Lord of the Rings quotes. I hope these tips will fill you with the passion Frodo felt when he returned home and defeated Sharkey and the Ruffians at the Battle of Bywater. Wait, that wasn't in the movie, was it? Exactly.

Have you ever made an obscure Lord of the Rings reference?