Jon Acuff's Blog, page 173

Fancy pulpits.

My wife is on her third iPhone 4 in six days.

The first one had a hardware and software failure.

The second one sounded like an old timey cotton gin. It was so loud she held it up to our landline at home when she was on the phone with Apple support and they urged her to bring it in. Immediately.

The third one? We'll see.

The worst part is that she holds me responsible. Because I've had one for a year and like Apple, she assumes that I might have hand built these defective iPhones. She'll call me ...

The question we all ask.

Life is like a hurricane, here in Duckburg.

Race cars, lasers, aeroplanes, it's a duck-blur.

Might solve a mystery or rewrite history …

If you grew up like I did, you know the next words that to gem of a song. It's "DuckTales, ooohhh, ooohhh." That's the chorus to the show DuckTales. My wife bought volume 1&2 on DVD for the move up to Franklin, Tennessee and my kids have loved them. And why shouldn't they? That song is the jam. I hope someday that Timbaland and Justin Timberlake will do a...

Writing "open letters."

"Jonathan Acuff betrays America with Anti-Christian article."

That was the title of a post that was written in response to a CNN article I wrote. In the post the author ripped me apart, questioning my love of democracy, apple pie and freedom.

But I think it was a joke. It has to be, it was so over the top and hateful that I have to assume they were just joshing. (I'm bringing the words, "joshing" and "no doy," back by the way.)

My biggest clue that it was a joke was that they didn't use the...

Permission to Speak Freely – Free Excerpt

I was a big fan of Anne Jackson's first book, Mad Church Disease. It was a gift to anyone who works in the ministry. That's why I'm excited about her second book, Permission to Speak Freely – Essays and Art on Fear, Confession and Grace which releases today.

Where her first book was for pastors, this book is for everyone. Anne was kind enough to share one of the essays from the book. Anne decided to share seven essays on seven different blogs, this being the second. To read the rest of the...

Sex.

The other day, pop princess Katy Perry said something interesting:

"I think when you put sex and spirituality in the same bottle and shake it up, bad things happen."

I disagree.

Although that specific quote was about Lady Gaga, I think it's indicative of something much bigger and much worse. Put simply, our culture has divorced God from sex.

I've long said that popular culture often acts as if God might have invented humanity and thus sex, but he was completely caught off guard that sex was an...

Win 5 free copies of a great new book.

Chad Gibbs is one of the funniest people I've ever met. A die hard college football fan, he recently decided to combine football, God and funny.

The result is his book, "God and Football: Faith and Fanaticism in the SEC."

Zondervan has been kind enough to donate 5 copies to readers of Stuff Christians Like.

To enter, simply comment with an answer to this question by Tuesday, August 24.

"What's your favorite sports team?"

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Facebooking your mission trip.

(My family is hoping to go on a mission trip next year. When we do, I'll make sure I reference this funny guest post. Enjoy.)

Facebooking your mission trip

So you've carefully chosen your mission trip location. You may still be in the Latin America game and are thinking of trying to upgrade to something in the Africa ball park. Asian trips are also very in, especially when smuggling Bibles is involved. No matter where you go, mission trips are transforming experiences. Outlooks on wealth are...

The power ballad worship song.

I grew up reading Thrasher magazine, watching the movie "Rad" as many times possible and listening to the rap group, "Public Enemy."

Why Thrasher? Cause I was a skateboarder.

Why Rad? Because the title says it all, it was rad.

Why Public Enemy? Because growing up on the mean streets of suburban Massachusetts really prepared me for hard laced, urban rap. Clearly.

Given my love for the hip hop, I'm lacking the musical background to truly appreciate something I've started to notice lately at church ...

Forgetting 1 geography lesson.

I realized the other day, that at least six of my friends have had affairs.

And they've all told me the same thing:

"I was not attacked by a naked, hott woman who fell out of the sky."

None of them were driving to work on an average Thursday, when suddenly, inexplicably they found themselves in the middle of an extramarital affair. Like a Lady Gaga video come to life, the roads were suddenly jam packed with hott ladies. It was borderline unavoidable when you think about it. It just sort of...

The anonymous person used as the sermon illustration.

When I was growing up, people asked me two questions because I am a pastor's kid:

1. Is the song "Son of a Preacher Man," true? Do pastor's kids have some sort of otherworldly powers of woo?

2. What does your dad do on the other six days of the week when it's not Sunday?

The answer to the first question is easy.

Yes. Yes we do.

The second question was a little harder.

As a pastor, my dad did a million weird , random things during the week. He went to a bunch of meetings. He counseled people. He...