Jon Acuff's Blog, page 184

Secretly believing in the magical power of the number 777.

My church tags our kids like whales when we drop them off at Sunday School

They might not use radio frequency ear tags, but when you give them your kid, they give you a laminated number and immediately attach that same number to the back of their shirt. Then, you sit in church and hope your number doesn't come up, thus signifying you are the winner of the "horrible kid lottery."

Yesterday though I looked at my number and got pretty excited. Why?

My daughter L.E.'s number was 7177.

Christians...

Win an iPod Shuffle or come see Conan O'Brien with me.

These two prizes have nothing to do with each other. They really don't have anything to do with this particular moment in time, it's just fun to give stuff away. And after the fun of yesterday's Stuff Christians Like CNN adventure, and the kindness of everyone from SCL who commented their support (man, some other people were hatin' on me and Jesus) I thought it was a good time to say thank you. So here are two cool things we're giving away today:

1. An iPod shuffle.[image error]

500 songs, in your pocket...

SCL on CNN.

I wrote a new Stuff Christians Like post on CNN.com. Please read it and comment on it. Thanks!

Click here to read SCL on CNN.

Taking Stuff Christians Like way too seriously.

("Start thinking you're a big deal." That's the answer most leaders give me when I ask them how leaders wreck their ministries. Ego, pride, thinking you've got mad skillz with a z not an s, that's what happens. Which is why I will always welcome guest posts that poke fun at me and the Stuff Christians Like book. It's a great way to not take everything so seriously. It's also a great way to laugh, especially since today's guest post created 4 new SCL based spin off sites. Seriously, 4 new...

Thinking about the Lost finale more than the second coming of Christ.

Do you think Walt is going to come back in the finale of Lost? You remember him, Michael's little boy? And if he does, do you think it will be all awkward because he's grown up, kind of like the first time you saw Haley Joel Osment from the Sixth Sense when he was in his early 20s? You wanted him to be a little kid saying, "I see dead people," but he wasn't. He was a young man saying things like, "I see light beer" and that's just not right.

But if he doesn't come back, if there's no return...

What someone did to my cardboard cut out.

I returned to my desk to find this illicit couple. (Photo after the jump)

Caption please.

[image error]

She is slightly taller than me.

Being lazy for the Lord.

"Guess what my favorite sky spirit is? There are three: wind, water and sun. Guess which one is my favorite?" Oh boy. My four year old McRae said that in the back seat of our car the other day and I almost drove off the road into a gully and/or a holler.

It wasn't a difficult theological issue to address. My wife and I didn't flinch, we just weren't expecting the Nick show, "Penguins of Madagascar" to teach our daughter about sky spirits.

That was easy issue, but there are harder issues to...

Weird Prayer Requests

"Maybe it's a demon." My wife says and I can't tell if she's joking at first.

She must be, but at first I am not so sure. My wife leads a Community Bible Study (CBS) group of about 20 woman every Tuesday morning. And for some reason, our four year old McRae has thrown up every Monday night, the night before the Bible study, for four weeks in a row. Well it's not a perfect streak, McRae didn't throw up the one week that CBS was canceled.

And on the Tuesday morning in question, she got up...

Arguing about the faith of U2.

U2 is definitely a Christian band. Or they are definitely not. I'm positive it's one of those two.

It's hard to be sure, but what I am sure of is that we Christians like debating that. I learned that the hard way when I called the band "NeedtoBreathe," the "Christian U2."

Comments lit up as people on both sides made their arguments. I love NeedtoBreathe and was surprised about this reaction. But maybe you've never experienced this particular phenomenon. If not, allow me to summarize what...

3 Rules of Christian Satire

Relevant Magazine recently gave me the chance to write an article about the 3 rules of Christian satire. I don't consider myself an expert but in the last two years I've had the chance to learn how critically beautiful and surprisingly fun satire can be in the midst of faith. Click here to check out the article.