Contest is over. Thanks for entering with some hilarious comments.
Publishers are starting to send me free books, which is cool and is hopefully a trend that will continue until I am able to have a library at home with a rolling ladder that I can sing, you guessed it, Newsies songs from the top of.

But even cooler than that is when publishers give me stuff I can give you. Moody Publishers just told me I could give out 5 copies of Christian George’s new book: “Godology: Because Knowing God Changes Everything“

I haven’t had a chance to read it yet because I’m slammed trying to finish my own manuscript, but I have to say I saw something inside it that made me instantly think it might be a good book. I’m of course talking about a quote from Homer Simpson.

Page 76 is completely blank except for a quote from Homer that says “Bart, with $10,000 dollars, we’d be like millionaires! We could buy all kinds of useful things like …love.”

Mr. Christian George, I don’t know you, but you had me at Homer.

Which brings us back to the giveaway.

I’ve got 5 copies of this book to give out. What’s the most ridiculous sign you look for that you’ll like a book? For me it was a Simpsons quote. Is it the cover design, the font, an endorsement from someone else that you already like that makes you think, “I might dig this book?”
With a bajillion books on the shelves these days, how do you pick one you’ll like from just a glance?

Best 5 answers win a free copy of Godology.

Comment on this post until Saturday the 7th at which point the winners will be announced.

Pete Wilson said it best when he introduced the Off the Blogs event on Thursday night, “We’re not sure what’s going to happen tonight.”

And that was true. We had a loose idea of how the night was going to go, but at the core of the whole thing was a big “what if?”

What if we all got together and talked about the things God is doing in our lives?
What if we took the crazy, weird, ridiculous, funny things God is doing on our blogs and experienced them together in a live setting?
What if I sat impossibly close to Carlos Whittaker on a stool?

I think we were able accomplish all three of those things.

I ended up talking about porn and what happens when we use the Christian F word “fine,” and why sometimes we only pretend we believe all sins are equal. And I told a story about an ice cream bowl from the second grade. Anne and Carlos told their stories with an authenticity that astounded me and Aaron Keyes led worship in a way I’ve never experienced before. Pete Wilson held the whole thing together like some sort of super cool, super kind, super glue.

A lot of interesting things happened that night. Katdish came and gave me a really cool gift bag for my kids that included smurf dolls because of the blue face photo I posted on here. The famous Steph from the Red Clay Diaries was there and a really cool girl named Abby actually skipped her feminine spirituality class to come, but it worked out because I think I said the word “ladies” during my little ditty so that’s kind of like class credit. All in all there were maybe about 125 folks there.

I’m hoping to speak more in the future. I talked with a friend in Tennessee about speaking at his church in the fall. I’m also going to include one of the central ideas from the night in my book. I’m going to post the ice cream bowl on this site at some point. And I have a 35 minute message I gave at another event that I called “Booty, God, Booty” that I’m trying to figure out how to put online, but I’m kind of web dumb. Bottom line, hopefully if you couldn’t make it the other night there are other ways for you to connect with what we talked about.

I shared a photo that Ben Arment took. In the photo you can see the cool painting hanging in the church and me on the far right of the stage sitting wicked close to Carlos on a stool. We’re both wearing white and are kind of blurring together like a bright ball of white hot sarcasm. If you’ve got a better photo from the night let me know and I’ll try to post it.

Special thanks to Catalyst and Brad Lomenick and Ben Arment for taking a risk on me, Carlos, Anne and Pete. Their One Day event was awesome and massive and that they were willing to do this in the same day was incredibly kind of them. And shout out to Derek Sweatman and Christian Church Buckhead for letting us hold it there.

Hope to see you guys off the blogs again sometime in the future.

Jon

(Remember Bryan Allain? He wrote “The Seven Sports Myths Christians Like” and is a hilarious, insightful writer with a crazy handle on the sports world. Bill Simmons of ESPN.com is kind of like the non Christian version of Bryan Allain. At least that’s what I tell people when they ask me what Bryan’s writing style is. He was kind enough to throw another guest post our way. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.)

Billy Joel says he thinks of all the songs he has written as his children. Some grow up to be famous, and some don’t amount to much, but he loves them all the same. I sometimes wonder if God feels the same way about all 66 books of the Bible. Does He love quiet, unassuming Jude as much as he loves superstar John? Does He love Esther, even though she never mentions Him at all?

Most Christians see nothing wrong with an unequal distribution of Bible love. We’ll talk about our “favorite verse”, “favorite book”, “favorite passage”, and “favorite body part comparison in Song of Solomon” without ever feeling guilty. We all have our favorites, and everyone is okay with that.

I was thinking about this on a flight recently, and my mind started to wander into some ridiculous territory. (Yes, consider that a warning, because I’m taking you with me.) What if this plane crashes? And what if only six of us survived, but instead of us all landing on a mysterious island with a smoke monster and a crazy French woman (shout out to my LOST peeps!), we were somehow scattered onto 6 different islands with no way of reconnecting? And what if, in those few moments before we crashed, we had the intuition to take the one Bible that was on the plane (which I had brought, of course) and split it up equally between the 6 of us in a Fantasy Football-style draft; literally ripping the pages out of the Bible to take with us to our deserted island?

This pretend scenario led me to two very real observations: 1) I need to bring a Sudoku book with me the next time I fly, and 2) I need to figure out which 11 books of the Bible I would take with me BEFORE tragedy strikes. There’s no way I’d be able to make the right choices while plummeting from the sky in a 747, drenched in my own urine.

So, after much prayer, fasting, and a re-reading of Jason Boyett’s Pocket Guide to the Bible, I’ve come up with a Cheat Sheet for the 11 books I would target in a “Books of the Bible Fantasy Draft”. Here they are:

Bryan’s Books of the Bible Fantasy Draft Cheat Sheet

1. The first book I would take would be the gospel of Luke. It would provide the account of Jesus’ life that I’d want to have, including the parable of the Good Samaritan, which is only found in Luke’s Gospel.

2. Mystery. Symbolism. Strange Monsters. No, I’m not talking about LOST again; I’m talking about my second selection, the Book of Revelation. Reading it will keep my imagination sharp and my spirit encouraged. The book is a great reminder that no matter how my own story arc ends, God has the final episodes of the Series already written.

3. At Number 3 I like Paul’s letter to the Romans. Since I’ll spend a majority of the next 10 years deep in thought or talking to myself, why not use that time to wrap my head around the Bible’s most difficult doctrines? (I hear that’s how Matthew Henry wrote his popular Bible Commentary back in the 1700s. He shipwrecked himself on a deserted island, destroyed his iPhone, and ate coconut shavings all day.)

4. Up next is the scandalous Song of Solomon. A little too early to draft this short book about romantic love? Perhaps. But I’d want to keep that famous Bryan Allain Charm© at peak levels in case my wife Erica shipwrecks on the island and we’re stranded together. (Erica, you can stop laughing now. Yes dear, it was a joke, but it wasn’t THAT funny.)

5. Once I conquer the mysteries of Revelation and the doctrines of Romans I’ll need a new challenge. That’s why the book of Hebrews earns a spot in the five-hole. It might take the rest of my life, but I WILL figure out who wrote this book.

6. At number 6 I like the shortest book of the Bible, 2 John. Clocking in at only thirteen verses, it will come in handy for those days when I want to FEEL like I’ve read a lot, but don’t actually want to READ a lot. Oh, stop making that face! You know you’ve been there before.

7. Number 7, the biblical number of completion. This is the perfect spot to stick the book that started it all, Nahum. No, I’m kidding, this is where I’ll put Genesis. If my wife does find me on the island, we can follow Genesis’ blueprint and start a whole new civilization like Noah and his Wife-Who-Is-Not-To-Be-Named.

8. My lack of handyman skills render me inept at building anything more complicated than a Jenga tower. Since my eventual homemade raft escape is bound to result in my drowning or becoming lunch for a large aquatic mammal, I’ll take the book of Jonah.

9. For those depressing days when I feel like the unluckiest person on earth, I’ll bring along the book of Job. Hey, at least I’m not covered in boils and surrounded by negative friends with weird names.

10. The book of James sneaks into the top ten solely on the strength of its verses about trials and tribulations. As each day finds me looking more and more like Tom Hanks in Castaway, I’m going to need that encouragement. Speaking of Castaway, if I find a can of tennis balls on the island, they will become my best friends like Wilson was for Tom Hanks. And I will definitely name them Obadiah, Zechariah, and Haggai.

11. Rounding off my list at #11 is the book of Numbers. Sure, I’ll read it to glean wisdom from time to time, but mostly it will be great for those nights when I just can’t fall asleep. Before you accuse me of blasphemy, have you ever tried to read Numbers after 11pm? There’s a reason Jewish rabbis refer to the book as “Biblical Ambien”.

So there’s my list. If you plan on flying anywhere in the near future, I suggest printing it out to take with you, just in case. Better yet, why don’t you spend some time creating your own Books of the Bible Cheat Sheet.

You don’t need to reproduce your whole list in the comments, but here’s a question I’d love to read your answers on. If you were in a Books of the Bible Fantasy Draft, and you took one of the gospels as your first pick (because I think most of us would like to have an account of Jesus’ life with us), what 3 books would you pick next and why?

P.S. You can find more of Bryan at his sports/faith blog, Prayers For Blowouts, and at his personal blog, Ramblings and Such.

I’m married, and if you are too, then statistically speaking, one of us is going to get a divorce.

I’m not writing that to be sensational, but I just want to be clear that it’s a big deal. And I don’t know if we Christians do a very good job of treating it as such.

Look at it this way: if one out of every two neighbors on your street got mauled by a bear, would you be more careful about bears? Would you buy books on how to keep your house safe from bears? Would you carry a gun and bear spray if there were in fact such a thing as bear spray? Probably. Yet, when it comes to divorce, we don’t do many equivalent things. And the ratios are equally as high as that bear scenario.

When was the last time you and your wife visited a counselor for just a tune up? What was the last book the two of you read together to strengthen your marriage? If you have kids, how many dates do you go on every month?

I fail at most of those things, so please don’t read finger-pointing in this post. My wife and I have far more fake dates at home (dinner after the kids are in bed) than real dates and for Valentine’s Day we got each other a hot water heater. It’s a “State Select” model which I’ve been assured is one of the sexier hot water heaters available. The finger is pointed at me. I just think divorce is something we should think about and maybe work on changing in our generation.

(This was one of the earliest posts I wrote on this site and felt appropriate for the tail end of love month.)

p.s. What’s the best marriage advice you ever heard? Mine was that “In most relationships there is a “how person” and a “wow person.” When the wow person tells the how person ‘I’ve got a crazy idea, we should start a business and then learn how to paint and then go camping, etc, etc, etc, the how person will ask questions like ‘where will we get the money for that, what about your job, when would we have the time?’ They think they’re contributing to the conversation but the wow person often takes it as an attack against the idea. So instead of saying “how” when a wow person comes up with a lot of ideas, the how person should say “wow” because the reality is that the wow person is going to execute maybe 1 out of 100 of the ideas and just wants to share the overflow of ideas with his wife. I’m the wow person in our marriage and my wife is the how. And that simple idea really rocked our world. John Woodall at North Point preached on that once.

So what’s the best marriage advice you ever heard?

The last section of Francis Chan’s book “Crazy Love” is up for discussion over at prodigaljon.com today.

Thanks to everyone that participated in the Stuff Christians Like Book Club.

Yesterday, I had to employ some not so subtle “wrap this meeting up already” techniques. If you don’t spend a lot of time in meetings at work, please allow me to enlighten you.

Sometimes, people will plan a 30 minute meeting and try to accomplish 14 weeks of conversation in it. When you hit the 29 minute mark you realize that:

A. You are going to miss your next meeting.
B. You are going to miss lunch or
C. You would sooner chew your right arm off instead of spending another minute trapped in the meeting.

Unfortunately, it’s not polite to yell, “Come on! We have 10 seconds left and 19 agenda items to cover, let’s end this thing already.” Or maybe you can if you’ve got an office with an actual door or a business card with a smattering of Alphabet soup importance on it, e.g. VP, SR, CEO, PHD, CIO etc. Surprisingly enough, I possess neither of these things.

So instead of throwing my weight around, which is pretty much non existent, I’ve developed some not so subtle techniques to let the meeting organizer know that I am mentally crouching into my chair like a sprinter in the starting blocks just waiting to burst out of that room when the clock strikes noon. And I realized that they might be equally useful in church.

Maybe your pastor just wants to flow some Sunday. He finished his main point already and is just up there talking. It’s the last service of the day and it’s not that the spirit is moving him, it’s that he has a captive audience and nothing stopping him. You can’t just yell “Come on! We have 10 seconds left until noon and we’ve already filled in all the blanks in the sermon notes, let’s end this thing already.”

If you do find yourself in that situation, and you might Thursday since I’m speaking at Off the Blogs, feel free to try one of these moves:

1. Close your Bible as loud as you can.
One of the first things I do to let someone know that we’ve gone over our allotted time in a meeting is close my notebook. And it’s not just an average notebook. It’s a five star, college ruled of course, so I’m pretty sure the impact of that is felt by everyone in the room. Same thing goes with your Bible. If it’s open on your lap, loudly close it. It’s the church equivalent of slapping your hands together and saying “done and done!” This works even better if you’ve got a zipper around your Bible cover. That is the equivalent of when college students wave their car keys at the opposing team during a basketball game to let them know, “Game is over, time to warm up the bus.” As a speaker, if I heard a chorus of zippers ringing out from the crowd I would know, it’s go time.

2. Start scooting toward the end of the aisle.
In a meeting, I’ll wheel my chair back slowly from the table to indicate I am pulling away from the meeting. (I’ve thought long and hard about wheeling it all the way out the door and down the hall, but haven’t yet.) You can do the same thing at church. Slowly but surely start sliding toward the end of the aisle. Don’t rush it or the people next to you will pick up on it and actively push against you, but gently start sliding against them. If you have a pew, eventually like human dominoes, the combined pressure is going to squish the person on the very end so much that they pop out like a golf ball through a fire hose right into the middle of the aisle. You can then get up to see if they’re OK and walk to the back of the church during all the confusion.

3. Clap.
In a meeting, even if we’re not done, I’ll start thanking people for inviting me to it. I’ll start talking about the meeting in past tense to try to will the meeting to an end with the power of my words. “Great meeting today. That was good. Thanks for inviting for me. I am glad I was able to come to it and heard what you had to share. It was very productive.” Sometimes my “was” is so intoxicating that like hypnosis I can convince the meeting organizer that the meeting is something historical, a moment that has already passed instead of something that is still going on and on and on. Granted you can’t throw out “was” from the crowd like Paula Abdul throws out compliments on American Idol, but you can start clapping. Just stand up right where you are and begin a slow clap. The hope is that you’ll inspire other people to stand up and start doing it with you like at the end of the movie Dead Poet’s Society where one by one a handful of students stand up on top of their desks in support of their fired teacher Robin Williams. If no one joins you, tell your pew neighbors, “Clapping is my love language. Every Sunday is pastor appreciation day for me. What? You didn’t like the sermon?”

These might work at your church, they might not. I can promise though that if you try them on Thursday while I’m speaking at Off the Blogs they won’t work. Because when I get nervous I crank up the sarcasm to 11, that’s right like Spinal Tap the dial goes to 11, and I often blurt out 90s rap lyrics as a defense mechanism. So if you start clapping in the middle of my flow expect me to yell back, “Don’t call it a comeback, I’ve been here for years” and you’ll be confused so I’ll yell back, “that’s Uncle L” only you’ll forget that Uncle L is a nickname for LL Cool J and so I’ll have to yell back, “the guy that was in that shark movie where the sharks could cure Alzheimer’s but they also ate Samuel L. Jackson’s head, remember that one?” And then at that point the whole night will unravel and all three of us will be embarrassed. Me, you and Samuel L. Jackson. So please don’t clap.

“I am not French.”

My oldest daughter will probably have to say that 19 million times when she’s in Elementary School. Not because we constantly dress her in berets* or make her school lunch on baguettes but because her name is “LE.”

It’s actually L.E., which stands for “Laura Elizabeth,” and is pronounced “Ellie” but teachers understandably get confused the first time they see it on paper. Granted “LE” means “the” in French so what they are assuming is that we named our kid “the Acuff.” Wouldn’t that be the cockiest name you’ve ever heard? I would probably do it though. Don’t tempt me.

Things would have been easier if we just named her after a character in the Bible. The problem with going that route though is that there are so many options. The Bible is chock full of potential names and it’s hard to find the best one. It’s difficult to discern which name is going to set your kid on the path to becoming a titan of spirituality or instead set him on a steady course of getting tuned up nonstop on the playground during recess. If only there was a way to rank the effectiveness of Bible names. (Can you sense a point-based Biblical name post coming? Wait for it…)

The Crazy Bible Name for Your Kid Score Sheet

1. You give your kid a name that doesn’t sound Biblical except for a slight letter difference that only Christians would notice, e.g. “Rebekah” with a k. = +1 point

2. Major prophets. = +1 point

3. Minor prophets.= +3 points

4. You give your kid a name that starts of kind off normal but then takes a sharp right turn into the Old Testament. Like “Anthothijah.” Starts off like you’re going to say Anthony but just before you get to the “ny” you throw a “thijah” at me. Well played. = +3 points

5. You name a kid without looking up the meaning of the name first. Mordecai for instance means “Servant of Marduk.” Good luck telling a three-year old what that means. = +4 points

6. Their middle name is Matthew, Mark, Luke or John = +1 point

7. Their first name is “The gospel of” = +5 points

8. Their name prepares them up for an obscure career. Agrippa for instance means, “tamer of wild horses.” = +2 points

9. You name them after a character that started out great but ended up kind of blowing it. Saul for instance. = +1 point

10. You name them after one of the 12 tribes. = +1 point

11. You name them after all of the 12 tribes. +5 points

12. Their name can easily be turned into a brutal nickname. Zechariah** for instance would become “Diarrhea” on the playground in about 2.4 seconds. = +2 points

13. You find a way to name your kid after the Bible and the movie Star Wars. Obadiah for instance. If you name your kid that but call him Obi, well done. =+10 points

14. You use the name as a witnessing tool, with the hope that every time your non believing family members say it out loud they will perhaps be reminded of 1 Chronicles 2:8 and eventually become Christians. = +3 points

15. You name your kid Jonathan or David and then are secretly disappointed when as a toddler they exhibit little affinity for any sort of weapons play or giant head cutting off. = +2 points.

How did you score? High? Low? What categories did I miss? We already covered the Christian penchant for naming kids after Lord of the Rings. Did you give your kid a Biblical name? Do you have one yourself? What names have you heard?

I should warn you, I’m Jonathan Christopher which means “Gift from God” and “Followers of Christ.” Soooo, I’m pretty holy.

How about you? What’s your Bible name?

*I’ve got nothing but love for you France, even though you stole my walkman while I was staying at a hostel in Paris called “the Peace & Love Hostel.” Should have been called “the Peace & Love & Steal Jon’s Bright Yellow Walkman Hostel” but that probably would have been too long for the sign.
** People named Zechariah, what was I going to do? I had what felt like a serviceable diarrhea joke and your name was the only one that was both biblical and kind of sounded like diarrhea. My hands were tied. (If it makes you feel any better, I so brutally misspelled the word “diarrhea” the first nine times I wrote it that Microsoft Word wouldn’t even spell check it. I was so far off that instead of making a spelling suggestion they just popped up a message that said, “You’re stupid.” That’s always fun.)

Are you coming to Catalyst One Day and Off the Blogs this Thursday night? I just found out that Katdish and Steph of the Red Clay Diaries are coming. (They are like celebrities at my house.) If you haven’t signed up yet for Off the Blogs and were going to do the “at the door” thing, please register ahead of time. There’s some concern that it might sell out and folks would have to be turned away. And I would hate to see any of you guys miss out. You can register here.

If you see me at One Day, feel free to say hey. I have a fairly average looking head so it might be hard to find me but I’ll probably have a red down vest on, a la Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future and a blue backpack full of Skittles.

That should narrow the field considerably.

I turn the Stuff Christians Like manuscript into Zondervan on March 30th. Then they will edit it. And then I will try to convince them to let me go with my title suggestion, “Stuff Christians Like: Funnier than the Shack.” Then they will print it in 2010 and I will put Europe’s song, “The Final Countdown” on repeat, put my entire family in some sort of vehicle and go on a book tour.

Only no name first time authors don’t usually get to go on book tours. So I asked my wife if we had a column in our current budget called “The Acuff family goes on a homemade book tour called ‘Booty, God, Booty.’” She assured me we do not. (I could have sworn that last year I told her that we needed a Dave Ramsey budget envelope with “Booty, God, Booty” written on it months ago, but apparently I am mistaken.)

Then I remembered that on the internet, people pay you to take advertising. And you can raise money for book tours and book giveaways and other stuff that is fun. So that’s what I am going to do. I don’t know how to take advertising or what that even means so it might take me a while to figure it out, in large part because I’m pretty dumb at the Interwebs. In the meantime, I’m going to do google adwords and see what happens next.

Bottom line, expect to see an ad or two on Stuff Christians Like and at least four Acuffs if I ever get to come speak in your town.