Next Saturday, March 21, marks the first full year that this site has been around. (I started it on March 21, 2008 but back loaded the posts starting on January 1 because I didn’t want to launch with 40 posts on one random day in March.)

I honestly didn’t think anyone would read this site and figured that it would be like one of my many other ideas that I briefly explored and then gave up on. I thought this spoof of the website stuff white people like (which a talented writer named Christian Lander started before this one) would go the way of myworstlifenow.com, an idea I registered a few years ago in response to a book you may have heard of.

But thanks to your support and kindness, this site didn’t disappear. I don’t talk much about stats because it’s a slippery slope into ego for me and like Mike Foster recently said on his blog, they don’t matter a whole lot, but a few people have asked recently. So here they are:

More than 425,000 unique visitors from 199 countries around the world have looked at 2.5 million pageviews on stuffchristianslike.net. I don’t know what the hits are, since Google Analytics doesn’t keep track of them, but there are the stats. (According to Google there are seven countries that have not read the site, including Western Sahara, which is weird because of all the Saharas I didn’t think Western would be the one that played me like that.)

So what’s next?

That’s a good question, and I’d like to ask you that.

Today, instead of a normal post, I thought we might be able to just talk about what year two should look like on Stuff Christians Like.

1. What’s working on the site?

2. What’s broken?

3. What do you want to see more of?

4. What should we get rid of?

5. What technologies is this site missing out on?

I’ll go first:

1. What’s working:
The guest posts. I really like those because I think people get tired of just my voice and I think there are a lot of other talented people out there that deserve a chance to shine.

2. What’s broken?
The usability of this site is pretty atrocious. It’s really hard to find posts and navigate and share things. In the future, maybe I’ll work on getting a new, cleaner, better designed version of Stuff Christians Like.

3. What do you want to see more of?
I’m not sure. I’d like to see more posts where I start a conversation and then just get out of the way and let it unfold. I think it’s really cool when people get to interact with each other and have that Eureka moment of realizing “Whoa, I’m not the only one that thinks or feels this way.”

4. What should we get rid of?
I think some of the posts go too long sometimes. Folks are busy and I’d like to see some shorter posts. And all the pictures of me wearing jean shorts. There’s probably about 42% too many of those on the site right now.

5. What technologies is this site missing out on?
A million. One in particular is changing the comment structure so that people can respond to individual comments and have conversations that way. A reader suggested I use “intense debate” commenting and that seems like a good option.

Those are my thoughts. Ironic that even as I complain that posts are too long I actually write one that is too long.

Thanks for reading and twittering and linking this site. I hope to continue to return that favor with content that makes you laugh and think and a book that’s so good it makes your teeth hurt.

In the meantime, what do you want to see happen in the second year of Stuff Christians Like?

What would you change? What would you keep? How would you answer the five questions above?

Microphones hate God. I can’t prove this scientifically, but I’m pretty sure it’s true. I think it’s because God doesn’t need them. When He speaks in the Bible, His voice is loud and carries naturally, or He uses angels and donkeys and burning bushes to amplify His message. So I imagine that microphones feel slighted and decided long ago to wage a very public hate campaign against the Alpha and Omega.

How else can you explain the shenanigans that occur on Sunday morning with the sound system? From microphones that work perfectly during sound check and then refuse to work during the service to that loud ear-bursting feedback that blossoms during the most inappropriate times, like prayer, sound systems are always punking church. And when they do, it’s so easy to pull out a “sound guy neck crane.”

The sound guy neck crane is the first thing we all do when the sound goes bananas in the middle of church. It’s a simple move, but I’ll walk you through the steps:

Step 1
Sound messes up.

Step 2
You quickly try to remember where the sound guy is stationed in the sanctuary.

Step 3
You crane your neck to his position and stare at him with eyes that say, “Do you not hear this? That microphone is on fire! Why do you want church to suck? Do you hate Jesus? That’s it, isn’t it? You hate Jesus. You sweaty Philistine.”

Step 4
Sound is restored. You turn back around and silently thank yourself for contributing to the rectification of the problem by pointing it out with your sound guy neck crane.

I’m just as guilty of this as anyone else. The only problem is that at the megachurch I attend, a staff of 29 people runs the sound on a Sunday morning, so my head has to bounce around like I’m watching a tennis match if I want to bust out a sound guy neck crane. “I see you in the balcony. You down at the sound booth. You up on the corner of the stage, I’m seeing you too, and I’m not happy.” Bounce, bounce, bounce, crane, crane, crane.

That’s part of the reason I’m going to retire my sound guy neck crane. It’s just too much work at my church. It’s also kind of a jerk thing to do. And by “kind of” I mean “really,” and by “jerk” I mean “words I can’t type without crazy *&# symbols.” From now on, when the sound messes up, I’m going to just side hug the person next to me and whisper politely, “Microphones hate God.” It will be awkward the first 2, 3, or 400 times, but people usually like side hugs, and it will put the blame where it belongs: on God-hatin’ sound equipment.

We should be.

But sometimes people friend me and say, “I know you probably don’t accept invitations from strangers, but …” Let me clear that up. I do. Every great friend I’ve ever had was at one point a stranger.

And if your question is “Will your status updates change my life Jon?” I’ll let you be the judge of that with a look at three of my most recent:

Jonathan can’t believe corduroy pants season is almost over. It’s one of my favorite seasons of pants.

Jonathan says another name for “uncle bud’s ant farm” could be “uncle bud’s toy that you watch ants die in over a period of weeks.” Our last one died today.

Jonathan says performing for the approval of other people is exhausting. And performing for God isn’t the fix. He wants our rest more than our running.

OK, that last one was kind of serious, but the rest are straight silly. Except if you’re an ant, and then the second one is pretty depressing.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, “Let’s be facebook friends.”

If you’re at all like me, even just a smidge, then right now you’re thinking, “Is this what I’m supposed to be doing with my life? Am I supposed to be doing something big and crazy for God right now?” If that thought isn’t on any level coursing through your head right now then congratulations, you’re not like me and probably have two well defined eyebrows and don’t have a wife that is forever confined to flat shoes so that she doesn’t tower over you.

But if you do have that thought, that “let’s go on a wild adventure with God” thought, then you and I are going to need an RV. I don’t know why. There’s not a single mention of an RV in the Old Testament, but for some reason, there’s always a motor home involved in my God daydreams.

A few weeks ago, a guy named Andrew Morgan came over to our house for dinner with his wife and one year old and confirmed that thought for me. Andrew is a filmmaker and last summer he got in an RV with another family and drove around the country filming stories about people living their lives in outrageous ways for God. His mission is to “awaken young adults to who God created them to be” and the documentary he and his partner Matt produced, “Anthem,” is really good.

But a few days after that night with the Morgans, I caught myself praying that same old prayer I keep throwing up to God. Once again I asked Him, “Do you want me and my wife to go on a crazy adventure?” (I actually say “Jenny” instead of “my wife” when I pray since she and God are on a first name basis but you might not know her name, so there you go.)

This is something I pray fairly regularly but this particular day I felt like if I was quiet enough, if I stopped trying to force God to answer the question the way I wanted Him to answer it, He might instead say:

“Do I want you to go on an adventure? Yes! Today! This very Wednesday. Live your life as if you’re already on a crazy adventure. I’m the God of the universe. You’re interacting with the creator of space and time, why do you think you need an RV to have a crazy adventure? Complete and utter trust in me lies in the moments you have. Not the moments you may have in the future. Adventure lies in the now. This day, not some day.

How small your imagination is if you can’t see that telling a coworker about me, about the son of mine that died on a cross for them is an adventure. It is! It is! Be the adventure today.

Stop asking me if I want you to go on an adventure. That’s the wrong question. The right question is “Do I want you to be the adventure? Do I want to have me in you, pouring out the greatest adventure that ever lived to everyone you come in contact with whether that’s in your cubicle or on a cross country RV trip?”

The answer is Yes! Be the adventure.

I don’t know if my ministry or your ministry will ever involve an RV. Maybe my cubicle at work is my mission field and the adventure I keep dreaming about going on started a long time ago. But if I do ever find myself in an RV for God, please know that I’m going to get one of those fill in the blank state maps on the back to show where I’ve been, I will eat beef jerky and diet Mountain Dew for three meals a day and will probably drag a small car behind my RV with a sign on it that says “I’m pushing as hard as I can.” That joke never gets old. Never.

“The birth of my child was treated with the urgency of an oil change.”

That’s a line from the two page manifesto I wrote on the “how was your stay at our hospital” exit form I was given after my oldest daughter was born. It was a bad experience and words are really all I have. I’m not a physically intimidating person. Ask Donnie from the fifth grade. He used to show me the scars on his hands he had from punching kids with braces, like me. Then he would throw my school bag under the rear tires of the bus when we got dropped off. (It’s possible that he unwittingly invented the idea of “throwing someone under the bus.”)

At the time, the only words I had were, “Aww man! Come on Donnie!” But now that I am an adult, despite the regular grammatical errors people point out, I have an ocean of adjectives to throw. Which is what I did after my wife almost had our first child in the lobby of the hospital. Every other couple in the lobby with us was hours if not days away from delivering and were kind of cuddling with each other and saying things like, “It’s almost time, our little guy will be here soon.” I was doing breathing techniques while my wife threw up and yelled a whole bunch and tried to separate my right arm from my body and beat me about the head, neck and back area with it. Meanwhile the male nurse in the lobby surfed the Internet.

When we were finally seen, the doctors were horrified we had been forced to wait in the lobby so long and the whole thing turned into an emergency situation. Needless to say, I went a bit crazy on the satisfaction survey.

This week, we’ll probably be going back to the hospital. Not to have a baby, but to visit a couple in our small group that is about to have their first kid. And although I’d like to think I matured a little in the last 5 years, I still feel really ill prepared for the whole “visit people you know in the hospital” thing. And it’s not like that’s a uniquely Christian thing to do, but as a Christian, I think we’re called to do it often, especially if you’re involved in Sunday School and Awanas and a small group and a men’s group and a church softball league and … someone is always going to be in the hospital for you to visit.

But since I’m so bad at hospital visits I don’t really feel qualified to tell you what to do. Instead I thought I would tell you three things I’ve learned not to do:

1. Don’t make the whole visit about getting free magazines.
I love magazines. I confessed that a few Saturdays ago on this site. And Northside Hospital in Atlanta has a room where you can just take as many magazines as you want. I’m not sure if you’re supposed to keep them or not, but the sign says “Free magazines” so I treated them as such. When we had our daughter McRae, I came home with a 7 pound baby and 12 pounds of free magazines. If you go to visit someone in the hospital don’t ask them where the magazine room is. They’re sick or injured or tired. You’ll need to figure out where that magical room is on your own.

2. Resist the urge to unfold the chair that turns into a bed.
When you have a kid, your wife will be put into a bed that is roughly the size of an aircraft carrier with buttons and levers and 37 kinds of awesome massagers. As a dad you will get to sleep on a chair that unfolds into a cot. Completely unfair, I know. When you go to visit a friend in the hospital, resist the temptation to play with that foldout chair/bed. You will want to unfold it because it looks like some sort of furniture transformer. It will be tempting to say “more than meets the eye” and then try to have it battle other furniture in the room while making pssww pswww laser sounds with your mouth in a struggle for world dominance. But if a friend just had their kidney removed they probably don’t want to see your furniture transformer movie.

3. Don’t climb into the ceiling.
Make sure that you don’t find a way to crawl inside the ceiling and pop a panel out over the person’s bed to surprise them. I can’t say that one enough. A family friend named Randall did that once. He worked at the hospital and a member of his church was in for a few days. He thought it would be funny if he climbed inside the duct work, pushed a panel out of the ceiling and popped his head out directly over the top of the hospital bed and yelled, “surprise!” Turns out hospital ceilings are not weight tested at “Randall level” and he ended up falling through into the room. Fortunately for him, it was a short ride to the hospital.

Those are my “don’t tips” for hospital visits. If I ever come see you, I’ll try to be funny and remind you that laughter is the best medicine. You in turn should have some written directions to the magazine room for me. That’s win-win right there.

What’s your best or worst hospital visit tip?

Growing up as a Pastor’s kid, I didn’t have many opportunities to participate in the Christian sport of Church Hopping. If you don’t go to your father’s church on Sunday morning, you might as well punch him in the face on the way out the door. But what I lacked growing up, I made up for in college, as I became a semi-professional church hopper.

I say semi, because I didn’t know all the rules of the game and didn’t properly focus on doing all the little things that make a world class church hopper. Fortunately, for you, and millions of other people that want temporary church experiences, I have organized them into one easy score card.

The Church Hopping Score Card

1. If you leave without even getting out of your car because you can’t find a good parking spot = +1 point

2. While visiting a new church you park in the pastor’s assigned parking space = +1 point

3. You get a free first time visitor’s gift = +2 points for each gift

4. You only visit once but still have the boldness to say, “I just didn’t feel like I connected with the people at that church” = +1 point

5. You refuse to come back to a church if not enough people said hello to you = +1 point

6. You refuse to come back to a church if too many people said hello to you = +1 point

7. Like the closely guarded secret formula of Coca Cola, you’re the only one that knows the correct number of people that should say hello to you = + 2 points

8. You visit on the Sunday the church is having a first time visitor’s lunch = +1 point

9. You take leftovers home from the first time visitors lunch = +2 points

10. You bring your own cooler to first time visitors lunches in anticipation of the leftovers = +3 points

11. You sit in a seat someone has sat in for 14 years running and they do the awkward stand and pause move right next to you before shuffling away in complete bafflement at who this person is = +3 points

12. You come long enough to benefit from everything the church offers but never actually volunteer for anything = +1 point

13. You have a pre planned little speech you give in case the church asks first time visitors to stand up and introduce themselves = +1 point

14. You have a “Hello My Name” is _______ sticker ball at home that is bigger than a soccer ball. = +2 points

15. You can easily name the three churches in town that have the best coffee = +1 point

16. During the “meet and greet” you use a pseudonym because you’re not sure if this is where God wants you to go to church yet = +1 point

17. You have a secret list of “if this happens at this church I’m outta here” = +1 point

18. You’re more than happy to tell the people around you why you didn’t like your last church = +1 point

19. The amount of traffic in a church parking lot weighs heavily on your decision to attend = +1 point

20. You have a scrapbook made entirely of bulletins to chronicle your travels = +1 point

How’d you score? Hopefully, really, really low, because all of those are pretty ridiculous. But had I measured that in college, I would have scored pretty high.

I hope you find a church you love. I hope if you’re hopping you’ll stop long enough to be real with a few people. And if not, I hope you’ll get some really good first time visitors gifts and send me a photo of your welcome name sticker ball. Who wouldn’t want to see that?

Did I miss anything from this list?

What would you add?

p.s. Special thanks go out to Robbie S. for this idea.

Recently a guy named Gerrid told me about his ministry. It’s called Moju Project and for each t-shirt you buy through their site, an orphan gets fed for a month.

I love the simplicity of that idea and that Gerrid and his gang o’ t-shirt designers have been deliberate about creating some very well designed shirts. On top of that, he was kind enough to offer three t-shirts to Stuff Christians Like readers. (That’s me wearing one in my kitchen. Not one of the ones you are going to win, that would be weird.)

So to enter for a chance to win a free t-shirt, just answer the question, “What mission trip would you like to go on?”

You don’t have to have gone on one in order to enter, just post a comment about a mission trip you’d like to go on. Any country, any cause, any time.

You can post comments until Thursday, March 12th at which point I’ll pick three winners and connect you to Gerrid for the t-shirts.

And make sure you check out their site mojuproject.com. I think what they are doing is great.

Remember, the comment question is:

What mission trip would you like to go on? Or what mission are you currently on?

I learned something doing the free book contest:

The Stuff Christians Like book better smell delicious.

Seriously, book smell and normal looking author photos are key. Mine is going to be a scratch and sniff and smell like cotton candy.

Here are the five winners. If your name is on this list, shoot me an email with your mailing address so I can tell Moody Publishers where to send your free book.

Carrie
It has to have a photo of a girl on the front contemplating something important….like “Is he the man God wants me to marry? Could I ever change his heart for God?”
And, also….I have to read the synopsis and make sure that nothing really bad is going to happen, like child abuse or vegetarianism, oh, or an outlook in the book the pushes legalism.
Then I will read it

Jeff
I look at the barcode. If the black-white pattern resembles any of my favorite zebras, I’m quite interested in the book. Then I add up the numbers below. If they add up to a prime number of a number divisible by 7, I’m hooked.

Jonathan Edmund
I check the about-the-author page to see if the author took a picture with his or her dog. If they did then I will buy the book. Period. If not, I check the title/inside sleeve to see what it’s about and if it’ll be worth it. So far this has only happened once, and I must say that Marley & Me is a great book but I cried the whole time because my dog had just died and I couldn’t handle it.

All I’m saying is, you should probably get an Acuff dog if there isn’t one already, or borrow a neighbor/friend/stranger’s dog for your ATA photo. (If it’s a stranger you may need a quick photographer as most strangers hate it when I grab their dog and try to photograph myself with it).

Brandon Anderson
I first wonder what I would look like holding this book in public. Will people stop and talk to me about this book? Do I look smart/edgy reading it? Does it say that I’m a Christian, but not one of “THOSE” Christians? Will attractive women inexorably drop their phone numbers or facebook addresses on my table?

Bethanie
Please, John. I don’t read anything besides the Bible. Reading this blog is the booty in my “BGB.” But Godology would look good on my non-existent college dorm coffeetable.

(Do you know Brannon Golden? You should, because he’s awesome. I met him and his wife when they said, “You’re speaking in Oklahoma? Come stay on our couch!” Which I did and will continue to do. He also is a master technician at the written word and read through the Stuff Christians Like manuscript for me, helping me with my inability to properly use a colon, an em dash and the words passed/past/pass. He joins us today for a guest post. And he actually included a graphic which is great. Check out Brannon’s idea.)

But Lord, when did we see your trash bins nearly overflowing with half-full coffee cups and discarded bulletins? Matthew 25:39c

LifeChurch.tv, where I attend, offers more options to serve than a season of Lost offers plot twists. To determine which role was the right fit for me, I tried praying and casting lots, just like the disciples did to pick Matthias. But I wasn’t happy with the results, so instead I made a list based upon a sophisticated mathematical model that I won’t bother explaining–not because I don’t think you’d understand, but because I found it on the Internet… and I’m really bad at math. Plugging my selections into the formula handily yielded the following chart:

Understand: this is MY chart. Yours would look completely different, based on your gifts. (Also, you may not be as good at Adobe Illustrator as I am.) But if you find yourself upset that serving in children’s ministry is near Death for me, please note that it’s also off my chart on the Holiness scale. So let’s call it even. My wife Kendra, who works for LifeKIDS.tv, feigned irritation at my irrefutably scientific results. (She serves in at least one LifeKIDS.tv experience every weekend.) But I call shenanigans, because she knows I was banned from serving in LifeKIDS after once blacking out during an experience. Turns out I’m not so good with the flashing lights, the noise… and of course the smell of that wintergreen mint stuff they sprinkle on vomit. (And it was Kendra herself who signed the order.)

Anyway, items appearing higher and to the right earn you more jewels in your crown in Heaven. Right now, I’m tracking on a grill nicer than T-Pain’s. (To Jon: You’re welcome.) But I’m cool with just a grill, because I’m the most humble person I know. And I’ll likely live in a nice lean-to cabana near Jon’s pool.

I like setting up the sanctuary because I don’t have to interact with other human beings, and re-stocking offering envelopes and pens in the chair backs suits my OCD. (BTW, in Paul’s big list in Romans 1:28-32, “inventors of evil” means those of you who chew/steal pens and/or pen lids from your church. Consider yourself warned. Is there some enormous black market for stolen pen lids that I’m unaware of?)

Taking out the trash is good for me because I don’t have to interact with other human beings. Perhaps more importantly, since other people are disgusted by it, they think I’m just really holy.

I presently lead a small group in my home. Although that puts me at level 3 on my own scale, I’m not sure what level of Scientology Thetan that would equate to. Having a small group forces me to interact with other human beings (do you see a pattern?). But I think Jesus wants that. Bonus: since we host it in our own home, I can watch TV until the very last minute when people begin arriving.

Although I’ve ushed before, I wasn’t good at it. I was a poor usher not for the reasons you’d think. Yes, I did have to talk to people (which was awkward and uncomfortable for both them and for me). But more importantly, I had to help “receive” the offering and count people. Too much responsibility and pressure.

Some people like the Parking Team because you get to drive golf carts. That’s awesome on the 15 days a year here in the Midwest when it’s 72 degrees. Less awesome when it’s 15 degrees (-7 with wind chill) or 108 degrees, which is every other day of the year. Plus I get enough of people giving me the finger during home group. I don’t need to supplement that with people in a hurry to get out and order water, not smoke, and not tip at our local buffets.

Perhaps one day I might reach that pinnacle of holy servitude and wholly selflessness, wiping noses and leading dance moves for kids. Just not this weekend.

The problem with this site is that the cadence swallows conversations.

Have you ever noticed that?

On other blogs, conversations have a chance to unfold. Momentum can build around an idea and people can talk through an issue and enjoy the back and forth challenges that erupt when different opinions are shared. But that’s hard to do on Stuff Christians Like.

If you miss a day or two, the idea train has moved on. A steady onslaught of new posts quickly push the previous day’s idea down a spot until it gets covered up entirely and stopped maybe before it’s over.

(That’s a benefit too in that if you don’t like a post one day you can trust that there are 500 other ones to read and hopefully 500 more to come.)

But I didn’t want to walk away too quickly from yesterday’s post about giving someone the gift of going second. I wanted to give that conversation a chance to continue.

First a point of clarity. The post was about honesty, not throwing up on people with all your junk if they ask you how things are when you’re riding in the elevator to a meeting. I completely agree with the great comments that said that’s whack and am certainly not encouraging that. If not saying anything honest is on one end of the spectrum then sharing everything with everyone with no discernible boundaries or intent other than your own release of guilt is the other end of the spectrum. And both ends suck.

Second, well I don’t really have a second but I didn’t realize that until I already wrote “First.”

I do have two questions for you today though:

1. Who gave you the gift of going second?
2. Who are you going to give it to?

I’ll go first (and I’ll leave out name specifics so folks don’t get shy.)

1. A guy named Troy H. gave me the gift of going second. He gave me a thousand gifts of second and was used by God to help save my marriage and my life.

2. I am giving the gift of second to a friend of mine named Dan. He’s not a Christian but recently I had the chance to go first, so I did. I also plan on giving the gift of going second in some form or fashion to every group I get to speak to. For instance, when I spoke at the Dave Ramsey headquarters I told them about a lie I had been telling about a deep friendship with Donald Miller that I didn’t really have in order to make myself look cooler than I really am. (We had one 15 minute phone conversation 3 years ago but based on how I’ve told that story you would think I saved Donald Miller’s life in Nam.)

Funny will commence tomorrow. Today, let’s talk:

1. Who gave you the gift of going second?
2. Who are you going to give it to?