Voting is officially closed. Thanks so much for commenting. I’m going to count the votes and post the winner in a few days.

A few weeks ago I held a “name this chapter” contest. (The chapter in question was about whether it’s possible to unsubscribe to a prayer email chain you don’t remember signing up for without making it look like you hate Jesus and prayer and humans. You can see the original post right here.)

After going through hundreds of entries, here are the 10 best. Please vote in the comments section by picking the number of the one you think is the funniest. The headline with the most votes will be printed in the Stuff Christians Like book from Zondervan, the winner will have their name in the acknowledgments section and get a free copy of the book. Vote as many times as you like until the end of the day on Tuesday, July 14th.

Here we go:

Jarrod Haggard
1. “The Eternal Implications of Clicking ‘Remove Me’”

Leo:Unfinished
2. “Breaking the chains: How to make holy use of the spam folder.”

Jonathan Ferguson
3. “Should I Pray or Should I Go Now?”

Casey
4. “Stuff Christians Like: Unsubscribing to prayer chain emails – we’ll have time to catch up in heaven.”

Chandler
5. “Sorry, my email is atheist.” Or Dewde’s collaborative response, “SCL: I May Be a Christian,
But My Inbox Is Atheist”

Chuck Allen
6. “How to Cease Without Praying”

han-nah
7. “Hate the Spam, Love the Sender.”

Elizabeth R
8. “Giving the prayer chain up (without letting Jesus down)”

snowberrylife
9. “SCL: I kissed prayer chains goodbye.”

jesse elisabeth
10. “Breaking chains without breaking hearts”

What number do you think is the funniest?

(It’s been a while since Hucklebuck has written a guest post, but if you’ve ever read the comments on this site you’ve probably seen his name. Well today, I’m excited to introduce you to Mrs. Hucklebuck or Stacey if you prefer. I love this idea she wrote and I’m really glad that both the Hucklebucks are so talented.)

After I read the SCL post dedicated to singles and several of the comments calling for a similar post about married couples without kids, I have compiled a scorecard of my own. Although I’m admittedly not as funny as Jon Acuff, I have written this post after years of discussions with my single friends about how hard it can be in both of our situations on any given Sunday.

I do realize that the following list is from the perspective of a couple whose desire is to be parents, and that not every married Christian couple feels the same. My situation involves infertility and recurrent pregnancy loss, but I’m guessing that many of these can apply to people who have not yet had children for just about any other reason.

So, if you’ve ever found yourself discussing intimate details of your fertility with a sweet old lady at church, read on!

Surviving Church as a MCWOK: Married Couple Without Kids
(with thanks to Eric for the term)

1. If you’ve been told “It will happen someday.” = +2 points (+10 bonus points if the person touches your face while speaking these words.)

2. If you’ve ever been told to “Just relax,” or “It will happen when you stop trying,” which is not physically possible. = +2 points

3. If you’ve ever been asked to “volunteer” in the nursery on Mother’s Day so the scheduled worker can enjoy the service. = +3 points

4. If friends with kids invite you over and you wind up babysitting their kids the whole time. = +1 point

5. If friends offer to let you spend time with their kids for some “family time” or to get your “kid fix.” = +2 points

6. If people offer to give you their kids if you want some so badly. = +3 points

7. If you can’t attend a church potluck without being asked about your sex life and/or personal doctor visits. = +3 points

8. If friends tell you that spending time with their misbehaving kids will change your mind about wanting your own. = +1 point

9. If you find you’d rather skip the Mother’s Day/Father’s Day/Sermon series on the family services at church. = +2 points

10. If the term “family” at your church always refers to Mom+Dad+Kids. = +2 points

11. If it is suggested that if you prayed hard enough or had enough faith, you’d have children. = +3 points

12. If you’ve ever been told that you are so “lucky” because you can go on vacations, go see movies at the theater, or sleep late. = +3 points

13. If you’ve been told that you should really enjoy your road trip because “at least you don’t have kids to entertain in the car.” = +1 point

14. If you’ve heard countless stories of people who have adopted babies and then miraculously gotten pregnant. = +2 points for every occasion

15. If you’ve been asked “Why don’t you just adopt?” (As if the decision is as easy as picking out a new toothbrush.) = +3 points

16. If it is assumed that you will work VBS every year because you “love being with kids so much” and probably have nothing else going on. = +1 point for every year you have worked VBS

17. If people assume that you sleep until noon every day. = +2 points

18. If you tell people you are a homemaker and the first question they ask is “How many kids do you have?” = +1 point

19. If it has ever been suggested that you aren’t as “blessed” as others just because you don’t have children. = +3 points

20. If you have had people tell you about dreams and visions they’ve had of your future children. = +2 points for dreams; +3 points for visions

21. If your “personal prayer request” about trying to have a baby gets printed on paper and put in the hands of every person in attendance at your church that day. = +10 points

22. If friends with kids eventually stop wanting to hang out with you because you’ve declined going with them to playdates a few too many times and you find out they would rather hang out with the new couple with young kids because they “understand what it’s like.” = +3 points

23. You can’t hold someone else’s baby at church without hearing “When are you going to get one of those?” or “That looks really good on you!” = +1 point

24. You’ve been told that you HAVE to watch the movie Facing the Giants. (Because, you know, it’s not just about facing “giants” in football…) = +2 points; +3 points if they tell you that the coach’s wife has a baby at the end

25. Someone has ever asked you about your fertility during Meet & Greet time at a Sunday morning service. = +1 point; +2 points if yelled across more than 2 rows of people

Your Score:
0-30 That’s okay, you’re still young. Just keep trying!
31-60 You’re not quite there yet. Have you considered other options?
61+ You’re an overachiever! The world would benefit greatly if you procreated!

How did you score? Did I miss anything you’ve ever heard as a MCWOK?

To read more about Hucklebuck and Stacey’s life as a MCWOK, visit Stacey’s blog.

I didn’t intend to become a hand dancer. Looking back on the path that brought me here, the steps I took were small. The warning signs quiet, the telltale marks of hand dancery subtle. I didn’t wake up one Sunday Morning and boldly declare, “Today at church, during worship, I’m going to hand dance!” It just kind of happened.

Our church is not really conducive to flat out dancing in the aisles. They’re pretty tight rows and although I’ve definitely seen some serious swaying, I’ve never seen anyone get down, really just let loose and like the Black Eyed Peas sing, “step on leprechauns.” (I’m not sure if that phrase technically means “dancing” but I’m trying to look relevant so please pretend that it does.)

But some Sundays, the rhythm gets me, much like Gloria Estefan warned me so many years ago. So when I stand up to worship and Steve Fee unleashes some sort of insanely awesome song and I feel the funk in my feet and hear that tiny voice inside say, “Do the robot, do the robot,” the only way I can quiet that inner tiny dancer is to channel it all to my hands. Which isn’t difficult, because if my hands are not engaged doing the ninja worship move, they’re resting lightly on the back of the chair in front of me.

Suddenly they start to tap.

“Hey, look at us, we’re keeping rhythm on the back of this chair,” they think. “What if in the second verse we switched it up and tried a little freestyle? Ohhh let’s pretend to breakdance and pass a mini wave from one hand up the shoulders across the neck and back down the other arm. Feeling it, feeling it. Go ahead shorty. It’s your birthday.”

I try to clap my hands instead but no one likes to be the only guy in a 25-person radius that is trying to clap along to a song. (And trying to clap along in beat to a fast Steve Fee song is like trying to catch flies with chopsticks. If those flies happen to be on meth and your chopsticks are made of wet spaghetti. It’s impossible.) So without a clap to fall back on I get lost in a moment of hand dancingness.

I want to stop, but it’s too late. Like Philip, the pop n’ locker on So You Think You Can Dance, I start to break it down, using the back of the seat in front of me like the customized cardboard mat me and my friends used to breakdance on in the fourth grade. It’s over. There’s no turning back. I’m hand dancing.

If you ever see me at North Point Community Church, please don’t stare directly into the hand dance, it’s like looking at the sun. You’ll get blinded by the brilliance.

Am I the only one that does this?

What do you do with your hands when you sing songs at church?

When I’m nervous and meet new people, I tend to read them my resume.

Not literally, I don’t carry it around with me, but I usually find a way to rattle off interesting tidbits about myself.

I did this recently at the Orange Conference. When I went to the blogger lounge I felt kind of insecure and didn’t know what to do. Everyone had their laptop and business cards all over the tables and I had neither. I immediately thought, “Oh yeah, bloggers are supposed to carry laptops not Moleskine notebooks. I’m so dumb.” After a few minutes of standing there like someone that’s eating alone and has forgotten to bring the “don’t feel pity for me I’m reading a book” book, I walked to the Land of a Thousand Hills coffee stand.

I asked if my friend was working at the stand that day and the guys behind the counter said no and then kind of said in a kind way, “And you are?”

I immediately started blabbering about how I had a blog and I once told thousands of people about their coffee and it’s read in all these countries and I’m a special person and look at all my accomplishments, me, me, me, resume, resume, resume. Even as the words were coming out of my mouth I wanted to grab them back, but I couldn’t.

And I find myself doing this more lately as I struggle with the impatience of wanting to be an author and a speaker. The Stuff Christians Like book will come out in March 2010 and I’m speaking at a bunch of conferences this fall so I completely get the foolishness of this thought but it’s still there. It’s a completely dumb thought to have but usually in life it’s not the wise thoughts we have that do the most damage. It’s the dumb ones.

When I pray, when me and God wrestle, there’s a part of me that keeps saying, “How come I only get to spend such a fraction of my day on Stuff Christians Like? How come I feel like I’m bursting with ideas and I’m only getting to write about them an hour a day? How come I’m not a super fantastical mister important Christian writer person right this second God?”

In the midst of those questions, in the midst of being wildly impatient and selfish and arrogant and a million other words that mean “whack,” I feel like God reminded me of a simple question,

“Why do you keep refusing the gift of the desert road?”

That’s kind of a weird question, but it comes out of some verses I’ve written about before. In Exodus 13: 17-18, as the Israelites are leaving Egypt, the Bible says:

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea. The Israelites went up out of Egypt armed for battle.

I love the simplicity of that. God knew that if the Israelites took the short way, if they took what probably seemed like the logical route, they’d face a war they weren’t ready for and would probably willingly return to slavery. So out of love, out a deep, big love for His people, he took them on the desert road.

As an Israelite, having spent decades doing hardcore physical labor and leading the kind of manual labor lifestyle that puts the P90X exercise program to shame, you’d have to be thinking, “What? I’m armed for battle! The desert road? Seriously? Look at this sword, I’ve got skillz! Let’s take the short way and give the Philistines two tickets to the gun show. Hey, I just compared my biceps to a weapon that is still centuries away from being invented, that’s odd.”

OK, maybe they wouldn’t have thought that last sentence, but I promise that they probably felt a little confused at why they were on the desert road and maybe at some point in your own life, you’ve felt that way too. Maybe you’ve felt ready for something and for some reason instead found yourself taking the long way around.

I don’t know what your “thing” is.

Maybe you want to fall in love and get married.

Maybe you’re at a job that doesn’t use your God-given talents and you feel desperate to get out.

Maybe you want to start a ministry.

Maybe you don’t know what your thing is, but you know it’s not what you’re doing right now.

Maybe you want to have kids.

Maybe you want to head out to the mission field overseas.

Your thing, your dream or goal or vision could be a million different things, and when it doesn’t happen, when it takes longer than we want, it’s so easy to get frustrated. To get disappointed, to think that the time delay is because maybe you’re not doing something right. Maybe God is mad at you. Maybe if you were a better Christian things would be happening faster and you wouldn’t be on a desert road.

But what if that’s not right?

What if God loves you too much to send you to war? What if He loves you too much to throw you into situations you’re not ready for?

What if that desert road is a gift?

I still struggle with the desert road concept. I’m not “done” with that idea. But my hope for you and my hope for me is that the next time I find myself on one I’ll pause long enough to ask God this simple question:

“I’m on a desert road, what war are you protecting me from right now because you love me so much?”

If the Stuff Christians Like book sells well I’m probably going to fund an event called “The Church Olympics.” The competitions will range from VBS scissor skills to prayer shot blocking to palm branch sword fighting. There will be dozens of events but the one that I think will draw the most spectators?

“The complain off.”

In this thrilling bout of athletic prowess, each church that enters the Olympics will put forth their greatest grumbler. They will find their best complainer, the person who is never happy, never tired of whining and forever spreading verbal vinegar or paragraphs of poison and then put them on top of a platform. The platform will be ten feet high and will be sticking out of a pool of Miracle Whip and Cinnabons. (Miracle Whip is like mayonnaise’s underachieving cousin and Cinnabons smell roughly 900% better than they actually taste. So as they’re falling the loser will briefly think they’re about to land in a delicious cinnamon roll. Nope. Just a Cinnabon slathered with Miracle Whip.)

Each person will yell their best church-flavored complaints at the other person until only one is left standing.

I try to be a pretty positive person most days but I could probably win this event. Know why? Because I know the greatest church complaint ever – “I’m not being fed right now.”

That is the worst because it’s one of those complaints designed to inflict hurt while at the same time making you look super spiritual. And every time I hear someone say it, I want to ask three things:

1. Are you doing the simple things right now?
When people say, “I’m not being fed,” what they’re really saying is, “This church is too surface for me. These sermons are too simple. I want to dig into the meat of the Scriptures. I want to explore the deeper mysteries of God.” And at the heart of it, desiring to explore God and dive deeper into who He is can be a wonderful thing. But when we get drunk on the idea of “not being fed,” we often skip right over the “simple things” and focus instead on the “complex things.” We lose sight of the simple things like “loving our neighbors” and “being salt and light.” So when someone tells you, “I’m not being fed,” ask them how they’re doing on the simple things. Ask them if they feel like they’ve completed the “easy things” like loving God and loving others and are therefore ready to move on to the meatier topics.

2. Who are YOU feeding?
“I’m not being fed” is such a “take” statement. It’s about me making sure my needs are met in my life and taking what you’re giving to do that. But if the desire to get fed is truly from God, there should be a large degree of giving present in the person’s life. If feeding is important to them, there should be evidence of them feeding other people. Even if you feel like the sermons are too simple, have you shared that simplicity with people at work who don’t go to church? Are you feeding people further down the line from you? Are you taking the small seed of knowledge you feel like you received and scattering that in your neighborhood, your community, your workplace? If the answer is no, then you’re not really into feeding. You’re into devouring. Devouring things for yourself, and that’s completely different than feeding.

3. Is this something the Pharisees would do?
I think this is a litmus question we should ask ourselves constantly. If I took the complaint, “I’m not being fed,” and placed it in the New Testament, who would be saying it? Is that something Jesus and the disciples would say to each other, or is that something the Pharisees (old school religious law zealots) would say? If the little Pharisee on your shoulder ever chimes in, “Great point. Thanks for letting everyone know how we feel,” about something you’ve said, you’ve got a problem.

Ultimately, a member of your church might blow off all three questions and still beat the “I’m not being fed” drum loudly and proudly through the halls. These are not silver bullets, and depending on how deeply someone is in a complaining funk, they might ignore a thousand questions you ask them.

But if they refuse to listen to you, the least you can do is make sure they enter the Stuff Christians Like Church Olympics. Who knows, you might think they’re an amazing complainer but maybe there’s a dude in Ohio whose complaints are so solid your friend will end up waste deep in a pool of Miracle Whip. Which in a weird way is win-win for you.

If you listen closely, if you place your ear to the ground and hold your breath, you can hear it softly in the distance. It’s a slow rumble, an almost imperceptible sound growing stronger. There can be no resistance. There is nothing that I can stand in its way. I fear this post comes too late.

AutoTune is on its way to Christian music.

If you’ve never heard the word “AutoTune” allow me a quick explanation. According to the webscapes, AutoTune or AutoTuner is “the process of correcting the intonation of an audio signal without affecting other aspects of its sound.” Or in other words, it’s an audio program that makes your voice sound all roboty and hides any pitch problems you might be having. Done in moderation, it’s a great technique that adds a lot of fun to an album. Done in excess, it feels like RoboCop produced your music.

T-pain made it famous as of late. Britney Spears has used it a lot. Kanye West’s latest album, 808s & Heartbreak, uses AutoTune on every song. Even a new Wendy’s fast food commercial employs it. But recently, Jay-Z released a song called “DOA” or “Death of AutoTune.” And since popular mainstream culture is done with it, the next stop for AutoTune is probably going to be Christian music. There is a growing fear that it will soon infect every one from Amy Grant to Yolanda Adams. (If there was a Christian musician with a name that started with the letter “Z” that A-Z statement I just attempted to make would have been slightly more awesome.)

How’s it going to happen? How will the virus of AutoTune spread to Christian music?

Here are the steps you need to be ready for:

1. Someone will spoof it.
Like most musical monsters, (see the Macarena), it’s all fun and games at first. “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if we used AutoTune during a concert? Let’s bust that out some night and have fun with the crowd.” The first spotting of AutoTune will come in the form of a joke played during a live show. My money is on the David Crowder Band. They covered the Sonseed song, “Jesus is my friend” live and although I don’t personally know them, they seem like they have a great sense of humor. This is how it will begin.

2. TobyMac employs it in a song.
I don’t have all of TobyMac’s music so it’s possible this has already happened. I do sincerely dig the song, “Made to love” and like TobyMac. But at some point in the next three months, as the only Christian musician currently saying things like “I feel the haters spittin’ vapors on my dreams,” TobyMac will almost be obligated to use AutoTune. I’m not saying the Dove Awards people are going to force him to use it, but they might. They’re a powerful lot.

3. Having seen TobyMac try it, other pop Christian bands will give it a whirl.
Once the Mac Attack has used it to and been successful, other pop Christian groups will jump on board. Teen girl bands and boy bands of emo descent will find ways to incorporate it. You won’t be able to turn on Christian radio without hearing someone stretch out the word “Jesssssuussss” with the robotic rhythm of AutoTune.

4. Your worship leader will use it in church.
Out of nowhere, in the middle of a praise song you’ve song for years, a bit of AutoTune will make a cameo during church. “Did that just happen?” you’ll say? Yes, yes it did my friend.

5. Someone will do a “Father Abraham” VBS remix with AutoTune, officially putting the final nail in it’s coffin.
Although I would pay money to see this, this will mark the end of the AutoTune cycle. Having traveled from rap to spoof to TobyMac to general acceptance to church service, AutoTune will now arrive in the VBS final performance night. And 6 year olds will do a dance routine to an AutoTuned rendition of Father Abraham. It’s over.

Has this already happened? I recently heard a song about prayer that seemed like it had a little bit of AutoTune in it. Am I too late? I’m horrible at keeping on top of trends, so maybe my words are more pathetic than prophetic.

Is there another trend in popular music you think is headed our way?

What song would you love to see remixed with AutoTune?

Happy Fourth of July weekend. Even though this is an American holiday, I thought it might be good to repost an idea about a church service phenomenon that I think happens internationally as well as in the US. (This is also the answer to the question, “Where did the Skittles thing come from?”)

This post is probably going to happen to you this Sunday if you live in America. Or maybe on the Sunday before Anzac day in Australia. Or perhaps even on the Sunday before Victoria Day if you live in Canada. Wherever you are, just be ready, be warned, be prepared for candies to rain down because some pastors actually did this at their churches after reading this when it was posted last year.

Fresh stuff returns Monday when I’m back from Blowing Rock, North Carolina.

Until then, I give you

The “everyone is on vacation, everything goes” church service.

It is a poorly kept secret that the day before a big holiday, whether you live in Cleveland or Croatia, your church is going to do things a little differently than on most Sundays. That is, with a large portion of the congregation out on vacation, they’re going to mix it up a little.

For instance, at a lot of churches, the younger ministers are always asked to preach the day before Memorial Day. Senior pastors know that it’s a lot safer to have some rough around the edges minister saying something crazy to 400 people instead of the 800 people that usually attend. Same goes with music. Go this Sunday (in the United States) and you’re bound to see some guy that’s always been in the background of the stage step forward for a totally unexpected guitar solo. Or a woman that’s always wanted to lead worship will suddenly be behind the mic for the first time.

I call it “Day Before Vacation Syndrome” or DBVS.

And because I am a huge dork and it’s roughly 800 degrees right now in Alpharetta, Georgia, I thought I would offer a few suggestions for ways you can avoid DBVS at your church:

1. Controversy
Since a lot of folks won’t be in church because they are out on vacation, use this opportunity to address all of the most controversial issues. Talk about politics, money, and anything else that otherwise would get the crowd riled up and upset. That way, whenever someone says, “I wish this church was not so seeker focused and dealt with some of the tough issues,” you can reply “You must have not been here for stemcellobamadrugssex Sunday.”

2. Snakes
Ever thought about incorporating some pit vipers into your service? Why not on the Sunday when everyone is out of town? I don’t know where you can buy a “bag o’ rattlers” but surely someone near you sells poisonous snakes. By the way, I don’t mean to be selfish, but it would really help me out if someone could invite me to a church service where they handled snakes. I’m dying to write about that but won’t unless I’ve actually gone to a service.

3. Church Sumo Wrestling
At every church there are little church politics that no one wants to talk about. The worship minister wants to do more modern songs than the pastor will allow. The elders think the pastor needs to do more old testament and less 30 Rock references. The janitor is still mad at everyone over the “glue incident” of 1978. Get those big blow up sumo costumes you can rent, a huge tube of bootleg jello (this a church after all) and then have everyone settle their differences. How cool would it be to see the super happy pastor’s wife leg drop the super grumpy elder that is always a jerk to her husband?

4. Skittles
Why not throw skittles out during the service? Instead of saying, “watch this” or “listen to this” or another phrase that is designed to get people’s attention, why not throw handfuls of skittles at them? Wouldn’t you love to be hit in the side of the head with a bunch of fruit candy delightfulness? I would.

5. Weird instruments
Ever wondered what an accordion and triangle version of the song, “I can only imagine” would sound like? Got a kid in youth group that is really good at beat box? Do you need more cowbell but are afraid most people would hate it? Well they’re all on vacation. Get the accordion out, it’s go time.

6. Practice Christmas
Next to Easter, the Christmas service might be the most important one you do. So why not do a dry run in July and make sure everything goes well? Just consider it a practice. Do the candles with kids, hang some holly, sing carols, do the whole thing up and then that way, when the real Christmas rolls around you’ll be ready. Don’t tell anyone it’s a practice, just do it as if it’s a normal thing to do. The look on the face of your visitors and members that show up and find themselves singing “Oh Holy Night” in the middle of the summer will be worth it.

7. Haikus
Do the entire sermon in haiku. It’s not as hard as you think. Here’s an example: Jesus was so cool (5 syllables) He gave His life for our sins (7 syllables) Let’s be close to him (5 syllables)

8. Have an “SCL Sunday”
Why not throw a “Stuff Christians Like” service? We’ll play Sandi Patty and Carman songs. We’ll take a love offering and interlink our fingers when we hold hands. We’ll get a puppet group, named “Strings of Mercy,” to come do the Noah’s Ark story and then I’ll speak. It will be fantastic.I would do some pop and lock breakdancing in the hallway if my church North Point did any one of these ideas. If they don’t I’m going to do that mime move where you pretend to be stuck in an invisible box. Mime is the opposite of breakdancing.

p.s. There are two things that go without saying: 1. I can’t promise that your church will use any of these tips. 2. I can promise that the church I start, GracePointeLifeTruthHouseNorthRiverElevate, will use all of them.

I don’t want to brag, but if getting kids ready for church in the morning was an Olympic sport, I would own a million gold medals.

If it were the Grammy’s, I wouldn’t have to rush the stage like ODB from the Wu Tang Clan to grab the mic from Shawn Colvin and yell, “Wu Tang is for the children,” because I’d already be up there accepting an award.

If it were the Oscars, I’d have a veritable army of bald headed golden men marching across my mantle.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, “I’m good at getting my kids ready for Sunday School.”

I wasn’t always though. I used to fumble my way through the morning, duplicating efforts with my wife, putting on shoes backwards and creating pony tails that jutted out from odd angles off the side of my daughters’ heads like lighthouses made of hair.

But can you blame me?

For some reason, every kid on the planet is wired to go crazy on Sunday morning. They might have been beacons of joy and helpfulness and flexibility all week, but come Sunday morning they turn into slippery little spider monkeys who are determined to make you late to church.

So what’s my secret? How did I become a ninja of Sunday School getting readiness?

Simple, I mastered these 5 steps:

1. The Pre-Game
You know Sunday is coming. It’s been in the same spot on the calendar for as long as you’ve been alive, so don’t act surprised when your head pops off that pillow and you think, “Oh no, I have to get the kids ready today.” Pre-game the night before. Lay out bowls and clothes and shoes. Make sippy cups the night before. (I can’t wait to retire the words “sippy cup” and “tinkle” from my vocabulary.) Prepare before the day actually arrives so that you’re ready for the storm.

2. Sell it to your kids
One of your biggest jobs as a parent is to play the role of studio audience or laugh track. In the same way that a studio audience will laugh on cue to let viewers at home know it’s time to find a particular scene in a show funny, your job is to back up whatever your husband or wife says with raucous enthusiasm. Here’s what it looks like in my house:

My wife: “L.E. and McRae, aren’t you excited about Sunday School?”
Me (Immediately after she says that): “Yay Sunday School! You’ll get to see all your friends and have goldfish and make a craft. Yay!”

Before they have a chance to even think about putting up a wall of resistance I piggyback what my wife has said, adding details, amping up the excitement, laughing on cue if that’s what the moment requires.

3. Hustle them to the bathroom like a SWAT team.
I can’t prove this, but I think my children have entered into a silent pact with each other to see who can use the bathroom the least amount of times in any given week. Roughly 72% of my creativity/energy at home is expended trying to convince them to use the bathroom. So, to avoid this “no bathroom liberation front” my wife and I try to shuffle our kids to the bathroom as soon as they wake up. Before they can give each other a secret handshake or a head nod and remind each other “viva la revolucion” we’ve grabbed them right out of bed like a SWAT team and marched them into the bathroom.

4. Distract them with stories.
It took me years to learn this, but if I want to get my kids to do anything, and this is for those rare times when they are refusing to instantly follow my Godly, fatherly advice as the leader of the house, I’ll tell them a story. It usually involves an animal. And the plot unfolds as they acquiesce to what I need them to do. For instance, “And do you know what your grandfather did with that bullfrog when he brought it home? Go ahead and take another bite of Cheerios and I’ll tell you.”

5. Use a series of aerobic moves to get them dressed.
Is it lying if you tell your kids that you want to see how high they can raise their hands in the air just so that you can slip a dress over their head? Is it lying if you made getting on tights a jumping contest in which you bounce them on the couch as high as you can all the while pulling the tights up? Is it lying if you make putting on shoes a fun race? I hope not, because otherwise, I’m a wicked huge liar.

On most Sundays my wife and I are the first couple to drop our kids off at Sunday School when the classrooms open. Then we go sit in the sanctuary for 20 minutes and have a “mini date.” After all, they play Coldplay songs through the loudspeakers before church starts, we sometimes have a coffee with us and we get to have 20 unadulterated minutes of hang out time. It’s the little things.

How about you?

Do you have any tricks you use to get your kids ready for Sunday School?

Any horror stories you want to share?

We are developing faster, smarter ways to mess up our lives. Thirty years ago, the Internet didn’t exist and no one started off their testimony with the line, “Things were going well until I discovered Internet porn.” Now though, if I had a nickel for every time I heard that I would easily be a Christian Thousandaire and wouldn’t need to start my Stuff Christians Like scented candle line as a way to earn extra cake.

We can download, connect, and social network our lives into the pit in about 4 seconds. We don’t even need a computer to do it, we can be in a meeting on our iPhones having side conversations that are going to wreck our marriages and our lives. And when a friend asked me about this trend, about whether I thought the world was getting worse or better, I was quick to say worse. “We live in a fallen world” I said, and we keep going deeper into levels of fallenness. (See that? Fallenness isn’t even a word and I just flaunted it as if it were. For shame fallen world.)

But if I’m honest, then I have to confess that sometimes I use that as an excuse to not work for positive change. I toss out “fallen world” like some sort of stamp when I don’t want to make the effort to care about a certain cause, or become emotionally involved in a difficult situation.

Crime rate up? We live in a fallen world, there’s nothing you can do.

Hate your job? We live in a fallen world, there’s nothing you can do.

Canada Geese refusing to migrate back because they like the sweet, tender grass of your lawn and prefer your predator free neighborhood instead of the northern tundra, crossing the road at in opportune times regardless of traffic rules, hissing at you when you refuse to feed them salty cracker treats, and constantly reminding you that they are the most entitled bird in the world?
We live in a fallen world, there’s nothing we can do.

School systems crumbling? Recycling not working in your town? Healthcare problems?
We live in a fallen world, there’s nothing you can do.

Hopefully, you’re not like me. Hopefully you see that when God gave us His two greatest commands, love Him and love others as much as we love ourselves, He didn’t say, unless you live in a fallen world. There was no caveat that gave us the freedom to give less than love if the world we’re living in is less than perfect. If anything, a fallen world is a world that needs love the most.

The depths we sink to as a society force us to give even deeper love.

The darker things get, the stronger the need is for brightness.

That we live in a fallen world is not an excuse to give up or not try, it’s a motivation to try even harder. God placed us here, in this time period, because the world needs love like never before. My love, your love, our love. That we live in a fallen world shouldn’t prevent us from living out of God’s love. If anything, it should prove the need for us to be doing that.

And even though that last paragraph felt a little “benefit concerty,” I think it’s true, fallen world or not.

The folks at the Christian Web Conference have invited me to come out to Los Angeles and talk about the role satire plays in sharing our faith. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun and some other people that I’m really forward to seeing will be there including Tim Challies, Abraham Piper and Anne Jackson.

If you’re in the LA area and can swing by on Friday, come hang out. I speak at 11 on Friday morning and then participate in a panel discussion on Friday afternoon at 4:30 with a handful of people that have roughly 19 million years more experience than I do. Expect me to be sweaty.

Here’s the registration page. (It costs $50, or the equivalent of 10 bottles of Axe Dark Temptation body spray, which is currently a running nightmare in my head with that chocolate man commercial they keep showing.)

I’m really excited about this event. The structure is that I only talk for about 20 minutes and then it’s open to a full crowd discussion. So I think it’s going to be a great chance to learn from each other. And it’s my first time to the West Coast and I am hoping to go to In-n-Out, or the “Left Coast Chick-Fil-A” if you will.

Here’s more info on the conference: Christianwebconference.com

p.s. please expect a “Going back to Cali” LL Cool J joke if I get to go out to California a second time. I have waited my entire life to make that joke and it will be made.