(Matt, from the church of no people, is back. You might remember his guide to writing the ultimate Stuff Christians Like comment. You might have used his helpful tips to create a great Christian dating profile. Both of those were hilarious and today’s post is no different. In it, he shares some tips on heaven. Enjoy.)

Stuff Christians Like: Near Death Visits to Heaven

We love to talk about heaven, but what do we know about it? The Bible doesn’t say, but adults love to make Sunday School lessons out of it. Lots of people these days write books about seeing heaven during their near death experience. The stories are usually similar – white light, robes, clouds, Thomas Kincaid, Celine Dion on the radio.

Christians love stories about visits to heaven, but they seem like a pretty lame idea of the place, especially if it’s supposed to be a reward. I needed a firsthand look at heaven, before I had to go there forever…So I decided send my kid brother to scope out the place. It makes a great day trip for adults too, especially if you’re on a tight vacation budget.

Now, I’ve compiled the first definitive heavenly field guide, based on scientific evidence and my kid brother’s first hand visit. It will help you get the most from your visit to heaven, and be better prepared to write a best-selling book when you return.

A Day Trip to Heaven
How do I plan a visit to heaven?It doesn’t take much planning. Some people think they need to have a heart attack and a hospital with a doctor. But, if you had that kind of money, you’d be taking a real vacation on a yacht or something. All you have to do is stand up really straight with your knees locked tight and hold your breath as long as you can. You should stand on your bed and not by the TV, or where your mom can see you.* Just make sure you’re really really born-again right before you go, so you get sent to the right place.

*The AMA considers locking your knees and holding your breath a really stupid thing to do for any reason, including visiting heaven or avoiding eating vegetables.

What does heaven look like?A lot of super-nerds like to think of heaven as Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica; some nerdy alternate dimension complete with spaceships and lasers and hot, nerdy aliens. Well, it’s not like that at all, and it offends heaven that you would have such a lame fantasy.

It’s more like Lord of the Rings and World of Warcraft. Schweet…

How will I feel in heaven?
It’s awesome. Think of some time you were completely psyched on earth, like the first time you rocked out to Ace of Base or went to a boy/girl party. It’s like that feeling. In fact, after lunch in heaven – there’s no such thing as nap time. What do you think it is, a “place of rest?” Instead, they have ‘pump-up’ time, when everyone runs around and listens to House of Pain, just so no one forgets how awesome heaven is.

I was always told that heaven is our greatest wishes, times infinity. So if you plan on going to heaven soon, you should prepare by wishing for a bunch of really awesome stuff, like a pet falcon or a new bike, or moon shoes. If you wish for something lame like new socks, you’ll get new socks…times infinity. So it’s probably a really bad idea to wish for a roundhouse kick to the face from Chuck Norris.

What’s the weather like?
Heaven is always a pleasant 74 degrees with a 30% chance of rain. It never rains, but there’s always a chance, a slight chance. That’s great, except Jesus won’t let you spend your whole day in the heavenly mansion. He’s always pushing people out the door for some fresh air and exercise so he can mop the floors. You’ll still need a jacket when you go to church.

Heaven is also free of all natural laws we are used to on earth. Of course, you won’t be able to just tell there’s no natural laws. So go ahead and do a simple test on an everyday natural law, one that you use all the time on earth. Any natural law will do. Try out the second law of thermodynamics and see what happens…did you try it? Pretty sweet, huh?

What is there to do in heaven?
The rumpus room has a lot of stuff. Some kid wished for a Wii right before showing up, so that pretty much worked out for everyone. The dollar theater was playing Harry Potter, so you won’t get bored.

The angels are always partying for all the souls on earth responding to altar calls. Contrary to popular belief, the angels do dance. However, there are threats of shutting this down, along with the mixed bathing, since Jesus has to spend so much time making sure the angels are dancing far enough apart for him to wedge his body between them. With all that, he barely has any time to make the grape juice.

Plus, Jesus is going to have to leave sometime, because he’s got to get back to Earth right before Steve and Julie Garrett of Akron, Ohio consummate their marriage.

You still have to go to church, but it’s way different. Even though everyone in heaven is there, it’s like the Sunday no one shows up. Some guy came on stage with an eagle, and when they passed the offering plates, people weren’t putting money in. They were taking handfuls of Skittles out. They did still have an altar call. Pastor Brother Bill kept saying, “I see that hand, thank you,” but I didn’t see anyone raising their hands.

Sometimes, Jesus will ask you to recite a Bible verse, but if you just quote Ben Franklin, he’ll usually accept it.

Who is in heaven?
A bunch of people. I saw my Grandma, my pet dogs, some dude named Morrie, the Blue Man, the Captain, Ruby, Marguerito, and Tala. I sure missed them.
You can meet most people in heaven through Twitter. Jesus is really into it. He’s following all 8,000 heavenly Tweet-souls and he’s already got, like, 50 followers in return. But he pretty much uses it to give shout-outs to himself.

Heaven has a bunch of other stuff you’ll like, and it can pretty much be summed up here.

There you go. If you want your kids to be good, make sure they know the truth about heaven. Anyone else who has been to heaven can share their stories too!

(For more great stuff from Matt check out his blog, the church of no people.)

I recently realized that I’ve started dropping a certain phrase into my emails and Facebook comments. Side hugs? No. Razzle Dazzle? No. Leg drops 4-eva? No.

My phrase of choice is apparently, “My wife and I.”

When girls email me about Stuff Christians Like or comment on something I said on Twitter, I’ve noticed that I make a point of name dropping my wife.

Even if the email I get from someone just says, “Can you tell me about how you found your literary agent,” I am tempted to respond with, “Well my wife and I were talking one day about being married and in love and we’re married, and we still have tickle fights and split milkshakes with two straws that bend in the shape of a heart and then I found a literary agent. The end.”

It’s not like I’m getting inappropriate emails. It’s not like my response needs to extinguish some “you’re so awesome” blazing fire of words. I just feel compelled to let the online world know that I’m married.

And I’m not the only one. I’ve noticed several readers who do the same thing and I think that’s great. The Internet is littered with wounded and broken marriages that allowed a seed of “emotional over share” to blossom into a full blown affair of disastrous proportions.

I think that I can also take this to ridiculously egotistical proportions, essentially believing that “When that person of the opposite sex asked me if I liked the new laptop bag I mentioned on Twitter, they were probably trying to hit on me. Better remind them I’m happily married. Probably should send them a photo of my wedding ring.” That’s a bit much and if you send me a short email someday, I promise I won’t copy and paste an “well my wife and I” into the response automatically. But overall, I’m cool with the “look at me, I’m married” approach to social networking. I do have a problem though.

You see, I’m very competitive. I don’t want to kind of tell people I’m married online, I want to be the very best at doing that. Only that’s such a minor, obscure thing to be competitive about that no one in their right mind would ever come up with an adequate, sanctioned in 17 states, method of scoring who the winner is. Fortunately, I am not in my right mind.

The “I want everyone online to know I’m married” scorecard.

1. You and your spouse share an email address. = +1 point

2. You and your spouse share an email address and the address makes that obvious with a name like theacuffs@yahoo.com = +2 points

3. You and your spouse share an email address and the address makes that wicked obvious with a name like JennyandJonaresoooooinlove@yahoo.com = +3 points

4. You and your spouse share an email address and the address makes that wicked, ultra obvious with a name like Markswife@yahoo.com or Lindashusband@gmail.com = +4 points

5. You sign off on all emails with the phrase, “happily married,” = +1 point

6. Emails? What are you talking about? You don’t write emails to the opposite sex. = +2 points

7. Your profile photo on facebook is just a close up of your ring finger. = +1 point

8. Your profile photo on facebook is a picture of you and your spouse hugging = +2 points

9. Your profile photo on facebook is a picture of your wedding day = + 3 points

10. Your profile photo on facebook is a picture of you and your husband hugging while he cleans a shotgun. = +4 points

11. Your tweets on Twitter are actually 123 characters long instead of the standard 140 because each one, regardless of the message starts with the phrase, “my hot wife and I” = + 1 point

12. The only activity you list on facebook is “being in love with my husband.” = + 1 point

13. The only interests you list are “spending time with my wife” = +2 points

14. For favorite book you listed “The 5 Love Languages” = +3 points

15. For favorite TV show you just got lazy and replied, “I’m married.” = +4 points

16. For quotations you skipped the standard CS Lewis route and wrote, “Will you marry me?” “Yes.” – “What my husband said to me six delicious years ago.” = +5 points

17. Your wedding happened six years ago but yet you keep updating facebook with fresh wedding photos from the archives of your love = +3 points

18. You use your facebook status updates as a running, “No I love you more, silly!” game between you and your spouse. = + 4 points

19. Your tweets are just a running countdown of days left to key dates, “Me and my hott wife will have been married for 2 years in roughly 117 days!” = +5 points

20. When you got married you “retired” your individual facebook or myspace profiles and opened up a new one called “PamelaFrankSmith” = + 2 points

21. You opened up a shared facebook or myspace account but gave yourselves a nickname, morphing your two names and ultimately settling on, “FramelaSmith.” = +10 points

Wow, looking at that list makes me realize I do a pretty poor job of showcasing my marital status online. I’m coming in at a solid 2 points right now.

How about you?

If you’re married, are you crushing me in the letting people online know about it game?

If you’re single, do any of your married friends play this game?

What item of “look at me online world I’m married!” is missing from this list?

p.s. If you’re single and this post made you want to throw up at least a little bit, always remember there’s a post about surviving church as a single.

In a few weeks the new Stuff Christians Like website is going to launch and I’m a little terrified. And not just in that way that I’m afraid of rollercoasters but pretend I’m not and come up with a lot of reasons that we probably shouldn’t ride Space Mountain today, look at those lines. Why don’t we go on Thunder Mountain at night so you can’t tell that I’m closing my eyes so I don’t see what’s coming around the bend even though my six year old daughter is sitting next to me with her eyes open. Not in that way, I mean genuinely terrified.

And the source of my nervousness?

I’m afraid to really try.

That’s a dumb sentence, and perhaps this is an illogical thing to fear given all the very real nightmares people face in their lives, but fear doesn’t really follow logic and that’s honestly the one in my head right now. I’ve got this weird belief that if I don’t really try, then I can’t really fail. I can always buy into the lie, “If I had tried, I probably could have done that.” But if I try, if I give it my all and my all isn’t enough, I’ll be crushed. It’s like never writing a book but always telling yourself you could have if you wanted to, you just didn’t have time or something came up or a million other excuses.

Paying someone to design a site, taking sponsors, admitting that I’m structuring significant chunks of my day to work on this as a ministry makes the whole thing feel “real” to me. I lose the fake security blanket of saying, “It’s just some ugly site on blogspot, it’s no big deal.”

Have you ever felt that way? Has there ever been some hope or dream that bubbles quietly inside but you’re afraid to admit it’s there? It’s a new career or a relationship you want to begin or some off the wall ministry that’s always been in your heart? Have you ever been afraid about putting your all into something?

What did you do? How did you deal with it? What happens when we’re afraid?

Those are the questions I’ve been asking God the last few weeks and it feels like the answer might be pretty simple:

Be as brave as a six year old.

Until a few weeks ago that idea didn’t make sense. I’ve never associated bravery with childhood, until the night before my daughter L.E. started kindergarten. We were sitting on her bed and I was trying to sell her hard on the idea. (“It will be awesome. So many friends and recess and gym!”) And in the midst of that conversation she bit her lip and admitted, “I’m a little nervous.” That’s all she said and then she turned her head and refused to look at me. She was doing her best to hold it together. She didn’t want to cry. She didn’t want to fall apart the night before the big day.

It is a big day. She was going to change from a small three hours a day preschool at a church that she had attended for years to an 8AM-3PM day full of new people, new places and new experiences. She was going to get out of a car, walk inside a monstrous building, navigate her way through hundreds of kids that were bigger and older than her to a new classroom. And she was going to do it with limited life experience.

Think about how the age of the kid amplifies the size of the experience. When you and I change jobs, we have precedent to fall back on. We can say, “Wow, new job starts today. Fortunately I’ve had a few other jobs before. I have a decade of work under my belt, this won’t be so bad.” But for kids, there’s no history to fall back on. The first day of school is a gigantic adventure of colossal proportions.

Yet, she was brave.

In that moment, I felt like God challenged my understanding of who He made me to be. I’ve read verses about being more childlike all my life but never thought about what they’re really saying. In Matthew 18:3 for instance, Jesus says:”I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” What does it mean to become like little children? I think it might mean that we’re supposed to be as brave as a six year old.

I think it might mean we’re supposed to be as trusting as a six year old. They put their faith in God and their parents with an abandon that isn’t limited to logic or reason. They just trust.

I think it might mean that we’re supposed to be as creative as a six year old. Every kid comes onto the planet believing they’re an artist and often adulthood slowly chips away at that belief. Maybe I need to put aside my pursuit of perfection and just color.

I think it might mean that we’re supposed to be as curious as a six year old. A butterfly isn’t a bug, it’s a reason to yell and scream and point and maybe even jump really, really high. Kids step out into each day as a blank canvas, waiting and watching to see what new colors God brings into their life. Kids are curious.

I could go on with this list all day and there are certainly things I wouldn’t add to it. There is wisdom and maturity that comes with age. But it’s interesting to me that when Jesus wanted to make an example of how we’re supposed to live, he never said, “Grab that 112 year old man over there. If you want to enter the kingdom of heaven you gotta be like this dude right here.” He used kids as his example. We’re called to become like little children.

So today, I’m going to be as brave as a 6 year old.

How about you?

Ben Arment is fantastic. He put together an awesome prize package for a Stuff Christians Like reader (it included 6 books and a wearable blanket) in celebration of what is undoubtedly going to be a great conference. (It’s called Story, you should go. Donald Miller is.)

After sorting through the most ridiculously awesome comments about what should be added to the Metrosexual Worship Leader Scorecard (You can read them all here) I picked a winner. I don’t know who “The Missional Position” is but he’s hilarious.

Thanks for commenting. Here’s to more snuggie giveaways in the future.

Here is the comment that won:

The Missional Position said…
name drops while talking about writing songs w/ famous worship leaders like matt redman and charlie hall. -4

works in sushi analogy to each worship song in the days set +2

wears white peg leg jeans w/ neon throwback 80′s hi-tops +3

wears 80′s secular band t-shirts during worship +3

wears current indie rock tees +1

wears more jewelry than a TBN host -4

wears 80′s jelly’s bracelets half way up one arm +1

ties a scarf around mic-stand a la Steven Tyler of Aerosmith +/- 0

introduces all those playing in the band w/ alternative names for the instruments (i.e on ax, on skins, etc) -2

converts engine of vw van or honda element to run on fast food grease +5

wears tees that have instruments of war mixed w/ instruments of love (i.e. tank shooting out hearts, b1 bomber dropping cupcakes, gun shooting flowers) +1

drinks bubble tea instead of coffee -1

is weekly touting a new fair trade product +2

wears TOMS +5

drinks water b/t every song -3

turns & points at drummer during songs or stands next to other instrumentalist in band and mimics their moves -4

runs and jumps off bass drum during a song -5

tries to the crowd clapping during a song by holding mic in one hand and clapping w/ the other making a “thud” sound every time -10

tweets links to bloodwatermission. TOMSshoes, xxxchurch and other causes regularly +5

has a 12seconds channel where he regularly interacts with his commenters +5

pastor refers to a new indie rock band worship pastor turned him onto in a sermon +10

indie rockers begin attending church because of the talent level of your churches worship band +15

indie rockers want to play on Sundays because of relationships w/ worship pastor +25

Last weekend, I was one of the breakout speakers at the North Point Community Church Single’s Retreat. (When they first invited me, I thought they said “breakdance speakers” and got my breakin’ 2 electric bugaloo cardboard square out.) I did two different topics, one of which was called “Date Less Jerks.” (Yes, “fewer” would have been technically correct but that has no flow.) In that message I encouraged folks to avoid dating and becoming a jerk. (Unfortunately a lot of that one is drawn from my personal experience of being a jerk.)

In preparation for the event I spoke to a couple of my friends, Misty and Tim, who work in the Singles Department at North Point. In addition to giving me some speech pointers, they challenged my knowledge of church hugs that are currently popular amongst singles.

“Hey,” I thought, “I know all about church hugs. I wrote the side hugs post forever ago. I made a t-shirt celebrating my love of the hug. I’ve got a PhD in hugging.” Wow was I wrong.

Maybe I’ve been out of the game for too long. Maybe I was never that good at hugging to begin with. It’s possible that people just felt bad and didn’t want to break it too me that I was horrible at hugging, and although externally they smiled, internally they were dying slow deaths of awkwardness and Acqua Di Gio cologne every time I embraced them. Hard to say, but I don’t want you to be as pitiful at the church hug as I am. So after much research, a few usability tests that I ran with my wife in our living room and more bar graphs than I care to count, here is a list of the varieties of church hugs you need to be prepared for.

1. The Three Strikes and You’re Out
Apparently, if you’re single and someone pats your back three times when you hug, that’s to let you know that you’re out of any possible dating contention and are firmly locked into the “friend-zone.” When someone hits your back three times, “pat, pat, pat,” in your head you should imagine that hand beating out the chorus to the song, “You’re a friend, just a friend. It’s the end, you’re a friend.”

2. The Circle of Something Something
If instead of a pat, the person hugs you and rubs their hand in a circle on your back, there might be something something a foot. “Hey, maybe we could go on a date. This hug at the end of a group get together just got circlicious. Is there something here?” There is my friend, there is. You don’t casually do the circle on someone’s back, that’s only two steps removed from a massage. This could be love.

3. The Multitasker
Guys will hug, as long as one of their hands can be multitasking in some sort of complicated handshake at the exact same moment. It starts with the handshake, which gets flipped into some sort of knuckle grab which then pulls you into a one armed hug that culminates in a three strikes and you’re out. Some people will tell you that it should be concluded with one or both guys saying, “dawg” but those people are gravely mistaken.

4. The Over Under
Although I’ve been very honest about my desire to never interlink fingers with you during an “everyone hold hands” moment at church, I’m surprisingly not opposed to an over under. What’s that? It’s a hug where someone goes over the shoulders with their arms and the other person goes under the shoulders. Executed in the right context, it’s an incredibly kind way to comfort someone during a trying time or a sad moment on a church retreat. Executed in the wrong context, like someone has just scored a hole in one in God’s favorite sport Frisbee golf, and it feels like you’re trying to slow dance in the eighth grade. (To Millie Vanilli’s “Blame it on the Rain” in case you were curious.)

5. The A Frame
Epic fail on my part. When I wrote the side hug post I thought the A frame was actually just another name for a side hug. Nope. An A frame is kind of a half committed full frontal hug. You hug, but you only touch clavicle to clavicle. Your torsos don’t actually really touch and from the side, it looks like you and the other person are forming an A. It’s a perfect hug to do during the “greet the people around you” moment at church. Instead of trying to escape out of the row or aisle, you can lean over, with the pew between you and hug someone’s neck.

Hopefully we’ve cleared up a lot of hug misconceptions today. No one wants to lean in for a deeply moving over under hug and instead be greeted by a multitasker but unless we’re all on the same page, hug train wrecks going to continue happening in churches around the world.

Are you a hugger?

What’s your style?

Did I leave any off the list?

Happy Labor Day.

Right now I’m in the car with the entire Acuff crew driving back from the North Point Community Church Singles Labor Day Retreat trying to convince my three old not to drop whatever it is she is looking at to amuse herself into that no man’s land between the car door and the baby seat that you can never reach while you’re driving. And you can try, you can attempt to hook you arm back there and even think “thin arm thoughts” but it won’t work. You can’t reach the toy, you can only brush it with the tips of your fingers and then you try to convince your kid that it was actually a pretty boring toy any way, in fact this one right here is far superior, let’s play with that until we get to a rest stop at which you will try to take your sandals off inside the gas station bathroom and walk bare foot on the floor.

See you tomorrow.

Jon

What’s your blog?

What’s your cause? What’s your band? What’s your book?

What’s the link you want people to see more than anything else?

I hereby declare this “Shameless Saturday.”

Post a link to whatever it is you’re all about with no shame or apologizing or feeling like you’re making a comment on a post you really don’t care about but are instead secretly trying to pimp your own blog. (I’ve done that myself many times. The best way to do it is to say, “That’s an interesting post. It reminds me of something I wrote recently on my blog ….” Sometimes when people do that it’s actually a good link to something they wrote that is similar to what was written on another post. But when I was coming up, on 8 mile, just trying to rock the mic at any chance I was given, that was definitely one of the techniques I employed.)

Please, use the comments this weekend to let us know about your blog or your cause or your band or your whatever. The Internets are so big it’s hard to find everything cool.

Tell us what’s up with a link. (I hope to do something like this once a season, so this is the summer edition of Shameless Saturday)

(Rob Stennett is a friend of mine and he is funny. When he told me about his most recent book, The End Is Now, a satirical thriller about the rapture, I asked him to do a guest post. He had me baffled at the phrase “satirical thriller” until he reminded me that the movie Scream was a satirical horror movie. I told him he could probably get Skeet Ulrich to star in the movie of his book. Since I rarely write about the end of the world and would probably just make puns about the REM song, it seemed fitting that he covered the final countdown. I’m a big fan of Rob and think you will be too.)

Worrying about the rapture
When I was eight years old my parents showed me a movie called A Thief In The Night. This movie was incredibly frightening to watch as an eight year old because it is scarier than 7 out of 12 Friday the 13th movies. If you’ve never been lucky enough to see it let me just say it is the ultimate rapture movie, the front-runner to Left Behind and The Omega Code, A Thief In The Night did for the rapture what The Godfather did for the mafia.

My parents showed me this movie because it was based on biblical prophecy, and because some if not all the events in the movie could really happen. I was sure they were right. I’d walk home from school, hear a marching band playing the background, and grow certain the Lord was warming up and the ultimate a trumpet sound would soon blare. I distinctly remember during a couple of sunsets looking in the distance and thinking I saw The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I woke up a couple of times in the middle of the night thinking I was in heaven and wondering why it looked just like my bedroom.

But I’m not alone. Worrying about the rapture is another thing Christians have liked for years. And because Christians also like their sermons delivered in three points I will give you three examples of when Christians worry about the rapture:

1) Worrying about being raptured before a major life event.
When I was eight I was scared that I’d be raptured before I got a girlfriend. I’d never had a girlfriend; never even kissed a girl. Sure, I loved heaven and Jesus but I didn’t know if they allowed girlfriends and kissing in the afterlife. So, I wanted to make sure I experienced this before I was whisked away. But that’s just the beginning. Many Christians like to worry about being raptured before graduating high school, college, getting engaged, getting married, having their first kid, having their first grandkid, and most of all before seeing their favorite sports team win the world championship. (Ask any Cubs fan what needs to happen before they get raptured. Red Sox’s fans on the other hand are safe; they can be called home at anytime now.)

2) Worrying about signs of the rapture
Many Christians have a little of the Da Vinci Code’s Robert Langdon in them. They look at the world’s events and think each event is a piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is the end of the world. A Middle Eastern country gets its hands on a WMD. There’s a piece, they’ll think. South Park is syndicated into prime time. Uh oh, this is getting really interesting. Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon all passing away within 48 hours—Houston we have a problem.

3) Worrying about how the rapture is going to unfold
This has got to be a top ten-debated topic in all of Christianity. For many Christians the worries are not linked to a question of when but how when it comes to Armageddon. Will the rapture happen pre-tribulation (that is before the antichrist, marks of the beast, and war to end all wars), mid-trib (somewhere in the middle) or post-trib (once the new earth and the thousand years of peace begin). For other Christians, they like to debate not how the rapture is going to happen, but if it’s going to happen at all. “How are you so sure that the passages in Revelation mean what you think they do?” If this question comes out between two people on different sides of this issue, well get your popcorn ready. This is going to be entertaining.

At the end of the day I’d like to think that worrying about the rapture is one of the biggest contributions Christian’s have made to Hollywood. Just look at the string of apocalyptic films that have been made in the last 10 years or so: (Armageddon, Deep Impact, The Day After Tomorrow, Knowing, 12 Monkeys, 28 Days Later, and anything starring Keanu Reeves.) Some would argue these movies are destructive and cause unnecessary fear, but that’s too pessimistic for this author. I like to think maybe this is not an entirely a bad thing. Maybe if worrying about the end of the world as we know it causes us to take stock in our life on earth, then this should continue to be one of things Christians like.

It wasn’t easy to pick the five winners of the YOUthwork book. You guys submitted some hilarious/honest answers to the question “What youth group related topic is still missing from Stuff Christians Like?”

Check out the entire list of comments here. In the meantime here are the five people who won a free copy of the book. If you made one of the winning comments please email me at theacuffs@yahoo.com with your mailing address and “YOUthwork” in the subject line. Thanks so much for sharing your ideas.

Erin said…
I’m a youth group alum, and we always had very interesting ways of raising money for whatever we were doing. Here are a few we tried:

1. Car washes – the boys were allowed to take their shirts off, but the girls were not even allowed to wear bathing suits.

2. Donation dinners- the youth would cook (and what youth know or cares about cooking?), and everyone who attended would give a donation for their plate. But the food we made was never worth much money, and I always wanted to say, “You really don’t want to eat that.”

3. Talent shows- this was the time when anyone who could strum a guitar was worshipped. Because the alternative was the youth choir doing a number, sounding horrible, but still getting a Standing O.

4. Rock-a-thon- This is where we got donations per hour or flat-rate to rock, in a rocking chair, all night. My calves are still sore.

LJ said…
How about a post concerning youth group skit teams? When I was in YG, we did what we called “human videos” to popular Christian songs. Our favorite was to “Arise My Love” by Newsong–a skit in which we all did sign language-like motions to the words. At the end, our zealous skit team leader came out dressed as Jesus (as if he’d just risen from the grave) wielding a flaming sword. Every time we did this skit at other churches or youth rallies, we were sure that 10s of people got saved. We were also sure that God had smiled with favor upon us, since no one’s hair caught on fire.

I’m not sure if you can relate to this, but skit team was the bread and butter of my YG experience.

Laura said…
What about the instability that ensues in youth group when the regime changes? The “getting a new youth director” phenomenon.

Loyalties divide up between those youth who miss the old leader and the few revolutionaries who are happy for the change – and it gets messy. There are tearful, overly emotional slideshows at goodbye parties and cards to be signed by everyone – shoot, I wish leaving my job at the office got such hullabaloo.

Then the new leader comes bounding in (literally sometimes) and the turmoil of “but Dave didn’t do it that way” or “this year’s mud fight was so much cooler than last year’s” begins.

It takes a while for the new leadership to regain stability, but I suppose it’s just a part of the office…I mean job.

Julie said…
Stuff Christians Like: Praying for unsaved youth to come to youth group and then complaining when they do.

Otherwise known as the “We want you to know Christ but first you must put out your cig & stop riding your skateboard in the sanctuary” phenomenon.

Dustin said…
This is what every youth group doesn’t need:
College Kids who refuse to grow up
As a youth pastor I have 10 college students who come in and are a huge distraction every summer and major holiday that they choose to bless us with their presence. These are the kids whose parents are deacons but they get drunk every weekend and slowly pull the HS seniors down because they look up to the college kids. The sad part is you cant say anything because their father is deacon…hooray church politics…boo my negative attitude this morning…sorry

Can we get a ruling on this one? Seriously, can we please come to some sort of consensus decision that we can all live with, because right now, when I don’t go to church when I’m out of town on vacation, I kind of feel like I’m taking a vacation from Jesus as well as from my job.

And that’s just not the case. I’m still doing quiet times in the morning, but when it’s Sunday and we’re at the beach for a few days, do I have to go to church? I feel like I have four different options when I find myself in this dilemma and each one offers it’s own risks and benefits.

4 Ways to Spend Your Sunday Morning While on Vacation

1. Go to a random church.
Benefits:
You’ll get to experience a completely different worship service than the one you’re used to back home. Maybe, even though you don’t raise your hands during worship at your church, you’re a hand raising worshipper and just needed the momentum of an entourage of other hand raisers to get you started. And when you visit a more charismatic church than you normally attend while on vacation, you’ll get swept up in the atmosphere and return home with a pound cake approach to hand raising.

Risks:
Depending on the church, you might have to perform any number of first time visitor activities including: raising your hand, standing up and telling people where you are from, shot blocking multiple invitations to the first time visitors’ lunch, refusing to volunteer to teach Sunday School, carrying a gospel gift bag around and many others. The only way to spare yourself is to make it insanely obvious that you’re on vacation. Wear a grass hat, hula skirt and gobs of Hawaiian Tropic suntan oil. On the downside, you’ll have a really difficult time staying in your seat if they have wooden pews because your body will be so slick that you’ll slide like a cloth in a lemon pledge commercial, but on the plus side everyone will know you’re just passing through.

2. Go to a vacation worship service.
Benefits:
A vacation worship service is a unique worship experience that locals put on to make tourists feel at home. When I was a kid we spent our vacations at Sunset Beach, North Carolina. Every Sunday morning a family there would host a puppet/worship service near the pier. Camp grounds are also a prime place to find these kinds of things as well. I regret that no one has stolen my puppet troupe name yet, Strings of Mercy, but on the plus side with this approach you’ll get to have a unique kind of worship moment.

Risks:
If you’re terrified of puppets, then the biggest risk, is well, the puppets. But if you’re not, the real fear is that you’re the only one that attends the service. Imagine sitting under a pier, by yourself, while a husband wife singing team serenades you directly with “Our God is an Awesome God.”

3. Do your own thing.
Benefits:
You get to practice having a home church. You get to say when it starts, what you’ll cover and get your family involved in putting on your very own church service.

Risks:
People have incredibly high expectations these days when it comes to church. Your brother, your cousin, maybe even your wife might think your message isn’t relevant enough. Or maybe it’s too relevant and they wanted to be fed more. If you have kids, they’re probably going to be expecting some gold fish and a captivating story about Noah or Jonah or Daniel. (This is the “animal triad.” When it comes to teaching kids Bible stories, the old adage is “when it doubt, bust animal stories out.” I think Billy Graham first said that but I could be wrong.) And unless you’ve got some sort of laser show or fog machine, don’t expect your Uncle to get up out of his seat when you try to lead everybody in a worship song. Worst of all you don’t really get to critique the sermon afterward because you preached it.

4. Go jogging instead.
Benefits:
There’s a myriad of benefits, depending on how you use your time instead of going to church. You could go for a long walk on the beach, go fishing with your son, hike a trail. Benefits would include fresh air, relaxation, fellowship with friends, quiet reflective moment with God, etc.

Risks:
My judgment. Actually, that’s not really a risk so much as it is a promise. If I am driving to church and I see you on a Sunday morning out jogging and you’re not wearing a shirt that says “I attend Saturday night church services,” I’m going to judge you. And then I’ll realize I’m doing it and feel guilty and now we’re both in trouble. So thanks for that.

I guess the fifth option is to not obsess about things like this, to instead trust in the Lord and worship Him in the way that makes the most sense according to His plan for your life wherever you find yourself on a Sunday morning during vacation. I can definitely see the benefits of that approach and the only real risk I see is that I won’t get to watch you slide across a wooden pew in a streak of Hawaiian Tropic oil like a glazed ham. But if you’re not going to consider my enjoyment of that moment and my needs, then go for it, pick the fifth option. Seems kind of selfish of you, but go right ahead.

Did you go to church while on vacation this summer?

What do you do on vacation when it comes to God?