“Emo,” for folks who don’t know, is a style of music often defined as “punk with emotion.” It’s roots go back much further than current bands like Panic at the Disco and Dashboard Confessional, but those are two examples if you use a loose description of the term. “Screamo” is where you mix emo with yell singing and “Ice Screamo” is what my two year old did the other day when the homemade ice cream man drove down our street with his dang hypnotic music. (What a horrible joke. Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week. Make sure you take care of your waitresses.)

Although short for “emotion,” emo music typically doesn’t pull from the entire rainbow of feelings. It tends to be kind of sad, kind of gray, kind of dark, kind of painful. And in the last year, I realized that’s how I tend to look at God.

I discovered that I am better at weeping with God, than I am at dancing with Him. I am great at coming to Him when the world has fallen apart and things are all broken and clearly beyond my control. When the puzzle of my life is missing the edge pieces, I am more than happy to empty my box with Him. But when I’m happy and things are going well, I at best send God postcards that say, “wish you were here!”

I’m not sure why I do this. I think on some level, the moment I get a taste of goodness, I get a little intoxicated on pride. I can go from “God is awesome” to “Jon is awesome” in about 1.2 seconds. I actually think I might hold the East Coast speed record. And so for the last few years, I’ve created this image of God that is very emo. He’s cloudy and weepy and downtrodden and when we get together we listen to old Cure songs and REM’s “Everybody Hurts.” Then we write some really bad poetry together and put the Counting Crows “Raining in Baltimore” on repeat while we lay in the fetal position. Good times, good times.

That started to change when I read something in the book of Psalms. Although I rarely quote the Bible on this site, these verses are too super fantastical to ignore. Here is what Psalm 126:1-2 says:

When the LORD brought back the captives to Zion, we were like men who dreamed.
Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy.
Then it was said among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them.”

Wow, that is sick. They were like men who dreamed. Their mouths were filled with laughter. When is the last time you heard a non-Christian say, “I’m not a Christian but you have to admit they sure do laugh more than anyone I know. The church is so full of laughter.” I’ve never heard that.

That’s why I write silly things on this site. That’s why I’ll write rap and lessons about how to hold hands and a million other mildly amusing things. Because that’s part of our faith too. Can you believe we get to serve a God that uses laughter as a way to show the nations His love?

God is emo sometimes. There are storms and pits in our lives. But there is also laughter and joy and big, ridiculous dreams.

We make God small sometimes. We don’t mean to. I mean in our heads we know He is big and massive. We know He created the Rockies and Switzerland and the manatee. We know His power and grace stretches across the fabric of history but we still find ways to shrink Him down.

It happens for a lot of reasons, but one is because doubt is easier than faith. Doubt springs forth with natural momentum, faith takes effort. Even when good things happen to me, I immediately start waiting for the other shoe to drop. I treat good things like teenagers treat quiet scenes in horror movies. I walk into the good and say, “Hello, is anyone there? It’s good in here, too good.” And then I wait for something horrible to come back into the picture. Because I doubt God can sustain the good in my life. He is not big enough. I do it constantly with this site. When friends ask me about it or the book I always say, “It’s going well but we’ll see.” The phrase “we’ll see” is my way of saying, “good things don’t last. God is not big enough to do the things I would like to do. He is small.”

But then something happened.

An MIT professor made God bigger for me. That wasn’t his intention. He was trying to stretch the Bose brand. They make Wave Radios and other stereo equipment. He was frustrated that writers like me were not taking any chances with the advertising. He was disappointed that we were not taking any risks and the writing we created was flat, lifeless and boring.

His biggest issue was that we were making his brand, the very soul of his company, very, very small. And he decided to explain the problem in a simple way that ultimately changed how I look at God.

Dr. Bose said that his brand was like a soccer field. It was big and wide, with large expanses for us to creatively play around in. And he wanted us to. He wanted us to explore every inch of that large field. But, when he communicated his vision to his second in command, that person got a little scared. They didn’t want to go out of bounds, to stumble passed the boundaries and get in trouble with Dr. Bose, so they drew the lines for the soccer field a few feet smaller than Dr. Bose had. That way, if they went over their own lines, they were still a few feet from Dr. Bose’s. And when the third in command got his instructions from the second in command, she was afraid to step over the second in command’s boundaries, so she drew the lines a little smaller. And then the fourth in command drew them smaller. And the fifth in command did the same thing and so on and so on until the brand finally got to me.

By the time I got it, the brand had been whittled to about the size of a postage stamp, which left me very little room to be creative. What I would end up writing was a disappointment to Dr. Bose because I clearly hadn’t explored his whole soccer field. I was stuck in a little one foot by one foot tuft of grass trying my best, but suffocating nonetheless under the rules and regulations that had been layered on by each person that had touched the brand.

I don’t think it’s crazy to draw a parallel with the way we treat God sometimes. I think that it’s easy to read the Bible, get a little nervous and pull the reins in on life. I think sometimes the picture we hand to people of God’s love and forgiveness has been downsized by our concern to stay within the bounds, versus play within the field. Our pastor gets a small field from his seminary professor who got a small field from their Board of Directors who got a small field from the Board of Trustees who got a small field from someone else and by the time you get it on a Sunday morning during service, God is microscopic.

It’s easy to do, and you can see it with things like the verse that says “Nothing can separate us from God’s love.” We start to think that he didn’t really mean nothing. I mean “nothing” is so huge. We should rein that in a little so that we don’t mess up. So let’s add some conditions to nothing. And all sins are equal but are they really? We should probably put some small conditions around that one too. Now that I think of it, 10 commandments was a good start, but it’s not enough. Let’s add a few. Let’s follow the 30 commandments. And the whole, “love God, love yourself, love your neighbor” thing can’t really be the most important things we need to do. That sounds too simple. Let’s expand that a little.

And on and on until we’ve shrunk God with conditions and expectations. We’ve taken his grandness and washed him in the hot water of fear and logic until he’s manageable and wee.

God is bigger than we can grasp. He has a soccer field the size of the universe for us to explore. He wants us to play. I want us to play. I want run through every inch of his soccer field. I hope you want to run too.

Next time someone tries to make him small, remember the lesson from Dr. Bose and refuse to accept a postage stamp God.

A fairly famous minister wrote a book a few years ago and said the following about church marketing, “The thought of the word church and the word marketing in the same sentence makes me sick.”

I think that’s a fair statement. A lot of people feel that way. Readers on this very site have said similar things. But then I realized something shocking, I had bought his book at a bookstore that marketed the book to me. I had paid money for a product about the church, after said product was marketed to me, the very definition of what makes him sick.

I wanted to make sure he was aware that this was happening, so I went online to tell him. Only instead of his email address I found the most beautifully branded site in Christianity. He had a multimedia product he was selling. There were previews and prices and all the stuff that constitutes marketing. So I bought another of his products and was blown away when it arrived. I brought it into work so that our advertising team could study how perfectly marketed it was. Surely he was not aware of the machinary being used to sell his thoughts on church and God. I decided to tell him on his book tour. The idea of a tour for a product you sell felt a little like marketing, but you read what he said, this guy gets sick at the thought of marketing, there must have been a mistake. But I couldn’t get to them. His tour was so popular that there was no chance to talk with him. And he didn’t just name it, “John Doe on tour.” It had a really catchy, sensational title that attracted lots of folks. I was so confused.

OK, I wasn’t. The second I read that sentence in one of the most perfectly marketed church books of the last decade, I knew he was being silly. The sentence was fake. The words were miles and miles away from his actions, but I think they reflect a problem.

The problem is that as we squabble about whether church marketing is good or bad, the world is noticing. When we fail to creatively portray God and the church and faith, the world sees an opportunity. And they’re pretty open about it. Here’s a quote from Communication Arts, an advertising magazine, “As traditional institutions, such as government, the church and the schools, fail to provide meaning, consumers will increasingly turn to products and services to find meaning in their lives. Savvy companies that can align themselves with the core values their customers find meaningful, and do so authentically, will prosper in an economy that’s increasingly based on meaning.”

The translation of that thought is simple, “If the church fails, we’ll be able to fill the hole inside people with products.” Maybe that is only scary and frustrating to me. But it’s hard to shrug it off when I read things like this from the Harley Davidson brand handbook: “There are three essential elements to the Harley-Davidson experience, which riders feel for the first time they ride: the joy of individualism, the chance to be free, to make choices; the commitment to adventure, the opportunity to change, to discover new experiences and emotions; the reward of fulfillment, an intense, personal and consuming bond with the bike that means a richer fuller life.”

Want a fun game? Switch out Harley Davidson with the word “God” and it reads like a church mission statement. “A consuming bond with God that means a richer fuller life.”

This post is already longer than I intended but I think there are three things we need to remember:

1. The new definition of marketing.
I hate selling the church. I can’t stand when ministers promise money and health and all the trappings of life if you’ll only believe in Jesus. That’s bogus, but that’s not how I define the word marketing. Marketing to me isn’t about selling a product. I define it as “sharing something you care about with other people.” That’s it. When I tell my coworker about how much I like Andy Stanley’s sermons, that’s marketing. When I tell you about a song I like, that’s marketing. It’s just a form of sharing and it’s one that Paul and the other disciples did really well. It’s silly that we’ll throw rocks at marketing and then pretend that Paul didn’t go on a tour, with a clear objective, to share the message of a new way of life. Paul shared. Paul marketed.

2. Your church already markets.
Unless your church doesn’t have a sign, please don’t tell me you hate church marketing. Unless your church doesn’t print bulletins, please don’t tell me you hate church marketing. Unless your church doesn’t read announcements and tell you the time of tomorrow’s potluck, please don’t tell me you hate church marketing. Unless your church doesn’t pay an advertising fee to be listed in the yellow pages, please don’t tell me you hate church marketing. Unless you’ve never bought a Christian book and instead got your Bible for free, please don’t tell me you hate church marketing. Unless you’ve never invited a neighbor to church, please don’t tell me you hate church marketing. We are all engaged in church marketing. When we act like we’re not, we prevent ourselves from doing it really well. We don’t allow ourselves to focus on making it better because we pretend we’re not doing it.

3. God invented church marketing.
What’s your favorite story of God marketing? Mine is in Numbers 21. In that chapter, the Israelites are complaining and so God says, “You want something to complain about? How about some poisonous snakes?” (That is not a direct quote.) Everyone starts dying and when they repent, God tells Moses to make a bronze snake on a pole. If the people look at it they will be healed. Now there are some ties here to Christ on the cross, but there’s another idea here as well. Why did God make an idol? In previous chapters and chapters yet to come, the Israelites will be severely punished for interacting with idols. So why did God create one and heal them through it? I think it is because He understood His people. He knew they spoke “idol,” He knew they thought and acted that way. So instead of coming up with something crazy and complicated, He spoke their language. He marketed a solution to them that they would easily grasp. But maybe I’m reading that story incorrectly. Maybe you still think God hates marketing. We can agree to disagree, but you can’t argue that He doesn’t like creative communication. The donkey that spoke, the burning bush, the mysterious handwriting on the wall, God is by no means afraid to communicate in some creative ways.

This was such a long post, but I honestly feel like porn and our approach to how we share God’s message are two of the biggest problems facing us. For more on marketing, check out my friends at http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/ . They’re experts at this issue and smarter than me.

Update: I don’t hate the pastor I mentioned above. I actually dedicated an entire post to him on this site and said people should check out one of his books. I really feel like there is no way to interpret his statement about getting sick from church marketing as anything other than how I have interpreted it. If I am missing some nuance, when he said “sick” he meant it as “love marketing” kind of like the kids say “bad” meaning good, please let me know. Honestly, I am no stranger to making mistakes.

Like a lot of things on this site, you’ll probably never hear someone deem something, “good enough for the church.” But if you’ve spent any amount of time in the church, chances are you’ve bumped up against this. One of the top worship leaders in the country drove this home for me when he recently said the reason people liked his work was that he was “from the recording industry and had never believed something was good enough for the church.”

I think this happens for a number of reasons. Sometimes it is financial. Not everyone has the budget of a mega church. So they’ll ask for the “ministry rate” when it comes to work. But often that means, “we’d like your B- quality work.” Sometimes it’s a matter of resources. If volunteers are tithing their time it’s hard to do a massive musical with just 10% of someone’s commitment. Other times it’s a product of having the right person in the wrong ministry. Like the example I gave of the church that didn’t want to hurt the unskilled guitar player’s feelings so they just kept turning his speaker down lower and lower. Sometimes we misinterpret our gifts and end up serving in a way we’re not supposed to.

Those are all symptoms though and don’t get at the core issue. (Core issue is such a counseling term.) At the heart of it, the reason the church is not known as being a global leader in creativity and excellence is pretty simple. We missed God’s love letter to artists.

I missed it about a dozen times myself. But while doing a two-year walk through of a one year read the whole Bible study plan, I stumbled upon it in Exodus.

There are two parts and both are pretty subtle though I’ve written about them before. The first takes place in Exodus 30 and 31. In 30, God anoints Aaron and consecrates the priests. It’s a big deal, with fragrant spices, sacred oil and a sense of the holy that is almost tangible through the pages. And after it’s over, do you know who God focuses on next? Do you know who comes second? The artists.

I had to read that a few times until I believed. There in the desert, as God establishes His people, as He sets into motion His very heart, the artists fall directly after the priests. Maybe that’s mindblowing only to me, but I find that stunning. Of all the professions, of all the people in the desert, it is the artists He speaks to next. Is there a more beautiful reflection of the importance He places on art and creativity?

We’ve made God military in a lot of our culture. We march in God’s army. We have men’s groups that are based on battle, but He doesn’t focus on the warriors after the priests. He doesn’t say the strength and might are most important after Aaron and the priests. He says creativity is.

Here is what 31:3 says:

“and I have filled him (Bezalel) with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts- to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of craftsmanship.”

This is not a cold, boring, vanilla God speaking. This is the first and ultimate patron of the arts sounding a gong for anyone that has a scrap of creativity in them. But I said this love letter to artists has two parts.

The second part continues in chapter 36. As they prepare to build the ark, God issues a call to the artists in the desert. Verse 2 says:

“Then Moses summoned Bezalel and Oholiab and every skilled person to whom the Lord had given ability and who was willing to come and do the work.”

That verse punched me in the stomach. If you read it, you realize there were only two conditions to building the ark as an artist. You had to have the skill and you had to be willing. That means that some people refused the call and sat on their hands in the desert instead. They could have built God’s ark, His temple, but instead chose to sit in the desert and waste their talent.

When I prayed about that, I felt like God told me I had the same opportunity to build his temple everyday. I replied, “what are you talking about? You’re crazy.” (He’s big enough for me to say honest things like that.) But then He reminded me that in 1 Corinthians 6:19 it says the body is the temple. He reminded me that every time I use my skills to help someone, I am helping rebuild their temple.

Foof. That’s big. That’s scary. That’s why I am writing today. I’ve sat in the desert for years wasting what meager writing skills I have. I’ve sat in a pile of sand, while the people in my life are broken and hurting, hoping someone will help them rebuild their temple. And I just can’t sit in the desert anymore.

I might never get a book published. This might all be a fad. People might stop reading this site tomorrow and disappear. I might not go on tour to churches and conferences and all that. I want to, I really do, but ultimately it’s not about that. It’s about rebuilding temples. And as long as I keep doing that, as long as I keep reading and responding to God’s love letter to artists, everything else is going to take care of itself.