witnessing

626. Evangelizing about trivial things.

Guest Posts/ witnessing September 25, 2009 • Comments

(If you like Tyler Stanton, and you should, you ought to go to the Catalyst Conference. In addition to it just being an awesome conference, Tyler is going to be all over that thing like a spider monkey. Seriously, he’s done some hilarious things that are going to go live at Catalyst and you would find them delightful. In the meantime, he’s checked in with another great guest post. Enjoy.)

Evangelizing about trivial things.
The other day Jon asked me my thoughts about P90X, a workout routine I purchased just moments after being hypnotized by its 30-minute infomercial. Without even the slightest hesitation, I launched into a Romans Road-esque discourse about its pros and cons, its benefits and reliability, and a (powerful) personal testimony of my own. I wouldn’t rest until Jon decided to become a disciple of Tony Horton.

As ridiculous as that sounds, it’s not that far off. I spend an insane amount of time, energy, and passion evangelizing about all kinds of trivial things. Don’t believe me? Here’s a typical day in the life of Tyler Stanton:

6:42am – Run by my local Starbucks and grab a grande black coffee. Sure, the meeting I’m about to go to will provide coffee, but I like to show up with a massive logoed cup so I can promote their superior bean to my co-workers.

8:33am – Once I’m through with coffee, I pridefully whip out my gum brand of choice and, without being asked, begin proclaiming truths about its flavor crystals and teeth-whitening capability. I then start distributing pieces like they’re individually wrapped tracts, mentioning that they should “taste and see” for themselves.

9:50am – As I open my MacBook, I look across the room and scoff at the ugly Dell across from me, as though I’m personally offended by their belief system. When its owner asks if there is a problem, I take a deep breath and dive into an apologetics rant that I learned at the Genius Bar.

11:08am – I overhear people at the table next to me talking bad about Twitter. At this moment, I can’t help but feel like I’m being persecuted for my social networking convictions. I turn around and ask them pointedly, if they died tonight, where…would people find this information out? Email? Please.

12:35pm – Someone has the audacity to suggest La Frontera for lunch. This is my opportunity to evangelize to the masses. I stand on my chair and, using the acronym C.H.A.L.U.P.A., list the reasons why El Torero is the one true Mexican restaurant, and that I’ll pray for the souls of those who suggest otherwise.

1:22pm – When it comes time to pay, I slowly pull my “Restaurants” cash envelope out from my pocket and regurgitate nasty credit card statistics that I learned from The Dave Ramsey Show. I offer the one guy who seemed remotely interested a ride so that I can answer some follow-up questions that he might have.

1:57pm - When the lady in line behind me at the bank asks to borrow my pen, I consider this a divine appointment and waste no time diving into my rehearsed one-minute testimony about how my life has radically changed since Bryan Allain introduced me to the black Bic Atlantis. “I’ve never experienced such a classy ball point!” I keep telling her.

4:40pm – My co-worker asks me if I want to go with him to the Georgia football game on Saturday. All of the sudden, I’m angry and offended. Being a Tech fan, he might as well have asked me if I wanted to accompany him to a puppy sacrifice down at the abandoned warehouse. The man who was once Darryl from accounting is now a nameless pagan cult follower in my book.

7:14pm – To cap off the day, my wife suggests we watch Reba. I gently explain to her that we were created for something more, something better and more satisfying…like 30 Rock.

10:10pm – I lay my head on my pillow, proud of my contribution to society.

(For more hilarity from Tyler, make sure you check out his blog, tylerstanton.com or follow him on Twitter.)

563. Keeping at least one non believer friend around strictly for witnessing purposes.

my bad/ witnessing June 18, 2009 • Comments

That is horrible! I can’t even believe I wrote that. But I did and I did because it’s true. The last thing you want is to find yourself walking out of an amazing sermon about witnessing without someone to go witness to. Sure, you can always find strangers on the street or at the coffee shop, but that’s hard. That’s Ph.D. level witnessing right there. You can’t jump to the big leagues right away. You need to work your way up to approaching people at the mall with the life changing message of Jesus.

So keep a ringer in your circle of friends. At least one guy that isn’t a Christian but is willing to let you practice witnessing on him. Run your message by him. Work through the salvation story bit by bit until you’ve got it down pat. By practicing with him, you’re exposing him to the gospel message 20 or 30 times. And by being honest about your intent, “I really want to share the love of Christ with other people, can I please tell you about it first?” you avoid that awkward “salvation segue” we often do.

You know the one where we keep steering people back to Jesus regardless of what the conversation we’re having is actually about. “You think the LA Dodgers have a shot at chasing the pennant this year because of the new batting firepower they acquired from the Yankees? It’s funny you say that, because that reminds me, Jesus died for you and wants to cover you with the blood of forgiveness.”

Let’s stop doing that. Not stop witnessing, clearly that’s not what I’m saying. But sometimes when sharing the gospel isn’t about sharing the insane love we’ve been given from Christ with someone else that we love it looks like while the people we’re witnessing to are talking, we’re internally thinking, “Waiting, waiting, waiting, come on, just pause long enough for me to yell ‘Jesus!’ One deep breath, that’s all I’m asking for, you take one long inhale and I am going to gospel you like you’ve never been gospelled before. Waiting, waiting, waiting.”

I’m not sure Jesus was like that. He didn’t seem to do things that way in the Bible. When a woman touched him while he was walking through a crowd in Luke 8 and He felt the power go out of Him, He didn’t say, “Sweet, I healed that lady and didn’t even have to make eye contact with her. That might be the world’s fastest healing. I should just run through the crowd and high five heal everyone like an NBA player coming through the tunnel of fans at a game.”

He stopped. Even as He was on his way to heal someone’s dying daughter. He stopped and made time for the person that needed him. He didn’t do drive by witnessing. And neither should we, which is why it’s always good to keep at least one non believer around to practice on.

p.s. I don’t have all the answers, especially when it comes to a topic as hotly debated as witnessing and this will hopefully be one of those posts where the comments challenge/shape/grow what I think about the topic. So what does witnessing look like to you? What does sharing the gospel look like to you?

560. Writing twitter messages that sound 14% holier than you usually are.

Church/ church culture/ online/ pop culture/ witnessing June 15, 2009 • Comments

Sometimes, when I sit down to tweet or twitter or twittle or whatever the verb is we’re currently using to describe the action of putting a 140 character message on twitter, I am tempted to write something 14% holier than I normally would.

It’s not that I want to lie, I just find myself thinking, “WWJT” and then I end up writing something more holy spirity religitastic than I’d usually say to a friend at a cookout or on the phone to my brother.

(If you don’t twitter, it’s an online service that essentially gives you a chance to “micro-blog” a short answer to the question, “what are you doing?” to your friends.)

But it’s not easy. It’s not easy to fit the entire gospel message into the 140 character messages you’re allowed to give on twitter. And when I recently read that celebrities had hired “ghost tweeters,” people that are paid to write and post short messages that make you feel like Kanye West or Britney Spears is regularly updating twitter with humor and insight, I had an idea.

Maybe instead of fighting my desire to write “super spiritual tweets” I need to embrace it. Maybe, all this time that I’ve been praying for a full time ministry I’ve missed what was right there in front of me. Maybe, it’s like Richard Marx said, twitter wants me to know, “Wherever you go, whatever you do, I will be right here waiting for you.”*

Maybe, it’s time to write the ultimate guide to crafting holy sounding twitter updates. Here are the 7 approaches I think you can take and actual examples that are less than 140 characters:

1. The Retweet
This move is kind of like looking into a mirror that is next to a mirror and staring off into infinity. When you see someone you follow write something holy, just put a RT in front of it to let everyone else know that you too had a very similar holy thought. You want to take it up a notch? Add an “Amen” in front of the RT. It’s like they just made a church hot fudge sundae and you come along and put the cherry on top. You’ll get 80% of the credit with 5% of the work.

Example:
Amen! RT @JESUSROX – The only time I’m not reading the Bible is in the shower but I’m inventing a waterproof OT so that will change soon.

2. The Riddler
Your followers, the people on twitter that sign up to read your updates, are expecting you to report back things like how you stepped in gum on the sidewalk or what type of mustard the waiter put on your sandwich. Throw them for a loop with an esoteric brain twister of spirituality that will have them twitaplexed all afternoon.

Example:
If God is all powerful, can He create an object so heavy that even He can’t lift it up? And if He did, what color would that object be?

3. Quiet Time
Want to look holy in your twitter updates? Constantly reference things you learned during your daily quiet time. Yes, that 30 minute window might represent 1/48th of your day, but that doesn’t mean you can’t twitter about it as if it were 19 hours long.

Example:
During my quiet time, God revealed some things to me. It’s hard to capture all of them in one Tweet, but here is the first of 32 updates.

4. The Church Sign
Pretend your twitter updates are church billboards. Just tweet things like, “CH__CH, what’s missing? UR!” The best part is that because church signs tend to be short, you can cram in a number of statements into each tweet.

Example:
God accepts knee-mail. No God, no peace. Know God, know peace. Go to church for a free faith lift.

5. Quote
Clearly, if you want to get your spirituality on in a short burst of words, you should bust out a quote from a well known theologian. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, CS Lewis is the way to go. His name only costs you 8 characters too. It’s like 50 years ago he knew that twitter would one day come along and he would need a short name to get some quote love. Seriously, you can’t quote “St. Augustine of Hippo” on twitter. You just don’t have the room.

Example:
Christianity,if false, is of no importance,and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.CS Lewis

6. The Other Day
Start every tweet with some sort of bold statement that you act casual about because you’re always doing things like this. “The other day while helping a group of drifters forage for sweet berries in the woods, I noticed …” Oh what? My drifter ministry? That’s just something I do for fun in my spare time.

Example:
The other day while rescuing orphaned baby seals and handing out free Bibles to fisherman, I stubbed my toe on the sidewalk. Kind of hurt.

7. Across the Uni-Verse
The easiest way to kick the doors of twitter open and proclaim, “Here I am, Gospel like a hurricane” is to simply quote a Bible verse and then link to a site like biblegateway.com. It’s kind of a lazy way to do things, which is why I personally don’t quote verses, I quote whole books.

Example:
Have you guys read Isaiah lately? You should check that book out. http://www.biblegateway.com/

Chances are, I’ll never get hired by any famous Christians to ghost tweet for them. But if I do, Carmen I am talking to you at this exact second, please know that I will be employing all 7 of those techniques, even if my tweet last week about the commute didn’t exactly reflect any degree of holiness:

“Sometimes, Atlanta drivers react to rain the same way my 3 year old reacts to the vacuum: raw terror, apprehension and 5MPH escape plans.”

Did I miss any ways to look 14% holier when you twitter?

Do you twitter?

Do you ever find yourself tempted to holy it up?

*And that makes three Richard Marx references in 2009. Goal accomplished by June. Dang, I am productive!

511. Feeling slightly guilty for telling people "good luck!"

stuff christians say/ witnessing March 31, 2009 • Comments

“Good luck with the 10K this weekend!”

Well, I mean, I don’t personally believe in luck, but you might. I believe that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. But how am I supposed to say that to you, my colleague from work, in the break room?

“I hope God works all things for the good of those who love him this weekend at your 10K race!”

That’s a mouthful, but seriously, I probably shouldn’t be saying “good luck.” Some Christians don’t even say “Pot Lucks.” They call them “Pot Blessings” which kind of sounds like the headline from an issue of the marijuana magazine “High Times” but I’m only digging myself into a deeper hole of awkwardness at this point.

Would it be weird if I told you “Have a blessed 10K?” Does that make me sound like I’m the kind of person that would throw holy water on you during the race or hand you communion wine at one of those drink stands along the course instead of Gatorade? And do I have to over pronounce the “ed” at the end of that word like some people do? Do I say “blessed” like I would say “messed” or do I need to pronounce it “bless-ed.” I always feel like some random guy named Ed is getting hooked up when people do that.

This is getting so complicated. From here on out, I’m dropping luck, I’m dropping bless-ed and am just going to say “Yay running!” and throw both hands into the air with spirit fingers. Wait, are spirit fingers related to the Holy Spirit or are those bad too? Ohhh, slippery slope, slippery slope indeed. I’ll go with jazz hands then, definitely jazz hands.

484. When people you are witnessing to think you are hitting on them.

witnessing February 2, 2009 • Comments

Let me clear something up for you. If a member of the opposite sex asks you to go to church, a Bible Study, a retreat or any other number of church-related activities, you have not just been propositioned for a date. Or at least that’s how it worked at Samford University, the small Baptist school I went to in Birmingham, Alabama.

Let’s say you get asked to attend some cool sounding event by a pretty girl in your English class. She starts taking special interest in you, asking you questions about your life, your plans for the future, etc. And if you were me, which thankfully you are not, you’d think to yourself, “Is this girl hitting on me? Are we going to make out right here in English class? That seems inappropriate but people do find the unibrow pretty irresistible.”

But then in the midst of what you thought was a “wooing process” you get picked up for what you thought was a date only to find the car packed with four other Bible Study attendees and it hits you …

you weren’t being wooed, you were being witnessed.

In order to prevent this from happening to both Christians and non believers the world over, I came up with a few phrases you can say to let someone know that you are witnessing to them and not hitting on them:

1. “I’d like you to go to heaven with Jesus, not the movies with me.”
Sure, maybe going to the Outback and having a blooming onion would be delightful, but that’s not the destination you’re really concerned with right now. We’re talking eternal consequences not what’s happening this Saturday night. So be upfront about that.

2. “I’m trying to love on you, not fall in love with you.”
This one is a little murky and you might even have to make air quotes with your fingers when you say it. The person you’re trying to witness to probably doesn’t even know we Christians use “love on” as a verb. So go slow with this and be prepared to repeat it.

3. “I like you. Jesus loves you.”
Bring it back to Jesus. Take the romance out of the night by centering the conversation back on the deep, passionate affection Jesus has for the person you’re talking to. Sure, everybody wants a tender Roni, Bobby Brown made that clear long ago, but this isn’t happening like that right now.

4. “I love you like a neighbor, not a boyfriend.”
Guys the world over shudder when they hear the phrases, “I think of you like a brother” or “I think of you like a good friend, not a boyfriend.” Even typing those, having been married almost 8 years, I got a little queasy. And as much as I hate to do it, I had to create a Christian version. Let your friend know that you think of them like a neighbor and are therefore loving your neighbor, in the same way you would love Mrs. Robinson, the crazy cat lady you grew up across the street from.

Dating is hard enough without adding the Great Commission to the mix. I hope this will clear up some awkward situations for you single folks out there.

Has anything like this ever happened to you?

476. Facebook friend suggesting Jesus.

jesus/ Serious Wednesdays/ witnessing January 21, 2009 • Comments

I will accept anyone’s friend request on facebook. I don’t discriminate. I don’t filter out weird people or hate on anyone that has a unibrow, like me. I see facebook as a cool chance to connect with readers of this site. So if you ask me to be your friend, please know I am going to accept that offer. (Let’s do it. Let’s be friends.)

But I never accept friend suggestions. If you’ve never used facebook, a friend suggestion is a feature where you can send a note to someone and essentially say, “I think you should be friends with this other person.” You get the other person’s name and a little photo of them. If you choose to accept it, then you send that suggested person a friend request.

It’s meant to be a neat little way to connect people, but I’ve started to get some random suggestions. Someone will send me a suggestion like, “Tammy Smith, Red Bluff High School.” I’ll look at it, quickly realize that I don’t know Tammy Smith and think, “If I accept this friend suggestion, Tammy Smith, a high school sophomore, is going to get a random friend request from a complete stranger, that happens to be a 33-year old married man, living in the suburbs of Atlanta with his two kids, who doesn’t even use his full name on facebook and kind of has a weird smirk in his photo.” Wow, the only thing missing from my induction into the creepy hall of fame is perhaps a mustache and a scar running down my cheek from a knife fight I got into behind a dumpster at a truck stop on the New Jersey Turnpike.

That’s a completely silly thought, but while thinking about that the other day at 5:00 in the morning, I realized that I approach witnessing to people about God in a pretty similar fashion. (I know, whoa, did he just leap from the New Jersey Turnpike knife fight story to witnessing to people about the everlasting love of Jesus Christ? Yes, yes I did.)

The truth is that sometimes I drop Jesus into someone’s lap like I’m sending a random friend suggestion on facebook. I don’t really tell them much about Him. I don’t really invest in the life of the person I’m talking too. I don’t even really listen to their story. I’ve just rushed to the end of my agenda and essentially said, “Yeah, yeah, regardless of what’s going on with you and your whole situation, I’d like to send you this friend suggestion to connect with Jesus. Here you go, vaya con dios stranger.”

It’s kind of like a Jesus drive by, me just spraying folks with the name of Christ and hoping it sticks. I don’t think that’s a particularly good thing. I can’t imagine that’s what God had in mind when He gave us the great commission. So what can we do to change that? How do we not just “friend suggestion” Jesus?

I don’t know. I’m all out of silver bullets, and to be honest there are about 3700 other blogs that have better advice about sharing your faith. But I have started to do something differently in the last few months. I’ve started to ask people questions I genuinely want answers to. Instead of asking a question and then forcing the conversation back into my framework regardless of their answer, I’ve tried to just listen and let people talk and remain engaged in what they have to say. The more I’ve done that, the more I’ve been amazed at how willing people are to open up when you actually listen. And sometimes, when I feel like God is cool with it, I get to ask my favorite question of all, “Who is carrying all that with you?”

Because everyone has an “all that.” Whether you’re going through a divorce or the most wildly successful season of work in your life, everyone has an “all that” they’re carrying. (Sometimes success is the most crushing “all that” you can face because what you thought would make things perfect just isn’t and that’s pretty terrifying.) 99 out of 100 times the answer to that question is “no one.” One woman told me she didn’t want to burden her happy friends with her sadness so she keeps it hidden. One man told me he wasn’t a guy’s guy and since he didn’t understand football it was hard for him to form relationships with other guys.

Time after time, the answer to the question “Who is carrying all that with you” comes back as “no one.”

But it’s not one of those questions you can ask and then disappear as soon as you’ve friend suggested Jesus. You have to be willing to carry the “all that” with the person you’re talking with. You can’t fade into the weeds of life like dissolving into the sea of profiles of facebook. That’s why witnessing is hard. That’s why it’s easier to friend suggest Jesus to strangers than it is to introduce your friend Jesus to someone.

It’s not right, but I think that’s why it happens. And I’m tired of it happening with me.

415. The 5 stages of emailing friends an unintentionally funny Christian video.

online/ witnessing October 3, 2008 • Comments

A few weeks ago, a number of my friends sent me a link to an unintentionally funny Christian video. It was essentially three people breakdancing and rapping to duel synthesizers on the stage of what appears to be a large church.

What makes it so funny is that the routine was not designed to be comedy. It’s unintentional. If you saw Saturday Night Live do the same exact skit you might laugh a little, but not nearly as much as you would when seeing a church really try to be serious about it. And as I debated on whether or not to email it to all my friends, I realized that when it comes to unintentionally funny Christian videos, I think there are five stages we all go through:

1. Denial and Isolation
“That can’t be real. There is no way a church is doing that. That has to be fake. Maybe that is something the parody website, The Onion, did. That’s got to be a joke. Am I the only Christian that thinks that is ridiculous? Is it bad that I think that is ridiculous? Is it wrong to mock something a church did? I am so alone.”

2. Anger
“This is why God gets such a bad rap. When my friends say Christianity is corny or cheesy, this is the kind of stuff they’re talking about. I hope the guys at work don’t see this and email it to me since I’m the ‘Christian guy’ in the office.”

3. Bargaining
“I shouldn’t send this to friends, but it’s so funny. Look at that moonwalk. I have to share this with the world. But if I email it out, am I just perpetuating the idea that Christians are cheesy? Or is it a good thing to send it to my friends? Maybe it will let them know, ‘hey, I get it, this kind of stuff is silly, but we’re not all like that. I promise.’ I’ll just send it to a few people. I won’t send it to my entire contact list.”

4. Depression
“All hope is lost. That video was viewed 20 million times on youtube. It was even on “The Soup” with Joel McHale, whom I love and think is hilarious, but that’s beside the point. It’s everywhere. Now, millions of people have had their misconceptions about Christianity confirmed. And I emailed it to the guys at work. All hope is lost.”

5. Acceptance
“OK God, you’re in control. I don’t get to define what you are pleased with. Maybe that breakdancing was exactly what you wanted and there were people that were deeply moved by that. But between you and me, I hope that when I get to heaven you’ll do a little pop and lock, pull me aside and whisper, ‘hey, even I thought that video was funny.’ But we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Those are exaggerated for certain and maybe you don’t experience each of them when you get an unintentionally funny Christian video clip emailed to you. But I do, and I hope I keep getting video clips emailed to me, because they are awesome and they make me laugh and in some unexpected ways, they force me to think about my faith.

(Plus, they teach me fun songs, like Jesus is my friend. I know you’ve seen this 19 times already, and it’s actually posted in the Stuff Christians Like Facebook group, but this thing deserves about 22 views.)

358. Color coding salvation.

witnessing July 22, 2008 • Comments

One of my favorite things to do is to apply current Christian practices to Biblical times. For some reason, the idea of John the Baptist side hugging people or Jesus teaching Simon the “Hammer of God” Frisbee throw is funny to me.

I do that all the time and I recently wondered if the disciples or other Biblical figures ever used the color coded salvation plan? I included this tube of candy as an example. Different people use different colors and meanings, with some including a blue Holy Spirit, but the basic gist is a color guided walk through from sin to heaven.

I started to think though, did Paul use salvation bracelets? I mean, I know he was really good at what he did, but is it possible that during his tent making days he learned how to make little leather bracelets? Was Timothy in charge of bead acquisition? Was Paul ever in a dark corner of a prison cell quietly singing to himself as he strung beads, “making my bracelets, making my bracelets, making my bracelets for Jesus.”

I am cool with bracelets and candy tubes and anything else that makes it easy to tell someone interested in the gospel. I once teased the evangecube and was promptly reminded by readers that products like that make witnessing across language barriers much easier. So despite teasing them earlier, I have come to see the importance of witnessing tools. But if we really believe in the power of color coding, why haven’t we done it in other areas of our faith?

Why is there not a color code for certain authors or certain types of churches? Why can’t you instantly tell more about someone at church from the series of color coded stickers they have on their Bible? Why haven’t we taken all those crazy colors Crayons have and made a new guide? Surely I can’t be the first person to do this.

The SCL Color Code Guide to Christian Culture
(Each is a real Crayola color)

Bear Hug
If you see this round sticker on a Bible, this person accepts full hugs as well as side hugs.

Goldenrod
A color used to denote a hardcore fan of prosperity ministry.

Vivid Tangerine
Used exclusively to indicate a metrosexual worship leader.

Macaroni and Cheese
This actual color indicates a serious supporter of pot luck dinners. More than likely this person owns several crock pots.

Flesh
Although renamed to “peach” in 1962, this color stands for Joel Osteen. Why? Because the show 60 minutes said he can bench press 300lbs and the color “muscle” was not available. I doubt he can do this. In part because anyone that is as massively muscular as me knows that 315lbs represents three 45 pound weight plates on each side of the bar, which is a goal for many. Rarely does someone call it quits at 300. I am challenging Osteen to a bench press contest. Other writers can argue his theology.

Laser Lemon
The person sporting this color still listens to Stryper.

Fuzzy Wuzzy Brown
This is the color most commonly found in Thomas Kinkade paintings, save for the “light” he adds when the painting is done. Think thatch roof, small cottage, deer frolicking, etc.

Hot Magenta
A color generated when you “love on” someone.

Cerulean
A bluish color generated when you “pour into” someone.

Jazzberry Jam
The color of the message I’ll give if you ever let me come to your church and talk about Christians and sex.

I love this game. If I ever publish a book, this is the kind of thing I will put in the back. Seriously, I could go all day, but it would be even cooler if you played. If you want to, visit this Wikipedia page with all the colors listed. Then post a comment with as many color descriptions as you come up with. Hooray for Tuesday.

p.s. The “Called Out Ones” Dancing Preachers International Conference is in Atlanta this year. I am dead serious when I say that if I ever publish a book and become a Christian thousandaire and have headshots and am important and all such things, I will ask that conference to sponsor me so that I can go, write a ton of posts from it, give them loads of publicity and take Gospel Hip Hop dance lessons.

355. Warning friends that your new friend is a non-Christian.

Serious Wednesdays/ witnessing July 20, 2008 • Comments

Have you ever warned your friends that another friend coming over isn’t a Christian? Probably not, but I have, because I’ve not always been very open minded. I think I do this because I often throw a Christian disclaimer on other things I engage with in my life.

For instance, the other day I wrote about a funny news video clip online I saw about a tiny dog that had barked for six years straight. I thought it was great the way the commentator said in all seriousness, “The dog broke the town’s previous record for continuous barking, which was eight minutes.” But the clip was on a comedy site that has a lot of crass stories on it too. So I did one of those Christian disclaimers where you say something like, “Yeah it’s not a Christian site, but some of the stuff isn’t filthy. But still, please make sure you stay away from the rest of it. I mean I don’t support the whole thing, just the part I mentioned.”

That’s a weird phenomenon, the Christian disclaimer, and I should probably spend some time thinking about what it means about my faith. But right now, I’m curious why we say something like that about people that aren’t Christians. I have three guesses:

1. Non Christians are loose cannons.
Sometimes people disclaim the arrival of a non Christian just in case they do something wild, like swear. But by disclaiming them it automatically creates a weird tension of us vs. them in the context of a dinner party. And honestly, have you ever not disclaimed someone and then had to go back later and say, “I’m so sorry about my friend Hucklebuck. Honestly, I had no idea he was just going to start punching people in the face. And I didn’t even know he carried a gun. I’ll help you pick out a new cat tomorrow. I should have warned you he’s a non-Christian.”

2. Our Christian friends might say something crazy.
Maybe we’re afraid that our Christian friends are going to say something really crazy in front of the girl from work that’s a non-Christian. You’ll all be eating dinner and then one of your friends will say, “Can you please pass the salt and did I tell you about the angel that spoke to me last night and helped me find a parking space at the mall today? My savior has a first name, it’s J-E-S-U-S!!” But chances are, if they’re real friends that you trust and care about, they won’t do something like this.

3. It’s witness time.
It could be that we think when our friends find out there’s a non-Christian in the room they’ll go into “witness mode.” Suddenly instead of acting normal and how they would every other moment of the day, they’ll start using all their fancy seminary words. They’ll start asking awkwardly intimate questions like “are you happy on the inside?” They’ll spend the whole night stuffing tracts into your non-Christian friend’s purse like squirrels before winter. Extreme examples? Perhaps, but I promise you it happens.

I don’t know how to fix this. It seems like there are a few overlapping issues in this post. I think the first thing is doing what we talked about in the dear seeker post and that’s changing the way we look at non-Christians. Retiring the label and seeing people as, well people. I would love to be the faith that doesn’t label or stereotype. Not in a lose your values, anything goes kind of way, but in an honest, “we’re people trying to love other people” kind of way.

Other new stuff from around the way:
1. Respect or ignore those that came before you? Yes – everything is replaceable.com
2. Run – 97secondswithGod.com
3. The lady in the corner – prodigaljon.com

Special thanks to Bill C. for today’s SCL idea.

Psalty: Behind the Music

Music/ online/ video/ witnessing June 27, 2008 • Comments

A friend named Kevin sent this to me today. I find it to be terrifyingly funny. I think a small church named Saddleback may have done it with a little known minister named “Rick Warren.” But if you made this video, please let me know, so that my applause can have a name, because it is very funny.