Prior to going to the Catalyst Conference a few weeks ago, I had not heard of this band.

After going to the Catalyst Conference a few weeks ago, I can’t stop listening to this band.

Seryn is from Denton, a mythical land in Texas that Matt Chandler says “hello” to often at the start of sermons. They remind me a little of Mumford & Sons. Each member of the band can play approximately 17 instruments proficiently. Seriously, during their set, the drummer would stand up, grab a guitar play that, then walk over to some sort of instrument I’ve never seen in my life and then absolutely kill that too. It was amazing, and they played with that kind of unabashed joy and gusto I’ve written about before. Someday, I hope to throw an event and invite them to be the music.

Here’s one of their songs. It breaks in a big, beautiful wave at the 2:15 mark. I’m a huge fan of Seryn. (Which I think is Greek for “We play an amazing amount of instruments well.”)

I bet you can’t guess the first sport mentioned in the Bible.

I don’t care if you went to seminary.

I don’t care if your Bible has a fancy Bible fanny pack with zippers and places for multi-colored notetaking pens.

I don’t care if you named your kid Aragorn and think you know what’s up.

There’s no way you’re going to guess the first sport mentioned in the Bible.

Want to know the answer?

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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 trying to build my blog that was something that I always tried to do.)

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. (I try to do Shameless Saturday once a season, so please consider this the Fall 2011 edition.)

Tell us what’s up in the comments with a link.

(It’s guest post Friday! Here’s a new one from Adam Stuck. He’s a writer who has a great take on what it means to be a missionary’s kid. If you want to write a guest post for SCL, here’s how!) 

Being Disappointed When Missionaries Don’t Look Like Indiana Jones. – By Adam Stuck

I think many of us secretly expect missionaries to look like Indiana Jones: leather jackets, dusty fedoras and ragged pants, with maybe a pistol or at least a whip—and, of course, a battered Bible with two or three bullet holes. It can’t be coincidence that missionary and mercenary sound almost exactly alike.

It’s sort of a disappointment when missionaries turn out to be normal people.

My parents are missionaries. My father often wears a leather jacket, but he doesn’t look like Indiana Jones. He’s a little stout—he prefers to call himself comfortably well-padded—and more than a little bald. My mother doesn’t look like Indiana Jones either. (That would be really weird, now that I think about it.)

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Tripp Crosby and Tyler Stanton are two of the funniest people I’ve ever met. They co-host Catalyst, create amazing videos and are brilliant on Twitter (@trippcrosby and @tylerstanton.) Tyler even wrote a book called “Everyday Absurdities,” which I highly recommend.

Last week at Catalyst they debuted their latest video, which was hilarious. It’s called “Godz Bodz,” and might be the greatest Christian workout video ever created. Ever.

The video is below, for more great stuff from Tripp and Tyler, visit their site:

The other day, someone on Twitter told me, “You have the face of a 25 year old and the gray hair of a 52 year old.” They’re wrong. I have the gray hair of a 50 year old and the cowlick of a 5 year old. Look at that thing, it’s epic!

But my cowlick isn’t the announcement. We’ve got something cooler and crazier and awesomer to share. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people from around the world made this possible. And it’s something I never dreamed would happen. Here, from the couch in our house that looks a lot like the couch on Modern Family, are Jenny and I and the big announcement. (And big thanks to Patrick Tohill for shooting the video for us. He is a one man machine of awesomeness.)

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the little things you’re doing right now matter. You’re tired of getting up early to lead a Sunday School class barely anyone attends. You’re serving in a ministry that isn’t growing nearly as fast as you’d like. You’re being kind to someone at work who is almost impossible to be kind to.

And doing these invisible, often thankless acts wears thin sometimes. We feel like they’re pointless and lose sight of how they might all be connected to a bigger story, that we’re a paragraph in a tale that stretches across time, a sentence in a book bigger than we can possibly fathom.

But sometimes, if we’re fortunate, we get to see something that reminds us of the connections, how lives can intersect in small ways to make a big impact on the world.

This video did that for me. I saw it at an event I spoke at last summer and will be returning to next summer called “BigStuf Camps.” I thought it was brilliant and hope it reminds you of the power that a tiny connection can have in the hands of our massive God.

A few weeks ago on a Monday night, my wife and I came to a television crossroads.

She wanted to watch Antiques Roadshow. I wanted to watch anything but Antiques Roadshow. (If you haven’t seen it, it’s a show where average people bring their antiques to an expert to have them appraised.)

It’s not that I’m opposed to the show. It’s just that I think it could easily have more action. Just once I’d like to see someone go all Hulkamania when they find out the high back chairs they thought were from the Civil War era are actually from the disco era.

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How do you grow a personal platform while at the same time honoring John 3:30 that says, “He must increase, but I must decrease?”

I don’t have a solution, just a question, and it’s one I’ve been struggling with.

I love that right now it’s possible for ordinary people like me to build platforms and maybe have influence. Without social media, I wouldn’t have been able to ever publish the Stuff Christians Like book . I love platforms!

But, as a Christian, I also wrestle with the ego aspects that often go along with them. (Which is a big part of the reason I joined the Dave Ramsey team. I feel like he’s done a great job navigating these tricky waters, and I want to learn how to.)

For me, the great temptation is to say, “If I get a bigger platform, then more people will know about me, and I’ll then be able to tell those people about God.” And I think that starts in a good place, but eventually in my own life and countless other leaders I’ve seen, that idea gets corrupted into: “If I get a bigger platform, then more people will know about me. The end.”

So with the thousands of tools we have to build our “personal brands,” and the very real good that can come from platforms (we built two kindergartens!) where does John 3:30 fit in? What’s the balance?

And if you know Hebrew and can say, “The heart of that verse has nothing to do with personal branding, proceed getting drunk on your own ego,” that would really help me out.

Question:
In what ways can a Christian go about building a platform while keeping God front and center?

I posted this morning about #teampatrick and how 70 watches would put Patrick through an intensive leadership program in Rwanda. Then I went to have lunch at my daughters’ elementary school. I tweeted a second time when I got home that we were going to close out the #teampatrick roster in ten minutes and then after that, I called Manny to see if we had hit our goal of 70. We did.

In 59 minutes.

You guys are awesome!

In less than an hour we hit our goal. And because I wasn’t available to announce it, we actually kept going. We ended up with 148 watches, which means we just formed #teammorri too! This is Morri Mpenzi. He’s 16 and will be going through the program too because of your immense generosity. 

We’ll be doing fun stuff like this in the future with Hello Somebody, and there are some wild ideas we’re tossing around right now. Whenever we do this kind of quick, unexpected project though, my friends on the West Coast always say, “Hey thanks for starting/finishing the project before I’d even woken up in my time zone you punk.” Fair enough.

If you want to add a third team to the SCL roster and still get involved, here’s the link to the rest of the 98 kids who are available for this program. (You can read about what we did in this post).

For now though, let me just say thank you!

I know the word “community” gets overused sometimes, but I love being part of the Stuff Christians Like community. I am constantly amazed at what God can do with friends that get together on a blog and Twitter.

Jon