Laughter is a gift from God. When we refuse to accept it, it makes Him want to take it back. Like the unicorns.

Categories

198. Orange Drink

youth group May 3, 2008 • Comments

The Christian version of the food pyramid is different from the one most people know about. The one with grains and vegetables and meat on it. The Christian version only has four items on it:

Goldfish
Discount pizza
Bootleg cookies
Orange drink

If you live in the south you might substitute barbecue for pizza and sweet tea for orange drink, but this blog is international (Hello Australia) so let’s stick to the basics.

I’ve written about the first three before but it’s time to add orange drink to the SCL hall of fame. You might have had red drink instead but it doesn’t matter because they all taste the same. Orange drink is kind of a cross between gatorade, kool-aid, sunny delight and tang. It’s usually served up in a big vat of orange stickiness.

I think a good portion of my body is actually orange drink, not blood. I honestly drank that much growing up. But I retired in the middle of high school. I kicked the habit so to speak.

Here’s what happened: I went into the back room at youth group to get some napkins. There, out of sight from everyone, was one of the youth leaders making the orange drink. She didn’t know I was there. I watched as she unsuccessfully looked for a ladle or spoon to stir up the water and orange drink mix. When she couldn’t find one, she shrugged, rolled up her sleeve and then stuck her whole arm into the big tub. It was like one of those gatorade containers they dump on coaches that win football games. Only this was no game. She had her entire arm in there, almost up to her armpit. Slowly she stirred it around, using that sweaty appendage as a big spoon.

I ate my discount pizza that night without a drink.

197. Super spiritual Christmas cards or letters.

Christmas/ witnessing May 2, 2008 • Comments

To the people that received our family Christmas card in 2005, please let me apologize. I shouldn’t have used that verse from the book of Joel in the card. It was depressing. It was sad. I think it was about locusts. I couldn’t help myself though. I saw that card as a platform to tell you all about my faith and what God was doing. So I wrote a really long, really intimate letter about the book of Joel. Again, my bad.

We do this sometimes, don’t we? We take something light and frivilous and put a serious layer of God sauce on it. It’s kind of like that guy we all know that really answers the question, “Hey, how are you?” when you ask him. Have you met this guy? He seems to be in the elevator a lot, at least that’s where I find him. And when you say to him, “How’s your day going?” he really answers. “My day has been good. God’s really working on my arrogance in my own marriage which has been difficult. I mean my wife and I just aren’t experiencing the type of intimacy I think we want. And my boss is starting to really push on me hard but I think she is just projecting because her mom recently had surgery on her hammer toe. Have you ever had hammer toe? It’s an interesting medical condition that seems to strike older people sometimes. I love cats although to tell you the truth, Sir MittenPaws has been acting up lately. I think he and Patricia Pussycat had a fight over the water bowl or something. I’m a Christian. Have I ever told you my favorite verse from Hezekiah?” At this point in the conversation I am using one of my keys to undo the screws on the escape door in the roof of the elevator.

Jesus didn’t share this way. He was so casual and so contextually perfect with the way he shared faith. I would have been “faithing” people with my hands left and right, like that time Oprah gave out all those cars. “You’re getting faith and you’re getting faith and you’re getting faith!” But not him. When the crowd wants to stone the woman caught in adultery he draws in the dirt casually. When he meets the woman at the well he doesn’t say, “Would you like to be covered in the power of God?” He asks her for a drink. When he met the disciples he didn’t say, “Let’s go save the world, can I get an amen?” He says, “I’ll make you fishers of men.” I love it.

That’s what I am aiming for. To witness that way and keep Christmas cards light and airy. Last year’s was a top ten list and unlike that Joel year no one said to me, “I cried when I read your Christmas card” which I think is a good thing.

196. The secret bathroom at church.

Church/ church culture May 2, 2008 • Comments

I once worked at an ad agency in Alabama. It was located in a small, old building in downtown Homewood. The bathroom in the building had horrible acoustics. Going in there was like walking onto a stage that loudly reflected every sound throughout the hallway and the CEO’s office which was next door. So instead of using that bathroom, my friend Billy Ivey and I started walking down the street to Dawson Baptist. We had stumbled upon that rare secret church bathroom and it was like Shangri-La.

Have you ever found one of those? They’re delightful. While the masses wait and grumble in line after church in one of the popular bathrooms, you can steal away to your own private Fortress of Solitude. It’s quiet, it’s clean and it’s the polar opposite of every other bathroom in the building. But there are a few rules you need to know about the secret church bathroom:

1. There is no secret church bathroom.

2. There is no secret church bathroom.

3. Seriously, don’t tell anyone.
These things tend to go viral so the second you tell a friend you have essentially just murdered your secret bathroom. I’m not suggesting you be selfish, but guard this secret carefully.

4. Beware the handicapped bathroom.
It’s tempting to find a handicapped bathroom that may be underused, but I promise it’s not worth making someone that is handicapped wait on you.

5. The secret bathroom is never in the kids section of your church.
Cleanliness is one of the signs of a good secret bathroom and four-year olds without any degree of aim mastery kill your hope of that.

6. Check the counseling area.
If your church has an area where they do counseling, check there first. There’s still a stigma about counseling in some churches that only broken people need it. (I’ve seen four counselors, so it’s cool with me.) So people are not prone to hang out in this area. They get in and out. They don’t want to be judged so the bathrooms are usually left pretty empty.

7. The church admin knows all.
The smartest person at a church is usually the church admin. Seriously. If you have one, ask her or him if they have heard any rumors of a fabled land where the bathroom is always clean and empty.

8. Lights off is success.
The greatest moment for a porcelain pioneer, a toilet traveler if you will, is when you walk into a dark bathroom and the automatic lights come on. I cheer outloud when that happens because it means no one has been there for a while. It’s like the lights at a surprise party have just been thrown on and it’s time to celebrate. (I need to get out more.)

I hope you don’t find this crass. I didn’t write it to shock you, but more to help you as you head off on a journey for your own bathroom version of Xanadu. Happy Friday. Happy travels.

195. Believing bad times equals bad us. (The cocaine testimony)

Serious Wednesdays May 2, 2008 • Comments

My life fell apart during the summer of 2005. It was mostly my doing, but there were factors outside of my control that contributed to the internal combustion I felt going on. My marriage was broken. My job was hanging on by a thread. My friendships were surface at best. Wounds I had failed to deal with in the past suddenly loomed neon in my “now.” It was like a perfect storm came together and threatened to drown me. It would be sensational to say I was suicidal, but I will say that I started to sympathize with the idea. I incorrectly began to believe for some people that were so far gone, ending a life might be the only escape route.

To oversimplify the last three years, God stepped into the pit and pulled me out. He revived my heart and started walking me through some of the best times of my entire life. Blessing upon blessing has followed that summer and though I often fail to show it, I am incredibly grateful. But, there’s a really dangerous idea hidden in those two paragraphs. It’s one I constantly wrestle with and I don’t think I’m alone. The idea is this:

“When I am bad, God does not love me and gives me bad times. When I am good, God loves me and gives me good times.”

I haven’t done a post on prosperity ministry and even though I think there are some similarities between this post and that movement, this ultimately isn’t about that. This is older and bigger than prosperity ministry. This is a belief I think God has fought since the dawn of time and I think it’s one that still punches the Christian community in it’s collective face fairly regularly.

This happens in subtle ways. No one sets out to design a works-based God, it just sort of happens. When you do well on a test, your teacher is happy with you. When you try hard in a game, your coach is happy with you. When you do all your chores around the house, your parents are happy with you. When you finish the project early, your boss is happy with you. It’s very easy to find examples in our lives of cause and effect relationships. Areas where if we do something deemed as “good,” we are rewarded with something good. That makes sense. That is a logical way to look at life. And so we start to naturally and quietly apply that same filter to God. I do it before I speak to large groups. In the week before I think, “I better be really good this week because I want God to bless what I say.”

But here’s the thing, God is weird. I know that does not sound theological, but He is. He does not operate like us. His ways are different. Sometimes He gives us seemingly horrible things because He loves us. That is a weird sentence that begs further explanation.

I’m writing a book right now called “The Prodigal Son’s Field Guide: 101 Things to Do the Day After the Welcome Home Party.” I have this idea that most of us live our lives between arrival and exit. That is, we’ve come home and we’re going to leave again unless we do something differently this time. In researching the book, I came across something interesting about the unpleasant gifts God tends to give us.

(If you’ve never read the story of the prodigal son, here’s a one sentence recap: Young son runs away from home to spend his inheritance on hookers and comes back broke but is thrown a party by a father that is overwhelmed he is still alive.)

I missed a word the first 100 times I read this story. The word I am talking about is “famine.” Here is what Luke 15:14 says:

After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need.

Did you ever wonder why he needed a severe famine before he began to be in need? I mean he had nothing. His money was gone. His friends were presumably gone. He had nothing and was nothing, but that was not enough for him. He needed the famine to hit rock bottom. He needed the famine as the final straw that broke his stubborn back. And I did too.

The summer of 2005 was my severe famine. It was the moment when I came to the end of me. When I realized that I did not possess the things inside of me that I needed to fix me. I began to be in need. And I now see that summer as a gift from God.

I think God is in the famine giving business. I think in the prodigal son story He gave the son that famine. He funded the downfall by not refusing to give the son his money. Certainly he knew the son’s intentions and yet he gave him the money anyway. He even helped create a famine moment for the older brother. Did you ever notice that? He didn’t invite the older brother to the party initially. He says get a robe, slaughter a calf but never “and go tell his older brother to come.” He broke the older brother by throwing that party for the son and he knew it. When the older brother comes home and realizes his messup brother is back, he angrily says:

‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.’

That’s not just an angry relative yelling at a father. That is a man standing in the middle of a famine, a moment during which everything he knows about life has been proven incorrect. Good deeds don’t equal good rewards. His world is upside down.

Why does God give us famine moments? Because there is nothing He won’t do to draw us close to Him. Would the God that killed His son to get closer to us find it too cruel to throw you into a famine? Would the God that watched His only son hang on a cross find it too harsh to bring you to the bottom of a dark pit if that’s where you would call out for light? I don’t think so.

My wife has a friend with a weird testimony. In it, she says that she is thankful for cocaine. If I had a dollar for every testimony that said that, I would have a dollar. You see she is an alcoholic. She was facing a slow, 30-year death by bottle until she met cocaine. Cocaine fast forwarded her to the bottom. Cocaine put her crash on warp speed. And there in her lowest moment, is where she found God waiting. So she is thankful for cocaine.

Chances are, you know someone in your life that is in the middle of a famine. If you do, please don’t try to rescue them. Don’t try to force them out of it or Bible verse them out of it. Go stand in it with them. If they are hungry, go be hungry beside them. If they are drowning, let the ocean sweep you up too. They might be right where God wants them. They might be standing in His embrace without even knowing it. Tell them about the gift of famines. They might not understand but tell them that God loves them. And He will do anything to show them that.

Maybe you’re in a famine right now. Maybe right now in Houston or California or Singapore or London or New Zealand you’re the reason I was supposed to write this. I can’t stand in your famine because I’m a thousand miles away but there’s something God wants you to know – He loves this. This doesn’t have to be about failure. His love is not only expressed through goodness. Sometimes deep love is expressed through deep storms. But He loves you. And if that is the only thing you take from this, then it’s been worth the writing.

The Prince song you wrote, hand clapping and the April Recap.

Misc May 1, 2008 • Comments

I wrote 90 new posts in April. That’s a lot to ask people to read, so I came up with a summary. A snapshot of what I think were some of the better moments from the month. Like the Prince song you wrote, the most sacriligious comment you made etc. Please enjoy:

Best rap related comment:
If I had a love offering for every time some guest preacher on youth day told all of us that we needed to check ourselves before we wrickety wrecked ourselves, I could build a new church.

Number of times we were called Pharisees in a comment:
One

Free chapters of book emailed out:
Chapters 1 & 2

Weirdest phrase I hope Christians start saying:
“Get my yoke on.”

Sentence that will get me struck by lightning:
I’d create some interpretative dance show, with Bible verses woven together with T-Pain lyrics, “She hit the flo, Next thing you know. Shawty got low low low low low low low low.”

Most sacriligious comment sent in by a reader:
My wife attended a large fundamentalist college where one of the prerequisites for admission was a “credible” profession of faith. All of the students were required to attend services on campus, in which very often that same alter call would go out week after week.Right before dinner.Only “one more chorus” you say? Well, you certainly got off easy. Within the space of a few weeks, an informal system was put in place where someone would “take one for the team” so to speak, by going forward, so that the service could end in a reasonable amount of time allowing everyone else to get their chow on.

Great ideas sent in by readers:
The search for one more person, holy email addresses, and pray if you feel led.

Number of times a Veggie Tales post incited someone to say I should kill myself: One

Best transformation of the Outkast song “hey ya” into a God song:
My favorite change–instead of “shake it like a polaroid picture,” they said “take it like Paul to the Romans.”

Most “whoa, why so serious” post:
Letting porn win.

Least serious post:
Clapping our hands, a step by step guide to the death of rhythm

Most talked about post:
Refusing to make songs you can slow dance to.

Least talked about post:
Getting your kids beat up.

Best Christian version of the Prince song Raspberry Beret ever created by you:
She wore a Raspberry Tankini
The kind you buy in a Christian bookstore, yeah!

Raspberry tankini,
she wore it downtown
to feed the homeless and poor

Dressed like she was
She had the nerve to ask me
If I planned to know the Lord

By MCab and Anonymous

Thanks for reading in April. I’ve got some fun things planned for May. I still say your comments and ideas are the best part of this site. Thanks for doing both. (As always, suggestions or book requests go to theacuffs@yahoo.com)

194. Traveling Mercies

prayer May 1, 2008 • Comments

The first time my brother prayed for “traveling mercies” I thought he was praying for a band. Honestly, it sounds like a side project Dave Matthews and that insanely muscular violin player are involved in. “Tonight, opening up for Widespread Panic, it’s the Traveling Mercies!”

Apparently though, traveling mercies are not a hemp-loving band but rather a prayer request to have a good trip. A safe trip, a happy trip, a fun trip etc. But what exactly are traveling mercies? Have you ever stopped to think about what we’re asking God for? I did and came up with a short list of what I think traveling mercies are when you’re on a road trip:

1. That you will hear Tom Cochrane’s song, “Life is a Highway” at least once.
2. That you and your father-in law will not get kicked off the New Jersey turnpike because your moving van weighs too much.
3. That you will not bust capillaries in your eyeballs from drinking too many Diet Rockstars or other energy drinks.
4. That you will employ ninja-like focus in not having to use the bathroom at a gas station.
5. That if your ninja-like focus breaks down you will employ a hover move so that you don’t touch any surface (the floor, the door handle, the toilet etc) within the gas station bathroom.
6. That your friend Carsten will not throw up in the car when you drive passed a paper mill.
7. That you will not throw your flat tire with rim still attached over the siderail in the mountains of North Carolina because you are dumb and in college and named Jon Acuff.
8. That none of your friends will tell you stories that start off with, “let me tell you about this weird dream I had last night…”
9. That you will honor the “eat at least one piece of beef jerky while on a road trip” rule. Unless your vegan.
10. That you will not be wooed by siren gas stations that appear close to the highway but upon getting off to get gas turn out to be 19 miles away.

Those are a few of my traveling mercies. What are yours? I think the comments you leave are usually funnier than the posts I write. So let’s play “Traveling Mercies Thursday” and see what you do on the road.

(Thanks to the many folks that suggested this one.)

193. Fist fights in church softball games.

Church/ church culture May 1, 2008 • Comments

I have a confession.

Someone once hit me over the head with a glass bottle while on spring break. That’s not the confession but it’s my most “Patrick Swayze Roadhouse” type story and I can’t imagine I’ll ever write another post on fist fights so I thought I should at least mention it. My confession is that I recently cheated at an Easter Egg hunt for little kids.

I know, I’m an awful human being. We were at my in-laws country club. Every year they have a massive Easter Egg hunt with a petting zoo and blow up toys and face painting etc. The highlight of the event is a massive egg hunt divided into different age groups. Hidden within the field are golden eggs that can be redeemed for large Easter baskets overflowing with candy and the type of toys you usually win at carnivals.

Last year, my four-year old L.E. found one and got a huge basket. So this year she expected to do the same and the pressure was on. There’s something weird and not great that happens with dads and their kids. It’s like throwing fuel on an already competitive bonfire. And I knew she was not going to get one. This year she had to get eggs without our help and was going in a group of kids aged 4-6. These boys in her group looked massive compared to her and were like stretching their quads in anticipation of running for eggs. So during my two-year old daughter’s portion of the egg hunt I saw a golden egg right behind a rope in another portion of the course that had not been opened yet. It was out of bounds, definitely not within play and was meant for another race.

So I stretched my leg out, picked up the golden egg while my sister-in law Marci provided me a cover and then put it in my pocket. A few minutes later, just to kill time while we waited for L.E.’s hunt to begin, I started pointing out to my her where some golden eggs were. I was just saying, “when it starts, you can run over there for a golden egg.” Another father wearing a visor, people in visors hate me for some reason, started yelling at me to his wife. “Look at this guy. Hey buddy! This is for kids. Give me a break.” I responded by saying something like, “Take it easy, she’s three years old, it’s going to be alright.” (Yes, in the heat of the moment I forgot my daughter’s age. I’m pretty smooth.) We yelled some more and then went our separate ways. Just imagine if he had seen me actually break the honor code of the golden egg. Good times.

And that’s exactly the kind of thing that happens in church softball leagues sometimes. It’s hard not to be competitive. Like driving out of the parking lot after church, we forget all about God in those moments. We throw elbows in church basketball, slide cleat first in church softball and don’t get me started on our Frisbie golf fouls.

All in all, it’s exactly the way Jesus first intended us to play church organized sports.

192. Using "love on" as a verb.

love April 30, 2008 • Comments

I really like this phrase. If this phrase was a girl I met in college I would ask her out after chapel, take her to Outback for a blooming onion and reasonably-priced steak dinner, and then go to a movie. Which in college was considered a 5-star date.

But in all seriousness, this is probably my favorite Christian phrase. Here’s an example of how to use it: “Mark is going through some tough times right now, we really need to love on him.”

See how tender and compassionate that sounds? It’s lovely, but it can be a bit confusing. In the last decade, several other similar phrases have popped up. So, as a public service, I thought I would point out the difference between the “on phrases.”

1. Eat on
Sometimes before a meal, someone will say, “I’m going to get my eat on.” This usually means you are going to a Chinese buffet, often titled something like “Super Buffet.” Remember not to waste your time on things like salad and bread. Skip those altogether and focused on anything fried.

2. Drink on
Sometimes before a big boozefest, someone will say, “I’m going to get my drink on tonight.” This event usually involves malt liquor and making out with someone you would not usually make out with. I sincerely recommend that you do not in fact “get your drink on.” SCL does not support bad making out in any situation.

3. Freak on
Sometimes before going dancing, someone will say, “I’m going to get my freak on tonight at the club.” Nelly Furtado and Missy Elliot did a song called “Get ya freak on” so maybe the phrase picked up steam there. I think if more Christian marriages employed this phrase we’d have less divorce. Just a theory.

I could write and write and write, but my friend is going through some tough times and I need to go love on him. (See how awesome that phrase is?)

(Thanks for the idea Andy)

Lonesome Crick

Life doesn’t ask permission. Sickness doesn’t knock first before it comes into your life. It just shows up on your doorstep and one day you fall down in a field. And the next day you’re in a bed without the energy to sit up and they send for your son Dalton in the big city. And he’s racing home, reaching home as fast as he can on a horse that carries him through rivers and woods and heartaches and doubts about making it in time. But he does. And for weeks he sits right there, never leaving your side. His worry growing. His beard growing. His love of the widow Johnson growing with each meal she brought to the room where sickness had come to rest.

Click here if the widow Johnson hates Dalton at first but grows to love him eventually.

Click here if the widow Johnson loves Dalton instantly.

191. Committees on Committees about Committees.

Church/ church culture April 30, 2008 • Comments

I once worked for a massive corporation in a sea of cubicles. One summer we got a memo from the corporate office about food and drinks at our desk. Apparently, we were worried about a fruit fly infestation. So the new rule we were to follow was simple:

“Employees can only have water and hard candy at their desks.”

That seems easy, right? Pretty clear. But as soon as it got posted, questions started to pop up like weeds:

What is hard candy?
What about candies that start out hard but then end up chewy?
What about those strawberry candies that have jelly in the middle?
Do fruit flies not like hard candy?
Oh no, what do we do about nougat?

Within a week, the office was in a minor panic and the admin decided to step in. She said she would compose a memo to corporate asking for a more detailed definition of hard candy. We could suddenly envision a hard candy committee forming. We all felt foolish. We went back to our desks and surfed the Internet.

Sometimes the same thing happens at church. We turn “Whereever two or more are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” into, “Wherever two or more are gathered, so shall a committee be formed with a logo designed by someone’s artistic son and an official sounding title.”

A church I know has a banner committee. I think they get together and talk about banners. How flat they are, how long they are, how to roll them up. This is what I imagine anyway, because no one has ever asked me to be on a committee. Although, I might start a council of sarcasm. Our motto would be, “Creating mottos is such an effective use of time.”

190. Hating Church Marketing (And how God invented it.)

god/ Serious Wednesdays April 30, 2008 • Comments

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.