A lot of people know I’m an expert on Chick-fil-A, mostly because I keep telling them that.
But also because I’ve written about “chicken church” a number of times in the past.
What I’ve failed to do, though, is share the 10 Commandments of Chick-fil-A.
That changes today my friend. That changes right now:
The 10 Commandments of Chick-fil-A
(It’s guest post Friday! Here’s one from Alicia Yost who blogs about being a mom at AmericasNextTopMommy. If you want to write a guest post for SCL, here’s how!)
Calling God By His First Name
I once went to a church where a woman, a self-confirmed prayer expert, called another woman out on the way she prayed.
“I say this in love, but you are praying incorrectly. You can’t just talk and not address your heavenly father by name. You must say, ‘Lord’ and then follow it up with your request. I wouldn’t want your prayers to go unanswered.”
The woman who’d been called out went red in the face because, you see, this had been pointed out during a prayer group and now everyone was staring at her. She started to cry.
“I’m just trying to be helpful. There is a right way and a wrong way to pray,” said the expert.
I didn’t see what the woman had done wrong. I usually pray the exact same way she had, but apparently we’ve both been doing it all wrong. Obviously, God is very picky when you dial his number. You must include a prefix code of “thou” or “Lord”. If you don’t, he will assume you are a crank call and hang up in your ear and then screen your calls.
If you follow me on Facebook, you’re probably going to get unfriended in the next month or so.
Why?
Well here are the three reasons I am not unfriending you:
1. You love ferrets.
I don’t, but that’s no reason to unfriend someone. So you built a little maze in your living room called “San Ferretcisco” for your luxury rat to scamper through. I’m not judging. Your love of ferrets has nothing to do with this unfriend.
2. Too many barefoot waterskiing photos.
No such thing, my friend. Keep them coming. That’s not a problem at all.
3. I wanted to Jesus Juke your Hunger Games status updates.
You know what I hunger for? Jesus and church. Nope, not going to do that to you. I promise.
So why am I going on an unfriending rampage? One reason:
1. It’s time for Facebook to be fun.
For the last two years, I haven’t done anything on Facebook. I even named myself “Jonathan Christopher” because I thought it wouldn’t last. (How visionary am I? Wow!) But now, I’m realizing the personal page I have is really limited. And the new page I have access to is really fun. We can have even bigger conversations on that one than on my old one. Plus, Facebook has a new timeline feature that we’ve created some original content for. It might be one of the most ridiculously fun things I’ve done and it will go live on Sunday.
So I’m going to focus on that page now and say farewell to my old page.
How do you get connected to the new page?
Click this link and hit the “Like” button.
Did you do it yet? No? OK, here’s another opportunity.
Click this link and hit the “Like” button.
Thanks for doing that. I can’t wait for you to see the timeline we designed on Sunday.
And good luck with San Ferretcisco. I’m still a fan.
Pranks aren’t by nature unique to Christianity. That I’m aware of, there’s no recorded history of C.S. Lewis pantsing J.R.R. Tolkien. Pranks by themselves don’t really fit the formula of this site, but apologizing after? Serving penance for a church-related prank that went horribly wrong or even horribly right? That’s us through and through.
But the truth is, you don’t need this post today. You should file it away for the day after April Fool’s Day. If you’re going to pull some shenanigans or tomfoolery or perhaps even get in a donnybrook, this Sunday is your day. Live it up.
But after, when your youth minister or senior pastor or local reporter stumbles upon the prank you have perpetuated, when like Richard Marx you realize “you should have known better” than to fit that many bees into so small a sleeping bag, you’ll be glad this post so clearly laid out the categories of prank apologies, based on the terror level color coded system the United States used until last year:
The photo at the bottom of this post is probably going to make me look like I have anger issues.
But in my defense, I made it very clear about what was going to happen that night.
The setup is simple. I was invited to speak at an awesome youth retreat at a church called Grand Avenue Baptist. (Fun fact: The youth minister’s name is Aaron Rodgers, and he beat the Green Bay QB to Twitter. He’s @AaronRodgers, the QB is @AaronRodgers12.) The event was a blast and concluded on Saturday night with a dodgeball game.
During the day, we did a Q&A session in which I told the students:
Sometimes, after I speak at a conference, someone will come up to my book table and say, “I’d never heard of you before today, sorry.”
My response is always the same.
“That’s nothing to be sorry about. You are a member of a very large group of people that includes most humans on this planet.”
Then we both laugh and I try to sell them a ten pack of Quitter.
Not knowing who I am does not make you rare. Not having read The Hunger Games makes you rare.
(It’s guest post Friday! Here’s a great one from Joel Stepanek. You can follow Joel on Twitter @lt_jstepanek. If you want to write a guest post for SCL, here’s how!)
Spontaneous Meal Prayer: A How-To Guide
The day was beautiful, everyone was smiling, and my sister and her new husband were simply beaming. The wedding ceremony had been emotional and moving and now it was time to have the introduction of the wedding party and newly married couple. And then, we were going to stuff our faces full of food.
As I waited in line to be introduced, my mind turned to thoughts about the meal I was soon to eat. I was interrupted by a tugging at my sleeve.
“Um, Joel, I know I forgot to ask you this earlier, but could you lead meal prayer?”
Last week, my wife and I saw a church van driving down the highway.
We immediately took a photo because of what was written on the back door.
And, don’t worry, my wife took the photo. I didn’t try to take it while I was driving. My job was to drive close enough for her to get the photo. I offered to put our car up on two wheels if that would have helped, but like most of my offers for car stunts, she passed.
Here is the photo:
It’s a little dark, something two wheels would have fixed, so if you can’t read it, it says:
“Knock and it shall be opened … Matt. 7:7”
My first 2 thoughts were:
1. Am I the one that thinks it’s funny when we abbreviate Bible names? It just looks so weird. “The book of Matt.” That’s like saying, “Did you read that new study from Beth Moore? It covers all four chapters of Jimmy.”
2. If I was going to paint a verse on the back of a van, what would it be?
That first thought was ridiculous, but that second one? Now we’ve got a bit of a conversation, a “caption this church van” situation, if you will.
So that’s today’s challenge. You’ve got a church van and can paint any part of it with any part of the Bible.
I’m coming right out of the gate with the story of Elisha calling down those attack bears on the teenagers. You put that thing on the back of your van, and no one is going to tailgate you.
What verse or story would you paint?
Four years ago today, this blog started.
I started it because I grew up in the church and it always weirded me out that sometimes we Christians didn’t use our best creativity to celebrate who we believe is the Creator of all creativity.
We tend to take a popular idea from secular culture, sprinkle a little God flavor on it, and turn it into a church idea.
“Got milk?” becomes “Got God?”
“Burger King” becomes “King of Kings.”
“Adidas” becomes “Add Jesus.”
So when the satire site “Stuff White People Like” blew up, written by the talented Christian Lander, I got an idea.
“What if I talked about this problem by committing this problem?”
That would kind of be ironic or postmodern or other words I didn’t really understand the meaning of at the time.
So on March 21, 2008, I wrote the very first post:
Stuff Christians Like is written by
Jonathan Acuff.
It was started on March 21, 2008.
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