It’s hard to believe we’re already celebrating our second Christmas on Stuff Christians Like. We had a great time last year, my favorite was the elf on the shelf beat down, but it’s almost time to roll out some fresh Christmas flavored ideas.

What Christmas idea is currently missing from Stuff Christians Like?

What funny Christmas event/food/activity/idea needs to be added to the site?

Let’s talk it out in the comments. Five people who comment by Monday, November 23 will win a copy of “Light up the World,” from the Desperation Band. I’ve been listening to it for the last few weeks and think you’ll dig it.

So, what should we talk about this Christmas?

The church my dad started in Marlboro, Massachusetts did not feature a “Sit behind Pastor Choir” or SBPC if you will. (I don’t think his new church does either but if you are in the Chapel Hill area you should check it out and verify that.) Until I went to college at Samford University, in Birmingham, Alabama I’m not sure I even knew Sit Behind the Pastor Choirs existed.

The first time I saw one in a big church I kept waiting for the pastor to release them to go back to their seats with us civilians. The song was over. Job well done. Move it along. But they just stayed there, perched behind the pastor, frozen in place until the sermon concluded.

At first I tried to ignore them and focus on the message that was being preached or the announcements that were being delivered, but I had a hard time. I’ve never been officially diagnosed as ADD but I probably have at least a smidge of that. Maybe even a dollop. Plus, I was a mess in college and living way outside of God’s will for my life back then. So before long, I started to watch the members of the choir, as if I was tuning into channel WSBPC.

But with choirs that sometimes numbered over 100 it was hard to focus on the whole gang of people up there. So I tended to look for 5 primary types of choir members …

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Recently, I saw a commercial for a new show on ABC called “V.” I immediately got excited because I thought someone finally had the courage to address a problem that is tearing the church asunder …

V-necks.

Unfortunately, my enthusiasm was misplaced as the show appears to be about aliens. Fine, ABC, chicken out. Address fictional issues. V-necks however, are fact. And they are terrifying.

If you’re reading this right now and you can feel a slight breeze on your sternum because you’ve rocking a deep v-neck, it might be too late for you. If you’re reading this and thinking, “What’s a v-neck?” there’s still hope for you my friend.

Having recently seen 19 million v-necks at the Catalyst Conference and found myself in stage three of Deep V-Neck Syndrome (DVS) I feel qualified to offer the following caution. Here is how DVS typically goes down:

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My three year old daughter McRae and my six year old L.E. both asked if they could put the Stuff Christians Like buttons on the back of their school backpacks. I said “Sure,” until I realized that the “booty, God, booty” button might not go over well at the Methodist pre-school. I just figured McRae would not be able to explain the wry Christian satire and ultimate message of hope in Christ it represented to a teacher who saw a three year old wearing something that said “booty” on it. Twice. Fair enough.

But then it struck me that I too had done a pretty poor job of explaining where and what the phrase “booty, God, booty” meant. That post came out on April 3rd, 2008 and has been long forgotten under the onslaught of other posts. And lately folks who didn’t see the original post have been asking me, “What the heck is the booty thing?” Worse than that, I recently saw a post on someone’s blog that featured the booty logo and just slammed the whole thing as being directly related to the fall of Western society. (I am summarizing, but that was the gist.)

So here now, to clear up the questions and the confusion, is a remix of the original post that started the whole idea …

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Last week I attended the Catalyst Conference, one of the most amazing conferences I have ever been to. If you’ve never been, imagine if you put Billy Graham, a U2 concert, 4 sticks of dynamite, worship music and 100 gallons of awesome into a blender and hit “puree.” It’s like that.

It’s also a little like the Christian Prom, every conference is to some degree. Though it’s been above 15 years since I rocked a rented tuxedo at the Saint John’s prom in Worcester, Massachusetts, the similarities between the two events are pretty stunning …

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