Saturday, April 30, 2011

Is There Anything Right About the USA Today Website?

I have to admit, I never went to USAToday.com until today and I made that decision for multiple reasons. One, if your newspaper design is terrible, it's close to guaranteed that your website will make me want to blow chunks. Secondly, I'm pretty sure Yahoo! News just buys USAToday stories anyways.

But I was sent there for the first time and decided to get a look at their home page and OHMYWORDWHATTHEHECK
 (Please click on the image to barf)
This is what happens when you stop caring. So many things to pick apart, but can we just start with a simple question: Why do you have an ad for the 2010 Census in your upper right hand ad-space? And why is it so pixilated? It is nearly May of 2011 so I'm pretty sure the guy who forgot to fill out his census will see this ad and still think it to be too much of an effort. If the Census paid top dollar for this, then good on you, USAToday.

Secondly, your front page story is on the fifth Fast & Furious movie with a promise that it delivers "high octane entertainment." But not to be missed is the assorted list of top headlines to the right of Vin Diesel as if he were curious in the top stories, which include: Mariah Carey's twins, warning for homebuyers, and the third most popular article (second list of sentences as you move right from Mr. Diesel) "Casey Abrams says he growled too much."

America!!!

What's the worst website design you've ever seen? I'm talking like this bad.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

The American Gods

One of my favorite quotes is from A.W. Tozer and it goes like this: "What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us."

Baylor University sociologists Paul Froese and Christopher Bader have contributed what seems to be an excellent study of what American people think about when they say, "God." 

95% of Americans believe in "God," so the issue obviously becomes one of definition. Who is this God? I find it increasingly helpful to have a name to the God we worship as Christians, saying the name of Jesus is a quick way to separate and tear down misconceptions people hold in their mind when they think about "God." Nonetheless, there still lies many divisions in our definition of "God" and the role he has in the universe.

Froese and Bader have released, America's Four Gods: What We Say About God - and What That Says About Us and I've been holding out for the paperback. Thankfully, the wonderful people at Duke's Faith & Leadership posted a great article summarizing a lot of the scholarly ground work included in the book. In the results of the study, Froese and Bader find these common adjectives amongst most Americans:
  • The Authoritative God: God is like a literal father, both engaged as a positive force in the world and a judge of the behaviors of humankind. Suffering can be the result of social and individual sins.
  • The Benevolent God: God is mainly a force for good in the world, a being who answers the prayers of individuals and comforts the suffering.
  • The Critical God: God is less likely to be concerned with moments in the lives of individuals, but will mete out judgments in the next life. This is a popular image among the poor and oppressed, the authors state.
  • The Distant God: God is a cosmic force that sets the laws of nature in motion, but does not get involved in day-to-day events or movements.
Read the whole thing here. 

Monday, April 25, 2011

Taking Jesus For All That He Is

It is difficult to find somebody who disagrees with Jesus' teachings. No matter what someone thinks about Christianity, when they are shown the raw teachings of Jesus they are impressed and inspired. Mostly. But Jesus being Lord over all and the Son of God? That seems like a stretch, they say.

On face value, I totally agree. I mean, the guy said some good things, but can't people who say good things also have messianic delusions? In fact, Mark Oppenhiemer of The New York Times said this exact thing (quite out of the blue) a month ago in his article about the new C.S. Lewis Bible. And I've thought about that when I was first getting into this whole Christian thing.

Jesus said great things, sure, but when it came to it, after he said these great things and got a following he just started thinking a little too highly of himself and said some things that weren't true.

But hold on...

In an examination of Christ's teachings, it becomes pretty clear that every one of his commands is actually rooted in his Messianic identity (the fact that he is God). Observe, just my top three favorite teachings:

Do you like his teachings on love? They are based in the fact that He is love. He is the source and creator and sustainer of all love.

Do you like his teaching on peace? They are based on the fact that he is peace. He is the source of the Sabbath and the creator of the seventh day.

Do you like his teachings on forgiveness and loving your enemies? It is based on the fact that he was killed by his enemies and yet he died forgiving them.

You can't separate Jesus' teachings from who he is because one informs the other. An examination of Christ's words show us that His teaching is founded upon a claim of who he really is. Biblically speaking: commands are always rooted in promises.

I stole that last line from Jeff Patterson. DEAL WITH IT.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Seeing Through

A guy who works with me at the church once said, "Think less about cool and more about Jesus." I like that. When I heard that I took it to mean that whatever we do should be see-through.

Many people love the worship music at churches and say they go "for the music." Some people obsess over the Bible teaching and say they go "for the teaching." They say things like, "it's just so solid" or "the music leader is so wonderful." Or what about the building? "The facility is really nice."

These are kind compliments, but they miss the point.

We see all over the Bible that Jesus is the point. If you look closely at the Greek, Jesus wasn't building his church on the rock of Peter, he was building his church on himself, the Rock of Ages. And if you listen to his words about the Holy Spirit, you'll see that the whole idea of the Spirit is to point back to Jesus. And if you listen to the Risen Christ's words to the men on the road to Emmaus, you'll understand that the entire Old Testament was a testimony of the Messiah to come, who would be named Jesus.

He's the point.

And so we like the music. And we love the teaching. We like the buildings and we enjoy the classes. I end up meeting a lot of people who are Christians because they found a nice little niche in the Evangelical sub-culture. They can act like a Christian, like Christian things, and enjoy Christian friends. But can they see through all of that?

Jesus, for all of us, gives the tangible form of the intangible. As the Scriptures tell us, he is the image of the invisible. He is the point because he is very clear and specific.

So churches like ours sings songs, opens the Bible, and gathers together in order that we might see Jesus. The problem becomes when we forget that all of this stuff is see-through.

In an age where everyone is "spiritual" and many people "go to church," let's remember that we go to church to meet Jesus, sing songs to Jesus, and we open the Word so that we might know Jesus.

The Bible is not the point. The Church is not the point. The music is not the point. The Community Group is not the point. Jesus is the point. And we make these practices so that we might be reminded of Him and the riches that are included within. All of our rituals are but windows.

But they are important because windows show us where to look. Nobody puts a window in place to view the garbage dump, it's a crummy view. No, if you're building your house you put windows by the beautiful view of the river or the mountains. Likewise, we point our teaching, music, and services toward the wonderful view of an accurate picture of a good God.

When you go to Easter service tomorrow, don't just look at the music, teaching, or people; try and see through it all - for there you may find God himself.

In the Garden for the Win

Just got back from the Rose Garden where I watched our Blazers come back from being down 23 in the third quarter, to win by 2 and even the series 2-2. At the height of our deficit, I looked at my buddy Alex who generously took me to the game and said, "This is not the playoff experience I was hoping for." I was so wrong. This WAS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR. And while I mostly blog about following Jesus, I thought I would take one post for a shout out to those Blazers.
I actually have enjoyed reading the local Dallas writers after this win. It's hilarious to read an article titled, "Mavs blow by Blazers in the 3rd, silence crowd" to Tim MacMahon's lead, "The Mavericks managed to blow a 23-point second-half lead, an unbelievable collapsed even by the standards of Dallas’ disturbing recent playoff history."

It's a great day to be a Blazer, that's for sure.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Can't Decide If 60 Minutes is Brilliant or a Piece of Trash

It's too bad that the same people responsible for Andy Rooney are the same people who bring fantastic profiles of the world's best and worst. 60 Minutes is one of those shows I find myself getting super excited about and then hating. I can't decide where I land.

Over the past two weeks, the television news magazine has compiled two very opposing, brilliant stories. The first is about the winningest coach in high school basketball, Bob Hurley, and his rejection of college jobs, money, and play at the next level. He is content with coaching St. Anthony's, a small Catholic school in New Jersey. He is involved because he loves the city and loves the kids - even if it makes him $9,000 a year.

This past week, 60 Minutes single-handedly took down Greg Mortenson, best-selling author and acclaimed "humanitarian." The crew of journalists traveled all of the world, getting comment after comment and story after story that proved Mortenson's heart-wrenching stories of helping Middle Eastern countries build schools to be fabricated and false. Turns out for all the good he has done, many of his memoirs are untrue and many of his school buildings are either wildly underfunded or empty. Furthermore, his non-profit has been bankrolling a lot of Mortenson's speaking gigs: spending 1.7 million on book-related expenses and 1.3 million on building schools. Sounds a bit uneven. The publishers are now reviewing his books.

Yikes. Two very different profiles, huh? And both reported by Steve Kroft! Nice!

But what's going on here? These are both fascinating stories for different reasons: in the first, we have a noble dude doing something small, but great, something he is recognized for but makes little money or notoriety for. In the second, we have a world famous humanitarian who's doing it all wrong.

The difference is in the details. Both guys are on 60 minutes, both guys are seen in the public eye in one way or another, but they both got to that program's airwaves in very different ways.

Americans desire to accomplish something amazing: a new wakeboarding record, a better company, a bigger church. We all value great things and huge successes, but is this what God honors?

I like that the God of the Bible doesn't really care if you're famous and successful by other people's standards or not, he just cares if you're faithful. The wisdom books of the Scriptures tell us to seek "righteousness," which we sometimes view translated as "unattainably perfect behavior." But "righteousness" could be translated as "right living." This is a word that is about the process of our accomplishments and how we go about attaining what we attain. We do not value the process, do we? We value the ends, not the means.

The Christian life is about embracing all that Christ is in order to achieve this righteousness because he is righteousness. He didn't just live rightly, he lived perfectly - and in our place. He is not just the means and not just the end, but he is both, described by a Greek-culture as the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

These stories show us that while what you accomplish is quite important, how you go about accomplishing it matters more than you know.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Too Legit To Quit

I didn't come up with that title - this guy did.

Due to an increase in traffic and my desire to take this blog to the outermost spaces of the cosmos, I decided to purchase a little spot for myself on the interwebs. If you've dropped in anytime after Sunday afternoon, you were redirected to the much cleaner www.wearemadeofsound.com
Yeah! So this shouldn't mess up anyone's RSS, but if it does let me know. And hey, now that the annoying ".blogspot" is out of our way, I think we can get a lot more done together. So pass that URL around as much as you like. Finally, thanks to you all who pass this around to one another, it's cool to hear the random people who read/enjoy and the growing number of visitors I see on my little statistical report. Friends of WAMOS, this one's for you (wait for the guitar solo around 2:48)...SING IT LEANN!!!

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Bringing Out the Best

When I was growing up in the church, I was told to have someone in my life who would be able to check in on me daily and “keep me accountable” to God’s Word. Sweet idea. But in my high school years and even my early college years, it became a little difficult to have a good relationship with someone whose partial purpose was to make sure you were lined up with the rules correctly.

The role of many of my “accountability partners” became a tired checklist of specific sins. Are you doing this? Are you thinking this? Did you say anything like this? And if I did, it was time to pray it all away.

But I didn’t fully realize the weakness of this system until I met John. He had always been a friend of mine, but it wasn’t until we moved into a tiny apartment in Northwest Portland that I really began to admire the guy. He was honorable without trying to be honorable, he was godly without talking much about it, and he was naturally and effortlessly generous even though he had very little money.

What I came to find out over those years was that Biblical community is more about aspiring to be like Jesus together rather than aspiring to not be like yourself. Do you see the difference?

John was the best guy to live with not only because he was a better dude than me, but because he actually brought out great things in me that I didn’t know existed: abilities, talents, and character traits that were buried in my difficult heart would begin to surface and bear fruit.

I started to recognize that I had the same type of relationship with my girlfriend. She brought the best out in me. After realizing that, I married her as soon as I could because along with being such a good woman, she was also super hot, a trait John never really had in my eyes.

So often, people want to be in small groups and community groups and even romantic relationships to check up and make sure they’re doing everything right and squashing everything that's wrong. But is that the gospel? Why are we focused on looking at one another through the lens of doing the right thing?

We surround ourselves with people who suppress the worst things in us when instead we should surround ourselves with people who actually bring out the best in us, namely the Christ that is within us. Because once the greatness of God begins to be brought out in us, the worst of us will disappear.

This is what prompted C.S. Lewis to write his famous passage on true friendship:
“We possess each friend not less but more as the number of those with whom we share him increases. In this, Friendship exhibits a glorious ‘nearness by resemblance’ to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah’s vision are crying ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ to one another (Isaiah 6:3). The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.”
         -C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Starting Your Day Out Right

This guy:

Tim Keller on Stories

Well. This just blew my mind.

I was fortunate enough to be introduced to J.R.R. Tolkien's brilliantly difficult-to-read essay, "On Fairy Stories" when I was a Senior in high school. I remember getting one thing out of it: While fairy stories show little resemblance to real life both on the factual and experiential level, we need them more than ever because they tell us how things ought to be. Just because life is a certain, does not mean that life should be that way: fairy tales give us a glimpse into deep, rich truths that tell us the way life ought to be - that death should lead to life, that sacrifice should bring joy, and that the fight is actually worth it.

I mention this because I found this absolute gem of a video, which is really an audio clip placed over horrific slides of rainbows and mountains. Don't watch the video, but listen to it. The audio clip is of my modern intellectual hero, Dr. Timothy Keller, explaining the purpose of stories. Don't try to listen to this if you're not ready to give 13 full minutes of your attention. Don't do your taxes while listening to this. Don't watch TV while listening to this. Just listen to this:

HT: Justin Taylor

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

"But he was in the stern"

When the disciples were caught in one of the worst storms they had seen on the sea, they believed they were going to die. Remember, these men were 1st century fishermen and a storm was nothing new. Yet this one was bad. They are quoted yelling for their lives as Jesus lay asleep in the stern of the boat.

What did the fishermen do?

"And they woke him and said to him, 'Rabbi...'"

They woke up the Rabbi. Sounds like the start to a bad joke. Often times we go on from this point in the story, but I'd like to stop us all here: in the midst of the storm, they woke up the teacher.

They not only woke up the teacher, they woke up the Messiah, God himself in flesh. So, let's make this simple and short: when a storm comes your way, what do you do?

Often times, we try to battle out the storm and fight it, all the while waiting for God. We wait. And we wait. And we wait. "Where is God now?" we ask. We blame him and believe him away from our lives.

Wake. Him. Up.

God will not leave you, but he might have his face turned away, he might be asleep or in other words: he might be waiting on you. If you are in the storm and waiting for God, it's time that you go to the depths of your vessel and wake him up. Speak to him, yell at him, shake him in the cages of your soul - for it might be time for a miracle.

A Reality Check

When I was studying the rhetorical characteristics of Evangelical churches in Portland, I came across a scholar from Columbia University named Randall Balmer, who quickly became an inspiration to my work. I read pockets of his book, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America, to help guide my limited studies and was fascinated with his quasi-journalistic but still scholastic approach to the faith culture.

Balmer goes from state to state cataloging interviews with evangelical leaders and lay-people within certain states. Since I was studying the churches in suburban Portland, I combed through his section on Oregon. Now, I'm re-reading the entire book in hopes to get a new perspective on this movement many of us find ourselves sitting in and wrestling with.

One of the best things we can do as humans is to read or listen to those outside of our own little stories. This book, if you so choose to tackle it, will certainly humble you as an evangelical Christian.

Balmer grew up in a fundamentalist Evangelical household and he does not claim to have an "objective" view on the culture as no good historian can, he says. Objectivity is an impossibility. But somehow while he gives up his objectivity, he does not surrender his scholarship. The book is such a brilliant twist of journalism and scholarship; I love it and recommend it, especially if you work within the evangelical subculture. So much of the gospel can get lost in normalized language and practices that only help us identify with one another instead of God.

I just write this post to recommend this unique work, but also to share this quote, which compares evangelicalism to adolescence (like I said, humbling) in an interview with the scholar Douglas W. Frank:
"No stage of life is more prone to hero worship than adolescence. An adolescent is strongly influenced by group conformity and the expectations of other people; it's a stage in which self-consciousness is at its height. 'I see [evangelicals]...constantly comparing themselves to the standards of spiritual behavior they've established and asking "How am I doing?" and "Am I good enough?" and "How do I appear to others?"' Spiritual appearances are very important to evangelicals, just as an adolescent spends a lot of time in front of the mirror."
            -Randall Balmer, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, p. 269

As Liz Lemon would say, "Ya burnt!" This hurts only because I see a lot of my own journey in this passage.

I celebrate a lot of what Evangelicalism has brought to Jesus followers everywhere, heck I've worked in Evangelical churches since I graduated from high school. This is not a picture of 100% of the Evangelical movement, but you have to admit it's pretty spot on for a lot of our experience, huh?

We must lead ourselves and our people away from self-obsessed spiritual adolescence.

Monday, April 11, 2011

First Crack at Self-Publishing

In our growing youth ministry, there's a lot to celebrate. I have loved watching more and more kids show up on Wednesday Nights, to see the numbers rise because each of those numbers represents a real kid who has started plugging in, making relationships, and learning about Jesus. Some pastors say, "Well, I don't care about numbers, I just love people." The truth is, as Pastor Joel reminded me this weekend, if you really love people you would want more and more people coming to church where they can meet other individuals who know Christ. It's that simple. In the church, attendance "numbers" is just a way of representing people.

So as we've been growing, it was amazing to see 33 of our students answer the call to come to Managua, Nicaragua this summer. We've been raising money and training our students for the last month, watching God provide over and over again. As we slow down the financial emphasis, we're turning our eyes toward preparing spiritually. One of our leaders came up with the idea to do a devotional book before we left for the trip, something we could all do together. It was difficult for me to find one that would work well for us, so I decided to write one.

I focused the 18-day devotional on the Christian virtue of servanthood, calling the book, Not Your Gut Instinct. I had some help and input from our staff, but the finished product looked pretty good despite my lack of design skills. It took tons of work but reminded me how much I love putting together and assembling a long-form piece.
Writing blog posts is somewhat easy; they act as stand-alone little messages that only go into so much depth. For some reason over the course of putting together the devotional, I was reminded of the one man show I wrote in high school that ended up in our annual playwriting festival. I think long-form writing is becoming increasingly rare our blogs and twitter accounts are being turned into books, it is difficult to think about the large scope of a long story.
This is why I still have a lot of appreciation for books, newspapers and certain magazines, especially what Dave Eggers and McSweeny's is doing. In our age of awesome web-based information and well designed and maintained blogs (which I love, obviously), there are still some things that long-form, large and well-designed pieces can do that computer and web-based work cannot do. I love when people explore these limits, publishing boldly. It was fun experimenting a little with it and got me thinking about other things we can do to stretch the limits of the press in order to keep it as a relevant medium.

We definitely need to explore all of the Internet, but in doing so also recognize its limitations. I really do not see the irrelevancy of print, I just see a some laziness. It's easier to build a website than a well-designed printed publication. I'd love to see the universities stretch the limits of the printed word as well as publishing companies and the Church.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

The Jimmy Fallon Crew is Killing It

When you're in youth ministry, "dude check out this video" is a common phrase uttered toward you. I was sent this video through multiple streams and it has solidified my opinion that Jimmy Fallon's crew is killing it. Yet another performance of a lifetime.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Specific Love

St. Paul writing to his apprentice Timothy says this about their ministry:

“The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”

Plain as day, we are meant to love people as Christ has loved us. But love is a specific thing in the Bible, it is not some ambiguous notion that has to do with good feelings. We say this word “love” all the time and yet have trouble understanding it. Paul specifies: our love comes from a heart and a conscience that are both pure and good along with a faith that is honest. We are commanded to love, but love out of something, out of an abundance of love, out of a changed heart, out of a clear mind, out of a hope in God.

Love is not ambiguous, it is specific: “By this we know what love is,” St. John writes, “that Jesus Christ laid his life down for us and we ought to do the same for our brothers and sisters.” Love is not contrived or thought up and checked off the religious to-do list, love is an outpouring - so what is filling you up?   

The Christian life operates so well this way because our well, our resource, our center is not an argument or doctrine, but a person. It is founded on a man who lived perfectly and died forgiving people who hated him. Our well is deep and our love is specifically self-sacrificing and generous.

Paul continues writing to his protege saying, “Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussions…” 

When we fix our eyes on “being right” instead of God making us right, we miss the gospel and get trapped into religious fundamentalism. But fundamentalism is not bad if our fundamental becomes the man Jesus. When our fundamental becomes the manifested love of Jesus who died for his enemies, our lives change and we love out of a clean heart, clear mind, and an honest hope in something much greater than ourselves.