May 2008 - Posts
I have a good friend of mine who hates compliments. He can't take them. The minute someone says something nice about him, he discounts it. He say things like, "Oh that was nothing. Anyone could have done that." Or, like many Christians, he'll say something holy sounding like, "It was all God. To Him be the glory."
Why are compliments the Christian version of kryptonite? What makes us so uncomfortable? My dad told me a story about a minister complimenting a girl after she sang a song. She blushed and rejected his words by saying, "That was not me, that was all God." He responded by saying something like, "I said it was a good song, I didn't think it was heavenly though. No offense, but I think God would have hit that high note."
I completely think that pride is one of our greatest enemies and I constantly have to be on guard for it. It's so easy to get intoxicated on compliments. And I've seen lots of young pastors crumble under the weight of positive feedback when their churches blow up with attendance. But from this moment forward, if I give you a compliment and you tell me, "God did that, not me," please know that I am going to reply , "Nah, that was you. He would have done a much better job."
In high school, the bathrooms were nasty. The bathroom at school also had horrible acoustics. Going in there was like walking onto a stage that loudly reflected every sound throughout the hallway and the classroom next door. So instead of using that bathroom, I would get the hallpass, walk down a big hill and one block over to the First United Methodist Church. I 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 Paradise.
Indiana Jones. I've been thinking of him lately. Yes, the new movie is out, and let's just say it's more fun than good. That's all I'm saying, but also because it looks like a lot like things Indiana Jones fights against, I fight against. Backsliding, slippery slopes, hedges of protection, those all seem like things from his movies. I mean, in the first one, didn't he "backslide" to get his hat out from that wall that was closing on top of him? And in the second one, wasn't that a "slippery slope" he was on when his rope bridge broke over all those crocodiles?
With the new movie out, costarring Shia Labeouf who I feel has already found a way to host Saturday Night Live 14 times, I thought it might be fun to play a game of "Indiana Jones or the Bible?"
Just for fun of course, but it does kind of prove if you're a good Christian or not.
1. When the ark was opened up, everyone's face melted.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
2. When the ark slipped and someone tried to steady it, that person died instantly.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
3. In a plot twist, the hero is thrown into a pit full of lions.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
4. In a plot twist, the hero falls into a pit full of snakes.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
5. Someone is rescued by an eagle.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
C. The Lord of the Rings (ohhh trick question)
6. Poisonous snakes come out of no where and a brass snake must be made to help ward them off.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
7. The natives are restless and in a fit of worship pull the still beating heart out of a human sacrifice.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
8. The natives are restless and tell their king they've turned into cannibals.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
9. The ark is mistreated, forgotten and lost somewhere no one will find it.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
10. As if by a miracle, a character is able to walk across a terrifying expanse as if on an invisible sidewalk.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
11. As if by a miracle, a character is able to walk across a terrifying, watery expanse as if on an invisible sidewalk.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
12. Through selfish greed, the villain falls to an unexpected death, essentially killing herself in a canyon.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
13. Through selfish greed, the villain falls to an unexpected death, essentially killing himself in a field.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
14. One of the main characters receives a painful scar on his hand when he gets burned.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
15. One of the main characters receives a painful scar on his hand so we won't get burned.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
16. A tag team of bears kills more than 40 people when they make fun of a bald guy.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
17. An angry man disarms a bad guy with a whip.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
18. An angry man clears out some bad salesmen with a whip.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
19. A huge boulder chases the main character down a hill.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
20. A giant whale swallows someone and pukes them up a few days later.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
21. A hooker with a heart of gold helps the good guys escape out of a window.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
22. At dinner, someone brings in a monkey head on a platter.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
23. At dinner, someone brings in a human head on a platter.
A. The Bible
B. Indiana Jones
I could do this all day and I hope that in addition to playing along, you'll suggest your own questions. This is just the type of ridiculousness you can expect in my book.
This past week I saw an advertisement for a church while driving. The sign said something like, "We now have 162 ministries to serve you and your family." First of all, kudos to the church for communicating with their community via that sign. I applaud their effort to let people know where they are and what they are all about. But, reading that sign did raise a few questions for me:
1. Do people at your church try to stab each other at the printer?
Can you imagine the turf wars that go down when 162 ministries converge on the church printer like locusts on a field of grain? Just 162 ministries all trying to collate and staple and print, each and every one of them throwing the God card? That would be a blood bath.
2. How obscure do you get when you have 162?
When you have that many ministries, you have to start really catering to some niche groups. I mean, with 162, I am assuming that they have a "Snake owners ministry," and a "People that still refuse to get a cell phone ministry" and a "Men in their 40s that grew up in Ohio but then went to school in Texas and finally moved to Georgia for a job in the healthcare industry ministry."
3. Why include the 2?
Why not just say, "Over 160 ministries?" Or you could say, "more than 150?" Is there really a Goldilocks person out there that sees that sign and thinks, "161 ministries would have been too few and 163 would have been too many, but 162 is just right."
4. Is there a Frisbee ministry?
I can almost guarantee that despite having 162 ministries, the church in question ignores God's favorite sport Frisbee. Please, if you go to this church and you're not currently praying that God will heal me of my sarcasm, email and let me know that you do indeed have a thriving Frisbee ministry.
5. Does your volunteer recognition Sunday service take 11 hours?
Honestly, when you honor volunteers do you just give them one big collective "thank you" from the pulpit or does each and every ministry come up to get love like some sort of church graduation ceremony?
So many questions and I fear I will have even more when people read this and post comments that say, "That ain't nothing, we've got 200 ministries!"
p.s. At the church I start, called GracePointeLifeTruthHouseRiverNorth, we're going to have three ministries: Love, Frisbee. Basketball, and breakdancing....now what?
Squeeze me? Stick with me here, don't bail on me yet. One of my new favorite things is when a kid gets tagged at Sunday School. When my friends drop their kids off, a volunteer or the parent sticks on a sticker with their name, their parents name and a number to her back. They then hand the parent a sticker to wear that has that same info on it. Then they run off into the fray of kids like a whale jumping back into the ocean after being tagged on a research boat.
Then, for the rest of the service parents get to play, "Bad kid lottery." Never played? It's simple. You watch the little screen below the big screen at church and wait until they flash a kid number. When they do, you grab your sticker and say, "kid #987. Ohhh, not my kid." And then you mentally go back to the sermon.
When the sermon is over you go get your kid like getting your car back at a valet stand. "Here's my sticker" you say, "I had a curly headed model, pink dress, white sweater." Volunteer looks at the ticket, "Oh yeah, let me go bring her back around." He finds the number on the back of your kid and wheels her forward.
I like this system. Honestly Sevier Heights does it really well. With 3,000 people at church, it would be hard to let you know your kid had stuck a Dandelion Yellow crayon so far up their nose they may have touched brain. I hope you have a tagging system too.