Stuff Christians Like Read online

  Where it starts getting weird is when the minister invites people to come down and pray at the front of the church. In a moment of odd “no rules, no worries” pastor behavior, he’ll say, “We’re going to invite you to come up here and pray if you feel led. If you feel like there’s something you need to give to Jesus or that God is pushing on you, come down to the front. We’ll sing another song and give you time to get right with God.”

  One Sunday morning, that happened to me at church. The thought of walking down the aisle in front of 5,000 people wasn’t that appealing, but when God gives me the “it’s go time” tap, I usually respond. I leaned over to my wife and said, “Uh oh, I think I’m supposed to go down.” She leaned back over and said, “I love you, but I’m not going.” I told her, “I’ll pray for your heathen soul and ask that someday you’ll have the deep faith I currently possess.” Then I went down. Overall, it was a great experience, but there are some things I wish I had remembered before I headed to the front:

  Don’t assume your friends are going to go down with you.

  I know this is dumb, but when I went forward, it also happened to be the first time we’d ever sat with our friends Ben and Sheila. When the minister said you should “take a friend down to the front with you,” I automatically gave God an extra high five for getting Ben and Sheila to sit with us. I didn’t head-nod to Ben or ask him to come down, I just figured he’d naturally follow me out like Billy Zane followed Tom Berenger in the movie Sniper. That didn’t happen. I thought maybe he was praying in his seat and was going to come up and place his hand on my back in a few minutes like some sort of Christian Cavalry.

  Don’t excuse yourself down the row by saying, “Pardon me, sinner…I’m answering the call of God.”

  It’s not a race. There’s plenty of “front-of-the-church Holy Spirit” to go around for everyone. If fighting with someone in the church parking lot is bad, just imagine how much God hates when you shove people on the way to his altar. Or maybe he doesn’t like people who mosey when you’re trying to sprint to where he called you. I could really go both ways on that one.

  Don’t get frustrated that you didn’t get a “good prayer spot.”

  If you’re behind someone slow on your walk up front, chances

  are you’re going to get a bad spot to pray. You’ll probably be off to the side by the stairs, which is the prayer equivalent of being seated by the kitchen at a restaurant. Or you’ll be kneeling on painful power cords for some instrument. It’s horrible for you to even think these things, but you’re going to and that’s okay.

  Don’t expect superpowers afterward.

  I wasn’t able to fly after I went down front that Sunday. I was kind of hoping that I’d be able to move things with my mind, or maybe jump a little higher, or at the bare minimum, be an inch taller. Didn’t happen. In fact, I think later that day I was a jerk to my wife.

  On the Jonathan scale, the whole thing was kind of a bust. Ben didn’t come down. I didn’t get a good prayer spot. God didn’t zap me. Fortunately, going down front isn’t measured according to my standards.

  USING VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL AS FREE BABYSITTING

  Denomination, schomenation, when our kids are out of school for the summer and we’ve suddenly got to fill eight weeks of time with activities, we Christians like to put aside our denominational differences and bounce our kids like Ping-Pong balls around the county to different Vacation Bible School programs.

  We sent our kids to three different churches last summer, in part because our church refuses to hold Vacation Bible School. One day, my daughter L.E. came home from one of the more “rural” churches we had selected for our “tour de VBS,” and I asked her what she learned that day. Her response?

  “We watched The Little Mermaid movie.”

  Hmm, I thought to myself, I’m not sure which part of the Bible Disney is taking that story from, but I’ve got to work all week and God did make the ocean after all and in a way, that movie is kind of similar to the Jonah story.

  “Have a good time tomorrow, sweetheart.”

  THE COOL YOUTH GROUP ROOM

  If I ever start my own church, iGracePointeLifeTruthHouse-NorthRiverElevate, I won’t need to hire a youth minister. I like them. I have nothing against goatees or Frisbee, it’s not that. It’s just that I won’t need a youth minister. I’ve got outreach taken care of already. I have a foolproof plan on how to connect with every teenager in our community—a cool youth group room.

  Seriously, why would I hire a full-time youth minister when I can get a real working traffic light for only $378? Have you ever seen those in action? You put one of those in the corner of your youth room, maybe pair it with a STOP sign and a mural of an open road or somebody smashing through a wall, and you’re going to break fire codes with the amount of kids that come to youth group.

  I can just hear kids I-M-ing about it on the internets right now:

  TEEN 1: Let’s go to that new church in town.

  TEEN 2: Y? (That means “why.” These kids today with their abbreviations! It’s wacky!)

  TEEN 1: They have a room called “the hangout spot” and there’s a traffic light in the corner.

  TEEN 2: Wait, a real working traffic light? Like the kind that I would see in the street? Get out of here.

  TEEN 1: Seriously. And they have a booth in this other corner; it’s like a coffee shop. They call that corner “the café.”

  TEEN 2: A real booth? Oh man, if you tell me they have a mural, I am going to flip my lid. (Kids these days are always flipping their lids. You gotta stay on top of this phresh language.)

  TEEN 1: Let’s go!

  You’re thinking about coming right now, aren’t you, and I didn’t even tell you about the section of bleachers we put in there and the fog machine. Sorry though, unless you’re a “tweener” you can’t come hang out at “Projekt Xcitement.” Feel free to attend our Single’s Ministry though, where we’ll try to help cure you of your singleness.

  FINDING TYPOS IN THE WORSHIP MUSIC

  I’m a professional copywriter. I am, in theory, supposed to be a highly honed, detail-dedicated arbiter of punctuation and grammar. That’s why I look for typos in the worship songs at church. What’s your excuse?

  I know, I know…you didn’t mean to. It was just up there on the screen, letters that are two feet tall practically screaming out at you, “Look at me, I’m a typo! Who’s got two J’s in their name and is here to love you in the chorus of this song? His name is J Jesus!”

  And then you’re stuck. It only takes one hit to become an addict. You want to stop. Deep down inside, you know you’re supposed to be worshipping, to be communing with the Holy Spirit in song and praise, but now it’s too late. After that first typo, you start noticing more. And if the words are all spelled correctly, you start picking up on spacing problems. That “Thank you” should have been on the same line as “Jesus,” you think to yourself. That “Jesus” is just a widow down there, all alone on its own line. Poor little lonely Jesus, stuck down in a corner of the screen by himself.

  Nobody puts Jesus in a corner. Oh great, now you’re thinking about lines from the movie Dirty Dancing during the middle of the sermon. And you’re mad that you have to stand during worship because it’s hard to write down the number of mistakes you found in the bulletin unless you’re sitting.

  Now you’re proofreading the bulletin, which isn’t really fair, because the person who put that together probably had about thirteen seconds to get it to the printer, and the bake sale folks were late getting their info in, so is it her fault there’s a “Cank Sale” this Sunday? That kind of sounds like the abbreviation for cankle, which is when your legs just go right into your feet with no discernible ankle, you think to yourself. You’ve got to be kidding me. Now you’re judging people’s body images? Everyone else is singing “Blessed Be Your Name,” and you’re judging the cankles of the people in the row next to you?

  REPORTING TO THE PASTOR IN EXQUISITE DETAIL EVERYTHING BAD H
IS SON HAS BEEN UP TO SO THAT WHEN HIS SON FINALLY DOES CONFESS TO KISSING THAT GIRL AT CHURCH, MY DAD REPLIES, “I ALREADY KNOW; THE DEACONS TOLD ME.”

  Thanks.

  LOSING THE WILL TO CLAP DURING SONGS

  I always cringe a little when a worship leader says, “Everybody clap together” at the beginning of a song.

  Instead of marching forward in a united rhythm, what usually happens in church sounds like someone lit off a box of hand firecrackers. Smacks and slaps and claps just ringing out randomly with no sense of where the song is headed. After years of witnessing claps die merciless deaths at church, I thought it might be good to analyze how the clap goes so wrong, so quickly. Here’s what I think happens, laid out in a convenient chronological explanation:

  Step 1. We get the “call to arms.”

  The worship leader tells everyone in the crowd to start clapping. Often, he raises his hands above his head to demonstrate. It’s an exciting moment. The world is fresh and new. We’re all a little intoxicated on the sense of potential and possibility. So together, we start clapping.

  Step 2. We realize there’s no leader.

  Eventually, the worship leader stops clapping above his head. Either he starts playing an instrument or grabs his microphone in a dramatic, Creed-like moment. Suddenly, we in the crowd realize no one is leading this clap-a-thon. We’re all alone. We scan the stage for direction, but no one bails us out. The main singer is focused on the song, and the backup singers are doing some sort of PhD-level, rhythmic clapping that’s beyond us. At least 15 percent of people call it quits right here.

  Step 3. We’ll give you the first verse and that’s it.

  Most people feel pretty generous if they clap for the entire first verse. We won’t go the whole song, but at least we pitched in. It’s the equivalent of serving at church by stacking chairs. You still feel like you gave something back to the church, but you didn’t have to interact with anyone or get up early. About 40 percent of people quit clapping here.

  Step 4: We find out the chorus is faster.

  Whoa, whoa, whoa! Just when some of us have decided to keep clapping, we run into a chorus that defies all logic. It’s suddenly faster than the verse was and we don’t know what to do. Do we speed up our clapping? Do we stop and pick back up on the second verse? Somebody, please, a little help! More than 20 percent of people quit here.

  Step 5: We finish the song.

  At last this crazy ride is over, the clapping is done. We’re finished and can feel good about what we’ve accomplished. But just know this: If you ask us to clap on a second song, about 50 percent of us will flat-out refuse. We’re all clapped out.

  THE CASSEROLE OF HOPE

  A casserole of hope is a food dish that a Christian gives you after a tragedy. It usually involves pasta and cheese in some format, but sometimes, if they really love you, they’ll make something in a crock pot. The challenge, though, is that it’s hard to know what to give someone. Do you make something big and hearty or light and fruity? Is it one meal or a series of meals? Is a dessert too frivolous? Does a serious situation require a serious meal, like some sort of melodramatic stew?

  Fortunately, I’ve come up with an easy list of what types of dishes certain tragedies require. Tear it out and put it on your fridge. It will serve you well in times of need and casserole.

  Car wreck

  This depends of course on the severity of the crash, but the key here is to give food that’s not portable. Chances are the crash might have occurred when they tried to make a cell phone call while driving and eating a twenty-seven-layer burrito at the same time. Don’t tempt them with any food that’s in tube form or easy to eat in the car. Give them soup with a packet of forks. It’s really hard to eat soup with a fork in a moving car.

  Fire

  Nothing baked. Nothing spicy. Nothing seared. Nothing grilled. The important thing is not to bring any food that will remind them of the fire. The last thing they’ll want is your famous “four alarm chicken wings.” Give them something carved of ice. I’m not sure what that is, but you can probably get one at Whole Foods.

  Hole in bedroom ceiling made while chasing a squirrel

  Beef jerky. For starters, the person whose ceiling was wrecked by a friend possibly named Jeff who was texting a girl instead of staying focused on the squirrel chase at hand can pretend the jerky is the squirrel. Also, jerky is portable in case this hypothetical person named Jonathan Acuff is required to take an overnight trip to the couch because he messed up his bedroom, which his wife completely didn’t see the humor in. And lastly, the squirrel is still loose and your friend will need a meal he can eat on the run—or on the rafters of his attic, as it were.

  Loss of employment

  I don’t know what to give someone who lost their job. But I know what not to get them: Easy Mac, those small, microwaveable packets of macaroni and cheese. When a company I worked for went out of business, I took what I called “the summer of Jon.” (Or as my in-laws called it, “The summer of the guy who married our daughter, took her from Georgia to Boston, and promptly lost his job.”) My wife’s one rule was that I had to get up when she did for work. That meant that at 6:30 every morning, I was showered and dressed with nowhere to go. I decided to kill time by eating Easy Mac for breakfast and lunch and snacks. I gained about fifteen pounds. Give an unemployed person a salad.

  Don’t worry too much about nutrition when someone is going through a difficult time. If they wrecked their car or the house caught on fire, the last thing people are concerned about is exercising their “core” and getting enough lycopene.

  CHURCH NAMES THAT SOUND LIKE DESIGNER CLOTHING STORES

  My cousin attends a church called “Warehouse 242.” There’s another church in his area called “Elevation.” In Durham, North Carolina, there’s a church called, simply, “The Summit.” I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point we started naming our churches after stores that sell designer jeans. And I’m cool with that. I don’t think you have to name something the “Back to the Bible Holiness Church”—which is outside of Atlanta in case you want to attend.

  I think it might even be a great thing to have a funky name because it opens up some good conversations with people. Imagine you’re at work on Monday and someone says, “What’d you do this weekend?”

  You can reply, “I hung out at Elevation.”

  Your friend will then say, “Is that the new salsa/techno/hip-hop/Southern Cambodian traditional dance club? I’ve heard the girls in that place are ridiculous.”

  At which point you can answer, “No, it’s a church,” and then proceed to share the entire gospel with him and possibly get him plugged into a small group on the spot.

  Okay, it might not go down exactly that way, but at the bare minimum, saying you went to “Elevation” is going to at least keep the conversation rolling and possibly even raise some questions. If you said, “I went to ‘God Is Awesome, Praise Jesus Cathedral of Hope and Light’ over the weekend,” your friend might throw a handful of glitter and climb out a window to escape the conversation. Which is never a good thing.

  THE FAKE SERMON ILLUSTRATION

  On a Monday morning right before a meeting at work, I got the following phone call from my three-year-old’s preschool.

  “Hi, Mr. Acuff. This is Susan at Small Wonder. McRae ate some sort of fungus on the playground. We’ve got Poison Control on the other line and have saved a sample of what she ate. They don’t think it’s going to be a problem, but we need to keep an eye on her for a few hours.”

  It turns out, there’s a white, clumpy fungus that grows in bark mulch called “dog vomit fungus.” While playing outside, McRae saw some and thought to herself, “Hey, free marshmallows!” and proceeded to eat as much as her little hands could grab. Then when they lined up the kids to bring them inside, the teachers saw McRae’s fungus-covered face and asked, “Oh sweetheart, what have you been eating?” McRae, blessed with her father’s heart of a servant, immediately answered, “I
’ll show you,” and walked the teachers over to the bark mulch buffet she had been enjoying during recess.

  That reminds me a lot of God.

  Not really, but I wanted it to. I tried to think of a way to write something about sin and how it looks good at first but then if we eat it, we end up throwing up all night and sleeping on the floor in our parents’ room. I looked and looked for a segue, but ultimately I realized that if I tried to connect that story to the Bible or God I would just be perpetuating a “fake sermon illustration.”

  A fake sermon illustration is when a pastor is desperate to tell a story but can’t figure out a way to tie it back into his sermon. It’s something funny that happened to him, something silly his kids did, or maybe even a movie clip that really shook him up emotionally. But he can’t find the bridge between the illustration and the message, so he just tries to sneak it by you really fast and hope that you don’t notice.

  I prefer that the minister says one of two things instead: