I have so many questions about that practice:

1. Do you get to choose the chaperone who goes with you? Like, what if everyone hates Brian the chaperone cause he chews with his mouth open at dinner, and he talks during movies? Do you get to refuse to have Brian and, instead, get to audition other chaperones? “Bill, I’d love to have you along on this date I’m about to go on, but it was a little pitchy for me, dawg.”

2. Do they sit at the table with you while you eat, or are they sitting off in a different table? Far enough away that it doesn’t feel awkward, but close enough that if you try to make out they can Matrix dive across the restaurant and shot block you?

3. If they do sit with you at dinner, do you have to make conversation with them too? If you ask your date, “Where’s the one place in the world you wish you could travel?” Does Brian jump in and say, “Hawaii! Definitely Hawaii, om nom nom, smack smack while I eat my baby back ribs.”

4. Would it be weirder if the chaperone talked during dinner or kept silent? I think it would kind of feel like there was a creepy serial killer at the table if the whole night he just silently took small bites of food while he watched you eat.

5. Do I have to pay for the chaperone’s meal at the restaurant? If that’s the case, Brian, you’re drinking water buddy and ordering from the “appetizers” portion of the menu.

6. What if the chaperone hits it off better with the girl on the date than you do? The college would have to make sure the chaperones you hired had no game.

7. What if you went out dancing for the date? Do all three of you have to dance together? I’m kidding!! If you had to take a chaperone, you’re not going dancing. That was a trick question!

I attended Samford University, a Baptist college, but they didn’t have this practice. It’s therefore hard for me to really say whether it’s great or not. I will say, though, that if I have to buy Brian dinner, and he tries to order lobster, it’s going to be a short date. He’s going home with a black eye, and I’m going home with some sort of Charlie Sheen level of demerits.

What about you? Did your college have any rules like this? (Separate dorms, house dates, chaperones, etc.?)

Here’s what Mark 2:47 actually says:

“And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell.”

The thing I was most afraid of was the word “pluck.” That is such a casual word. I had this fear that one day I’d be watching a movie, like Doc Hollywood, and all the sudden some completely unnecessary nudity would occur. My parents, who did rent that movie for me when I was young because “Hey, it’s just Michael J. Fox!,” would turn and say, “Oh no, I bet you saw that with your eye, Jon. Hand me my plucking shears.”

Looking back on it, that seems like a pretty reasonable fear. And though I escaped adolescence with both eyes intact, I have started to see people do a digital version of the “pluck your eye out” move.

Take me for instance: I deleted my friends list on Twitter.

I still follow everyone and love doing so, but I deleted the list of 30 friends I had created.

Why?

Because, as I explained in this post, I was acting like a jealous 7th grade girl. Every time one of my friends would post some amazing tweet about the greatest night of friendship and food and life-changing awesomeness they’d ever had, I would immediately think, “Awww, thanks for not inviting me.” Then I’d get jealous and all ridiculous.

So I deleted the list.

Now when I run into a friend, I don’t know everything that’s happened to them in the last 7 days (which is exactly how 1999 was). And then, they get to surprise me with what’s going on in their lives, at which point I celebrate with them, versus being jealous of them.

And I’m not the only one that’s plucking their digital eye out.

A close friend of mine deleted her entire Facebook account. Other friends of mine have taken digital fasts. Bit by bit, I’ve seen more and more people getting their digital pluck on.

Will that approach to social media fit perfectly for everyone? Of course not, just like not everybody enjoys corduroys as much as I do. I’m OK with that. You’re missing out obviously. The pants actually audibly proclaim your arrival when you walk into someone’s office. But, whatever, try to tell me you’re living a full life without that experience. Whatever.

How about you though?

Have you or anyone you know plucked out a digital eye ?

Church Greeter Ninjas by Stewart Conkle

I was raised in a very big, very popular, traditional church in Atlanta. As a child, I remember going to BIG church for the first time. I was in awe. The auditorium was cavernous. It was ornately decorated. The lighting fixtures that hung from the ceiling were gold and shiny. The carpet was burnt orange, and the choir members wore baby blue robes that really made the two colors pop.

The greeters at this church were mostly elderly people. The women wore long dresses. Usually with flower prints. The men all wore three-piece suits and heavy cologne. (Possibly a musk of some sort, an Old Spice perhaps.) That’s how it used to be.

Churches have changed drastically over the years. The older, traditional churches are becoming more rare. The men and women who greet you at the door, dressed to the nines, are all but gone.

The greeters of today are like highly trained, very friendly covert ninjas. They dress to look like you and I. They prefer t-shirts and denim instead of fancy suits. They wear Chuck Taylors instead of penny loafers. In short, they blend in. Becoming one with the crowd because that’s what ninjas do.

They are always mindful of visitors because first impressions go a long way. There is a subtlety to what they do. They want to make you feel at home, but they don’t want to smother you. They want to give you the answers you seek, but they don’t want to overload you with info. Their senses are keen, and they have eyes like an eagle. They can see a first-time visitor when they pull into the parking lot. Here are three things that give first-timers away.

1. First-timers are bewildered.
Greeter ninjas can see it in our eyes. We first-timers are looking for something but not sure what. Our eyes dart around randomly. We aren’t sure where to go or what to do. This is where the greeter ninja has to act fast. Timing is crucial. Every second I’m lost as a first-time visitor equates to another reason why I won’t come back. It can be a traumatic time for first-timers, and the greeter has to be our rock.

2. First-timers often come in packs.
No one wants to visit an unfamiliar place alone. First-time visitors often recruit a support group. Family. Friends. Random people in the parking lot. For the greeter ninja, the pack is easy to spot. We clump up and move together like a school of fish. We all have the same mindset. Just like point number one, if one of us is bewildered, then we’re all bewildered. Again, it’s crucial that the greeter ninja acts fast when they see the pack in distress.

3. First-timers are rarely on time.
There are a myriad of reasons why I might be late the first time I visit your church. It’s sometimes on purpose. I’m not sure of how the church worships and that creates anxiety. Do they do the hands in the air thing, or do they sit and sing softly so that no one can hear their voice? Do they sing songs they know, or do they sing the new song that is ten minutes long, has 12 verses, and was written by the worship pastor? Those are all valid points. However, greeters rarely get the set list in advance. Sorry. You’re on your own there kid.

The biggest reason we first-timers are late is that we get lost in the labyrinth of cones and cars in the parking lot. If I’m not careful, I’ll circle the parking lot for eternity. This is where our parking lot greeter ninjas come in. Acting quickly, they giftedly guide and direct first-timers, one car load at a time.

We have all been first-time visitors. The greeter ninjas know how you feel. They know both the stress and the excitement of visiting a new church. Keep in mind that they, the greeters, are there for you. In the shadows. Ready to assist when the moment arrives.

Question:
Does your church have greeters?

(For more great stuff from Stewart, read his blog or follow him on Twitter!) 

But traffic indulging title aside, it’s February, which means Valentine’s Day, which means it’s time for a few love flavored posts. Starting with today’s.

A friend* of mine once told me something that I thought was funny. I tend to pass on funny things directly to you. (No Ticketmaster “handling charge.” I send it your way immediately for free.) Here is what he told me:

“Jon (people in stories you tell always use your first name when talking to you), I used to not listen to Rihanna songs or Lady Gaga songs because I thought they were dirty. But then I got married and now I imagine that those songs are about two married people, much like myself and my wife. Am I weird?”

My first thought was maybe. But then I thought, maybe not. It’s hard for me to say because I’m older than some of y’all (I can feel the rain a comin’ in my knee) and tend to have songs from the 80s and 90s on my slow jam mix. Think Chris Isaak “Wicked Game” or Mazzy Star “Fade into you.”

But what about you? If you’re single, have you ever thought, “That song is too dirty to listen to right now, but in the context of marriage that is going on the mix tape?”

If you’re married, have you ever thought, “Hello formerly forbidden music, welcome to the Song of Solomon?”

Or is my friend just weird?

*I know you think that there is no friend and I’m the one who thinks that about music. I promise there is a friend and he doesn’t live near the Niagara Falls region. Breakfast Club reference? See, I’m old.

That’s a lesson in Twitter etiquette I learned the wrong way. I’ll be teaching folks everything I know about Twitter at the Quitter Conference on February 10 & 11, but that’s a free nugget of wisdom for you.

In my defense, that terrifying gentleman with the threatening vocabulary misinterpreted what I had said about Eazy-E, the 1980s rapper.

Here’s what I tweeted from @jonacuff:

Every time I see Dr. Dre optimizing computers in that HP commercial, I think, “This is exactly what NWA was all about.”

I wasn’t making fun of Easy-E. I was making a social commentary on the unexpected career trajectory of Dr. Dre. There’s not a person alive who heard Dr. Dre in the 1980s and thought, “You know what this guy will be doing in the future? Optimizing computers for Hewlett Packard.”

Next thing I know, I’m involved in a tweet battle with a guy in Compton.

Lesson learned.

But in addition to picking up wisdom like that on Twitter, I discovered something else really interesting the other day. And it came to me in the form of a virus.

Here’s how viruses on Twitter work.

A spammer sends you a direct message (The Twitter version of an email.) In the message is a link. When you click on the link, it takes you to a page that looks like the login page to Twitter. You login with your name and password at which point the spammer has control of your account. They then proceed to send a direct message to each of your friends as if they were you. (You can only DM people who follow you.)

The common protocol after that happens to you is to tweet, “I got hacked!” which is not exactly true. There wasn’t a Mission Impossible-type Bulgarian hacker who spent many a long hour trying to crack your password. The majority of the time, if you got a Twitter virus it means you saw a link, were curious about the link, and gave somebody your info.

So, based on the Twitter viruses you get from friends, you can start to pick up on what people are really motivated by. For instance, I got 20 virus direct messages sent to me and they reveal a curious trend.

Spammers started by trying to appeal to people’s desire to lose weight. They tweeted things like: “Want to lose any weight? Go here: URL best product for losing weight.”

Then they tried an appeal to people’s desire to be rich. Here’s a spam direct message I saw yesterday: “This woman on CNBC tells a story about how shes making money online! I just started and already made 53 dollars today!!”

I love that they chose the random amount of $53. The hope is that you’ll think, “If they promised me a million dollars, I’d never believe it. But $53? That feels honest. I want $53.” Click.

Finally, they tried a spam that appeals to people’s sense of self worth. Here’s a spam I saw today: “You seen what this person is saying about you? URL terrible things.”

Guess which one worked best? Guess which one more people fall for?

The one that says “You seen what this person is saying about you?”

More than 90% of the Twitter spam I get carries some form of this message. Other versions of the same idea include:

“What were you thinking in this photo?”

“There is a rumor/blog going around about you.”

“This person is using their Twitter feed to say horrible things about you.”

“I just found this funny photo of you online. LOL!”

The verbiage might differ, but the meaning is the same.

“You’re a worthless person. Someone is saying that online. Want to see?”

And we click. We click by the tens of thousands. Even with busted grammar like “You seen” we rush to that bad blog or bad photo of us. Critic’s Math is part of it, but I think the problem is even bigger. Why do we click on something that says we’re horrible?

Because we’re secretly afraid it might be true.

Deep down, in the wounded part of us, we’re afraid they might be right. We’re unlovable. We’re not enough. We’re a failure. We guzzle poison about our identities even while we reject compliments.

Someone tells us we did a good job on something, and we immediately respond, “Oh that, that’s nothing.” We can’t shake the feeling of that compliment off our skin fast enough. And so the chance to see our fear validated online? To click a link that says we’re horrible and see the proof? We can’t resist that. Our ego takes the bait, and our fear pushes us forward.

That’s part of the reason the Bible is so crazy to me. As we rush off to find anyone or anything to determine our identity, the Bible sits quietly by with page after crazy page of truth about who we are.

Ephesians 2:10 calls us God’s handiwork. His work of art.

2 Corinthians 5:17 says that anyone in Christ is a new creation.

Zephaniah 3:17 says he delights in us. Not likes us. Not tolerates us. Delights.

We are the only creation on the entire planet God put his breath in. The most amazing sunset can’t say that. The mountains can’t proclaim that. The deepest ocean can’t declare that.

Only we can.

Maybe somebody told you that you were worthless a long time ago. Maybe a parent gave you that identity or a teacher singled you out or a boss tried to make that your title. But it’s not.

Stop drinking poison. Stop clicking on links that say you’re horrible. Stop listening to the voice of doubt and fear. Stop believing you’re anything less than the person God loved so much he sent his son to the cross for as the only means of rescue.

Words like “lyrical poetry” and “unstoppable rhythm” come to mind when I think about my ability to tell a story on stage with my dancing. Bottom line: When it comes to church skits, I had the moves like Jagger. I work out.

Pop culture jambalaya!

But just the other day, it hit me, “I haven’t seen a church skit in years!” And they’ve not just gone missing from my church. I visited 20 different churches in 2011 and saw neither hide nor hair of a church skit. No couple before the sermon that is having marriage problems to set the scene. No youth group car crash “I wish we’d all been ready for Jesus” skit. Nary a ribbon was twirled nor a gloved hand was mimed.

Did I miss the memo?

Did we vote skits out of the building?

Did video kill the skit star?

Does your church do skits during service?

I rewrote this first sentence 14 times because I didn’t know how to break the news to you. So I’m just going to come right out with it.

We are missing out.

For years, decades, maybe even centuries, we’ve been getting the short end of the stick. How do I know?

Because I went to a festival at a Greek Orthodox Church, and they have … dancing.

Were you aware of this? How long have you known? Why didn’t you tell me?

I’m not talking about just regular dancing either. I’m not talking about the slow motion choir side-step that we’re OK with. You know the one: “robe to the right, robe to the left.” This wasn’t boring dancing.

This was raucous, reckless abandon, God-is-big-and-bright-and-beautiful dancing.

There were skirts that had coins tied to them that spun around and made noise. There was clapping and laughing and that color of blue you see on Greek diner coffee cups. And when the sun went down, there was fire.

Not a small circle of fire people stepped into like Johnny Cash, there was a huge ring of fire that people danced inside. They had fire! They literally danced in fire and kicked their legs and did all the fun things Footloose tried to tells us were awesome all those years ago.

I didn’t get to have a first dance at my wedding because the church we were married in didn’t allow dancing. No father-daughter dance. No uncle embarrassing himself to Fergie’s “Fergilicious” dance.

OK, that last one was a pretty good thing to avoid, but don’t make me quote the verse where David dances in the OT to get this thing in motion.

I don’t know if you’re reading this blog or if you ever listen to my pleas. But if you do, if you’re still out there, can we take a vote? At the next convention, in addition to talking about how every church should buy the Stuff Christians Like book in bulk, can we please form some sort of Greek Dance Committee? I’ll volunteer to do some more reconnaissance. We could all get nicknames like “Gyro” and “Orzo.”

And then we’ll hold festivals too and get Hillsong United Greece to play at them. This idea has legs, and those legs are ready to spin around in a ring of dance fire.

Sincerely yours,

Jon

Question: 
Are you with me on this?

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years,

The short story is they started a parade in their neighborhood. And the only rule is that no one is allowed to watch, but anybody can participate.

That sounds silly, but years later hundreds of people have joined this New Year’s Day tradition and discovered the joy of being in a parade with lots of lots of people you love.

This year, the Grand Marshal was a boy named Rodrick from Uganda who has an amazing story.

Bob’s son Richard made a short video about the experience. I thought it was beautiful and perfectly shareable for a Saturday such as this one.

The Clap Offering – By Ben Cotten

I grew up in a non-denominational church that did “modern” worship before it was cool. Granted, what we did wasn’t exactly Hillsong United, but it did involve an overhead projector and a PA system. It was the 7-11 approach to worship music. 7 words, sung 11 times. Remember “I Exalt Thee”? Ever heard that song done 11 times with a polka beat? You haven’t lived.

A lot of things have changed since then, but one thing has not.

The Clap Offering.

When the worship band finishes a song, it never feels like it should end. We never know quite what to do with our hands during that moment. If we were attending a performance, we would clap for the band during that awkward dead air. It’s what we do at rock shows. We congratulate the band on a good performance by clapping. Or, alternatively, we clap for the performers to make them feel better about a bad performance, as is the case at your daughter’s dance recitals.

But at church, we aren’t supposed to be performing. Yet, we feel this compulsion to clap. We can’t help it. We find ourselves clapping, then realize we can’t clap for the band so someone will shout “Let’s give a clap offering to the Lord! Hurray!”

Uhhh… whah? I’m no Jesus, but I don’t know how impressed He’ll be by my sacrificial slapping of skin together. Or does Jesus really appreciate a good clap? Does it make Him feel better about Himself when I say, “Way to go, Jesus. Nice job”?

And, I’m confused. What makes a good clap offering? What’s the difference between one that may be “acceptible to the Lord only because of grace” and one that He really likes? How would the apostle Paul clap? Is there a clap offering technique to be practiced during Sunday School classes? What if I do the cheerleader clap, with both palms cupped and hitting together? Does that count as worship leading?

Do I get extra “points” for the over-the-head, rock-n-roll band front-man clap while bobbing my head? What if I turn to the audience and start waving my hands up and down, palms up like a gangsta chanting, “Give it up! Give it up! A clap offering. Give it up! Give it up!” I may not be clapping myself, but I am releasing others into their clap callings. Disciples make disciples, after all.

What about the solitary and slow, yet building faster and louder clap? You know the one. It’s been featured at the climax of all great sports films. One guy takes a stand and begins clapping alone until others join him in a moving display of solidarity with the hero. It’s more dramatic than other claps, so does that make it better? You can combine this one with a standing ovation and a knowing nod to your neighbors too. Very versatile.

Or the famous golf clap? It’s soft, yet respectful.

What if I lost both my palms in a terrible handball accident and all I can do is snap my fingers? Is the “snap offering” a reasonable, if inferior, substitute for the clap offering? They say that, when you lose one sense, the others intensify. I bet there are some palmless people out there who can really snap like the dickens. Should they be excluded?

Maybe I’m over-thinking this though. Maybe I’m having a hard time taking the truth from my head to my heart and eventually my hands.

Or maybe it’s not the clap, but the heart behind the clap that matters.

(Did you give me a clap offering at the end there? That was a pretty dramatic left turn I took. Kind of a sprinkle of Serious Wednesday right there in the last line.)

Question:
Has your church ever done a “clap offering?”

(For more great stuff from Ben Cotten, read his blog or follow him on Twitter.)

And though it’s not Wednesday, I found two videos that captures that moment perfectly. Because along the way we all hear voices. Voices that tell us we’re not good enough for God. Or we’ve blown it too many times to ever step through the doors of a church. Or if we could just stop doing that thing we keep doing, God would be happy with us. Some of us have heard those voices so long they’ve become like soundtracks for our lives. But into that noise, into that clutter, I think God loves to speak the truth. I think he loves to give us our real name, our real identities, and our real freedom.

It reminded me of these videos. A bajillion people have seen them, and you might have too. The first is a girl who was born deaf, finally getting to hear for the first time at the age of 29. The second video of a deaf baby hearing for the first time, and the moment he smiles so big that he drops the pacifier is unbelievable.