Someone asked me that during a podcast last week and it was a good question. There is indeed a chapter titled that in the book. But when you write stuff like that in your kitchen you never really think someone with a melodic voice is going to ask you questions about it in a very serious manner. (The chapter focuses on calf implants, but you were thinking it was about boobs, weren’t you? You should be ashamed of yourself. I’ll pray for you.)

With the book coming out in about 2 weeks, weird things like that keep happening. And to tell you the truth, I’m getting kind of nervous. I’m starting to get a little worried that no one will buy it. What if it bombs? What if my first book was also my last book and I become like Daniel Powter, the singer of that song “Had a Bad Day?” I’ll probably have to start wearing a lot of knit hats, that guy was always wearing knit hats.

That was on my mind the other day while I was jogging. Specifically, I was thinking about how many copies I would sell. The number. The number. The number. I’m Hurley from the show Lost right now, obsessed with that stupid number on the hatch. But in the midst of thinking about that, I felt like God reminded me of something.

God’s math is different than my math.

In God’s economy, one heart recovered is massive and cause for celebration. One person’s homecoming is a reason to rejoice. Just one.

But we forget that. Maybe it’s the whole “doing things with excellence” movement. We’ve all gotten really caught up in making sure our churches are the best they can possibly be. Maybe it’s the economy, I read somewhere that 50 churches close their doors forever every single week. Maybe it’s just desperation, you can’t measure heart growth, so we get lost in far less significant numbers like attendance and blog traffic. I don’t know what the reason is we’ve so messed up God’s math, but I know I think of my family math differently.

For instance, my wife is going out of town this weekend with her friend Lori. (She’s leaving the kids with me, otherwise, I would be carrying around a mission trip machete and patrolling the house for cat burglars.) I will be in charge of our two daughters, L.E. and McRae. Now imagine if Jenny came back Sunday and I had lost McRae, our 4 year old, over the weekend. And when she said, “You lost McRae?” I answered by saying, “Relax, it’s only one person. That’s not a big deal. She’s just one person.”

That would be a huge deal. I didn’t lose a number on an excel spreadsheet, I lost McRae! Four year old, apply chapstick to her whole face, McRae! That would devastate our family. The number one would take on infinite importance. And I think that might be how God sees one person.

I think that might be how God sees the one person who showed up at your event. I think that might be how God sees the one neighbor you’ve been witnessing to. I think that might be how God sees the one person you think is actually listening during your small group.

I think that might be how God sees you.

You’re not a number or a stat. You’re Susan or Matt or McRae.

Because God’s math is different than ours.

If you’ve got something small that you wish was bigger, it’s OK. If you got one person instead of the 100 you were expecting, it’s OK. There’s nothing wrong with big groups or working as hard as you possibly can to grow something large. I attend and love my church of 25,000 and hope the book sells a bajillionty copies. But just be careful.

Don’t ever confuse the size of your ministry with the importance. God doesn’t.

And don’t ever think your safe return to his arms is any different than how I’d feel if McRae was lost and suddenly found again.

Though it has nothing to do with anything on this site, it’s funny, and I feel like funny is one of our core values. (Didn’t I sound all corporate there? Like we were going to push the envelope and collaborate on our synergy?)

I would love to hear what your caption would be for this hell cat in the comments.

Caption Please: ____________

Like leprechauns.

Can we get a ruling on those?

If you grew up in a land that did not discuss leprechauns and are unfamiliar with them, allow me to enlighten you.

A leprechaun is a fantastical creature that tends to be of Irish descent. They wear shoes with a curl at the end, which kind of look like Steve Maddens, and they are slippery. If you catch one, you get to keep its pot of gold. The most famous of the bunch is probably the guy from the Lucky Charms cereal. He is after all, magically delicious.

But as a Christian, am I supposed to have a solid opinion on leprechaun propaganda? I get that we’re not supposed to like witches and occult type of stuff, but what about little green men?

The reason I ask is that last week my 6 year old was assigned some leprechaun homework at school. Her kindergarten class was building “leprechaun traps.” So we glued and glittered a box that in my opinion would have bagged at minimum two to three medium sized leprechauns a day. (I read “Where the Red Fern Grows” so I know all about trapping critters.)

Should I have been upset about this assignment? Should I have protested the school, perhaps with a sign that read, “Green is Mean!” or “Leprechaun? My family says ‘Leprecan’t!’”

What do you think?

Are we down with the men in green?

Unfortunately, Matt Chandler is currently under the impression that he could beat me at arm wrestling. How do I know this? He told everyone on Twitter this silliness. You see a few days ago, I tweeted that I was having dinner with Brad Lomenick, the director of Catalyst and that I was going to ask if I could arm wrestle Matt Chandler for his spot at the conference.

Matt Chandler, who recently started getting treated for a tumor, responded, “I’m on gamma radiation, I would crush you bro.”

I wanted to turn that sentence into a t-shirt I loved it so much. I have been shot blocked by some “famous Christians” that want nothing to do with Stuff Christians Like, but here was Matt Chandler joking about his treatment and engaging in some verbal sparring. It made me want to move to Texas.

Although I was clearly disheartened at Matt Chandler’s misinformation, I have blogger arms and am currently huge, I was willing to forgive him once I heard his discourse on the recent angel movie, Legion.

It was brilliant and it touched on our obsession of angels, a topic I feel like I haven’t done a very good job describing. Especially since angels typically only come in 4 varieties:

1. Ferocious

The movie Legion is about angels coming to the earth to destroy mankind. God is upset and the angels are sent to wreak havoc on the sweaty masses. We like this intense depiction of angels as evidenced by everything from Peretti’s “This Present Darkness” to Christopher Walken’s “Prophecy.” (If you haven’t seen it, Viggo Mortenson, or Aragorn if you will, plays a terrifying satan. Best quote, “Little Tommy Daggett, how I loved listening to your sweet prayers every night. And then you’d jump in your bed, so I afraid I was under there. And I was!”)

2. Cuddly

Is there anything cuter than a chubby, cuddly angel stroking gingerly on a harp? I guess if you added a cat, wearing a tutu, that would make it cuter, but it’s hard to improve on the soft adorableness of a little cupid like angel floating softly in the sky above us. In 54% of all angel pictures or dolls or knick knacks they always look like they are on their way to or have just come from a tickle fight with other angels.

3. Bumbling

Clarence in “It’s a Wonderful Life” was the most bumbling, clutzy angel I’ve ever seen. He needed his wings. He couldn’t figure things out. He was like your crazy, drunk uncle at Thanksgiving. But we still love him.

4. Nicholas Cage

Surprisingly enough, this is the fourth type of angel we most often enjoy. In the movie “City of Angels” Hollywood introduced us to an entirely new form of angel, the Nicholas Cage. Gravel voiced, prone to expensive bankruptcy settlements and awesome comic book collections, the Nicholas Cage angel is a creature all to itself. This angel is often denoted by his penchant for Goo Goo Dolls music.

Those are the four most common angels I know of, but surely I missed one. Surely, right this second, a different one is fluttering about your imagination. Land it here good friend, land it here.

What’s your favorite type of angel? What do you think about angels?

So after 800 folks responded to my offer to write a guest post on their blog, I got an idea. What if we created the world’s largest blog post? What if we created one massive scorecard, with hundreds of entries?

That sounds fun to me, so here’s what I think we could do. I want to do a massive post about how to spot a Christian on American Idol. Now that we’re down to the final 12 contestants, I think that revisiting this topic is critical.

Now since this is different from what we originally talked about doing, I don’t want to assume everyone who initially signed up for a guest spot will be into it. You might hate American Idol. Or scorecards. So I won’t just spam everyone who commented on my first offer of a guest post.

But if you are cool with this idea, just email me with “guest” in the subject line. Include the link to your blog. I will email you part of the scorecard. Then on Friday, April 2, you can post it. On Stuff Christians Like we’ll post links to all the people who participate. We’ll have a special giveaway for people who finish what might be a 500 blog long scorecard.

That’s the plan, if you’re in, email me by Wednesday, March 17 and let’s get it going.

I am continually grateful for your generosity. Thanks for praying yesterday during our first 24 hour prayer day.

We’ll do others.

Jon

Today, starting at 7AM eastern time, people from around the world will be praying about the requests people left in the comments on this post and any new prayer requests that come in.

People from all over have volunteered to cover the hours of the day and the comments with prayer.

Let’s pray. Here is a link to hundreds of prayer requests. If you have a prayer request you would like someone to pray for, please post a comment on today’s post.

The list of people who will be praying is after the jump. (We’ll pretend daylight savings time is not happening until after we’re finished at 7AM Sunday morning.)

7:00AM = Toni, Jenny, Tracey, Paul, Jon

8:00 = Steffi, Jordan, Kim, TJ, Claygirlsings

9:00 = Nick, Alas, Rebecca C, Jennifer, Erin, Susan, Jess, Stephanie

10:00 = Donna, Kels, Brittany, Gina, Violet

11:00 = Alison, Rae, Cindy, Edna, Meg, Jon B., Cody

12:00PM = Aydan, Rayanne

1:00 = Caroline, Phillip, ldhrendur

2:00 = Emanon712, Stacy, cjnash06, huggiesgirl, Curtis Honeycutt, Christina08

3:00 = AymieJoi, Stacy from Louisville, Kena

4:00 = Kels07, melladp, mattstreasure, Breanne

5:00 = Brittany, penny broome, miriam

6:00 = evambrose, Sarah

7:00 = Rebekah, Rachel

8:00 = Honeylove

9:00 = Persio, Malin

10:00 = Dawngreen, Connie, Mina

11:00 = Rebecca, Shannon, Becky Miller, Hope

12:00AM = B. Marie, Megan, Dianne

1:00 = Miss Ashley, tsholom, shelley, Quirky, Stretch Mark Mama

2:00 = Squinancywort, Raven, Dan

3:00 =Rebeccamh, onejarofclay, zacinator, Val, Sarah S.

4:00 = Scott, Katy, Peter

5:00 = eastern ky pastor, Gina, Jennifer, Tanya, Jenochej

6:00 = Charmaine, Angela, James

For those of us that have been to a Christian conference, retreat or youth camp in the last decade, we know the power of the Tangible Sermon Reminder. The TSR usually occurs when multiple speakers are up against each other, all vying for your inordinately short attention span and space in your pre-worn journal. We’ve all been victim of the TSR and it usually takes the form of a small, post-sermon giveaway that is meant to drive home the sermons’ main point.

As Christians, we don’t remember any of the sermons we’ve heard in the last ten years but I ALWAYS remember the TSRs.

Traditionally, the TSR comes in many forms. It can be as simple as a small cross or as complex as a bracelet with six different colored beads on it, all representing a different stage of the roman road.

But with TSR competition heating up in the last several years, Christian conference speakers have taken TSR use to new heights. It usually happens after the closing prayer (any earlier and the speaker could risk loosing the attention of the audience) and it typically comes in the form of a small trinket or memento. Before you’re inspired to change your life as a result of this gift, keep in mind that it was purchased with your tithe.

Now, everyone please look under your chair and find out the three most common TSR’s of 2009.

THE NAIL:

Most common use: reminder for what Christ did on the cross, reminder of the consequences of sin.

Pros: cheap, easy to find, can send the youth intern to Home Depot to make this purchase.

Cons: will be confiscated at airport security, cannot be used with children under 13, could result in tetanus.

Application: put it on a necklace, hang it from your rearview mirror.

THE PROMISE RING:

Most common use: reminder that true love waits, reminder that perfect love is a circle…it never ends.

Pros: Girls can use it to deflect the advances of guys from the college ministry.

Cons: Christian who have ‘made mistakes’ in the past can’t have one.

Application: Wear it on your right ring finger.

THE ROCK:

Most Common use: reminder that Jesus is our rock, reminder that their are “goliaths” in our life that we need to kill.

Pros: Can be purchased by the pound, multiple rocks provide entertainment for A-D-D kids during ministry time.

Cons: makes really loud noises in the laundry when you leave it in your pants pocket, kids confuse Jesus with Dewayne Johnson (the wrestler).

Application: Put in on your mantle, use it as a cubicle decoration.

THE PUZZLE PIECE:

Most Common use: reminder that we’re are all part of the Christian body, reminder that we are worthless unless we have the other parts.

Pros: recyclable, no individual resale value.

Cons: only comes in quantities of 1000 or 3000, youth group kids try to fit their puzzles pieces together and when they find a match the guy says, ‘God must want us to hook up.’

Use: stick it to your bathroom mirror, tape it to the inside cover of your bible/journal.

Have you ever been TSRed?

Pastors are always looking for new TSR ideas, any suggestions?

I found that using the phrase “If by” was the perfect little sarcastic twist to add to an otherwise normal sentence. When someone would ask me a question, I would answer like this:

“Am I thirsty? No. If by ‘no’ you mean, “I could drink an ocean of grape kool-aid right now!”

See? It wasn’t even funny, but I got so tangled up in it. Before long, I was using the “If by” phrase dozens of times of day. Friends and family members became concerned. Small children and dogs could sense something was wrong with me. Very bad season really, but I recovered. And I think we as a community can too.

Recover from what?

From making Old Testament Bible themed jokes about the new tablet from Apple.

If you’ve never heard one of these jokes, then you are living a pretty good life my friend. You really are.

The jokes are simple, most humor viruses usually are. At the core is comparing the Apple tablet to the tablets Moses brought down with the Ten Commandments chiseled on them. That’s it. Easy. But things never stay that way.

What starts as one little joke spirals out of control until someone is doing a mildly witty twitter stream about the new “iMoses.” (You know who you are, you know who you are.)

So today I want to declare joke amnesty. This stops right here, right now. Let’s get it out of our system. Let’s come together as a community and get out any and all iPad Bible related jokes we have and then let’s walk away. Not mad, just walk away.

So let’s have it.

If you’ve got a bad Christian joke, let loose. I declare today, “Bad Christian Joke” amnesty day. Share it and then just walk away. Let it go. Don’t look back.

What’s your bad Christian joke?

there will be rocks.

When you speak to someone or blog to someone, they are often holding rocks in their hands. The rocks are built of all the negative experiences they’ve ever had with the idea you’re trying to tell them about. I think this is true of everything from faith to organized sports. As you talk to them, they hold their rock, a rock composed of a dad that forced them to play baseball even though they hate it. They hold a rock composed of a church they fell in love with only to have the pastor have an affair. They hold a rock full of all the conversations they’ve had with hypocrites and liars who once shared the same idea you are.

And they want to throw it at your idea. To unleash that rock.

The temptation Christians face often is to pretend that rock isn’t there. There’s a weird dynamic that we believe. We sometimes think that if we admit the church fails or that Christians fail, it means that God fails. So instead of admitting the rocks are there, we ignore them. Or we try to come up with excuses for them or shine them up or dress them up.

But I think that’s the wrong thing to do.

What I’ve learned is that the best thing to do is to confess those rocks are there. To get off your platform, whether in a one on one conversation or on a blog, and stand beside the person and say honestly, “Hey, you’ve got a rock in your hand. It’s a rock that I helped put their with my own hypocrisy and mistakes.” And then, once you’ve said that, once you’ve built a relationship that is real, I think you can ask them for the rock. You can say, “Can we talk about that rock? And while we talk, can I hold it for you?”

You know what happens when they give you their rock? Their hands are open and empty. They can now hold something new in those hands. Something like truth and mercy and grace. You can hand them something new when they hand you something old.

There will be rocks, but that’s OK.

We serve a Christ who knows a thing or two about moving rocks.