Four years ago today, this blog started.
I started it because I grew up in the church and it always weirded me out that sometimes we Christians didn’t use our best creativity to celebrate who we believe is the Creator of all creativity.
We tend to take a popular idea from secular culture, sprinkle a little God flavor on it, and turn it into a church idea.
“Got milk?” becomes “Got God?”
and so on.
So when the satire site “Stuff White People Like” blew up, written by the talented Christian Lander, I got an idea.
“What if I talked about this problem by committing this problem?”
That would kind of be ironic or postmodern or other words I didn’t really understand the meaning of at the time.
So on March 21, 2008, I wrote the very first post:
Stuff Christians Like: #1. Putting a God Spin on Popular Secular Ideas.
I wrote 40 posts and backloaded them starting on January 1 so that you didn’t see 40 posts all crammed onto March 21.
I thought I would write about this concept for a week or two, and then drop it like the other 50 URLs I had registered on GoDaddy.com. (One can only wonder what would have happened if I had given my brilliant idea of ‘wordninja.com’ the old college try.)
I didn’t think anyone would read it, much like the other blogs I had started in the past. But then people started to. People like Katdish and Nick the Geek and Curtis Honeycutt and Stacy from Louisville and Hucklebuck and Bryan Allain. People started commenting and encouraging each other and laughing along with each other at all the silly things we do in the context of church and faith.
We even developed a mission:
“To clear away the clutter of Christianity so that we can see the beauty of Christ.”
That’s the only thing I’ve tried to do these last four years. (That and make you laugh.)
A lot has happened in the last four years. The blog got turned into a book
Normally, Wednesday is “Serious Wednesday,” a day you helped me develop and have encouraged me to continue. And next week, we’ll continue that tradition. But today, it felt right to stop for a second and tell you something I can’t possibly tell you enough:
Thank you.
Thank you for reading this blog.
Thank you for commenting with ideas that are often funnier than the actual post I’ve written.
Thank you for believing that SCL could be a book and then buying the book when it came out.
Thank you for supporting me, even during times when the writing wasn’t great and my focus on what mattered most was clearly lost.
And, most importantly, thank you for supporting the ministries Stuff Christians Like supports. You guys raised more than $100,000 with Samaritan’s Purse, SafeWorld and HelloSomebody.
Let me repeat that.
Stuff Christians Like readers raised over $100,000.
You built two kindergartens in the jungles of Vietnam. You sent 3,000 mosquito nets to Uganda. You sent 6 Rwandan young men through a leadership program.
That is so awesome that it makes my head spin.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
This is the moment in the Grammy acceptance speech when they start playing music so you’ll shut up. (Dave Grohl I wanted to hear what you had to say!)
Since I don’t have music, instead I’ll stop talking and share the 10 most popular posts in the last four years of Stuff Christians Like. (I’d say, “Here’s to four more years,” but that sounds like I’m running for president and not writing a satire blog. So here’s to tomorrow. I’m looking forward to seeing what the next year brings all of us on Stuff Christians Like.)
10 most popular SCL posts in the last 4 years:
1. Understanding how metrosexual your worship leader is.
3. Saying, “I’ll pray for you” and then not.
6. Running into famous Christians. (AKA “The Michael W. Smith” incident.)
7. Hand raising worship – The 10 styles
8. Surviving church as a single.
9. The side hug. (Had to write a disclaimer on this one.)
