As I’ve confessed before, my wife drives us home from church and I sit in the back seat with the kids. We do this because we go to a megachurch and until construction of a new bridge is finished, our church parking lot is akin to Mad Max and the Terrordome. Also, I’m a jerk and have the distinct ability to cut someone off mere minutes after hearing a sermon about grace.
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Last week, I told my wife that it would be appropriate, dare I say “loving” of her to get me an iPad for Father’s Day. Her response? She laughed. It wasn’t a mean laugh, it was more of a giggle that seemed to say, “An iPad? That is adorable. Should I buy it with one of our offshore Cayman Islands bank accounts Lord Featherton?”
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I want to, want to be crazy about the World Cup.
Seriously, my desire to actually desire the World Cup is off the charts.
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I am what the Dutch call “web dumb.” When people email and ask how they can subscribe to Stuff Christians Like, how they can get an RSS feed or get the posts via email my usual response is “So, the webscapes can do that now? Far out!”
Seriously, let’s look at my online track record:
1. The domain name for this site was taken so I registered a new name with a typo in it.
2. Not understanding Twitter, I register myself as “ProdigalJohn.” Only my name is Jon, so that’s kind of a typo and a guarantee that none of my friends can search for me.
3. On facebook, I decide to go with “Jonathan Christopher” as my name creating further confusion. (That’s my first name and middle name.)
4. I allow a 1957 Chevy dealer to take the .com version of this website.
All in all, I find that I tend to have the web skills of an 1840’s prospector.
That’s why when it came to redesign this site I hired an expert named John Saddington. It’s also why when the church I attend, North Point Community Church, announced they were starting an online church I was completely confused. I clearly want to seem postmodern and relevant so when I heard they were launching northpointonline.tv I had two choices:
1. I could nod my head and pretend I understood what online church was all about. (This is a technique I often do in conversations so that I don’t look stupid.)
2. I could ask a bunch of questions.
Faking it is kind of exhausting and would make for a really boring post, so I decided to go with option number 2 and ask a bunch of questions.
Since North Point often sends out emails called, “A note from Andy Stanley” (the pastor of my church) I thought I would address the questions directly to him. (This is horrible, but every time I see the subject line “A note from Andy” in my inbox, I think to myself, “Andy finally emailed me! I bet he wants me to go on tour with him and Craig Groeschel, or maybe play flag football with him and Rick Warren or at the bare minimum he’s agreed to endorse the Stuff Christians Like book!”)
So here are my questions for Andy Stanley about online churches, or maybe they’re for you if you’re smarter than me about the whole online church movement:
1. If I’m watching a sermon online and I open up another window and answer some emails at the same time, is that a sin? Isn’t that the cyber equivalent of doodling in your bulletin? If I have a really big monitor, does that change your answer?
2. What if the emails are from people I’m in a Bible Study with, so technically speaking, I’m participating in fellowship? Ohh curveball.
3. Do I have to stand up when the worship leader calls us to our feet?
4. If I don’t like the worship songs that day, can I DJ myself with some songs I like from iTunes?
5. If I have a bad connection or the wrong version of flash or my computer crashes, is it safe to assume that I can blame that on the devil? If so, can I put him on notice?
6. How long can I pause the sermon, go do chores/answer the phone/find more comfortable socks to wear etc. and then come back without it seeming like I’ve left church?
7. There are only two occasions in which I wear a belt: A business meeting at work where I want to look smart and church. Do I have to wear a belt to attend online church?
8. Is it weird if I’m still shy about singing with my hands raised during online church? Should I still be doing the ninja in my own home? Is that something a counselor can help me with?
9. If I watch the sermon on a podcast, do you mind if I fast forward through the first few minutes of the sermon where you recap last week’s message for the people that weren’t there?
10. Someone once told me they consider eating at Chick-Fil-A to be tithing. Now that I’m using my computer to attend church, can I consider a new Mac purchase to be like one big, silvery cool tithe?
11. Will you please not cut off the podcast before or in the middle of the closing prayer? People at home like closing prayers too. (I’m talking to you Matt Chandler.)
12. Is there anyway that you could create a frame around the video player that has a graphic of someone giving someone else a back massage during church, someone coughing and the heads of the tall family I inevitably manage to sit behind every Sunday so that the experience will feel more authentic?
Those are the questions I have for Andy Stanley. And for you.
Does your church have an online version?
Would you have asked something different than me?
What do you do online when it comes to church? Blogs? Podcasts? Video sermons?
Are you currently doing anything church related online?
So many questions!
A few weeks ago, a guy in the front row winced during a speech I was making during a wedding rehearsal dinner. I had been asked by my in-laws to help emcee their youngest daughter’s rehearsal dinner, to help make sure that there weren’t any long pauses when no one was making toasts and to keep any ramblers from going on and on. So I told the crowd what would happen if that went on too long during their toast. I forget my exact words, but I think they were something like,
“If you start to ramble and lose your way during the speech, I’m either going to slowly come up beside you, put my arm around you and thank you for speaking in the middle of whatever sentence you’re in or I’m going to stand up and start clapping as a signal that it’s go time.”
I was the hook man, that was my job and apparently a guy in the front row was not a fan. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him wince painfully and tightly wrap his fingers around the handle of his steak knife for what I can only assume was for stabbing purposes at that point.
OK that last part was an exaggeration, the crowd that night certainly wasn’t that tough and looking back on it, they were pretty easy to work with. They pale in comparison to the toughest crowd of all – the early church service crowd.
This is the crowd who hours before much of mankind is awake, has decided to get showered, dressed, and ready for church. It’s 8:30AM, they’re sitting quietly in rows with a blank stare on their face and an early morning glaze on their eyes.
I know all about that crowd because my wife and I attend the first service at North Point Community Church and one of my favorite things about doing that is seeing how the announcements guy or worship leader tries a “wake up” technique. There are several good ones to pick from:
5 techniques to wake up an early morning crowd:
1. Tell us we’re better than the other services.
Go on, butter us up. Tell us, “I love the early morning crowd. First service worships the loudest and is so engaged in the experience.” Create a sense of competition between us and those heathens waking up at 10 to go to church. They’re so lazy! We’re so not! I can feel the adrenaline of team unity surging through me right now. Success, I’m awake!
2. Remind us we’ve had coffee.
Sometimes we just need to be reminded that there’s coffee coursing through our veins right this very second. When you say, “Good morning, everyone ready to worship? Everyone had their morning coffee and ready to make a loud noise?” It helps us remember that there might still be a cup right in front of us on the floor. We should take a sip. Right now, we should do that. Thanks for the subliminal coffee cup message.
3. Pretend morning is God’s favorite time too.
Quote a verse from Psalms about God being a big fan of mornings and that will make us feel 14% better about how tired we are. Say, “There’s something about a sunrise that helps me remember God’s love for us, something about the stillness of an early morn that brings God to mind.” Try Psalm 90:14, that one works like a charm.
4. Make us stretch or have an awkward conversation with a seat neighbor.
If you feel like we’re really dead, that there’s absolutely no energy in the room, you might have to get us to stand up and wave our arms around to get the blood flowing. If that doesn’t work, ask us to tell the person next to us what we did last night. Introverts will suddenly be filled with the adrenaline of nervousness and extroverts will suddenly be filled with the excitement of a chance to over share. Win, win.
5. Berate us.
This is a worst case scenario here. If you ran through all four attempts and we’re still doe eyed and slumbertastic, secretly hoping there will be a long period of quiet reflection during the service so that we can grab a quick cat nap, feel free to berate us a little. From a faith angle you can say, “We serve a big, loud God. You need to wake up and shout to the Lord!” From a competitive angle you can say, “Second service destroyed you guys last week as far as worship goes. Do you want that to happen again?” Or just make something crazy up and say, “Every time an early morning crowd doesn’t sing, an angel loses its wings.”
Hopefully the next time you go to an early morning service you’ll be so awake the church staff won’t have to use any of these five techniques. But if you’re not, if you find yourself slouching and sliding lower and lower into your seat as the service starts at least you won’t be surprised when the worship leader tells you the third service gets their worship on way better than you.
Have you ever experienced a “come on, wake up” technique at church?
Did I forget to add one to this list?
No one ever bangs the mic during the announcements portion of Sunday service and says, “Is this thing on?” or ends the whole thing by shouting, “You’ve been a great crowd. Make sure you take care of your ushers!” But they should, because occasionally the people that make the announcements treat the whole thing like an open mic night at a comedy club.
Something about the power of the mic and the heat of a spotlight tends to transform normal looking members of the church into comedians or even would be pastors. What was supposed to be a simple, “There’s a gravy jamboree this Thursday night in the Community Hall” somehow morphs into a def jam comedy session which must just be excruciating for the pastor to watch. During those moments, I have to imagine pastors are silently thinking, “If I threw a hymnal from where I am sitting, would it be possible for me to: A. Knock him out cold? B. Get the drummer to help me carry the body back to the pews?”
How do you stop this phenomenon? Certainly the first step is prevention, you simply ask the right people to do announcements. But even that’s not flawless because you don’t know 100% how someone is going to act on stage. The mic and a crowd do unexpected things to people. But even if we can’t avoid it, maybe we can recognize it quickly and eliminate it by looking for these warning signs.
Signs your announcements are about to jump the tracks:
1. The Daily Show
This is probably the most common joke format and takes its name from the popular satire news program, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” In this approach, the person reading the announcements tries to add a “zinger” after every bit of news they share. For instance, “The singles retreat will be held on Labor Day at Destin Beach, Florida. A retreat for singles? What are they retreating from? I’m the one with four kids. I should be down on that beach, am I right?” (This may or may not involve someone saying “Yowza!” after each item in the announcements.)
2. “That reminds me.”
This is the kiss of death phrase when it comes to announcements. When someone says this, what they’ve really just said is, “I want to reflect on what I just read with some ideas, insights and general rambling that is so off script it will make your teeth hurt. I’ve segued out of the ‘volunteer for VBS’ message using the phrase ‘that reminds me’ and will now be sharing something I learned recently in Leviticus.” If you are a pastor you should get 42% sweatier if you ever hear this phrase during a series of announcements.
3. No notes
You want your announcer to have a note card. Andy Stanley doesn’t even try to memorize the announcements, but like riding a bike with no hands, some people want to show off and go up there without any notes. Usually, midway through, they end up running into a metaphorical mailbox right after they silently yell, “Look mom, no hands!”
4. The Bermuda Triangle of “I said ‘good morning'”
If you’ve never spoken publicly before please, please heed these words of warning: never, ever enter into a Bermuda triangle of double greeting. You think it will be light and playful, there are probably “how to preach” books that encourage people to ask the crowd to repeat the phrase “good morning” if the first one wasn’t loud enough as an icebreaker, but fight that temptation. If your guiltfest “I said ‘good morning'” doesn’t work the first time then you’ll think you need to do it a second time and if the good morning you receive is progressively smaller than the original response you’re just traveling down hill at that point. You’ll keep doing it until finally it’s only one guy in the fifth row saying “good morning” and there’s a big bail of tumbleweed made of leftover palm branches from Easter rolling across the stage as you awkwardly wait for a good morning that just isn’t coming. (Cue lonesome harmonica.)
5. The sermon audition
Whenever I get into an elevator at work with an important executive, a recognition I can usually make based on the crispness of the pleats in their pants, I am tempted to make an elevator speech. I am tempted to say something so wise and insightful and awesome that right on the spot they say, “How would you like a raise and an office with a door and a new project that involves filming the follow up to Breakin’ 2, Electric Boogaloo? We’ll call it “Breakin’ 3, Rise of the Worm?” And the same thing happens sometimes when you give an overly ambitious person the task of providing the announcements. We think it’s a sermon audition. We think, “This is my one shot. Don’t mess it up Jon. In fact, you better lose yourself in the music, the moment. You own it, you better never let it go. You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow. This opportunity comes once in a lifetime.” And then your palms get sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy. There’s vomit on your sweater already, mom’s spaghetti. You’re nervous, but on the surface you look calm and ready, to drop bombs. But maybe that’s just me. And people from 8 mile.
At North Point Community Church, where I attend, staff members do all the announcements so unfortunately I don’t get to see most of these warning signs. And we don’t use hymnals so I couldn’t throw a glancing blow even if I wanted to.
How about you though?
What’s the funniest thing you’ve ever seen happen during the announcements at church?
I didn’t intend to become a hand dancer. Looking back on the path that brought me here, the steps I took were small. The warning signs quiet, the telltale marks of hand dancery subtle. I didn’t wake up one Sunday Morning and boldly declare, “Today at church, during worship, I’m going to hand dance!” It just kind of happened.
Our church is not really conducive to flat out dancing in the aisles. They’re pretty tight rows and although I’ve definitely seen some serious swaying, I’ve never seen anyone get down, really just let loose and like the Black Eyed Peas sing, “step on leprechauns.” (I’m not sure if that phrase technically means “dancing” but I’m trying to look relevant so please pretend that it does.)
But some Sundays, the rhythm gets me, much like Gloria Estefan warned me so many years ago. So when I stand up to worship and Steve Fee unleashes some sort of insanely awesome song and I feel the funk in my feet and hear that tiny voice inside say, “Do the robot, do the robot,” the only way I can quiet that inner tiny dancer is to channel it all to my hands. Which isn’t difficult, because if my hands are not engaged doing the ninja worship move, they’re resting lightly on the back of the chair in front of me.
Suddenly they start to tap.
“Hey, look at us, we’re keeping rhythm on the back of this chair,” they think. “What if in the second verse we switched it up and tried a little freestyle? Ohhh let’s pretend to breakdance and pass a mini wave from one hand up the shoulders across the neck and back down the other arm. Feeling it, feeling it. Go ahead shorty. It’s your birthday.”
I try to clap my hands instead but no one likes to be the only guy in a 25-person radius that is trying to clap along to a song. (And trying to clap along in beat to a fast Steve Fee song is like trying to catch flies with chopsticks. If those flies happen to be on meth and your chopsticks are made of wet spaghetti. It’s impossible.) So without a clap to fall back on I get lost in a moment of hand dancingness.
I want to stop, but it’s too late. Like Philip, the pop n’ locker on So You Think You Can Dance, I start to break it down, using the back of the seat in front of me like the customized cardboard mat me and my friends used to breakdance on in the fourth grade. It’s over. There’s no turning back. I’m hand dancing.
If you ever see me at North Point Community Church, please don’t stare directly into the hand dance, it’s like looking at the sun. You’ll get blinded by the brilliance.
Am I the only one that does this?
What do you do with your hands when you sing songs at church?
Happy Fourth of July weekend. Even though this is an American holiday, I thought it might be good to repost an idea about a church service phenomenon that I think happens internationally as well as in the US. (This is also the answer to the question, “Where did the Skittles thing come from?”)
This post is probably going to happen to you this Sunday if you live in America. Or maybe on the Sunday before Anzac day in Australia. Or perhaps even on the Sunday before Victoria Day if you live in Canada. Wherever you are, just be ready, be warned, be prepared for candies to rain down because some pastors actually did this at their churches after reading this when it was posted last year.
Fresh stuff returns Monday when I’m back from Blowing Rock, North Carolina.
Until then, I give you
The “everyone is on vacation, everything goes” church service.
It is a poorly kept secret that the day before a big holiday, whether you live in Cleveland or Croatia, your church is going to do things a little differently than on most Sundays. That is, with a large portion of the congregation out on vacation, they’re going to mix it up a little.
For instance, at a lot of churches, the younger ministers are always asked to preach the day before Memorial Day. Senior pastors know that it’s a lot safer to have some rough around the edges minister saying something crazy to 400 people instead of the 800 people that usually attend. Same goes with music. Go this Sunday (in the United States) and you’re bound to see some guy that’s always been in the background of the stage step forward for a totally unexpected guitar solo. Or a woman that’s always wanted to lead worship will suddenly be behind the mic for the first time.
I call it “Day Before Vacation Syndrome” or DBVS.
And because I am a huge dork and it’s roughly 800 degrees right now in Alpharetta, Georgia, I thought I would offer a few suggestions for ways you can avoid DBVS at your church:
1. Controversy
Since a lot of folks won’t be in church because they are out on vacation, use this opportunity to address all of the most controversial issues. Talk about politics, money, and anything else that otherwise would get the crowd riled up and upset. That way, whenever someone says, “I wish this church was not so seeker focused and dealt with some of the tough issues,” you can reply “You must have not been here for stemcellobamadrugssex Sunday.”
2. Snakes
Ever thought about incorporating some pit vipers into your service? Why not on the Sunday when everyone is out of town? I don’t know where you can buy a “bag o’ rattlers” but surely someone near you sells poisonous snakes. By the way, I don’t mean to be selfish, but it would really help me out if someone could invite me to a church service where they handled snakes. I’m dying to write about that but won’t unless I’ve actually gone to a service.
3. Church Sumo Wrestling
At every church there are little church politics that no one wants to talk about. The worship minister wants to do more modern songs than the pastor will allow. The elders think the pastor needs to do more old testament and less 30 Rock references. The janitor is still mad at everyone over the “glue incident” of 1978. Get those big blow up sumo costumes you can rent, a huge tube of bootleg jello (this a church after all) and then have everyone settle their differences. How cool would it be to see the super happy pastor’s wife leg drop the super grumpy elder that is always a jerk to her husband?
4. Skittles
Why not throw skittles out during the service? Instead of saying, “watch this” or “listen to this” or another phrase that is designed to get people’s attention, why not throw handfuls of skittles at them? Wouldn’t you love to be hit in the side of the head with a bunch of fruit candy delightfulness? I would.
5. Weird instruments
Ever wondered what an accordion and triangle version of the song, “I can only imagine” would sound like? Got a kid in youth group that is really good at beat box? Do you need more cowbell but are afraid most people would hate it? Well they’re all on vacation. Get the accordion out, it’s go time.
6. Practice Christmas
Next to Easter, the Christmas service might be the most important one you do. So why not do a dry run in July and make sure everything goes well? Just consider it a practice. Do the candles with kids, hang some holly, sing carols, do the whole thing up and then that way, when the real Christmas rolls around you’ll be ready. Don’t tell anyone it’s a practice, just do it as if it’s a normal thing to do. The look on the face of your visitors and members that show up and find themselves singing “Oh Holy Night” in the middle of the summer will be worth it.
7. Haikus
Do the entire sermon in haiku. It’s not as hard as you think. Here’s an example: Jesus was so cool (5 syllables) He gave His life for our sins (7 syllables) Let’s be close to him (5 syllables)
8. Have an “SCL Sunday”
Why not throw a “Stuff Christians Like” service? We’ll play Sandi Patty and Carman songs. We’ll take a love offering and interlink our fingers when we hold hands. We’ll get a puppet group, named “Strings of Mercy,” to come do the Noah’s Ark story and then I’ll speak. It will be fantastic.I would do some pop and lock breakdancing in the hallway if my church North Point did any one of these ideas. If they don’t I’m going to do that mime move where you pretend to be stuck in an invisible box. Mime is the opposite of breakdancing.
p.s. There are two things that go without saying: 1. I can’t promise that your church will use any of these tips. 2. I can promise that the church I start, GracePointeLifeTruthHouseNorthRiverElevate, will use all of them.
Jon Acuff is the New York Times Bestselling author of four books including his most recent, Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average & Do Work that Matters. Read More…
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