I visited a new church last Sunday.

Visiting churches can be scary.  But my wife and I were out of town on Sunday, and I don’t believe in skipping worship just because God has blessed us with the means to go on vacation.  (Plus, God gives extra points for vacation church, and extra extra points for bragging about it.)  So we drove down the street and picked a church based solely on their meeting time. 

I’ve visited many churches and experienced many types of worship.  But I had forgotten how long it had been since I was outside my comfort zone.  The people were friendly and all that.  Though the pastor and praise team were absolutely not comfortable with any stray moment of silence.  They were saying, “Praise the Lord,” and “Thank you, Jesus,” like it was a nervous, spastic tic, even when it made no sense.  This continued on for an hour and a half, at the end of which my wife and I were saying, “Sweet Jesus, let’s get out of here and eat lunch!”

It reminded me how diverse worship is, and how I’m only comfortable with a small slice of it.  Really, a lot of worship makes me uncomfortable.  I want to emphasize that I have nothing against Christians who worship differently than me.  I’m just uncomfortable around them.  So I started wondering if I should just be more comfortable with Christians who worship differently from me, or if they should take a seat and not draw so much attention to themselves. 

I came up with five types of Christian worshippers.  Which one are you?

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Hey everyone!  I’m glad to be back home and ready to fire up the blog again. 

Some of you may know that I’m looking for a new teaching job because I’m a bi-vocational pastor and my current job is a dead-end that I’m totally overqualified for.  Sadly, over the last couple of years, the selection has been pretty slim when it comes to the job market.  In fact, my vacation was punctuated by phone calls from principals rejecting me for jobs I applied for.  It’s not like these are high-profile jobs either, which kind of messes with your mind when you get repeatedly turned down for pretty basic jobs.

Anyway, in my never-ending search for better employment, I’ve decided to try a new tactic.  Most job seekers check out Craig’s list or they decide they want to follow in the footsteps of some famous person or role model.  I decided to look up some famous people, and see what jobs they held before they were famous.  Everyone knows that before Kurt Warner was winning the Superbowl, he was bagging groceries (and now after he won the Superbowl.)  But there had to be tons more stories I could try to replay in my life.  Maybe if I follow the same career path as some famous person, I could wind up in the same place as them in a few years.  Worth a shot, right?

I think I found five sure-fire ways to land a dream job.

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Today, I’m wrapping up my countdown of the best posts from my blog.  Today’s post continues to garner the my blog the most Google searches.  Something about the copious use of the word “porn.”  Anyway, it’s one of my favorites, but I’m truly sorry for all the people who have mistakenly come to my blog when they wanted something else.  This post originally appeared September of 2009.

First, if you’re looking for porn, I apologize, because there will be a lot of you who will be disappointed. You can’t use this stuff. It’s too hard, too weird, too unnatural for anyone’s deviant taste. This porn is only for Christians. If you’re not into the freaky religious stuff, you’ll be disappointed and probably grossed out, making it impossible to enjoy any other porn for the rest of the day.

But if you’re a Christian, have I got something for you. Christians don’t like porn, (except for the millions who secretly do like porn.) But I’ve got the best porn for Christians. This thought came to me when a reader was soliciting suggestions for blogging topics. They stipulated “no Joel Osteen and no porn.” And naturally, I put the two in the same box…

Four Reasons the Prosperity Gospel is Christian Porn

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Today, I bring you the counterpart to Monday’s post, in my countdown of the best of my blog while I’m out of town.  This post was originally inspired by reader comments.  It seemed unfair that Jesus could be the role model for perfect men, but the ladies were left out.  Plus, with so many girls claiming Jesus as their “boyfriend,” I wondered if Jesus could be a good girlfriend, if only he were a woman.  This post originally appeared May of 2009.

Jesus was a real man. We established that on Monday.  But of course, it doesn’t matter how “manly” (by our standards) Jesus really was (though he was pretty manly.) What’s important is how we represent him with our lives.

I’m glad to agree that we don’t need a hyper-masculine Jesus, because as it turns out, Jesus would’ve made a pretty fine woman too.

Jesus is a great example for guys to follow as men, as boyfriends and husbands. But where does that leave the ladies? Guess what? It looks like Jesus, if he were a chick, would make a pretty rockin’ girlfriend.  That makes sense, since he, well, created women.  Behold, Jesus’ perfect feminine mystique.

Jesus: The Perfect Woman in 5 Steps

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Today begins week two of counting down my favorite blog posts while I’m out of town.  Today’s and Wednesday’s posts are two of my favorites, and the reactions they got ran the full gamut of “high fives” to “you’re going to hell.”  And even the people who liked the posts all interpreted them in different ways.  So here it is, a little touched up for those of you who may have missed them, and for my long time readers who originally commented on them.  This post originally appeared May of 2009.

Something’s wrong with our Jesus.

For a long time, the number of women and children in church has greatly outnumber the dudes. Why is this? I think it’s partly because guys don’t think they can relate to Jesus. We’ve painted him as this meek, wobbly spined little guy who wasn’t a real man. Thus, church is a place for women and children and weak men, the kind of people Jesus related to.

Wrong.

Jesus was a real man. A man’s man. The kind of guy who, if he weren’t the Son of God, would help you fix your roof, would bring steaks over for a barbecue, and throw down if some drunk guy was asking for it. In fact, Jesus was the father of all ‘real men.’ All real men are just copying Jesus in some way. Jesus had many sides to him, but today, we’re only focusing on the one that gets ignored too often. Behold, the raw power of Jesus’ perfect masculinity.

Jesus: A Real Man in Five Steps

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Now we’re on a roll!  I’m continuing to scour my archives in search of my favorite blog posts while I’m out of town through next week.  Today, I’m bringing you the all-time most widely read posts I’ve ever written.  And the thing is, I put off writing these posts for over a year!  Originally a three part series back in July of 2009, today you get the condensed version.

I was part of a church that died.

What made it even more painful was that my family had planted the church. My Dad was the pastor.

Despite our best intentions, our plans, our prayers, the church did not just die, but was killed. It was as if no matter how many times we put Satan on notice to leave us alone, he kept sending the exact wrong people to our doorstep. The church wasn’t killed all at once one day, but over some years as each person came in, chipped away at us, and left.

Ten People Who Will Kill Your Church

The Musician

I know there’s a lot of musicians who read this blog, so I’ll just ask you directly. Why are so many of you a bunch of whiny, insecure-yet-pretentious prima donnas? Honestly, we had a string of musicians all the way back to the beginning of the church who felt they were much more talented, worth more money, and more indispensable than they ever could hope to be. I’ll take an average musician with a good attitude any day over these characters.

The musicians killed the church because the church believed they were indispensable.  Wrong. Try having worship without music. People did it for centuries, and still do it.

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