Know what churches need more of?  Awesomeness. 

All the experts say the church is dying, maybe because churches are just too lame.  So congregations everywhere are scrambling around, trying to figure out how they can trick the masses into showing up.  Churches try to add new contemporary services, or have big events that aren’t church, but everyone likes them, or just try to do an image makeover to look more relevant.  Some attempts are really cool and original.  But a lot…well, I’m not sure what we’re doing, but it isn’t expanding God’s kingdom.

Here’s what I mean.

Qualification Fail

Here’s where a lot of churches start with their attempt to grab new people – hire a totally awesome new person.  If churches can just get someone that understands young people, and pop culture, and knows what on earth “Twitter” is, then obviously, we will have done enough, because it’s now that person’s job to reach young people.

I was a youth pastor for three years.  I got “hired” (I use the term loosely, because there was no money involved) on the qualification that I was 20 years old, I looked reasonably mature, and my involvement would mean no one else need concern themselves with the youth.  My age and awesomeness was supposed to be an asset in bringing in new kids to our youth group, as I was practically still a high schooler.

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Have you noticed that Christians can kind of overreact sometimes?

…Just once in a while.  Some television personality will make a slightly insulting comment about Christianity, or an organization will kind of make fun of Christians, or an artist will make a mildly blasphemous piece of art or music.

And some Christians will kind of, sort of overreact. 

Now, I just called Christians out on something that a lot of us do.  I know what you’re thinking already.  Some of you are thinking, “Overreact?  Christians don’t overreact at all!  HOW COULD YOU SAY THAT AND BE A CHRISTIAN?”

I see all the things out there that you do, people that degrade Christianity.  I get emails on a semi-regular basis from people making pretty amazing accusations about my life, thoughts, motivations, spirituality, maturity, and awesomeness.  It doesn’t matter how many I get, they mess with me a little bit.  I want to react negatively.  But it never does any good.

There’s a lot of ways that Christians can react to haters.  I’ve come to think that more than almost anything, people are defined by how they react to criticism.  There’s a lot of good ways.  And then there’s the ways that just reinforce all the negative stereotypes, the reactions that trip us up, make us failures.

Here’s my list of ways to fail at reacting to criticism.

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Summer vacation starts this week.

And, to be honest, I have mixed feelings about it.

I go through this every year.  When I was a kid, I loved summer vacation.  Nothing to do but sleep in, play video games, explore the creek, and blow up action figures with firecrackers. 

As an adult, as soon as I don’t have anything to do, I get kind of queasy.  I’m really afraid of “wasting” my day.  I literally feel that if I haven’t accomplished anything by 10 am, the day is a wash, and I have failed as a human being. 

The truth is I have plenty to do this summer.  I won’t be wasting my time…well not all of it.  But I’m afraid to waste time.  Maybe you’re like that too.  Maybe you’re like that and you just don’t know it.  Because I think more and more Christians today feel like failures for the simple reason that they feel they’ve wasted their day. 

I think I know why.  See if any of these fit you.

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Monday’s post was a huge failure.

Actually, I was pretty blown away by many of the responses as usual to the question of “what makes you feel like a failure.”  Turns out that, as usual, I was right and a lot more people feel like failures than internet chatter would have you believe.  All the boasting and bragging just makes a lot of people feel like they’re the only “failures” out there.

I think failure is such a big topic that I’m going to run with it.  Let’s talk about mistakes and failures and faux pas we make as Christians, ministers, parents, as people. 

Today’s fail topic is this:  Christians love to “hear from God.”  That means we pray to God, we sing songs, and we hope God will speak, tell us what to do, confirm something, “open a door” or give a blessing.  We think God is talking to everyone, because there’s so many people who seem to hear so clearly from Him, just like on Monday we talked about how God seems to be blessing everyone but us.

I’ve already told you that I think God is not giving out life plans like magic beans.  But I also think a lot of us are hearing less from God than we want to admit.  And because of that, we feel like failures.

Well, turns out God told me three things when it comes to hearing from Him.

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