When I was in middle and high school I spent a lot of time home alone. My mom worked crazy hours and my older brother joined the Air Force when I was in 8th grade. A million nights home alone will lead you past boredom. While I always kept the TV on so I didn’t feel alone I rarely watched it. (A habit I often fall back on today, to the annoyance of Kristen.) And there’s only so many nights in a row you can play video games before the loneliness of solo gameplay sets in.

In fact, there comes a point where boredom leads to creativity. Creative with things you can do alone. 

In those years I would take as long as I possibly could to eat meals. I’d take forever to cook it. Or I’d cook it out of order or one thing at a time. Anything to make it last longer and give me something to do.

One little food oriented fascination I had was with communion. I don’t know why but I’d play around with communion elements. I’d tear bread, or a tortilla, or a tortilla chip… and mimic the motions of communion that we’d do in church. I’d recite the verses, dip the bread, the whole nine yards.

I wasn’t mocking it and it wasn’t quite the real thing. Actually, I used to worry that it was sacrilegious. And I would never have told a soul about this back then. In fact, I’m a little nervous about writing about it today.

Here’s the thing: It wasn’t really communion. Sure, it was the motions of communion. I got a certain feeling during communion at church, one worth trying to replicate.

But you can’t do communion alone. Even if you nail the elements and the words and everything. Because you can’t do communion alone. 

The very word communion has the same root word as community, with a different suffix. Just like you can’t be in a community alone you can’t experience communion alone.

This is something for those of us in evangelicalism to wrestle with. We have a personal pronoun issue. Our relationship with Jesus is about communion, not ourselves. Communion with the Father, communion with the Son & Holy Spirit, and communion with one another. It isn’t about you it’s about we.

I’ve often found the way we evangelicals do communion to be a lonely shadow of the experience found in other types of churches. We have reshaped communion into being about me and my relationship with Jesus, uncomfortably giving space to create a private moment, instead of allowing communion to be about a communal thing, our collective relationship with Jesus.

Satan wants nothing more than us to look out for our own best interests. Never forget the table. The table drives us to communion. 

Photo by Pierre Porte via Flickr (Creative Commons)

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Brilliant.

Putting a flywheel on a bike to store lost energy? I ride my bike quite a bit, it’s the cheapest and fastest way I can get around town. This is a relatively simple solution for wasted energy of stopping for a red light.

Here’s what I know about innovation. It’s never come out of a big companies R&D department. Professional R&D departments are a waste of corporate dollars largely because there is a tie between desperation and innovation.

There are only 2 reliable sources of innovation, in my experience.

1. Hungry entrepreneurs – Desperate for their next paycheck, backed against the wall, misunderstood and unappreciated, many of our best inventions came from these people.
2. Front-line soft innovations – A core problem with companies who fail to create new ideas is that they don’t listen to the people doing the work. They might be friendly with them but they don’t truly listen to the solutions their front-line workers say they need every day.

What does that have to do with you? Everything. Our society is desperate for brand new freshly minted inventions. And those of us who manage people need to develop regular ways to listen to the front-line workers– elevating their ideas to the position where they can create the sof-innovation you need.

[see the video]

First thought? Wow,  that is so flipping cool!

Second thought? I’m going to have nightmares about them.

Third thought? Alfred Hitchcock.

Fourth thought? How much?

Fifth thought? They need cameras like this.

“Am I afraid to take Jesus at his word?”

This has been rattling through my head lately as I’ve read the Bible.

• Love your neighbor as yourself. Yeah well, I guess that depends on how you define the word neighbor. Right Jesus? And what if my neighbor is annoying? I’m off the hook, right?
• They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. (Acts 2:45) Yeah well, this couldn’t possibly apply to me. Live in community with people? Yeah, well I mean I have the right to chose where I live blah blah blah. And I don’t live near anyone in my church. So I’m off the hook, right?
• Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s. (Luke 20:25) Yeah well, clearly in Jesus’ day they didn’t have tax attorneys or loopholes to help me not pay my fair share. Clearly, Jesus didn’t have Tax Cut. There’s other people doing it,too. I’m off the hook, right?
• Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother. (Mark 3:34-35) Yeah well, we know that family comes first, right? It’s not like Jesus had kids. I’m off the hook, right?
• I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. (John 4:35) Yeah well, I get to define what Jesus means by this, right? He couldn’t possibly mean the people on my block… I invited them to church and they didn’t come. So I guess I need to wait a while longer, it’s on them. I’m off the hook, right? 

In all of those instances… and a whole lot more like it… I have a tendency to see a silent simile. I want an out clause. I need an out clause. I need some grey area to wiggle out of what Jesus is saying. And a simile would sure be useful.

The problem is that in almost all cases there is no simile. If I’m going to take Jesus at his word than I’m going to have to reorient my life around his words and not the other way around.

Immerse Journal just published an interview I did last November about my article on Open Source Theology.

Aaron Mitchum did a great job asking me hard questions, drilling into some of my assumptions, and pushing back a bit about some of the articles claims.

Here are 3 reasons it’s worth your 21 minutes. 

1. I was sooo tired. It was Sunday afternoon at NYWC, I’d taught 5 times and been in meeting after meeting since Thursday. So enjoy the first couple minutes as I struggle to sound coherent. Stick with it, it gets better. But feel free to laugh at me.
2. Aaron threads the narrative together. Each day on my blog I write about 500 words. That’s not enough to string it all together with what I’m really all about. This interview goes back and examines what lead to what I’m writing today, digs into my Christology a bit, and gives context to a lot of what I’m doing today. 
3. There are some great zingers in there. (This whole post is shameless self-promotion, so why not tease you with that?) But I just listened to this thing and I have to tell you the filter was off! There are a few spots where I was like– uh, did I really say that out loud!

Here’s the link.

I’m an idea guy. And one thing I’ve learned over the years is that every one of my ideas has value. That doesn’t mean every idea is a good idea. It just means that every idea is worth writing down and coming back to later.

Several months ago I had this thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool to have an illustrated children’s book for 3-5 year olds that taught the real-life stories of Christian heroes?” Before I got too far with it I realized– This is one of the worst ideas EVER.!

Here’s what some of the pages would have been: 

• Polycarp – He was an old man who was burned at the stake because he refused to burn incense to honor the Roman Emperor. When he didn’t catch on fire, they stabbed him with a spear.
• Cyprian – When he refused to sacrifice to pagan gods, he was first banished. But then he was brought back to Carthage and beheaded. On his way to be killed he took off all of his clothes and put on his own blindfold.
• Agnes – Agnes was martyred because she refused to marry someone who wasn’t a Christian. But since the law in Rome was that a virgin couldn’t be executed, Roman soldiers dragged her to a brothel first. Then when they tried to burn her at the stake the wood wouldn’t catch fire, so a soldier stabbed her in the throat.
• Jovan Vladimir – He was beheaded in front of his church because he refused to lead his country into war.
• William Tyndale – After being jailed for over a year in a castle, Tyndale was choked, impaled, and burned at the stake. His crime? He translated the Bible into English.
• Hugh Latimer – Why he was killed isn’t all that clear. But people in charge of the church just didn’t like him because he was teaching truth about salvation and had a habit of preaching at places that weren’t the church. So they had him burned at the stake.
• Thomas Baker - A missionary to Figi who was killed and eaten by cannibals.

I dunno, this might be my best idea ever…

Last August, I wrote a post “What’s Happening in Alabama?” In that post I drew attention to proposed legislation that would make every citizen and every police officer in Alabama an immigration official. In short, it would make it illegal to do business with someone who is undocumented. (Pay them, drive them somewhere, rent a house to them, sell them groceries, etc.)

I ended this post with this statement:

Please tell me I’m misunderstanding what this law is about? It seems to me that this is segregation all over again.

And I heard predictable pushback. I was educated that Alabama was not the state it was in the 1960s. And I was told that Alabama is a democracy and the people have a right to pass laws which the people support. And I was told that illegal immigrants were stealing jobs from Alabamans who were unemployed. And that there was an exploding population of illegals from Mexico and something had to be done.

Most importantly, I was told that I was blowing this out of proportion. Those things would never really happen.

My favorite comments were from people who told me– a guy who lives 10 miles from Mexico and in a neighborhood where 70% of my neighbors are of Hispanic origin– that more illegal Mexicans in Alabama are dangerous to the people of Alabama and Alabama needs to protect itself. (4% of Alabama residents are Hispanic, by the way.)

So the law passed and went into effect in October. (Alabama HB 56) And the unintended consequences began. 

You need to listen to this week’s episode of This American Life, You Reap What You Sow. I actually think it should be mandated that every Alabama resident listen to the impact this law has had on their state in just a few months. Some examples:

• Grocery stores asking for ID prior to serving people who “look Hispanic.”
• Employers not paying employees for work completed.
• Landlords indiscriminately changing lease agreements, because they can.
• Law enforcement arresting Mercedes Benz executives from Germany.
• Companies refusing to do business with Alabama, pulling contracts and going to other states.

How about this? Still proud of this law?

School kids told me they’re fighting off comments like, I’m glad you’re all moving, we don’t want you here, you take our jobs. At a pep rally, where Latinos were all sitting up front, kids started shouting, Mexicans move to the back. And most of them did.

The law is intended so that people who are illegal will leave the state. I get it. For people who don’t take the time to understand the issues it seems OK to make life a living hell for someone else, terrorizing them to the point where they flee.

After all, they aren’t here legally. They shouldn’t have any rights at all– except the right to leave. 

But this isn’t the America we can all be proud of. This really is creating an environment of us vs. them that is strikingly similar to the 1960′s in Alabama. A place where Martin Luther King, Jr. was jailed for his protests. A place where people were murdered for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A place where people of one color used one bathroom while people of another color used another one.

People are being discriminated against because they look like they might be illegal. 

We need to be reminded that “legal” doesn’t equal “moral.” And the majority might rule but they don’t always represent the will of the people.

Gabriella said that the new attitude has permeated every aspect of her life, every aspect.

Gabriella

Even in the church.

Jack Hitt

Really?

Gabriella

Yes, because even in the church, you find people that say, well, we are in God’s house. And then they don’t want to talk at you. And they don’t want to give the peace to you. That is so sad.

Jack Hitt

So in your church, you have the passing of the peace, that part of the service? And so in your church, when they do that, what normally happens? You turn and shake hands with people?

Gabriella

Yes. They shake hands and everything. But now I found some people that say, I don’t want to do peace with you.

I’m assuming you’re already using my 3 favorite apps, Evernote, WordPress & Dropbox.

Here are sixapps I’ve started using recently that I think you should try out. 

Wunderlist (iPhone, iPad, and Mac) – I’ve finally found a to-do list app that I love! It has a nice and simple interface, reminders, and syncs with all of my devices.

Skitch (Mac, iPad) – If you ever need to do a screen capture this is your app. Easily capture, make notes, draw on the screen, and share it with whomever you need to share it with. I love the iPad app… it’s really so easy to use that it’s fun! They just got bought by Evernote, so I expect to be able to sync it to my notebooks easier soon.

ESPN Passport – (iPhone) This is a fun little app for sports nuts. If you’re watching a game, whether in the stadium or watching on TV, its allows you to talk smack with other people watching the game. It links to your ESPN account so it pulls in your profile and all of that stuff. (You can win badges and stuff like that, too) You can also share your smack talk via Facebook/Twitter. But I just like to take pictures of me and my kids at games.

Square – (iPhone, iPad) As a small business owner I sometimes have the need to swipe a credit card and charge someone on the spot. Square is drop dead easy and the credit card rates aren’t that bad if you figure in that a merchant account isn’t needed, no monthly contracts, etc. You sign-up for free, they send you a little Square reader, and you’re good to go.

Redfin - (iPhone, iPad) I’m not really in the market to buy a house but I do like to know what property in my area is going for. This app is sexy. It shows you all the houses available based on your parameters. And then it has a very simple, elegant layout to show you the properties. (And all the really important info, like taxes, schools, comps, etc.)

Editions – (iPad) An AOL app that doesn’t suck? It surprised me too! This little app is gorgeous. You tell it your news preferences and each day it goes out and aggregates all the news you want. Then it lays it out like a magazine designed just for you. It’s beautiful, too.

Bonus#1: Mustache Me (iPhone) I blame Brian Berry for this one. Instant fun. Add a mustache to any picture, share, beauty.

Bonus #2: car2go PRO (iPhone) Car2Go is a car sharing service that is taking off here in San Diego. Basically, they are these little electric cars you can rent for $.35/minute to get around town cheap. The app helps you find and reserve them… which is super easy and fun!

Last week, I put together a sweet little seminar for parent’s called, A Parent’s Guide to Social Media.

It’s an hour-long training session aimed at removing the fear about what their teenagers might be doing online and back-filling it with the latest research, then helps to build a theological framework for raising kids in a digital world.

Part of the challenge of putting together something like this is that the data behind it will change all the time. (New research comes out from the big players quarterly while lots of additional one-off research is published all the time by universities and the marketing world.)

That’s why teaching parents principles is more important than merely looking at trends. They need to know what to do today. But they also need to know what’s going to work with the next thing that comes out.

Long story short, I’ve now down this seminar with two groups of parents and it’s gone pretty well. If you’re interested in having me come to your church or event to present this stuff, just let me know.

Leading from Desperation Leads Us Astray

It’s counter-productive to lower the bar. I don’t know if it’s fear or flat-out desperation that leads us in church leadership to do this. But, in obvious and non-obvious ways, we think that more people will follow Jesus if we make it easier.

“If you’re ready to take the next step in your walk with Jesus, it’s real easy.”

“Take the next step in your walk with Jesus, just _____.” [Insert something non-committal, usually involving food]

What’s going through your mind at that moment is the felt need that you want as many people to follow Jesus as possible. (Which is good) And it seems like in order to do that you need to make it as simple as possible.

But you’re wrong. 

Hit the pause button and open your Bible to John 6. Let’s see how Jesus handled his fans.

This is one of those upside-down Christian leadership principles: To grow disciples of Jesus I need to make it harder, not easier. 

Jesus knew that fans came for the free magic show & food. They went from town to town. There was probably a guy selling glow sticks and two kids peddling t-shirts.

But when he told them that following him was going to mean eating his flesh and drinking his blood… most of them left. Jesus wasn’t out to make it easy. He knew that you need to test people and make it hard to find out who were the fans and who are the followers.

Christian leaders would be wise to follow Jesus’ example on this one.

Crosses Hurt

Luke 9:23 says, “Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

Why don’t we take Jesus at his word?

Have you ever denied yourself, literally? I don’t mean skip a meal or do the 30 Hour Famine or skip a movie on HBO or choosing to go to a Christian college instead of a state one. I mean really deny yourself. Jesus’ early followers literally changed their zip code. They sold everything they had. (Acts 2:42-47) They gave up family life for community life. They redefind family. They ate what the deacons made. They suffered. Not because they had no choice… but because they had the choice and denied themselves! 

Have you ever picked up a cross, literally? You should try it. It’s heavy to drag that thing around– even for a few minutes. They don’t sand down the edges of crosses. They don’t remove splinters. It’s not a fashion statement.

Carrying your cross should be burdensome. It’s should cost you social status. It should hurt. If it doesn’t than you’re a fan, not a follower carrying a cross.

Following Jesus shouldn’t be easy. If, as a leader, you are calling people to an easy, simple form of discipleship… that check is going to come back as insufficient.

Ultimately you aren’t leading people… you’re making fans of yourself and not followers of Jesus. 

3 Ways that Form of Discipleship is Insufficient

1. Fans of my ministry will kill my ministry potential – Fans just do what you say. Fans just want to hang out. Fans just want to say they know you. Followers of Jesus respect you as a leader, but spend their life copying Jesus and not you.
2. Building my ministry around my church will kill my ministry potential – Seriously, the more time you spend hanging out at the Temple, the more time you get hung up in Temple life and deny the ministry Jesus has called all believers to… loving your neighbors as yourself.
3. Fans build false assumptions of success – Having a full room and a stacked budget sure feels like success. But Jesus measures your success in ministry differently. He’s not impressed by what you’re impressed by. People showing up doesn’t mean lives changed. Jesus constantly tried to shake the crowd so he could meet the needs of the poor, practice healing, elevate the voice of the marginalized, on and on. Jesus never said… “Invite your friends to hear me preach at the Temple.” Never. Not once. And neither should you.