2014 has been a phenomenal year for me personally, and I appreciate all that you have done for me. As I gear up for next year (Podcast! Webinars! Freelancing! More!) I’m sharing some of my favorite content from the year before.
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10. What Will It Take to Become a Church for the Depressed?
The sting of Robin Williams’ death strikes in a sore place in the cultural subconscious next to the memories of Phillip Seymore Hoffman and Mitch Hedberg.
All death is tragic. Suicide especially.
The death of Robin casts a particular shadow on those of my generation. Aladdin and Hook are the stories of our childhood. Patch Adams, Dead Poets Society and Good Will Hunting taught us how to grow up.
Depression is tragic. When it affects someone like Robin, we are all hurt.
Depression is also normal, natural and must be responded to within the church.
9. How Sufjan Stevens and Brene Brown Kept Me in Church
Sam drove up to my overpacked car, shook my hand and then gave me a CD-R with the words “Come on Feel the Illinoise” written in blue ink.
“I’m done with church,” he said. “But Sufjan has become church for me.”
The next few years were awash in false starts and a constant sense of emergency. Jobs and relationships didn’t work out. Fear and loneliness became my replacements for dreams.
8. Everything I Know About Church Planting I Learned From Jimmy Fallon
Like most people, it took me a long time to warm up to Jimmy Fallon. His time on SNL swung violently between hilarious and obnoxious. When we started a Late Night show, I was just confused.
As he’s grown into the role, and mastered his unique approach, I find myself wishing that our new church planting efforts would eventually be described as “kind of like the Jimmy Fallon show, but for Jesus.”
7. It’s Okay to Have Nothing to Say About Ferguson, Iraq or Ebola
Everywhere we look, we see tear gas, beheadings and disease.
Sometimes we respond by spouting our opinion. Often we go as far telling people what they are doing wrong. Or we get hyped up and angry about something that isn’t really about us.
It’s ironic to say this on a blog, a tool created to broadcast opinions, but I think that it’s okay to admit that we don’t always have anything helpful to say on a topic.
Moreover, it’s okay to be speechless about the difficulties others are experiencing.
6. Three Straw Man Arguments for Bi-Vocational Ministry
I’m not for or against bi-vocational ministry, but I am opposed to any elitism that may accompany it. It is important that we humbly seek God’s calling in our situation. Many criticisms used by fans of this approach are actually criticisms of theology, strategy and ecclesiology, not arguments against paid ministry positions. Consider these three “straw man” arguments.
5. Louis C.K. Makes the Case for a More Boring Church
list or the next fascinating comment I’m going to make is incredibly difficult.
This is murder on my spiritual life. Sitting still long enough to meditate on scripture or pray can be painful.
I need a church community that will help me become the kind of person capable of slowing down and encountering the God of the mundane.
4. You Have Our Attention #YesAllWomen. Please Teach Us How to Be Better.
I got my first job at 18 in a call center on the other side of town. It was only a 15 minute drive away, but it was a different world. The majority of those I worked with were other races, many African American. For the first time in my life, I heard real stories of being pulled over by cops for “driving while being black,” and worse.
Like most in my Gen Y cohort, I would have adamantly told you “I’m not a racist.” The fact was, I was actually ignorant about the systems that enabled the racial divide in our society.
That’s how I feel when I read the #YesAllWomen hashtag.
3. Top Ten Things the Church SHOULD Be Talking About
There are a lot of voices tugging on the conversation that shapes on the life of the church. Unfortunately, a lot of them are external to the day-to-day workings of a local church.
If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of voices like civic religion and click-happy media here’s what I would like to hear us talk about.
2. In Ten Years Only Church Plants Will Be Left
Believe me: In ten years, only church plants will be left.
Okay, that’s a bit of hyperbole, but here’s where I am coming from:
Recently, I was discussing with someone from an older church in an established denomination an incredibly difficult situation that her home church was experiencing. One party in the church had made a decision. This led to a lot of hurt feelings. A bunch of people left the church.
1. 10 Rare Examples of Christian Music that Doesn’t Suck
Christian music has shaped Western Civilization. Our modern music theory can be traced back to the chants systematized by Pope Gregory, and the Jewish and early Christian antiphonal songs that proceeded them. For centuries, the church commissioned some of the greatest works ever composed. Rock and Roll, one of the few art forms that the U.S. can take credit for, can easily be traced back through R & B, to gospel to and African American spirituals.
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