Stuff Christians Like (12 page)
Now that I’ve found you. Now that we’ve locked eyes, I’m going to try to communicate a two-part thought with my head nod. The first part is sympathy: “Hey fella, sorry to see that you’re sick; that stinks.” That head nod goes up and down. The second head nod, which is side to side, is a little different, “You shouldn’t have come to church today. The pastor can’t tell you that, but I can. God is okay with you listening to the podcast and not infecting his people, the bride of Christ, with your germs. Seriously, you can stay home next time.”
Is that an awful lot to ask of a head nod? Probably, but ultimately it won’t matter. You’re so hopped up on cold medicine you’re probably going to think I’m break dancing. Which is fine, being mistaken as a pop and locker is one of my lifetime aspirations. But know this. I’m watching. I’m listening and above all, I’m trying to hold my breath for forty-five minutes. But it’s getting difficult. Just promise me that if I pass out from my David Blaine – like attempt not to breathe your mushroom cloud of menthol, you won’t volunteer to do mouth to mouth.
Ten years ago, if you drank coffee during a church service, people knew you as “that coffee guy” or “that tea lady.” It wasn’t unheard of, but it certainly wasn’t as popular as it is today. Now, forgetting your coffee cup before service is like leaving your Bible at home. While the rest of the pew enjoys triple foam Hazelnut Mocha Venti Explosions, you sit there like some sort of drinkless hobo. It’s embarrassing.
When I sell out and open up the
Stuff Christians Like
gift shop, I’m going to sell a Bible with a hollowed-out spine that
you can put coffee in. There will be a little screw-top spout and when you need a sip, you can just tip your Bible back. You’ll look really holy because people will think you’re literally kissing your Bible during church.
Don’t you wish you worked at a church? That would be such a dream job!
I’ve never been blessed that way but my assumption is that other than Sunday, a church job is kind of like having a really long quiet time. You probably get to read the Bible all day and take long breaks in your prayer closet and spend eight hours a day growing your own spiritual life.
I’m sure the phone rings sometimes, like when someone needs a casserole of hope after a death in the family or a youth
group van breaks down, but for the most part I imagine the average day is filled with a lot of “me time.”
And God is your boss. How cool is that? There’s no politics or in-fighting or gossip like at the average corporate job. It’s just a collection of people, a family really, living out of the gifts God has given them. Loving on each other. (You actually work at a place where “love on” is an acceptable verb!) Everyone is all on the same page, pouring out to each other the love that God is pouring into them. Don’t you want to hug this book right now just thinking about that?
I bet there’s always an acoustic guitar being played somewhere in the office. (Should we even call where people work at a church an “office”? Let’s call it a “happy holy spot” instead.) And when you go to make copies on the printer, you’ll hear the acoustic guitar and probably join an impromptu sing-along right there in the mailroom and make up a song.
Is it even really a full-time job? Seriously, other than maybe a few hours on a Sunday morning, what else are you doing? Praying? Worshipping? Holding car washes to raise money for mission trips? What’s that take, four hours, tops? How do you spend the rest of the week?
Being loved on I bet. See, there it is again! That’s the kind of thing that is constantly happening if you work at a church, but good luck trying to say that at a real job. If tomorrow in one of my meetings at work I said, “I really need to love on these third-quarter budget estimates,” I would immediately get “laughed on” by my co-workers. Not if you work at a church. They support each other!
Plus, they’ve got an entire congregation full of people that love them unconditionally. Imagine having hundreds of people that are fans of what you do and how you do it. People that are going to wholeheartedly accept what you do and never write mean emails no matter if they disagree with your decisions. Me? I read negative opinions from our customers all the time. People that work at churches? They’re opening thank-you notes
and sunshine emails and gift baskets with delicious cheeses and spiced meats all day long.
Someday, if they ever sunset my job (a fun-sounding euphemism we’re actually now using to replace the word “eliminate”), maybe I’ll get a church job and get to live the sweet life.
Does this practice have an age limit? When you hit your thirties, is it biblically illegal to press your fingers against your eyes so hard when you pray that you see a light show? Is that something you’re supposed to leave in childhood?
I hope not, because this experience is delightful. I remember sitting through long prayers as a child, my hands on my face, bored. To overcome my boredom, I’d press against my tightly clutched eyelids until sparks and colors would flutter by.
I secretly believed that if I pressed hard enough, maybe I would see Jesus. That the shapes and hues would slowly form his face. It never happened. Which is probably a good thing, because if I had seen the face of Jesus, other people probably would have wanted to come see it too. I’d have a line of Jesus fans, trying to get near my eyes, lighting candles near me, and eventually I’d have to auction my eyelids on eBay. Which would be awkward and probably a little painful because from that moment on I’d be some weird-looking guy without any eyelids. I’d look wide awake and excited 24/7.
Other than some unexpected sex advice from an older gentleman and my father, the minister, initially forgetting to give us our rings, my wedding was fairly normal. My friend’s wedding, however, her wedding was extraordinary.
She married a great guy that is a Bible scholar. One of the ways he honored this deep love for God’s Word is by having an eagle in his wedding.
Go ahead and read that last sentence again. It’s a big one.
While most people plan candle moments and have their silver medal friend that was not good enough to be in the wedding party read “love is patient,” this guy actually hired an eagle to make a cameo. Now, there’s some debate about whether it was an eagle or a hawk. I think that’s kind of like arguing about whether it was a shark or a barracuda that bit your foot off while swimming. The details don’t matter nearly as much as the fact that he had a bird of prey in his wedding.
My brother went and said that he spent most of the wedding filming action scenes in his head in which the eagle swooped down and flew off with the flower girl. It didn’t though. Apparently it sat up next to the minister on a tall perch looking all “eagly” and just chilling, with a look on its face that kind of said, “Yeah, I’m an eagle. Don’t sweat the technique.”
The reason my friend loves eagles is due in large part to the Bible verse in Isaiah 40:31 that says, “They shall mount up with wings as eagles” (KJV). And he’s not alone. I found forty-one eagle-themed products on a Christian website once.
But I don’t think that’s enough. I don’t think we’ve worked enough eagle into our lives. So I prepared a short list of ways I think having an eagle on staff could help a church.
Can you imagine how amazing it would be to have a live eagle fly around your sanctuary while people did an interpretive dance
routine to Bette Midler’s song “Wind beneath My Wings”? I’m starting to tear up a little right now just thinking about seeing him unfurl his wings as sweet Bette sings “Flyyyyy, flyyyyyyy, fly high against the sky…”
I personally am not a huge fan of that guy or girl that saves nineteen seats at church with a variety of papers and Bibles and purses. We do all this work to get visitors to come to church and then tell them they can’t sit here, here, or right there. An eagle would fix that. I would have our falcon master (you would need to add that position to your church regardless of whether an eagle is considered a falcon; someone needs to wear that big leather glove) teach the eagle how to pick up the junk people use to save seats. Just as you put down a trail of bulletins across some seats you wanted to save, a missile of feathers and talons and beak would swoop down from the heavens and steal every one of them.
Occasionally, someone feels their kid is too old or young or tired or delicate to attend childcare or Sunday school. So they bring him in the church, squirt Capri Suns down his throat for energy, and then pretend they don’t hear him wailing through the entire service. Oh, but the eagle hears. The eagle hears all. With the softest approach in the game, the eagle would lightly pick up the child, carry him away, and drop him in a ball pit outside with all the other crying kids. (Am I the only one who thinks this way?)
Instead of having that guy/girl on staff that is in charge of randomly yelling “amen” during the sermon to get the crowd going, you could use the eagle. Whenever you made a good point or wanted to increase the energy in the room, you could have the eagle do that loud, piercing scream they are known for. No one would ever doze off in church again. Although some pastors would abuse it and overuse the worship eagle like the way I once abused the phrase “if by.” I was constantly saying stuff like, “Am I hungry? No,
if by
’no’ you mean hungry enough to eat my shoes.” My younger brothers, Will and Bennett, had to have a joke intervention. It was a very unfunny season in my life.
When I was a kid, our church spent Labor Day weekend at Camp Resolute, a small boy scout facility on the edge of town with tents, a mess hall, and all the things that make camps fun. Besides having great campfires, which make for fantastic testi-whoanies (that awkward over-sharing people feel compelled to do in the presence of open flame), it had a lake. I liked swimming and canoeing, but my favorite lake activity was the away-game baptisms for a few very distinct reasons:
