It’s the best we Christians can do I guess.

Got any other funny “Christian” videos to share? Leave ‘em in the comment section.

As you probably already know, Rob Bell’s new book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, which comes out on March 29th, has received some interesting feedback already. I will write a post on Love Wins once I read it, but as you can see from the release date, it isn’t even out yet. Here’s a post from someone who was able to get an advanced copy of the book.

This is what we have seen so far from Rob Bell and his publisher about his new book:

THE VIDEO

LOVE WINS. from Rob Bell on Vimeo.

THE BOOK DESCRIPTION

Fans flock to his Facebook page, his NOOMA videos have been viewed by millions, and his Sunday sermons are attended by 10,000 parishioners—with a downloadable podcast reaching 50,000 more. An electrifying, unconventional pastor whom Time magazine calls “a singular rock star in the church world,” Rob Bell is the most vibrant, central religious leader of the millennial generation. Now, in Love Wins: Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, Bell addresses one of the most controversial issues of faith—the afterlife—arguing that a loving God would never sentence human souls to eternal suffering. With searing insight, Bell puts hell on trial, and his message is decidedly optimistic—eternal life doesn’t start when we die; it starts right now. And ultimately, Love Wins.

After reading that description, I definitely want to read the book as soon as I can. I will also say that I choose to believe what the Bible says about heaven and hell.

But, after reading the different comments, blog posts and other stuff out there, I realize that there are tons of different thoughts on the subject of the afterlife.

This all has me wondering…

What do you think happens after this life? Also, do you believe hell is a real place? Why or why not?

I am just putting this picture here because it has a religious theme. None of the below comments necessarily represent my thoughts on short people.
There.
Now…

caption please.

I can’t believe that I’ve never written a post on cussing before, so I guess it’s time.
Oh, and I will write the word “cuss” too many times in this post.

Cussing was always off limits to me when growing up. My parents definitely led by example because I don’t think I ever heard them say a cuss word. If they did, maybe it was done in private. On the other hand, my grandmother, which we called “Nana”, thought it was hilarious to say a cuss word from time to time.

Oh and it was.
She said that saying a cuss word was something that her parents sometimes did to lighten the mood. She liked to show us how that worked.
Her favorite cuss words had to be sh*t & damn.

You see, since we weren’t allowed to say cuss words, hearing those would make us all laugh. They just sounded funny. Probably not funny to most of you, but it still makes me laugh.
And if you knew my Nana, then you know she should’ve been Saint Nana. Definitely the most Christ-like person I’ve ever known. I’m pretty sure cussing doesn’t make or break you.

It seems you have two sides on this topic. One says what you say shows what’s in your heart, so you shouldn’t say cuss words. Maybe that shows that there’s something wrong that is deeper than the surface.

I really like what Ephesians 4:29 says…

Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth. Say only what helps, each word a gift.

Definitely makes sense.

The other side asks a question. “Why is cussing so bad, if they’re just words?”
I guess I can see both sides.
Let me know if there are other sides on this that I’m missing.

Starting in my twenties, I found myself saying words that I thought I’d never say. When I found myself cussing I felt something, though. It was either conviction or guilt, so I chose to try and stay away from those words. I still try to stay away from them, but I definitely slip from time to time. And I still feel that guilt. I don’t know if that’s God or my parent’s voice saying not to say those words that causes the guilt.

Anyways, cussing doesn’t seem to be a big deal these days to anyone, whether you call yourself a Christian or not. Maybe it’s just the people I hang around.

How do you feel about cussing?

Brian Wurzell :: Grace Ocean :: AVAILABLE TODAY! from CS Worship Arts on Vimeo.

My friend, Brian Wurzell (Yes, I want his last name. And his hair.), just came out with an awesome new album today entitled, Grace Ocean. I had the chance to listen to the album earlier today and I have to say it’s really well done and he is the real deal. My favorite song so far on Grace Ocean has to be “Great Redeemer”. You can listen to other songs off of the album HERE.

Anyways, you can go buy Grace Ocean on iTunes, that is if you don’t win it here first. I’m giving away THREE copies of his brand new album. Two over on twitter and one right here on jackalopekid.com.

To win, all you have to do is just Retweet the following tweet on twitter or post it on your facebook wall:

RT @brianwurzell My NEW album, Grace Ocean, is NOW AVAILABLE on iTunes. Go get it today! http://bit.ly/graceocean #graceocean

Then…

Leave a comment below telling me about a time you gave grace to someone else or experienced it yourself.

That’s all you have to do to win, folks.
The contest ends January 5th at 11:59pm mountain time.
Good luck!

You can’t look at the past. The preachers that I listened to growing up drilled this into my head. Can’t look at the past. Got it. It was bad to look at the past because the future is where it’s at. Well, I can sort of understand that because they don’t want you to dwell on it. I get that. But, the past holds a ton that we can learn from. If we don’t look at the past, then we are destined to fail time and time again.

Why is this?

We can’t learn from our mistakes unless we dissect what we did to cause the problem in the first place. Once we know what caused it, and we decide that we don’t ever want to see that result again, then we know what not to do again.

Albert Einstein even said,
that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I can’t count how many times I’ve done that.

Heading into 2011 and as you plan for the future, don’t forget about the things that were executed perfectly in 2010 and the things that didn’t work so well in the past.

Hope you took good notes.

Don’t do something halfway.

Most people seem to get that. But, when looking at the online world, some folks obviously disregard that great advice. Even though there are different organizations that fall in the “bad website” category, I want look at what the church looks like online.

Before I get started I just want to say I’m not wanting to pick on anyone here. Look at this as more of a favor…

Ok. I will say that some churches get it. There are definitely some great church websites out there. But, there are also some terrible looking ones. I really can’t say it any other way. I mean, you can obviously see what I’m talking about here. Click on that link and view those sites. It ain’t pretty.

I have some notions on why this happens.

Churches first decide that they want a hip website to stay relevant so they can let all those hipsters know what’s up. After this decision is made, they lack one or some of these necessary components…

Someone who actually knows how to put together a site.
Time.
Focus.
Resources.
Maybe you can add something else to the list

Your website shows who you are a lot more than you think. If your website looks like junk, then people automatically assume that your church looks like… well, junk. Last week we talked about how a church building can sometimes change a person’s perspective on the church, even before setting foot in the church building itself. And I don’t think that a website is any different.

If you think that you, your church or your business may need to go in a different online direction, I would challenge you to take a close look at your site. It is sometimes hard to look at things through a reader’s eyes when we become so accustomed to the way things look. You may even find that you need to change the theme, take some unnecessary items off of your site, find a professional that may know more about building sites or maybe even take the site down while you and your team reevaluate where you stand. It can only help, right?

Where do you think a website fits in on the representation of a church/company/organization? How much does it matter?
Also, what are some church websites that are doing it right? Why do you like those websites so much?

I said I wasn’t going to write a post on this, but I’ve been seeing so many things going on lately, that I felt I needed to at least talk about it a bit. Usually I talk about the positive things that social media has to offer. But, lately I’ve been noticing that some of the negative things have almost been outweighing the positive. I think a lot of it has to do with readers misunderstanding what is being written, but still, it’s so annoying when you know what you mean, but nobody else does.

The first case I am talking about is when MercyMe’s front man, Bart Millard, wrote “XMas” instead of Christmas, which started a huge uproar from people who wanted to keep “Christ” in Christmas. Here’s that tweet for ya:

If Bart has 140 characters to use on twitter, everybody knows you shorten what you can. Also, I guess those folks didn’t know that “X” really means Christ. People just need to think before they respond. That’s a lesson for all of us. It was definitely a misunderstanding.

On to the next one.

Mark Driscoll has two reputations within the church. One is that he is very over the top and another says he is very biblical. I think he’s both with maybe some inconsistency thrown in there. But, when a leader is in the spotlight it is easy to point fingers at what some else is doing wrong when really all of us have something we need to deal with.

Well, after watching this Avatar video that was posted of Pastor Mark preaching on Avatar, I thought I was going to hell. Literally. I guess that’s where the “over the top” comes in.

So naturally, when Pastor Mark made a comment about enjoying Jay-Z’s music, people went ape-$%^#. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I love Jay-Z. J Hova has rhymes like no other. I do try to get the edited version and fill in words like “love you real good” or “poop”, but him and his band have serious talent. His bassist, Tony Russell and drummer, Tony Royster Jr. are among the best in the world, in my opinion. So after seeing his response to Avatar and then seeing that he enjoyed Jay-Z’s music confused everyone, including myself. Then Pastor Mark came out with some feedback in the form a post after everyone was calling him out.
Here’s an excerpt from that post:

Now, if he would have posted that in the first place maybe people probably would’ve gotten that, but again it’s that twitter rule of 140 characters or less. Some people are saying that the post was released just because of the way people reacted, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. I think that’s what he thought all along about Jay-Z. I also think he means what he’s saying about Avatar in the post- that it’s a well done movie and it’s not a sin to see the movie, but it is if you adopt the hindu behaviors portrayed in the movie. I will say that with all the things he has said over the years about relevant topics including culture, The Shack, stay-at-home dads, and yoga and the way they are always perceived wrong, he might need to find a different way to communicate effectively, though. Matt Chandler even pokes fun at the way Mark communicates here. Not many people can do what Mark does and I’m guessing he’s reaching someone out there, so not much of us can say stuff. I mean, I’m guessing people have come to know the Lord through his ministry, just maybe a yelling God that I’m not used to, but maybe some people need that. That would definitely be some interesting data to see.

All this has me trying to think of life before social media, when we didn’t know what everyone was doing and everyone’s random thoughts. Whether we like it or not, social media has given each of us a voice. Either to put out a thought or idea or to lift up someone else’s idea or bash them for being wrong. The thing I know all of us kept thinking while seeing all of this going on is “What if this same effort that is being put into bashing people for their thoughts was out into building clean water wells or finding other ways to help other countries that are less fortunate and their people who really need it?”

Whether you agree with what Bart did with XMas or Pastor Mark’s views and how he communicates those, I’m pretty sure they both know Christ. Oh, and Rob Bell. That might receive more comments than Driscoll and Millard combined.
Haters gonna hate.
Some of you might disagree with my opinion on those, but writing XMas or yelling and playing things on the safer side is better than playing it on the less strict side, even if life will be a little less exciting.
The only thing with that is that could make people outside of the church think that Christians can’t have fun, which is totally not the case. Whatever.

What we need are people who keep leaders in their prayers.

Those are my thoughts and most of this is me writing while thinking out loud.

I know you have been misunderstood because everyone has. I remember the last time it happened to me. I was telling someone why it’s important for a church to be relevant and up to date. They thought people should go to church for Jesus and not worry about the material things in the church. That was quite a discussion that I will leave for another blog post…

So, what point were you trying to get across the last time you were misunderstood?

Some remember that exact moment when they accepted Jesus into their life and some just know it happened along the way.

For me, I remember that moment.

I was twelve years old.

I had that altar time with the snot cry.

A lot has happened since I was twelve.

I’ve done some good. I’ve done some bad.

That’s why this relationship of grace through Jesus is awesome.

It’s a daily walk with Him.

How did you come to know Him?