Stuff Christians Like (9 page)

This is what we in the industry refer to as an “underhand move.” Instead of reaching your arms upward, you hold them slightly in front of you, palms turned toward the sky, as if expecting to receive something from someone in front of you. The Pound Cake places your elbows at stomach level, your hands tilted at a 47-degree angle, as if someone visiting your housewarming party is about to hand you a delicious pound cake. It’s not a heavy cake, so you don’t have to brace yourself. Instead, you just relax and think, “Hey, cool. Pound cake. Let me take that for you.”

I’m stingy with my high fives. I think the last time I gave one was in the delivery room of my second daughter. The next time I give one will be if this book sells more than nineteen copies. Other than those two situations, I find the high five to be the physical equivalent of using a lot of exclamation marks!!! That’s why I rarely do this move. The double high five looks exactly like it sounds. You act like you’ve just scored a touchdown and are about to double high five the person in front of you. (Some people call this move the “Secret Passageway” because it kind of looks like you are feeling along a wall for a hidden button that will open a secret door. But I’m a purist and don’t use that term.)

This is my favorite, and probably the most common hand raising technique. It’s not complicated and regularly makes cameos in magazine ads for Christian colleges. Much like the famous song, you simply raise your hands above your body and form a big Y. That’s all. But it leaves little doubt to the folks around you about what’s going on. You’re worshipping. It’s big, it’s beautiful, it’s messy, and it’s great. A friend of mine said that when her mom did it, it always looked like she was clearing a runway for God to land.

I tend to be a Ninja guy myself.

The only thing Christians like more than inviting friends, co-workers, and family members to church is fearing that on the
Sunday they do, all hell will break loose during service. (Not a swear. This is a Christian book; I get to use that one.)

It doesn’t matter how great your church is Sunday after Sunday. On the one day you actually invite a neighbor for the first time, there’s a moment of panic that passes through you.

Worship music top notch week after week? Well this will be the Sunday the lady who owns a mission trip rain stick souvenir will be doing an interpretation of the song “I Can Only Imagine.”

Pastor always brings his A game? Well this will be the Sunday he starts his sermon by saying, “Today I want to talk about why you should give all your money to the church unless you want to go to hell.”

Never done any old school snake handling at your church? Well this will be the Sunday where they hand out a free pit viper with each bulletin.

Your only defense against this fear is to prepare a really good church disclaimer. As soon as the service jumps off the tracks and you see your friend squirm, lean over to them and call a mulligan, “Church is never like this. I don’t know what’s going on today. Will you please come back next week?”

I cried once at a Fuddruckers hamburger restaurant during lunch. No, it wasn’t the time I participated in a two-pound cheeseburger eating contest and got the meat sweats while throwing up that afternoon in my cubicle at work. It was just a normal lunch with a guy from the office. We started talking about how crazy God’s love is and before I knew it, I was tearing up right there over a plate of onion rings.

I don’t know why guys can’t cry at church, but it’s a law. Fortunately, there are a few ways to pretend you’re not crying:

There’s a huge difference. A sniff is what a man does when he has a cold. A tough, manly cold. A sniffle is what a small puppy does when it’s crying in church. Pretend you have a cold. If you think you’re going to cry, fake sneeze a few times, blow your nose into a tissue, and mutter to the people around you, “This darn cold! Got it ice fishing…for sharks…with my bare hands.”

Best-case scenario is that you keep the tears in your orbital region and never allow them to escape your eye. But let’s say one makes a break for your cheek. When you feel that wet renegade creeping down, immediately look up at the ceiling. I don’t care if it’s 12 feet away or 100 feet away—react as if condensation from the air conditioner has just dripped on your rugged, masculine cheek. Then proceed to punch that little pool of water off your face. Stupid ceiling leak.

You know who wipes their tears with the back of their hands? People who’ve just finished watching a Lifetime Channel movie called
Stolen Innocence
, where the heroine had her heart broken by a horrible man and lost everything she had but in losing her way found herself and the will to survive. That’s who uses the back of their hand to wipe tears. Not you. You use the tips of your thumb and your pointer finger. Put one on each side of your nose and make clockwise circles as if you are rubbing the tension out of your face from wearing glasses for too long. You’ll look pensive and maybe even thoughtful, like you’re trying to concentrate. All the while you’ll secretly be wiping away tears. Works like a charm.

There are more tips, but most are pretty complicated and involve props like pirate eye patches and smoke bombs. You’ll
probably want to stick with these. If you can’t—if you end up crying in the middle of church—counteract that wanton show of emotion by volunteering to tear down the band equipment or stack up all the chairs in the sanctuary. Alone. Wearing a red and black flannel shirt like a lumberjack. That’ll fix ‘em; that’ll fix ‘em good.

An altar call is when the pastor encourages you to come down front and give your life to Jesus. Those are pretty straightforward events. You go down, you pray a prayer with someone (usually on staff), you go home. Not that giving your life to Jesus is straightforward—please save the hate mail—but the altar call is pretty cut and dried.

Where it starts getting weird is when the minister invites people to come down and pray at the front of the church. In a moment of odd “no rules, no worries” pastor behavior, he’ll say, “We’re going to invite you to come up here and pray if you feel led. If you feel like there’s something you need to give to Jesus or that God is pushing on you, come down to the front. We’ll sing another song and give you time to get right with God.”

One Sunday morning, that happened to me at church. The thought of walking down the aisle in front of 5,000 people wasn’t that appealing, but when God gives me the “it’s go time” tap, I usually respond. I leaned over to my wife and said, “Uh oh, I think I’m supposed to go down.” She leaned back over and said, “I love you, but I’m not going.” I told her, “I’ll pray for your heathen soul and ask that someday you’ll have the deep faith I currently possess.” Then I went down. Overall, it was a great experience, but there are some things I wish I had remembered before I headed to the front:

I know this is dumb, but when I went forward, it also happened to be the first time we’d ever sat with our friends Ben and Sheila. When the minister said you should “take a friend down to the front with you,” I automatically gave God an extra high five for getting Ben and Sheila to sit with us. I didn’t head-nod to Ben or ask him to come down, I just figured he’d naturally follow me out like Billy Zane followed Tom Berenger in the movie
Sniper.
That didn’t happen. I thought maybe he was praying in his seat and was going to come up and place his hand on my back in a few minutes like some sort of Christian Cavalry.

It’s not a race. There’s plenty of “front-of-the-church Holy Spirit” to go around for everyone. If fighting with someone in the church parking lot is bad, just imagine how much God hates when you shove people on the way to his altar. Or maybe he doesn’t like people who mosey when you’re trying to sprint to where he called you. I could really go both ways on that one.

If you’re behind someone slow on your walk up front, chances

are you’re going to get a bad spot to pray. You’ll probably be off to the side by the stairs, which is the prayer equivalent of being seated by the kitchen at a restaurant. Or you’ll be kneeling on painful power cords for some instrument. It’s horrible for you to even think these things, but you’re going to and that’s okay.

I wasn’t able to fly after I went down front that Sunday. I was kind of hoping that I’d be able to move things with my mind, or
maybe jump a little higher, or at the bare minimum, be an inch taller. Didn’t happen. In fact, I think later that day I was a jerk to my wife.

On the Jonathan scale, the whole thing was kind of a bust. Ben didn’t come down. I didn’t get a good prayer spot. God didn’t zap me. Fortunately, going down front isn’t measured according to my standards.

Denomination, schomenation, when our kids are out of school for the summer and we’ve suddenly got to fill eight weeks of time with activities, we Christians like to put aside our denominational differences and bounce our kids like Ping-Pong balls around the county to different Vacation Bible School programs.

We sent our kids to three different churches last summer, in part because our church refuses to hold Vacation Bible School. One day, my daughter L.E. came home from one of the more “rural” churches we had selected for our “tour de VBS,” and I asked her what she learned that day. Her response?

“We watched
The Little Mermaid
movie.”

Hmm, I thought to myself, I’m not sure which part of the Bible Disney is taking that story from, but I’ve got to work all week and God did make the ocean after all and in a way, that movie is kind of similar to the Jonah story.

“Have a good time tomorrow, sweetheart.”

If I ever start my own church, iGracePointeLifeTruthHouse-NorthRiverElevate, I won’t need to hire a youth minister. I like them. I have nothing against goatees or Frisbee, it’s not that. It’s just that I won’t need a youth minister. I’ve got outreach taken care of already. I have a foolproof plan on how to connect with every teenager in our community—a cool youth group room.

Seriously, why would I hire a full-time youth minister when I can get a real working traffic light for only $378? Have you ever seen those in action? You put one of those in the corner of your youth room, maybe pair it with a STOP sign and a mural of an
open road or somebody smashing through a wall, and you’re going to break fire codes with the amount of kids that come to youth group.

I can just hear kids I-M-ing about it on the internets right now:

TEEN 1: Let’s go to that new church in town.

TEEN 2: Y? (That means “why.” These kids today with their abbreviations! It’s wacky!)

TEEN 1: They have a room called “the hangout spot” and there’s a traffic light in the corner.

TEEN 2: Wait, a real working traffic light? Like the kind that I would see in the street? Get out of here.

TEEN 1: Seriously. And they have a booth in this other corner; it’s like a coffee shop. They call that corner “the café.”

TEEN 2: A real booth? Oh man, if you tell me they have a mural, I am going to flip my lid. (Kids these days are always flipping their lids. You gotta stay on top of this phresh language.)

TEEN 1: Let’s go!

You’re thinking about coming right now, aren’t you, and I didn’t even tell you about the section of bleachers we put in there and the fog machine. Sorry though, unless you’re a “tweener” you can’t come hang out at “Projekt Xcitement.” Feel free to attend our Single’s Ministry though, where we’ll try to help cure you of your singleness.