We miss something remarkable when happiness is our pursuit, because happiness is a brief vapor at her very best. What’s more, there is something beautiful about getting what you get, something lovely in the mess, something divine in the ordinary. And the something is grace.

Grace to smile in sickness, to dance in death, to cartwheel in chaos, to strike a pose, though all around us and inside us crumbles. Grace to understand that this isn’t the way things are supposed to be, at least not forever. But it’s the way things are now and here. Grace to believe there is plenty of grace for all of it. All we have to do is receive it; life that is. Life, as is.

And if we’ll take what life gives, grace will find us—in all her fierceness and splendor, dressed in chain mail and armor, ready to pin a sprig of lilac on our collars. But she only comes to those of us who find ourselves in the places where brokenness and rejoicing coexist. Places where bitter death tolls harmonize with strains of celebration. Places where broken bones dance to the trumpet’s blast.

(excerpt from As Is, page 35)

If you’re thinking…”um wow, when did Tyler become such a good writer?” Let me put your thoughts at ease: I didn’t write those words.

I’ve been reading a book titled As Is by a mostly unknown author over the past few weeks. This was by far my favorite part and also best captured the theme of the book as a whole.

Aside from just letting this sit here as is (I kid, I kid), here are a few quick observations on these paragraphs:

1. Krista refers to grace as a woman, which is really quite normal. Before being married I would have thought that was lame. Now it makes complete sense. Grace isn’t too common in me.
2. I find myself almost always opposed to go to the places where we find grace. Because grace means uncomfortable and exposed. Why is it that I shy away from those places in life?
3. The typical Christian view of grace is somewhat limited to me. We take it as God’s forgiveness towards us sinners. I did a study on this in school, but I believe God’s grace shows up in our lives in many ways other than when we sin.

What has God taught you about grace?

Many people are of the opinion that churches should only sing the “hymns of the faith” (whatever that means).

3 funny (or odd) things about that:

1. Most hymns aren’t really “hymns.” Hymns in a musical sense have no chorus, but a lot of “hymns” do.
2. The Bible speaks about singing a new song, and I don’t think we should take that too literally but it is a helpful reminder that even the best things in life become meaningless when done over and over without purpose.
3. Everyone’s “hymns of the faith” list is different.

In my years of doing youth worship in high school all the way to today I’ve ran into many people who think songs written long ago have better theology than those written today.

Considering I’m a relatively young guy, I find that opinion to be a shot against my generation which, as a whole, isn’t hymn crazy. But I also don’t think it is true.

I’ve talked before about horrible lyrics in today’s praise and worship music, but I there is plenty around that is rooted in Scripture and has a richness to it. I ran across a song by a newer artist named John Mark McMillan this past week that I think is a great example of this this richness. It was a song he set out to write in the style of a hymn (though it does have a chorus, so like “How Great Thou Art” it isn’t really a hymn).

I’ve often found hymns to be written with a confusing language to those lacking in some theological or Biblical training. And this song (“Death In His Grave”) has enough of that to need explanation after a listen through. Some people call that a Biblical/theological richness, others just call it confusing. Here’s the chorus (check out the whole song lyrics here):

On Friday a thief
On Sunday a King
Laid down in grief
But awoke holding keys
Of Hell on that day
The first born of the slain
The Man Jesus Christ
Laid death in his grave

(watch the video here)

I guess my whole point is this:

It is Jesus we are after in our churches. At least I hope so. Plenty of the songs being written today draw us closer to Jesus through lyrics, just as much as hymns do. Hymns are not Canon. Neither are contemporary worship songs.

It is not the songs we should care about, it is the God we sing about in the songs that matters.

I wrote about how a Mentoring Project tweet went viral earlier this week. It was amazing to me how many people had a negative reaction to us. It just goes to show that anytime a bunch of people have access to an organization there will always be some who choose to despise everything about it.

I said last week that it hadn’t rained here in over 3 weeks. Let’s make that over 4 weeks now.

Blogs

1. Eugene on imperfectly living out our faith.
2. Not that I agree but this is well put together: “Why national flags don’t belong in church.”
3. Just when I thought BP was starting to figure it out, this happens.
4. Don Miller wrote a very thought provoking post about the context of spirituality and faith.
5. Funny and true. SCL post on secreting being liberal.
6. The band I played with at Sunset last weekend decided to have some fun for the prelude at our 11am gathering. Check it out.

News

• As if you needed more proof that the PCUSA denomination is in major trouble.
• A bus driver in Austin, TX was fired for refusing to drop off a traveler at a Planned Parenthood. Hmm…
• The next big thing isn’t sermons on a screen at multiple locations, its 3-d hologram preaching. This is going a little too far I think.
• Incredible pictures of the 2010 Tour de France from Boston.com.

Have a great weekend.

That title is a joke in case you were wondering. Some people have formulas and such for getting things to go viral, but really no one has any clue how anything goes viral.

That Old Spice campaign last week in Portland? I don’t get it, but it went viral.

I do some social media stuff for The Mentoring Project and yesterday one of our tweets on Twitter went viral. I’ve seen things get retweeted (think of this as sharing what someone else said for those of you who don’t use Twitter) 20 times and thought it was getting a big push. Yesterday I set up @tmproject for a tweet in the morning, and it got retweeted over 500 times. Make that over 700 times (and growing) between Twitter’s standard retweet and the old school retweet.

I could explain why in this instance so many people got behind a statistic, but why people got behind this instead of the hundreds of other things we’ve done over the last 6 months is beyond me. It helped that two Twitter users with a large following retweeted us and that led many others to as well. But we didn’t ask for anyone to get behind this. This is the part of social media I’ll never understand or be able to predict.

A lot of times art only makes complete sense to the artist.

Going viral on social media is kind of like that. It doesn’t make much sense.

Everyday great things get overlooked and important things are missed, while the opposite gets glorified.

I’m just glad that yesterday more people were made aware of the fatherless epidemic that we can do something about through mentors.

Any thoughts on how things go viral?

I get the feeling that a lot of people believe the secret to their future success in life is rooted in getting involved with social media. Whether it is for a business or just a person, too many times people think they just need to start a blog, use Twitter, get on Facebook, put pictures on Flickr, connect with people on LinkedIn (…and the list goes on), then they’ll have it made.

There are a lot of lies that are spoken and unspoken when it comes to beginning to use and connect with social media. And sadly there are plenty of lies that I’ve believed for a time. Sometimes these lies drive us to use Twitter or start a blog, but soon enough reality will set in and more often than not, these people slowly disengage. Here are some lies about social media I’ve believed:

1. Your blog will land you a job. There are probably a few thousand people out of many, many million who could get a job because of the name they’ve built on these social networks or through their blog. But guess what? You aren’t one of those people. Your blog may help (or hurt) you get an interview for a job, but you will never, ever get a job because you have a great blog.
2. You will get a bunch of new best friends. I’ve made a lot of meaningful friendships through this blog and other social networks, but far too often introverts get onto Twitter looking for a new connection only to find out that not everyone else is looking for the exact same thing. This isn’t to say you can’t make friends, but until the friendship moves to a face to face connection, it will only be so deep. Call me traditional but I still believe deep friendship happens face to face.
3. People care about my stats. There’s always someone who has more followers or subscribers so there really is no reason to think you’ve arrived. Some people think it is crazy how many people read my blog (couple hundred a day), but I know many who would say that is ridiculously low. In the end though, I don’t think people care about how many followers you have, they care about how you treat them as a person.
4. It’s easy. This is the worst lie of all. Talk to a lot of “experts” on social media and you will get the perception that having success within social media is really pretty easy. You do this and then you do that and then VIOLA, you’ve hit the big time. To truly connect with people or to build a decent readership of a blog takes A LOT of time, effort, and energy. Not just for one month, but always. It takes a consistent drive to be creative and to desire to connect with real people, not just be a content robot.

What lies about social media have you believed?

Think my title is a little over the top?

Check this out:

“In a recent survey of 1,000 church attenders, respondents were asked, ‘Why does the church exist?’ According to 89 percent, the church’s purpose was ‘to take care of my family’s and my spiritual needs.’ Only 11 percent said the purpose of the church is ‘to win the world for Jesus Christ.’” – Greg Laurie, senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California.

Rather than rehash a lot of what Bob Hyatt has already said, I’ll point you towards his post. To me, it is a must read.

I do think there is a role of the church in meeting the needs of the community around and within. However, I do have a problem with the poll results from Greg Laurie’s church (my sister attends there sometimes when she is in school).

I am curious though…

According to you…

Why does the church exist? Or why does your local church exist?