We recently sat down with Jonathon Acuff, creator of StuffChristiansLike.net, and he answered a few questions regarding his latest book project, also called Stuff Christians Like, and some things he’s been rethinking lately. He was also kind enough to let us giveaway a few books. Stay tuned to the end of the interview and see how to you could win a free book.

RETHINK MONTHLY: Jonathan, we like Stuff Christians Like. In fact, we love what you’re doing. You seem to understand Christianese so much that often we wonder if you were born and raised in a closet in the back of a old Baptist church. So, we’re dying to know … were you?

JON ACUFF: Good question. My dad actually started a Southern Baptist Church in New England when I was a child. Watching him take the gospel to an area that hadn’t experienced much of the Southern Baptist approach really helped set the foundation for what I write about.

RM: OK, so maybe you weren’t actually conceived in a closet in the back of a old Baptist church but you do get church culture – this is evident by the response you’ve received with your Stuff Christians Like blog. Now that you’ve written a book with the same name, how has the response been? Tomatoes or roses?

JA: I would say that the response has been 98% positive but like most writers, I take the 2% most seriously. People have been amazingly kind but I get wrapped up in the negative stuff sometimes and let that weigh too heavy.

RM: What’s been the greatest thing you’ve taken away from Stuff Christians Like, the book and the blog? And what else has come out of this experience?

JA: I think the most important thing is that we raised $60,000 to build two kindergartens in Vietnam. That’s something that regardless of the blog and the book will really make a difference. I feel blessed to have done the book, but I know that having hundreds of kids have a place to go to school will make a big impact.

RM: Great, Jonathan. We’re really looking forward to seeing how the book impacts our culture. One last question – anything goes. What has been one thing, whether it’s God or life or Lady GaGa music, you’ve been rethinking lately?

JA: I’ve been rethinking how I define success. As greater opportunities pop up, which are not really cause I’m cool or talented but more because God does crazy things, I am being forced to rethink what really matters.

About Stuff Christians Like
On a whim, Jon Acuff started a satirical blog called stuffchristianslike.net. Acuff hoped this reaction to the popular site Stuff White People Like would start dialog about how silly it is to slap a God-spin on popular secular ideas.

Since the blog started in March 2008, it has had over 6 million page views with over half a million pages views in November alone. Over one million unique visitors from 210 countries (98 percent of the world) have visited the blog and left over 65,000 comments. Out of 112 million blogs in the world, Stuff Christians Like is ranked in the top .01 percent.

About Jon Acuff
Jon Acuff is the comedic genius behind the hit blog Stuff Christians Like which explores the funny things Christians do – including their love for side hugs, crock pots and metrosexual worship leaders. Now, this pastor’s kid, with a mind for branding, a sarcastic mouth and a heart for God is challenging how we laugh about faith in a new book. Acuff is a copywriter and blogger and lives in Atlanta, with his wife and two daughters.

Enter to Win
To be entered to win Stuff Christians Like, the new book by Jon Acuff, simply post a comment on this page. Make sure to include your email address and you will be entered to win 1 of 4 free books. A drawing will be held next Monday, May 3rd, 2010 and winners will be notified via email. Thanks for participating and good luck!

Winners Announced
The winners of our book giveaway have been announced. They are: Elliot, Vin, Krister, and Joseph. Thanks for all who participated in our contest. Look for more contests to come in the future.

Recently we sat down with Rob Bell and talked with him about his new book, Drops Like Stars, and his West Coast tour. We had a great conversation talking about suffering and creativity, creating without pain, and the “church shopper.”

If you’d like to be entered into our contest to WIN tickets to see Rob Bell on his West Coast Drops Like Stars tour, please click here.

RETHINK MONTHLY: You recently wrote a book, Drops Like Stars, and in just a few short weeks, you’ll be on the West Coast giving a presentation of the same name. Can you tell us what led you to write a book about connecting the dots between creativity and suffering?

ROB BELL: Two things: First, I cut my teeth as a pastor. What happens when you’re a pastor and have an actual congregation full of people is you end up getting invited in to some of the most intimate moments of people’s suffering. I can think of an endless number of times when there’s some couple that I’ve only met twice, and then I end up in the I.C. unit with them in the last hours of their kids’ life. Or a family, who I’ve probably had five conversations with, whose sixteen year old son hangs himself, and I end up sitting in the hospital room all alone – just me and the family. Or I go to a funeral home to plan a service and it’s just me, the family, the body, and the casket, and I have to put together a service in the midst of all this grief and pain. Or the endless couples that I’ve met who are struggling with miscarriages. Then I see those same couples two years later and they’re still suffering. So part of it as a pastor is just watching people go through agonizing suffering and then seeing them a year later, two years later, three years later, and seeing the kinds of things that came out of their suffering. And secondly, I make things for a living. Whether it’s books, films, even sermons, there’s a certain sort of art to creating things – a certain agony to the art process. You have an idea about something and then you just work and work at it. It’s frustrating and you feel like you’re missing it. Then eventually it starts to exist. So I started to see all these parallels between the creative process and what I had seen with people who had gone through brutal suffering and all of the creativity and imagination that their suffering actually unleashed.

RM: In the book, you say, “And so we’re polite and we play by the rules and when asked how we are, we answer, ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ just like we’re supposed to. And then we suffer. There’s a disruption and our boxes get smashed.” Did you write this book out of your own experiences with suffering, or were they more out of observations of other people’s sufferings?

ROB: In the end, the book is kind of absent of my own experiences, but it’s deeply shaped, and a lot of people who’ve read the book have had the same sort of idea and say, “Hey wait, there is a bunch of you that’s missing in this book, but it’s got to be there somewhere.” My next book is essentially going to be all of the agonizing, brutal sorts of things that led to up to this book. But, yeah, my own experiences have deeply shaped the book, and my experiences will probably have its own book; just not as many pictures.

RM: Speaking of the visual element of the book, how did you connect with the designers to develop such an engaging, creative piece?

ROB: Mark Baas headed up the design, and he’s been a friend of mine for ten years, and we’ve been through all sorts of things together. Right away I knew that the content had to have a strong visual element, and when I finished the first draft I read it to him as my friend, but knowing that he might have some opinions about it. He immediately said, “Let me art direct, please?” There are several photographers and designers, all here in Grand Rapids, and Mark put together a whole team of people. When I had originally hand-written the first draft, I had a lot of notes in the margins – picture of this here, picture of that there – he took it and ran with it. We had the concept together, but he really oversaw the details of getting it all shot.

RM: There was a phrase in the book, “You can’t create without pain.” You also mention, with the cross, that God says, “I know what you’re feeling.” But what about God’s creation prior to pain, prior to the fall, and prior to the cross? Some of the best things we witness in this life were created in a world and at a time without pain. So, does that conflict with your message that creativity has to come out of pain?

ROB: When I first talked about creativity and suffering, several people said “You mean the tormented artist?” or “Only people who were abused can write great music.” There’s sort of an illusion in culture where the tortured artist is the only person who’s able to access their feelings. Central to the Christian story is a Trinitarian God who creates out of joy. The universe is the overflow of love and harmony. God doesn’t need pain to create. The cross, however, and the new creation does come about through pain. That’s the story of the cross. Out of all this mess, something beautiful emerges.

RM: Concerning the response of the book, do you feel it has connected with people who are still asking questions about life, still searching for faith?

ROB: There was a man and his wife whose 22-year old son was killed in March, and the wife got the book and read it out loud to her husband, five months after their son was killed. They talked about that being the beginning of the healing process for them. In one city, a man’s mother died of cancer twenty-nine years ago, and he said he felt that at the Drops Like Stars live event, for the first time he was able to go places he hadn’t gone. He was able to heal in a way he hadn’t in the previous twenty-nine years. One woman from Tampa, Florida bought tickets for her and her husband, and from the time she had bought the tickets until the night of the event, her husband died. So there have been some very visceral, powerful encounters I’ve had personally.

Our culture is a culture of denial. We don’t have good culture modes for grief and mourning, let alone just asking questions. And I think a lot of people with faith backgrounds feel guilty for being angry or venting or putting God on trial. Being honest about how they’re really feeling is not something they’ve been encouraged to do. My experience has been that when people are given a medium, whether it’s a book or a live experience where they don’t have to have everything resolved – they don’t have to end everything with a nice Bible verse about how it’s all going to work out – there’s a certain freedom in that to be healing. Some people think that half the Psalms are laments. And some of the psalms don’t end with “it’s all going to be alright.” They end just hanging there. And I think in our culture what people need are spaces where you can grieve and be angry and vent and rant and you can be fully human without having to, in the end, put on a polished smile. That’s actually, I think, where we begin to heal. So, the feedback has been that this has given people that certain space, and that’s a beautiful thing to be a part of.

RM: What do you think has happened in modern evangelical Christianity where for so long it hasn’t been alright to lament or be in mourning? Where did we take a left turn to get to this place where everything has to be neat and in order?

ROB: The consumer mentality – the altar of consumerism – is almost like water that we are swimming in. It’s almost like you have to drag the fish up onto the beach and just beat it senseless. Think about the ways people evaluate your average sermon. The number one way a lot of people evaluate a sermon comes in the form of a question: “Did you like it or not?” Imagine after Jesus tells the parable of the wheat and the sower or he curses the fig tree. Imagine people saying, “Did you like it?” You know, those aren’t categories you generally find people throughout history using. Or secondly, people evaluate and say “Did she do a good job? Did he do a good job?” These are all the ways in which spiritual practice has been co-opted by consumer culture.

So, the questions aren’t: “What’s going on inside of you? What is the Spirit doing to you? In what ways are you stretching, evolving, growing, or being transformed?” Instead it’s “Did they do a good job?” which is essentially a subject, object, relationship, in which we stand at a distance and observe and then evaluate and decide whether or not go to that church. A guy the other day said to me, “I’m church shopping.” Can you imagine saying that to the mystics or the apostles? People use phrases that are absolutely insane with a straight face.

RM: Well, we just hope he finds a good deal somewhere.

ROB: Exactly. In a way, a spiritual path has become a commodity like everything else. You have to begin to see that this is the water that the fish are swimming in. It’s so pervasive that it takes profound awakening for people to go: “Oh my word, this is absolutely screwed up.” For a lot of people, the way they were taught about God is that this is an answer to your problems. But the truth is if you decide to follow Jesus, this may be the beginning of some of your problems. There is massive suffering on a global scale and Jesus invites us to see the world as God sees it. Then we begin to steal and see things that we didn’t see before. On many levels, the spiritual path has always, for thousands of years, involved suffering. That’s been a stated, obvious consequence of directing your life in purposeful ways. These are traditions and paths that have been lost to many people, especially when they are given a bright, shiny, happy god, who will fix all their problems. Part of it is introducing people to their own history. When you do, all sorts of beautiful things happen then.

This interview was featured in the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of Rethink Monthly magazine. To see the article in the online version of the magazine, please click here.

We’re back with a special Veteran’s Day podcast featuring Mike Foster, author of Deadly Viper Character Assassins and all around cool guy. We talk about Mike’s recent project, The ManCave, as well as pose the question: How far does grace extend especially to those in ministry?

To find out more about Mike Foster and the Deadly Viper project, visit deadlyviper.org.

Download the podcast here.

Recently we came across a great online video magazine called Enoch Magazine. It intrigued us. So we decided to find out more. After finding out more about them, the more we liked them and their vision. Here is an interview we recently had with Nate Smith, Managing Editor of Enoch Magazine.

Tell us a little about Enoch Magazine. What is it? And why is it?

Enoch Magazine is a non profit media movement that exists online. We travel and film documentaries that show God’s glory in unique and different ways. We also interview bands, have dj mixes, articles, and more. Our big focuses are the homeless and finding out what people’s perception of Jesus is. We started Enoch because we were frustrated with a lot of the Christian Media available out there. It seemed so much of it was living in the Christian bubble and it was frustrating. We wanted to take a different angle. We wanted to find people who are truly serving God but their not famous or anybody special and document that.

What obsticles do you face with running the magazine?

Well honestly finances and time. Its hard to fund all of our trips when we give all our content away for free. That’s ok though. Look in the Bible and never once did they charge to hear Jesus speak or did the disciples ever ask to be paid. We live in an age where we are constantly being bombarded by the digital and print world. If you don’t have a lot of money than you can’t advertise or if you don’t have a lot of time to post your content all over the internet people might not find it. I still work a part time to help fund trips and its hard sometimes to find a good balance.

How has Enoch challenged your faith?

That’s a great question. It seems with Enoch I take it a day at time. Most of the time you don’t know who is reading the articles or watching the videos so you can’t directly see God working. It’s made me remember that in faith God is always behind the scenes and always working and many people don’t give him the credit he deserves. Its made me grow in my trust in finances. We are moving our magazine to Skid Row in Downtown Los Angeles and I have no money and barely enough to cover the gas to get there but I am trusting God a day at a time. It makes me realize he will take care of me. It sounds cliché but he seems to always come through. I definitely have thrown in all my cards with God so I have no choice but to be faithful.

Tell us more about the documentary Skid Row is Holyground that you guys created a few months ago.

A little over a year and a half ago my partner in the magazine Carter Theis wanted to go to a place he was scared of and see God show up. He wanted to go to Skid Row in Downtown Los Angeles and film a documentary about what the need was there. For those of you who don’t know Skid Row is a 9 by 9 block in Downtown Los Angeles where they estimate 15,000 to 20,000 homeless people are living. For us it was about also growing in faith and trusting that the Lord would protect us in what is considered one of the most dangerous places in the United States. That was out first trip and we’ve been back 4 times since then. Over the last year and a half we have released a series of videos called Skid Row is Holyground on the Enoch Web Site. We hope to eventually put out a DVD of our whole experience. We are moving there in a few weeks and we will putting out weekly videos on the Enoch Magazine site and also on Skidrowisholyground.com.

Enoch is moving their headquarters to Skid Row in LA. Why the move and how did the passion develop within you guys for one of the most dangerous communities in California?

Every time we were out there on the streets we hated leaving after we had connected with that community. By just making videos we felt we were not doing enough. We wanted to be down there every day truly making a difference. So, after a few trips we decided that we should move Enoch Magazine to Skid Row. There is never a dull day on Skid Row. It’s exciting! There are so many ministry opportunities down there too. You can do anything from Street Evangelism to music to feeding to discipleship and so much more.

What are some of the needs you are facing?

Well our number one need right now is finances. We have partnered with a ministry called the Jonah Project (jonahproject.org) and we are in the process of buying a building on Skid Row. This building will not only serve as the Enoch Magazine Headquarters but also as a place that will be open for the homeless everyday. They will be able to get fed, get new clothes, go to bible studies and services on Sundays. We also want to have a place to throw concerts that are specficially for the homeless. This building will also be a place that mission groups can come and serve and stay. We want people to come to Skid Row and have the same experience we had on our first few trips. We actually have a website for the building called Skidrowisholyground.com

How can people connect with you?

People can connect with us by going to Enochmagazine.com or Skidrowisholyground.com. You can also connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace or email us at info@enochmagazine.com.

Recently we had a conversation with Margaret Feinberg, author of the new book, Scouting the Divine. We asked her questions about her pilgrimage across the US, caring for a flock of sheep, and Wal-Mart. And this is what she had to say…

Have we heard incorrectly or did you recently come to Oregon, our neck of the woods (or should we say “God’s country”), to spent time with sheep?

I love me some Oregon. Seriously, I HEART the Pacific Northwest. After spending five years living in Alaska, it’s hard not to fall in love with your region of the country. Almost a decade ago, I met a woman from outside of Portland who took care of sheep. I never forgot our meeting all the rich spiritual insights that emerged from her simply talking about caring for a flock. Last spring, I tracked her down, cold called her, reintroduced myself, and garnered an invitation to spend time in her home and among her sheep. The experience was unforgettable.

Why ‘Scouting the Divine?’ Where did this concept come from?

I’ve become increasingly aware that the agrarian world of the Bible is distant from my modern suburban lifestyle, so I decided to be intentional about closing the gap. I went on my own “stay-grimage.” or “spiritual pilgrimage” in the United States. I spent time with the shepherdess in Oregon, a farmer in Nebraska, a beekeeper in Colorado, and a vinter in Napa Valley. With each person, I opened the scripture and asked, “How do you read this—not as a theologian—but in light of what you do everyday?” Their answers changed the way I read scripture forever.

Can you spend a minute and tell one of the truths that impacted you personally while writing Scouting the Divine?

There were so many spiritual discoveries. One I’ve been gnawing on lately came from my time with the beekeeper. I asked him why he thought the Promised Land was described as a land overflowing with milk and honey. The land could have been described as anything—the land of ginormous pomegranates or luscious olive oil. Instead, God chose to make the land famous for overflowing with milk and honey. When I asked the beekeeper, he noted that a land that overflows with honey means that everything is working in its proper order. The winter snows don’t melt too late. The summer heat isn’t overwhelming. The rain falls at its appointed time. The first freeze doesn’t arrive too early. If any of these factors are out of alignment then the grasses and flowers can’t bloom to their full potential and the bees can’t produce honey in abundance. That means that one of the defining characteristics of the Promised Land is that everything works in it’s proper order. I want to enter that Promised Land in my own life.–where I’m living in the season of life God has placed me in to my full potential.

On a side note, we’ve always been impressed – from following you on Twitter and reading your blog – that, despite the busyness of ministry, you prove to remain passionate about your relationship with Jesus. What are some practical things that you do to keep that passion fresh?

Even in the midst of a busy schedule, I try to take care of myself. This may sound so unspiritual, but I try to make sure I’m getting enough sleep. I carve out mornings when I allow my body to drink in as much sleep as it needs. Why? When I’m well-rested, I’m less like to make foolish decisions that lead me into sin and it’s easier to connect to God and respond to His leadings and nudging. I have a hunch the people of God would be far more effective if we were well-rested. In addition, I love to read what I call Bible nerd books. I read commentaries, studies on ancient Israel and obscure books that really feed my spirit and soul. And Leif and I read a Walter Bruegermann prayer aloud together. It’s one of the sweetest moments of our day.

When does Scouting the Divine release and how can people purchase it?

Scouting the Divine is available October 1 and the accompanying six-week DVD study releases from Lifeway in January 2010. You can check it out on amazon.com, borders.com, or my own site—which is launching all-new in October!–www.margaretfeinberg.com. For all you Facebookers, I’m on as Margaret Feinberg and for all you twitters, you can find me @mafeinberg.

Next time you’re in Oregon herding sheep, you’ll have to stop by and say hi.

Would love to! I’ll be speaking at Living Hope Church in Vancouver, Washington, and George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon, in November.

BONUS: When I think of Wal-Mart, I think of … the hidden story of Sam Walton’s heart for caring for the poor that isn’t heard or heralded oenough. I just got back from Bentonville, Arkansas, home of Wal-mart, and discovered countless stories of outrageously generous and good things being done by this shopping behemoth. You’d be surprised at just how much!

A popular speaker at churches and leading conferences such as Fusion, Catalyst, and LeadNow, Margaret Feinberg (www.margaretfeinberg.com) invites people to discover the relevance of God and His Word in a modern world. Audiences love her ability to connect the practical with the spiritual. Recently named by Charisma magazine as one of the “30 Emerging Voices” who will help lead the church in the next decade, she has written more than a dozen books including the critically-acclaimed The Organic God and the Sacred Echo (Zondervan). People of all ages connect with her relational teaching style. Margaret currently lives in Morrison, Colorado, with her 6′8″ husband, Leif. When she’s not writing or traveling, she enjoys anything outdoors, lots of laughter, and their super-pup, Hershey. But she says some of her best moments are spent communicating with her readers. So go ahead, become her friend on Facebook, or tag her on Twitter at @mafeinberg.