On September 16th, Don posted a blog about how investors had backed out of the Blue Like Jazz movie and the project was to be put on hold indefinitely. It so happens that both of us follow Don’s blog on a regular basis – and we both share the same ideals when it comes to the business world. We immediately began emailing back and forth about this, and we have to admit that our initial reaction wasn’t “Ah, that sucks.” It was rather: “There’s another way.” The way we saw it, this book sold more than a million copies. It was an anomaly from the get go in our eyes. Another thing that stuck out to us was that this wasn’t your everyday ‘Christian market’ readership either. This book reached so many people of all demographics. So why fund it traditionally? Why not open it up to the people in which the book actually impacted?

After reading the comments on the blog that day, we knew that we weren’t the only ones. So many in the blogosohere were already willing to give to this project. The problem was, there just wasn’t a means to do so. There needed to be organization and we needed to have a collective glimpse of the destination.

We crafted an email about our thoughts, and knew we had a mutual friend who was friends with Don from way back. We took a chance and asked him to send it on. Sure enough, within a few hours, we heard back. Both Don and director Steve Taylor wanted to hear some of our ideas. We were stoked (there were multiple fist pumps…). We effectively did not sleep at all that night. We put together a viral marketing campaign and laid all our thoughts out on the table… Or rather, numerous white boards.

We submitted a proposal to Don and Steve the next day. Soon after that we heard from Steve saying that he was pretty excited to see what we could come up with. We met late on a Sunday night and nailed down all the details of the campaign. With Don conferencing in from Portland, they both gave us the green light to move forward with the campaign.

Since then, it’s been an absolute whirlwind. We had only 5 days to get all the components in place for a launch. A homepage, Facebook, Twitter and most importantly: Kickstarter. Kickstarter is an amazing tool and we would not have been able to create this project without it.

Why do you guys think BLJ the movie is worth saving?

Blue Like Jazz was a huge book for us. One could say that it is our generation’s Mere Christianity. It comes at faith, religion and Christianity in such a unique light…one we weren’t accustomed to seeing it in. We believe this story is important, and we believe that if this film is made – it could change things in way’s unthought of. We want to see this come to fruition, and if $125,000 is all that stands in the way, then we say… “Let’s do this.”

This isn’t going to be just another cheesy Christian movie, is it?

No, it isn’t. Mainstream Christian movies have a tendency to water things down. They all pretty much have the same feel. We feel Blue Like Jazz takes a more honest look at what it looks like to struggle with faith. If this film is made, it could really change Christian movies moving forward.

How can people get involved?

Well first and foremost, we are raising money. So we need donations! But just as important, is your voice. We need people to spread the word. The only way a campaign like this succeeds is when the voice of the people meets the passion of the movement.

What kind of success are you seeing so far?

We’ve seen some great reactions so far. Twitter has lit up with so many commenting in. Local and national media have chimed in. Nashville news station WKRN did a video piece on the campaign, and there’s been many influential bloggers who have started to spread the word. But as far as numbers go, in the first 48 hours we have raised over $20,000.

If I donate, where does my money go?

The beauty of Kickstarter is that no money will exchanges hands unless we meet our goal. If we do meet our goal, all transactions will go through, and (after Kickstarter’s fees) the money goes straight to Director Steve Taylor’s movie budget. No middlemen. Your money goes directly to funding this movie.

What’s the deal – are you guys getting paid for this or something?

The deal is simply this: we were passionate and we acted.

What about Blue Like Jazz the book was so important to you that you want to see this movie made?

The honesty of Blue Like Jazz changed the way we viewed our faith. The rawness of it all isn’t so popular in mainstream Christianity, and we hope to see that changed.

What was Donald Miller’s reaction when you pitched this idea to him? How did that all go down?

It started with the whole, ‘It’s not what you know, but who you know.’ Turns out, us and Don have a mutual friend named Randy who helped make the connection. We first pitched the concept to Randy – and crazily enough he felt just as passionate about it so he sent it along directly to Don. Once he received it, they were really grateful that the people cared enough to stir the waters, but they also weren’t necessarily jumping for joy – regardless, both he and Director Steve Taylor were both open to hearing our thoughts.

So we met with Steve late one Sunday night at one of our houses, pitched our crazy-man looking whiteboards, then after about 3 hours Don called in and he and Steve actually bought into it. After the crazy “So wait – we’re really going to try and pull this off?” settled into the air, it was non-stop motion.

As we closed the initial launch meeting – both Steve and Don spoke some really kind and gracious words. It was at that point we realized we were merely a small piece of a much greater story, and we haven’t looked back since.

Erik sat down with Rich Duncan and asked him a few questions about the project.

To find out more about the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition project in Salem, visit the website at www.richduncan-emhe.com.

We believe that many of God’s people instinctively know there is a missing note in much of today’s Christianity. When they hear it put in the terms that Jesus Christ is the missing ingredient, they resonate with that. Jesus has too often become a logo, a slogan, an afterthought, and a footnote. Rather than the sum, substance, center, circumference, and the ALL of our faith. Of course, we explain what that means exactly in our book.

Were you surprised by the number of people who said things like, “I’ve been a Christian for thirty years and have never heard this before?”

It always surprises me yet it doesn’t surprise me. I actually hear this quote often when I speak on God’s eternal purpose in Christ in conferences, even from seminary professors (believe it or not). It surprises me in that it’s the grand narrative of the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. It doesn’t surprise me because for many years I didn’t see it either, despite my study of Scripture and hearing scores of sermons from every quarter. The eternal purpose — which is centered on Christ and all of His unsearchable riches — is what one reviewer called “the hidden obvious.” Once our eyes are opened to see it — really, Him — we can’t help but see it everywhere. Readers can learn more about the eternal purpose at http://www.ptmin.org – We discuss it some in our book of course.

What has replaced Jesus as the focus of many churches?

So many things that are “about” Him or “related to” Him. Depending on the particular church or movement, here’s a short list: Evangelism, church multiplication, social justice, personal holiness, apologetics, Bible study, memorizing Scripture, the gifts of the Spirit, revival, signs, wonders, healing, speaking in tongues, leadership and leadership principles, church growth, etc. All of these things can replace, eclipse, and leave Jesus Himself out in the cold. And sadly, they often do. That’s not just a theory; a good number of pastors and church leaders have confessed this to us after reading the book. (See some of the Reader Reviews at www.theJesusManifesto.com) The Holy Spirit is very jealous to preserve the unvarnished reality of Christ being ALL.

What has been the reaction to the book so far?

The vast majority of readers have said that the book has given them a whole new way of understanding, viewing, and relating to the Lord Jesus. Many have said that God used the book to change their lives, which is hugely humbling for us. Others have read it, but seemed to miss the point because they were looking to “do” something — they wanted a recipe. The book is deliberately not a recipe book. It’s main job is to give readers a deeper revelation of their Lord, one that will bowl them over and steal their breath. Whenever this happens with a reader, we rejoice. In short, our aim in the book can be summed up in the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” Our book seeks to give the kind of glimpse of the vastness of the Lord Jesus Christ that puts within them, by the Holy Spirit of God, a longing to explore His infinite riches for the fulfillment of God’s timeless purpose — the very thing that provoked Him to create.

To find out more about Jesus Manifesto by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola, visit www.theJesusManifesto.com.

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.

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.