So this week has been quite tiring for our little family. We’ve gone through the entire emotional spectrum over the past 7 days. I’m emotionally exhausted and only have the energy to write about something like kittens, or rainbows, or kittens playing with rainbows. But since there’s no breaking news on that, how about this…
K-Strauss, is a yo-yo expert…or so he says. And he says it everywhere that will let him. He’s been on a half-dozen different news stations claiming to go to different schools with a message about the environment, but he never gets to that. Instead he always starts talking about the broken home he’s from, or how messed up our school systems are these days.
Here’s a clip of him getting a phone call in the middle of his interview…and taking the call.
And here’s the kicker, no one knows why he does this. As far as anyone knows, this guy isn’t filming a documentary on how to crash local morning shows, he’s just a guy who has a different, but hilarious, sense of humor and goes around spreading his awkward joy. Even the newscasters laugh, maybe not at the time, but they laugh. One of them said it was the most bizarre experience he’s ever had on the air, but I guarantee he said it with a smile on his face.
So I’m reading through a book right now called, “Stuff Christians Like.” It’s seriously one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. It’s written by a preacher’s kid, who knows us well, and I highly recommend it if you are in the mood to irreverently laugh at yourself. Some examples of Stuff Christians like are:
Giving Gospel Tracts with Haloween Candy
Using the desire to be culturally relevant as an excuse to watch “Family Guy”
Fearing God will send you to Africa if you give him your “All”
Told you it was funny.
But one of my favorites things from this book was this:
Scheduling Revivals.
Here is a quote from what the author, Jonathan Acuff:
“Revivals, those unexpected outporings of God that sweep whole communities up into a Heavenly rythymn, are an important part of the Christian faith. Sometimes the best way to show how important they are is to go ahead and get one of the calendar. Sure, they’re often spontaneous, but if you can fit one in right after Vacation Bible School and right before Missions month begins, might as well.”
And here is where all this comes together.
One of the most central things of our Western ethos, is control. We like to be in charge of things. And on some level I appreciate this. As someone who is in front of people often, I like to have some idea of what is happening. If Yo-Yo guy interrupted one of my sermons I probably wouldn’t laugh, at least not for a long, long time.
But K-Stass is very effectively pointing out something that I think even churches need to listen to. Something that Jonathan Acuff is satirically saying as well. We aren’t in control. As Barbara Brown Taylor says, “We never lose control, only the illusion that we ever were in control in the first place.”
At Pepperdine, sermon after sermon kept coming back to the truth that leaning into God’s Spirit is the opposite of control. If we are honest when we read the book of Acts, we see people who are totally unsure of just about everything. The earliest Christians were constantly moving toward people and places that they wouldn’t have chosen to go. And the only explanation we have is that they honestly believed that God could be trusted with their lives.
And in return we see men and women filled with joy.
And maybe that’s what K-Strass is going for after all.
