America’s Happiest People

Posted on: 11/12/08 4:31 AM | by Jonathan McKee

Do you wonder who enjoys their job the most?

A University of Chicago study offers a little insight into “Job Satisfaction in the United States.” And guess what came up as #1?

Clergy!

All you pastor and youth pastors, go ahead and celebrate… or maybe you already are… after all, you’re the happiest. You rate #1 for happiness with your occupation. You’re followed by firefighters, travel agents, architects, and special ed teachers.

Check out the whole article here.

(ht to David R. Smith)

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The End of Christianity

Posted on: 10/14/08 8:22 AM | by Jonathan McKee

It’s always a learning experience to hear what people outside the church think about those of us “inside” the church. This is a sobering example.

This myspace blog titled “The End of Christianity” from a person that calls themself “Human Evolution” has been getting some serious internet buzz (shout out to Chris for sending it to me). The top of the page offers a 37 second YouTube video of Richard Dawkins that begins with him reading the words, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction.” He goes on to describe God as “vindictive, unforgiving, unjust, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, homophobic, and racist.”

As you scroll down the page you’ll begin to read the rantings of someone who is obviously very upset with God… someone really hurting.

Some might be inclined to get angry with what you read. I beg you to read with an eye of compassion. My guess is that most of us have someone living a few doors down from us who thinks just like. Have you ever stopped to listen to their thoughts? Have you ever read between the lines to see what’s behind these words?

For example. Read this small excerpt:

Regardless of the fact that God does not exist in scientific terms, many have spent their lives as devout Christians; they ask God to spare one second to talk to them or to give them a small sign, but many (including myself) are ignored, even when we pray the “right” way and for the “right” reasons God epitomizes the deadbeat father. When we have dozens of people praying for us, nothing happens, as the study mentioned above shows. While God is silent to our prayers, there are children slowly dying of starvation every 5 seconds, there are natural disasters claiming the lives of millions, and there are viruses using innocent hosts in the most detestable ways.

Do you hear the undertones in this writing? Do see you see the life experience? “They ask God to spare one second to talk to them or to give them a small sign, but many, including myself, are ignored…”

The entire blog brings up issues like this, tough questions, and real feelings from a real person.

This is a good example of the philosophies our kids are going to encounter in the real world. Are they prepared for these conversations? (We talked a lot about this in our podcast episode #12 with Dan Kimball)

According to one of the comments on this blog page… we aren’t. This guy threw these darts at Christianity, basically concluding that Christians are completely ignorant:

The reason Christianity remains is because of several reasons:

1. Christians don’t read their Bibles, nor do they know the history of their religion.
2. Christians do not know that the arguments they think prove their case are not valid logical arguments.
3. Christians don’t know how their Bible was compiled, nor do they know the politics involved with the process.
4. Christians don’t know (or won’t accept) that their Bible is flawed scientifically and it proves many contradictory answers to important questions (such as suffering).

Despite the meaning behind his claim, are these accusations wrong?

Hmmmmmm.

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Scientists Spend 10 Billion to Discover Origins

Posted on: 09/10/08 1:17 PM | by Jonathan McKee

Wow… that’s a lot of cash for something that I could tell them by just reading Genesis 1:1.

But I guess some people aren’t convinced. Hence this historic “big bang” experiment. Scientists plan to smash particle beams together at close to the speed of light inside CERN Research Center’s tightly-sealed Large Hadron Collider to create multiple mini-versions of the primeval Big Bang.

Reuters has an article about it here, and thanks to blog subscriber Tom who sent me the CNN article here. A blurb from the CNN article:

Experts say the collider has the potential to confirm theories about questions that physicists have been working on for decades including the possible existence of extra dimensions. They also hope to find a theoretical particle called the Higgs boson, which has never been detected, but would help explain why matter has mass.

The collider will recreate the conditions of less than a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, when there was a hot “soup” of tiny particles called quarks and gluons, to look at how the universe evolved, said John Harris, U.S. coordinator for ALICE, a detector specialized to analyze that question.

Hmmmmmm.

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E-scrolls

Posted on: 08/28/08 6:26 AM | by Jonathan McKee

The oldest copies of the Bible are about to go online.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are about to be digitally preserved and scanned for all to see. These scrolls are the Biblical documents discovered in 1947 by a Bedouin shepherd who wandered into a cave in the Judean Desert looking for a lost sheep. Instead of “Wooly” the sheep, he found the greatest theological find in history.

CNN posted the details yesterday:

More than 2,000 years after they were written, the Dead Sea Scrolls are going digital as part of an effort to better preserve the ancient texts and let more people see them than ever before.

The high-tech initiative, announced Wednesday, will also reveal text that was not visible to the naked eye.

Over the next two years, the Israel Antiquities Authority will digitally photograph and scan every bit of crumbling parchment and papyrus that makes up the scrolls, which include the oldest written record of the Bible’s Old Testament.

The images eventually will be posted on the Internet for anyone to see.

Click here for the entire article.

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Political Evangelism

Posted on: 08/19/08 10:54 AM | by Jonathan McKee

My dad just sent me this from our local Sacramento Bee, a fascinating article about how political campaigns are learning from person to person evangelism models.

This is timely for me. I’m actually pounding hard right now finishing up writing my book on relational ministry with an emphasis on the power of “one-on-one” relationships (just like the Connect seminar we offer).

A little snippet from the article:

When supplicants answering the Rev. Billy Graham’s altar call streamed to the foot of the stage, each would be met by one of the evangelist’s helpers. The pairings weren’t random.

Graham insisted that young women meet young women. Older men greeted older men. Graham understood that the best way to cement the conversion was to show new believers a reflection of themselves within the church.

And then a little further down… (emphasis mine)

The Democrats learned their lesson – they used paid workers who obviously were “not from around here” to do their canvassing – and so this year the Obama campaign is recruiting an “army of persuasion” based on the Bush neighbor-to-neighbor model. At training sessions, “Obama Organizing Fellows” are taught to develop short, personal narratives that will explain to their neighbors how they came to support the Democrat.

It may spoil some of the fun for the newly minted Obama fellows to learn that their device is taken directly from the megachurch. Evangelicals have long known that people come to faith most easily through contact with friends and neighbors, and that one of the most powerful ways to draw converts is for believers to “witness” their faith (Acts 1:8) with personal stories of salvation.  (Click here for the entire article from the Sacramento Bee, 8/18/08)

Hmmmmmm.

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What Would it Be Like to Be…

Posted on: 07/4/08 9:24 AM | by Jonathan McKee

I’m not big on forwards… but this video was passed to me and caught my eye.

At first I thought this video was pretty goofy (Okay… it is pretty goofy. It’s pure “Saturday Morning Special” quality… so don’t have high expectations at all)… but I love this subject matter.

 

Maybe I just liked this because I spent a whole chapter in my “Do They Run…” book talking about this kind of compassion mindset that asks, “What is it like to be….?”

This also reminds me of the subject matter of the Nickelback “Saving Me” video (which we provide a MUSIC DISCUSSION write up on our web site)… a guy who can see people’s “mortality clocks” ticking away above their heads.

Good stuff.

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Religion a Salad Bar in America

Posted on: 06/24/08 5:51 PM | by Jonathan McKee

“Religion today in the USA is a salad bar where people heap on upbeat beliefs they like and often leave the veggies — like strict doctrines — behind.”

Wow… what an indictment! That’s USA Today’s summary of the new data from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life‘s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey of 35,000 Americans. Most of these findings seem to parallel studies I quoted a few years ago about today’s culture in my Do They Run When They See You Coming book about reaching out to unchurched students.

This 2008 survey reveals some interesting findings about U.S. religious beliefs. A few highlights:

• 92% U.S. adults believe in God

58% say they pray at least once a day.

• 78% overall say there are “absolute standards of right and wrong,” but only 29% rely on their religion to delineate these standards. The majority (52%) turn to “practical experience and common sense,” with 9% relying on philosophy and reason, and 5% on scientific information.

• 74% say “there is a heaven, where people who have led good lives are eternally rewarded,” but far fewer (59%) say there’s a “hell, where people who have led bad lives and die without being sorry are eternally punished.”

• 70%, including a majority of all major Christian and non-Christian religious groups except Mormons, say “many religions can lead to eternal life.”

• 68% say “there’s more than one true way to interpret the teachings of my religion.”

• 44% want to preserve their religion’s traditional beliefs and practices. But most Catholics (67%), Jews (65%), mainline Christians (56%) and Muslims (51%) say their religion should either “adjust to new circumstances” or “adopt modern beliefs and practices.”

• 50% say “homosexuality is a way of life that should be accepted by society,” but the most consistently traditional religious groups say society should discourage it — 76% of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 68% of Mormons, 61% of Muslims and 64% of evangelicals.

• 51% have a certain belief in a personal God, but 27% are less certain of this, 14% call God “an impersonal force,” and 5% reject any kind of God. “People say ‘God,’ and no one knows who they mean,” says Kosmin, director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.

• 14% of all surveyed, including 28% of evangelicals, say religion is the “main influence in their political thinking.”

Check out this link for a fantastic little interactive graph with a collection of these findings. Very cool! (Pew Forum always has great research- you heard a few of these results from us recently in our Youth Culture Window article on church attendance).

Another interesting fact about all of this… apparently my home state of California proved to be “less religious” than other states. (Oh stop it… I know, I know!) LA Times summarized some of these findings.

These are great facts to familiarize ourselves with to better understand the culture we’re trying to reach out to.

Belief in God… Just Not Church

Posted on: 05/20/08 9:47 AM | by Jonathan McKee

Last Sunday I provided a quick “youth culture update” to a local group of youth leaders. In this training, I talked about how the majority of this young generation in America is open to God and spiritual beliefs… just not church attendance or organized religion (a fact I discussed in detail in my book about reaching out to the unchurched).

UK opinion columnist Camilla Cavendish draws the same conclusion about people in Britain. In this article she highlights the religious trends report suggesting there will be fewer people attending churches than mosques by 2040. Apparently only 6.3 percent of the UK population attends church on an average Sunday.

But does that mean 93.7 percent are atheists?

Not even close.

Cavendish, a self described “moonlighting agnostic,” gives us a glimpse into the reality that people might be interested in God… they just aren’t interested in church.

There is a fascinating debate to be had about cause and effect. But the only point I want to make is that being a Christian country has always been about more than belief in God and Sunday worship. In the 2001 census, seven in ten people described themselves as Christian, to the astonishment of many bishops; 22 per cent claimed to be still going to church at least once a year.

So Britain is very similar to America in that the majority of the country describe themselves as Christian, but very few attend church. My friend Dan Kimball expands on this phenomena in his book They Like Jesus, But Not the Church.

This coincides with much of what we’re hearing from people in the media (the source where much of this generation are drawing their opinions from). Celebrities make statements frequently that support this kind of thinking. In my Reaching Out to the Unchurched Training I often share quotes from the media preaching “belief in the spiritual” but resistance to “church or religion.”

“I think I find more strength in faith than I do in organized religion.”
– Jon Bon Jovi, Time, August 6, 2007, p. 6.

“I believe there is something out there.  I believe there is an energy, a Karma– you know– what goes around comes around.  And I hope to God that there is an afterlife . . . I don’t go to church that often.  I go for like Easter Sunday.  There is such a short period of time to live and I’d rather spend it ‘living life’ as apposed to sitting down and praying.”
-Hayden Panettiere, Interview, The Source for Youth Ministry

“I grew up in a family that called itself Catholic.  But nobody told me that to pray you have to go to a place.  I’ve always believed in God my own way.”
– Actress Penelope Cruz, Jane, March 2005, p. 109.

Hmmmmmmm.

I always find it interesting to get a peek into the minds of those we are trying to reach.

Worship on American Idol?

Posted on: 04/11/08 10:38 AM | by Jonathan McKee

Okay… I am constantly shocked by TV, but last night was a totally different kind of surprise. If you saw it, you were probably as surprised as me. American Idol opened up their show last night (Thursday) with the “Top 8” singing the worship song, Shout to the Lord.

Yes… the first words sung on American Idol last night were, “My Jesus, My Savior, Lord there is none like you.”

Check it out! (if you are receiving this in an email, click here to see it)

 

Wow!

Yes… last week (with Dolly Parton) we heard them sing about Jesus in a couple of songs. I was a little suprised then. But wow… two weeks in a row? And Shout to the Lord? Wow.  (Did I mention, “Wow!”)

But then I discoverd something interesting on the internet this morning. This was the SECOND time they sang this song.

Huh?

Yeah… I missed the first time also. For the rest of you who have TIVO like me, when we watched Idol Gives Back, your recording probably ended without hearing the closing number. But if you go on YouTube today you can view the closing number of Idol Gives Back (Wednesday night) where the “Top 8” are wearing white outfits and singing Shout to the Lord. (followed by Ben Stiller coming on stage for a final word where he drops a few cuss words that have to be bleeped out- talk about a contrast)

Wait… this gets more interesting. In that previous version, they start with the words, “My shepherd, my savior. Lord there is none like you.”  That’s right. They left Jesus out of it. Check it out (if you are receiving this as an email, click here to see it).

Hmmmmmmm.

It’s funny. Yesterday the internet was filled with blogs of ticked off Christians ranting about “Why did they take Jesus out of the song!” People were outraged.

Sure, I wouldn’t have liked it (if I had seen that version of the song first). But it doesn’t surprise me at all. What surprises me is that Jesus made it back in!!!

So what happened overnight that put Jesus back in the lyrics? (because I know Fox wasn’t listening to those whiney blogs)

Does anyone know why Jesus was voted back in just before Michael was voted off?

Did You Miss It?

Posted on: 03/21/08 8:28 AM | by Jonathan McKee

“This is an awareness test.”

That’s how this 55 second viral YouTube video starts. Go ahead… give it a try. Because during this Easter season, this “test” brings up a pretty good point.

Watch closely: 

It’s easy to miss something you’re not looking for.

Hmmmm.

Don’t miss celebrating the true meaning behind Easter this weekend.

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