top 12 list (of top 10 lists) on 12-12-12

It’s December 12, 2012, and we ought to celebrate!  You know we won’t experience the good fortune of a matching number month-day-year again until next century (and I fear I won’t be around to enjoy that one).  So…

• Eat a dozen donuts for breakfast.  
• Use the word twelve in every conversation you have today.  
• Run twelve miles… or twelve minutes.  
• Spend twelve dollars on a gift and give it to the twelfth person you see today.  
• Memorize the names of the twelve apostles — or if you’re Jewish perhaps the twelve tribes of Israel (are Jews any more likely to have memorized the twelve tribes than Christians are the twelve apostles?).
• Have a moment of silence at 12:12 (the one that hasn’t happened yet) in order to reflect on this rare occasion.

I don’t care much what you do.  But do something!  Celebrate this twelfth day of the twelfth month of the twelfth year in this century.  And if you do indeed decide to celebrate, leave a comment telling us all what you’re doing.

Oh, what’s that?  What am I doing on 12-12-12?  Well, for starters I’m offering you guys…

10 ideas for more effective teaching

Matt Dabbs is an associate minister at the Northwest Church of Christ in St. Petersburg, Florida.  He works a great deal in education and small groups and has one of the best Christian blogs (a truly incredible amount of content) on the internet.  He blogs at Kingdom Living, though I particularly want to direct you towards his Bible Class Archive, which offers teaching materials to be used free of charge, provided you credit the author.  And there are over a dozen talented teachers who have submitted lessons to his archive.

I’ve asked Matt to offer us a few suggestions to those of us who are Bible teachers.  But his ideas will be helpful to any teacher, no matter the subject.

men are from mars…

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I am republishing a portion of my most popular blog post ever in the history of aliens and strangers. While I’m not ashamed that my most visited post has to do with love, I am a little embarrassed that this Christian missionary’s most successful essay ever is this:

Top Ten Alien / Astronaut Pick-up Lines

10 things this missionary MUST do on furlough

When people find out we’ve been in Tanzania 2 1/2 years without visiting the U.S. — and that we plan on living here a total of at least 10 years — the first thing they say is this:

Wow!  That must be hard.
What do you miss the most?

What do I miss the most?  That’s an extremely difficult question to answer.  It’s like asking a father which of his kids he loves the most.  The answer is all of them.

But the two questions are not exactly the same, mind you, because I’ve not sired much of anything you’ll see in this list.  Nor do I miss everything about the states.  But I do miss a lot.  That’s why I’ve made this top ten list.  

i left my wallet in el segundo or 7 songs that shaped my life

In January of this year, I was a little frustrated with all the backwards thinking being done on the internet.  Everyone was publishing their top posts of 2010 — those were LAST year’s top posts!  I never want to be one who rests on my laurels, so instead I predicted my top posts of 2011, even though they’d not yet been written.  This post is one of them.

So please join me, if you will.  Let’s go back in time – yeah, yeah, I just said a bunch of crap about not looking back (I also posted a link to my top posts of 2010, but you were probably too busy reading to notice) – and explore 7 songs from my childhood that made me who I am today.

5 reasons kjv readers aren’t celebrating

The King James Version of the Bible turns 400 this year.  Do you have plans to celebrate?

No.  Not really.

But it’s a very special occasion.  If I were born in 1611, you’d celebrate my birthday wouldn’t you?

Uhm… I guess?  But I don’t see what that has to do with an outdated and difficult-to-understand book.

It’s a ceremonious occasion.

Okay…?

Well, in your expert opinion, why are more people not taking advantage of this opportunity to extol the virtues of a book of such distinction?

Only a handful of us read it.  Why should we celebrate a book we don’t read?  I would, however, be all for observing The Message’s birthday.  Do you know when that will be?

No, I’m sorry.  I don’t.  

Too bad.  That’d be a heck of a party. 

But surely some people still read the KJV.  Right?  It’s poetic.

Yes, they still read it in pockets of south Alabama and Georgia.  They also use “thees” and “thous” in their prayers.  And if you interview any of them, I wouldn’t mention poetry.

What then, shall not these souls make merry on this blissful occasion?

Yeah… I don’t think you’ll find any birthday parties for the KJV even among these good brethren.  Here’s why:

5 Reasons Even People Who Read the KJV Are Not Celebrating Its 400-Year Anniversary

1. We can not know with any certainty the actual date of the KJV’s birth.  Therefore it is unwise at best — and sinful at worst — to commemorate the birth of the KJV on any given day. 
2. As Christians we are expected to celebrate the birthday of the Bible every day (or at least every Sunday) — and not just one day out of one year.  We celebrate by reading the word and learning from it.
3. The Bible never authorizes any birthday celebration for books — itself included.  We seek to celebrate where the Bible celebrates and sit in silence and dispassion where it is silent and dispassionate.
4. The observance of the KJV’s birthday most definitely originated in some obscure pagan holiday, ritual, or ceremony which involved evil spirits, immoral sexual acts, and/or Harry Potter.
5. By celebrating the 400-year anniversary of the KJV, we would be admitting that it was not indeed the Bible from which Paul read.  And we’ve kind of got a lot riding on that.

let’s be practical: 9 ideas for better prayer

image courtesy of heavenawaits

I’ve been to a lot of conferences for ministers and missionaries.  And my biggest frustration is that 55 minutes of a one-hour class on “Developing Leaders in the Ministry” will be about why it’s important to develop leadership in my ministry.  Generally speaking, every individual in that class knows the importance of developing leadership; that’s why they chose to attend the class.  What we want is something practical.

Sadly, I leave these conferences happy if I walk away with only four or five very practical ideas.  This shouldn’t be the case.

Yesterday I wrote about devotion to prayer.  But really… how many of us didn’t already believe our prayer lives could use a little boost?  And so — without going into the details of why prayer is important or how it works or even what it is — I want to attempt to offer some practical suggestions for improving our prayer lives.

Now, these ideas are just that: Ideas.  You may already be doing some or many of these.  You may have tried several of these and found them to be stupid, foolish, or theologically incorrect (I hope not).  But hopefully you will find at least one practice in here that will improve your praying. I’ve tried to offer both general principles and very specific ideas, so there’s a lot of overlap.  Think of this list as a starting point.  Be creative.

9 Ideas for Better Prayer

1. Lessen Interruptions

• Choose a specific place to pray — one in which you’re less likely to be interrupted.
  • The closet can serve as a special prayer place.
  • Your kids are less likely to interrupt you while you’re in the shower.  [Maybe.]
  • During your morning run.
  • At the office.
  • In your car.
  • At the park.
• Choose a specific time to pray — one in which you’re less likely to be interrupted.
  • 5:00 AM
  • During your drive to work.
  • Late at night or just before bed.

2. Fix Routines and Make Reminders

• Pray every time you…
  • enter the kitchen.
  • hear your watch beep on the hour.
  • start your car.
  • put on your shoes.
  • access the internet.
  • see a Bible.
  • have a cup of coffee.
• Create reminders.
  • Wear a bracelet you wouldn’t normally wear.
  • Set the alarm on your watch.
  • Place Bible verses or prayer cards…
    • on your mirrors.
    • in your cabinet doors.
    • on the dash of your car.
    • over the lintels of your doors.
    • as screensavers or backgrounds on your computer.

3.  Structure Your Prayer Time

• Make and keep a list.
  • Pray the entire list at one time.
  • Or pray one section at a time, completing the list each day (or even each week, etc).
• Pray through an acronym.
  • ACTS: adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication
  • PRAISE: praise, repentance, adoration, intercession, supplication, eternal results
  • PRAY: praise, repent, access, yield
  • PRAYER: pray, respond, admit, yield, expect, rejoice
  • AVAILABLE: you can google this one yourself  [Does someone get paid to make these up?]

4.  Pray Shorter

• Make your prayers brief and you can…
  • improve your concentration.
  • increase the number of times you pray each day.
  • greatly increase the likelihood that you’ll actually take the time to pray.
  • please God. (Mt 6:7-8)  [Oh, and don't use big words.]
• Pray sentence-long prayers for people and places as you encounter them.
  • Pray for each coworker as you pass them in the hall.
  • Pray for the sender of each email you receive.
  • Pray for every school or church you see on the way to work.
• Combine these short prayers with the fixed reminders above.
  • Tell God one thing you’re thankful for every time you access the internet.
  • Pray for one of your friends or family members every time you look at your watch.
  • Pray short prayers that God will help you develop one fruit of the Spirit in your life.  Assign a different fruit to each kitchen cabinet, and pray for that fruit each time you open that cabinet.

5. Set Achievable Goals

• I doubt it’s wise to begin by saying, “I’ll pray for two hours every day.”  How about:
  • I’ll pray five times today.
  • I’ll pray in my car — from my driveway until I exit the neighborhood.
  • I’ll pray for however long this light remains red.
  • (For runners, a prayer fartlek of sorts…)  I’ll pray from this tree to that mailbox.
  • I’ll thank God for more things today than I ask him for.
• Build on what already exists in your schedule.  Add prayer to those habits you’ve already formed.
  • Don’t say you’ll wake up to pray every morning at 5:00 when you usually wake at 6:00.
  • Instead, attach prayer to an already existing running schedule, lunch time, or particular event in your day.

6.  Change It Up a Little

• Write your prayers.
• Pray out loud instead of quietly.
• Memorize a prayer from scripture.
• Reword a prayer someone else has written.
• Draw or paint your prayer.
• Write a song.
• Just listen.
• Go on a prayer walk, in which you walk in the specific place over which you’re praying.
• Be creative.

7.  Pray With Your Family

• At breakfast, lunch, or supper — whichever you eat together (or all of them).
• With your spouse before bed.
• With each child as you’re getting them dressed.
• In your car before you begin each trip.

8.  Remove Structure From Your Prayer Time (yes, exactly the opposite of #3)

• Pray in incomplete sentences.
• Pray vague ideas and thoughts instead of specifics.
• Attempt to carry on a conversation with God.
• Place an empty chair in the room, and tell God about your day.

9.  ?????

• Your turn.  What practical advice do you have for the rest of us?  What’s worked (or not worked) for you?

top 10 (visited) in 2010 [but not the 10 best]

I talked all big and bad earlier in the week, as if I thought a blogger linking back to his/her top 10 blog posts of 2010 was a sad thing.  Yeah, I was just fooling around with you guys.  Though that day’s list where I predicted my top 10 posts of 2011 was probably WAY more interesting than this one… where I do nothing more than look back at this past year.  Predicting the future is always cooler than trying to get people to click on your old blog posts.

All the same, though, it’s the weekend.  And these are the top 10 posts of 2010, selected by you, the readers. I do, however, have to admit that I’m a little disappointed.  I like to think of you all as a spiritually mature crowd — but many of these posts were just plain foolish.  Hey, you like what you like; who am I to say otherwise? If you crave the spiritual milk (and not meat), so be it.

1. this post is not about anne rice
2. missionary predicament: hospitality and rest
3. church planting: the discovery bible study and dna
4. a mother’s response to the ground zero controversy
5. martian love and alien pick-up lines
6. down with beliefnet
7. tanzanian kids say the darndest things
8. water, water, everywhere — and a frog who’s in our sink
9. how to make link sausage
10. making God in our image

If you’d like to offer some lame excuses as to why you guys didn’t like the Bible study posts more than the ones about Tanzanian kids and frogs in the waterlines, do so below.  I’ll be holding my breath.

looking forward — top 10 posts of 2011

Don’t Look Back — It’d Be Immature of You

Now, I can’t control what every other blogger in the world is doing (oh, if only I could…).  I can, however, tell you what they’re all up to these days.  And that is: reviewing their top 10 blog posts of 2010.  I’m not going to suggest this is a fruitless endeavor, or that I’m above such.  But it is backward-thinking at best, and resting on one’s laurels at worst.  And here at aliens and strangers, we want to be about the future — not the past. Yep, no laurels for us (literally, there are no laurels on which for us to rest).  After all, Paul did say…

There’s one thing that I do:  I forget what’s in my past and I comtemplate what’s ahead…  Anyone who’s mature should do the same. — Philippians 3:13-15 (taken completely out of context and summarized by me)

And we all want to be mature, right?  So I’m not going to do this “Top 10 Posts of 2010″ thing.  Instead, I’m going to offer you up my top 10 posts of 2011.  Seriously.  [I can't link to them yet, of course, as they've not yet been written.  But still... here they are.]

Top 10 Posts of 2011 — aliens and strangers

1.  auburn wins the national championship

Yep, this one will be posted tomorrow.

2.  10 steps to a successful blog

This will be a satire piece.  I may not know successful blogging — but I do know satire.

3.  i left my wallet in el segundo

Music I remember from my childhood, and how it helped me become the man I am today.

4.  10 things i have to do on furlough

Christie and I will return to the states in August of this year for about three months.  Our (my) goals are to visit family and friends (many have not met Baylor), encourage and be encouraged by our sponsoring churches, participate in a few great opportunities for continuing education, and accomplish these ten things.

5. 10 mistakes i’m afraid we’ll make on furlough

Lots of things can go wrong during a 3-month visit in the U.S.  Ranging from the occasional embarrassing cultural faux pas to legitimate and problematic blunders, this post will be a top 10 list of my biggest fears.

6. a post / series on discipleship which doesn’t yet have a title

This series is currently being written by John King, one of my mentors and shepherds at Stones River Church (our sending congregation).  He is a gifted teacher, and I think of him as my own personal expert on discipleship.  Soon he’ll be yours.

7.  why i am a member of the church of Christ

From a page out of Dr. Leroy Brownlow’s (in)famous book, in this post I’ll explain a bit about the church of Christ, my own religious heritage, what I appreciate most about it, and why I’m a member of this “movement.”

8.  an ode to bacon

This is SO self-explanatory.

9.  silly abbot, pixar’s for kids

I have no idea what this post is going to be about.  I just really liked it as a title.

10. ??????????

This is where I need your help.  Please feel free — encouraged even — to give me ideas for blog posts (you’d like to read) in the comments section below.  I’m happy to accept suggestions for subject matter or even just possible titles of posts.  If you’d like to read more Bible study material or poetry or short stories or top 10 lists — or if you just want me to shut up and leave the whole blog idea alone — let me know.  I’d also be delighted to hear what you think has and hasn’t worked on aliens and strangers.

Which of these posts are you most looking forward to in 2011?  And what’s your idea for post #10?

one-year anniversary

Today is my anniversary!  Yeah, the blog and I have been together now for exactly one year (hence the paper).  We’ve had our ups and downs and, truth be told, we’re not necessarily in this for better or for worse and in sickness and in health.  Pretty much, first whiff of trouble I get… I’m out of here.  Why do you think we haven’t had any little baby blogs yet?

But I don’t anticipate leaving aliens and strangers anytime soon.  I enjoy it too much.

On November 5th of last year, I posted my first blog entry.  Prior to that day I was writing reports each month and sending them out to everyone who’d subscribed to our mission email list.  Every month I was writing five or six pages of stuff — and having to delete most of it to reach a suitable length for an email.  I was challenged by Ross Kellis to start a blog instead.  I thought and prayed about it.  And what tipped me over the edge was that I wanted to write some kind of Bible studies or devotional thoughts that would allow and encourage discussion; and I didn’t have an outlet for such.  The blog was born.

Asterisks overboard was my first blog post (not necessarily my finest work, but my first post all the same), and was written in the same format as my email reports.  The first post written more in the style of a blog followed the next day — paul’s big mistakes.  And now, here we are at the end of year one.  My regular readers will know I’m not one to write about blog rankings and numbers and the like — I actually never have before today.*  [And, in speaking with a few of you, I've found that some would believe my blog is considerably more "successful" and far reaching than it actually is.]  Today, on my anniversary, I thought I’d post a few stats and a list of the “Top 10 (or 12, depending on how you count it) Posts on Aliens and Strangers.”

 

aliens and strangers

 

Total Visits = 55,000
Current Average per Day = 177
Average per Month = 4,583
Alexa Traffic Rank = 1,919,581
Technorati Rank = 34,751
Technorati Authority = 122

1. Most Visited Post
   
2. Favorite Corruption of Scripture
3. Favorite Satire Piece
4. Favorite (still) Unfinished, Yet Published (anyway), Essay
5. Favorite Advice for Christians Today and part two
6. Missionary Full Disclosure
7. How (not) to Eat With Your Hands — a Photo Tour
8. Best Top 10 List or maybe it’s this one?
9. A Post About Dead Animals
10. How to Study the Bible

Alright, enough of my shameless plugging.  Feel free to do your own in the comments today; I figure it’s only fair.  Which of your blog posts would you most like the rest of us to read?  Leave a link or two.

 

* However, I must admit I had an unhealthy relationship with site stats and page views for the first 4 or 5 months of this blog; I was looking at that stuff almost every day.  The desire to be admired often leads to prostitution and a betrayal of one’s ideals.  And site statistics quickly turn into popularity pornography.  I’ve got a much healthier grasp on all of this these days.