Won't YOU be my neighbor? Please??

We can all appreciate the figurative meaning of Jesus' parables and the "big picture" application of his commands, but sometimes it takes the literal to get my attention.

I'm on the second level of my apartment building. Directly above me on the third floor lives a family with three or four children under age 7. Most evenings, and most of the weekend, the children heave bowling balls onto the floor (aka my ceiling) and herd cattle between the bedrooms. Occasionally Louie the Wonder Cat gets a little scared and hides under the bed, and one morning I woke up to find a picture jarred off the wall.

Below me on the first floor is a woman with many Major Issues and Serious Problems. I know this because she discusses them at length on her patio, often when I'm trying to escape the Thunderdome upstairs by retreating to my balcony. She finds great solace in pouring out her miseries in long, loud cell phone calls. This would be annoying enough, but her chain-smoking makes it really special.

So I can sit outside and get lung cancer or sit inside and watch the plaster crack. Or, this time of year, I can work inside with the windows open and experience both at once.

I could talk all day long about Jesus' teaching to love our neighbor as ourselves and the importance of serving others, but only if we mean the big world out there I don't have to deal with. Because the irony is I am annoyed to distraction with my actual neighbors, and haven't given much thought to serving them at all.

I won't say the name of the church or the word, but this morning an older gentleman named Luther offered the opening prayer in the service I attended, and in his plea that God help us stop "whining, and complaining, and griping" he also included one other word that means much the same thing but usually isn't said in church.

My head snapped up as I looked around to see if anyone else noticed, but the moment passed and eventually I returned to the accepted posture of corporate prayer, even if my mind was no longer following along.

Actually, it was a good prayer, one that we could all pray occasionally. Philippians reminds us to do everything without complaining, so the spirit of Luther's prayer was certainly in line with God's will.

And it definitely puts a new spin on being "seeker sensitive."

Church enews headline of the day

You Can Avoid Foreign Toilets and Still Serve God

(242 Community Church is hoping this will entice some adults to volunteer as helpers in their children's ministry this summer. Clever, but I'd consider a foreign toilet before I'd step into some of the ones frequented by gaggles of preschoolers.)

One of my friends I think you should know--a new recurring feature! (OOMFITYSK)

Last week I reconnected with Sally Lloyd-Jones, a children's book author who lives in New York City. I worked for Sally as a summer intern when she was the publisher at Reader's Digest Young Families, and our paths have crossed a few times since then.

I found her website while I was avoiding my work and surfing around Standard's website. In addition to her books with Random House and other publishers, Sally has published several books with Standard including the award-winning Baby's First Bible. Her most recent book, which the NYT called "adorable, original, well-illustrated, and fabulous," is How to be a Baby: by Me, the Big Sister. (Even the title's great.)

I encourage you to check out her storybook Bibles with Standard, as well as her other books, especially if you have a young child. Her blog is also a delight, even if you can't get the full effect of her British accent making it funnier.

I think when I grow up I want to be Sally. Is it too late to become Welsh?

4 years at an acclaimed private liberal arts college: $50,000

An A in "Humanities and the Arts" my junior year: 50 hours of studying

Being able to recognize Barber's Adagio for Strings playing in Starbucks this morning: pointless

I've spent a zillion hours the last few weeks compiling videos, blogs, and podcasts from our churches for ChristianChurchToday.com. (Side note: If you have any of the above, shoot me a note with the details: jen@cctoday.com).

So I've been able to spend time on YouTube and call it work, and I've found a lot of great stuff from churches big and small. Here's the link to one of my favorites, since Blogger allows everyone on earth but me to post videos directly. What's the opposite of hearting something? That would describe my feelings for Blogger.

Lately I've been attending a non-instrumental church here in Nashville, which surprises me for at least two reasons. For one, I love music of all kinds so to voluntarily limit my musical worship to the acapella variety didn't initially appeal to me. And also it's just quite ironic to "do church" without instruments in Music City USA.

So I didn't quite understand why I kept returning, except that--to reference one of my previous rants about church--these services seem worshipful. And so I keep going.

A few weeks ago I got a little more insight into why I'm gravitating toward making this my new church home. I was talking to Ryan Christian, who is the worship minister at Richland Hills Church of Christ in Texas, about RH's transition from being acapella-only to being a "both/and" church that also has an instrumental service. He remarked, "Acapella is the great equalizer between styles."

He's right. Spirituals, contemporary choruses, ancient hymns: these can all be done well with instruments, but the use of guitars, organs, violins or drums creates very definite stylistic differences that practically disappear when the instruments do.

In my current disillusionment with church services as usual, it's really no surprise at all that I'm drawn to the simple-but-not-easy excellence of my local church of Christ. I don't know if I'll stay there, but it's home for now.

Northern Hills Christian Church in Thornton, CO uses a blog to keep members connected with the church's missionaries. I'm still reading through it, but it looks like the various missionaries--recent posts include individuals working on Katrina recovery, in Uganda, in Tanzania, in Mexico, and in Paraguay--email their updates and prayer requests to the NH mission team who then post them on the blog. The blog is easily accessed through the church's website.

This is such a great idea, and I wonder why more churches don't do it. It's low-cost and easy. Most important, it helps church members remember their missionaries serving far away and probably reassures those missionaries that people back home really do care about their daily lives and experiences.

You can check it out at http://northernhillsmteam.wordpress.com/.

I like these creative worship ideas from http://www.wibsite.com/faith/interesting.htm. There are more on the site--I just copied my favorites here. And I believe the author's British, so read it all in a Knightsbridge accent.

Decide that worship doesn't have to be based around singing.

Invite people to wander round 'stations' situated around the building rather than just sitting in the pews.

Stick a huge sheet of blank newsprint (usually available free from your local newspaper printers) on the wall and get people to scribble prayers or anything else on it.

Share a meal together.

An idea for a ritual: Hang a large sheet from the ceiling. Encourage people to make a tear in it to symbolise the barrier between God and people being broken down (fits well with Luke 23:45).

Take a look at the Visions website. In particular look at their images section, plenty of inspiring stuff.

Try one of the experiential prayer exercises on the embody site.

As a confession give people large dissolving tablets and invite people to write on them then dissolve them.

Have a variety of resources for prayer (maps, news reports, etc.) in different corners of the room for people to wander between and pray for different topics.

Get people to write down prayers on small pieces of paper. Photocopy these onto acetate, probably reducing them as well. Cut these into slide-sized pieces and put them into slide frames (available from a photographic shop). Then at the next meeting project the written prayers with backing music.

Make a photostory of a Bible account using your friends as willing participants.

Have coffee available during the service.

Conduct a snap vote of participants on an issue. Get instant results or read them out at a later point in the proceedings.

Make a cross out of an old Christmas tree.

Have your service at a different time.

Bring together the items involved in a biblical story in order to help people focus. For example for the 'I am the Vine' passage find some shears, grapes and a cut off branch.

Use a number of rooms and have different music playing in each.

Split talks into several 5 minute sections rather than one long spiel. (You knew I'd include this one.)

Hands down, no contest, my favorite Christian music artist is Nichole Nordeman. I can't think of a song of hers that I don't like, but I can think of a dozen I absolutely love.

Turns out I didn't end up interviewing folks at the GMAs this year, and the only reason I felt disappointed was it meant forfeiting a long-shot chance of meeting her. Nichole, if you're reading this, do you want to be best friends?

Go to iTunes and take a listen. Start with these. I'd give a limb to be able to write this well.

This Mystery
Every Season
Wide Eyed
I Am
Gratitude (my anthem of 2006)
Brave
Finally Free
Sunrise

I so wish I could have gone to last week's Q conference in Atlanta. Several of my friends attended, and one of them spoke. (Read their thoughts here and here).

One of the many cool things about the event is that every speaker--from Rob Bell to the executive vice president of CNN--receives exactly 18 minutes to speak. A huge digital clock faces the speaker and another one faces the audience, and both can watch the minutes tick down, for good or bad. It forces the speakers to distill their thoughts, communicating only the most important, and it allows attendees to hear from many more leaders than at a traditional conference.

With the theme "It's Time," this year would have been the perfect opportunity for the NACC to adopt a similar strategy. In the absence of a countdown device, however, part of my role on this year's tech crew will be crawling to the front row and alerting the speaker--who is sharing that it's time for church planting or it's time to reach the lost--that it's also time to get off the stage.