This Is What Love Looks Like.

/ Erin Kirk / Leave a comment

I can’t remember how I stumbled across my new favorite book, Love Does by Bob Goff.

Maybe I read Bob’s bio which said he is an attorney and honorary US consul to Uganda, who offices at a picnic table in Disneyland. When he’s not in Uganda representing imprisoned children caught in a legal vacuum, he invites people dying of cancer to his house in British Columbia, so they can make good memories in the time they have left.

Bob is a ripping good storyteller and every one of his capers originates in the whimsy and extravagant love of Jesus. He doesn’t quote a lot of scripture, he just lives it and tells us what happens.

Try not to chuckle about the trips he takes with his kids or how he snuck into the Library of Congress, at midnight; or how he sent flowers to the woman who totaled his jeep, just so she wouldn’t feel badly. He didn’t replace his Jeep either, he bought a long board instead. When he’s in LA, he skates to work at Disneyland and relies on the kindness of others to get him where he needs to go.

Who lives like that?

Jesus did.

Oh and in case you’d like to be friends with Bob, he included his cell phone number in the back of his now New York Times Bestseller. He says he answers it. So, I’m going to call him. I’ll let you know what happens.

Where Do the Righteous Rush?

/ Erin Kirk / Leave a comment

Author, speaker, blogger Jen Hatmaker, posted recently about the upcoming election. She took to task Christians on both sides of the political fence for cozying up to their chosen party’s un-Christlike shenanigans.

And, she was pilloried for it. (Pause here for a moment of surprise.)

Haiti 2010

(Photo credit: Cap’n Brian)

The week before, Hatmaker was in Haiti blogging on behalf of Help One Now a Christian relief organization, attempting to address, among other things, the conditions in Haiti’s tent cities which have earned them the nickname “rape camps.”

Did those posts go viral? Engender outrage? Nope. The response, Hatmaker says, was sincere but small.

Why are we comfortable with a version of Christianity that bears so little resemblance to Christ? What do we think we are doing? How can you call yourself a ball player if you don’t actually play ball?

“Yah, take that,” I can hear the non-Christians saying.

Well, wait a sec. It cuts both ways. When I was not a Christian, I still considered myself a socially conscious, defender of the poor. Unfortunately, that mostly meant I sat around with my socially conscious friends and talked about the problem of poverty, but none of us did that much about it. No ball playing there either.

Hatmaker considers this in thoughtful post about our priorities as followers of Christ – especially those of us to whom much has been given, ie: most Americans.

“It’s so easy to get incensed over American politics; that pill goes down like a dream compared to rape camp. Identify with Jesus in His sufferings? Pass. Identify with a political party? Sign me the freak up.”

Her post is worth a read for the solid reminder that God cares a great deal about widows, orphans and the poor. Hatmaker suggests that God cares less that we defend His honor during election season and more that we defend theirs in rape camps.

The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defense, not God’s, that the self-righteous should rush.” ~Life of Pi (quoted in Hatmaker’s post)

Church For Cowboys?

/ Erin Kirk / 4 Comments

Not long after we moved to Texas, our neighbors invited us to Cowboy Church.

At the time, I was in a deep state of apostasy, not reading The Bible, and furious with the church, but I needed to make some friends. Sam just wanted to rope. So we went.

The best explanation for Cowboy Church I’ve ever heard came from our pastor Dennis, a 30-year-old beanpole with a booming voice and a heart for Jesus. He’ll baptize a grown man in a stock tank, preach in his spurs and once rode his horse across Texas carrying a stack of bibles.

“Cowboy Church is a place where men can be men,” Dennis says, because if a man gets saved, he adds, the whole family gets saved.

In the early 80’s there were about five cowboy churches in Texas. Today there are an estimated 750 nationwide. They’re all about John Wayne and Jesus and that’s why you won’t hear any churchy hymns or see men in too-tight suits struggling with their neckties in the back.

Last weekend, Wood County Cowboy Church hosted its annual fall gathering, with a pasture roping, a chuckwagon, worship and two ranch rodeos. I don’t have time to explain what all that is to the non-Texans, so here are a few pictures.

You can hardly throw a rock in Texas these days without hitting a cowboy church, but if you don’t happen to live here and want to find one, here‘s a good place to start. If you live in a town where cowboys still exist, chances are they’re meeting on Sundays at the local sale barn and would love to have you.