This morning I had the privilege of interviewing Brian McLaren, author of A Generous Orthodoxy, pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church and big name in the emerging church. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, the complete interview is now online over at Church Marketing Sucks.

McSweeney’s is well-known for broad pop culture skewering where just about everyone gets jabbed with subtle yet deadly barbs. The site recently took aim at the Bible, or at least a pop culture understanding of the Bible, with This Bible You Sold Me Is Clearly Defective and I’d Like to Return It, Please.

I’m just surprised the list is so short.

(from the About page of the Church Marketing Sucks blog, a project I’ve been working on for a few months that just went public:)

Frustrate.
Something’s wrong with your church. Something’s wrong with the Church. Church marketing efforts and communication in general suck. We’ve got the greatest story ever told, but no one’s listening. The church has a problem communicating, and it’s time to change.

Educate.
We love the church, but it needs some help. Typos, cheesy logos, and bad clip art aren’t helping the cause. But snazzy marketing won’t save this ship, either. It’s not about being perfect, but there’s a better way to communicate. It’s authentic, it’s loving, and it knows how to spell.

Motivate.
This isn’t simply about putting butts in pews or selling glossy postcards. It’s about helping the church be the Church, and seeing lives changed as a result. If helping the church communicate better allows one person to finally glimpse the Gospel, then our work has been worthwhile. It may be fuzzy math, but God can worry about that.

Heritage USA used to be a thriving Christian resort tucked away in Fort Mill, S.C. and capital city for the infamous PTL Ministries and televangelist Jim Bakker. The residential resort used to draw 6 million visitors annually (nearby Paramount’s Carowinds brings in 2 million annually). People sold their homes and made the pilgrimage to Heritage USA to join the resort. But the Christian Mecca didn’t last.

Now the Christian paradise is in ruins and being sold piecemeal to developers. So much for a resort resurrection. Though the idea of an abandoned Christian resort/theme park sounds like a novel waiting to be written.

But with the new Billy Graham headquarters only a few miles across the state line in Charlotte, soon to be the new site of Billy Graham’s boyhood home, perhaps there’s yet hope for a Christian Mecca.

Vintage 21, an emerging church in Raleigh, N.C., has a stockpile of goofy promotional videos. The first few about a small group of one are pretty good, though a bit long. But the last several promote a series on Jesus in Mystery Science Theater 3000 style. As discussion starters they’re brilliant, if border-line sacrilegious (I like the last one the best). (link via Nick Ciske)

Now I’ve see it all: The Talking Jesus Action Figure. It’s a 12-inch action figure that recites the Ten Commandments in an eerily macho voice (listen for yourself!). Sadly the web site doesn’t say whether or not it comes with Kung-Fun action grip. How long before we see the healing of G.I. Joe and forgiveness of Barbie Magdalene, ala Brick Testament?

This beats the Dashboard Jesus I saw last week in Las Vegas.

66 percent of evangelical adults favor a constitutional ammendment making Christianity the official religion of the U.S., according to a Barna survey. While a majority of evangelicals favor such a move, only 32 percent of adults in general favor the move.

The survey explored a number church/state issues, in most cases finding favor for Christian principles, though few favored official support of Christianity. Support for removing the 10 Commandments, “In God We Trust” and “one nation under God” was between 15-18 percent, while support for teaching creationism was at 59 percent. (link via e-vangelism via Youth Specialties)

Protestants are losing their centuries old majority in the U.S., falling from 63 percent to 52 percent between 1993 and 2002. You can thank church dropouts, fewer children being raised as Protestants, and fewer Protestant immigrants. Some of the shift can also be attributed to people who describe themselves generically as Christians, but not Protestants, a category that didn’t exist in the 1970s but now constitutes 2 percent of the population.

Relevant posted their pictures of unbelievable Christian kitsch from last week’s CBA (a Christian retail convention — it used to stand for Christian Bookseller’s Association, but as you can tell from Relevant’s pics, they’re not peddling just books anymore, so the CBA abbreviation has lost all meaning).

Sadly, their pictures of the Scripture Candy booth don’t include the Bible Bar, a candy bar made with the foods “the Lord calls good” in Deuteronomy 8:8: Wheat, barley, grapes, honey, figs, pomegranates and olive oil. The web site calls it “one of the greatest new products ever introduced to the Christian market.”

If you’re at all familiar with this blog, you probably noticed (with some sense of relief) that I didn’t give my usual anti-patriotic rant on the 4th of July. Well, it’s not too late. How ’bout a mini-rant?

Jenell Williams-Paris mentioned that the theme on Sunday at the local mega-church her parents attended was “America: The Country the Bible Built.” She said it was heresy. Her mom said she just likes to be negative.

My church didn’t have anything quite as obvious, but we did sing “America the Beautiful.” I couldn’t sing the song, not because I disagree with its message or think its a bad song. I simply couldn’t understand how it fit into the context of a worship service.

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea! …

God mend thine every flaw …

May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine! …

Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!

It’s a fine song. Go America! Thanks be to God, keep watching over us, rah, rah, rah. But is it really appropriate in worship? The first verse sounds more like it’s praising America than God. Sure, God gets his mention, but America gets two (with exclamation marks). The song’s relationship to the divine is asking for a blessing, a holy handout. The purpose here doesn’t seem to be simple worship. If you do worship through the song, it seems at least secondary to me.

Maybe I’m just being anal and searching for something to rant about. Is it that bad to sing a patriotic song when the 4th of July falls on Sunday?

I just wonder how good it is. Do Christians in other countries sing patriotic songs on their nations’ holidays in church? I’m uncomfortable with the whole concept. We’re a worldwide Church, bound not by flag but by blood. It seems so incongruous to praise our nation — oh yeah, thanks to you God — in the face of such a wider world.

Maybe I’m representative of a declining nationalism and a rising globalism. Yeah, I love my country. I just love my God that much more and would rather worship God on Sunday morning.