Here are a couple of good ones to start off with.

Tik Tok by Ke$ha
Cover by Amy Colalella

Better Man by Pearl Jam
Cover by Hayley Legg

Yes, the words are powerful and the arguments are sound. It’s not the video itself that I have a problem with. It’s (what seems like) every one of my christian friends sharing the link on facebook or retweeting it on Twitter. They talk about how “truthful” this video is or how much they agree with it, but then they move on with their life unchanged. They agree with what is said here and they share it, but for the most part their life doesn’t change. Their actions stay the same. How they approach Christ, the church, and religion remains constant.

There must be something satisfactory about watching a video like this and sharing it, but the big problem is – IT STOPS THERE! It bothers me when I see this happen. We quote what theologians or preachers say and don’t let it transform us, we read the lastest Christian book don’t change how we pray or view God, we watch video and praise them relentlessly, and we get away with thinking that by doing this we are doing what we are suppose to. God has called us to be much, much more.

Maybe I’m thinking about this too much, but I when I see a great video like this go viral, but how we do church doesn’t change, I feel like we completely missed out on the purpose of the video. [end rant]

UPDATE: Additional reading from The Gospel Coalition

One of the things that gets me about this book is how much Charlie reminds me of myself when I was his age. I would imagine that it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that in many ways most teenagers have tendencies to be a wallflower from time to time.

Another reason this book is so impactful is it gets you thinking. The book is a collection of letter that Charlie writes someone, he writes them to sort out his thoughts so this can easily be seen as a journal that he writes. And the thing about journals is we see how and what we think when things happen to us in out lives. For me, this originally struck me a sad book because so much doesn’t go his way, but it gets me thinking- there are a lot of stuff that doesn’t go our way in our life, but do we see our life as sad? Sometimes, but most of the time we try and handle it in the best way we think we know how and (like how Charlie is in most of the book) we are generally content with life.

I came away with two things.
1.) “So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we’ll never know most of them.” We are who we are and we need to find people who will accept us for it. It’s cliche and something we shove down the throats of teenagers, but we need to be ourselves and if we’re not, we aren’t going to be happy.
2.) Engage in life. Too many people wait for life to happen for them. They wait for something amazing to come to them instead of going after the amazing. Instead of chasing their dreams, they remain their dreams. We let so many things in our life pass us by and while some of us don’t have personality of a wallflower, by our actions we become wallflowers.

UPDATE: Just for the record, I highly recommend this. Read it, you’ll love it.

1. Josh Hamilton- I Am Second. Watch it!
2. Dider Drogba- They guy saved a country from Civil War, plus he plays some mean soccer.
3. Tim Tebow- the man with the spiritual gift of winning, haha.
4. Dirk Nowitski- got Dallas that long awaited championship!
5. Michael Young- classy and professional guy who leads by example.

Who are some of yours?

1. Momentum A great time with my friends from England: camping in the middle of nowhere West England, worship every morning and night, it was a great week and worth the extra week I stayed in England.

2. Game 2 of the ALCS Rangers vs. Tigers. Extra Innings. Nelson Cruz hit a grand slam in the 11th to win the game for the Rangers! What an epic game!

3. Versailles Kinda threw this on my trip to Paris because a few people told me how amazing this place is, and they were right. This place blew me away, I wish I had another day where I could just roam around the gardens.

4. Playing craps at Caesars Palace I learned to play craps for my trip to Las Vegas, it was on my bucket list. Not only was it fun, but I made some money- especially at Caesars Palace (yes the real Caesars Palace). I started the night with a set amount of money, and by the end I had made over 500% of what I started.

5. St. Paul’s Cathedral One of the first major structures built after the Great Fire of London. The inside is one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen, and although the walk to the top was long and claustrophobic, the views were worth it.

6. Eiffel Tower What a sight! It is beautiful and scary at the same time. The sights at the top were amazing. I was glad that this was the first sight I saw in Paris.

7. My weekly lunches with my friend Sam for almost two years now we meet once a week. I look forward to this every week. We talk about everything from stupid guy stuff to church and ministry things to just life in general.

8. Mike Satterfield at Easter Retreat This guy can preach- and he brought it at our student ministry retreat this Easter.

9. Preaching in Big Church in Birchington During the first weekend of the Minnis Bay mission, I was given the opportunity to preach for one of the local churches. It was a difficult sermon to write, I basically ended up doing a typical 3 point sermon with illustrations emphasizing each point (one was the, now famous in Minnis, Jesus Wants the Rose story that I borrowed from Matt Chandler). Apparently it was not only one of my best sermons, but one the best many had every heard! From me?! I was humbled, I kept it simple and left it up to God to do the talking.

10. ___________________
Enough about my year- Number 10 is for you to fill in. What is your favorite moment of 2011?

Here is a New Years Resolution for you: spend a week or two this year and go through everything you have. I mean physically look at everything that you own and start to purge some things. Our lives will be less cluttered, you will have less stuff to worry about and with the things that you sell you will have more money to do stuff. If you need any motivation, just watch Hoarders on A&E- that will make you want to get rid of stuff real quick.

And DON’T EVER believe otherwise.