I don’t hate this because it is religious. I hate this because I am a designer and this is lazy design and theft masqueraded as parody.

Crowskie

This article in Gizmodo is the subject of the above commenter’s angst.  And mine.  I could not have said it any better.

the iChurch

That’s what a creative, artistic world thinks when they see our pathetic marketing.  I am not against the church using marketing, but isn’t it safe to say that we might be able to come up with something that is not a rip-off of some major advertising department’s stuff?

Do we serve an infintely creative God?  Are there ideas out there that are (gasp) better than just photoshopping an iPhone onto a banner and printing it?  Let’s return to the days when the church led the way in artistic thinking (think Michelangelo or Raphael before they were Ninja Turtles), and leave behind the lazy photocopying of other more talented artists.  Then, and only then, will we have any voice in our culture.



This is for my friend Jon, who has a cornhole set in his back yard, but had never heard the official theme song.

Corporate memos from American Jesus.

It’s my culture’s fault.

It’s my parent’s fault.

It’s my child’s fault.

If it wasn’t for those things, I would have read my Bible yesterday.  Or the day before.  And furthermore, if I had read my Bible, I would have some great insight into life to blog about today.

These are a few of my favorite lies.

The bottom line is that I should read my Bible.  Or is that the bottom line?  I wrote it unquestioningly enough.  It flowed right out of my brain, through my fingers, and spilled all over the blog. I have been conditioned to say things like “I should read my Bible more” or “I should pray more” or “I should share my faith more.”  The question being, who or what conditioned me to say those things?

I am so prone to make my relationship with God into an exercise in efficiency.  I Americanize Jesus.  I make him about the bottom line, only it’s not a financial bottom line, it’s things like “how many people came to Christ” or “lives changed,” or to CCC it up a bit “movements everywhere.”  And Jesus becomes my CEO and corporate president, pushing me to figure out more and more ways to see our corporate vision become a reality.

That turns my apporach to the Bible into reading the corporate memo.  And, while avoiding conjecture about God’s feelings, I would rather Jacqueline not read a love note from me if she is going to read it as though it were a corporate memo.

It’s time to go find the love note I left on the bedside table.

48 Hours…

Here’s how this thing worked, for those interested:

We got a line of dialogue (“Is that all you’ve got to say?” in our case), a prop (ashtray) a character name (Chuck Raynal) and drew a genre (comedy), and had 48 hours to write, storyboard, shoot, edit, and produce a film.

Here’s our entry!