As The World’s Number One Speaker On The Subject of Humility…

As the world’s num­ber one speak­er on the sub­ject of humil­i­ty, I’d like to draw your atten­tion to a book in which I am a recur­ring char­ac­ter.

Earl Creps has just writ­ten Off-Road Dis­ci­plines, a book for church lead­ers try­ing to nav­i­gate all the change our cul­ture keeps throw­ing at us.

I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to dis­cov­er that I am quot­ed many times through­out the book. If you have nev­er read your­self quot­ed in a book before, let me assure that it can be dis­con­cert­ing.

There’s no way I can be objec­tive about this book. It’s writ­ten by a friend and almost all the recur­ring char­ac­ters are friends.

So I will sim­ply say that I enjoyed it and I think I would have enjoyed it whether or not it was by a friend. It’s just filled with fas­ci­nat­ing lit­tle snip­pets.

The His­to­ry Chan­nel recent­ly offered me part of the answer in a doc­u­men­tary about the researchers who devote their lives to dis­cov­er­ing Atlantis. These pas­sion­ate and sin­cere peo­ple con­sid­er them­selves con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­als in their field. They employ expen­sive, high-tech equip­ment and sac­ri­fice the respect of main­stream sci­ence to live on the per­pet­u­al verge of one of the great­est dis­cov­er­ies of all time. Spurred on by an ancient text (Pla­to, in this case), they spend years sur­vey­ing vast stretch­es of ocean in a quest to assem­ble clues to cat­a­clysmic events in the dis­tant past. The dis­dain of their sci­en­tif­ic peers only increas­es their fer­vor by mak­ing these faith­ful into pro­fes­sion­al mar­tyrs. Some­time before the last com­mer­cial on the TV pro­gram, I grasped the par­al­lel to the post-Chris­t­ian expe­ri­ence of the Church: ancient texts, out­ra­geous the­o­ries, huge expense, per­se­cu­tion com­plex, and a pas­sion­ate devo­tion to things that mat­ter only to insid­ers. (page 21)

I have to believe I would find that grip­ping no mat­ter who wrote it. Or con­sid­er this sim­ple evi­dence that demon­strates a truth I have long believed but been unable to show data for:

…in a sur­vey of mag­a­zine indices I found that the first ref­er­ences to post­mod­ernism in Chris­t­ian peri­od­i­cals did not appear until four to thir­teen years after the first ref­er­ences are indexed in sec­u­lar jour­nals.

That’s the most con­crete, data-based illus­tra­tion I’ve ever seen of the cul­ture lag in which the church is trapped.

Plus he coins two phras­es that I love: “over­churched under­achiev­er” (so busy with church stuff they have no time for real stuff) and “ortho­doxy creep” (a ten­den­cy to doc­tri­nal­ize every opin­ion).

Any­way, on to the impor­tant stuff: me.

My first appear­ance in the book is on page 45:

After hear­ing a talk sup­port­ed by Pow­er­Point, Glen (half my age) said polite­ly, “I thought you had a degree in com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

Ouch. The words hurt Earl the first time and me the sec­ond.

I am fea­tured again five pages lat­er: “Glen helps me with tech­nol­o­gy and the Inter­net.”

My best role, how­ev­er, comes in the chap­ter on humil­i­ty.

No, real­ly.

A [min­is­te­r­i­al] life rep­re­sent­ing an atti­tude of “I know!” “You’re wrong!” and “You need me!” serves as what my friend Glen calls a “block­er,” stand­ing in the way of the spir­i­tu­al­ly hun­gry rather than moti­vat­ing them to inves­ti­gate Jesus fur­ther. (page 83)

At last, I am por­trayed as the hum­ble sage I know and love.

So I’ll stop quot­ing from the book before I paint myself in an unflat­ter­ing light again. 😉