The Fantasy League of Christian Twitter

by Ben Howard

'Tis the season for fantasy football drafts. Don't let anyone fool you, fantasy football is the most enjoyable thing about football season. If my fantasy team tanks, I'll barely pay attention for the rest of the year. Fantasy sports make it fun to be a fan. Instead of rooting for a team that might be a perennial loser, you get to root for that obscure guy you've never seen play to break a 20 yard touchdown run.

In recent years, the fantasy world has exploded beyond sports. Beyond the mainstays of fantasy football and baseball, we've seen the growth of fantasy basketball and hockey. Even weirder was the temporary existence of fantasy leagues for congress and the music business. My personal favorite is the Grantland Reality TV Fantasy League, where participants draft the cast of reality TV shows and get points when said cast member cries, gets drunk, gets kicked off the show, etc.

This got me to thinking, why not have a fantasy league for all the Christian leaders of the world. Who doesn't want to draft Mark Driscoll and hope that he goes on a Twitter rampage thus guaranteeing them bragging rights over friends and family? I know I do.

I took a first pass at the rules and scoring, but I'd love to hear your input. What other cliches and trite phrases should we reward with points?

Also, I'm trying to come up with a more clever name. The leader at the moment is "The League of Predominately Gentleman", but I'm open to suggestions.

So, without any further ado, let me introduce you to the Fantasy League for Christian Twitter!

Rules

Each league will have six (6) teams

Each team will draft three (3) Christian Tweeters

To qualify for the draft a Tweeter must have 20,000 followers and at least ten (10) tweets in the last two weeks.

Scores will be calculated at the end of every week.

Scoring

1 pt     All references to Jesus, God, Christ, Church

3 pts   Bible verse tweeted without context

3 pts   References to their book

3 pts   Tweet constructed as "X is not Y, it is actually Z"

5 pts   Tweet directed specifically at one gender

5 pts   Tweet that rhymes

5 pts   Use of the word "orthodox"

10 pts  Tweet about sexual morality

10 pts  Use of the phrase "the bride of Christ"

10 pts  Use of the word "heretic"

10 pts  Retweet of another pastor in the league

20 pts  Snarky replies/retweets of people they disagree with

Example

Just for fun I took a look at everybody's favorite Christian Tweeter, Mark Driscoll. How would he fare under this scoring?

Well, Pastor Mark put down a strong 83 pts last week. In addition to his seventeen references to God, Christ and church, he also quoted eight verses sans context, mentioned his upcoming book, composed three "X is not Y, it is Z" tweets, one tweet about sex, and one snarky quote of actress Emma Thompson.

So what do you think? Sound fun?

Peace,
Ben

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87. 

 

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.

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On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 35 - Twitter Is Summer Camp For The Internet

by Ben Howard

This week Ben is joined by guest hosts Joanna Bradley and Emily Maynard to talk about the weird and wild world of Twitter. We'll talk about meeting internet friends, why you shouldn't date guys from Twitter, whether or not to self-censor, the ridiculous nature of Twitter fights, and the awkward moments when the internet and real life merge. Also, we'll all give our recommendations for Twitter must-follows. Join in, hang out with us, and have a laugh or two.

If you like the show, please rate and review us on iTunes. It's the first step in our secret mission to take over the world.

You can download the podcast by clicking here. Or you can subscribe to the podcast by searching "On Pop Theology" in the iTunes music store.

Also, remember to "Like" On Pop Theology on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @OnPopTheology for all the updates, posts, and links throughout the week.

Finally, if you'd like to stream the podcast, you can do that here:

Peace,
Ben

If you have any questions, comments, or if you just want to say hi, you can contact us at onpoptheology [at] gmail.com.

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10 Lessons from My First Year of Blogging

 by Ben Howard

A year ago today I posted a rambling 300 word post about why it was important to talk about theology and pop culture. Later that day I posted a longer, even more rambling post about the importance of the show Community. I've never read either post in the last calendar year and, to be honest, neither should you. I'm sure they're quite terrible.

Nevertheless, those two posts launched On Pop Theology and today we're celebrating the one year anniversary with our 291st post. Obviously, a lot has happened between then and now. So in celebration of a year of writing I want to share 10 lessons I've learned from my first year of blogging.

10) Writing is therapy.

I've heard this a lot and it's kind of cliche, but it's also entirely true. Over the past year, I've used this space numerous times to process complex and competing emotions. Yesterday's post, where I literally talked to myself, is probably the most obvious example, but I've also worked through issues of identity, tragedy, frustration and anger in posts here. Thank you for indulging me, I hope they helped you too.

9) Famous people are people too.

It's easy to forget that the people on TV and the people in movies and the people who write books and sing songs are actually real people. It's easy to project a lot of emotional baggage onto them and make them "mean" something. I've written about a lot of celebrities, I even had one write back, and it's made me more conscious of the fact that just because someone has a high profile, it doesn't mean they stop being a person.

8) I have no idea what people like.

If you've blogged yourself, you know that it's a rush when one of your posts becomes popular. As a result, the chase for page views can become intoxicating and addictive. I've had periods where I chased popularity and the lesson is I learned is that I have no idea what's actually popular. I've worked hard on posts for days that fall flat, and I've written posts in 20 minutes that explode. I really have no idea why some things are popular and others aren't so I've started to listen to the following advice...

7) Embrace your weird.

My friend John sent me a link to a lecture a few months back. The speaker was talking to a group of video game designers and his advice to them was that instead of searching for popularity or trying to "be creative" they simply needed to embrace their weirdness. This is the advice I've started giving to contributors and it's advice I've tried to heed myself. If you want to write about obscure Austrian poets, do that to the best of your ability. I mean, we spent three days talking about an obscure basketball player and atonement theory last week. Weird is good.

6) It's okay to be wrong.

If I went back and read everything I've written over the past year, I'm sure I'd find some posts that I don't quite agree with anymore. Guess what? That's part of life. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." A thoughtful, honest inconsistency has allowed me to learn from my mistakes. In one post, someone said they thought I was being racially inconsiderate. I didn't intend to be, but through conversation I made a friend who has lead me to some excellent resources on racial issues that I didn't know before.

5) Don't take yourself too seriously.

Everybody needs to laugh and be silly. Reality can be a rough, messed-up place and sometimes the only appropriate response it to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Certainly, there are times to be serious and humor can be difficult if used in the wrong ways, but we could all use a little more laughter.

4) It's fun to create with friends.

If I had to run this site by myself, I'm pretty sure I would've stopped a few months back. While I love writing and trying to be creative, my favorite aspect of this site is working with my friends to record the podcast and write posts. My favorite memories of the last year have all involved creating things with my friends. If you're one of the 29 blog contributors or one of the 16 voices heard so far on the podcast, thank you, I love you, and you're amazing.

3) You can have real friends on the Internet.

It's crazy I know, but I love how many people I've gotten to know through the blog and Twitter. Nothing beats a good old-fashioned friend in the same city, but Internet friends you're pretty awesome too. I have yet to meet most of you, but hopefully we'll cross paths somewhere along the way. Thanks!

2) The grind is worth it.

Blogging is fun, but it's also a grind. For a while, I would beat myself up if I didn't post for a day or if I missed my deadline (which I am currently in the process of doing), but once I freed myself from my own hang-ups and restrictions a lot of that stress fell away. The grind really is worth it. I can tell my writing has improved, even if it still has a ways to go. I can tell that writing is shaping the way I view the world and is even, I hope, helping me to be a better person. It can be rough and it can be frustrating, but it's worth it.

1) Doubt and vulnerability are more useful than anger.

I've written or outlined a lot of posts while angry or frustrated and I inevitably go back to them when I've calmed down and find myself disappointed in the approach I was planning to take. Righteous indignation can be necessary and trust me, I'm not short of issues that raise my ire, but I've learned that vulnerability and doubt are far more valuable tools for conversation. Righteous indignation may be useful to rally the troops, but it is limited in its strategic usefulness. This is the most important lesson I've learned from blogging and one I want to work on more in the next year. I want to write with more humility and less arrogance, more vulnerability and less rage. I want to write that way because I think it's just a better way to be.

I'd love to hear your favorite memories from the last year, whether you're a contributor or a reader. What have you learned? What do you hope to see in the future?

Peace,
Ben

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87. 

 

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.

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Rick Warren Tips and the Darkest Timeline

Author. Tweeter. Meme Inspirer.

(Note: This post is an experiment. It's a normal post where I've included my self-critical internal monologue. My internal monologue is written in bold italics.)

by Ben Howard

A few weeks ago, mega-church pastor Rick Warren tweeted out the following rather cryptic message to his mass of followers:

“New churches: Buy land as soon as you can but delay building for as long as you can. Cant explain all the reasons here.”

Now that’s just a weird statement. It sounds like vague pronouncement of an apocalyptic future where property rights are still intact and you need a lot of land, or it’s some kind of financial advice that exploits a church’s status as a non-profit for financial gain (yay!).

This could actually be valid advice. Are you sure you aren’t just dismissing it because you don’t like Rick Warren? And if you don’t like Rick, why is that? Is it because he’s popular? Is it because people listen to him and they don’t listen to you? Are you mocking him because he said something dumb or are you doing it because it makes you feel better about yourself?

Since the internet is the internet, and Rick has a fairly well-established group of anti-fans (enemies is a bit strong), this tweet spread across the web pretty quickly. However, in this instance, the tweet is not the point of the story.

Anti-fans? Really? That’s the passive aggressive stuff you come up so you don’t have to say what you feel. That’s weak.

Late one night, a few people started sending messages using #RickWarrenTips. Essentially, they were absurd tweets full of vague and ridiculous advice, quotes from movies, TV shows, bizarre usage of clichés; normal twitter stuff.

And then it grew, and grew, and eventually by mid-morning the next day, most of the people I follow were tweeting out Rick Warren Tips non-stop.

There's always money in the
banana stand. Can't explain here.

I wonder if this doesn’t say more about you and who you follow than it does about the level of humor or virality of the hashtag. Maybe you’re just at the middle of a giant ball of groupthink that keeps perpetuating a mass feedback loop.

A few refrained, they mentioned that it was in some sense dehumanizing to mock a pastor just because he was famous. It was belittling and beneath them to join in on this simple, yet arguably mean-spirited joke.

Then something interesting happened. Rick Warren joined in.

Did he actually join in? You know you’ve wondered about whether or not he actually sent those tweets. Do you know why you’ve wondered that? Because you want him to be a villain, and this kind of thing humanizes him. You’re torn between wanting to hate him as a personification of an idea you don’t like and knowing you need to treat him as a human.

His tweets weren’t particularly funny (he joked about the dentist and diarrhea), but it was interesting to see someone take something potentially insulting and spin it into something else. It was interesting to watch Rick Warren steer into the skid, or lean into the pitch, or whatever metaphor best exemplifies making fun of yourself so you can be part of the joke and not just the punchline.

You even go out of your way to say his jokes weren’t funny. Even when you’re including him in the conversation and commending his action you still have to qualify it.

I’ve always been a fan of this kind of reaction when celebrities do something worth mocking. Why react with indignation? Why take it personally? If you just take the joke and join in, it shows that you’re self-aware and you don’t take yourself too seriously. It makes people like you.

What about the times when we should be offended? What about the jokes that we shouldn’t take part in? What are we supposed to do when our desire to do right is more important than our desire to be liked? What then?

Fun with anachronistic weapons!

Last week I wrote about the Djesus Uncrossed sketch on Saturday Night Live and I was making the same argument for institutions. It’s easy to be offended, but if you take a little time to dissect what’s being mocked, maybe you can join in on the joke because it just might be worthy of mockery. The Djesus skit made fun of the relationship between the peaceful Jesus of the Bible and the military ideology of the Religious Right. That is a thing worth mocking.

Was that the really the joke they made? Or is that the joke you wanted to see because it validates your worldview? Did they say something profound or did you interpret something from it that wasn’t there? And if it wasn’t there, what did you really see?

Sometimes we’re wrong. Sometimes we should just join in on the joke.

And sometimes we’re still wrong, and we just haven’t realized it yet.

Peace,

Ben 

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.

Contact us at onpoptheology [at] gmail.com.

Twitter Angst and the 2012 Olympics

by Ben Howard

Everybody has been on a bad vacation.  That one family trip where everything felt tense all the time and you were waiting for something to spill over.  That one road trip where your dad yells that he’s going to pull over to the side of the road, and then actually does it.  That one trip where you or your brother or your sister just decide that everything unequivocally sucks because you feel like being an angst-ridden hormonal teenager.

I’m pretty sure Twitter is the angst-ridden hormonal teenager of the 2012 London Olympics.

Now, lest this post devolve into a kids-get-off-my-lawn curmudgeonly rant, I’ve definitely added my voice to the misanthropic murmur of social media over the last few days and weeks, but I’m starting to feel uncomfortable with it.  I’m starting to feel uncomfortable and tense about the aggressive snark and cynicism which has started to ensnare my generation’s observations of the surrounding world.

On Friday, I watched the opening ceremonies with some friends.  To be fair it was gorgeous and epic, but at the same time it was weird and at points incomprehensible.  There was a salute to the National Health Service, which was weird, and a scene where 200 flying Mary Poppins (Poppi?) battled a 100 foot inflatable Voldemort, which was weird, but awesome. 

However, when I got home I checked Twitter and Facebook before I went to sleep and was barraged by a series of tweets and status updates about how much the ceremonies sucked and how stupid it was and it was all so…predictable.

The last few days have been filled with bitter tweets about Olympic spoilers, and rants about why NBC won’t show events live, but instead saves the best events for prime time (the best response is Will Leitch’s column here.)

To be honest, I don’t care.  It isn’t important.  I just want to enjoy a worldwide spectacle.  I just want to be a part of the fun.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how difficult I find it sometimes to be authentically happy and how rare and beautiful it can be to just enjoy something without deconstructing it to find deeper meaning.  However, in the world I live in, and likely the one you live in too if you’re reading this, it’s hard to escape the cynicism.  It’s hard not to breathe pithy statements that border on bitterness and arrogance.

I’ve often felt the same way about the church.  A few years ago I got to the point where I could never leave a church feeling anything but bitterness and spite.  Some of it was arrogance, and some of it was pain.  There’s a thin line between making fun of something because you love it, which gives us a healthy perspective and a dash of humility, and making fun of something because you hate it.

I wonder when we know that we’ve crossed the line and I wonder how we get back.  Thankfully through the love and support of friends and a healthy church community, I can get more out of a service than anger and frustration.  They blessed me with that gift of grace.  But how do we move a society that way?  How do you we help a society embrace beauty even when its flawed?  Or is cynicism justified and I’m just being naïve?  I’d love to know your thoughts because I’m still working this one out.

Peace,

Ben

When he isn't channeling Andy Rooney for a post about the Olympics, Ben spends his time in a field with Snoopy waiting for the arrival of the Great Pumpkin.  Any day now.  You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87.

Why Twitter Marks the End of Church Pews

Today I'm putting up a guest post from Dixon Kinser.  Actually, it's a post taken from the archives of his blog So Indie It's Embarassing (http://dixonkinser.blogspot.com/).  Sadly, he doesn't post much anymore, but there's some fantastic things there.  Enjoy!

Peace,
Ben
------------
by Dixon Kinser

It is my opinion that when Christian’s gather for worship the rituals they undertake function as a kind of training. What they do together gives shape, form and imagination to the kind of people they are trying to become. This is as true for the obvious elements of Christian worship (preaching content, song selection, giving, confession, prayer for the church and the world etc.) as it is for the more oblique ones (room orientation, seating configurations, vestments etc.). It is these oblique ones that I think will be most affected by a technology like Twitter.

Twitter is, of course, a relatively new technology that allows the user to update a personal web feed with what they are doing at any given moment. It provides a new and interesting way to communicate to be sure, but it is also indicative of the larger culture trends toward virtual relationships. These are the kind of relationships that are facilitated in spaces like MySpace and facebook and use email and twitter their means communication.

These media make it is possible to converse with many people, all over the globe on any given day but never look at another human being in the face. Even worse, these technologically based relationships can actually supersede the real thing (ever had somebody ignore you while you were talking to them to respond to a text?)

All this brings me to my point.

As our culture moves into more and more virtual forms of communication (for a scathing critique of this reality see the film Wall-E) will the church’s practice of meeting together become increasingly both counter cultural and crucial.

Christianity is a living way of life that requires relationship with other human beings. The kind of formation we seek (I am a Christian so I put myself in this camp) happens most authentically in community when face to face with other human beings. As more and more technologies crop up that draw us away from looking at other people in the face the more important the churches practice of relating to other people “in person” will become.

And this is why Twitter could very well be the death knell of the church pew. We all know that worshipping in pews requires very little face-to-face interaction. Yes we subvert this with some of our practices (passing the peace etc.), but for the majority of our community training we only see the back of our neighbor’s head. Will the increased need for face-to-face time in worship in response to our cultures increasingly virtual relationships finally call for the end of pews?

We need to look at one another and one of the technologies working against us is the church pew. Architecture is one of the intangibles of our Christian formation and its augmentation can really make a difference. Could this be the time?

It’s not like the pew has been around since the time of Jesus or anything. It’s usage came into vogue as another communication technology rose to prominence – the printing press (ever notice how a Basilica’s pews are shaped like the layout of a book?) Perhaps its demise at the hand of another communication technology is just the right kind of poetic beauty.

Or is it irony.

Peace,

D