Profound Thoughts 006 – Confessions

Elaborating on my work with XXXChurch would not be complete without reflecting on one of my main responsibilities. The Confessions blog is there for anyone to submit their story. My responsibility is to read and publish their story on the web site. Some are spam and so all of them need to be read and approved…

These people are opening their lives up and many times for the first time ever. They write about discovering porn at a young age and being unwillingly attracted, they write about living in fear of getting caught, they write about being a forty-something mother watching porn at home and feeling like the only one, they write about being introduced to “sexual things” years before they even know what sex is.

I’m thankful that I get to read these stories. They remind me that people really are out there struggling to overcome pornography’s grip. I am most thankful to read the comments that people leave and they are giving advice and encouraging and then, the best part, the first person comes back… and leaves thank yous and updates about their progress. None of us can even be sure who’s using a real name but the connection is so powerful that people can start to become whole again!

Twit 026 – Basketball

Jon, Whom you may remember from HeartSupport, had a Birthday Basketball Tournament. We played half court three-on-three outside at his parents house. It was a beautiful day and his folks were the best hosts laying out so much food that it was tough to decide what to eat that wouldn’t come back in later games…

I was pretty stoked because I won one of the two championships up for grabs: The Toilet Bowl. It might have been the loser’s championship but it does mean we won at least a game.

Twit 025 – Impactu-ous

When one makes an impact it is an impactu-ous occasion. When one is nominated and wins and Myspace Impact Award, one is then elevated to the title of impactu-full.

Allow me to introduce The Love Alliance, winners of this months Myspace Impact Awards for Social Justice. It is a privilege to know David and Lauren of The Love Alliance and to have been able to aid them in spreading the word about their nomination to secure the win. Their baby organization will now receive ten thousand dollars to keep doing what they’re doing. It’s exciting to think where they will be in five or ten years…

Thanks to everyone who voted.

Twit 024 – Podcast

Earlier this week we recorded the last of the podcasts for Dirty Little Secrets. For me the whole process was new and exciting. I guess that’s what you call a first and last time experience.

As it turns out I misread the email briefing and, rather than spending time finding something specific to bash Brandon about, I came ready to join in with whatever everyone else was saying about him. I did that fairly well. I should have just said “Prayer wall moderator” a few times and it would have been fine.

If anybody is dreaming about the glamor of being on a podcast you should know that all you need Garage Band, a mic, and a thing with twiddly buttons and wires sticking out of it. As we discovered, you don’t even need chairs to sit on! Now that's not glamor, that’s punk rock.

Profound Thoughts 005 – Living Biblically

This is very profound, even if it isn’t me. There are insights in this that are reminiscent of Nooma. It’s worth watching the whole thing if you get a chance.

Twit 023 – Behind the Scenes

Ok, Some of you might be interested in some of the behind the scenes stuff that goes on at XXXChurch. You know, when we aren’t making ridiculous films about going to the Mac Store, what do we do to keep this thing ticking over?

Well, one answer is that last week I labeled, sorted and posted 5,000 postcards to church youth groups in the west. We hit every church with over 500 members in the states of California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada and Utah. This took me about 3 days of my time.

The funny thing was that the company that made the list for us didn’t remove the churches of the Mormons or the Scientologists! Needless to say very few churches in Utah made the final cut…

On that note here's a video entitled, "Cartoon banned by the Mormon church". I have no idea if this is what they really believe but it sure makes a great cartoon from the 80's!

Twit 022 – Apple

It’s an interesting phenomenon that Apple is running many aspects of my life. Apart from the plethora of Apple hardware dotted around the flat I have made several trips to the Apple Store. Not once have I been on my own account! First Brandon got his entire keyboard replaced… that was boring.

Then Sammy K’s computer died and in a moment of frustration did what he knew to be right and bought a new MacBook Pro… for almost $3000. There were torrents of sweat beading up on his brow! We even made up a word to describe his excitement... but you’re going to have to request that privately!

Then there was the new iPhone… and I’m running to keep up with Brandon as we race to get in line to get one.

This is becoming ridiculous.

Twit 021 – Pornmobile Controversy: The Video…

It is here!

Just as promised, unedited and in it's entirety, the video footage of our encounter with Michael in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Needless to say we had a difference of opinion.

If you have no idea what I’m are talking about click here for the original post including heated debate on the comments section.

By the way, if you would like to thank Michael personally for his input his email address is michaelmarkley@yahoo.com. Please keep your encouragements pleasant and to the point.

(Look out for the cheeky grin from the lady trying to get to her car)

Twit 020 – Cornerstone

(Rob Shevlot)

The last festival of our stint of five was Cornerstone. This was a big one because everyone had built this one up as better than all the rest. Hippy Christians ran this festival and they were generally more hands off and more creative and grass roots as opposed to formulaic and established.

It delivered in both those ways. Bands that blew my mind were Bradley Hathaway and mewithoutyou. They both played on the same stage at the same time on consecutive nights and both times I was backstage. mewithoutyou included a stage invasion and we all danced on stage together. It was great.

Also we stayed with a family called the Shevlots who are friends of XXXChurch. They were the most genuine people you could hope to meet.

Twit 019 – Mackinac

Mackinac Island is off the coast of Michigan in Lake Heron. Brandon and I went there because the Lutheran church of Michigan was having their senior high retreat there and they wanted us to go and talk to them about looking at porn.

Mackinac is an odd place. You can only get there by ferry and you also cannot take your car with you. So we walked… and rode in a hoarse-drawn taxi.

It also had the quaintest little shops that sold fudge and the most quaint and picturesque hotels and the most quaintly decorated rooms in those picturesque hotels… I felt like I had just walked into The Truman Show.

The Lutherans didn’t help much. We had our tamest T-shirt pulled from our merch table and two angry mothers trying to tell us how we should run our question and answer session. One of them swore at me about it.

Great. Still, we had some awesome conversations with some pretty switched on kids… so it wasn’t the end of the world.

Profound Thoughts 004 - Fighting

This... is... GOLD!

Twit 019 - English Lesson

This is a video from when I first started but I just thought I would put it on the ol' blog:

Twit 018 – Creation Controversy (Creation Festival)

On the second to last day of Creation Fest we met Ryan. I missed most of what happened because I was talking to someone about XXXChurch. That was broken up when David asked me for help gathering our “Jesus Loves Porn Stars” T-shirts and everything else that said ‘Porn’ on it.

Ryan was helping to run the merch tent and on day three discovered what we were selling and… freaked out! He went so far as to confiscate the merch and tell Rosh (who I talked about in Twit 016) to take off the JLPS t-shirt he was wearing.

In the end it turned out Ryan was just a volunteer who went over the top. We still were not aloud to sell the JLPS t-shirts but we could sell the JLPS bibles and Ryan came by to ‘apologize’.

Stephen tried talking to him at the end just casually to clear it up but he obviously was not having it. Apparently his eleven year old is not going to be warned about any of the dangers of porn.

Sad…

And scary…

Twit 017 – Bradley and friends (Creation Festival)

During this festival I had the pleasure of meeting one of David and Lauren’s friends, Bradley Hathaway. Bradley is a poet/singer/songwriter. That is a lot of /’s but he is a talented man so he can handle them. He hung out behind our booth the whole festival and even though I had to postpone meeting him due to the crash that I talked about in Twit 016, I don’t think he was offended.

We also met the members of the band that was there too: Matt and Ric. They were both super ace guys as well and lots of fun to hang out with.

They did a show on a small stage that started at 12:40am. It was the best part of the festival as far as I'm concerned. Not much sleep happened at this festival, but I got over the crankiness…

Twit 016 – Camping (Creation Festival)

We set up for Creation the first morning of the festival. It was different because at all the others we got to set up the night beforehand. We stayed at this guy Rosh’s house the night before and he lives two hours away so it was an early one and a long day.

Rosh is one of the other vendors on the festival circuit who works with a Pro-Life organization called “Rock for Life”. They were great guys.

The evening of the first day I hit a ‘brick wall’ and crashed out emotionally! I was freakin’ out in my head because it seemed like everyone else were being jerks. The truth was my body needed sleep and I was getting paranoid. I decided to go to bed before I ended any friendships in one easy insult!

Twit 015 – Podcast

We did another podcast with David and Lauren. This was the second ever podcast for The Love Alliance. It was pretty disjointed and Lauren was raggin’ on David for having a robo-tronic voice every time he spoke into the mic. Chris talked about Invisible Children and his involvement with the Deep-south tour and visiting Uganda. If you still do not know what I am talking about from Twit 014 then click the link. I insist.

Also, while we are at it, did talk about The Love Alliance yet…?