Mike Sares, the author of Pure Scum and one of the pastors at Scum of the Earth Church, is completely candid, seriously sincere, and easy to listen to.  I received Pure Scum as a Pop’s Day gift from Rhonda, which she knew I would at least be interested in based on my very unhealthy high school slash college obsession with Five Iron Frenzy.  Turns out she was right.  Even though I am decades younger than Mike, I totally relate to him.  I think at the root of it all, he loves God and he loves people.  The relatable part though, is that he is honest about how hard it is to love and how good it is love.  Many of the poems and song lyrics that he quote in the book have created a resurrected desire to write and create good, honest prose.  The whole book meanders through his story, which involves the story of others like Mary Kate and Gothic Seth, and speaks volumes about reaching people that are far from Christ by doing things that no one is doing.  You have to pick up on the fact that there is way more going on than he is telling you because he is so humble that he won’t tell you exactly what God is doing through him.  My favorite part is on page 144:

Somewhere in the past, they were inoculated with a dead version of church life which makes them resistant to the real thing when they finally do encounter it.  You can go to church on a Sunday, fellowship with the back of someone’s head for an hour and then go home, but that isn’t community.  Sundays for the Christian are a celebration of the life that we have with God and each other the rest of the week.  If Sunday church is the only togetherness a person has with the body of Christ, it isn’t enough.  It’s like having dessert without having the meal first.  A steady diet of only that every week, and the young Christian is not getting near the nutrition or exercise that is required to be healthy.  Instead they become bloated, inactive and judgmental.

So, Mike, I want to say thank you for putting words to things that I have felt and have not been able to express with words.  I know that you are not a mega-church hater that blogs about his frustrations.  You actually live out a contradiction to the stale Christianity that has haunted me.  I admire your obedience, your willingness to stop swimming and be carried.  And thank you for reminding me that I am violently disgusting scum, purified by the blood of Christ, and desperately in need of a savior.  Living in that tension, being pure scum, ensures that I never view holiness outside of the Cross.  You are a good man.  Thank you for writing this book.

Steven Furtick has officially jacked me up, set me off, spun me round and got my mind spinning.

Page 6 >> if your vision for your life isn’t intimidating to you, it might be insulting to God.

That line alone sold me on this book.  I haven’t been able to shake it.  It has me sprinting through it and tweeting like a mad man.  Most people I know don’t even have a vision for their life.  Not a real one.  I don’t.  I can’t go to a whiteboard or a file or a piece of paper and say, see here, this is what I envision happening in my life.  I wish I could say I did.  But I don’t.

And then to expand that vision to something that intimidates you.  That’s brash.  That’s ridiculous.  That’s enormous.  That’s awesome.

And then!  Then, to say that if it isn’t intimidating to you, then it is insulting to God.  It’s beautiful.  It’s motivating and immobilizing.  Motivating because it makes me want it so bad.  Immobilizing because I have no idea where to go or what to do to get it.

Let’s just say I am glad that there are 169 more pages in this book.

It doesn’t come out till September 21st, but seriously, jump on it.  Click on the picture of the cover above.  It will take you to amazon.com.  You can pre-order it there.  You will not be sorry.  If you are sorry, I’ll buy it from you and give it to someone that wants to see God move in unexplainable ways in their life.

We just got back from an amazing week at Mt. Hope Bible Camp.  Their website was/is hideous, but the camp was awesome to the core.  The staff was awesome, the food was awesome, the grounds were awesome, and the weather was awesome.  The week was incredible.  God moved in ways that only seem to happen at camp.  We had a ton of fun, and not enough pictures because we lost our camera battery charger. (I think Bella hid it in some clever spot)  We did get a few pictures from the ybod games, and you can see those at the bottom of the post.

One of the incredible things that I got to be a part of this week was speaking.  It was my first time speaking at a camp for a chapel service, and God moved in such an incredible way.  I am so humbled to be able to speak into so many kids lives.  God gave me the topic and the idea and the words and stirred up a crazy fire in me where I was really dying for these students to know what God had done in me.  All of it was through Jesus and what He said and did, and the theme was so contagious throughout the week that by the time I got to speak on Wednesday night, the students were incredibly eager.

The theme was I Am Second, based on the website where people offer their testimonies about why God is first and they are second.  I found myself returning to a Steven Furtick quote all throughout prepping for this sermon, right up to the point of praying before chapel started.

I will see God wring glory from my life, some where, some way, some how.

I feel like God really started to wring my life that night, and thanks to Abe and Kyle, I can now share the mp3 with you.  A few people have already told me that they wanted to hear this, and I am more than happy to share it.  For those of you that prayed for us while we were gone, thank you so much.  God set kids free in ways that they didn’t even know they were trapped.  It was a beautiful week.

Here is the audio from the sermon.  It’s called 5 Frogs on a Log.  

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