• They can’t find a pitch even in the middle of a baseball game. *
• They think singing louder compensates for their lack of musical ability.
• They have terrible parents, because good parents would tell their tone-deaf children that they can’t sing. We have American Idol to thank for a generation of hopeful yet hopelessly tone-deaf teens who think they’re the next big thing when their whale sounds shouldn’t even be dignified with the term “music.” (HT: Matt Chandler)

According to the venerable Wikipedia, tone-deafness, also known as “amusia,” is a “hearing impairment [that] appears to be genetically influenced, though it can also result from brain damage.” So, those that suffer (though the argument could be made that we all suffer) from tone-deafness are either hosed by genetics or hosed by circumstance. Then again, aren’t we all hosed by the same two things?

Listed among the notable tone-deaf on Wikipedia are such luminaries as:

• Charles Darwin
• Ulysses S. Grant
• Che Guevara
• William Butler Yeats
• Theodore Roosevelt

I’ve never heard any of them sing, and it’s difficult to imagine any of these men doing so anyways.

CC Image • 2-Dog-Farm

But, God bless ‘em, the tone-deaf sing. At least the ones at my church do. Maybe they know they’re terrible. Maybe they don’t have a clue. But they sing. They sing their bleating hearts out. Why?

Because they don’t care. They don’t care about the sound of their voice as it physically assaults the eardrums of every bystander. They don’t care that they don’t sound like everyone else. They don’t care that they may or may not be committing the eighth deadly sin—screechery.

They sing because the One who’s listening hears hearts more than tones, beliefs more than words, and sincerity more than posturing.

May we all remember this when offering our worship to a gracious God, whatever form that worship takes.

But.

The next time that tone-deaf guy sits behind you at church, make pained faces in his direction to see if he reacts negatively or stops singing completely. You’ll have won a small and meaningless victory while saving the rest of us from yet another bad American Idol audition.

On second thought, don’t do that. My favorite episodes of Idol all happen in the first three weeks.

But first, I heartily encourage you to do one or all of the following:

• like the FaithVillage Facebook page
• follow @faithvillage and @FVmomentum (me) and @FVstrive and @FVculturelab on Twitter
• or subscribe to FaithVillage’s RSS feed.

That way, you can get these articles when they go live, instead of a few weeks or months down the line.

Also, use the right sidebar at FaithVillage.com to sign up as a Charter Member. Go do it now. I’ll wait.

…………. waiting ………………. waiting ……………….. still waiting …………………..

Done? Good. Now you’ll receive our e-newsletter, but you’ll also be invited to partake in our beta launch, meaning that you’ll get the opportunity to try out our site before anyone else. And let me tell you, the latest updates I saw just today are visually amazing. You’ll want to test our site out when it launches, so if you failed to heed my instructions from earlier, get to it now.

You should also know that we do a GiveAway every week, like this one. And sometimes we have featured GiveAways made possible by generous contributors, like this one. So you should definitely check our site on a regular basis, leave a comment, throw us a like on Facebook, and RT our links to all your friends! OK. Enough of the salespitch. Sometimes I can get carried away . . .

As for my favorite articles over the last few months, here they are:

1. [CONCERT REVIEW]: MUTEMATH at Common Grounds in Waco, TX
2. Why Are Young Christians Leaving the Church? An Interview with David Kinnaman
3. [BOOK REVIEW]: Radical Together, by David Platt
4. Six Steps to Establishing Your Church’s Online Identity
5. 10 Top Mobile Apps for Church Leaders

So, if you’re not following @FVmomentum on Twitter, where you can learn immediately when a new article is posted, or if you haven’t subscribed to the FaithVillage blog in your feed reader, you’ll learn about my FaithVillage posts in posts like this one. These articles were written in the last month and are ranked by way of how much I like them. It’s a very technical standard.

1. What Can Be Learned from Steve Jobs’ Resignation?
2. Book Review: Not a Fan
3. Mired in the Monday Meeting
4. The Chasm of Effective Communication
5. Book Review: Let God Change Your Life

Timing.

On Wednesday, June 22, I replied to a month-old message sent from a friend through LinkedIn. Once on the site, LinkedIn showed me a job posting they thought I might be interested in. I was. I was so interested that I stayed up well past my bedtime re-working my resume, which had not seen an overhaul in at least a year. I composed a cover letter espousing my excitement over the position, confidently proclaiming that the job description was written as if it were a biographical sketch of my past. With nothing to lose, I applied for the job the next morning.

On June 23rd, I had an impromptu lunch meeting / job interview with Brad Russell, the Senior Editor/COO of FaithVillage.com. On June 29, I met the publisher of the Baptist Standard, Marv Knox. On July 6, I was offered the position of Church Leadership Editor for FaithVillage.com.

I accepted. Gladly. Gratefully. Humbly.

Recent tumultuous years precipitated my move to Dallas, a place, honestly, that I never thought I’d be. When I was going through the worst of times, I asked God “Why?” a thousand times or more. I told my friends that I couldn’t wait to get to the other side of the mess I was in so I could start to get an inkling of the answer as to “Why?” 

I hesitate to say that this new job is one of the answers to that question, fearful that my future hopes might be dashed in some way, like the fleeting seeds of a dandelion on a windy summer day. But there’s an irrepressible hope within me that this is what that was for. By trusting in God’s goodness (which has been a lifelong struggle for me), I believe He’s placed me in a job that meets where my passions and modest talents collide. I’m looking forward to this new endeavor, and can’t wait to start.

Since I want you to visit this site and make it a daily stop in your travels across the internet, I’ll direct you to FaithVillage.com to learn more about us.

Oh, and the last thing. God is a good comedian, and not just because His timing is impeccable (despite our protestations). One year ago I was the runner-up for a position in Plano, the first job I was seriously (three times) interviewed for after arriving in Dallas. I was sure I was going to get it. When it didn’t happen, it took me a month to get over it. In a few months from now, FaithVillage will be moving to new offices… just around the corner from the same company that passed on me.

[Adapted and expanded from this post: The Primal Scream]

In the wake of the death of my marriage, I began a search for answers to questions that I knew had no answers, but the desire to know, unequivocally, what had gone so horribly wrong was too great. I had to know the answer to “Why?” More than just “Why did this happen to me?” I had to know “Why does this happen to anyone?” even “Why does this happen to everyone, in some form?” Which, really, boils down to the first question, plus a pointed noun, “Why, God?” Yet even in asking that question, in thinking long enough about it, one might even question the necessity of the comma, the necessity of the God, and simply, honestly, ask “Why God?”

Read the rest at RelevantMagazine.com…