I just finished reading Jesus Loves You… This I Know by Craig Gross and Jason Harper and the first word that comes to mind is WOW. I’ve read other books that preach a similar message but none were so authentic, so real. Craig and Jason aren’t content to stay in the safety of their churches – they spend much of their time in the gutter (as Craig calls it) being the hands and feet of Jesus, showing His love to the world. So, on to the review.

First, a little history. Craig Gross is a co-founder of XXXchurch which exists to help those struggling with addictions to porn and also those in the porn and sex industry. They’re known for their X3 Watch software (which, unlike many web filters is completely free), showing up at porn conventions to pass out Bibles with covers that read “Jesus Loves Porn Stars” and more recently their porn debate tour with porn star Ron Jeremy. Just last year Craig & his family, along with a few friends, moved to Las Vegas to start The Strip Church. As you can imagine, Craig has seen a lot. I’ll get back to him in a moment.

Jason Harper’s story is a bit more traditional. He works on staff at a megachurch and is a published author. In the book he recounts how, after one of his messages where he challenged the audience to “get into the gutter and share Jesus with love and kindness to every person”, a woman confronted him over the fact that because he worked in a church he didn’t know what it was like to confront people in the secular workplace, or the world. He was stuck in the same Christian bubble he had been warning the audience about. As Jason wrote, “Maybe church leadership across America has gotten so busy ‘doing the ministry’ that we forgot the main point of ministry.” So he set out to change that by getting a part time job. But not just any part time job; one of the most hated jobs in America: a door-to-door cable collection agent. The guy that knocks on your door, asks for payment on a delinquent cable bill and if you don’t pay he takes your equipment and cuts the cable line. So Jason spent a year working one day a week as a collection agent. I don’t want to put any stories here since the whole point of this review is to inspire you to read the book for yourself, but I will share one thing Jason shared which really impacted me. He once heard a pastor (Clint Brown) speaking about the the thief who was crucified next to Christ and asked Him to “remember me” (Luke 23:39-43). Most of us have read that passage before, but this pastor saw it from a different angle; he thought there was more to the thief’s request of remembrance.

Re-membered. Was the crook asking for Jesus to have a fond recollection of him in heaven? Or, where the circumstance of life had dismembered him, was he asking the carpenter to re-member him? Was he asking to be put back together?

Back to Craig’s story. Again, I don’t want to put too much here because you really need to read this book for yourself, but I will share one thing that, you could say, stepped on my toes. You see, most (if not all) of Craig’s opposition has come not from those he is ministering to, but from the church itself. He receives countless letters and emails each week from Christians who do nothing but discourage and hate. At every porn convention, debate and pride festival he is blasted by Christians just for associating with sinners. The problem Craig found in himself, and the same problem I found in myself, was that he forgot Jesus doesn’t only love sinners; Jesus loves the religious. Craig wrote about how, upon searching his heart, he discovered he had become the one thing he despised the most: judgmental. He had become judgmental towards the judgmental. This chapter really spoke to me because I found myself in the same position. I strive to love people where they’re at, regardless of their beliefs, lifestyle or background, but upon searching my heart I found I had no love or tolerance for the religious. But Jesus loves them too.

So, there you go. Hopefully I’ve inspired you to check out Jesus Loves You… This I Know, without giving too much away. Believe me, it’s a great book – you won’t regret reading it.

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Viral marketing, viral video…… you’ve probably heard someone using those terms. If you haven’t, or if you’re unsure of their meaning, when something goes viral it simply means that is replicates and spreads quickly and exponentially… like a virus. Thanks originally to email, and now to YouTube and social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, we’ve all seen the power of viral marketing and viral video, even if some didn’t know what it was. Some of you might remember the Peanut Butter Jelly video that was popular several years ago, the dancing baby from Ally McBeal or the fat kid lip-syncing Numa, Numa. A more recent example would be the JK Wedding Entrance Dance that was posted on YouTube last month. A friend of mine sent me the link in a Facebook message, I posted it on Twitter and Facebook, several of my friends posted it on their sites, etc., etc., until within a few days it was everywhere. As of right now, exactly one month after being posted on YouTube, the video has over twenty million views. What was originally just a video of someone’s wedding entrance is now among the top 100 most viewed YouTube videos of all time!

Anyways, this got me thinking; we as people are viral. Our attitudes are viral, our passions are viral. We all know this – we’ve all had that situation where everything was going good, but all it took was that one person saying that one thing to us and from that point on the day was ruined. On the other hand, we’ve all had one of those days where nothing seems to be going right but all it took was one person to smile or say something encouraging and suddenly things seemed to turn around. So I was lying in bed early this morning thinking about Jesus and how everywhere he went he was speaking life into people. Jesus changed lives not through law, but through love. John 3:16 doesn’t say if you accept Christ, God will love you. It says because God loves us He sent Christ to us. Jesus loved people where they were at and that love was so infectious it caused them to love, and then to change. Because even a child knows that merely saying “I love you” isn’t the same as showing it through your actions and life. As the old DC Talk song says, “Luv is a verb.” The early church didn’t have any fancy marketing strategies to advance the message of Christ; no TV/radio commercials, no podcasts, no websites, no million dollar buildings. Nothing to draw people in, except love. What began as just a sect of Judaism is now the largest religion in the world, and originally is spread from person to person through love.

Yet Christianity is now hemorrhaging followers. Instead of growing it is shrinking year over year. Why is that?

I didn’t include the Bible because that should be obvious. That’s like putting breathing on a ‘To Do List’. And a few books are missing because I’ve loaned them out and, well, haven’t seen them since. Those would be Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell, I Am Legend by Richard Matheson and Hell House by Richard Matheson.

Sad thing is, I’ve got another 20 books on my shelf I have yet to read. So I may discover some new favorites soon.

For those who think Les Paul is just the name of Gibson’s flagship electric guitar, you have much to learn.

Les Paul is, or was until this morning, a real person, without whom music would be a VERY different world. Dissatisfied with the acoustic guitars of the day, in 1939 Les Paul created one of the very first solidbody electric guitars (Leo Fender and Adolph Rickenbacher also created their own namesake models during the same time period), nicknamed “The Log”, which was nothing more than a length of common 4″ x 4″ lumber with bridge, guitar neck, and pickup attached. For the sake of appearance, he attached the body of an Epiphone hollow-body guitar, sawn lengthwise with The Log in the middle. This solved the two main problems he had with acoustic guitars: feedback, as the acoustic body no longer resonated with the amplified sound, and sustain, as the energy of the strings was not dissipated in generating sound through the guitar body.

In the 1950′s Gibson Guitar Corporations presented Les Paul with a guitar they designed based on his innovations and the rest is history.

Sort of.

While most think of Les Paul as a electric guitar pioneer, he had many other musical accomplishments and innovations. You can thank Les Paul for recording effects such as overdubbing, tape delay, sound-on-sound delay, phasing and even multi-track recording itself. He is also a Grammy award winner and inspiration to dozens of guitarists across several genres. So next time you’re drooling over that Gibson Les Paul hanging in a music store, remember the man behind that name.