Dear Michael Bay and Transformers,

I just saw your latest movie, and I have some constructive criticisms. In order to make this simple, I’ll split my comments into three sections: what you’ve got going for you, what’s total crap, and what to do about it.

What you’ve got going for you

Really really great special effects and action sequences. Good work. Giant, photorealistic robots beating the crap out of each other? What’s not to like?

An awesome score. The main theme is akin to “Strength and Honor” from the Gladiator score, which might be one of the best songs ever. But really, the score all around is pretty awesome.

A solid leading man. Say what you will, Shia Labeouf is a great actor.

A beautiful leading lady. She’s attractive, all right? (please read my “what’s total crap” comments for more) And she’s not half bad at acting.

The general cast that doesn’t make me overly cringe due to poor acting. They won’t win any Oscars, but at least your cast doesn’t seem like they’re reading cue cards.

Potentially compelling plot line and story elements. A mysterious race of techno-organic robots, with a shadowed and tragic history, including an epic rift between those who would protect and those who would destroy? Sounds like a winner to me.

What’s total crap

Completely juvenile sexually obsessed dialogue and jokes. Seriously? That robot has testicles? And that one humps a girl’s leg? Really? It’s lame, unnecessary, and makes the whole movie feel like a joke. I kept imagining pimpled adolescents writing the script while giggling and elbowing each other. Or as Josh Willis said, “it was as if junior high boys wrote the script in a dirty locker room.”

Treating your leading lady (and any other female actors) like they’re nothing more than sexual objects and eye candy, to be goggled at instead of appreciated. Megan Fox is a pretty girl, but you don’t have to exploit her body for us to appreciate her beauty. I don’t have to describe any of the strategic camera shots. You know what I’m talking about. It’s degrading. It lowers two things: the value of women, and the legitimacy of your film.

Robots that are idiots. I remembered what I hated about Transformers 1 when it became clear that T2 had even more of it: silly robots who talk smack like middle schoolers, crack moronic jokes and are derogatory social stereotypes. It’s clear that you simply don’t believe in the potential goodness of your content. This is not funny. It’s not cool. It’s. Just. Stupid.

A barely understandable plot line. Okay so that “Allspark” thing was downloaded into Sam’s brain? And it creates robots out of appliances? But it’s also a map to the “key” or “dagger” or whatever that thing is called? And the “key” makes the big gun shoot the sun? But the “key” can also resurrect Optimus? And even though it disintegrated it can be reformed because Sam believes in it? What? Are there any rules here?

What to do about it

No more stupid robots. Make all the robots realistic characters like Optimus Prime and “The Fallen” or Megatron. Talking robots are hard enough to swallow without the handful of cartoonish caricatures. Silly robots are stupid. If you need comic relief, do something more realistic, like play up the robots’ lack of understanding of human culture, or utilize the great comedic timing you have in your leading man, Shia.

Which leads me to my second point: use your good cast to create compelling characters with compelling backstories. I’m not asking for Saving Private Ryan here, but I do think we could have a little more than what we’d expect from a Sci Fi Channel Original Movie.

No more crass, juvenile sexual content. If you want more kids to see this movie, get rid of it. It’s not necessary. The movies would be better without it. And I’m pretty sure everyone’s opinion of you would only go up.

Treat women with respect. What makes a woman great is not that she can work on a motorcycle with her butt hanging out of her shorts. What makes a woman great is her personality, story, love, support, strength, and relationship. Instead of demeaning the female actors, use these things to legitimize their characters. Have some respect for goodness sake.

Get some clear story lines. If there’s something complicated, please explain it to us. If it’s too complicated, please don’t include it in the final draft. But don’t just throw it out there and expect us to go along for the ride.

In conclusion, Mr. Bay, Transformers—you have all the elements of a good, fun, popcorn crunching thrill ride. Just use them. Leave the total crap behind.

Sincerely,
Logan

Today I’m doing a little compare and contrast. The picture on the left was taken last summer, the morning after returning from a week of CIY. The picture on the right was taken of me this morning, the morning after returning from a week of CIY. It goes without saying that this trip, for me, was the most enjoyable trip I have ever taken as a youth leader.

If you’d like a great summary of our trip, the best thing for you would be to go to http://nopoyo.tumblr.com where you’ll find the proverbial thousand words. (Warning: you’ll be viewing our trip backwards. That’s just how a tumblr works.) However, as a writer, I’m a firm believer that there are things that can’t be explained through pictures and such things are also those things which made this trip so wonderful:

— We had fun. Last Sunday afternoon, the youth leaders sat in a circle in our living room and prayed for the trip. Most of the time we spent asking God to make this trip fun, to build friendships, to awaken community within our rather fragmented group. I’m carving out this space on the internet in order to praise God for answering this prayer. I think God gave the leaders supernatural energy, strength, and creativity so that we could make fun moments for the kids. Perhaps for the first time in the history of our youth ministry, the kids cried uncle before we did. These fun moments included water fights covering the area of an entire dorm, a giant mattress slip’n’slide, finding all the deep spots in a creek, playing Werewolf deep into the night, many rounds of Wah, BS (you know, “Bible Study”), Hanky Panky, The Sign Game and The Picnic Game, and *ahem*, an all girl wrestling tournament.

— Tom Nobis, the leader of Know Sweat, gave us a quote at the beginning of our week to try to instill in the kids. “Superiority, masked in the act of service, is still superiority.” After spending a week wondering how to communicate this to the students, I was blown away by how God taught us this lesson. Dave, the man whose house we were painting, was the kind of man in whose presence it is impossible to feel superior. He was kind, clean, gentle and strong. He took off an entire morning of work in order to paint alongside us. On the final day, he cleared his throat and gathered us around him. With tears streaming down his cheeks, he spoke to us of his gratefulness for receiving a gift that he did not deserve, just as we had all received a gift that we do not deserve from Jesus. “We’re all in the same boat,” he said. What a humbling, realistic portrait of the poverty that we all possess and the grace that has been poured out on us.

— For the first time in the year and a half that Logan has been working at North Point, it actually felt like the kids and youth leaders treated him like the youth minister and that they actually liked that he was their youth minister. This was made clear on Wednesday night when, during a game at the main session, Tom Nobis asked all the youth ministers to stand up. When Logan stood up, the kids cheered, screamed “Logan!”, and pumped their fists. They were proud that he was their youth minister. Although we did not get to talk about it at the time, I’m sure you can imagine that this was a very special moment for both Logan and for me.

Trips are always taxing and this trip was not any different. But instead of feeling utterly deflated and spent this morning, I feel energized, excited about youth ministry, even eager to spend more time with some kids. As Rachael would say, “Hallelujah!”

My hurdle: quiet time.

I could stop it at this, for I’m beginning to believe that my hurdle is as simple as this, but it would be good for me to delve into the reasons behind this.

A great symptom of the hurdle that I have, but can not see, is my guilt. I am nearly constantly in a state of unworthiness, disappointment and a sense of “not enough”. When I consider the majesty of God Himself and the magnitude of what He had done for me, whatever I am doing in return is not enough. Instead of embracing this idea and being content with it, however, I keep on striving. Since I can never achieve the absolutely unattainable and down-right ridiculous goal of giving back to God to the extent that He had given to me, I am living with a constant sense of failure. And also guilt; that I am not trying hard enough.

I guess I still feel that it is all about me.

Here’s where the quiet time part comes in. Over the past couple weeks, I have looked at my life, trying to find out where this guilt has it’s source. Is it my judgmental attitude toward people? No, I’m pretty much okay with that. I even feel justified sometimes. Is it my arrogance that is causing me to feel so guilty? No. Most the time I forget that I even am arrogant. With very little self-examination, it became clear that the majority of my guilt is coming from my less-than-daily quiet times. I feel like a failing Christian when I do not have a quiet time every day. When I do have my quiet time in the morning, I feel right with God and justified before Him. I even feel like I can talk to Him for the rest of the day. When I think back to a time when I was “doing better than I’ve ever done before”, it was when I had a steady, rhythmic, daily quiet time.

The Quiet Time is sacred to me. It is where I have felt the closest to God. It is where I have received great and life-altering revelations from scripture. It is where I can revel in the beauty of God. It is where the great saints of the past have achieved Oneness with God. It is where the great saints of the present lead you at the end of every sermon or book. It is where my mentors have focused their attention–both on themselves and on me. It is the single most important aspect of a Christians life.

Or is it?

In a video, Francis Chan recently reminded me of John 14.21: “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me.” Often, when I hear or read this verse, my first response is to ask the question, “What are His commands?” This time, however, when I asked this question, there was a command conspicuously absent from my mental list. (Yes, Logan, I even make lists in my head of the commands of God.)

The missing command? Thou shalt have a daily quiet time.

It’s not there. There’s lots of stuff about praying continually and about scripture being our only weapon against the devil. There’s evidence that God uses moments of quiet and solitude to speak to His people. David liked to spend his mornings with God. But he also liked to spend his nights, his meals, his evenings, his days with God as well. No where do I find God giving an explicit command to have a daily quiet time as I know it.

Suddenly, I’m feeling very much betrayed. The saints of the past, the saints of the present, my mentors, even my own words look to me like a Pharisee, standing before his followers saying, “You can only walk six steps on the Sabbath,” or “Wash your hands before you eat,” or “Give God a tenth of your nutmeg.” They are all just commands that, when accomplished, leave you feeling so good before God and yet leave your heart indifferent.

I’m angry. Quiet times had become for me a totally Pharisaical, self-reliant and heartless ritual so that I might attain my goal by human effort.

I’m having trouble understanding what it means to live by grace and not by law.

My biggest hang-up is the fact that from the outside, there may be no visible difference between the woman who lives by grace and the woman who lives by law.

My upbringing did a lot to make me comfortable living by the law. I went to Sunday School classes that gave me a sticky, foil star if I was there, if I had brought my Bible, and if I had brought money. You were the best if you had three stars. It was to be expected from all the “core” kids. The kids whose parents had once occupied the same classroom as a child, sticking the same foil stars in a row. I always felt sorry for the little girl with the bad haircut and the ratty dress that only had one star, just because she had arrived. Sometimes she would have a pink KJV Bible the size of her hand and so she would get two stars. But she never had money. My parents gave me money every Sunday morning, so I always got three stars.

One year at VBS there was a competition in the 5-6th grade girls’ class to see who could memorize the most verses. Second place would receive a cookie cake. I don’t remember what the 1st place prize was, but I won it. I worked every afternoon and evening and even in the mornings on the way to VBS memorizing several chapters in those five days. I’m still proud of that achievement.

I knew a lot about the Bible. Sometimes my Sunday School teacher would ask a question, then say, “Can anyone answer this question besides Aanna?” It humiliated and infuriated me. One time, a close friend of the family graduated from a bible college. My father sat us children in front of the graduate and proceeded to show him how we knew more about the Bible then he did. “What were the names of all the judges in the Old Testament?” my dad asked. I remember our friend just smiling and shaking his head. Then my sisters and I recited the names of the fifteen judges.

In high school I began to have a personal drive and desire to know God. I began waking up at 4:00 in the morning so I could have more time to read the Bible and pray. I had read through the Bible by the end of my freshman year. I fasted for days at a time. Whenever I looked inside myself to find the reason behind my actions, I just felt a deep sense of “should”. I felt guilty if I didn’t. Eventually, my dad told me to stop waking up so early and to stop fasting unless I had a really good reason. So I stopped and then felt really confused, wondering why God had led me to believe that what I had been doing was from Him.

I pushed myself in other areas as well. I won competitions in piano performance. I got a great score on my ACT, but was disappointed when I heard that someone at my high school had got a perfect score. I was only ever content if I was the best.

My first true encounter with grace came my freshman year of college when I took a class on the book of Galatians. I can’t remember exactly what affected me, just that I was affected. “Grace” became a very important word for me. I remember feeling deeply humbled. Put in my place. I began to pray that God would show me my true “lostness”.

Later, a professor who knew me pointed me to two verses. John 6.44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day,” and Acts 16.14, “One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message.” I needed to understand that even my ability to come to God and to believe was a gift from God. I needed to understand that I couldn’t and didn’t do anything on my own.

I have way more in common with Pharisees, the prodigal’s older brother, and pre-Paul Saul than with Mary Magdalene, the penitent tax-collector, or the centurion. It terrifies me that I can relate more to the enemies of God than the friends of God.

I spent an entire year or more intent on examining my motives and only doing those things which were born from a love from God. I would read my Bible only when I felt a love for God and a need to be in His presence. I prayed when things popped into my head that I wanted God to handle or again, when I felt a need to be in His presence. I stopped reading my Bible every day. My prayer life faltered. My patience and self-control grew thin. I felt like I was drifting aimlessly.

Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I still needed to spend time in the Word and in prayer, but to come to an understanding in my heart that it was out of love for God and not from a duty or a need to please and not disappoint that I was doing it.

I can’t seem to find a steely discipline within this heartfelt love.

I often approach the throne of God with a strong sense of His disappointment. He still loves me, but He’s disappointed and I think that I should have tried harder.

The verse I can’t get out of my head right now is, “Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?”

I guess I am.

The heat index today is supposedly 108 degrees. I took Mabel for a walk this afternoon and I think I nearly killed her. I almost died myself.

Walking through my neighborhood, I realized that people have lots of different ways of dealing with the heat. Many people were inside in the air conditioning. There were a few boys playing basketball in the streets with their shirts off. Some people go driving with their windows down. Behind the fence of one house I heard loud, festive music and the thump, thump, thump of a pinata meeting it’s match. At the church this morning, we played water games with 35 children. I’m about to go take a cold shower. If I had time, I would be swimming instead.

I’m slowly getting educated on how to deal with this heat. Lesson #1: Don’t take your dog for a walk in the middle of a heat wave. (I’m waiting for you to send me a swarm of “duhs” in the comment boxes.)

I’ve been told these bunnies are creepy. They are an icon of my childhood. To keep or not to keep?

I’m sure North Point people are sick of hearing about The Simple Service Initiative. If you’re one of those people, move along now, there’s nothing new to see here.

If you’re not one of those people, here’s the deal: The Simple Service Initiative is an all-church event that is taking place from March 13th-16th.

The adults and little kids are going to get up Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning, meet up at the church and then go out and do various service projects all day long. Each night they will return to their homes to rest up for the next day.

The youth (middle/high school, college) are doing something a little different. We’re going to leave tonight (Friday) to go to a camp called “Copass,” where we’ll be staying for the duration of SSI. Each morning we’ll get up, go to another camp called “Summit” for disabled and at-risk kids, and work our tails off to fix it up (mostly grounds work). Each night we’ll return to Copass for games, food and a lil bit a-learnin’.

It’s going to be seriously awesome, and I think a really good way for NoPoYo to come together as a group over something significant.

Here’s what you can do to get involved:

Pray that:

• Each day that the kids will be impassioned to have God’s heart for helping those in need.
• The kids will be drawn into deeper relationships with each other.
• Everyone will grow closer to God.
• We’ll have a blast!

Follow us:

• If you’re super geeky (like me) and want to see a play-by-play of the trip, this site will be updated regularly with pictures and stuff of what’s going on:
  http://nopoyo.tumblr.com

Logan and I are in the process of buying a house. Although there are still some loose ends, it looks like we’ll be the proud owners in eleven days. There are many things we like about this house, including lots of natural light, a swimming pool, and a great kitchen, but perhaps our favorite thing is what the previous owners have done to the garage.

I’m usually (as in every time except for this) not a big fan of a garage conversion. However, when we walked into this one, we immediately saw loads of potential. It contains one sizable room, a full bath, and a large storage closet. Since the floor in the main room is still unfinished, we immediately thought UPP. (For those of you unfamiliar with UPP, let’s just say it involves ping-pong balls, walls, and lots of kids.) Then, we thought about finishing the room, putting in lots of old La-Z-Boys and making it a big theater room. But Logan was the one who had the really brilliant idea. He pointed out the exterior door leading out of the bedroom, the full bath, the way the whole area was separated from the rest of the house by the laundry room. Even the closet was big enough to, say, house a little kitchenette. In short, he thought about making it into a complete apartment and seeing if any of the college guys in the church wanted to move in.

We really liked this idea for two reasons. First, the small amount of rent we would charge would really come in handy as we fix up the rest of the house. Second, we’re strong believers in the value of living in very close proximity to other people. It just seems like it forces you to live in community, to give of yourself, and to learn to love people even when you don’t like them. Plus, it’s fun to share stuff. For example, why buy a lawn mower if your neighbor has one?

The night before last I got an e-mail from a friend. She said that her roommate has decided to move in with family in order to save a little money, so she’s left with a rent she can’t afford. To top it all off, she’s expecting a baby in a month. She knew about our idea to make a little apartment and remembering this, had sent her e-mail to see if she could be our new roomie.

There are still some things that might make this thing not work out (we still have to check to see if we’d be on the right side of the law in all of this), but it looks like we might all be able to really meet each other’s needs.

Part of me thinks that the Holy Spirit was not thinking of college boys when Logan suddenly got the idea of what we wanted to do with our garage conversion.