Crazy Crazy

A few weekends ago, I attended the C3 conference at Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas. Not having been previously exposed to Fellowship Church, or Ed Young I wasn’t sure what to expect. Our associate pastor asked me to go and I enjoyed it immensely. (Actually I enjoyed the preaching, the music wasn’t as enjoyable. But at least they didn’t paint anyone during the worship time).

One of the best sermons preached was by the aforementioned Ed Young. In his message, called “Crazy Pills” he distinguished between good crazy and crazy crazy. Good crazy he described as a focused passion on the positive things of faith. Tim Tebow and Jesus (natch) exemplify good crazy. But then he spent the rest of the sermon on crazy crazy people. By this he’s not talking about people who are clinically insane, or diagnosed with some particular disorder. Rather, those who can function just fine in society, but are in fact crazy crazy. He noted that there are a lot of crazy, crazy people out there and that most of them are attracted to churches.

This presents a problem for ministers, because they often waste their time working with, praying with, advising people who will in fact never change. Better to focus on those who are open to personal and spiritual growth. To more closely define the craziness he spoke about, he identified several characteristics of crazy crazy people. I’ll post his list this week and next. When he shared the list I thought “Yep, I’ve worked with him before.”

People who are crazy:

1. They have crazy eyes.

2 They are always playing the God card – ‘God told me to do this’ or ‘God told me you should do this’

3. They are constant name droppers

4. They always find a way to ‘one-up’ you – If you went to Olive Garden for lunch today, they will say ’ ‘Well, I flew to Tuscany last week on my private jet and ate a feast in a vineyard going back several centuries.’

5. They will blow up your phone. They will text you and email you all day long!

6. They ask for your advice. You spend time and energy and prayer preparing to give them the proper advice. AND THEN THEY DON"T TAKE IT!!!!!

7. They talk endlessly about themselves. Their conversations are scattered with I, I, I, me, me, me, mine, mine, mine.

8. They don’t have a filter. They speak whatever they think (and are proud of it!).

More next week.