It just came to my attention that something’s been a little screwy with my website and comments lately. For a while you couldn’t leave comments at all. Then you had to sign in to leave comments. I think I fixed it so that we’re back to normal, but I can’t figure out how it got messed up in the first place.

Needless to say, if you’ve read the previous post you know how topsy-turvy life has been over the past couple of weeks.

Part of this topsy-turviness is related to the fact that my latest book, The 52 Greatest Stories of the Bible, is about to come out. It should hit stores next Tuesday, in fact. And you can already buy it online from your favorite places like Amazon.com or Christianbook.com.

One of the things we’re working on is a website to go along with the book. You can read the first chapter, and we’ll be adding all sorts of fun stuff in the coming weeks.

Oh, and it would really help me out if those of you who have read the book (or at least portions of the book or maybe you heard me teach through the material) could go and write a favorable review on Amazon.com. In fact, if you do that, I’ll send a free copy of the book to the person of your choice as a Christmas gift.

It took us forever to get out of Atlanta. We slept too late. I had to go get new glasses (long story). We still have a million little odds and ends to get packed.

And we had to take our cable modem back to the cable office — which is impossible to find.

So, on the first day of our road trip, we barely made it to Tuscaloosa. Not the prettiest place in the southeast. The girls were fussy. Coco the dog needed tranquilizers or something — he was freaked out. Jill and I were snippy at each other. We were not off to a good start.

The second day started the way the first day left off. We were all groggy and fussy and in a pretty bad mood. Coco eventually settled down, but the girls were engaged in the classic struggle over the middle of the backseat. That seems to be one of those things you don’t have to teach kids to do; fighting over where to draw the invisible line that separates “your area” from “my area” must be part of our sin nature.

We took away every privilege we could think of, and, when that didn’t work, we may or may not have threated to leave one of them at a gas station in Meridian, Mississippi. Not our finest hour as parents!

But we got to Jackson and stopped at a Cracker Barrel for lunch. After having a “little chat” with our darling children, I stumbled upon the single most important discovery of our trip thus far: Cracker Barrel lets you rent books on CD — children’s books — unabridged children’s books.

For the next five-and-a-half hours we rode in blissful, fight-free silence listening to Eden Riegel read Ella Enchanted. Not only is this a fantastic children’s story (with an even better message for those parents who want nothing more than to “make their children be obedient”), but it allowed us to make great progress.

We stopped only so I could attend a conference call with my agent, my co-author and some of the folks marketing The 52 Greatest Stories of the Bible. By the way, things are really starting to gear up on that front, and you’ll be hearing more about that in the next few days.

By nightfall, we had made it to Tyler, Texas — right at 500 miles and three state lines. We crossed the Mighty Mississippi and rolled through the Sportsman’s Paradise into the Great State of Texas. We’d seen more trees and variations of the color green than we ever thought possible. We ate good Tex-Mex and swam in the pool. It was a full day.

Day Three got a leisurely start. I wanted to get to Dallas by lunch to meet up with my good pal Tim Spivey. Tim’s all set to be the next Sr. Minister at North County Church of Christ in Escondido, CA. The movers were at his house the day we had lunch at a terrible all you can eat pizza place in not-so-beautiful Balch Springs, TX. We ate and chatted, and my girls were still on their pretty good behavior.

Then we put our head down and drove all the way to Midland, TX. The trees pretty much stop after Fort Worth, and the landscape flattens out considerably. Then you hit the Hill Country, but things go from that deep green of the south to a more khaki green and tan. After seeing so many cows that day (my kids especially liked the look of longhorns), we thought steak must be on the menu. The Cheetah Girls movie was on, so that kept us out of the pool, but it was mercifully short. All of my girls fell asleep watching Olympic Volleyball.

Day Four was our longest day. Jill really wanted lunch in El Paso, so we hit the road and kept going until we got there. It was a late lunch, but boy-o-boy was it good! The speed limit is 80 most of the way, so we really started piling up the miles, and we crossed two time zones which helped. That gave us a 26-hour day to work with.

We saw the hilll country flatten out completely. Then we saw our first cactus. Then we saw the red clay give way to sand and dust. Surprisingly, we got slammed with rain for about 15 minutes, and the temperature dropped to 67 degrees in New Mexico. We listened to Stockard Channing read Ramona and Her Mother by Beverly Cleary. For those of you who may not remember, Ramona was the Junie B. Jones of the late-70s and early 80s. The girls really liked it.

I’m not sure what exactly got into us, but we drove all the way to Tucson. We got there late, and we were all tired and hungry and griping. Our hotel was not very nice. Our dinner was even worse. But the beautiful thing was knowing that the next day would be a short one.

We have family in Phoenix. So, we got up and drove a couple of hours. We checked into our hotel early. We ate In-N-Out Burgers. We swam in the pool. We played with cousins and an aunt and uncle and a grandma. We liked it so much we decided to stay here an extra day.

By the way, do people live in Phoenix on purpose? I just can’t imagine it. It was 107 degrees yesterday. Last night, as we left our dinner party and headed back to our hotel, it had cooled down…to 95. It was 95 degrees last night at 10:30! It’s not like this was surprising. It’s not like this is some kind of fluke. This isn’t a one-time anomaly. It’s this hot all the time. And people live in that kind of weather intentionally. Not only that, but they talk about it like it’s the greatest thing ever.

“Can you believe how hot it is?”

“Yeah, isn’t it great? But it’s a dry heat!”

“So is a brick oven!”

Seriously, I’m pretty sure the surface of the sun isn’t very damp. But no one wants to live there. I find myself constantly wondering about the interior temperature of the van and whether there may be something in there with a flash point of, say, around 300 degrees — which is probably how hot it is in there. I’m afraid to touch any flat surface outside because I’m sure my skin will actually stick to it.

Tomorrow we’ll head to the Grand Canyon and maybe Lake Havasu — which I hear actually gets about five or six degrees warmer than Phoenix. Really?! It gets warmer than Phoenix? What I really want to know now is how there is still water in Lake Havasu if it’s that hot? Why hasn’t it all evaporated?

Greetings from Phoenix, everyone! Land of hot. Land of sun and sand and cactus and family and In-N-Out burgers.

Did I mention it’s hot here?

I can remember, when I was a kid, my grandparents lived in Atlanta, and I lived in West Monroe, Louisiana. Coming to Atlanta was like coming into the City of Oz — giant buildings glimmering in the sunlight. We had to drive past Six Flags to get there, and that only added to the fun and anticipation of what might lie ahead. We’d see that golden dome of the Capital Building. We’d eat at The Varsity. It was so not West Monroe.

And I loved it here.

Of course, we were always coming to visit around holiday seasons, so that sense of wonder was always hanging in the air. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Fourth of July. There would be food and fireworks. Georgia football. Or Braves games.

Man, I remember going out to the old Fulton County Stadium and sitting in the bleacher seats to cheer on a team that was just terrible. But I didn’t care. It was part of being a little boy in a big city.

And I dreamed of one day living here.

Then when I was in fourth grade we moved to California — the opposite side of the world. I remember going to Dodger games when the Braves were in town. I felt like that guy in the old School House Rock cartoon: “Hooray! I’m for the other team!”

Oddly enough, my family eventually moved to Atlanta — Stone Mountain to be precise. We moved at the beginning of summer in between my freshman and sophomore years in high school.

And I hated it here.

It rained all the time — seems odd to say that given the past few years of drought, but the summer of 1985 was wet here in the south. I’d absorbed enough west coast snobbery to really live with a chip on my shoulder out here. I wasn’t very pleasant to be around, and I let people know at every opportunity that I was only here because my parents wanted to move here.

The first chance I got (high school graduation), I drove straight to the Pacific Ocean and lived there — Malibu to be precise. But life is funny sometimes. I married a woman who wanted to work at the Olympics more than anything else she could think of. So, in 1994 we moved right back here to Atlanta.

We’ve left a couple of times in the 14 years since then, but we always seem drawn back here — the last time was nearly six years ago. Maybe it’s the charm of the new south. Maybe it’s the climate. Maybe the affordable housing. Maybe the Braves.

It’s probably the people.

We have more friends here than I could name. Dane & Christy. Steven & Angelique. David & Pam. Michael & Dawn. Danny & Tammy. Bob & Jenn. Chuck & Laura. Hal & Jenny. Phil & Holly. Yuriy & Nadia. Jeff & Elizabeth. Ken. Mark. Greg. Leigha.

I could go on and on.

We’ve been to weddings and baby showers and funerals. Late night hospital trips. Emergency rooms. After church lunches. Small group dinners. Cookouts. Movies. Concerts. Midnight phone calls. Back porch conversations about marriage and kids and dreams and fears and hurts and love.

We’ve done life together.

A couple of years ago I said that God himself would have to show up and pry us out of Atlanta. Who knew he’d actually take us up on that offer? That is precisely what we feel has happened. God is calling us to this new venture back in southern California. Being the type of people who long ago determined to respond to such promptings, we are eager to obey. But we are so, so incredibly sad to go. I cannot remember feeling such a complex swirl of emotions as I feel tonight.

In a matter of hours, I’ll say goodbye to this beautiful city where so much of who I am was forged. Where so much of what I know was learned. Where so much of my heart will stay. Sometime tomorrow — perhaps as you are reading this — I’ll drive past the golden buildings shimmering in the summer sun. I’ll drive out past Six Flags, and I’ll look back at Atlanta in the rearview mirror.

And I will miss it here so much.

Farewell, Atlanta. And farewell all you fair Atlantans who have meant so much to us over the years. We love you more than we can say. And we will most likely be back sometime.

I like to play this game with my good friend Ken Boa. Whenever we travel together or eat together or just hang out together, we end up playing a variation on a game we like to call “What would it take?”

The only rule is you cannot ask the other person about anything illegal, immoral or unethical. You can ask about anything else, though. It goes like this:

Ken: John, what would it take for you to eat a fish head?

John: One million dollars!

Ken: Really?! C’mon. If you were really hungry you’d eat it.

John: For one million dollars.

Ken: No, seriously. If you were really, really hungry and someone offered you, say, $20?

John: What’s the weather like?

Ken: What? What difference does that make?

John: If it’s cold, I think I could do it. But if it’s too hot outside I might get sick.

Ken: So…what would it take? You’d have to be really hungry, and it would have to be cold.

John: And a million dollars!

We’ve played this game for hours before, traveling the backroads of Tennessee and Georgia.

John: Ken, what would it take for you to be the Singles’ Pastor at First Baptist Church of Podunk, Indiana?

Ken: For how long?

John: A whole year.

Ken: How much vacation time do I get?

John: None.

Ken: None?

John: It’s your first year. You get vacation time your second year.

Since Ken introduced me to this game several years ago, it’s become a favorite of mine. I play it with other traveling companions as often as I can, and it’s always a lot of fun.

Today I’m going to play this game with you.

What would it take for you to do something outrageous for God? I don’t mean like inviting your neighbor to church with you. I mean something truly excessive and startling. Something like selling your house and driving around the country in a motorhome with your family looking for ways to serve other people like my friend Jay Loecken is doing. I mean like taking your family to Africa like my friends Michael and Dawn Hill did this summer.

Now, I’m not saying everyone should do these kinds of things. Some folks are actually called to live in the suburbs and shop at Target and eat at Chili’s and drive a minivan. And there’s nothing really wrong with any of that.

But I wonder….

What would it take for you to break free from your routine and do something totally wild for God?

Dear Friends,

We have an idea – a really big, potentially dangerous idea that is certain to be one of the most difficult things we’ve ever been a part of. It’s an idea that might be the most life-changing idea we’ve ever had, and we’re inviting you to be a part of it.

No, it’s not Amway!

Here it is: We’re selling our comfortable home in Alpharetta, GA, waving goodbye to some of the best friends we’ve ever had and moving to California to start a brand new church just northwest of Los Angeles.

Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties are home to approximately 1.2 million people. Roughly 14 percent of those people consider themselves Christians (7 percent Catholic, 6 percent Evangelical, 1 percent Mainline Protestant). And in the past decade, the number of Christians there has been decreasing.

Think of it: More than a million unchurched people in those two counties alone. Nearly 500,000 of those people live in the Ventura/Oxnard Metropolitan area, where we’ll be, and where you’ll find only 130 Evangelical churches. By way of comparison, Davidson County (Nashville, TN) has a population of about the same size. There are more than 750 churches there. Forsyth County (where we live now) has a population of right around 150,000. There are 37 Baptist churches alone here!

Statistically speaking, the best way to reach unchurched people is through new church plants. On average, a church that is older than 10 years can expect one new convert per year for every 89 members. A church between three and seven years old averages one new convert for every seven members, a dramatic difference. A church under three years old averages one new convert for every three members.

So, we’re planting a new church – River Park Community Church – for people who think church isn’t for them. And all of the Turners’ friends said, “Good for them. How exciting! We’ll miss them, and we’ll pray for them.”

Not so fast, my friends!

Did we mention that this big idea would require some funding? Yeah, and that’s where you come in. We’re so totally sold out to this idea that we’re actually asking you for money. We’re not going to ask you to pray for us. We’re going to assume that you’ll be praying for us. (Please pray for us). But we are asking you to help us fund an outpost of God’s Kingdom in a part of the country where most of the population believes church is for church people and that God probably doesn’t want much to do with them. This is about partnering with parents to help children grow in faith. This is about providing a place where married couples can come talk about their marriage before it’s too late.

We’re asking you to help us lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ that will manifest itself in increasing levels of intimacy with their heavenly Father, community with other believers and influence among those currently outside the Christian faith.

We’re asking you to join in God’s unstoppable, multi-generational plan to rescue and redeem the world, creating a community of people who are rightly related to himself and rightly relating to one another, a group of people who love God and each other for the good of the whole world.

Asking you to fund our big idea feels a little awkward. But we know that this idea has the potential to change the world. So, we’re willing to deal with the consequences of asking our friends for money. Big ideas always have consequences, don’t they?

More than 200 years ago, men gathered in the city of Philadelphia around an idea that some truths are self-evident.

More than 500 years ago, a man named Martin Luther nailed a list of ideas to the door of the Wittenberg Church.

Nearly 2,000 years ago, a man named Jesus told his followers that he was building a church that would march on and triumph over the very gates of hell.

People gave their lives for the sake of these ideas, and their ideas changed the world. We’re not asking you to give your lives to change the world, just your money. So, you could say you’re getting off pretty easily!

We’re planning to raise $100,000 between now and December. That’s a lot of money in a short time – especially given our current economic situation in the US. But we believe you’re generous folks who want to see God’s kingdom spread – even along the coast of California. In order to raise that kind of money, we’ve broken things down like this:

• One gift of $25,000
• Three gifts of $10,000
• Five gifts of $5,000
• Ten gifts of $1,000
• Twenty gifts of $500

Now, there’s not a fundraising professional alive who would say that this is the right way to go about getting money. But we’re not fundraising professionals, and this isn’t about the right way to do things. This is about doing the right thing.

So, here’s what we’re asking you to do: Go back to that list of financial gifts above, and figure out what amount you feel you can give. Please let God stretch you in this and pray with us that the money you’ve invested in this work is spent bringing Him glory.

Here is where you can send your gifts:

River Park Community Church
1746-F S. Victoria Ave., #358
Ventura, CA 93003

Or you can give online here.

Here’s how you can learn more about our new church: River Park Community Church. Here you can always find out more information about what we’ll be doing. Thank you so much for your generosity towards us and your faith in our big idea.

In His Big Grip,
John Alan, Jill, Anabel, Eliza and Amelia Turner

“Brothers and sisters, stop thinking like children…. [I]n your thinking be adults” (1 Corinthians 14:20).

Why isn’t that ever the memory verse?

God made us rational beings. That’s part of being made in his image. And — in the Bible — he’s given us a rational revelation of himself and his will which he obviously intended for us to study.

Furthermore, every aspect of Christian discipleship depends on our willingness to think and reflect upon God’s glory, God’s faithfulness and God’s desire for our lives.

Finally, like the earliest apostles, we are called to not only “preach” the gospel but to “defend” and “argue” it so as to “persuade” people of its truthfulness (cf. Acts 17; 19:8; 2 Corinthians 5:11; Philippians 1:7).

I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about this or not, but, in the Old Testament, the great declaration of faith of God’s chosen people was Deuteronomy 6:4-5: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

But when Jesus lived on earth, someone once asked him to recite this great command, and Jesus made an interesting addition. Jesus quoted it, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30).

So, either Jesus misquoted the text, or he thought it was important enough to add the bit about loving God with all your mind.

What are some other reasons why you think it might be important to love God with all your mind?

I am so honored and humbled by all the comments and email I got over the weekend from people who come by the blog on a regular basis. It’s hard to believe that I created this blog four years ago primarily to keep up with our friends and family scattered across the country. It’s grown now to nearly 1,000 hits per day! Thank you so much for your participation.

I was interviewed by a reporter last Friday about Christians and the use of what is now being called “Web 2.0″ technology — social networking sites and blogs that create interactive communities. The reporter said she initially assumed that this was a way to reach out to the younger generation, but, after seeing how many folks come here who are not…er…from the younger generation, she may have to rethink the demographics.

One of the things that really made me happy was how many of you come here because the things we talk about stimulate your thinking. As many of you know, the whole reason I founded Faith 2.0 was to help people live better lives by re-examining what they really believe. I feel that has been precisely what we’ve been doing the past few months here as we’ve explored thoughts about God, about humans, about Jesus, about salvation and, most recently, about church.

These five things (theology proper, anthropology, christology, soteriology and ecclesiology) are what John Stott calls “five foundations for social involvement”. They are the true foundation for developing what he refers to as “a Christian mind”.

And yet….

There are some who seem to believe that we shouldn’t devote too much time to cultivating our minds, our intellectual lives. Some even say it’s “unspiritual”. They say God wants our hearts. They say God wants us to obey whether we understand or not. They say we should not study anything other than the Bible, and that we should merely speak where the Bible speaks and remain silent where the Bible is silent.

Have you ever encountered this anti-intellectualism in churches? Why do you think it’s so important for God’s people to learn how to think critically?