What is a “Jesus notebook,” you ask? Well, when I started going to Elevation, I actually paid attention during church for the first time in my life, so I started taking notes on the worship guides. My sister got me a beautiful Moleskine journal for Christmas after a year of scribbling on worship guides, and I filled it with sermon notes, prayers, issues I was facing, and anything else Jesus-y. I have successfully filled one journal per year since then, and I keep all of them close at hand. 

So why is the name of this post “My Pastor is Hilarious”? Well, during Code Orange Revival, I realized every night as Pastor Steven got more and more exhausted and less and less filtered in his speaking that he is really really funny. So I went through all of my journals and read my favorite aspect of them: the funny, out-of-context quotes in the back, and I thought, “I should share these with the world.” So here are the funniest Pastor Steven quotes that I wrote down in the past 3 years, starting with the oldest (and if they seem sarcastic, they are–promise):

“Let’s say five. It sounds more awesome.”

“You flipped hamburgers. I burned dogs.”

“At Elevation Church, we accept witches, atheists, and cat lovers.”

“If a piece of me hits you, sell it on eBay.”

“I couldn’t get another church to hire me. That’s why I started my own.”

“I want to preach my own funeral, crawl in my casket, and tell Jesus you said ‘what’s up.’”

“If you can’t have joy in here, you suck a lot.”

“If God needed your money, He’d beat you up and take it.”

“I decided a couple weeks ago that I’m going to quit asking for amens. I’m just going to give them to myself.”

“He wins–like every team that’s going to play the Carolina Panthers this year.”

“That’s awesome that your mom’s a thug.”

“We don’t [watch football] because it’s easy, ladies; we do it because we’re called.”

“You’re a wimp and you just need to know that up front.”

“I’ve always been short and white and relatively uncoordinated.”

“She was checking me out–not checking me out, ringing me up.”

“Planting is awesome! We’re farmers!”

“The day I can’t get the church to recognize Beverly Hill Billies, we’ll shut this down.”

“Not a great church ice-breaker: ‘Who’s been betrayed? Welcome to church!’”

“We can all relate with sheep-sheering parties.”

“I’m a pretty good guy. I mean, I’m like the best guy ever.”

“This week is a ‘David running for his life and the king committing suicide’ kind of Psalm, so it’s rather peppy and inspirational.”

“I usually don’t switch into King James modeth.”

“It’s not like I work on commission.”

“Then I’m going to relate what Jesus said to Simon Cowell and it’ll be great.”

“Who made you the judge, you freaking dufus?”

“No, I don’t cook. I do other things. I can cook eggs.”

“If you’re depressed, I’ll make you more depressed.”

“So in that way, we’re Communist.”

“I’ve been to little league soccer games, and they need some Jesus.”

“If there’s a #1 fear I have, it’s whack jobs starting a small group.”

“I think I’m addicted to Wikipedia.”

“And if you’re a first time guest, well, like, welcome and all that.”

“I don’t like, throw stuff at Holly when my food is cold.”

“Fourteen people are excited.”

“I would like to have a bath of onions.”

“I hate you because you’re evil, but I forgive you because I’m fasting.”

“I’m going to take these fake glasses off so I can see.”

“I may not get to tell them that I hate them, but I’ve got them in a chokehold in my mind.”

“I can’t come; I’m going to be drowning baby kittens in a river.”

“I think you should test drive your oxen before you drive them off the lot.”

“It doubles as a hunting Bible.”

“Can you guys just clap your hands for me one more time for finishing a book?”

“If you were to go in the upstairs of my house, which I’m going to be honest, isn’t real likely to happen.”

“So you worship idols and you suck. Amen.”

“You don’t have to write these down, but you can…if you’re on staff.”

“If you only come this weekend, you will die and go to hell.”

“And when I say I’m closing, that means absolutely nothing.”

“I can’t cross my legs because my jeans are a little too tight.”

“I hope you can see this at Blakeney. Actually, it’s probably better if you can’t.”

“What am I, a freaking cardiologist? I don’t know your heart.”

“Merry Christmas, Jesus! Here’s my jacked up life!”

“Don’t be offended I said that. I love Asians and rednecks.”

“The music was terrible, and I can say that because I was the one leading it.”

“Dig a big ditch. Gotta be careful how you say that.”

“Go to town. Buy a pirate.”

“I hope that’s right. Doesn’t matter if it is. It’s not like you know anything about geese, either.”

“When I walk on stage, lose your mind because I’m in the house.”

“We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against TSA agents.”

“See, I didn’t know I had a Lamborghini.”  

“I also, I don’t know if you noticed, brought a boat on stage.”

“People are going to the orange tent to be group leaders, and people are going to the orange tent because they’re messed up, and there are messed up group leaders going to the orange tent.”

“I go to a counselor. I’m not scared to tell you that. You’re crazier than I am.”

“You can’t have abs without sit-ups. That’s deep.”

“I’m the best pastor of Elevation Church we’ve ever had.”

“I used to would have–that’s horrible grammar, but you’ll see what I mean.”

“The whole time I’m running I’m thinking about stopping.”

“Spank me, God! Spank me!”

“Now we know why he was sad, because his mom named him Cleopas.”

“They pray for their sports team to win, but they live in Charlotte.”

“People come with problems. I’m talking about you.”

“If you ever leave me, I’m coming with you.”

“Leave me alone so I can show everyone what a good time we’re having.”

“You need to bake me some meat.”

“I lost a sweater recently. Please feel sorry for me.”

“This sermon is like a middle school dance: it’ll go better if you participate.” 

And my personal favorites, one from three years ago: “Some churches hand out candlesticks. We shoot lasers in your face,” and the most recent: “And then a hater comes into the picture. We don’t know anything about that at Elevation Church, but we’ll read it for context.”

So, that’s the not-so-life-changing moment of Code Orange for me: realizing that hiding these quotes in the backs of my journals is selfish. I hope you laughed a bit. I also hope you realize that, as I already said, these are out of context and mostly sarcastic, so if you felt confused or offended by any of them, please don’t lose sleep over it. 

1. i don’t understand how anyone gains weight in college. seriously, i walk/bike like a million miles a day and i sweat all. day. long. and then when i get out of class, i exercise. 
2. speaking of walking, i thought i’d like walking everywhere in college since i like walking in new york city so much. however, despite the fact that chapel hill is a beautiful place, i get really bored walking. where are all the crowds and homeless people and naked cowboys and people shoving flyers in your face and the box offices and cabs and lights and street vendors and protests? nope, just a bunch of 18-22 year olds and a lot of brick. oh, and nobody knows how to illegally cross a street here. drives me crazy.
3. i’m pretty sure 95% of the people here wear gym shorts, t-shirts, and tennis shoes 95% of the time. i LOVE it. that’s what i used to immediately change into after school or work, so you can imagine my delight that i can wear that 24/7 instead of just in my free time.
4. college is not real life. in high school, i woke up before 8:30 AM 7 days a week. the latest i went to bed was a little after midnight. here, i can wake up at 10 AM 5 days a week. i can go to bed at 4 AM on the weekends. trust me, i won’t be doing those things most of the time, but the possibilities are still insane. 
5. speaking of possibilities, there are way too many things to do in college. i spent my first week trying to decide which campus ministry to join, and it turns out that there are like a million of them (i chose intervarsity). i also started working at a theater in the props department, which is awesome. why is it awesome? because i get to learn how to use power tools and next week we’re making antique vibrators (you heard me) for a play called “in the next room or the vibrator play.” and because i work in a theater, i decided to audition for a play. i even had 2 callbacks, and it was between me and 3 other girls for the only female role in a show called “sic.” i didn’t get it, but that’s okay because i definitely didn’t have time for that anyway, what with elevation global UNC launching this weekend (which deserves a post of its own). my point is, i’m either in class or at work from 9-5 every day, and then most evenings i have meetings. i am busy, busy, busy.
6. my first real weekend here, i went to a drag party. yep, a drag party. there were straight guys in dresses. it was madness. college is crazy.
7. for the first football game, my suitemate and i painted ourselves blue from the waist up. we looked amazing (pictures are on facebook). people asked us to take pictures with their kids. i felt like a tourist attraction.
8. i’m finding that my sister is the only person i’ve met who is really honest about being a freshman in college…alumni from my high school would come back to visit and gush about how quickly they made friends and how they went to parties all the time and stuff, but courtney said it’d be hard. she said that being a freshman is lonely at first because you don’t know anyone and everyone has different schedules so a lot of times you’ll eat by yourself or stay in on a friday night. i have found this to be true, but i don’t really mind. secretly i like being alone, and i like staying in sometimes. i’m making friends and i already have a lot of friends here, but i wouldn’t lie to high schoolers by saying, “i party all the freaking time!” but that’s okay with me.

1. RENT: yeah, yeah, i know, it wasn’t on the list. one night mark was at my house and said, “maddison. we need to find a performance of rent while we’re in new york. i don’t care if it’s in the street, there HAS to be somebody doing it.” well it just so happens that it’s off-broadway right now and the fantastical adam chanler-berat plays a glasses-less mark in it. not only that, but the chick who plays joanne is freaking AMAZING. beautiful, talented, believable, likable, best joanne ever. the show itself was interesting, performed differently than most versions of rent, and mark and i got to see it from the front row because he won the lottery!
2. book of mormon: if you’ve heard stuff about the book of mormon and you think to yourself, “that show is so overrated,” then you couldn’t be more wrong. seriously, this was the most magical piece of theater i’ve ever seen. mark and i waited in line for 11.5 hours to get standing room only tickets, which means we stood in the back of the theater (perfect view, not kidding) for the whole performance, and it was so ridiculously worth it that i really wanted to cancel our plans for the rest of the trip and just stand in line for 11 hours every day to see it. unfortunately one of the 2 leading men was not there so we had an understudy, but it didn’t matter too much because a) the understudy was good, b) the show was amazing anyway, and c) it gave us more of an opportunity to focus on the absolutely perfect andrew rannells. honestly, i missed about half the show because i was watching andrew’s (yeah, we’re on a first-name basis) reactions to everything, which were usually funnier than the main action anyway. (btw i told him that after the show, and he said, “it’s nice to know that someone’s watching.”) he was just so perfect. everything about him is perfect, right down to his overly bleached teeth. i’m not ready for a new obsession to take over my life (because NPH is still doing a pretty good job of that), but if i was, you’d start seeing the name andrew rannells sneaking into every post.
3. anything goes: i know, not on the list. we decided to see this instead of spider-man because mark didn’t want to see spider-man and we heard it sucks anyway (visually fantastic, but everything else sucks). anything goes was written in the 1930s, so it was pretty dang cheesy. again, the leading man was an understudy, but he was fan.tas.tic. and the main reason why i wanted to see this show, sutton foster, ended up being worth it. she is wonderfully wonderful and has the same kind of effect that andrew rannells has, which means i watched her the entire time.
4. how to succeed in business without really trying: this show really pissed me off. we were in the front row, which was cool because we were so close to daniel radcliffe, but it was not cool when the show ended and we got completely trampled at the stage door by the HUNDREDS of people lined up to see harry potter. seriously, people left at INTERMISSION to stand and wait for him. but the upsetting part was that the other actors did not come out of the stage door, so i did not get to meet the adorable bud frump (no, that’s not his real name. that’s his character’s name. i forgot to look in the playbill for his real name. sorry, unnamed fantastic actor.) not going to lie, daniel radcliffe was the weakest link in this show…his acting is (of course) great, his american accent is great, his dancing is impressive, but his singing is, well, “eh.” but the show is really great and funny and definitely not as old-fashioned and cheesy as anything goes (even though it was written a long time ago). i just feel bad for the cast because they’re probably thinking, “these people are only here to see harry potter.” not true, cast, not true.
5. catch me if you can: i’ve been waiting 2 years to see aaron tveit live, but unfortunately my excitement for seeing him was overshadowed by the amazing norbert leo butz. the show is a little slow and i can understand why it’s closing, but norbert is just barrels of fun. i’d see it again just for him. also, aaron has the craziest range ever (laptop speakers can’t handle the madness that happens at 3:33), definitely should have been nominated, and is not only ridiculously talented, but extremely nice eye candy too.

so mark and i have decided to make an annual trip to NYC to see a bunch of shows. we managed 5 shows in 4 days and only spent $139 on tickets. that’s right, you heard me. yes, we had to wake up at 6 AM every day and sit in lines for countless hours, but it was better than spending a gazillion dollars.

“‘nothing,’ said the voice. next time he determined not to answer; but when it had called on him a thousand times he found himself answering whether he would or no, and ‘nothing,’ came the reply. he taught himself to keep silent in the end: not that the torture of resisting his impulse to speak was less than the torture of response but because something within him rose up to combat the tormentor’s assurance that he must yield in the end. if the attack had been of some more violent kind it might have been easier to resist. what chilled and almost cowed him was the union of malice with something nearly childish. for temptation, for blasphemy, for a whole battery of horrors, he was in some sort prepared: but hardly for this petty, indefatigable nagging as of a nasty little boy at a preparatory school. indeed no imagined horror could have surpassed the sense which grew within him as the slow hours passed, that this creature was, by all human standards, inside out–its heart on the surface and its shallowness at the heart. on the surface, great designs and an antagonism to heaven which involved the fate of worlds: but deep within, when every veil had been pierced, was there, after all, nothing but a black puerility, an aimless empty spitefulness content to sate itself with the tiniest cruelties, as love does not disdain the smallest kindness? what kept him steady, long after all possibility of thinking about something else had disappeared, was the decision that if he must hear either the word ransom or the word nothing a million times, he would prefer the word ransom.” -perelandra, CS Lewis

gosh i love jack.

i’m what’s called a “thork,” or a theater dork if you will. (funny, i’ve never heard anybody use the word “thork” other than polly and claire. perhaps they made it up. i don’t know.) up until this year my level of theater dork-ness was limited to shakespeare, a few straight plays (no music), and a little sondheim. when i was a freshman in high school i was one of those “broadway is all about wicked, legally blonde, and spring awakening” types. i got closer to grasping broadway last summer when i saw 3 shows in 4 days with the twins in new york. but this summer, when i found out that the man who holds a place in my heart slightly higher than Jesus (joke) was hosting the tony awards, i decided to get really into broadway. (side note: sorry i talk about NPH all the freaking time. he’s not the point of this post, i promise.) after extensive research and study, i realized that people who are on broadway are freaking amazing. they’re like the hardest working people in show business, and they get the least credit. can you imagine doing 8 two-hour shows a week? can you imagine having that show cancelled unexpectedly and suddenly you’re out of work and auditioning for everything again? can you imagine leaving your job every night and being bombarded by crazy fans who want your autograph and a picture with you? (ok, maybe that last one isn’t so bad.) the point is, i would like to apologize for calling myself a thork for so many years, yet neglecting broadway almost entirely. shame on me. to make up for it, i’m going to new york at the end of the summer for 4 days, and i plan on seeing 4 shows. yes, after learning everything i possibly could about every show, i narrowed the list down to 4. here we go:

1. the book of mormon: this show is about 99% responsible for the opening number of the tonys this year. no, broadway is not just for gays anymore because now a bunch of south park–yes, south park–fans are spending $267 to see this show. winner of 9 tony awards and nominated for 14, this show is the $#!t. it’s the most sacrilegious and obscene thing in the world, but it’s hilarious. the soundtrack made me want to convert to mormonism.
2. catch me if you can: 2 words: aaron. tveit. i CANNOT believe he wasn’t nominated for best actor. for shame, for shame. however, it’s not that much of a bummer because his counterpart, norbert leo butz, is amazing and won best actor. when i first saw “norbie” (as claire hilton affectionately calls him) in this show, i thought he was like 60 years old in real life. then he got up to receive his award and he’s like mid-30s. well deserved, well deserved.
3. how to succeed in business without really trying: i’m not going to lie to you, i’m just seeing this show so that mark and i can dress up as harry potter characters and yell, “harry potter! harry potter!” in british accents when daniel radcliffe steps out the stage door afterwards.
4. spider-man: i didn’t link a video to this show because it’s not really necessary. all you need to know about it is that it’s been in more (fake) news stories than really any other show on b’way. from directorial controversies to missed deadlines to budget overruns to a bunch of injured spider-men, i’m not sure there are any problems this show hasn’t faced and i’m not sure there’s any joke it hasn’t been the butt of. i’m seeing it in hopes that a cable snaps and one of the spider-men falls in my lap.

this summer i work all the time and go to bed at 10 every night, so there’s not really much time for reading. i mean, i’ve been trying to finish lewis’ space trilogy since may. however, as i mentioned a few posts back, my job allows me to listen to audiobooks for around 8 hours a day. i’ve been doing this for 3 weeks, and i’ve completed 5 and a half books so far. here’s an update on the audiobook bonanza:

1. the hunger games trilogy: my sister courtney suggests books for me to read quite often, and i have yet to be disappointed by one of her suggestions. she’s a 7th grade english teacher, so sometimes she reads kids’ stuff such as the hunger games. now if  you’re thinking, “psh, kids’ books. lame. keep your harry potter and chronicles of narnia to yourself. i’ll be busy reading real books,” then you need to be kicked off your high horse because not only are the 2 series mentioned in that fake quote amazing, but so is the hunger games. like, oh my goodness gracious i cannot describe to you how good this book series is. i’m not going to lie, like a good series of superhero movies, the first 2 books are undoubtedly awesome while the third is kind of like, “really? you’re going to kill scott and professor x in the first hour AND have a kid grow eagle wings and fly out of a building? tsk tsk.” but it’s definitely worth it to read all 3. just to entice you a little, here’s the premise of the first book: in a futuristic america, the government ruthlessly controls 12 different districts, letting them starve while the people of the “capitol” live in extreme excess. in order to remind the districts that they have no power against the capitol, they pick 2 kids randomly from each district to participate in the hunger games each year, a televised event in which the 24 kids are thrown into a deadly environment and kill each other (or die by other causes) until only 1 remains. craaaaaaazy.
2. picture perfect: a couple years ago i got really into jodi piccoult books (because of a suggestion from courtney…), but i stopped reading them because they’re all kind of similar and morbid. but it’s been a while since i’ve read one of her books, so i just picked one of the cheapest ones on itunes, which happened to be picture perfect. i was pleasantly surprised (and not just because the guy reading the book had a sexy voice). it starts with this lost woman who can’t even remember her name. she runs into this kind native american (his race is important to the plot) police officer who helps her out until her husband comes and finds her. turns out her husband is a famous movie star. (my one problem with this book: nobody ever recognizes her as being a famous person’s wife. i mean, there are plenty of famous people married to ordinary people, and i would recognize those ordinary people if i met them on the street. just saying.) as her memory comes back to her throughout the book, she is reminded that her famous husband physically abuses her. it’s difficult to read (or listen to in my case), but it’s a very intriguing story and has a happy ending. oh i also learned something about myself through this book: knowing i can defend myself makes me very uncomfortable when i hear of other people being totally helpless. i literally have to put myself in the scenario and mentally beat the mess out of the abuser in order to calm myself down. weird.
3. oliver twist: so i was trying to be all noble and listen to a classic, but this was a horrible one to go with. not only is it extremely boring, but the audio sounds like it was made in the early 1800s. the guy is like 80 years old and you can hear him turning the pages. not a joke.

wow this update was a lot longer than i anticipated. stay tuned for the next set of audiobook reviews. i’ll make it shorter.