I recently finished an online Neuroscience Course and have read about 9 books on the brain, neuroscience, why we believe what we believe, weird sociological behaviors, and consciousness. It was a bit weird because I sensed my brain understanding more about how it worked… and I kept wondering who the “I” was that was noticing what it’s brain was learning. Strange huh?
If you are like most people the Reading Test above was pretty easy as long as you just kind of skimmed over it and read like you normally do…which is to absorb the word without thinking about the letters. Many of you read the whole paragraph just as fast as you would have if the words been spelled correctly. The more I learn about the brain the more fascinating I find the human in general. We read that paragraph easily because we basically saw the first and last letters and
and filled in the the rest with whatever our brain decided should be there. Some of you just read the last sentence without noticing that the word “and” was used twice in a row and the word “the” was doubled up as well.
Many of you have done this experiment before but try it again just for kicks.
Just read it one time and count one time. No Cheating.
How many f’s are in the following sentence?

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE-
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIF-
IC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.

In case you need to know, there are 6 of them. A vast majority of people don’t get the answer right.

We see what our brain has programmed us to see. We remember only parts of what we think we remember. Our memories are being formed in different places in our brains where there are little neurons firing making up things that fill in the blanks, thereby creating false memories. We believe what we have been taught to believe, and it’s really hard to change those beliefs, especially if we have had them for a long time. This is true even when we are face to face with a reality that shows for certain that our belief is incorrect. When Galileo looked through his telescope and discovered that the earth was not the center of the universe and that our planet actually revolved around the sun, no one would believe him. Great scientists with great minds would come and look through his telescope and come to the conclusion that the instrument evidently worked fine when looking horizontally at objects in the distance but somehow malfunctioned when looking up into the sky.
Their sacred beliefs about how the universe was set up could not be challenged in their minds no matter how clear the evidence was. It took 300 years for people to finally accept what Galileo so clearly could prove. They even put him under arrest, knowing he was brilliant, and made him say that he was wrong.

Upton Sinclair once wrote “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it”
Sometimes our brain decides on its own(seemingly) that it won’t believe, or can’t comprehend something because somewhere down in our subconscious we feel like we have too much to lose if we “change our minds”. Galileo’s friends had too much to lose to comprehend what was so easy to see.

So why would I write about that? We do have the ability to re-think. We have the knowledge that we actually do fill in blanks in our minds and memories with things that just aren’t true. I think we should think more about how we think and what we think. I think we should be more open to other people’s thoughts and recognize that maybe we don’t “know” what we think we know.
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I have two friends who were at an event together a while back. They got into a discussion about a book that is quite controversial. One of them had a strong belief about that book and how “off base” and dangerous it was. The fascinating thing was that he had not even read the book himself. His pastor had told him what it said, and why he shouldn’t read it, and why it was wrong.

Life is too darn fascinating for us to allow someone else to do our thinking for us. Heck, our brains are filling in gaps for us all the time with untruths about things we think we read or saw or experienced with our own senses.
Let’s just keep on reading and listening, and looking and learning…and therefore evolving and changing. We need to give ourselves the opportunity to fill in the gaps with the truth. And the truth is often not easy to decipher. As Fox Mulder would say, “the truth is out there”. And I believe it can set you free.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I was anxious to receive back the surveys we had sent out to see what people really were thinking about communicators for some events I was producing. We had around 13000 students at our Bigstuf Camps this summer, and they were represented by about 400 leaders. Generally we get tons of letters from students, chaperones, pastors and youth leaders letting us know how they felt about our camps. This year was no different. The problem I was having was that I knew that if we got letters, those letters would generally be the glowing, you-were-incredible, can’t-wait-til-next-year, kind of letters. What I hope for is a lot of those kinds of letters and then some kind, but critical letters helping us to know what we could do better. I also know that almost everything about any given event is quite subjective, so we have to carefully consider why each person will say what they say and what kind of background they have and whether we feel like any criticism is justified based on who we are, and what we believe the majority of thoughts would be from our constituents. I will say, it’s nice to hear from people that they wouldn’t change a thing, and that it’s by far the best camp in the country. If everyone thought that, then our job would be easy as we contemplate what should evolve or change. And…fortunately, lots of people say that.
But….what I wanted out of this particular survey was to really find out how important our selection of speakers is in the decision-making process as youth pastors decide which camp they will come to. I also really wanted to see what kinds of speakers these leaders wanted in front of their students. I purposefully added speakers that we have never had at our camp, but who travel a lot and speak at other events. Many of these speakers would be labeled conservative, and some of them maybe liberal. Some are people who have been around the youth culture a long time and some are pastors of large churches. I kinda figured that if they ranked a particular speaker high, then I could guess which ones they would rank low, and if they made comments about “strong biblical teaching” on some, then I might guess what they would say about some of the others. I’m going to list for you the speakers who were on the survey. And if you would like to rate them or talk about them on this blog, then that might be interesting …and maybe it could give me new insight if enough of you commented. However, let me get back to deciding whether to laugh or cry.
I was wrong about being able to guess what people would say about one speaker after I read what they said about another. There was only one consistent thought throughout the whole survey. 98% of everyone who answered, loves Andy Stanley.
Beyond that, it was just weird. The ranking was 1=I never want this person in front of my students. 10 =I wish all my students could hear the person all the time.
The results and comments were fascinating. There was almost no rhyme or reason. For every speaker who got a number of 10’s, they got just as many 1-4. People would say, I don’t like this speaker personally because I disagree with him theologically, but my kids like him so I will rate him high and be back at camp. People would say one guy gave the best message they ever heard and then they would day he gave the worst message they ever heard. They would critique a whole message by one line someone delivered in their message. They would say, “I don’t much like speakers to be “in-your-face” kind of speakers, but maybe kids need that…I’ll give him a 10.”
At the beginning of the survey, I had suggested that I struggled finding female speakers for our camps and that I would really love to have women speaking to our kids so if people would recommend females communicators for us, that would be great. I got a letter that said I sounded sexist when I asked that so they would never come to our camps because of that line in our letter. I also got a note that said it wasn’t a good idea to add females to our line up.?????? I saw people say things like, I have never heard this guy before but I have “heard a lot about him” so if you invited him to camp, we would definitely come.
What is amazing to me is “almost everyone thinks they are right”.
And there usually isn’t really a “right” or a “wrong” when you are talking about such a subjective concept. We had a special musical guest one night. Some people thought they provided the most incredible, life-changing hour of the week. Others thought that if we have them back, they probably won’t come back.
What is strange to me, was not that there were polar opposites on the rating scale…it was that people rated them all along the scale. A guy who got a lot of 10’s got just as many 9’s,8’s,7’s,6’s,5’s,4’s,3’s,and 2’s.
About one particular speaker, I got comments like this. “He didn’t use his bible enough”. “My kids got bored”, “he had nothing to say”, “he didn’t challenge our kids”…and for the same guy at the same camp I got these, “the most effective speaker we have ever heard”, “my kids loved him”, “my kids are quoting his talk all the time”, “he challenged our group more than anyone”.

Our goal is to put great people, with great gifts, who will challenge and encourage and inspire students and adults to grow in their relationship with Christ. We know there are all kinds of kids out there and that it takes different kinds of communication to reach those different kinds of kids. We will always put people on our stage whom we believe can impact the lives of those who hear them. I consider that platform one of the most important places on earth. I take it very seriously.
The survey made it much more interesting and challenging as we think about how to do camp. I was really appreciative of those youth pastors who said something like this: “I’ve been around Bigstuf long enough to know that you all are going to give my students exactly what we need. So, I don’t worry much about the speakers and who they are going to be, I just know my kids are gonna come back home with changed hearts and lives, simply because I trust the Bigstuf team.”
So, if you are thinking about coming to camp and you aren’t sure about the speakers you see, you should know that the whole camp experience is a lot bigger than the speakers. Now and then a great speaker will do just a fair job of speaking…which happens to all of us…but, the experience during the whole week is one where God works because of, and in spite of any one individual who stands on the stage.
I guess we should all remember that for anything that we rate a 10, there is someone out there who is just as sharp and wise as we are…and they will give it a “1”.

So, you try to be the camp producer and know that…and see how easy it is

Meanwhile let me wrap this up before I give you the list. I blogged a few weeks ago about Andy Stanley and leadership. After this survey I thought about that blog because I wondered something. I know some of you think I am prejudiced because Andy is a good friend. But this has nothing to do with that. If he got almost nothing but 9’s and 10’s and incredible comments, maybe there is something we can learn from that besides who we would like to have at camp. In my other blog I talked about what it takes to be a good communicator and how we should think when we are preparing to speak. If you are a communicator or you stand on a stage in front of people, go back and read that blog. It could be the reason that Andy was the most consistent in his ratings.
Here are the guys I put on our survey. If you want to comment about any of these, or others that you know of, feel free to do so. (We are always looking for new and gifted leaders for our team)I’d be interested to know if the diversity of opinion goes beyond the youth pastors that we surveyed. But remember, this isn’t a speaker bashing forum. The internet gets weird sometimes.

Andy Stanley
Ben Crawshaw
Brad Jones
Clay Scroggins
Craig Groeschel
Darren Whitehead
David Platt
Don Miller
Doug Fields
Duffy Robbins
Francis Chan
Jamey Dickens
Jared Herd
Jon Acuff
Louie Giglio
Mark Batterson
Matt Chandler
Perry Noble
Rodney Anderson
Shaun King
Steven Furtick
Stuart Hall