SkyMall: The Best Mall

Many of you may be familiar with SkyMall, the shopping magazine you find in front of you on airplanes, filled with delightful and zany inventions. For years I've considered it one of the greatest joys of air travel (although you can peruse their products anytime, it's just not the same). If you're familiar with SkyMall, and with me, you might find we're a perfect match-- both creating unique, innovative products that no one else seems to appreciate.

Let me first offer a sample of my own work-in-progress product list. My personal favourite is a fashionable food thermometer, which makes you look chic and trendy while ensuring that you don't ruin the rest of your week by eating a burrito that is hotter at its core than you expected. (It has happened to all of us.) You can even customize it to your ideal food temperature, so nothing is ever too hot or too cold. That's right, Goldilocks, this one is for YOU!

Another invention, to which most of the credit goes to my collaborator and "fraintance" Jeff Hollenbeck, is a lead, pen(cil) stamp used for standardized testing. When fellow students are losing precious seconds filling in circles like monkeys for multiple choice questions on the ACT or SAT, you can just stamp, stamp, stamp your heart away with this mechanism! To be totally honest, this idea is becoming less and less marketable with the onset of computerized test-taking. But who knows how many students could advance their scores on the ACT/SAT in this year alone with the release of the lead stamp invention?!

By comparison, SkyMall features such unusual products as tools for "potty training" your cat to use your personal toilet (seen here), a ball-point "spy" pen boasting a hidden video-recording device (seen here), and a "gentle" alarm clock that slowly emits light, rejuvenating fragrances, and soothing nature sounds to wake you up over the course of a half an hour (seen here).

The only weakness to SkyMall, other than the fact that I am not on their team, is their marketing. First of all, they make no effort to get noticed on ground (not just in the sky). The do not circulate or publicize outside of airplanes (and the internet), and in doing so they're missing out on expanding their customer base to elderly or sick people who don't travel, people who are afraid of planes, and people who don't have enough money to fly (but who might be willing to splurge on a secret spy pen). Now, I will explain a second weakness in marketing. Listed under the heading: "The Greatest Gift... is to help others help themselves" in SkyMall magazine are the "E-pen," which removes unwanted facial hair on women, and an anti-snoring aid, amongst other products. These items should never be gifts. SkyMall needs a loyal customer base; giving these gifts to one's friends might end the friendships and thus would not provide such a stable base of support.

Hopefully, it can be understood by the preceding discussion that SkyMall and I are a match made in heaven. We are both dedicated to innovation in the daily lives of common people. We both see the importance of potty training our cats, spying in our day-to-day encounters, and testing the temperature of food before we take the risky leap of taking a bite (presumably they would like this product as well). My hope is that someone from SkyMall reads this and sees that I could be capable of writing catchy blurbs for their products, critical analysis of SkyMall corporate growth and loss, or coming up with the product lists for each magazine. My more realistic hope is that you have gained a new appreciation for SkyMall and will do a thorough read-through of the magazine the next time you travel on commercial air.

Notes: Credit goes to Shira Kresch for reminding me of the joys of SkyMall. On an unrelated note, let me offer my apologies for coming off as a profit-driven, capitalist swine in this post.

Why Evangelical Christians Matter and Why I (Sometimes) Like Them

Randall Balmer, professor of American religious history at Columbia University, calls the tremendous ongoing growth of the evangelical movement the most important religious and social movement in American history. Other scholars call it a revolution in American religion, restructuring our political and religious identity as a nation. Whether you agree or disagree, you are surely familiar with evangelicalism, the widespread adoption of a Bible-based worldview promoted by a diverse group of Christians who, over the past twenty-five years, have kept growing and growing, and growing. It’s not difficult to see this boom happening in my home state of Minnesota, with the unparalleled growth of Eagle Brook Church, an evangelical community started in 1991 that now boasts the highest weekend attendance of any church in the state (over 11,000). In December, Eagle Brook, which broadcasts televised sermons from its Lino Lakes campus to sites in Spring Lake Park and White Bear Lake, released to the press that it will be building two additional sites in Blaine and Woodbury, respectively. The Eagle Brook experience may seem foreign to Christians who are new to the “mega-church” scene; the sights and sounds of Eagle Brook include stadium seating, rock-type music, smoke on the stage, and a few hands waving in the air.

This past summer, I conducted twenty-four interviews at three Twin Cities churches as part of my Senior Individualized Project ("senior thesis") at Kalamazoo College. I studied Eagle Brook’s various campuses, House of Hope Church on Summit Avenue in Saint Paul, and Central Presbyterian Church in downtown St. Paul to examine how the traditional patterns linking social class and belief about God in America are challenged by the increasing popularity of evangelicalism among the upper-middle class. One of the most important findings of the study posits that the congregation at Eagle Brook demonstrates a stunning in-group theological unity (i.e. everyone believes the same things), unparalleled by mainline Protestant churches like House of Hope and Central. In my analysis, I argued that Eagle Brook does this by directly defining expectations for the beliefs and behaviors of its congregants and by capitalizing on emotionally-charged group experiences with the sacred. They achieve this with culturally relevant services and by demonstrating mastery of the art of oral communication in a nation of talkers.

In a left-leaning state, there is no shortage of negative stereotypes about evangelicals. When I told fellow Minnesotans (or fellow students) about my thesis, they often responded with disparaging perceptions about evangelicals. Upon beginning the study, I myself assumed that evangelical culture embraces a stagnant thinking and irrational faith. After attending a few services and conducting several interviews, I discovered that, on the contrary, “Eagle Brookers” invest great energy into wrestling with the doubt and mystery of a Christian faith. Further, Eagle Brook places a radical emphasis on reducing global and local poverty beyond that of any church I had ever seen or heard of before.

Like many others, before I began the study I found it hard to rationalize the staggering costs of the facilities at Eagle Brook, with the construction of the Lino Lakes campus alone totaling $24 million. But throughout the course of the study, I began to see the astounding social impact of “Eagle Brookers.” According to my interview with executive pastor Rev. Scott Anderson, in the past three years alone, Eagle Brook has raised $2 million for the reduction of AIDS in Mozambique. Anderson said, “We can do more, too. I see it as a failure of the church that people…are starving. Shame on us when the Church of Jesus Christ is more worried about the air conditioning level in an office than about the people who are dying all around us.”

According to the Eagle Brook Church website (eaglebrookchurch.com), since 2007, “Eagle Brookers” have filled and donated 4,300 backpacks to kids in need through Here’s Life Inner-City. Their March 2009 food drive yielded 23,100 pounds of food and almost $17,000 in cash donations for local food shelves. In November 2009, Eagle Brookers donated 5,753 gift-filled shoeboxes to be given to children in desperate situations around the world through Operation Christmas Child. The list of local and global social contributions goes on, and the point remains that Eagle Brook is making an astonishing social impact.

The facilities may be expensive, but the Eagle Brook community realizes that with such privilege comes great responsibility. Whether or not you agree with the theological or political opinions of the majority of evangelicals, there is no denying that the seriousness with which social issues are addressed at most “mega-churches” and the magnitude of their impact on poverty reduction leaves most mainline Protestant churches (and many secular non-profits) in the dust. As Eagle Brook and its like-minded churches nation-wide plan even more radical goals for poverty reduction in the coming years, I look forward to a more just local and global community. (Click here for a two-minute snippet of a sermon from Willow Creek Church, which inspired the "mega-church" movement. Click here for my favourite full-length sermon from "Willow" on enemy love.)