Leadership associate editor Skye Jethani tells the story Mike Sares shared with him at a conference earlier this year. Tell us what you would do if you were Mike.

A few days before Christmas, pastor Mike Sares got a call from his associate. "Mike," he said, "Mary Kate Makkai has agreed to read one of her poems at the Christmas Eve service. It's really, really good, but it's got the F-bomb in it several times, and I just thought I should check with you about that."

Sares first told me his unexpected "F-bomb story" last March at the FutureGen conference in Orlando. We've all heard the tales of pastors accidentally detonating a vulgar ordnance from the pulpit (everyone's recent favorite being Blake Bergstrom's infamous "pitch your tents" faux pas). But the dropping of multiple F-bombs during a Christmas Eve service with laser guided premeditation? That is nothing to laugh about.

Mike Sares pastors a congregation called "Scum of the Earth" in Denver, Colorado. No, Scum of the Earth is not your typical congregation. Scum calls itself "a church for the right brained and the left out." They embrace authenticity, creativity, and those who are on the margins of society. That explains why Sares didn't immediately take the nuclear option off the table. But he wasn't quite ready to push the button either.

The following is by Abram Book, Leadership editorial resident, who reported the nationwide Narnia promotion campaign that rolled out last month in Wheaton, Illinois, now the home of C.S. Lewis's wardrobe. OK, one of several such wardrobes. This one has a solid wood back, we're told, behind the fur coats.

The marketing machine for the big C.S. Lewis Narnia movie is just getting cranked up, and they're using all the tactics that made The Passion of the Christ a blockbuster. But as sample marketing materials for use in churches and as preacher's magazines with Narnia covers arrive in our office mailbox, and as attenders at the Catalyst conference for church leaders were treated to Narnia previews and promo tools, we have to wonder, Is the church being used? Or more precisely, How crassly is the church being used?

After a promotional stop that brought C.S. Lewis's stepson and a slew of marketers to the platform of a nearby church in October, I asked Quentin Schultze, professor of communication at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, whether the church's cooperation with Hollywood in movie marketing is a trend.