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Giving Up Center Stage

Erik — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:09:38 +0000

In 2 Samuel 12, Joab (the captain of David’s army) does something striking. He willingly gives up the glory, honor and credit for a battle to his king. In verses 27-28 he sends a messenger to David saying, “I have fought against Rabbah and captured its water supply. Now bring the rest of the army and capture the city. Otherwise, I will capture it and get credit for the victory.”

We like center stage. We like the limelight and the attention we get from a job well done. Especially when we’ve worked hard to earn it. But in this account, Joab simply hands it over.

Why?

Because Joab knew his role. He understood that his job wasn’t just to win battles. His job was to support the king.

This is the philosophy I take when it comes to my role as a staff pastor. My ministry position may have a title. I may have an age group or a specific segment of people in the congregation that I’m responsible for. Those responsibilities may define what I do, but they don’t define how I do it.

A good staff pastor does what he should do. A great staff pastor does the “what” and understands how to do it in a way that serves his/her Pastor and gives up center stage. This isn’t to say that a staff pastor should never be honored for his work, but it is to say that some credit isn’t meant for the staff pastor. Understanding these circumstances and properly reacting to them is what separates a good staff pastor from a great staff pastor.

And that’s not to suggest that I completely understand it or succeed at this. But I do strive to serve my Lead Pastor and honor his personality, dreams and vision for the church. Otherwise I risk injecting my own agenda and stealing center stage from him in the process.

So how do you respect and serve the authorities over your life? Have you found yourself in situations where you are tempted to steal center stage?

the spirit of giving

Book Review – Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale

Erik — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 19:39:43 +0000

I’ve collected quite a few subscriptions in my RSS Reader over the years. I skim through most of them, but it’s been a great way for me to quickly find great articles, helpful reviews and useful resources.

I recently came across a recommendation in one of these feeds to read Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy & Fairy Tale. The review was so positive that I immediately found a copy at my local library. I couldn’t wait to get started on it. The reviewer even declared that this was essential reading for church communicators and included some promising quotes from the book.

After reading it myself…I’m going to have to disagree. Or at least give a less enthusiastic review. I think the glowing review, the title of the book and my expectations were just all out of whack on this one.

Telling the Truth is not at all what I thought it was going to be. I’m probably too analytical for a book like this. As I read it, I kept thinking that people who like to call themselves “creatives” would probably be the ideal audience.

The book can be summed up with the follow passage from chapter 1.

“The Gospel is bad news before it is good news. It is the news that man is a sinner, to use the old word, that he is evil in the imagination of his heart, that when he looks in the mirror all in a lather what he sees is at least eight parts chicken, phony, slob. That is the tragedy. But it is also the news that he is loved anyway, cherished forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for. That is the comedy. And yet, so what?….In answer, the news of the Gospel is that extraordinary things happen to him just as in fairy tales extraordinary things happen….It is impossible for anybody to leave behind the darkness of the world he carries on his back like a snail, but for God all things are possible. That is the fairy tale. All together they are the truth.”

Now, the book was worth reading if just for this paragraph. (I love this passage.) It’s just that this quote comes early on (pages 7 and 8). The book had me here. I was sold on it…but then I was left hanging as it never provided any deeper analysis than that. The remaining chapters (2, 3 and 4) cover the topics in the subtitle of the book: Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale respectively. To be honest, I didn’t find these chapters very helpful. They serve more to provide examples (mostly literary) of their respective topics than to reveal how the Gospel functions in that way. That’s not to say that this aspect of the Gospel isn’t mentioned. It is. It’s just not done until layer after layer of other examples are used first. And when it is, it doesn’t go much deeper than the above quote.

It’s probably an expectation thing for me. I’m sure some people will love everything about this book. But for me, it’s a great premise that failed to really expand the main idea.

Now with that said, I’m glad I read it. I think the concept of Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale is a powerful one. And a few sections of the last chapter in particular are inspirational and helpful to minister’s charged with communicating the Gospel.

In this case, the title (almost) says it all. It’s not a bad read. But if you’re looking for practical applications. This isn’t it. The book has a great premise and will inspire. But it doesn’t go much deeper than that.

Cornerstone Easter Video Interview

Erik — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 14:16:04 +0000

I wanted to share one of the videos we showed on Easter. It’s an interview we did with one of our church members who had an incredible experience with God during a prayer time at our church. We put it together pretty quickly because we didn’t hear about it until just a few days before Easter.

Ken did a great job. He just sat down and said everything he needed to say in one take.

The music is the song “Quiet” from the band “This Will Destroy You.” I came across them after I heard their music in the movie Moneyball.

I’m very happy with how everything came together for the short amount of prep time I had to put it together.

CstoneChurches.com

Erik — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 15:52:24 +0000

I just completed a major overhaul of our church’s website last night. Over a year and a half ago, Cornerstone began to expand through the planting and revitalization of new church campuses. Since that time, the Cornerstone Network has expanded to 6 campuses.

When this began, we changed our original domain, BethaltoChurch.com to CstoneChurches.com. Our desire was to communicate that we were expanding to include more than one location. The website tried to reflect this and had a “Locations” menu.

It worked to an extent, but it didn’t work well. There were at least three glaring problems with the site.

It was basically a Bethalto-specific site with a locations menu tacked on.
Because of the locations menu…Bethalto-specific ministry information was buried in a series of menus.
It was near useless for our other campuses. Each location had a “page” but there just wasn’t room for information about what made that location unique.

So we decided to overhaul it and come up with something more useful.

We decided to make CstoneChurches.com a landing page. It’s basically a “which campus do you want” page with a little information about the Cornerstone Network. I anticipate that we’ll have more information added in the future, but for now, it works.

Then, each of our six campus will have their own websites.

Two of our campuses have their own websites already (Life Community and Simplicity). The landing page points to those external pages.
Two are still in the process of being developed, so I linked to their Facebook pages for now (Deaf Church and Godfrey).
Calhoun has received a brand new site and Bethalto’s site went through a complete redesign.

The last two websites (Calhoun and Bethalto) are located relative to the landing page. For instance, Bethalto’s site is CstoneChurches.com/Bethalto and Calhoun’s site is at CstoneChurches.com/Calhoun. Godfrey’s and Deaf Church’s will use the same convention as well.

Anyway, I’m pumped about the updates. I’m using a beautiful, responsive template from JoomlaBamboo.

Take a minute to check the sites out. I’d love your feedback about what works and what doesn’t.

where’s your footnote?

Parker’s Comedy Routine

Erik — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 03:43:46 +0000

Each year our church holds an event called Cornerstone’s Kids Got Talent. It’s a “talent” show that our kids put on to raise money for camp.

Last year, Parker was asked to participate with a comedy routine. It went so well, that he decided to do it again this year. And in the humble, totally unbiased and realistic perspective of his dad…I think he knocked it out of the park.

Book Review – The Circle Maker

Erik — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 04:46:16 +0000

I recently finished reading The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson. Since his first book, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day, I’ve been a fan of his writing. As I’ve mentioned in other reviews of his work, each book gets better than the last.

The book’s title comes from the legend of Honi, the Circle Maker, who drew a circle in the ground and declared he would not move until his prayer for rain was answered. It’s this kind of bold, faith-filled prayer that Batterson addresses throughout.

What I appreciate about this book is its effective mixture of “how to,” theology, and stories of answered prayer. None of these elements outweigh the other to a great extent, but each of these are presented in a highly inspirational way. Batterson has a incredibly effective ability to cause the reader to dream big and pray big, audacious prayers.

The most impacting chapter for me, however, was probably one that dealt the least with prayer. Chapter 15 covers the topic of setting Life Goals. The book is worth picking up for this chapter alone. Too many people (including myself), simply walk through life without considering where they are headed or without creative a set of goals to achieve. I love the practical and inspirational aspects of this chapter. I’ll be revisiting this section of the book numerous times.

Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of this book. Circle Maker is engaging, easy to read, inspiring and challenging. I highly recommend it.

Book Review – Surprising Insights from the Unchurched and Proven Ways to Reach Them

Erik — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 21:59:33 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, I finished reading the book, Surprising Insights from the Unchurched and Proven Ways to Reach Them. I’m fairly certain this book has the longest title of any book I’ve ever read. However, this will likely be one of the shortest book reviews I’ve done.

Surprising Insights is essentially a report of the author’s (Thom S. Rainer) extensive research with a group of people he calls “formerly unchurched.” And it does live up to it’s name. Not everything was “surprising,” but it did contain a great deal of insight that I wasn’t expecting.

Essentially, Rainer makes an important and critical distinction between “unchurched” and “formerly unchurched.” Instead of focusing on reaching people who have no connection to a church, he examines the experiences of recently new church attenders and what drew them into the church. In other words…what “worked” for them and drew them into a faith community. It’s a simple, yet profound distinction that informs and directs the course of the book.

It’s a quick, straightforward book to read. But it does read like the report of an extensive survey. There are multiple anecdotal stories and examples throughout that enhance the data. These were okay, but I was mainly interested in the data.

If you’re a Pastor and you are interested in reading about some of the factors that draw unchurched people into church, I recommend it. It will give you some great perspective and likely challenge (at least some of) your current approaches to ministry.

Valentine’s Day Wallpaper

Erik — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:03:43 +0000

I’m not the most romantic husband. So Valentine’s Day doesn’t come easy for me. But last week I had an idea for a small way that I could show my love for Bethany.

I decided to create a custom wallpaper for her iPhone.

After a few unsuccessful drafts, I came up with a design that included the obligatory Valentine’s day colors and hearts. But it also included a few pictures of her and I that were located in the area of the bottom row of apps. After she went to bed, I took the liberty of loading the wallpaper and moving around her apps to make sure the images were visible.

The wallpaper can be seen below. If you’ve got a copy of Photoshop and want to tweak it for your own use, you can download the psd here.

If you end up using it, let me know in the comments. I’d love to know how it turned out.

Christmas 2011

Erik — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 02:44:47 +0000

Each year at Christmas I create a video to remember the season. Here’s a highlight video of the boys’ experience this year. The footage is almost exclusively of them opening presents. In some ways, I wish I had captured other video of our time, but on the other hand, I love the reactions they have as the give gifts (the beginning of the video) and then open up those toys they had been hoping for. I hope you enjoy it.

I made the following video with the Action Movie FX app for my iPhone.

In case you missed past videos, I’ve embedded them below. My personal favorite is probably the first one I made (it’s at the very bottom).

southloopchurch.com redesign

Erik — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 02:30:18 +0000

I have a very small “side business” setting up websites/blogs and customizing templates for churches and individual. Over the years, I’ve become very fond of Joomla, a content management system (CMS) that I think works well for churches and small businesses.

A couple of years ago, I set up a site for my friend, Dug Harris. He was just launching South Loop Church and needed to promote his new church online. The site served him well, but recently, he and I were both itching for a redesign.

I built the original site by slightly customizing the Bliss template from Joomla Bamboo. You can find the old site here for a limited time (some of the links are broken now due to the update, but you can see how it looked).

The new site launched this past weekend. Of all the site’s I’ve set up with Joomla and customized, it’s by far my favorite. You can see it in the screenshot below or in full at southloopchurch.com. (To see the original template, click here.)

For examples of some of the other work I’ve done or to contact me regarding putting a site together for you, visit scottpress.com.

I realize that some people may look at this and say something like, “I could do that.” And you’re probably right! Joomla is an incredibly power and free CMS. There are plenty of great developers out there that make excellent templates for an affordable price. If you aren’t interested in having me set up a website for you, but you want to do this on your own, please consider helping me out by using my affiliate links. Before you make your purchase, just click on the ads to the right. I highly recommend these companies. Thanks!

scottpress.com