The Pastor’s Bulldog

I realize that this post could come across as negative, so I’ll preface it with this: Clayton King is the man. Great preacher. Good man. I love hearing him preach at Elevation.

 

This post is kind of two-sided in the fact that it has some positive and negative comments. I’ll start with the negative so that I can end with the positive. As I said previously, I love when Clayton comes to preach. The last time he was here (that I remember) was the “Thank You” series. In that message he talked about the importance of supporting your pastor (meaning Steven). After that message it seemed quite clear that there were issues with Elevation attendees complaining about the pastor.

 

I’ll be quite honest with you, I was definitely miffed when we started attending Elevation and I wasn’t granted time to speak with Furtick. After spending five years at Banyan where I constantly had access to the young adults pastor there, I felt very small and unimportant at Elevation. The whole scenario nearly influenced me to keep searching for another church. But I enjoyed Elevation too much to leave and so I just accepted that Pastor Steven and his staff were very protective of his time. I guess there were probably some yahoos that got to meet with him and more than likely just argued about whatever when they did get to talk with him. So I learned to adjust.

 

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah…So Clayton is back again to preach a similar sermon series about giving our pastor the time he needs to do his job. I totally agree with everything Clayton said in his message. We as the church put expectations on Pastor Steven that would cause him to burn out quickly if he tried to meet them all. Our church is too big for Steven to be “waiting on tables”. There is still a part of me that wishes I could get to know the guy personally, but he’s got enough friends already. I mean, he is quite the celebrity now. You can’t just expect him to form close relationships with everyone at church. That would be insane. But I think we would have been good buds had we met each other in the past.

 

Clayton stated we were doing a good job with allowing Steven the time he needs to do what he does. But I can’t help but get the feeling we as a church are not doing that and therefore warranted this message from King. So was this a refresher sermon or a chastisement? A friendly reminder or strike two?

 

Now for the positive…I’m glad Pastor Steven has people in his life like Clayton King. I kind of think of King as Pastor Steven’s bulldog. Don’t mess with Steven or he’ll sick his bulldog on you. And King comes at you like a bulldog…unafraid. It wouldn’t be fair for Steven to have to preach a sermon about needing time to do his job. Clayton King has Steven’s back and so do I. I may not agree with everything Elevation or Pastor Steven says or does, but no church is perfect right? If we wanted the perfect church it would consist of one person: ourselves.

 

Birds of Prey: Red-Tailed Hawk

I thought about selling some copies of my artwork for some extra money, but I’ve never been real big on my artwork being worthy of selling. Anyways, here’s one of my birds of prey. I haven’t posted any artwork lately, so this was due. It’s one of my favorites that I’ve done so far.

 

 

 

 

Drifting

I’m writing this blog entry from the great state of Alabama. I’m in Birmingham for three days taking a course at my company’s headquarters down here. I’m trying to stay awake late in the day and so I thought I might write to help fight the urge to doze. But I started this blog with a pen and a notepad, that way it looks like I’m taking notes.

Amanda and I drove down Sunday afternoon. It was a long drive. A long, boring drive. I-85 to Atlanta and then I-20 to Birmingham. Not much in the way of twists and turns. We were both pretty tired from lack of sleep the previous night. I drove most of the way. To stay awake we listened to her workout music which consisted of the Black-Eyed Peas and Quad City DJs. That was interesting enough to keep me alert.

As I sit here writing and listening to the speaker and watching people fight the force of gravity on the heads and eyelids, I’m thinking of my nice comfy bed back at the Hilton Garden Inn. I can hear it calling me. The sandman is harassing me right this minute. I’ve had three Cokes today, but all that has done has made me frequent the facilities. About the only way to stay awake is to snack. When I first started working here I had to go to a week long class and I snacked all day to fight sleep. I gained five pound that week.

There’s some random buzzing noise coming from an unknown source in this room. Normally what would be an annoying sound has become a sweet lullaby. The previous speaker turned off the lights for a video. That was a risky move considering the topic was not very spectacular, the speaker was not very charismatic and it was not long after lunch this was taking place. Since I’ve started writing this I’ve had to tap my neighbor twice just to make sure she didn’t nod off and out of her chair.

I feel bad for the current speaker because he’s the last one of the day and it’s very obvious that everyone has entered the zone. They are all nodding, but not because they are agreeing with the speaker. It wouldn’t look as bad when they did it if they didn’t abruptly stop in mid-nod.

Head slowly nods…slowly…slowly

AWAKE!!! Now aware of nodding…

Nodding slowly…slowly…slowly…

AWAKE!!! Opening eyes as wide as they can…

Stretch…shift position…try to pay attention…but still drifting…

Where’s My Dictionary: Profundity

I’ve decided to start a recurring segment on by blog called “Where’s My Dictionary?” I enjoy Pastor Steven Furtick’s messages because they are very clear-cut without watering down the Word. But occasionally he says something that causes a thought-cloud with a big question mark in it to form above my head. I wish I could put this word into the context it was used, but the word struck me and I thought about it and not the sermon. This past week he used this word:

pro·fun·di·ty  (prə-fŭn’dĭ-tē, prō-)

n. pl. pro·fun·di·ties

1. Great depth.

2. Depth of intellect, feeling, or meaning.

3. Something profound or abstruse.

Does anyone else feel like they need a dictionary in church sometimes? Learning new words is fun. Now I have to go look up “abstruse”. The dictionary will probably say it means “profundity”.