I just can’t help myself! I made this a while back. Actually I made it before I made the Seat Nazi logo. He he he…
Never take yourself too seriously…this means you Elevation sell-outs!!!
All joking aside, the ushers have done a pretty good job about not goose-stepping down the aisle lately. I still don’t like to be told where to sit…
Move over virgin Mary! Look out face of Jesus! This is the Elevation Church Leaf! Sometimes I have a hard time believing people will flock to some piece of tree bark that looks like the aforementioned people. Maybe not believing, but understanding. People do crazy stuff. If I looked down into my plate of pasta and saw the virgin Mary, I’m not sure what I’d do. I certainly wouldn’t make a big to do about it. I doubt the Lord is trying to reveal His self to me through the endless pasta bowl at the Olive Garden.
I remember some dude made a big deal because one of the spots on his goat looked like a number 3 (as in Dale Earnhardt). Yeah, that was ridiculous. It just seems like people are worshiping idols. When people make a pilgrimage to see something they find incredibly important, it sounds like when the Israelites would travel to Shiloh, Jerusalem, etc. to worship. Did you get that? To worship. They went to worship not the temple, not the priests, but only God. I think people can worship the face of Jesus in the side of a tree and not the real thing.
With all that said, here’s a leaf my wife found for all you Elevation Church attenders. She picked it up because she thought it was pretty. I looked at it and said “Look! The Elevation Church leaf!”
No, Elevation Church is not opening a new campus in the Southpark area. Notice the spacing in between South and Park. That’s right, the staff at Elevation have been turned into characters from South Park! I’m not really big into South Park, but when I found this website where you can create your own South Park characters, well…
This is of course only a handful of the staff at church, but I thought it was enough to post them. I made a few of them a while back. The website to make the characters is somewhat limited in the different items, clothing, etc. that you can give your characters. So while they don’t exactly resemble the staff, they are close enough. And hey, they are only cartoon characters after all. What do you expect?
I started making these designs a while back. The 80′s Rock sermon series kind of inspired me to make these. If they sold these t-shirts at church, I’d definitely buy one (or more). Since no one was very happy about my seat nazi design, I figured these would go over a little smoother. And these are designs that could seriously be made into t-shirts as opposed to the seat nazi one (which was a joke). I even made a t-shirt for the ladies (and possibly some guys that are secure in their masculinity).
I had no idea that the post was read by anyone at the church office until after the 8:30 service when someone that is regularly in close contact with the Pastor told me that it was circulating around. He looked at me and said something to the effect of “That was pretty brave sitting next to Chunks after what you put on your blog.” I didn’t even know that this person knew I had a blog. I can only assume that he didn’t and heard about it from someone else. But then to find out that Chunks Corbett, the Executive Pastor at Elevation Church unknowingly sat right next to me Sunday and had possibly read my blog. That was an interesting thought.
We were seated near the back of the middle section where four empty seats were. At first we thought there were only three seats because the gentleman beside us was a big dude and we weren’t sure which seat he was sitting in because he was standing during worship and had drifted over to the seat beside him. So after worship we sit down with an empty seat on either side of us. I thought to myself “This could be interesting considering my recent post.” I figured we would be asked to scoot over (which of course we would), but it never happened.
A few minutes into the worship I get a tap on the shoulder and someone asks “Is this seat saved for anyone?” I look up and see Chunks standing there. I smile and say “For you.” So he takes his seat beside me not knowing who I am. He was inches away from the writer of this controversial blog post and could have said something. Even if he did know, Chunks Corbett doesn’t strike me as the type of person to tackle that subject right then and there. I of course was also unknowingly sitting next to someone who possibly read the post.
I actually thought about introducing myself because our wives know each other through the Prayer Team and other stuff. But that seemed kind of odd. There really wasn’t anything for us to talk about and to introduce myself as “the husband of someone who knows your wife” seemed awkward. Plus it was during church, which is a bad time for introductions anyways. I did happen to catch one of Chunks’ pop-flies in softball last summer at the one game he played in, but I didn’t think that was worth breaking the ice for. Wouldn’t that have made for an interesting situation!
So what did those at the church office think? I will probably never hear from any of them. They might feel that I wrote it for attention and that they didn’t want to dignify it with a response. Or they could have thought it was funny but didn’t want to encourage my brand of humor. Or they could have thought I was just complaining and didn’t want to bother with one more complaint. Or they could have been totally offended and wouldn’t mind if I didn’t attend Elevation. I don’t know what they are thinking because no one bothered to comment other than one volunteer. I used to volunteer doing setup, but that didn’t last very long. I could never be an usher; I just couldn’t be that robotic. I don’t think I could be a greeter because I’ve been told I don’t look people in the eyes when I talk and the greeters are so nice and inviting that I don’t think I’d fit in. I’m sure there is something I could do to help, but I’m content to just be for now.
Hopefully I won’t get black-listed for this. At one point I think that I was being considered by someone at church to help do some graphic work for EKidz. I highly doubt I’ll get the chance to do that now. I probably wouldn’t be trusted because I’m probably viewed as a deviant. I realize these are a lot of assumptions of how other people feel, but until I get feedback from anyone, what should I think?
The silence says enough. It’s kind of like when someone says something in a group that is incredibly awkward or outright ludicrous, but no one speaks up. They just kind of stand there with this dumbfound expression of disbelief thinking “Did they really just say that?”
Ask anyone that knows me and they’ll tell you, much to their chagrin, that I’m usually not afraid to speak my mind. I can have discernment when I feel it is necessary. Like when I was first bothered by the ushers, I could have ripped ‘em a new one with a slanderous blog, but I didn’t. I waited until I could just laugh at the whole situation and see how silly getting upset really was and then blog about it. Last night my small group jokingly prayed for me to have more discernment when blogging.
This post probably isn’t going to make me very popular with the volunteer staff at church, but oh well. I used to get real agitated about the ushers at Elevation Church. I realize they are just doing as they’re told…but it’s annoying. I don’t like being told where to sit. I’ve never been told where to sit at church by anyone (with the exception of parents) in my entire life. That is until Elevation Church. It used to bother me so much I wouldn’t be able to focus on the message because I was focusing in on this one thing that was really grinding my gears.
And being told that if you get up in the middle of service you’ll have to sit in the back upon return to avoid distracting anyone…who freakin’ cares??!! How old are these people that someone walking down the aisle to their seat is going to distract them from Steven’s sermon? Unless they have ADD like me, then the smallest things can be distractions.
So here’s my tribute to the Seat Nazis of Elevation Church. This is the logo I would put on the t-shirts of the ushers.
Steven Furtick hasn’t helped me increase my vocabulary in a few weeks. But this past Sunday he gave me a new one to look up. One could probably decipher the meaning of the word without looking it up because it looks similar to words we already know (ie: translate, literal, etc.). But I’m not sure if he used this word correctly. Unfortunately new words cause my mind to wander from the context in which they were used in order to determine their meaning. Such is the ADD mind…
trans·lit·er·ate (tran(t)s-ˈli-tə-ˌrāt)
transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): trans·lit·er·at·ed; trans·lit·er·at·ing
: to represent or spell in the characters of another alphabet
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.
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
Its easy to stand at a distance and criticize. Steven Furtick and Elevation Church are apparently prime targets for this. I must admit that I’ve had moments when I’ve felt Elevation Church might not be what a church should be, but then I realized that I can always find something to complain about. In fact, I still do. But that doesn’t keep me from abandoning the church. If everyone was looking for the perfect church, then everyone would have one-member churches. You just can’t satisfy everyone’s preferences. In the end you have to decide what you will and will not budge on.
There is a cancer in the Body of Christ. A malignant force that threatens to destroy the cells. I wish I didn’t have to write this blog. I guess I don’t have to, but I’m going to give in and spit this out while I can. Christians like Ken Silva of Apprising Ministries are cannibals. They’ve given in to devouring their own kind to keep themselves alive. I’ve written a brief email to Silva to express some disgust at his view of Elevation Church and Steven Furtick. It wasn’t a long email and it was of course dismissed as an angry email and nothing more. I’ve decided that after this email I will try my hardest to avoid reading anything that supports Ken Silva’s ministries.
But since I’m not done with this blog entry yet, I’m going to keep on. Its hard enough to win people to Christ without people like Silva spreading slander without regard to who it affects. What do you tell non-Christians? “Hey, come follow Christ! See how we tear each other down as much as we can!! Don’t you want to be a part of this??!!” That won’t exactly bring in the lost. So we have differences within the body of Christ…so what? As long as the gospel is the heart of it, why do we have to fight over pipe organs or guitars? Contemporary or traditional? Its so sad to think of what we could accomplish if we didn’t fight amongst ourselves.
Like Steven Furtick, I deal with anger issues. Its hard for me to let stuff slide without getting ticked off. I don’t know exactly what his anger does to him, but mine keeps me awake at night.
