The Expectation Gap with Steve Cuss

In this episode of the Craft & Character podcast, Steve Carter interviews pastor and thought leader Brian Lee about healing from church hurt. Brian has a heart for those who feel like wanderers looking for a safe place to land. He has created an incredible community for anyone who has felt cast aside, betrayed, or hurt from religious institutions. Brian is hosting a conference for pastors to learn how to be better trauma informed and how to create a safe place for their congregation and staff. Also for any congregant looking to find healing and community he is hosting a gathering in late September (2024) which is going to be powerful. BIO Brian Lee is a pastor, coach, and speaker. As a survivor of spiritual abuse and religious trauma, he has spent his time since leaving vocational ministry in 2021 working to provide recovery and resources for fellow victims and survivors. He has worked with individuals, churches, teams, and denominational groups. He offers coaching in areas of recovery and healing from spiritual abuse, deconstruction and reconstruction, discerning how to stay or leave an organization, and more. He has also led team workshops, seminars, and trainings, and has facilitated mediations. EPISODE LINKS Conference Website: https://www.brokentobeloved.org/conference Brian's Website: https://www.brokentobeloved.org Social Media: @brokentobeloved @steveryancarter @craft_character Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this episode of Craft & Character, Steve Carter talks with pastor, founder of Capable Life, and author Steve Cuss about the tiny gap for preachers between our beliefs and experiences of God. Steve Cuss unpacks why this matters from theological, emotional, and character fronts, so we can begin to confront these gaps with curiosity and openness. Steve Cuss offers us a way forward to not just help the pastor's spiritual well-being and experience of God, but to also invite your congregation into newfound depth and honesty with the Lord. BIO Steve Cuss is a pastor, former chaplain, and founder of Capable Life which helps people lower internal and relational anxiety in the work place and home place. Steve, his wife, Lisa, and two sons and a daughter live in Erie, Colorado. EPISODE LINKS @stevecusswords on Instagram, X and threads www.stevecusswords.com @steveryancarter @craft_character Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There is a discipleship opportunity right now that pastors and preachers must take advantage of. Pastor Daniel Im and Steve Carter discuss how we must understand the audience is different in our congregations than from 10, 20, 40 years ago. They’re asking different kinds of questions. They’re more cynical in some ways and wildly curious in others. When our messages can invite people into the deeper streams, challenge them in the right ways, and truly wrestle with the questions they’re wondering about, we have a chance, a grand opportunity to disciple more and more people than ever before.  BIO Daniel Im is a pastor, Bible teacher, writer, and podcast host with a passion for the local church. He is the Lead Pastor of Beulah Alliance Church in Edmonton, Alberta, and the author of several books. His latest book is The Discipleship Opportunity: Leading a Great-Commission Church in a Post-Everything World. He has also written No Silver Bullets: Five Small Shifts that will Transform Your Ministry, Planting Missional Churches: Your Guide to Starting Churches that Multiply (2nd Ed), and You Are What You Do: And Six Other Lies about Work, Life, and Love. Daniel has an M.A. in Global Leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary and has served and pastored in church plants and multisite churches ranging from 100 people to 50,000 people in Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal, Korea, Edmonton, and Nashville. EPISODE LINKS New Book: The Discipleship Opportunity @steveryancarter @craft_character Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of Craft & Character, Steve Carter interviews the Win Today Podcast host Christopher Cook about how leaders can transform their mental, emotional, and spiritual health from the inside out. Christopher shares wisdom he has learned, how the reliance on the Holy Spirit is everything, and what courage looks like as you face past trauma. This episode explores key insights from Cook’s new book Healing What You Can’t Erase and will give you some practical steps to partner with the Holy Spirit to take your next right step in your personal spiritual formation. BIO Christopher Cook is a leadership coach, author, and podcast host focused on transformation and wholeness. With an aptitude for strategy and execution, his ability to unearth clarity out of complexity drives his mission to help individuals and organizations thrive in their true identity. His work has appeared in outlets such as SUCCESS Magazine, and he has spent over a decade coaching leaders in both the marketplace and non-profit sectors. His weekly podcast, Win Today with Christopher Cook, equips wellness-minded listeners to move beyond the limitations of self-help, and instead, toward an integrated life of wholeness from the inside out. Pulling from his own experiences with adversity and personal transformation, these efforts, embodied by his passion for mental health, emotional health, and spiritual maturity, along with his educational credentials in business administration, leadership, and ministry, have led to helping people experience healing and transformation in their spirit, mind, and body. EPISODE LINKS @wintodaychris Wintoday.tv New Book: Healing what You Can't Erase @steveryancarter @craft_character Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of Craft & Character, Steve Carter interviews leader, coach, and author Alan Briggs about avoiding burnout and finishing the race well. Alan recently released a new book called AntiBurnout that will help you lead for the long haul by sharing practical steps that he has learned advising pastors and business leaders. This episode is so practical and will help you take a good hard look within to see if how you are working today is actually going to work well for you in the seasons to come. BIO Alan Briggs helps CATALYTIC LEADERS leverage CATALYTIC MOMENTS for SYSTEMIC CHANGE. He serves businesses and nonprofits as a Leadership Coach, Sabbatical Coach, team consultant, podcaster, and speaker. He founded and leads Stay Forth Coaching to help leaders experience deep health and impact and create healthy cultures around them. He curated the "Right Side up Journal" as a three-month journey to find healthy and proactive rhythms, and he uses it every day. His latest book AntiBurnout; a lighter way to live and lead in a heavy world invites leaders in any field to resist the pull toward exhaustion and overwhelm and experience lighter leadership. The principles, frameworks and tools in this book stem from 13 years of coaching leaders. Alan's past books, Staying is the New Going, Guardrails, and Everyone's a Genius focus on specific areas to be faithful to your creative wiring and unique calling. EPISODE LINKS @alanbriggs on Instagram Stayforth.com New Book: AntiBurnout @steveryancarter @craft_character Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of Craft & Character, Steve Carter interviews Westover Hills Senior Pastor Luke Norsworthy about having the internal character to meet the six demands of life. It can be so easy to give time and energy wondering if my life would be better if I was in a new role or at a new church; but Luke beautifully articulate to love the life you already have isn’t about changing your circumstances but being the version of yourself that inhibits your life. Luke walks us through each of the six demands that he writes about in his new book How To Love The Life You Already Have. BIO Luke, his wife Lindsay, and their three daughters live in Austin, TX where Luke is the senior minister of the Westover Hills Church. He is the author of God over Good, Befriending Your Monsters, and How to Love the Life You Already Have. For a decade, he has hosted Norsworthy, a podcast that helps his listeners navigate faith in the modern world. EPISODE LINKS Luke's New Book: How to Love the Life You Already Have Podcast: Norsworthy Website: www.lukenorsworthy.com His Church: Westover Hills Church @lukeanorsworthy @steveryancarter @craft_character Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this special episode, the host of the Craft & Character, Steve Carter, unpacks how holy weekend is an incredible gift to anyone walking out a grief journey. Steve opens up about what led to him writing these words, what his hope is for Grieve, Breathe, Receive, and how to honor what comes up when change shows up. This is a book that will help you know what to do when life shocks us or we experience hurt, loss, death, an end to a relationship, or any form of change. Give this episode a listen and may it show you how to grieve with hope. BIO Steve Carter is the bestselling author of The Thing Beneath The Thing, host of the Craft and Character podcast, a coach to communicators who are looking to find their unique voice or take their next step of growth in speaking and teaches regularly at churches, conferences, and various businesses around the country. His next book Grieve, Breathe, Receive releases on May 7th, 2024. He is the former lead teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church and currently serves as the lead pastor at Forest City Church. Steve lives outside Chicago, Illinois, with his wife and two kids. EPISODE LINKS Books: Grieve, Breathe, Receive and The Thing Beneath The Thing Social - @steveryancarter on IG, Twitter, and Threads www.stevecarter.org @craft_character Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this Craft & Character episode, Steve Carter interviews author and youth pastor Micha Boyett about her new book Blessed Are The Rest Of Us. Micha talks about how she discovered the slow way when her son was born with Down Syndrome and later diagnosed with autism, she was drawn into the ancient teachings of the Beatitudes. In a culture that values performance, perfection, and strength, Micha found in this small passage of ancient text a new language to honor the worth of her son and to push against the intrinsic ableism in our culture’s response to disability: blessed—whole—are the weak ones, the grieving ones, the ones who long for peace, the misunderstood. In other words, blessed are the rest of us, who will never live up to the world’s exacting standards. Micha shares what this could look like fully embodied in our churches today. BIO Micha Boyett is an award winning podcaster, as well as a writer and speaker. In addition to Blessed Are The Rest of Us, she is the author of Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer and a contributor to the New York Times bestseller A Rhythm of Prayer, edited by Sarah Bessey. She cohosts The Lucky Few podcast and is the creator and host of The Slow Way podcast. EPISODE LINKS Book: Blessed Are the Rest of Us @micahboyett on Instagram and Threads @steveryancarter @craft_character Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of Craft & Character, Steve Carter interviews author and pastor Jay Kim about how to hear God’s voice and communicate truth in a noisy world. Jay unpacks what led him to write his new book that comes out on April 16th called Listen, Listen, Speak. He talks about how discernment, mastering the art of listening well to God and one another, and also being able to clearly speak to the times is important for every preacher. Jay is one of the wisest, most thoughtful and accessible pastoral voices of our day. His insights will help you in your time alone with God, leading one-on-one meetings with staff, congregants, elders as well as helping to best engage, respond, and speak order into the chaos. BIO Jay Y. Kim serves as lead pastor at WestGate Church in the Silicon Valley of California and is the author of Listen, Listen, Speak (Faithwords, 2024), Analog Christian (IVP, 2022), and Analog Church (IVP, 2020). Jay is also host of the Digital Examen podcast and the Making Space podcast. EPISODE LINKS Jay’s new book: Listen, Listen, Speak: Hearing God and Being Heard in a Noisy World Jay’s other books: Analog Church, Analog Christian Website: jaykimthinks.com @jaykimthinks @steveryancarter @craft_character Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The relationship between a worship pastor and the preacher is crucial, especially on holiday weekends. In the latest episode of the Craft and Character podcast, Steve Carter interviews the worship pastor at Forest City Church, Carrington Gaines about how to work well together. Steve and Carrington serve together and breakdown how they planned out the Good Friday and Easter services around the song “Alive in You.” They talk about the trust required between preacher and worship pastor, how to dream, push each other, and bring out the best in one another. Carrington shares his process of writing a song as they break down the lyrics of "Alive in You." BIO Carrington Gaines is a husband, father, artist, songwriter, and a lover of all things Buffalo Bills related. He is the worship director at Forest City Church in Rockford & Elgin, Illinois, where they create spaces for anyone and everyone to encounter Jesus in the most authentic way they can! EPISODE LINKS: Worship Page: https://linktr.ee/forestcityworship Website: https://www.carringtongaines.com IG: @forestcityworship IG: @carrington_gaines @steveryancarter @craft_character Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices