Pastor's Circle - Greg Surratt

Greg Surratt is the founding pastor of Seacoast Church, located in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. He joined the Pastor's Circle to discuss his newest book, Ir-rev-rend. Below are the "CliffsNotes" of his interview.

Tell us about your book.

Ir-rev-rend refers to what a lot of people think about me. I'm real, raw, and probably different from what you would expect in a pastor.

It's a bunch of stories of real-life people that I've met, and how we met God.

Do you think we put on a "pretense"?

I definitely do. We try to put on an image to impress each other, and sometimes even to impress God.

Sometimes I think that's what stands between us and a real-life image of God to other people.

What kind of facade do we put on?

Sometimes we pretend like everything's perfect all the time. We get up in the mornings and say the wrong things.

I think with parents there's a huge pressure to produce the perfect child.We put pressure on them that God doesn't put on us.

How can we get real?

We do it in several ways. In the context of a large gathering, we try to be as real as we possibly can.

One thing I've discovered about this generation is they just want to be real.

In our church, the small group is definitely the core.

Is there a tension between going for excellence and being raw?

You've gotta be discerning with who you share the biggest flaws of your life with, which is why we have small groups in our church.

I believe God made us in His image. We do everything the best we can possibly do, but remember that the outcome doesn't depend on us, it depends on Him.

You talk about money in the book. Tell us about that.

You've got the balance between the concepts of generosity and prosperity.

I deal with that in the book. Jesus talks about money more than anything else.

There's a nerve that connects our heart to our wallet. Oftentimes our wallet is the last thing to get saved.

My dad's motto was always "Err on the side of generosity."

Out of all the areas, what's the one you deal with the most?

To me, it's probably discouragement. There are things that happen every day when the Enemy tries to get us off track and discouraged so God can't use us.