Today is the LAST DAY to get the Early Bird rates for Echo 2012, so we’re doing everything we can to spread the word. I won’t pelt you with 20 more reasons to register now for Echo, I’ll just give you one:

The price goes up tomorrow! 

Check out the site, click the Register Now button, and grab your ticket.

Scott McClellan is the Editor of Echo Hub and the Director of Echo Conference. You can follow him on Twitter: @scottmcclellan.

In the wake of NBC canning Community showrunner Dan Harmon on Friday, I was reminded of the time I heard Harmon describe himself as suffering from a “fraud complex.” I wasn’t familiar with the term, but it was obviously a clever antonym to the more commonly known “god complex.”

According to Wikipedia, a god complex is “an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility.” Perhaps you know someone who fits into that category.

On the other side of the spectrum, there’s chronic self-doubt — which Harmon referred to as a fraud complex — in which feelings of ability are deflated rather than inflated. Perhaps you know someone who fits into that category too.

In either case, the problem is the sense of self — it’s over-inflated or it’s under-inflated. For the god-complexers, all kinds of problems can arise in a creative environment: unwillingness to serve where needed, refusal to submit to review or critique (even self-critique), and inability to function within a team dynamic.

For the fraud-complexers, there are problems as well: unwillingness to create or share work, refusal to exhibit confidence in ideas, and inability to self-start. A fraud complex inflicts a constant fear of being exposed as a pretender upon its host.

If you’re the humble sort, a god complex can be difficult to understand or tolerate. After all, the sufferer’s flaws might be obvious to you.

If you’re the confident sort, a fraud complex might be just as irritating. You might want to yell, You’ve earned this opportunity — act like it and make the most of it! 

I’m not a pastor or a mental health professional, but I can tell you both complexes are toxic to creativity, collaboration, culture, and community. For one thing, neither a god complex nor a fraud complex is interested in the truth — their minds are already made up. For another thing, neither complex is willing to fully participate in a team effort.

Without the truth and without a team, what’s left?

Certainly not the fullest realization of the work you were meant to create. And certainly not the fullest realization of the person you were meant to be.

Scott McClellan is the Editor of Echo Hub and the Director of Echo Conference. You can follow him on Twitter: @scottmcclellan.

I said it last week, and I’ll say it again: Thursday is the last day to take advantage of the Early Bird rates for Echo 2012. I’d hate for you to miss it. But in the event you might need a little convincing in order to register for Echo, I put together a little list of reasons you should come:

1. Tony Hale.
2. aka Buster Bluth.
3. Buster stinkin’ Bluth!
4. There will be food. And coffee. And more food. And more coffee.
5. The fun challenge of trying to recognize people in real life based on their tiny Twitter avatars.
6. These are your people.
7. Our sponsors and exhibitors are the best — they’re great organizations valuable resources.
8. Marlon Hall is going to knock your socks off.
9. The opportunity to connect three different devices to the Echo wifi network.
10. Davin Bryngrim.
11. Last year we hosted a screening of Blue Like Jazz: The Movie nine months before it hit theaters, and we’ve got some really great After Hours plans cooking again this year.
12. Gary Molander hugs.
13. You won’t find a better place for chillin’ out, maxin’, and relaxin’ all cool than Watermark Community Church.
14. Jon Abel is back leading worship for us, and he’s a wonderful human.
15. Todd Wagner always delivers.
16. Rest.
17. It’ll be like a play-date for your iPad.
18. Jeff Sheldon, who you might know as Ugmonk, is teaching a breakout.
19. So is Esther Havens, who has been in Guatemala capturing stories for Warby Parker.
20. And just because it bears repeating: These are your people.

I could go on, but hopefully you’re convinced by now. Check out the Echo 2012 site and grab your tickets between now and Thursday.

Scott McClellan is the Editor of Echo Hub and the Director of Echo Conference. You can follow him on Twitter: @scottmcclellan.

If you know me, you know I love Gary Molander. He’s one of those people who pastors me from afar, and he ministers to so many people around the world through his work at Floodgate Productions and his book, Pursuing Christ. Creating Art.

Anyway, Gary was nice enough to interview me about Echo (and incude a special Echo offer), so I’d encourage you to check out that interview. One of the questions Gary asked me was why it’s important to see our creativity as something given to us by our Creator. Here’s the first half of my response:

To me, the most tragic outcome of the Western Church’s divorce from the arts wasn’t that we as a culture missed out on having the best painting, music, prose, and film for a few centuries (although that is certainly tragic). Rather, I think the most tragic outcome was that a dominant strain of Christian theology put artists at odds with themselves.

To read the second half of my response and a few of my thoughts about Echo, head over to Gary’s post. And be sure to check out his special Echo offer at the end of his post, would you?

In the mean time, what do you think about this “tragedy of the Church’s divorce from art” idea? I’m hoping to explore it a bit more in an upcoming post, but I’d love your perspective.

Scott McClellan is the Editor of Echo Hub and the Director of Echo Conference. You can follow him on Twitter: @scottmcclellan.

First up, the most interesting video I saw this week features the great Ken Burns talking about story: (via Kottke)

Has Photoshop ever crashed on you at the worst possible time? (Who am I kidding … of course it has.) If so, you probably lost some unsaved work. Well, check out the story of the time Pixar almost lost Toy Story 2:

Ah, the life of a designer: (via ChurchMag)

I saw “Colosse – A Wood Tale” on Motionographer today and just loved it. I think I identify with him or something. And hey, you don’t need words to tell a good story:

Bob Sturm is a sports talk radio host here in Dallas, and his family recently shared their adoption story:

The New York Rangers coach, known for his gruff disposition, gets remixed. Are you telling me your senior pastor couldn’t benefit from this kind of “tribute”?

Well, thanks for stopping by and clicking through! Have a great weekend.

Scott McClellan is the Editor of Echo Hub and the Director of Echo Conference. You can follow him on Twitter: @scottmcclellan.

We’re excited about Echo this year, and I hope you are too. And the truth is that there’s still plenty of time to register. Sometimes we even have people register when they arrive at the conference!

But while there’s plenty of time to register, time is running out on our Early Bird rates. These rates end one week from today — Thursday, May 24:

• Individuals — $249 each
• Groups of 2-4 — $229 each
• Groups of 5+ — $209 each

That’s a great deal, so don’t miss it. Check out the Echo 2012 site and register today!

Scott McClellan is the Editor of Echo Hub and the Director of Echo Conference. You can follow him on Twitter: @scottmcclellan.

I have a friend who, every so often, asks me the question I least want to answer and most need to answer. For a private and closed-off person like me, it’s the best and worst question:

How’s your heart?

I don’t know how he knows to ask — maybe he knows we have a lot in common or he just senses it. I don’t know how he chooses his moments, but it’s always at the right time.

It happened again yesterday morning in a text message.

How’s your heart?

I love it. I hate it.

I answer honestly … eventually. But first I have to resist the urge to placate him with my usual evasive garbage. You know, something like, “Everything’s good, man. Thanks for checking in!” (Full disclosure: Most of my exclamation points are disingenuous.)

This question — How’s your heart? — reminds me of a powerful talk I heard Jud Wilhite give last week at Catalyst Dallas. Speaking to 3,500 church leaders, Jud said this phrase again and again:

“Your calling before God is not to a spectacular ministry, but to a faithful and sincere heart.”

If I’m honest, I have a tendency to focus on what I’m producing rather than what is being produced in me. And even though he’s a well-known pastor, Jud could cop to the same tendency. That’s why the question my friend asked me is so vital and life-giving — it beckons me to return to the inward work of cultivating a faithful and sincere heart in relationship with God.

So, how’s your heart?

Scott McClellan is the Editor of Echo Hub and the Director of Echo Conference. You can follow him on Twitter: @scottmcclellan.

When I blogged about a great new iPad app called Paper a few weeks ago, I also mentioned my beloved Cosmonaut stylus. What I didn’t mention at the time was that we’d been working for months to get a batch of Cosmonauts for the Echo Hub Store. Last week, we finally got that batch, and you can see Cosmonaut here.

Cosmonaut is a beautiful stylus for iPads and other touchscreen devices that began in 2011 as a Kickstarter project (of which I was a backer). Now Cosmonaut is available to the masses, and as you can see from this feature on The Verge, it stands up well against competition from other stylus manufacturers.

If you can see yourself using a tablet to sketch ideas, develop design concepts, paint without getting messy, or even take notes in an app like Penultimate, check out Cosmonaut. In my experience, a good stylus just works better than a finger (sorry, Mr. Jobs). Cosmonaut isn’t for everyone, but it has certainly been a fun and useful part of my iPad experience the last few months. Maybe it’d work for you too.

Scott McClellan is the Editor of Echo Hub and the Director of Echo Conference. You can follow him on Twitter: @scottmcclellan.

You’ve gotta love Twitter. I know I do. One of my favorite things about Twitter is that it makes meeting someone for the first time exciting instead of awkward. For instance, I’ve been tweeting back and forth with Jim Gray for years now, and last week we finally got to meet at Catalyst Dallas.

Jim works for Integrity Music and Kingsway, the music divisions of David C. Cook, and during our conversation he told me about how to get 12 free mp3s from artists such as All Sons & Daughters, Paul Baloche, Leigh Nash, and Desperation Band from WorshipForward.com.

To me, great music is one of the best sources of creative inspiration. Good tunes help my brain function properly, and these artists make great tunes. Grab the 12 mp3s here and say thanks to the fine folks at Integrity and Kingsway.

See you next time, Jim!

Scott McClellan is the Editor of Echo Hub and the Director of Echo Conference. You can follow him on Twitter: @scottmcclellan.

The year after I stepped away from pastoral ministry was a difficult one. To help me process the feelings I was experiencing, I invited a counselor friend to coffee. His name was Ron, and he was amazing.

As a part of his life-giving words to me, he included this: “Gary. You are an artist. Because of this, you will experience higher highs than I ever will. But you will also experience lower lows than I ever will.” Then, he said something I’ll never forget.

“Don’t try to change that, because you can’t.”

And after I pursued that with him for the next thirty minutes, I began to understand that, in his counseling experience, artists tend to exhibit extremes. I had been trying to hide these extremes because the non-artists in my life kept trying to “correct” me.

What they were trying to tame, Ron was trying to leverage.

It’s Heaven and Hell.

As an artist, I will always react to difficult situations with more grief and sadness than most people. But the opposite is true, too. The smallest success or idea that allows me even the dimmest glimmer of hope will always cause me extreme joy. And I need to stop crucifying myself because of this. I need to stop trying to hide it.

I need to embrace it.

So do you.

The more people I come in contact with, the more I realize how rare it is to meet someone who gets genuinely excited about anything. It’s almost like people are scared to exhibit any real desire, for fear they’ll be shot down, or misunderstood.

For fear they’ll be corrected.

But make no mistake about it. The best art is borne in the joy of heaven, or the pain of hell.  God-fearing artists will experience both, and God will beautifully interact with them in both places. But to create from Hades – to try to become artistically motivated from a place of perfect balance between heaven and hell – will cause artists to create safer art that is less impacting on the viewer, and frankly more boring.

I think it would feel like castration.

So while artists need to stop living and dying based on every whim of our emotions, we also need to come to grips with the fact that, for many of our Tribe, we will always exhibit high highs, and low lows.  And when we place our ordinary lives on the daily altar as living sacrifices, we need to make sure and place this tendency on the altar as well, for God to mold and transform as He sees fit.

We may battle in this illogical space for the rest of our days.

But we should also learn to embrace its beauty.

Gary has been married to his wife Angela for 22 years, and is the father of three daughters. He is the author of PURSUING CHRIST. CREATING ART., a book that explores life at the intersection of faith and creativity. Gary is the co-owner of Floodgate Productions and Floodgate Creative, and is the Founder and President of The Floodgate Foundation.