Never Trust an Artist

I am an artist. I’ve always wondered why the average Senior Pastor has a hard time trusting our tribe. I used to think their lack of trust was completely unfounded. But as I get older, and as I become more in touch with being an artist myself, I’m beginning to understand why. I’ve noticed some tendencies that seem to be consistent among artists I know who are getting paid by churches.

I have never met an artist who displays ALL of the following list of characteristics. But some of us display some of them. And it’s important for us to have the courage to look in the mirror, and to NOT respond with a defensive victim mentality.

1. Artists commit, then forget. Ask an artist to “get me that document”, or to “forward me that email”, and we’ll tell you “Sure. Right after lunch.” And we never think about it again. Until an organized person in charge reminds us.

2. Artists don’t write anything down. We honestly think we’ll remember. The best friend an artist can have is a senior pastor who gently whispers, “Did you want to write that down?”

3. Artists live one wrong decision away from disaster. Most people live 9-10 bad choices away from personal ruin. Many artists walk as closely to the line as they can because of the risk, and the rush.

4. Artists lie. Not all, but some. We lie to cover ourselves when we’re guilty of #1 or #2.

5. Artists struggle to see the bigger narrative they’re living in. Sometimes, we think our stories are the biggest, and the most important stories being told. The senior pastor, really more than anyone else in the church, sees the clearest portrait of the church’s big picture. Senior pastors get ticked when the church won’t fulfill her biblical mandate. Artists get ticked when their guitar strings break.

6. Artists gossip. Not all, but some. Much of the time, we’re gossiping about the Senior Pastor who refuses to trust us.

7. Artists deflect blame. Our first reaction is usually to find someone else to blame the problem on. Then we engage in #4. An hour later, we engage in #6.

There’s a pattern here. It always boils down to two things. If Christian artists could simply learn two things, we’d be a lot better off, and we’d make more of an impact on those exposed to the art we create.

First, we need to learn to follow through. Do what we say. Say what we do. Never walk into a staff meeting without a yellow pad and a pen, a Daytimer, or the IPhone “Notes” App open. Immediately following every meeting, we need to transfer our to-do notes onto something we’ll look at every day - our main computer, our wall, our secretary’s forehead. Paint an office wall with chalkboard paint, and create a special drawing every week, made up of to-do’s.

Second, we need to take personal responsibility more seriously. When we don’t meet a deadline because we forgot, we simply need to be honest about that. We need to have the courage to simply say, “I’m sorry. I forgot. I’ll take care of it immediately, then give you an update later today.”

Our world would be flat without artists. But our world would never move in any positive direction without leaders. May we all be willing to look hard in the mirror, and learn that artistry and leadership are not opposing or competing gifts. I pray that every true artists takes their leadership responsibility more seriously than ever.

Media From 30,000 Feet

There is a view of media from the ground level. Much has been written about this particular viewpoint. It’s the stuff that slams Christian creatives every day:

* What’s the best way to encode a video if size is the key issue?
* My pastor just had a brainstorm, and now I need to work all weekend. How do I stay creative and positive?
* How do I respond when staff members miss the weekly bulletin deadline?
* How can I add a click track to a video so the band can be in sync with it?
* Should I start a blog? Should I keep my blog when no one reads it?
* How soon should I be expected to get our church’s website updated?
* We need more volunteers. Who are they? Where are they? How can I reach them?

Everyday stuff. Challenges everyone in a media position will face. They’re all great questions, and they’re all from the ground level.

But what happens when we jump into an airplane, and leave the ground? If you could free yourself from your unique daily challenges and expectations for a short time, and take a step up to see your ministry with the eyes that once launched your dreams in the first place, what would be there?

As we’re sitting on the plane, two courageous questions move us in the right direction:

Question #1: What do I hope to accomplish?

Ministering in any capacity—whether part-time or full-time—has a way of making us forget what we truly hope for. The daily urgent makes us forget our dreams. When we create anything, what are we hoping will happen to those who view our creation?

For me, every time I create a mini-movie for the church, I’m hoping that all who watch it will experience a stirred heart. There are reasons, but that’s for another time and place.

How about you? What are you hoping for? When you’re sitting in the airplane looking at your own creative heart, and you remind yourself of your hopes and dreams, what’s there? What has God spoken over and over to your heart?

Question #2: Is my behavior at ground level leading me into my hope at 30,000 feet?

I’m convinced that vision is not the key factor in realizing our deepest hopes and dreams. Neither are core values, mission statements, a talented staff team, or intentions. All of these things are important, and all play a part. But they are most definitely not the key to everything.

The one thing that has the power to make or break our God-given hopes and dreams is…

Our behavior.

Behavior at the ground level. The conscious decisions we make every day. The plans we execute.

Artists are great at having another new idea. But we can become extremely passive and scattered with the execution of our ideas, with consistent behavior that will lead us into our new idea. We can spew vision, mission, and intention all day long. But if our behavior and our plans don’t lead us into our hopes and dreams, then we’ll feel flat.

And we’ll question everything.

If the videos we create at Floodgate Productions do not stir hearts, I promise you that the answer can be found in the daily choices we make with regard to scripting processes, actors, locations, musical underscore, and other factors. The choices we make daily determine whether our deepest hopes are realized.

Or not.

So if you were to express your hopes and dreams for the stuff you create, and if you were to write it all down WITHOUT editing yourself, what would it say? What do you really hope will happen as a result of your labor? Be unedited. Smile. Cry. Cuss. Don’t worry about proper punctuation. Just answer honestly.

And, while you’re looking at your unedited page of hopes and dreams, will you have the courage to ask yourself: Is my daily behavior leading me into my hopes? Into my dreams?

If not, it’s time to change your behavior. Because your hopes and dreams will never go away.

They’ll just become a thorn of frustration.

This article originally appeared in Collide Magazine - a great magazine that all media pastors and volunteers will greatly benefit from.

An Open Letter to Creatives

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about creatives who exist in the church. People who create their church’s videos, design and maintain their church’s websites, lighting and stage directors and artists, and musicians. There are so many things I want to say to you, but haven’t.

Until now.

I guess I want to make this simple statement first and foremost: After watching people like you for years and years, I want you to know that the stuff you create doesn’t matter as much as you think it does.  After years of experience, I’ve come to the conclusion that the artistic designs you engage in may only marginally impact someone’s life.

I wonder if it all starts at the top of the food chain?  I wonder if the lead pastor and executive staff team have sold creatives (like us) a bogus bill of goods?  They’ve told us that the stuff we create every week has the potential to change lives.  But just be honest for a minute.  Can you actually name someone whose life has been changed as a result of your craft?  I doubt it.

You awake in the middle of the night with creative ideas, mixed with the stress of deadlines you can’t possibly meet. You’ve ignored, or even dropped the most important relationships in your life.  You stay late at the church office, and no one knows, or even really cares.  And all for what? All to create and maintain art in the desperate hope that someone’s life will be impacted?

Really?

And what about this obsession with beauty?  You uphold beauty like it’s the gateway to God Himself.  God only communicates His presence through His written Word.  He has chosen never to communicate through any other means - His Word even says so.  Again, my greatest fear is that you’ve been sold a bill of goods that simply doesn’t produce over the long term.

And so here’s what I really want you to hear and meditate on.  Next weekend is coming.  Over the next few days, your schedule will be taken with creative meetings that you don’t want to be a part of; with pastoral conflict at the highest levels; and with late nights away from the people you love.  You are preparing for something that will come and go in a heartbeat.  By the time you’re worship services are over, most of the people will be at brunch, arguing about the choice of music, or the pastor’s sermon.

And I’ve just gotta ask this most obvious question: Why labor in vain?

Wouldn’t you be a better steward of your church’s financial resources if you didn’t put as much time and effort into one weekend? There’s a time to know when “good enough” is “good enough”, and it might be a good time for you to back off of any unrealistic expectations you have of creative beauty, and to simply declare “good enough”.

Will this weekend change lives?  Maybe.  But do you need to take any of the responsibility for setting up an environment for that to occur? In my experience, the answer is a resounding “no”.  Let God be God.  He will do whatever He wants.

I openly invite this conversation to continue.

Yours truly.

Satan

(This article was written for Collide Magazine - a great magazine that helps church leaders better understand the unique intersection at the corner of church and media).

No Resolutions. One Goal.

I hate resolutions.  The guys I work with hate them too.  You’ll see this disdain in our videos (Whatever, Starting Now, and Resolutions).  And if you spent time with the three of us, you’d feel it too.

There are two reasons for this disdain.  First, nobody keeps resolutions.  Second (and more important), nobody CAN keep resolutions.  Resolutions are a test of our ability to exert enough self-effort to control a habit, a situation, or a person.  And this pursuit inevitably champions the “pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps” theology that runs rampant in North American Christianity, and is entirely contrary to real Life in the Kingdom of God.

Now you know about me, and resolutions.

But…

There is one goal I have for the coming year.  It’s not fleshed out or anything yet, but it’s there, and is slowly growing in strength and potential (that’s a really complex way of saying I think about this when I mow the lawn, or stand in the shower).

Simply put:  During the next season of my life I want to spend more hours reading than watching television and movies.

I suppose I’ve slowly become someone who uses television as a way of decompressing from the stresses of my life.  I do NOT believe this to be a bad or evil thing.  Yet.  We all need patterns of allowing our minds to stop racing - things that give our minds a break.  For some, television does the trick.  My problem is that I don’t need to decompress AS MUCH as I think I do.  So I’d like to read more, not as another substitute way of decompressing, but as a pathway to further spiritual and professional growth.

I think I’ll stay away from any “How To” books, because I’ve tried the formulas and, for me, they don’t work.  I think I’ll read some previously unread authors (Lencioni, Rohr, Steele), as well as some old favorites (Eldredge, Bell, Miller).   And I think I’ll work my way through some obscure Old Testament book (like Zephaniah, or Habakkuk, or some other book that I only pretend I know something about).

So, if you can picture Dana Carvey impersonating George Bush Sr. on SNL, just say this out loud:

“Resolutions.  Bad.”

“Goals.  Good.”

That’s where I’m at.  And I feel like it’s a God-thing in my life.

How about you?

Bono - Christmas Genius

This morning, Jason forwarded the Floodgate Team a link to Pastor Mark Driscoll’s blog. The article is by Jonathan Dodson, and he’s commenting on the a quote from Bono. We think it’s worth passing along to you…

This reflection on Christmas occurred after Bono had just returned home, to Dublin, from a long tour with U2. On Christmas Eve Bono went to the famous St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where Jonathan Swift was once dean. Apparently he was given a really poor seat, one obstructed by a pillar, making it even more difficult for him to keep his eyes open…but it was there that the Christmas story struck him like never before.

He writes:

“The idea that God, if there is a force of Logic and Love in the universe, that it would seek to explain itself is amazing enough. That it would seek to explain itself and describe itself by becoming a child born in straw poverty, in shit and straw . . . a child . . . I just thought: “Wow!” Just the poetry . . . Unknowable love, unknowable power, describes itself as the most vulnerable. There it was. I was sitting there, and it’s not that it hadn’t struck me before, but tears came streaming down my face, and I saw the genius of this, utter genius of picking a particular point in time and deciding to turn on this.”

Christmas Gifts for Pastors

For pastors, there is no better season each year than Christmas. The season seems to carry with it an inherent goodness, not to mention a heart’s openness to the Gospel message. It’s like there’s a non-verbal, clearly spoken message sent into the hearts of our people which says, “Everything can be re-born, and made new.”

But at no time during the rest of the year do pastors work as hard as they do than during the Christmas season. Christmas is not simply a day in the life of a church. It’s a season. And that season consists of planning five or six special worship services. For many Creative Arts pastors, it involves a larger-than-life Christmas production. For Youth Pastors, it involves the kids being out of school, which means a complete shift in time spent with them. And for Lead Pastors, it involves shepherding a who lot of people through lonely, even depressing times.

There is a dual reality of being a pastor during the month of December - it’s incredibly rewarding, and emotionally exhausting, all at the same time.

So this year, why not get your pastoral staff something special? I’ve come up with a few ideas for you to ponder…

* If your church shows videos during its worship services, buy your pastor a copy of “The Quench Project”. This is a compilation DVD of the best videos shown in churches around the world. And 100% of the proceeds go to build clean water wells in Africa. Visit the website for more info: www.thequenchproject.org.

* If your pastor has small children, give him a date night (presumably with his wife), complete with a gift card to his favorite restaurant. Also, financially cover the childcare issue with someone his wife trusts. You just pay the bill. And this is extremely important: You are not invited to go with him.

* Buy your pastor an ITunes Gift Card. Most pastors I know love getting these little beauties.

* Many of you have cabins or second homes. Offer these to your pastors’ families free of charge for a weekend, or even a week.

* Give your Worship Pastor the week after Christmas off. Find someone to fill in the Sunday after Christmas, and let him/her have a weekend that doesn’t revolve around singing more Christmas songs.

* Buy your pastor a Gift card from ChristianBook.com. Most pastors love reading, but can’t afford to purchase the books they enjoy. This will help solve that problem.

These are only suggestions. You know your pastors better than I do. But whatever you do this year, please do something. Do anything. Don’t let the season go by without thanking your pastor, and your entire pastoral staff, for the spiritual growth and maturity they work tirelessly to foster in you. They literally live and die every day with every step of your spiritual advancement. So do something nice for them this Christmas.

Pastors… add your own items for your wishlist below…

The Greater Potential of Thanksgiving

When my daughters were young, we’d take them trick or treating on Halloween. It was usually just a trip around the block - my daughters dressed as angels, or princesses, or babies. The most important thing my wife and I told them, every Halloween without exception, was this: “Remember to say thank you.”

The words “thank you” are possibly the most important words in any language, for any time. It’s not simply about being nice or cordial. Those magic words hit any inclination toward self-reliant pride square between the eyes, and shatter the myth of deservedness. The opposite of gratefulness is entitlement. People who don’t say “thank you” are some of the most arrogant people I’ve ever met, because they often feel like they deserve everything they’ve become.

In our churches, we know the people who are genuinely grateful. They are the worshippers. They are the broken ones. They are the most giving. They are humble at the core. They are grateful because they remember God’s mercy in their lives.

And we know the ones who are not thankful. They are the most negative, the most critical, or the most apathetic. They are the quickest to judge a person who disagrees with them. They feel like hurting people have brought it all on themselves. They withhold compassion. They feel entitled because they have forgotten God’s mercy in their lives.

Thanksgiving is coming. And there is much at stake here. Every year, we set aside one day to express our thankfulness, our gratitude. And every year, we can become tempted to focus more on a large bird, than we do a great God.

There is much at stake here.

At Floodgate, we’ve worked hard over the past three years to help resource your church to experience the true potential of Thanksgiving. We honestly believe that hardened hearts can be transformed into grateful ones. With that in mind, we’ve created a number of media resources for you to implement into your Thanksgiving services. Check them out here.

Whether or not you use any of our resources, it’s vital that churches express gratitude on this wonderful day. And that’s our prayer for you, your leadership team, and your church body. May we be leaders who point people toward a gratefulness that is God-centered, and a thankfulness that comes from their deepest heart.

Because there is so much at stake here.

Veteran’s Day - A Chance to Say “Thanks”

My father was 18 years old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The next day, he and his friends stood in a line that wrapped around the Navy recruitment office. They were volunteering to defend our freedom. My father would tell you that young men were lying about their ages, just so they could fight against a very real enemy.

I was born in 1964. I do not understand any of the feelings my father’s generation possessed with regard to defending the freedoms they held so dear. It’s not that I don’t want to understand. It’s that I can’t understand.

Until September 11.

On that day, my generation woke up to the reality of a very real enemy, and the inclination deep in our hearts to protect those we love. We were angry, and frustrated, and ready to volunteer. We were scared and confused.

And for the first time in my life, I got it. There was intellectual understanding, with a depth of feeling I had never before experienced.

Veterans are people unlike me. They not only feel deeply about defending America, but they act on those feelings. They put their lives on the line for us. Think about that statement: They put their lives on the line for us.

With a deeply grateful heart, the creative team at Floodgate Productions has created our latest mini-movie. It’s called “A Veteran’s Voice“. If you do nothing else this Veteran’s Day weekend, please pick up this video, and just play it in your worship services. People from my father’s generation, from my generation, and from the upcoming generation need to know that WE APPRECIATE the heart they’ve given us.

If you don’t like the video we’ve created, then please make the time to find another video honoring Veterans. Check here.

Again… let us not forget….

They put their lives on the line.

For you. For me.

I pray the church communicates how grateful we are to these brave and courageous people.

Should There Be a Church Video Standard?

Last Tuesday afternoon, I received an email from my pastor. Jason, Dave, and I were in the middle of a lunch meeting with the largest church video distributor in the world. Ironically, my pastor’s email message had to do with church video distributing. Here’s my rough paraphrase of his question:

“Gary. I’m looking for a video for this Sunday. It needs to be about the freedom we have from sin, in Christ alone. I’ve looked for the past hour on a church video website, and the videos are awful. I would never show them in our church. Do you guys have anything on that topic, or can you recommend something that’s good?”

I emailed him back, and basically said, “No. Sorry.”

His response was even stronger in his next email: “Then will you please tell your friends who make videos to make them with a certain quality standard? And please tell them to be less preachy….” Because he had already spent an hour of his time looking for a video and found nothing. he concluded, “I want my hour back!”

What are your thoughts?

This is an industry that’s growing larger by the hour, so it’s important that pastors and church leaders consider questions like this. Should a video that a high schooler made on his camcorder for his youth group be allowed to sell on a website, especially if the quality is lacking? Or is there a quality standard that churches and video distributors should adhere to?

Keep Taking Risks

In a bit of a follow-up post, I wanted to continue to discuss our response to Wall Street. Last week, the team at Floodgate created a video response, in hopes that it would serve Christ’s church around the country. It is very relevant and timely video, and we invite you to check it out here. As I write this, the video has been downloaded over 2500 times. Obviously, that message was important to you.

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been chewing on a separate, but related message that I think God is speaking to my heart. The message is a simple one…

During times of great economic distress and anxiety, don’t stop dreaming.

If you’re already bent toward having all your ducks in a row before you make a decision, then my simple post won’t change that in you. But if you’re like me - a dreamer and a wanna-be risk taker who is scared - then let’s agree together right now that we need to keep dreaming, keep pushing the cause of Christ, and keep creating outside-of-the-box ministries and ideas. Let’s keep giving money and resources away to people in need. Let’s keep risking. Let’s keep reaching out. Spend less, to be sure. But dream bigger than ever before.

And above all… let’s agree to keep elevating the glory of God beyond this financial mess. He may be behind the meltdown. He may have nothing to do with the meltdown. But this one thing I know…

God is above the meltdown.

He supersedes it. He’s bigger than Wall Street. He’s far greater than any economic plan any politicians commit to implementing.

So please, please, please… keep risking and dreaming. Keep walking by faith. Keep placing yourself in the direct path of unbelievers, and allow yourself to display Christ’s grace and truth to them. Keep laughing with your friends, your spouse, and your children. And as prepare for this weekend’s worship services, plan to worship God like never before. Elevate His glory, and all these things will be added unto you.

I promise.

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