Collaboration Illustrated

A few months back, just before Christmas, I was approached by Chuck and Joy Kieffer of The Foundry Church to help with their Christmas Rocks program at Weidener University, We were going to create a performance art project together telling the Christmas story. Joy and I put our heads together to come up with the project. I had seen a Youtube video of a guy who did a painting of the face of Jesus on six cardboard boxes and suggested we do a variation of that. I then came up with some roughy sketches. The sketches weren’t quite what Joy had in mind and she took a run at something a little different.

I loved what she came up with but I’ll confess I thought it was far too complicated to get finished in the time allotted. Nonetheless, now we had a plan. Somehow we got more time than I thought we had, and Joy recruited her daughter to help with the painting and it came out great. Chris Pierdeminico from The Foundry videotaped one of the sides being created and I think you’ll agree it came out pretty cool.

We did four paintings in all that night on nine boxes )over 80 square feet of full color art). It seemed to be very well received and I thought it was a very successful collaboration. Collaboration works when we are willing to be humble enough to see another way of doing things, comfortable with the give and take of exchanging ideas, flexible enough to try a different approach and determined to get it done. Of course having God in the midst of it can’t help but help.

God never said it would be easy.
Bible Reading Guide
An important part of following God is knowing what He wants and a great way to know what He wants is to read His Word. Follow this plan and you will finish reading the Bible in a year.
Leviticus 15; John 8
You can also download your own chart here.

Collaborate!

Col-LABOR-ate

Look at the word collaborate. Now strip away the first three letters. Then strip away the first three letters and you’ll see something interesting. Right there in the middle of it all is the word “labor” and that is exactly what collaboration is, sharing the work.

Collaboration may well be the best illustration of what it means to be the body of Christ. when a few people bring what they can do to the table and work together, weaknesses are erased and more is accomplished than we could ever accomplish on our own.

The apostle Paul even went to far as to call himself and his partners in ministry God’s co-workers (or co-laborers if you will) in 2 Corinthians 6:1. That is the best collaboration of all. After all the best effort we can make—the best investment of our time and talents is to be a part of what God is doing.

What are you waiting for? Seek the Lord. Find people with a similar vision. Utilize all your gifts in community. Be the Body of Christ.

Collaborate!

Bible Reading Guide
An important part of following God is knowing what He wants and a great way to know what He wants is to read His Word. Follow this plan and you will finish reading the Bible in a year.
Exodus 40; Leviticus 1,2; Psalm 27
You can also download your own chart here.

Amazingly Creative Video

Don’t worry it’s not one of mine, my ego hasn’t grown to that level. Quite honestly this is one of the coolest things I have ever seen. It’s the video for David Crowder Band’s latest song shine. It’s done in stop motion, using Lite Brites. The article I read on it said they used over 700,000 pegs all effects are hand done. 83 friends helped with the project and they ate 146 pizzas while completing it.

Why do I share this? First, because it’s amazingly cool, second because the song is great, but mainly because it shows what a few people with some simple materials can do. Gather a few friends, make the most of what you have and together you can do something amazing.

As far as the challenge goes, I’ve been a little lax in posting but not in working. Most of my days have been spent on two projects, my own new stop motion video for Footwash Ministries (read John 13) and on painting sets for the Jungle book. In addition I have been writing messages and finalizing presentation materials for the spiritual renewal services I will be doing next week at Koontz Church of the Brethren and my HistoryMakerz Youth retreat the next week Lord willing. Please keep me in your prayers and let me know what have you been working on?

Collaboration

Seeing my son’s school musical inspired me to talk about the power of collaboration. What could you do if you teamed up with others that you may not be able to do on your own? In this video, I share a little more about the AMOK Vision in hopes that the viewers will be inspired to look beyond themselves and team up with others to tell the greatest story ever.