I am Facebook friends with Steve Wiggins singer, songwriter and former lead singer of Big Tent Revival. He came up on my people you may know suggestions one day and I sent him a friend request because I’m a fan of BTR. Anyway, Steve posts an almost daily feature called Free Band Name where he posts a usually humorous band name. This fired my creative juices and the name that came to me was Combat Wombat (by the way a google search revealed that is an actual band). What is a Wombat? A burrowing plant-eating Australian marsupial (family Vombatidae) that resembles a small bear with short legs. There is no point to it, it just sounded funny.
As I thought about it an image came to mind and I had too much time on my hands one day so I drew it up. Just for kicks I put it on a shirt in my Zazzle store. For some unknown reason it has become my biggest seller. (mostly to Australians it seems probably because they know what a wombat is.)
Why do I post this? Two reasons, first because one never knows what will connect with people. I drew this because it made me chuckle, but a dozen or more people on the other side of the world thought enough of it to wear it on their chests (and this with absolutely no promotion on my part). The things we create have the ability to resonate so we have to be careful what we put out there. It’s not so important for a cartoon creature with a funny name but ultra important when what we are creating is attached to the Greatest Story Ever Told.
Secondly, the internet has made the world very small. It used to be that in order to get something like this done. I would have to design it, get someone to buy it, promote it and maybe just maybe if all the planets aligned one day it might see the light of day. Now I can create something go to a website click a few buttons, put it on a multitude of products and have it available for sale in a day or less. Virtually all the arts have a similar stream now. The gatekeepers and the middlemen are a shadow of their former selves. This is both a blessing and a curse. One one hand the opportunities to get your creations to an audience have expanded a thousand fold on the other thousands or millions more people are contending for essentially the same audience.
Is it good or bad? Neither or maybe both. We can connect with far more people and we can be overlooked by far more people. In the end, it once again all comes down to faithfulness. We need to do what we do the best we can and create the best most outstanding things we possibly can (outstanding=to stand out) and then we need to trust God with the rest. Selling Combat Wombat t-shirts to Australians is not a life or death thing (though it is in a small way helping to finance my ministry), taking the Gospel to the world with out creations is. Pray to God for guidance, give God your best and share it with the world. From there it’s up to Him. Be faithful. Its a small world with six billion opportunities. God knows what He’s doing. Do what you do, the best you can, because you never know how God’s going to use it.
AMOKArts 