Gather at the Table…

We’re in Holy Week, the land between Palm Sunday and the Crucifixion, between “Hosannah!” and “Crucify!” As we move toward Thursday, the day the disciples gathered around the table, we have scripture to tell us some of the things that happened and yet there is still much left to the imagination. How did they feel? What did they truly understand? What were those moments of uncertainty like as they gathered around the table? Were they in denial? Were they afraid? Did they really comprehend what Jesus was telling them?

This video really from The Artist’s Bible really touched me. I wanted to share it with you as we face this time that is as much about looking forward as it is about looking back.

A Quote That Sums Up Why I Do What I Do…

Picking a favorite artist for me is kind of like picking a favorite color. It took me till this year to identify that color as chartreuse. While I love a lot of artists, Van Gogh is clearly right up near the top. Something in his story really moves me and the work is some of the best in the world. (Keep your eyes open for a new presentation from me called Vincent: Art, Death and the Power of Encouragement coming this year.) When I read this quote from Van Gogh, I knew it really summed up why I do what I do.

“The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”

Why do you do what you do?

Ignore the Painting…

I was invited to speak and paint at a conference once. (Keep the word “invited” in your mind.) The painting they wanted was very large, the largest I have done live so far. We discussed the design in advance and I even shared sketches. I told the people who brought me in that in order to get a piece so large done I would need to work through the rest of the service, with the exception of the prayers. I usually don’t paint during the corporate prayer. One man stood up to share a few reflections and he started off by saying “ignore the painting.” Laughable, if it wasn’t so troubling.

Remember that word “invited?” Here’s why, they invited me. Knowing full well what I do, they asked me to come to their event and do what I do. There were no surprises. For the most part, it was a wonderful experience, I loved serving at the conference and many people reported being blessed. I am not sharing this to complain but to share a resistance that you may come up against as you use your creativity to serve the Lord. People may see it as a distraction.

Here’s the thing… those people are “wrong.” Art in a service is not a distraction. As a matter of fact, I am prepared to say its no more a distraction than the music. I guess I better explain. I love music, I even like to sing. Problem is, I am not very good. I’m also very conscious that people around me may be able to hear me. I don’t want my lack of singing ability to detract from someone else’s worship, so I become both conscious and self conscious, until eventually my focus is more on trying to sing well than it is on praise. Talk about distraction.

Now because I get distracted in the whole singing process, should I lobby my pastor to cut the band or the organist? God forbid, because while I an become distracted, there are also times where I feel escorted to the throne of God by the worship music and even if I didn’t feel that, I know others do. Art can be the same way. In a world full of visual learners, and near constant visual stimulation, art can be a door, an entry point into worship and a way to help people to learn and remember. And it works.

I first became aware of the power of this media when I was pastoring. Our church met in a small rented space. We really weren’t able to do much in the way of decorating, but I was allowed to hang art on the walls. I began painting in my services, creating paintings related to the message. I was amazed by how often I would hear one of my people showing a visitor a piece of my art and telling them something I preached on weeks, months, maybe even years before. When I am live painting at a church or a camp, I love hearing the people behind me trying to guess what I’m painting. Are they distracted? Maybe, but when I am ready to preach, they are locked in and ready to hear the story behind the art.

Art is not a distraction, it’s an entry point to a deeper understanding of God’s Word.

Don’t ignore the painting!

How to Maximize Your Creativity

Creativity gurus often try to get you to ask questions like, “What would you do if you knew you could not lose?” or “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” or “What would you do if money were not an object?” They’re all good questions and they do all help us to get look at our goals. The problem is, they’re not reality. You can lose. You probably will fail and for the vast majority of us, money is an object. How can we maximize our creativity in the real world?

1. Use wisdom in risk. There is no creativity without risk. All creativity takes resources, and almost all of us have limited resources. The key then is to risk wisely. Experiment as inexpensively as possible. Test your ideas in the digital world first. Bounce your ideas off the people who might use it before actually doing what you’re setting our to do. The less you spend in the early phase, the less damaging failure will be and the more likely you are to succeed.

2. Failure is likely, so fail forward. No one but God is infallible. The rest of us will fail. The key is to learn everything you can from the failures of others. Remember smart people learn from their mistakes but really smart people learn from the mistakes of others. Of course, much of creativity is pioneering, so sometimes there is no one from home to learn but yourself. Start with an idea. Experiment and make note of the strengths and weaknesses of failed ideas and experiments. Then take what you’ve learned and move forward. This is the method all scientists use, and it should work in all other realms of creativity as well. Failure is not fatal, it’s a learning experience. Learn from it and move forward.

3. Not every idea is a good one. Sometimes what we learn as we move through the creative process is that we have a flawed idea. Don’t give up at the first sign of struggle, but sometimes you just have to lay an idea aside and sometimes, frankly, you have to bury it and put those limited resources to work on something better. Minimizing risks in the early experimentation phase can reveal these weaknesses and guide you toward adjustments or a complete change in direction. Even the worst ideas can help us to learn and mover forward.

4. No creative is an island. Rare, to nonexistent, is the person who can do everything. Sometimes you just need to get help. Enlist experts in the areas where you struggle. Get them to help you through your weak spots. Help them in theirs. It’s not impossible just because you can’t do it. What’s hard for you might be a piece of cake to someone else. Get help. The doesn’t have to be a major expense. Often there are people who are willing to help just for the sake of being helpful, others may be willing to partner with you for a share of the end profits. Wouldn’t it be worth it to give up a little off the top rather than owning all of something that never sees the light of day.

5. It has to see the light of day. I’ve said it before and I will say it again. Ideas are the most valuable thing a creative has. They are also totally worthless if they never become something real, something shareable. Until you put an idea out for the world to see it’s just a dream. Don’t waste your time lamenting that someone used your idea (unless they blatantly ripped you off). If they just had a similar idea to you, and believed in it enough to do what it took before you did, be happy. You got really close and had an idea that could have been successful. It won’t be the last one, work for the next idea, believe in it and get it out.

You can lose, you will fail and money is an object. None of those things will keep you from success. What keeps us from success is not working to make our ideas into reality. We maximize our creativity when we risk wisely and often, fail forward, know when to give up, create with abandon, bringing things to reality and sharing them with the world.

What are you creating?

My Dream About Elvis…

Last night I had the strangest dream. I dreamt I was in this old house, the dream was even black and white, which is strange because I usually DO dream in color. A well meaning old man was lecturing a young man about the life he was living. I’m not sure who the old man was, but the young man was Elvis. The old man was getting nowhere and for some reason I felt the need to speak.

I called him over, “Elvis Aaron Presley, come over here, I need to talk to you.” He came over. “Sit down,” I said and he did. He looked like the young Elvis from the movies. I said, “Elvis, one day they will call you the King of Rock and Roll. You will be wealthy beyond measure and millions of young people will want to be just like you. They will follow your example. They’ll dress like you. They’ll do what you do… (a slightly sneering smile spread across his young face…) And by 1977, you’ll be dead because of your choices. Your choices matter, and they’ll matter to millions of people. People will do what you do.”

As I finished speaking, I thought I got through to him. Then there was a knock at the door. When it opened, a large crowd of people who were up to no good came to get Elvis for a night of “wild living” as the Scripture says. Someone asked him why he would do this after what I just said. He said “I have until 1977.” Then I woke up.

Why do I share this? First because while most of us will never be called the king of anything, we are almost all leaders (especially as creatives), maybe to a small group of people, maybe to a large one, maybe just to one or two other people, but for almost all of us, there are people who will follow us. The choices we make matter, so we need to make good choices.

Secondly, one of the things people lament over is the unknown quantity of life. If we knew when things would happen, we could do things differently. I don’t think it matters. If we knew our “deadline,” I’m not sure it would change very much. Human nature seems to say, “live now, pay later…” It has since the garden. The truth is every one of our choices contributes to the quality of life we will live. Choices matter, so make good ones.

This dream shook me up a bit. It made me take a look at my own life, because while I’m not in a place of debauchery, there are some areas especially in the realm of health, where I could be making better choices. I also knew almost immediately that I had to share it. So my guess is it’s for someone besides me. Is it for you?

Where will your choices lead? or better yet, Who will your choices lead?

Advancing a Cause

Last week, my wife Dawn and I went to a Chris Tomlin concert. It was amazing, to say the least. If Barry Manilow writes the songs that make whole world sing (???) Chris Tomlin writes the songs that make the whole world worship. This is the guy who took the most famous song in the world and made it better (admit it, you can’t sing Amazing Grace without singing “My chains are gone…” either). But this time it wasn’t the show of the music that blew me away. It was the cause.

You see Chris is partnering with an organization called Cure International. These folks I’ve life-changing surgeries to poor children all over the world. The things they do are amazing and they do them in the name of Christ. I’m not ashamed to admit, I began to weep watching the video clips. This is an organization that could use your support. I also have a friend who is a surgeon who files half way around the world each year to do something similar with a different organization, not just doing operations but training Doctors over there to do these same kinds of things. This is the Lord’s work and one more evidence that there is a lot more to ministry than preaching, playing and singing.

What strikes me is this: If a guy like Chris Tomlin with a huge platform can use his gifts to advance a cause, what can we do with ours. Admittedly we don’t have a platform that large but we do have something. How could you let the people who follow you know about something that you’re passionate about? There is a world full of people in need and who knows maybe you have received your gift “for such a time as this?”

How can you use your gift to generate awareness of a desperate need?

To learn more: cure.org

Dealing With Ideas

Ideas start out in a lot of different ways. In this case the idea started out with a name… Mayhem. I don’t know why it’s mayhem. Maybe because a couple people gave me grief over AMOK, I don’t know. (AMOK by the way stands for Arts Ministry Outreach for the Kingdom, not the murderous rampage some people accused it of being, but I digress…) Usually when I get a name or a title, the first thing I do is create a logo. I’m not sure why this is either, but I think it’s because a logo somehow makes the creation a little more real, at least in my mind. I am a huge fan of ambigrams, words and images that look the same right side up and upside down, and I had already seen Mayhem expressed in this way, so I decided to create my own spin on it. Here’s what I came up with…

I know what you’re ready to ask. What is Mayhem? The truth is, I don’t know yet. My guess is it may be some sort of edgy comic newsletter or anthology, but I’m not sure yet. Is it right for the final project? I have no idea. My first thought is it looks a little dark, so it may not work out. Also if it is a comic type of project, right now I have no time to create it. None of these issues is a factor at this point. What is important is I got an idea and I got it down on paper (okay in this case pixels). The idea now has something tangible to refer back to, when the time is right.

As creatives, our ideas are of huge value, at least when we put them into action. They don’t always come at the most opportune time, but squandering them is a huge mistake. It took me about an hour to put this together and add it to my file. Now it exists as a reminder of what could be a really cool idea.

How do you manage your ideas? An idea is a terrible thing to waste!

Busy, Busy, Busy and the Myth of Working Better Under Pressure

I’m in a phase of life right now that is really busy. Some of the things I have to do are great, others not so much. Will I get it all done? Most likely. Will I be stressed out and anxious in the process? Yes. I guess the real question is, is it worth it?

There will always be things in our lives that are thoroughly out of our control but most of the time what we really need is just to gain some control over the things we do actually control. When we overcommit, we are signing up and volunteering for stress.

And don’t tell me you work best under pressure. Recently, I was cutting it way too close on a deadline. So close that I worked an obscene amount of hours to get it done. As a result, the end result is less than flawless, which aggravates me to no end. “I work best under pressure” is nothing less than code for “I procrastinate and then rush something out just under the wire.” Maybe it’s just me but I doubt it, creativity is very rarely enhanced by stress.

As believing creatives, we’re on a mission and part of that mission is to create quality work. Maybe instead of trying to satisfy everyone and impress people by how busy we are by overcommitting, we should scale back and try instead to over deliver–
bringing our best to every project, every time.

Are you busy or fruitful, because it’s really hard to be both.

Amazing Art

I was at The Foundry Church in Wallingford, where I serve as artist in residence yesterday. They are using the walls of their worship space as a gallery right now, having just held their first themed show featuring artists from the congregation. The theme was Stained Glass Masquerade. There was a lot of really nicely done art on display. I found this piece mesmerizing.

The piece is constructed of fiber, nails and plywood. The artist created the various tones by varying the amount of wrapping around the nails. I was truly amazed by the piece, and the photo doesn’t really do it justice. The shadows cast by the fiber onto the plywood ground adds even more dimensionality. This is a remarkable piece of art. Then I found out the artist who created it, Samantha Burns, is 15. My jaw just dropped. What a phenomenal talent!

The fact that an artist so young can create such a great piece of work could almost serve to be discouraging. I have serious doubts I could do a piece this good at over three times her age, but that is the wrong response. It’s not about whether or not we can create what someone else can create. Its about creating the things we are called and led to create. What are you doing with your gift? Seeing a young artist with such a great gift should not discourage us but rather encourage us in this.

The time to create is now!

A Great Day

I ministered at the Vision 15 Conference. It was a great day. I got to share two workshops with students and I never cease to be amazed. I started by doing a demo and sharing a few other examples then I left them have a shot at it. I gave them three options: create a testimony piece, create an expression of John 3:16 or create a piece based on their life verse. Then I gave them a chance to share. I was blown away by the response. You know I don’t make a lot of money, and I’m not famous, but I get to do some of the coolest things and meet some really great people.

God is good. Remind me of that the next time I get whiney.