provision comes in all shapes and sizes...

So a couple of days ago I blogged about some of the things we need for launching THE WELL and their attendant price tags.

I told you I had no idea how we were going to 'pay' for any of them but that I'd keep you posted on how things developed.

Well, here's your first report:

That there trunk is full.  Packed to the gills (but note that it ALL fits) with a sound system.

Yes.

A.  SOUND.  SYSTEM.

Picked it up today.

Cross one $5,000 line item off the 'in faith' list kids.

How'd it happen?  Well, I sent an email out to the VP's of THE WELL and to one of my friends who was an elder at my last church and who (with his wife and kids) will be joining us this time 'round, updating them on the costs and asking them to prayerfully consider how they might help.

I also have standing offers out to five big churches in our area asking them for help.  I've heard back from three and things aren't looking peachy in the short-term but we'll see in the end. While the lead guys at each church have been very kind (sincerely so) it's a lesson worth mentioning to any potential church planters out there reading this blog that the gap between goodwill and follow-through is a wide one.

This doesn't mean the guys you deal with are any less nice or gracious or less deserving of your respect, thanks, and admiration, but it simply reinforces the realization that most churches (and certainly almost ALL business in general) are typically focused on their own issues, ideas and bottom lines and the chances of you breaking through and getting them to act for your benefit are slim to none.

(note to self: don't be like this if you ever 'make it' with this one...)

Again (and some of them may be reading this) I'm not saying you do anything other than be gracious, humble and grateful for their time and consideration, I just want you to be prepared to not get what you need most of the time.

It's kinda' just the way it is.

That said--and this is why you can extend love and peace--God is your provider not anyone or anything else.  God knows what you need (not 'want' but need...) and He will provide for you exactly what you need--even if it seems to you at the time that it's not enough.

So...

I email the sound people yesterday and ask if they might consider allowing us to pay in installments.  Didn't think they would but the Bible teaches that we 'have not because we ask not...' (and when we ask and still don't get it's 'cause we're asking 'amiss'--again--reminding us that we're not God, we don't know 'best') so I figured I'd put it out there.

They don't get back to me.

But, because love 'hopes all things...' I call today, track the guy down, and sure enough he'd just missed the email.  He pulls it up while we're on the phone and, while we're discussing it, he says, "Oh, by the way we can finance this for you in-house..."

No credit cheque required.  Just and application and basically a handshake.

They do it all the time for 16 years olds trying to outfit their garage as a rehearsal space for their band.  Real old-school, like they look you in the eye, judge your sincerity, take a deposit and out you go.

With a trunk full of gear.

Can you believe it?

( at 35 with four kids as a second-time church planter I'm a bit less of a risk.  I actually laughed at the line in the application asking for my 'parents' name...)

And the first payment isn't due 'till October 9th which will be after we've had four (4) Sunday offerings at THE WELL and--I tend to believe--we might be able to pay it off right then and there.

Crazy.

And I must also comment that technology has come a LONG way in eight years.  When I planted my first church our first sound system nearly bankrupted us.  It was huge, impossible to handle, took ten people working for two hours to set up and basically was a huge pain in the backside.  The rig I bought today didn't exist then.  But...

Lemme' say re: that big rig, 1) It was my fault.  I was way too 'show' oriented in those days and wanted to try and beat Dave Matthews at his own game.  I need to repent of eyes bigger than my brain and hereby do so. 2) The company that sold it to us fleeced us.  We paid 6 times what today's system cost me and easily twice what it was worth at the time.  Dudes saw a couple starry-eye church planters and figured they'd take 'em to the cleaners.

SIX. TIMES.

And my sense, looking back, is that we got suckered.  The lesson from that is that if you're planting a church or starting any kind of capital-intensive business when you're still relatively young and foolish (I was 26 at the time) make sure you seek out and take advice from older folk who've been around the block a few times.  I know you think you know it all (I certainly did) but you don't and I didn't and I'd rather you avoid the beats and hard knocks I had to take to get me to this point.  3) Simpler is better.  Church is all about the content.  Preaching that lifts people's hearts to Heaven and calls them to Jesus.  Worship that lifts people's hearts to Heaven and makes them yearn for home.  Space for them and their kids to be together in God's presence and space for them (if they're single) to find a husband or wife so they can make some babies and live life together loving Jesus, each other and their friends, family, neighbors and city.

That's it.

Just get the tools you need to make (and keep making) that space.

So (and this is for me--and maybe for you depending on where you're at and what you're doing with your life...) keep it simple stupid.

And enjoy that snazzy new sound system that Jesus gave you that looks so good in your trunk.

Gonna' look even better 'on stage' in eleven days!

T

Eyes open...

I often refer to the idea of living with your eyes (and heart, soul, mind) wide open so that you'll 'catch' those moments in life that are worth noting, storing away, and using--sometime in the future--in one of your sermons or stories.

The parking lot you're looking at is across the street from the hotel I typically stay at when I'm shooting in Vancouver.  I was working late one night and noticed how cool the thing looked all empty and glowing blue in the dark.

I thought it'd be awesome to film a chase in with somebody running for their life.  You could mount the camera outside and film the various levels at once.  We--the audience--would know how close the character was to getting caught 'cause we'd see where her pursuers were even though she couldn't.  Then, when we cut into the space with her, we'd have the delicious double pleasure of fearing for her and with her 'cause we'd be trying to figure out where we (now that we were with her) were in relation to the 'baddies' we'd just seen when our perspective was on the outside.

I took the shot so that I could use it as a reference in the future.

What's interesting about that--taking a shot and storing it away--is the faith that's implied by the act.  My actions (stopping, noticing, thinking, grabbing camera and shooting, storing) demonstrate that I believe (hope) that at some point in the future the shot and the idea behind it are going to prove useful, worthwhile, or fruitful.

In my case--and with this example--that means I actually believe I'll be making a twenty million dollar movie some day that will allow me to see my 'vision' realized through the lives, work, creativity and follow through of a team of technicians, artists, crafts people, executives and--ultimately--viewers.

Crazy right?

Good crazy.

The kind of crazy we all need to be building our lives on if we hope to live a life that's something more than mundane.

What crazy thing are you planning for?

T

Angels and Demons and the fall...

So this is pretty cool.

On November 4th I'll be pitching a new dramatic TV series to a major network.  We're actively in the process of getting the presentation done which means working with Optix Digital in Toronto and a team of writers who don't know yet that I'm working with them.

What I mean is, I'm planning a story meeting with them but haven't actually booked anyone yet. I'll get to it.  The problem is, there's so much happening right now that I'm well and honestly stuck between the fact of having daily 'tasks' that need taking care of and strategic 'work' that has to be done or else I'll quickly find myself in the place where I don't have any more 'tasks' to take care of.

It's like this each fall.

I call it 'pitch and budget season' 'cause it seems like every October-December involves endless hours at this here keyboard creating concepts and treatments and pitches and the budgets to back them up.  We burn the candle at both ends and on the sides right through 'till (typically) the week before Christmas when we find out what next year is going to hold for us production-wise.

My poor wife.

Every year the same thing, this race to an uncertain finish line.

I keep telling her that, even though we barely notice it, every year gets a little better than the last.  A little bit more money, a little bit more fun, a little bit less pressure (always the same, and typically more stress) a lot more opportunity, a lot more at stake.

That's why they call life a 'race'.

Anyway, back to the series...

I don't want to give away too much but it'll be pitched as a thirteen part series, loosely based on an idea from a script we optioned last year.  It'll follow a 'family' of fallen angels as they go about their task of killing people.

That's right.

They're part of the 'legion', the subgroup of celestial beings tasked with visiting death on the humans.  

There's a lot more to it, but not for this blog, at least not yet.

I'm hoping our concept art and the presentation to support it makes a strong impression on the network execs.  As you can imagine, getting money from network execs is like (insert your favorite 'blood from a stone' quip here...)

And here's the part that's SFS-worthy...

My executive producing partner and I are spending money to get this pitch ready.  Real, actual, not-insignificant money that we worked extremely hard to earn.  We're spending the money and a whole bunch of uncompensated time to put this pitch together.

And we have no guarantees that the network will buy it.

But we feel passionate about it and are convinced that it'd make a rockin' series.  We LOVE the potential of it and are committed to pursuing it.

And so here we are, in the middle of the fall, getting our balls out one more 'gain, getting ready to hang 'em out there and take our chances with failure.

Because we believe.

And that's the part that might be useful for you today.  

What's that thing that you feel passionate about and convinced of to the point that you're willing to risk your life/time/resources/reputation for?  What thing in your life is good and glorious enough that you'd court failure to see it live?

Are you doing that thing?  Pursuing it?  Is every day a day you feel you could've used six more hours to push the thing that one step further ahead?  Do you get up at night to write RTF notes to yourself because the ideas just won't stop coming?

If that's you and you're there, good on you, keep at it, push it, pursue it, don't give up.

If you read that and know that you're not there, and if you feel that longing that says you'd love to be, well then, do whatever it takes to put yourself in the situation where that kind of reckless living becomes the norm.

Find the situation where faith is possible.

T

The Beautiful Things...

Nothing like uncertainty to focus your vision.

I do realize that this 'season' of blogging may come across a little more 'mopey' than my "I'm a strong, cool, got-it-together kind of guy" self-image would typically be comfortable with, but them's the breaks when you're waiting for a deal to close.

Update on that:

Last I heard, days ago, the 'honcho' was going to look over the budgets then get back to us with what I was told would be a 'green light' as they wanted us to start actually working the first week of December.

Well it's the first week and I'm still waiting.

My biz-partner is fond of telling me that things are moving 'lightning fast' by 'corporate standards' and that I should relax.  The harsh reality is that things aren't moving anywhere near fast enough for me, since it's Christmas and I've got four beautiful things to take care of.

See 'em up top?  Lovely no?

One thing my parents never did (and my parents are wonderful by the way) was talk to us about money.  We never really had any clear sense of what they made or how they managed their money.  My impression (and I could be wrong, y'never know when your Mom might find your blog...) was that they kept it to themselves by way of sheltering us from the stress of it and because it was kind of a 'generational thing' inherited from their parents...you just don't talk about certain things.

I wanted to be a little more transparent with my kids.  

Now, I've certainly not gone 'full disclosure' with them.  They're not aware of the particularities of our current 'transitional financial state' but they do know that we're waiting for these 'deals' to close; to the point that they've started praying for it.  

In classically 'childlike' manner, they're praying for the deals to close so that we can buy them the things they've asked for from us for Christmas.  They've got no stress about the things they've asked Santa for since, according to them, "The Big Guy's made of money..."  But that ne'er do well father of theirs, well he's gotta' close them deals.  Sarah said at breakfast today; "Well, why don't you just close 'em daddy?"  

My thoughts exactly.

So we wait.

And our mental state while waiting is increasingly fragile.  Niki and I typically wake up stressed, don't talk much while prepping breakfast, calm down a bit by our second cup of coffee then ramp up to stressed again by lunch then off a bit for the busy afternoon, then back up for dinner after which we try to do our best to not think about anything other than the next episode of 'Lost' or the latest romantic comedy I've rented for her.  And, yes, I'm aware that food has a lot to do with our emotional cycles.

In all seriousness, it's a dance to keep one's state of mind (and spirit) in healthy orientation.  I keep thinking of Job and spurring myself on to love God in the midst of this 'dark' (relatively speaking of course, I'm consistently reminded that there are many [MANY] out there suffering to much greater degree than us...) season that's stretching on to two years now.

Niki said it yesterday... "Man, we've been 'church-less' for two years..."

Two.  Years.

Jordie picked up on the phrase; "Yup', we're ChurchLess", like he likes how it rolls off his tongue.  The kids have started lobbying for us to plant another Church. They still ask about our old one which is endearing 'cause when asked for specifics about what they remember of it, things get real hazy real fast.  

Adding to the tension is the lack of a 'backup plan'.  That'll cause your heart to constrict right there (and God help me if my Mother-in-LAW find this...) Amazes me sometimes.  I wonder if I'm irresponsible or faithful.  After thinking on it for a bit I tend to land on the latter, simply because I decided to sell my life out to following the path of faith many, many, years ago now. I don't really have any other options.  As I've said many times before, it really does come down to whether or not you actually believe that God exists.  If you don't, then live your life.  If you do, well then, "My life is God's life now..." is how I put it once.

So, reduced to that kind of faithful foolishness, one has very little recourse but to live life moment to moment doing one's best to focus on all the beautiful things you encounter along the way while you wait for God to do His thing.

Things like a great egg and cheese sandwich made for my wife and I this morning. Things like a great sex life (oops, Mom or wife might be reading this...) and a marriage that is still glorious after nearly eleven years.  (We were sitting by our Christmas tree this week, eggnog to hand, candles burning, and Niki looked over at picture of us on the wall.  "We've been doing this a really long time."  She said. "I'm so amazed it hasn't gotten old." 

Things like glorious kids with eyes that shine.

I've been thinking about atheism lately (there's been some ruckus about it and connected to me at an online community I'm part of) and I just can't square it with my gorgeous kids or the lovely way in which the bark on my backyard tree spirals up towards the sky.

None of those beautiful things make any kind of sense in a world with no God.  

Last time I checked, 'natural selection' didn't care about beauty, just survival (and don't go commenting about how 'beauty' enhances reproductive ability...I already thought that one through...) and all around me I see...

The beautiful things.

So I keep on believing.

T