Year Two Recap

check out what the Vine has been up to with their second year. this video took about 41 hours all together between scripting, drawing, shooting and editing. all the music and drawings are original. cyndi h. drew 200 individual drawings over 11 hours...it took about 2 hours to shoot it. turned out incredibly.

God is doing great things and we're stoked to be a part of it!

your product

i went through the drive-thru at wendy's earlier today and saw they had a new kind of shake...that of course is why i went at 3 in the afternoon, an ice cream run. but when i asked the guy through the speaker which of their new shakes was better, he said he hadn't tried them.

this has always been crazy to me. there are a couple of problems with this. one is that the person didn't care enough to either try the new products at the place they work and are a representative of, and another is that wendy's doesn't intentionally have all their employees sample the items on the menu, especially a new item.

what he told me was he hadn't tried them, but what he may also have been saying is the products wendy's is putting out aren't worth trying, even if you work there. if i were head of wendy's, this young man would probably not work for wendy's anymore.

this makes me think about the church, of course, because thats what i do, i can't help it, i just parallel everything to the church. but what if i was asked by someone about an area of the vine and i said something along the same lines..."well, i've never tried a cluster group." or "i've never been to the youth ministry" or "i've never been involved in an outreach event." but "i'm sure its okay."

as a member of a team and a staff and even more than that, a vision and call and mission, i would be completely remiss to not have at the very least sampled the other areas of ministry at the vine.

you have to know your product. you have to know how many calories are in your shakes...or if it is even good in the first place. and you can only know some of these things by participating.

i asked the wendy's employee about his lack of knowledge about the new shakes and he said that another employee there had told him which one was likely better. i would have preferred to have been helped by the knowledgeable employee.

what do you know about your product?

check out what i know about the vine here.

too far is never too far

check out this story...and you'll see there is no such thing as being too far from God

if only two

brilliant. i watched a large part of a documentary on a composer tonight that was nothing short of brilliant. renowned and famous and just crazy enough to be a magnificent musical mind. 70 years old and still writing, composing, scoring.

as a part of the documentary the composer's wife emotionally admits their paths are parting as a result of his overwhelming love for music to the neglect of his family. but it isn't unlike the stories of so many great writers, composers, artists, and unfortunately, evangelists and historic foundational christian leaders.

so focused on a gift, passion, or call, the most basic of calls falls neglected and atrophied. family finds last place. wesley is the great spiritual father of the methodist and wesleyan movements, yet he was an insufficient husband at best...i have heard the same of moody and many other great spiritual fathers of the church. so emboldened by the gospel to reach the masses, the few, the families were left behind.

like every young musician and artist i longed to be known, to make an impact, to change the world...like every young musician, those dreams were mixed full of impure motives and imperfect desires. now a bit older i no longer feign at fame and have little or no desire to be known across america and/or the world for my abilities and gifts.

a large part of that is family. i am not always the father and husband i long to be, but when it comes down to it, i am a father and i am a husband. i am not just a person living in the same house. i am father to brennan brave and liam noble and husband to cynthia lisabeth and at the most basic, this is my first call. God has given me a wife and children for a reason.

do i want to see thousands and thousands of thousands come to know Jesus? yes. do i want to advance God's kingdom at the expense of the kingdom he has placed within my own home? no.

and this is the very reason i will, with most likelihood, never be famous, and i will likely never be known, because i will not do what so many have done: work harder at work than at family.

if i reach only two, if only brennan and liam stand before the throne of my Lord redeemed and in love with Jesus more than life... than i did exactly what God has asked me to do.

now ask yourself this question...especially if you have a problem with this...why does this make you uncomfortable? why is there part of you that wants to barb back with, "just make sure you do everything you can." or "you better not pass up an opportunity God puts in front of you." or even, "your wife and kids will understand if..."

sounds like pharisee talk. sounds like law disguised as freedom. sounds like legalism pretending to be the gospel.

you likely have one of three responses to this. either you completely disagree, you are uncomfortable with the idea but don't know why, or this is refreshing and possibly freeing for you.

all i can say is....be free. for i would rather not be known at all in the story of history because of only reaching two, than to be known for reaching thousands at the detriment to my own wife and children. this to me would be complete failure.