Eyewitness Account: Yelapa

JoAnn and I just finished a 7-day cruise vacation along the “Mexican Riviera” and we got a surprise bonus:  an opportunity to visit Yelapa, one of the places she mentions in her testimony.

A few weeks ago I finished the rough draft of the book-length version of her testimony, but now it’s time to go back through it and make the characters and settings come alive.  So I was excited to have the chance to visit Yelapa – she spells it “Yalappa” in her journal – and to see it for myself.

We took a sailing excursion from Puerto Vallarta.  The boat had a crew of five and 12 guests, and there was too little wind to sail; we had to use the diesel engine.  Four of us managed to get seasick, myself included.  “This is much gentler than the water taxis we had to use,” said JoAnn.  “They were just motorboats, and we felt every wave and always arrived wet.”

Word soon got out that JoAnn had lived in Yelapa thirty years ago, and every time we got a new view the tour guide asked if it looked like it did thirty years ago.  Inevitably JoAnn had to answer, “Not at all; it’s really built up.”

We learned that electricity had come to Yelapa three years ago.  “They really needed it for the schools.  The kids were falling behind without it.”  And though boats are still the best way to get to town, they now have a road that comes within a mile of Yelapa for those who want to walk the rest of the way.  Modernity is closing in.

Eventually we arrived.  “It’s unbelievable,” said JoAnn.  “It’s so built up!  None of this was here.”  We anchored about fifty feet from shore and water taxis delivered us to the restaurant.  It was rustic – a large blue Pepsi awning stretched over poles so we could sit at plastic tables in the shade, our bare feet on the sand.  Vendors came to our tables as we ate, bringing scarves, shawls, jewelry, trinkets, and even a chance to be photographed with an iguana.  “It’s unbelievably commercialized,” said JoAnn.  “None of these restaurants were here.”

We finished lunch and had time for a short walk before our excursion would leave again.  “There’s a path that will take us to where I used to live,” said JoAnn, and we took off walking.  But I was the first to see the obstacle.

“Is there a way across the river?” I asked.  It didn’t look deep, but there was quite a current.

“This must be new!” JoAnn exclaimed.  “I don’t remember a river here.”  We watched a man in his bathing suit ford the river; it was thigh deep and his dogs struggled to swim across.  “Of course, it wouldn’t be a problem for someone in a bathing suit.”

We were in jeans and the clock was ticking.  We decided to turn back.  “Still, I don’t remember a river,” said JoAnn.  “Who knows?  Anything could have happened to make a river in thirty years.”

I was disappointed.  I’d hoped for something that would help me bring a few scenes in JoAnn’s story to life but the river was blocking our way.

Back at the restaurant, JoAnn asked the manager if the river was new.  “It’s always been there,” she said.  “As long as anyone can remember.”

JoAnn came back to my table and reported,” I don’t know how the river got there.  They said it’s always been there.  I guess I wouldn’t have noticed wading through it – I was always in my bathing suit.”

“I think I got what I need,” I replied.  “I knew you were stoned all the time in those days, but now I see how out of it you really were.  Even if I were in a bathing suit, I think I’d remember wading through a river…”

So I’m glad I braved seasickness to go and visit Yelapa.  As I had hoped, JoAnn’s story came to life.  And she got a good picture of me with the iguana…

For the short version of JoAnn’s story, see http://DiaryOfAnExorcism.com.

 

 

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

 

 

Encourage Your Contacts

Recently when I was soaking I sensed that God wants me to take my contact list and hold it before Him when I soak, to see who He might direct me to encourage.

How often?  Maybe once every of weeks.  It takes time to follow through.

For me, this will include a lot of ministers because they are the people I work with as I travel and preach.  In effect, this will be a form of networking.  If your life is more in the arts than in ministry, your contact list will include producers, editors, other artists, marketers, etc.

But this kind of networking is different in several ways.  It is birthed in prayer, not in our own efforts to think strategically. The goal is not to advance professionally but to show the love of God to the people we contact.  We are daring to believe that God will send us to people at times that are more meaningful to them than to us.

I’m not going to say God can’t use these moments to advance our careers.  He can, but that isn’t the main thing we reach for when we read over our contact list as we soak in His presence. We’re saying, “Lord, send me to anyone You want me to encourage, not for my reasons but for yours.”

 

I’ve barely begun.  This week has been unusually hectic and as it began I wondered if I’d find time to encourage five people.  I did; the Holy Spirit overflowed out of me several times and somehow I ministered to six – I wrote about it at http://miraclelifestyle.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/use-the-cracks-in-the-sidewalk/.  But here are two more people, both from my contacts list, that God has led me to connect with.

The first is a pastor in North Carolina.  We talked about things going on in his church and in my ministry, and he asked when I was going to come minister at the church.  I said I’d get back to him and I will, but I knew in my heart that I hadn’t called to try to line up a meeting.

The other was a young minister in our church and I took him to lunch.  I asked him what was going on in his life and told a little of what was going on in mine, and we talked a lot about what God is doing in the church. He shared a very wise perspective – that the body tends to hunger for what it needs most – and I’m still pondering what he had to say.

There was one strategic issue I discussed with him, but I could have done this by phone:  I had asked him to serve on my board and was waiting for his answer. But that isn’t why I took him to lunch.  I needed to take time to thank him for the many times he has made CDs or copies for JoAnn and me, often on short notice, and always cheerfully and efficiently.  And I genuinely wanted to have a friendly visit.

 

God has designed us to need teamwork.  We can’t do it all, and we can’t do it alone.  We need one another.

If you look over your contacts list once or twice a month while you’re soaking, God will lead you to the people you need and to the people who need you.  But many people never get a call unless it’s from someone who wants something.  You can be the exception.

 

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

 

Artistic Limitations

My Bible reading this morning took me to Psalm 113:7-8, and as I read it I felt a surge of hope for Christian artists:

He raises the poor out of the dust, and lifts the needy out of the ash heap, that He may seat him with princes – with the princes of His people.

One strategy would tell us that if we want to make our mark with the arts, we must position ourselves with the princes and policy makers of the earth.  Another strategy tells us to choose humility and to lean on God.

Personally, I opt for the second strategy. There are too many scriptures that say God uses the weak things of this world to confound the wise, or that His strength is made perfect in our weakness.  I suspect that this principle so gripped Saul of Tarsus that he deliberately started calling himself “Paul” which means “little” – he wanted to stay in a position in which God could lift him up.

With this in mind, I want to suggest that the limitations you experience as an artist work for you, not against you.  They are God’s tool to keep you in a position in which only He can make your work influential.  If you can rest in leaning on Him, He will lift you up.

JoAnn and I are starting to taste the world of professional art.  Her manager is starting to take her work to potential clients, and he is also guiding us in the steps we need to take into professionalism.  It’s good to be part of a team; JoAnn’s work will get out to people it would not have touched otherwise.

But teamwork has cost us a bit of freedom.  Gone are the days when JoAnn can crank out whatever she likes; now she must accept the guidance of other professionals – “Use brighter colors on these pages – more contrast between the background and the text – simpler design in the middle pages.”  They will make her graphics more effective, but she is no longer the sole decision-maker about her work.

In future decisions, we will have to include the other team members in our thinking.  It will be unfair to them if we suddenly develop the urge to drop it all and conduct revival meetings.

Ironically, many Christians seem to think this is what the Christian artist should do.  But if the artist is a professional, this option will betray the rest of the team — managers, producers, agents, publishers.  It is not a step to take lightly, and would probably lead to being blackballed by the artistic community.

By contrast, the hobbyist has more freedom.  You can shift course radically without affecting anybody else.  You can drop your projects to make a missions trip or to go back to school; it won’t trouble anyone else if you do.  The hobbyist is free, but doesn’t have the platform, the credibility, or the resources of the professional.

Whichever position you are in, don’t beat yourself over the head about trying to make a kingdom impact.  You will have small opportunities daily to live for Christ – by putting Him first in matters of integrity, by taking time to care for hurting people, by listening to His voice and letting Him guide you in your work.

Your strategizing won’t launch you into the world of princes.  God can; it’s easy for Him.  But you can drive yourself crazy trying to get to the top.

Choose the humility strategy.  Do your job and do it well, whether you are a professional or a hobbyist.  Look for opportunities to let Christ shine through you in the small things of daily life.  Then trust God to fulfill Psalm 113:7-8 as He looks for the humble so He can set them among princes.  You can try to get there yourself, or you can let Him put you there.

Your limitations aren’t working against you; they are positioning you to lean on God.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

The Artist As Shepherd

I‘ve just completed a week of ministry in Korea and have come home with fresh vision for Christian artists.  God is calling us to shepherd our generation.

Shepherd and pastor are the same word, but God isn’t necessarily calling artists to drop their work to become pastors of churches.  We use the word “pastor” for the person who addresses the congregation every Sunday morning, who performs weddings and funerals and baby dedications, and who is for all practical purposes the CEO of the local church.  This is what our culture and tradition have done to the word “pastor.”

But God uses the word a little differently in scripture, especially in the Old Testament.  He often calls the secular leaders shepherds, whether they were politicians or businesspeople.  It’s too long to quote here, but Jeremiah 23 is God’s word of judgment against the shepherds who “destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture.”  Ezekiel 34 echoes the theme.

As artists, we don’t necessarily have a position of authority that makes us leaders.  But we have a capacity to influence people, and influence may shape a culture even more than its authorities do.  God is challenging us to be good stewards of our capacity to influence people, and to nudge them towards godliness.  Here’s an example of what I mean.

My wife has just begun to work with a new manager, Terry Sheppard at http://cre8ives.net.  Terry is a consecrated Christian with a wealth of experience, connections, and creativity in marketing Christian art.  And his first advice to us was to identify a secular cause we believe in, and target the next project towards meeting this need.

Making a long story short, JoAnn’s next project is aimed towards helping and encouraging children in disadvantaged neighborhoods to learn to read.

Think about what it’s like for a child in a bad neighborhood to start falling further and further behind in reading skills.  Is this child likely to finish high school?  To get a job?  To take on the responsibilities of parenting?  And if not, what options are left?

It would be unrealistic for JoAnn to think that her next book will put an end to illiteracy.  But it can make a difference in the life of one child here and another there, and how can we measure how powerful that influence will be?

Why did Terry tell us to look for a secular cause to advance?  Why not simply stay within the pastoral ministry of the church?  Why not proclaim the gospel rather than ministering to other needs?

The questions are valid, and each of us must ask God to help us identify our mission.  But before you decide that you should present your work to Christians only, consider a few more questions.

Are you troubled at the ungodly influences that permeate today’s culture?  Are you disgusted at the filth that parades itself as art?  Do you expect God to find unsaved people through whom He can make a difference?  If God wants to inject righteous influences into our society, who will be the instruments He can use?

Pray about it.  You may find that God starts to give you a fresh sense of missionary direction.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

A Marketing Team

Most of us will go through a season of having to do all our own marketing, but eventually it is helpful to graduate to the point of having a marketing team.

My wife and I began with the build-a-better-mousetrap school of thought and expected the world to beat a path to our door: I with my book, workbook and CDs about prophetic song; she with her four-color graphic intensive books for children. We’ve both had to learn a lot the hard way.

Slowly but surely, we’ve begun getting our marketing materials together. Sometimes I or we are invited to participate in a conference; for that, we keep photos and bios on file. Because JoAnn and I both are multi-talented, we have prepared bios that reflect the variety of things we do. We have built websites. I maintain four blogs. I have familiarized myself with the basics of search engine optimization and have shaped my website accordingly. If you run a search on prophetic song, my materials are usually among the first listed; search for prophetic worship and I’m a lot further down the list. Only rarely have our websites led to sales of our products or services, but they do seem to add to our overall credibility.

I could go on to tell about the colorful business cards JoAnn has designed for both of us, the flyers and email letters we have had to produce for special events, the copies of our work we have given away for promotional purposes, and so on. We haven’t gotten serious with FaceBook or MySpace and have never done anything with press releases, direct mailing, or promotional giveaways.

It’s a lot of work to market our work, and we haven’t had time to do all we could. So a few months ago when we met a man who has a lot of experience in marketing and the arts, we kept our ears open and wanted to learn all we could. I’m creative, but Terry’s IPM Quotient – Ideas-Per-Minute – far exceeds mine.

As our friendship grew, we all began to sense that God wanted us to work together on a few projects. So I’m not sure what to call Terry’s position – for starters we’re calling him our Manager – but he is putting together a team for a special project for JoAnn. He has just posted his new website at cre8ives.net.

For decades, JoAnn has worked on the Alphabuddies, a series of 350 graphics, most of which are a whimsical alphabet made of people, animals, flowers, trees, and more. Terry saw the potential to use these graphics in a literacy campaign aimed at helping disadvantaged children learn to read.

Terry has cultivated a lot of connections over the years, and he has linked us with educators so JoAnn can revise a story she wrote years ago and produce an alphabet book. We needed a writer to make the story sparkle; I ended up doing the writing, which meant putting the whole book into rhythm and rhyme.

JoAnn has spent several weeks putting in long days on her graphics, Terry has linked us to designers who will critique her work. This has led to revisions, but the teamwork is bringing out the best in JoAnn and the pages look better and better.

Now we are in the phase of preparing some of the marketing materials: bios, photos, and more.

I’m going to write other articles about this process in coming weeks, but for this article want to make one simple point: until we built a better mousetrap and waited in vain for the world to beat a path to our door, we didn’t realize we needed to market our work. And until we tried to do all the marketing we could on our own, we didn’t realize that we need a team.

So God’s timing has been right. We’re grateful to have met Terry, and are doing all we can to rise to the occasion as God has given us this opportunity.

Stan Smith :: © 2009, GospelSmith :: www.GospelSmith.com

Soaking Testimony: Learning To Write

In my last post, I mentioned that I was getting ready to take a week to finish the rough draft of JoAnn’s testimony, and that I was trusting God for a flow of ideas for the stories JoAnn will need for two children’s books she’s writing.  Here’s what’s happening with both.

Here’s what’s happening with both projects.

JoAnn’s Testimony. I’m sitting in the deli at the foot of the hill, eating a decadent breakfast of bacon and fried potatoes to celebrate finishing the first draft.

I spent last week in a getaway not far from home; it was a mountaintop retreat with a view of the sea.  My goal was to finish the rough draft of the book, which meant converting JoAnn’s diary into a narrative.  I needed to revise about 60,000 words; I finished 50,000 before I needed to come home, so I hibernated Sunday night and all day Monday, and finished the rough draft today.

What lies ahead?  I’ll have to go back through the chapters to trim the fat, strengthen the settings, and b ring the characters to life.  Then I’ll go back through the whole story and change the names and protect the reputations of everybody mentioned.

Meanwhile, I’ve been praying for guidance for publishing and marketing.  A few ideas had already formed, but a friend has volunteered to recommend me to a couple of agents.  So I’ll be in touch with them before I do anything else to get the book into distribution.

The Two Children’s Books. I had hoped to write the stories for JoAnn before I left for my retreat but didn’t get to do so.  I put these two projects on the back burner and will get to work on them now.

As I’ve spent time soaking, one simple conviction has hit me:  to build the stories around scenes, and to ratchet the sense of conflict a little higher in each until a resolution comes about in the end.

Somehow I think it’ll be easy to come up with a story this way.  All I have to do is come up with the characters — JoAnn has done this part already — and put them in a room and turn them loose.  They always seem to know what to do; all I have to do is write it down.

Soaking Really Helps

When I began writing JoAnn’s testimony a couple of years ago, I sensed I would need to study fiction techniques.  Though the story was non-fiction, it would need fiction techniques to make it readable.

I asked God for help; I had never written fiction before.  I read several books about writing; only one was worth the bother.  But I had read a lot of fiction over the past fifteen years. So between the one-on-one times with God when I was soaking and my awareness that some books are better than others, God began to teach me.

There have been too many principles to explain here, but I’ll show you the difference.  JoAnn’s diary read like a report:

Then X told me he thought Y was embezzling me.  I didn’t want to believe it at first…

This was all she needed to say in a diary.  She wasn’t trying to engage the reader.  She knew X and Y so well that she could see them in her mind’s eye as she wrote.  But I’ve had to rewrite it like this:

Then X turned to me and said, “How long have you known Y?  How do you know he isn’t scamming you?”

As long as he was bringing it up, I asked myself how long I had known X.  Less than a month.  What was his game?  It felt like he was trying to take over my life.  “I’d have to think,” I answered.  “It’s been at least ten years.  He and Bob used to be inseparable.”  I shifted in my seat uncomfortably.  It was unthinkable that X would be embezzling me.

“But it’s time to face the facts,” Y continued.  “He had records for $90 when we came in just now, and there was $190 in the drawer.  What if he’s been doing this every day?”

“I guess I need to check up on it.”  I hated to think of sneaking around behind X’s back, looking over his shoulder as though he were a criminal.  “But I hate this!  He’s been a friend of the family for years!”

“Well, it wouldn’t be that hard to go to the bank for a start,” X continued.  To him it was all business; he and X weren’t friends.  “Maybe you’re right.  All we need to see is whether he’s been depositing cash every day.  If he has, he’s in the clear.”

This is the classic dictum for writers:  “Show, don’t tell.”

What have I learned about this when I was soaking?  I’ve learned a lot of principles, but maybe the most important one has been that God sees the heart.  If I want to show a person or a place, I need to show it in terms of the hearts of those who were there.  I don’t claim to be the best writer in the world, but at least I feel that I know what I should be trying to accomplish when I put a scene on paper.

Enough said for now.  I’m finishing my breakfast and need to go back home and finish all the work I didn’t do last week because I was hidden away in my mountain retreat.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

Soaking Testimony: The Promise Of Flow

Apparently, God was waiting for me to get to this point.  I began to feel overwhelmed yesterday and decided I couldn’t take another step forward without soaking first.

I’m involved in two writing projects right now.  First, I’m taking my wife’s journal from the years when she was converted and converting it into a book-length manuscript.  Though it is non-fiction, I’m studying fiction techniques so I can tell the story well.  (For a short summary of her story, see http://diaryofanexorcism.com.)  Second, JoAnn has recently committed herself to producing two children’s books.  She is coming up with the story and doing the illustrations; my job is to make the text rhyme.  It isn’t too hard to make things rhyme; I do it a lot in my free time — and so on.

Usually the projects are fun, but deadlines for the children’s books are coming closer and closer and the writing projects are taking up so much time that I don’t have time to work on setting up meetings for ministry — most people can’t imagine how many hours of legwork it can take to set up a trip.  So I sank into bed yesterday afternoon and put on some worship music.  And as I waited on God, it took about an hour to have a simple encounter that took only a few seconds:

I sensed Jesus coming to me.  He was smiling sweetly, though something in the smile carried a mild rebuke as though I had unnecessarily allowed things to trouble me.  “I can’t do it all,” I said to Him.  “I just can’t do it.”

His smile got larger. “I was waiting for you to say that,” he said.  Then wordlessly He communicated His promise:  that I’ll be able to sit down and the words will flow; that He who lives in me will do the work through me; that my anxiety had stemmed from trying to do the work in my own strength.  Scriptures began to flood my mind:  “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise…let not the wise man glory in his wisdom…Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

A few moments later JoAnn came in the room to say it was time to eat; we had to leave for church in a few minutes.  I got up refreshed, invigorated by the promise of God.

I don’t sense that God has promised to give me perfect writing.  I’ll probably need to go over it all and tweak it.  But my rule of thumb is that if I can get anything on paper, I can always improve it.  In the children’s books, there are large chunks where I can’t get anything on paper.  This is what I expect God to give me in a few minutes of flow.

It’s a busy weekend. I’m involved in two conferences this weekend and am going to a beach house next week so I can hole up and work on JoAnn’s testimony book.  Ideally, I should finish a rough draft of the children’s books by Monday morning so JoAnn can work on the graphics while I’m out of town.

God likes faith, and I wanted to write down what I sensed He has promised me before I’ll have time to see the promise fulfilled.  I’ll post an update in the next few days and tell how it goes…

God Wants Storytellers

One night at the Project Light Conference, Mark Thomas and Ralph Winter both spoke.  One of their phrases stuck in my heart and has been stirring me ever since:  “God is looking for storytellers.”

I’ve seen this in the Bible.  The four gospels and Acts give more stories than teachings.  Even when He taught, Jesus often used parables.

I’ve seen it in healing meetings.  Often as one person testifies of what God has just done, someone else receives a miracle.  It can become a chain reaction.

More than once I’ve suspected that my life is a story God is writing.  The strange twists of things that go right or wrong are just the sort of thing that makes a story interesting.  Of course, we all want life to be interesting until it really is; then we storm heaven and rebuke every demon we can think of to try to get things to go back to normal.

I’ve read a lot of interviews of how writers write a novel – the creative process fascinates me.  Many (though not all) begin by creating their characters.  Then they throw them into an odd situation and let the characters work out the story themselves.  In a sense, the author predestines the characters to act a certain way; the situations test the characters and change them, depending on the choices they make.

It sounds like real life, and I can’t help wondering if this is how predestination works.  But I won’t go there right now…

Nevertheless, I read a little book by Sundar Singh in which he recounts open-heaven experiences he had.  He met Christians who had died and gone to heaven, and as they told their life stories, they all sounded like parables.  Everybody’s life taught a lesson.

We’re stuck in the middle of our own lives and can’t see the story God is telling.  But every righteous choice counts far more than we realize; and if we’ve sinned terribly, we still have the power to repent all the more powerfully.  It’s difficult as we go through it, but in eternity our lives will tell a story that glorifies God.

After listening to Mark Thomas teach about getting outside the box and Ralph Winters tell about God’s looking for a storyteller, an odd story started working in my mind.  I wondered who first put a bow to a stringed instrument and got the sound of a violin.  Is it a sound that was already used in heaven, and God or an angel taught someone to play it?  Or did man create it by some odd process of accidental discovery – I picture a bored warrior sitting by the campfire and rubbing the strings of two bows together – and the angels learned something new from what man created?

I recall a Bible school teacher who said, “When the Bible is silent, I am silent.”  The Bible doesn’t tell much about how musical sounds were invented, though its few lines are suggestive.  Maybe it‘s better not to think about these things.

But there’s more of God out of the box than in it.  He’s writing a story, and just as He knows the story of whoever first played the bow, I wonder what He remembers about you.  After all, God lives in eternity.  He can remember the future as clearly as though it happened yesterday.

Perhaps He will empower you to tell a story of His works and it will anoint people with the gift of faith.  Maybe He will give you a parable that will inject kingdom values into our culture  And maybe He’s writing a story with your life by giving you an identity in Christ and dropping you into a hostile environment where the life of Jesus will make an impact.

God is a storyteller, and He’s looking for voices who tell His stories to the world.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

A Film Or TV Audition

I recently attended the Project Light conference at Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena, California; they focused on arts and media.  In the afternoon they gave us several workshops to choose from, and I chose Christinna Chauncey’s workshop on how to audition for a film.

I went on a lark. Three or four people who say they are movie producers have said I would make a great character actor. Apparently I have an intense face; I get the impression that if they need a wacko who starts a food fight at a wedding reception, I have the look they’d want.

I’ve decided to call their bluff next time they say I should be an actor, and with this in mind I chose the audition workshop. I was by far the oldest person in the room. Christinna came in and had us all introduce ourselves and tell why we were here – everyone else was an aspiring actress or was studying drama in college or had already made a few commercials and wanted to branch out.

“I’ve got an hour and a half to do a workshop that normally takes eight weeks,” said Christinna, “so there won’t be time for everybody to read.” She drew a few names out of a bowl, and I was one of the people chosen. She asked if I would go first and handed me a script. “You’ll be the professor.” She gave more scripts to a few more of us and said we could go outside to prepare if we wanted. I chose to sit in the class, trying to read and digest the script while listening to her question and answer session.

And it was good stuff: how to work with an agent, why we shouldn’t take it personally if we’re rejected for a part, and a lot of nuts and bolts about the audition process itself. Soon she was ready for me to read, but did I have any questions first?

I did. Three pages of dialog gave me a mental image of the professor, but one line didn’t fit. “There is a moment in a script when a character breaks, and does something out of character. That’s where the drama is.”

I understood what she was talking about because I’ve seen how the principle works in writing. But I was so fixated on the professor’s nature – proud, a little arrogant, unwilling to be challenged by an idealistic younger man – that I missed the opportunity to bring out his inner conflict.

So I was the professor and Christinna read everyone else’s part, and I felt the professor’s rage so strongly that I glared into Christinna eyes and unconsciously stepped closer to her. When we finished, she said, “Okay, there’s some good stuff happening here. But remember to stay six feet away from the person who’s reading the other part. If you get too close you can make them wonder what’s going on.”

Sorry Christinna – I didn’t mean to be intimidating; it was the professor’s fault; he was the one who got in your face.

I realized that ministry had prepared me for the professor’s role because ministry has forced me to empathize with all sorts of people, whether I found them easy to like or not. The discipline of encouraging five people a week will cause us all to be more empathetic, which in turn spills over into acting, writing, songwriting, and many other arts.

But I learned something rich from Christinna too. I didn’t get it in time to do justice to the professor, but if there’s a next time I’ll know to focus on the drama of the character’s saying or doing something out of character.

I’m amazed at how much Christinna managed to teach us in an hour and a half – she’s good at what she does.  Now I’ll feel ready to call their bluff if directors tell me I should be in the movies. I don’t know what I’ll do if they call mine…

Stan Smith :: © 2009, GospelSmith :: www.GospelSmith.com

More Of God’s Presence

Where does God’s presence look like in the life of a Christian artist?

In John 14:21, Jesus made it clear that He wants to manifest your presence in your life.  Here’s how:

He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.  (John 14:21)

The more we act on the words of God, the more He will make His presence felt in our lives.  This suggests that if you can braid your art and God’s commandments together like the strands of a rope, you will have many encounters with Him.  What might these encounters look like?

1. Moments of inspiration. These are the moments that make the difference between whether your art is self-expression or a voice for the heart of God.  Only as God opens His heart to you can your art express Him.

It may be that He speaks to you, or it may be that He simply reaffirms His love.  Maybe His presence moves you with compassion.  These are moments when God deposits something in you that slowly but surely works itself out in your art.

2. A sense of laboring together with Him. Sometimes you will sense God working with you as you create.  It can be a dialog between you and Him, or it can happen without words:  you’ll sense God himself playing complicated guitar riffs through your hands, or pages of text will almost seem to write themselves as your hands fly at the keyboard to try to keep up with the words as they come to you.  These are rich moments of sensing that Christ in you is working with you and through you as you stumble into the flow of His creativity.

3. The sense that your work has become worship. The very process of creativity can become an act of devotion.  Colossians 3:17 commands, “whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men.”  In other words, you can cultivate a relationship with God in which your work and your marketing all become works of love.  This kind of communing with God is a venue in which you will experience His manifest presence.

4. Divine appointments. Romans 8:28 says all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose.  The call is up to Him, but the love is up to you.  If your life work – expressed through art – is to love Him, you will experience many divine appointments as God Himself opens doors for you.  These open doors are another manifestation of His presence.

5. A sense of mission. As you surrender your life and your art to God, He will intensify your calling as an artist.  Christian artists are missionaries, and God will let you know whom He is sending you to and how you can make a greater impact.  This sense of purpose and focus is yet another way God will manifest His presence in your life.

Finally, it all comes back to receiving His commandments and keeping them – not just a slavish obedience, but a loving sense of cherishing His words:  pondering them, meditating on them, seeing the heart of God in them, committing ourselves to them, and finally acting on them.  More about all of this in The School → Encounter God.

But I’m sure this short article doesn’t list all the ways God will manifest His presence in your life.  Post a comment, telling how God has shown Himself in your own life and you art.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com