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

 

 

Seeing In The Marketplace — Six Steps

I’ve just finished a ministry cruise and I learned several things about marketing – okay, it was a ministry context, but the principles certainly spill over into the arts.  So before I tell my own story, I want to challenge you to use your imagination and look around at your next art show or concert or craft fair.

I was one of three speakers and one of four worship leaders on the cruise.  We each had a book table with our various products for sale, and we each had an opportunity to take up an offering. It was a wonderful opportunity to see what works and what doesn’t.  I’m going to list six steps we took in our seeing – these steps apply to all sorts of marketing venues – and I’ll illustrate them with specific ideas we have gleaned.

1) Look around and see what others do differently. We saw two main things:  everyone else used offering envelopes, and everyone else was able to accept donations by credit card.  Then John Mark Pool graciously offered to let us route credit card donations through his ministry; these donations proved to be more than half of our income from the cruise.

2) Ask a lot of questions. I’d always avoided using envelopes, not wanting to be pushy or manipulative.  But Sandy Pool explained that people are very security conscious and don’t want to leave their checks where a stranger might be able to copy their information.  And the envelopes make a way for cash donors to get a tax receipt – duh, I should have thought of that one myself!

3) Stay tuned to the Holy Spirit. My wife JoAnn noticed that people weren’t buying much from our book table or from any of the others.  It had been so much work to drag all this stuff onto the ship that it was depressing to think I’d have to repack it and drag it back home.  So I asked God for wisdom and took time to soak.

“Give your CDs away to any donor.”  This is what I heard when I soaked, and I announced it in my first workshop.  I was surprised to find that many of the people had never heard anything like this.  Several came up to me and told me what they had given and what they had taken, and they wondered if they could have one more CD.  “Take it,” I said.  “It’s yours for any donation.”

4) Follow through with research. Everyone told me I need to start accepting credit cards, but as we asked questions we found that everyone gave us different answers.  So I got home and went online to search various merchant accounts and credit card terminals.

I quickly bogged down in information overload.  Was this really something I could do?  I have to know whether I’m working point-of-sale, as I would be at a book table, or setting up e-commerce on the web.  Eventually I need to do both, but it could take months…

5) Follow through with soaking. Like Hagar in the desert, I was so overwhelmed with my own impossibilities that it was hard to see the well God had provided for me.  It was only when I took time to soak that God made the way simple for me.  In His presence, the information overload from my research suddenly fell into neat categories with a clear step-by-step process I can follow.

6) Follow through with action. So far, we’ve made it to the first step: to print forms that would allow us to accept credit card payments on PayPal.  These forms will be on the book table the next time I minister.

Small steps add up.  If we let God open our eyes in the marketplace, He will show us one small step after another.  As weeks turn into months and months turn into years, we will become skilled at presenting our work efficiently and tastefully.

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

Seeing Your Opportunities

There are art projects to take on. There are ministry opportunities that will spring from your art. There are marketing opportunities that fit your unique gift mix and circumstances, and that will get your art out to the people it is supposed to touch. These opportunities are all around you – but can you see them?

A story in Genesis 21 shows that sometimes we need God’s help to open our eyes. It’s a long story, but I’ll make it short.

Abraham had two sons: Ishmael, the son of Sarah’s servant Hagar; and Isaac, the newborn son of Sarah, Abraham’s wife. There had been friction between Sarah and Hagar when Ishmael had been born thirteen years earlier, and now, as Abraham made a feast for Isaac, Sarah saw Ishmael scoffing on the sidelines. “It’s time to get rid of Hagar and her son,” Sarah said to Abraham. “The son of this bondwoman won’t be an heir with my son Isaac.”

Abraham was displeased, but he prayed and, to his surprise, heard God say to go through with Sarah’s plan. So he rose in the morning, gave Hagar and Ishmael provisions, and sent them away. Eventually their supplies ran out, and they were still in the desert. They had no options. They both expected to die.

Hagar left the boy under a shrub and summoned the strength to walk away so she would not see the death of her son. But Ishmael prayed, and God sent an angel.

“What ails you, Hagar?” the angel called. “Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is.” And after declaring God’s purpose for Ishmael, Genesis 21:19 says, “Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water.” She refilled her canteen and gave Ishmael a drink.

I won’t go into all the issues about the customs in Abraham’s day and the justice or injustice of how he treated Hagar and her son. Instead, I want to focus on the rejection they faced, the meager resources with which they ventured into the desert, and the divine activity that enabled them to see His provision for their journey.

Most artists face rejection. Friends may admire our work, but we try to sell it and there are no buyers. Or we work as part of a drama group but never get the leading roles, so we get lost in the crowd. Or our band makes just enough money that we have to work full-time so we can afford to do what we love on weekends.

It can be a desert walk, and friends and relatives lose interest in supporting our expensive hobby. So we have to take our meager resources and make them work for us as we venture out into the art world. As our resources dwindle, our existence as an artist seems ready to die.

Of course, we have an option Hagar never had: we can go back home and get a “real” job. But if we’re to make it as an artist, we need to find the resources to finish the journey.

Hagar’s story says a well was already there, though she hadn’t seen it. Perhaps her grief had blinded her to the help God had provided. The turning point in the story came when Ishmael prayed. God heard the prayer and opened Hagar’s eyes to see the well.

I find the story in Genesis 21 suggestive. There are wells all around you – Jesus promises to be a well in the lives of them that believe. You can receive wisdom and direction from God that will cause you to find opportunities for your work, your ministry, or your marketing.

Spend time soaking in God’s presence. He may show you a new product that people will want. He may show you an opportunity you’ve been overlooking. He may simply refresh you so you’ll have the will to put one foot in front of another.

But make it a habit to soak, and make it a habit to ask God to open your eyes.

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

Seeing Without Seeing

I live in a community where we all have mailboxes at the foot of the hill, and a few days ago my list of errands included picking up the mail.  I was focused on my to-do list, and seeing a woman ahead of me, I steered around her.  Then as I got in my car, I sensed God telling me, Look again.  You know her. That’s when I realized I had just passed a friend without saying hello.  Next time I see her, I’ll have to apologize.

How often have you looked at something or someone and not seen?  Maybe you’ve lost something, looked everywhere for it, and then when you finally found it you realized you had looked at it several times without seeing it.

Jesus addressed this issue when He explained why He taught people in parables:

“Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.  And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says: ‘Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, And seeing you will see and not perceive; For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, And their eyes they have closed, Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, So that I should heal them.’”  [Matthew 13:13-15]

It’s a puzzling passage and it brings up a lot of issues, but I want to look at just one:  if God has called you to be a Christian artist, He has called you to see.

A few years ago I read Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain.  I’ve never been particularly gifted at drawing, but I was surprised to find that as I followed the exercises in the book, I could draw realistically. It takes time I don’t have; I haven’t done anything with it. But I realized that 90% of drawing is seeing.

I had never managed to draw a recognizable portrait because I had never bothered to see.  My wife’s face?  Start with an oval; add blonde hair with blue eyes; stick in nose and lips.  But something in my mind wants to substitute stereotypes for real vision – have you ever seen anyone who has a face that is a perfect oval?  And would the features I added really be hers, or would they be a composite drawn from my imagination?

To make a portrait recognizable, I would have to look at the lines and planes that are really there:  the highlights and shadows of her cheekbones, the delicate yet elegant line of her nose, the unique double-curve of her lips.  Then people would see not just any blonde, but JoAnn.

This is a good start, but seeing goes deeper.  After all, a photograph could capture her features, but I might have to take twenty pictures of JoAnn to get one or two that reveal her personality.  The portrait I draw likewise must show her personality and not just her looks.

It takes a lot of seeing to draw a portrait!  And if anyone can see, God can.  The Christian artist has a huge advantage over artists who don’t know God because He who sees the hearts lives in us.  He can and will teach us to see as He sees if we ask Him to give us this wisdom.

This is what seeing is all about.  And though I’ve written about it in the art of drawing, the principles apply equally in other media and with other senses.  An actor has to see the body language and hear the speech patterns of a character.  A dancer has to see the movements that convey a mood.  A writer has to find the lines that portray a character, not just giving a physical description but also revealing the person’s hopes, fears, and motivations.

If you have asked Jesus to live in your heart, you can expect Him to empower you to see as He sees, to hear as He hears, and to feel as He feels.  Ask Him to awaken your perception so your art can release heaven’s vision into the earth.

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

Artistic Perception

We’ve been looking at the moments when God uses analogy or parables to trigger our creativity, but we’re going to look now at another creative skill:  perception.

One thing that sets artists apart from others is their perception.  We see or hear things others miss.  While most artists may tend to do this by nature, the best artists train themselves to perceive.  And if you are a Christian artist, God will help you with this training if you will ask.

I was a young man in Bible school, training for ministry. As the teachers walked us through the Bible, we sometimes ran into scriptures that talk about prophetic song.  “We don’t hear much prophetic song,” the teachers would say with a faraway look in their eyes.  “But evidently it was happening in the days of the kings.”

So I began to pray, asking God to teach me about it. His first lesson was a lesson that awakened my perception.  All nature is praising Me, I sensed Him saying.  Listen to the rhythms of the trees rustling when the wind blows.  Listen to the songs of the birds.  Listen to the sounds of the waters rippling over the rocks.

I tuned my guitar in an open tuning (DADDAD) and took it into the woods.  I began to hear rhythms I had never heard in the music of man – it was hard to play them on guitar, especially with the 1-2-3-4 patterns I had learned.  And when I listened to water running over the rocks, I learned to pick out the various melodies, and how they fit together.

I’ve written more about this learning process in my book, Prophetic Song: Gateway To Glory.  But the specifics of my process may not be the main thing God wants to teach you. Here’s another version of a hearing lesson, one that is more likely to fit God’s purpose for your life.

I sat in a prophetic song training session at Morningstar in Ft. Mill, South Carolina.  They announced that a variety of singers and musicians would lead worship.  They assigned the students to keep a notebook of what they heard that they especially liked or disliked.  They made it clear that the point of the lesson was not to criticize or find fault.  Instead, “As you identify the sounds that do and that don’t speak to you, you’ll identify the sounds that resonate with your heart.  And these are the sounds you need to develop…”

If you are a musician, this is a good exercise.

I’ve talked about music, but lessons in perceptions affect all the arts.  I have meager talents in graphic arts – especially since I have a touch of red-green color blindness – but I often need to lay out a flyer, a booklet, or a CD cover.  God has sometimes led me to go through a magazine and pay attention to the graphics that grab me, and to identify the principles that make them work.

It was the same thing with web design. I had Adobe Creative Suite 2 with GoLive, but where should I begin?  I prayed.  Go online and run a search for “free web templates.” I did, and to me, the ones at www.elated.com stood head and shoulders above the rest.  I didn’t use their templates; I wasn’t sure I knew enough about web design to make them work.  But their designs gave me ideas I used on my own page.

We have a God who will teach us to see, to hear, to perceive.  Isaiah 50:4 says the Lord will awaken our ear to hear His voice.  If we have placed our artistic gifts on the altar and invited God to use them, He will awaken our eyes and ears to see what He perceives so we can communicate His heart and not just our own.

Ask and you will receive.  Seek and you will find.  Knock and it will be opened to you.

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

One Vision, Many Facets

Your work needs to reflect several points of view.  It’s one vision with many facets.

One of the best ways to add depth to your art is to look at your subject from several angles.

It’s biblical.  The four gospels present Jesus from four angles.  The book of Acts shows the early church, mainly under Peter’s leadership in the first twelve chapters and then under Paul’s leadership in the rest of the book.

This principle applies to all the arts.

I was still in grade school when my father, who played French horn, taught me how to listen to classical music.  “Listen for the melody line…see, here it is in a major key…now it comes around in a minor key…now you’ll hear it, at half the original tempo, in the bass.”

Suspense movies often move the narrative line among several characters at several locations.  The reader knows they will all converge at some point, but part of the suspense comes from knowing more than the characters know because the story is being told from several points of view.

Drama often happens when several characters live through the same event, but they all react differently because they perceive it differently.

The human body is designed to see from two places at once – this is why you have two eyes. With just one eye, you will see the world around you as flat scenery; with two eyes, your brain can assimilate two slightly different images and perceive depth.

Depth in art demands more than a single perception.

Sometimes artists paint the same scene in different light or with different techniques.  The same song sounds different played as a solo or played by a band.  The same paragraph will convey one mood if written in active voice, and another in passive.

This principle applies to your art, but it also applies to marketing.  You will reach the most people if you market from several perspectives:  using cyberspace, printed materials, public relations techniques, and face-to-face encounters with buyers or the public.  The best marketers know better than to put all their eggs in one basket.

As you let God lead you in the arts, you’ll find He stretches you to see from several angles.  He is the God who commands us to do to others as we would want them to do for us – and this commandment teaches us to think from a perspective other than our own.

Use this commandment in your work and in your marketing.  If you were looking for a painting to hang on the wall or a book to read or a piece of music to listen to, what would you look for?  This kind of imaginative thinking will help you serve the public with the art you produce, and even to minister to needs God wants to touch in their lives.

Because God’s main commandment is for us to love Him and His people, thinking from other people’s perspectives will help us with our mission.  Your art will grow from being an act of self-expression to being a work of love.

Multiple perspectives will deepen your work, whatever your artistic medium.  It will make your marketing efforts more effective.  Whenever your creativity is in a slump, you can jolt it awake by using another point of view.

Be ready for God to use one form of art as a parable as He teaches you new techniques in your own medium.  Be ready for God to inspire you to see something from two or more angles as you work.  And expect God to stretch your vision to see from your audience’s point of view.  He wants to go deep as He inspires you.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2008, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com