There have been several instances where I would have a flood
of ideas come to me during a church worship service. These ideas have included thoughts about
reaching out to the homeless, thoughts about cover and article ideas for a magazine published by the church, photography and
even videography ideas. So, I know that
I’ve had these types of ideas on my mind for a long time (even years). I remember when I first met with the church pastors accompanied by my wife.
They were trying to gauge our areas of interests to get to know us and I’m
sure to find out what areas of ministry we would fit in with my church. During that meeting, my wife and
I mentioned photography as a ministry and that has definitely come to pass as
we have stepped into that ministry by joining the magazine group to
provide them with pictures to use for each published edition. During the same meeting, I specifically
mentioned videography as another potential ministry.
Now, I am the type of person that will typically have an
idea and then think about the largeness of the idea by breaking it down into
all the small details that have to be done in order to make a project come
together. If the idea is a large or
complicated one, I usually get overwhelmed by everything that would need to be
done and then would completely drop the idea since it is too big for me to
complete. I either start becoming
anxious about the implementation and drop it for stress reasons (even laziness)
or I realize that I don’t have the time available to pull it off. Then, I never pick up the idea again and move
on to the next project.
This past Sunday (October 18th), my wife and I
attended the marriage class that we’ve been part of for Sunday school. This week’s message was about having goals
(small, mid-term, and long-term) for our marriage. As I thought about it, I realized that we
didn’t have any stated goals for our marriage and wondered what they would
be. During the class, we watched a video
from the series “The Story of Marriage” by John and Lisa Bevere. There was nothing in the message itself that
really stood out to me but I remember just having casual thoughts about their
video production techniques (to include lighting and camera angles). At the end, I noticed the list of cast with
their stated roles scrolling through in white text just like any other video production
that includes credits. It really struck
me at this time that if any of the ideas that I’ve had about videography were
going to come together, I would need a cast of people just like this list of
credits. I really don’t know why I hadn’t
thought about this much before but I started to realize that there is a talent pool
of people at the church that would excel in these roles. We have an elementary school principle that
knows about theatrics, we have worship leaders that can provide musical arrangements,
we have story tellers and script writers that are even working with the magazine, we have technically gifted individuals that have knowledge about
camera operations, and we even have former actors that have their own acting
school! The heaviness of this idea just
stood out to me and it was like I was seeing a puzzle come together. I knew at that point that I had to talk with
my wife to get her help and opinions on it.
But, we continued with the marriage class and then proceeded to the
church service.
During the church worship service, I continued to think
about the concept of putting together a “film group” that would be able to put
together videos for ministry purposes. I
really started thinking about the roles and realized that we had a deep talent
pool even with the church's Christian school. I thought about ideas for developing a
children’s video ministry with the theatrics of our elementary principle. I thought about our members with previous
acting experience taking the role of coaching people in our video projects on
acting techniques or even serving as a film director. As I was thinking about all of this, I knew
it was completely outside of my own capabilities. So, I laughed and said to God, “Ok God, but
you’re going to have to show me how.”
After service, I was in the children’s room waiting for my
daughters to be ready to leave. I was
holding the material that they gave out in the children’s service that day and was
sitting down. I remember just briefly
turning over the papers and the back of the handout said in bold white letters
on a red background “TAKE THE LEAD”.
This just completely struck me and I thought it might be a word from God
showing me what my role would be in this.
I kept this to myself at the time knowing I would share it with my wife
when we had time to discuss it.
As we were going home from church, I informed my wife that I
had something that I needed to talk with her about and she informed me that she
also had something from the worship service.
Apparently, God had also given her a vision in a new ministry
direction. I thought “Wow! She must have
the same ideas that I had.” So, we
waited until our daughters were in their nap time.
When we met to discuss, we were both excited that we had
something to discuss concerning a potential new ministry. My wife insisted that I tell my story first
even though I really wanted to have her say her side first to see if it lined
up with mine. I proceeded to tell her
what I saw from the credits and the talent pool at the church. She listened to me until I was finished and I
asked her about her vision. She said
that she was given an idea about an overall publications and communications
ministry. Her ideas were not limited to
just a “film group” but that it would cover all media types. We agreed that God might have been speaking
to us about our specific parts in the ministry but that they were very similar
in nature. As we were discussing this, I
remembered that a friend from our previous church would say the phrase “How do
you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
I took this as comfort and knew that my first bite would be to discuss
this with the church pastor to hopefully get further guidance and direction. I scheduled a meeting with him in hopes to
fulfill the call to “TAKE THE LEAD.”
