Gigi's Blog

Broccoli, celery, gotta be Veggie Tales

visioncgbc | May 19, 2008 20:42

Dreams, Part II (Chapter 21)

I've blabbered on for hours now about Bible college puppet teams and MTV and polygons and pay scales. I hope you're still with me, because it's time for me to ask you one simple question again: Have you ever had a dream?

      Boy, I sure have. I wanted God to use me to make a difference in the world. I wanted somehow to single-handedly offset all the lousy messages immature rock stars were packing into their music videos on MTV My dreams got a bit more specific as I got going, of course. I wanted to make movies and TV shows filled with biblical truth. I wanted to build a theme park. I wanted to create the next Disney. Be the next Disney. And my dreams were all going swimmingly for a while. Everyone loved the shows. Letters poured in from around the world, telling stories of the impact we were having. Kids conquering their fears. Dads decid­ing Christianity wasn't that "dorky" after all and returning to church with their families for the first time in years. Whole fam­ilies coming to Christ. All because of VeggieTales.

 

Inside Big Idea, however, things were not so rosy. My life had become so unpleasant that my Christian background suggested one of two scenarios must be true: (1) I was doing something hor­ribly wrong, or (2) I was doing something horribly right, and, as a result, was coming under withering spiritual attack. My pride insisted it must be the latter, but deep inside I wondered if that were the case. Time and time again I sat down to journal, and invariably I began by writing, "What am I doing wrong?"

 

And then, finally, it was all over. Finished.

 

After the bankruptcy sale, Classic Media set up a new com­pany called "Big Idea, Inc." to continue the production of VeggieTales under the direction of Terry Pefanis, the finance exec­utive who had, ironically, tried to buy Big Idea Productions on behalf of Gaylord Entertainment six years earlier. I had brought Terry to Big Idea as a last-ditch effort to avoid bankruptcy after parting company with my second president and CFO in early 2003. For whatever reason, Classic Media decided the "new" Big Idea would be located 'in Franklin, Tennessee, not far from Terry's home. Both of my positions-chief executive officer and chief cre­ative officer-were eliminated. Classic's executives asked me to continue providing voices for my characters and to write one script per year under the direction of the new company's man­agers. Lacking any other clear direction from God at that point, and in need of income, I agreed to a two-year creative services con­tract. I was now a freelance writer for the characters I had created.

 

God did not kill Big Idea. I never for a second blamed God for the collapse of my dream. I dusted the body for fingerprints, and they were all mine. What I wrestled with, instead, was the fact that God could have saved Big Idea Productions. He could have stepped in, erased my mistakes, and kept Bob and Larry in my hands for the sake of the kingdom. I mean, he's God, right? He can do any­thing. But he didn't.

 

He could have stepped in when Jonah hit theaters and doubled our opening weekend box office. He could have done that. But he didn't.

 

He could have shown up when Jonah hit stores on DVD, doubling the sales. That wouldn't have been hard for him to do. It would have saved Big Idea. But he didn't do that either.

 

And finally, of course, he could have swooped into federal court in Dallas to assure the jury would see the truth in the lawsuit between Big Idea and Lyrick Studios. The case seemed painfully clear to me-it wouldn't have taken much effort. Especially for God. He could have easily done it, and it would have saved Big Idea. But he didn't.

 

I left the courtroom that day deeply confused. Numb. How could God have let that happen? Why hadn't he shown up? Didn't he care about the work I was doing? The families that were being blessed? How could he just stand back from something that was doing so much good and watch it fall apart?

 

When I was about five years old, my younger brother fell down our stairs in his walker. They were linoleum-covered stairs with metal edges, and he tumbled down the full flight, head-over-heels in his walker. Amazingly, he came through with only five stitches in his upper lip. My grandmother and my mother both saw it happen, though, which must have been absolutely terrifying. They lunged to try to stop him from falling but couldn't get there in time.

 

But God can always get there in time. God never arrives "too late." What confused me so deeply is that I knew he saw me fall, and I knew he had the capacity to catch me-to prevent my acci­dent from happening. Yet he didn't. He just stood there, watching me tumble down the stairs.

 

What kind of God would do that? That is the question this book is ultimately trying to answer. Beyond all the business implications, beyond the interpersonal dramas and the thrill of seeing something wonderful come to life, I'm really chasing the answer to this ques­tion: What kind of God would stand back and watch a dream-a good dream, for ministry and impact-fall apart?

 

It's time to back up again. What we believe about God has a lot to do with how we were raised and the sort of messages we heard when we were kids. As you know by now, I grew up pretty deep in the evangelical Christian subculture. My childhood was filled with potlucks, church picnics, Bible conferences, and missions festivals. Growing up in such surroundings you bump into certain evangel­ical sayings that stick with you, sayings like, "Only one life, 'twill soon be past-only what's done for Christ will last." As a kid, that phrase really hit me. If the only things that mattered were the things I did for Christ, well, that's what I wanted to do. But there was another saying that stuck with me: "God can't steer a parked car." These phrases may not have been Scripture, but they sure smelled like it. Pithy little sayings like these were so frequently bandied about in my formative years that my personal theology may have been shaped as much by these bumper sticker senti­ments as by the Bible itself. As a result, I entered adulthood (1) absolutely committed to spending my life doing things for Christ, and (2) determined not to be a "parked car." I had to get going. I had to get busy.

 

But busy with what?

Mine was not the sort of Christian family accustomed to "hearing from God." Growing up, I don't believe I ever heard an adult in my family or my church begin a sentence with the words "God told me .. ." That sort of talk was for charismatics. We were logical Christians. Intellectual Christians. God had given us brains, and we were supposed to use them. So rather than asking God directly, I spent a lot of time thinking about what my work for Christ might be. Missionary conferences pitched mission elds at us kids like travel agents pitching vacation packages. latch the slides-make a commitment. But overseas missions idn't seem right for me, so I kept looking. Eventually, I found a lace where my storytelling gifts seemed to line up with a need 1at was tugging at my heart-a need to express God's Word 1rough popular media. And that would be my work for Christ!

 

That issue resolved, I got busy. I built, and built, and built. ven when I wasn't building, I was thinking about building, dream­19 up the things I would build next. And in the midst of it, God 1.0wed up, blessing my efforts. Great! I thought, Look at all the good m doing! But I was just getting started. If I could do that much Dod just by making a few videos, think how much good I could do . I made movies and toys and books and TV shows and theme arks! Think how much good I could do if I built the next Disney!

 

And so; I got busier.

And the good kept piling up, along with awards and accolades )r my "goodness." God must be pleased, I thought to myself, because sure am doing a lot of good now. I hoped God was pleased, any­ray, because all the work was taking a toll on me-on my health, lY marriage, and the good people that had joined my chaotically expanding company.

 

And then, in the midst of my great goodness, everything started to go wrong. Everything. "Ah! My good work!" I screamed. pedaled and steered furiously to keep my little car on the road - rocks looming on one side, a sheer drop-off on the other-just like 1 the movies. Good thing I was the good guy, I thought, because the good guy never goes over the cliff.

 

Except that I did. I fell. My dream and I fell all the way to bank­ruptcy court, where a gaggle of lawyers picked through the wreck­age, packed up all the good parts, and mailed them to Franklin, Tennessee, leaving me alone, with nothing. Nothing but my oId Big Idea office chair, my thoughts, and the God who had watched me bounce down the stairs without raising a finger.

 

For a while, of course, I just lay at the bottom of the stairs and moaned. Then I started asking questions.

 

"Why, God?"

 

"Why did you let that happen, because-I mean - wow­ - that hurt!"

 

"And I was doing so much good! Didn't you notice? Didn't you see it?"

 

"Why?"

 

And then, very quietly, he started whispering to me.

 

To be honest, God's whispers had started about eighteen months earlier when I received an e-mail from a woman I had never met. She congratulated me on my tremendous success and compli­mented me on all the impact I was having. But then she closed by advising me to keep an eye on my pride. "That's a little forward," I thought to myself, "considering we've never even met."

 

The e-mails from the mystery woman kept coming - every month, every other month. For more than a year. ''I'm glad things are going - so well for you," - of course, they weren't, but she didn't know that - "but keep an eye on your pride."

 

Humph. I filed the messages away as the rantings of an unin­formed fan. So God decided to turn up the volume a bit.

 

Prayer meetings at Big Idea were interesting affairs, because, unlike most churches, the Christians at Big Idea came from many backgrounds-Catholic, Episcopalian, Baptist, and Pentecostal, in addition to a big bunch of generic, white, suburban evangelicals like myself. We white, suburban evangelicals typically organized the prayer meetings and kicked them off with an opening prayer, which, in typical white, suburban, evangelical fashion, were usually short, polite, and pleasantly earnest-heartfelt, without expressing too much passion or expectation of divine response. Given my back­ground, this didn't strike me as anything but typical. Until, that is, one of our Pentecostals stood to pray-an African-American woman from Chicago's southwest side. Suddenly, I was at a differ­ent meeting entirely. Words and emotions and heartfelt petitions rolled through the room, surrounding and enveloping and lifting us all about a mile closer to heaven-so close I was sure I felt God's warm breath on the back of my neck. My music major wife learned early on about the difference between singing from your nose and singing from your diaphragm. For the first time, I was learning about the difference between praying from your head and praying from your heart. The generic suburban evangelicals kept organiz­ing the prayer meetings, but the real praying never started until the Pentecostals showed up.

 

But that last prayer meeting-the one right before the Lyrick trial-was different. There were only thirteen of us, huddled wearily together like the last survivors in a town under siege, and our prayers were marked more by fatigue and desperation than passion. The company had been battered by five rounds of layoffs and was now nervously considering what further horrors the law­suit could bring. And so we prayed desperately for God to save Big Idea, to keep Big Idea going, to keep the team together. We prayed that God would give me the wisdom to preserve the com­pany we all loved so much.

 

But not everyone was praying.

 

One of the women there that night was a good friend of my wife's and an amazing prayer warrior. But she wasn't praying-at least not audibly. She was sitting there silently, as if she wasn't quite comfortable with the tone of the evening-or something. We finished our desperate petitioning, and folks started filing out. She remained in her seat as the others left, then approached me.

"I think God has something for me to tell you," she began, I tensed up a bit, though hoping internally it was good news-I haps a prophetic word about the court case or the amazing I God was hatching to restore Big Idea.

 

"I don't think this is about God and Big Idea," she sail think this is about God and Phil."

 

My throat tightened. This wasn't the word I was looking She wasn't done, though.

 

"Before it's over," she continued, "I think you might need to say good-bye to all of us."

 

She turned and walked away. I couldn't breathe. Why would she say something like that? What a horrible "word from God.   Besides, it made no sense. How could this crisis not be about Big Idea? Big Idea was my dream-the work I was doing for Christ.  Big Idea was so much more important than me-more important to the world, more important to God. No, this crisis had to be about Big Idea. Walking out to my car, I tried to set her statement aside and focus on the work ahead of me.

 

It was at this point that God apparently got tired of whispering and decided instead to speak plainly. I mentioned my great-grandfather's Bible conference in northwest Iowa. A few years before the bankruptcy, my mother had assumed leadership of the conference. My wife and I hadn't attended in years. We'd just gotten too busy. "You should come this year," my mother implored "the speakers are going to be great." For a moment I consided it, but then I thought, Oh, I'm going bankrupt, and that really takes it out of you. No Bible conference for me, thanks. Not right now. So my mother went, and upon returning, handed me a tape, saying, “I think this was for you."

It was a sermon preached by an old family friend, a pastor named Richard Porter. He opened his talk by saying, "What does it mean when God gives you a dream, and he shows up in it and the dream comes to life, and then, without warning, the dream dies?  What does that mean?"

 

He had my attention.

 

Rick went on to tell his story. He was, at that time, senior pastor of a large church in suburban Vancouver and had spent eighteen months spearheading an area-wide revival effort. Churches had come together, and a revival service had been staged in a large stadium. The event was a huge success. God had showed up. The Spirit moved. Thrilled to see his hard work paying off, Rick immediately began planning follow-up meetings and couldn't help but wonder if, before long, folks down in the States would start hearing rumors of "something big happening in Vancouver."  The revival effort had become his life. His dream.

 

And then, without warning, 9/11 happened. Everyone got distracted, and the whole thing just died. Dead. Rick was so emotion­ally and physically exhausted that he couldn't get out of bed. His doctors told him to take twelve months off. His elders told he could have nine. Day after day, he lay in bed searching for answers, finding himself saying to the God he had served his entire life, "If this is what it's like to work for you, I'm not sure I can do it anymore." After a lifetime of tireless Christian service, the emotion of seeing God bring a dream to life, only to let it die, was more than he could bear.

 

In the middle of that dark period, he attended his daughter's church one Sunday and listened as the young pastor spoke on the story of the Shunammite woman - a story that, for Rick, would change everything.  In case you aren't familiar with the story of the Shunammite woman from 2 Kings 4, it goes something like this (Yes, I realize most business books or autobiographies or whatever this is don't delve into deep scriptural analysis.  Especially when written by Bible college dropouts. So sue me. It's relevant.)

 

The Shunammite woman was a wealthy woman in Israel who would prepare a meal for the prophet Elisha whenever he passed through town. Apparently she was a good cook, for soon Elisha was visiting so frequently (here my friend Rick inserted a joke about pastors and "free meals" that I will not repeat), that she went to her husband one day and proposed they build a room on the roof for the prophet. (Which, at the time, was not an insult.) Now when Elisha passed by, he could stop in for a meal and a nap.  Well, Elisha was so appreciative of her kindness that he called the woman before him and asked, "What can I do for you? What do you need?" "I don't need anything," the woman demurred. "I have a home among my people."

 

But Elisha's servant approached him later and said, "Sir, her husband is very old, and she has no son." Meaning, in that day, before long she would have no one to provide for her. She would be destitute. Elisha called the woman back and proclaimed, "A year from now you will hold a son."

 

Her response to Elisha's promise shows how deep this longing must have been. "No, my Lord," she said, "Do not lie to me." She wasn't calling Elisha a liar, of course. What she was really saying was, Don't go there. Don't touch that. Don't play with my emotions. It has taken me years to put that dream to sleep. Don't wake it up.

 

But true to Elisha's word, the next year finds her holding a baby.

 

Even if you have never struggled with the unfulfilled desire to have a child, you still can imagine how much she loves this baby. Not only is he her son, he's also her dream! Her future! Her promise from God! He's everything!

 

The boy grows and one day walks out to his father in the fields complaining of a headache. "Go to your mother," his father says. And the young boy goes to his mother, curls up in her lap, and dies.

 

And there she is, holding the dream God gave her, dead in her arms.

 

If anyone tells you the Bible is "dry," they aren't reading it.

 

The woman takes her dead son up to Elisha's room and lays him on the prophet's bed. Then she takes a donkey and heads quickly for Elisha. When Elisha sees her in the distance, he calls out, "Is every­thing all right? Is your husband all right? Is your son all right?"

 

"Everything is well," she replies. She explains what has hap­pened, though, and Elisha immediately springs into action. "Take my staff and my servant," he says, "Go and lay my staff on the boy."

 

But the woman refuses. "As surely as the Lord lives and you live, I will not leave you."

 

So Elisha returns with her. Upon arriving at the woman's home, Elisha enters the upper room alone and prays. He then lays down on the lifeless child, hand to hand, foot to foot, nose to nose. The boy sneezes and opens his eyes. Elisha brings him downstairs and hands him back to his mother.

 

That is the story of the Shunammite woman.

 

I know what you're thinking because I thought the same thing myself: What is the point of all that? I mean, why put the poor woman through that exercise?

 

The young pastor concluded his sermon by saying, "If God gives you a dream, and the dream comes to life and God shows up in it, and then the dream dies, it may be that God wants to see what is more important to you-the dream or him."

 

The Shunammite woman's response is clear. What does she do when her dream dies? She heads straight for the man of God. When he sees her coming and asks, "Is your husband all right? Is your son all right?" she says, "Everything is well." When he asks her to return home with his servant, she says, "As surely as the Lord lives and you live, I will not leave without you." She doesn't understand what is happening, but she is going to hang on to God no matter what.

 

C. S. Lewis said, "He who has God plus many things has noth­ing more than he who has God alone." Now, I have no problem with that statement when I think of it like this: "He who has God plus a big, shiny car has nothing more than he who has God alone." Sure. I'm fine with that. Or "He who has God plus a fancy house has nothing more than he who has God alone." No problem. But if God is infinite, we can't add anything to him. Nothing, added to God, can meet our needs any more than God alone. So we need to put everything in that blank.

 

"He who has God plus a wonderful, healthy marriage has nothing more than he who has God alone."

 

Hmm. Gee.

 

And the one that really got to me: "He who has God plus an amazing ministry impacting millions of lives around the world has nothing more than he who has God alone." Nothing more. As I came to the end of the tape, sitting in my car in my garage, Rick said this: "If God gives you a dream, and the dream comes to life and God shows up in it, and then the dream dies, it may be that God wants to see what is more important to you-the dream or him. And once he's seen that, you may get your dream back. Or you may not, and you may live the rest of your life without it. But that will be okay, because you'll have God."

 

I couldn't get out of the car. I couldn't speak. God was enough?  Just God? Even without all the work-all the crazy pedaling and accomplishing? Just God?

 

I started thinking about Abraham. He, too, had a "dream."  God had given him a promise, in fact. "From you I will bring a great nation - your descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the heavens." Whoa. Cool. But somewhere down deep, a little voice in Abraham's head was saying, "Well, that's great, God ... but I don't even have a son!"

 

"Okay," God replied, "first I'll give you a son."

 

Fifteen years later, here comes Isaac. Like the Shunammite woman, we can only imagine how much Abraham loves Isaac­after all, not only is Isaac his son, he's his dream! His promise! And then one day God shows up and says, "What do you love more, your dream or me?"

 

Abraham replies, "Sure, God, that's easy. You!"

 

"Okay then-put him on the altar. Kill him."

 

Long pause. Abraham's stomach drops. His eyes dart franti­cally around the room.

 

"But God-he's my son. He's my dream! The promise you gave me! He's how you're going to impact the world through me! He's everything!"

 

"Put him on the altar. Kill him."

 

And what God learned about Abraham that day was that he would let go of everything before he would let go of God.

 

And God said, "Okay, now I can use you."

 

As this truth sunk in, I found myself facing a God I had never heard about in Sunday school-a God who, it appeared, wanted me to let go of my dreams.

 

But why? Why would God want us to let go of our dreams?  Because anything I am unwilling to let go of is an idol, and I am in sin. The more I thought about my intense drive to build Big Idea and change the world, the more I realized I had let my "good work" become an idol that defined me. Rather than finding my identity in my relationship with God, I was finding it in my drive to do "good work."

The more I dove into Scripture, the more I realized I had been deluded. I had grown up drinking a dangerous cocktail-a mix of the gospel, the Protestant work ethic, and the American dream. My eternal value was rooted in what I could accomplish. My role here on earth was to dream up amazing things to do for God. If my dreams were selfless, God would make them all come true. My impact would be huge. The world would change. Children would rise up and call me blessed, and I would receive a hero's welcome into heaven. The most important thing, though, was to be busy. Industrious. Hardworking. A self-made man - er, Christian. The Savior I was following seemed, in hindsight, equal parts Jesus, Ben Franklin, and Henry Ford. The Christians my grandparents admired - D. L. Moody, R. G. LeTourneau, Bill Bright-were fan­tastically enterprising. The Rockefellers of the Christian world. Occasionally I would read about different sorts of Christians that would confuse me, like, say, Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa seemed like a great woman, but her approach struck me as highly ineffi­cient. I mean, she was literally feeding the poor. One at a time. Didn't she see that her impact would be much greater if she devel­oped some sort of system for feeding the poor that could be fran­chised around the world? She could be the Ray Kroc of world hunger! Wouldn't that be better?

And then there was Henri Nouwen. A Catholic priest with a bril­liant mind, Henri was invited to teach at Harvard. (Yes, that Harvard.) As a teacher, could you possibly have any more impact than that? God was clearly positioning Henri for some major impact. And then in 1985, after just three years at Harvard, Henri walked away to spend the rest of his life living in a community for the disabled, devoting a significant portion of his time every day to the care and feeding of a severely disabled young man named Adam. Why? Because he was convinced that is what God wanted him to do.

 

When I read Henri's story for the first time, I thought he was a loon. How could he think God was calling him from his high-­impact position at Harvard to a low-impact life quietly writing and caring for one handicapped man? God would never call us from greater impact to lesser impact! Impact is everything! How many kids did you invite to Sunday school? How many souls have you won? How big is your church? How many videos/records/books have you sold? How many people will be in heaven because of your efforts? Impact, man! Clearly, Henri was a loon. Mother Teresa - ­she was pretty good-but think what she could have done with an MBA and a business plan.

 

That's what I thought anyway, until I watched God stand back and allow my "world-changing good work" to fall apart. And now my friend Rick and C. S. Lewis and the Shunammite woman and Abraham were telling me that I was off track. Out to lunch. It was like a recess pile-on, and I was at the bottom. But God wasn't done yet. He was about to throw Henry Blackaby on the pile.

 

Henry Blackaby is a lifelong Baptist pastor and church planter who unexpectedly became a successful author in his late sixties after penning the devotional study Experiencing God, based on his own life experiences. My wife had enjoyed the book immensely, though I was too busy with my world-changing to pay much attention. Still, I was aware of Henry Blackaby and his book, enough so that it surprised me to see his name on the spine of another book tucked casually into a stack of books in our bed­room. It was a study of the life of Samuel. I would later learn my wife had purchased this second book - a devotional about Christian leadership - as a gift for me, then, mindful of prior failed attempts to play the role of the Holy Spirit in my life, had set it aside for a later date. And so here I was, minding my own business, sitting quietly and somewhat lackadaisically on the bench at the foot of our bed, when God decided it was time for Henry to jump on the pile.

 

"Hmm-didn't know Blackaby had written another book," I said.

 

I picked it up and opened it to week one, day one. A few para­graphs down I read these words: "If you start something and it does not seem to go well, consider carefully that God, on purpose, may not be authenticating what you told the people because it did not come from Him, but from your own head. You may have wanted to do something outstanding for God and forgot that God does not want that. He wants you to be available to Him, and more important, to be obedient to Him."

 

Dang. I glanced around to see if Henry was sitting in the room somewhere, chuckling at me. Over the next few weeks, I dug into Henry's study of the life of Samuel with a zeal previously reserved only for my own "big ideas."

 

Day four: "It is not more head knowledge we need; it is a heart relationship we must develop."

If he sounded a bit like Yoda, the analogy was fitting. My friend Dick Staub recently wrote a book called Christian Wisdom of the Jedi Masters, inspired by a conversation he had with a frus­trated young Christian friend in Seattle. After hearing the young man describe his longing for an older Christian mentor, Dick adroitly responded, "So you're saying you long to be a Christian Jedi, but my generation failed to produce a Yoda." Yep, the young man nodded. That was it exactly.

 

Suddenly I felt as if I were Luke Skywalker, running through the swamps of Dagobah with a seventy-year-old Baptist church planter on my shoulders. I had found my Yoda.

 

Day five: "It is not what is in your heart, nor what you want to accomplish for God, nor what you want to see in your church, nor even what you want to see in your group of churches. The key is not what you want to see (your vision), but what is in God's heart and what is in His mind."

Continued below 

 

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