The Process - Torn Down, Built Up
It's Monday - so i't blogreading day for me. I check out a lot of leadership blogs, read a lot of articles and jump from link to link. It was one of those link to link to link jumps that took me to this article about Spiderman the Musical. Now, Bono and the Edge of U2 did the music for this musical that has become a monster, so I'm interested to begin with, right? And, you know, it's Spiderman so, though I'm not a Marvel Superhero fan, it's still part of my childhood culture...
Anyway, in the article, Peter Schneider, former chairman of Walt Disney Studios (so I figure he's got some insight into such things), talks about why this production became a bit of a nightmare (yeah, it's grossing lots of money - but has cost a fortune to produce and has been fraught with problems). This paragraph is particularly compelling:
"A show does not come off the rails in one day." A ministry does not come off the rails in one day. A Christ-follower does not come off the rails in one day. Looking back at the wreckage of bad decisions in my life over the past 30 or so years (I can't really say too many decisions before I was twelve or thirteen really have had that great an impact on my life...) I have to agree with exactly what Schneider says above: it's not the big decisions - it's the culmination of the little decisions.
And it happens all the time, in all kinds of venues: creative areas like the aforementioned musical - where one compromise demanded another compromise, which instigated another change in the original vision, which...ugh... It can happen in ministries - Jim Bakker wrote in his book I Was Wrong*** that there really wasn't one moment where he could look back on and say, "Okay, if I just hadn't done that one thing, all this would not have happened." It was a perfect storm of lots of little moments. It happens in marriages - most people don't set out to have an affair (yeah, I know it happens, but those people are just plain stupid) but it's the little flirtations, the stolen moments, the emotional bonds that build over snippets of conversations and momentary encounters. And let me riff on marriage a minute - how often have I seen two people - ten, twenty, thirty years of marriage - that are worlds apart emotionally and spiritually - not because at some point they said, "I want to move in the opposite direction as you" but through missed opportunities, unresolved issues, life stuff that happens.
But here's the good news: It doesn't have to be that way. And if it is, it doesn't have to stay that way. A long time ago (wow, almost five years...really?) I wrote a long article on ye old blog about Sanctification****. And it's funny, because getting it all back together, you usually really can point to a single moment, a single decision where you said, "Okay, this has gone on long enough." It's the moment of salvation for the Christ follower, right? It's when the director of the show brings in the writer and says, "Okay, this just won't work. It's a great vision, but we can't pull it off. Let's make this work." (As opposed to what I perceive usually happens, which is, "I've got a better idea that rawks so let's do my idea because it is too full of coolness") It's when the husband and wife say, "What happened? Where are we? We need help." When the alcoholic says, "I have a problem." Where did it go wrong? That should NEVER be the first question. That question comes later, it's better, "How do we get back to where we need to be?" It is coming to Christ with all that we've blown, and laying it at the cross.
And then the process begins to rebuilding, renewing, redeeming, recreating (I Cor 6:11) us in the image of Christ. Sanctification.
***Not a Jimmy Bakker fan, no - and I haven't read all of this book (I THINK I read about a third of it). If memory serves, and please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but if memory serves I've been told that by the end of the book it's not so much "I was wrong" as "Lots of people around me were wrong and they ruined me and I was wrong to trust them..."
****Oh yeah, I DO reference Jimmy Bakker AND sanctification in the same freaking blog post. I'm just that...um...random...
Anyway, in the article, Peter Schneider, former chairman of Walt Disney Studios (so I figure he's got some insight into such things), talks about why this production became a bit of a nightmare (yeah, it's grossing lots of money - but has cost a fortune to produce and has been fraught with problems). This paragraph is particularly compelling:
A show does not come off the rails in one day. It is the cumulative impact of many wrong turns. In Jon Krakauer's book "Into Thin Air," there is a moment when the climber thinks he is going to die and wonders how he got into this awful and dangerous position. Looking back, he realizes that it was not one big mistake of judgment. Instead, it was 10 little decisions that seemed inconsequential along the way but, in retrospect, turned out to have led him into a precarious and nearly fatal situation. At some point, the cumulative impact of all those wrong decisions makes it impossible to regain your bearings.
"A show does not come off the rails in one day." A ministry does not come off the rails in one day. A Christ-follower does not come off the rails in one day. Looking back at the wreckage of bad decisions in my life over the past 30 or so years (I can't really say too many decisions before I was twelve or thirteen really have had that great an impact on my life...) I have to agree with exactly what Schneider says above: it's not the big decisions - it's the culmination of the little decisions.
And it happens all the time, in all kinds of venues: creative areas like the aforementioned musical - where one compromise demanded another compromise, which instigated another change in the original vision, which...ugh... It can happen in ministries - Jim Bakker wrote in his book I Was Wrong*** that there really wasn't one moment where he could look back on and say, "Okay, if I just hadn't done that one thing, all this would not have happened." It was a perfect storm of lots of little moments. It happens in marriages - most people don't set out to have an affair (yeah, I know it happens, but those people are just plain stupid) but it's the little flirtations, the stolen moments, the emotional bonds that build over snippets of conversations and momentary encounters. And let me riff on marriage a minute - how often have I seen two people - ten, twenty, thirty years of marriage - that are worlds apart emotionally and spiritually - not because at some point they said, "I want to move in the opposite direction as you" but through missed opportunities, unresolved issues, life stuff that happens.
But here's the good news: It doesn't have to be that way. And if it is, it doesn't have to stay that way. A long time ago (wow, almost five years...really?) I wrote a long article on ye old blog about Sanctification****. And it's funny, because getting it all back together, you usually really can point to a single moment, a single decision where you said, "Okay, this has gone on long enough." It's the moment of salvation for the Christ follower, right? It's when the director of the show brings in the writer and says, "Okay, this just won't work. It's a great vision, but we can't pull it off. Let's make this work." (As opposed to what I perceive usually happens, which is, "I've got a better idea that rawks so let's do my idea because it is too full of coolness") It's when the husband and wife say, "What happened? Where are we? We need help." When the alcoholic says, "I have a problem." Where did it go wrong? That should NEVER be the first question. That question comes later, it's better, "How do we get back to where we need to be?" It is coming to Christ with all that we've blown, and laying it at the cross.
And then the process begins to rebuilding, renewing, redeeming, recreating (I Cor 6:11) us in the image of Christ. Sanctification.
***Not a Jimmy Bakker fan, no - and I haven't read all of this book (I THINK I read about a third of it). If memory serves, and please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but if memory serves I've been told that by the end of the book it's not so much "I was wrong" as "Lots of people around me were wrong and they ruined me and I was wrong to trust them..."
****Oh yeah, I DO reference Jimmy Bakker AND sanctification in the same freaking blog post. I'm just that...um...random...
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