The work of art which I do not make, none other will ever make.

Did you ever get a feeling, have a strong inclination or hear a voice urging you to choose a certain path and discover something unexpected? There always comes a time in life when you find yourself at a fork in the road. Do you go down the road less traveled or the one which has been paved?

I have always have chosen the road less traveled, partly because I thrive in adversity and have a pioneering spirit. I have found in my life, life can be a series of thousands upon thousands of forks in the road. When you strip life down to its core, it’s all about making one choice after another. Add up all your choices and there’s your life. Life IS a fork in the road.

While covering the Death of Pope John Paul II in Rome, something happened to me. Something Big. Sitting on the plane as we returned after the Papal Conclave, God put a call on my life to use my talents to help the Kingdom. I really didn’t know what that looked like, nor how to go about making something like that happen; my life to that point was spent in Broadcast News and sitting in a pew on Sunday Mornings. God had a plan. Dana and I took the road less traveled when an opportunity from a church in rural Oklahoma called. That move was the hardest move we ever had to make, but it taught us so many things.

Three years a go my family joined Lawton First, a church birthed out of the great depression. It was a time of great excitement and change. I’ve spent the last few years helping the re shape it’s brand, develop a social media strategy to continue the conversation between Sundays, and most importantly develop a strong culture of storytelling. Those achievements pale in comparison to what God has done in the last three years and is continuing to do in our congregation and city.

Today with bittersweet emotions we let our Lawton First family know I would be stepping down from my role as the Director of Communications. It was a decision that we did not come to lightly, but a decision backed by God.

And after much conversation, prayer and fasting, I am excited to announce that I will be joining the team at Fellowship Technologies / Fellowship One in Irving, TX where I’ll be working as the Creative Director in the Marketing Department. I’m thrilled to be joining the team and working with my great friends there. Additionally, I have begun to work on a book with prospects it will be released next year, as well I plan on continuing to help the Church through speaking, consulting, and freelancing through Good World Creative.

While we venture down this new road, I know the next few weeks will be sentimental as we leave some of our closest friends, but we are very excited to see how God is going to use us in the future of sharing the story of Fellowship One and the Church.

Where do you think the church is when it comes to identification of relevance, community, engagement, and convenience?

Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today. Yet what is the church missing when it comes to storytelling?

If you were to write a book… who would be your mentor?

I mentioned the other day that I sensed that I was slipping into a creative purgatory and there seemed to be a lot of noise in my life, and all of this is happening when my creativity is at it’s zenith.  Isn’t it funny that when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.  I’ve done some soul searching the last day or so and really feel to keep from slipping into creative black hole I need to simplify.

I started thinking of the story of the mighty sequoia trees in the Pacific North West.  They stand almost 400 years old and 240 feet high—as tall as some of the highest buildings in Spokane!  But a few years ago, one of them toppled over for no apparent reason.  No windstorm, fire, flood, or ice.  No insect damage.  The conclusion: foot traffic.  People walking around the base of the tree had damaged the root system and contributed to the collapse.  Park officials since fenced some of the oldest and largest trees to keep the public from trampling the root systems of these giants.

The plight of the sequoia tree is merely a metaphor for my life and your life.  These great trees lived for hundreds of years withstanding everything mother-nature could throw at them, yet they can’t survive when there is no protection—no sacred enclosure around their root systems.  I think I need, we need, a sacred enclosure too—an inviolable time to protect my art and my creativity because without that, my roots get trampled, my art suffers.  I need time to listen and focus.  Bottom line is I’m over stimulated and have allowed the noise to take root in my mind.

What do I hope to achieve? In our efforts to live the ‘good life’, it’s easily to find ourselves overwhelmed by seemingly endless choices, checklist of tasks, decisions and activities.  I hope to slow down, and give time to remember who I am and what’s really important in my life.  And as I simplify, I hope to begin to listen intently my inner creative voice more and allow my creativity to flourish.

How am I going to do it? This will be my last blog post for the foreseeable future, additionally I will be logging off of Twitter and Facebook, and I will be going 100% analog. Of course, because of the nature of our world and communication, I will have my wife @danaknisely check all of my communication platforms and relay information and correspondence.  If you need to get hold of me, feel free to email me.

For the last few weeks there has been a lot of fighting, arguing, with myself trying to seek the truth.  Can I be honest with you… I mean really honest with you?  Over the last few months I have been slipping into a creative purgatory.  To be frank, I feel at times I’m treated more like a machine spitting out domesticated creativity than really producing something truly meaningful from my inner depths.  Sadly I’ve been relegated towards people thinking creative excellence is a high-powered faucet that can be turned on and off at will.  I fear becoming a widget.  There’s nothing fun about being an appliance, unless your an espresso machine.  I’m not a shiny machine that people jostle in-front of in wonderment of my golden, tinkling display of mechanized, electronic joy!  Seriously, machines are predictable and boring; that’s not me.

Yet every day, I feel like I’m fighting the status quo and the willingness to come against the fear and apathy that wants to keep me in a place of living beneath my potential.  I feel that my creative soul has been ripped away from me.  What can one do?

Should we shun the counsel of the world to avoid trouble whenever possible?

“Learn to accept in silence the minor aggravations, cultivate the gift of taciturnity, and consume your own smoke with an extra draft of hard work, so that those about you may not be annoyed with the dust and soot of your complaints.” – William Osler

The Israelites crossed the Red Sea after God parted the water.  Then they spent the next forty years wandering in the desert before they crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land.  They should have been able to make the journey in about eleven days.  Why did it take so long?

When we read the story, we discover that one of their major issues was complaining.  Instead of remembering the victory of the Red Sea crossing, they complained.  They complained about the food and the conditions and their leader and each other.  Is that why it took so long?

Ok I’ve been dealing with this for a while and not sure how I feel about being “second guessed.”  How do you feel about it?  I have a feeling we all feel the same way. But, if I really can be second guessed, perhaps that means that my first effort was a guess.  It shouldn’t be, but sometimes I suppose it is.

So, I guess my point is that second guessing should never really happen.  If I’m doing it to someone else, I’m being judgmental.  If I’m doing it to myself, I shouldn’t have been guessing to begin with.

You’re probably guessing that I’ve said enough about this. You’re probably right.