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I will Pursue Excellence.

Why no one sets out to sell out, how compromise starts with small things, and how Kaizen helps artists get a little better every day.
I will Pursue Excellence.
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I will pursue excellence in my craft and continually grow and learn.

Don't settle.

Excellence is not the pursuit of perfection,
Excellence is not settling for less than the best.
The danger is always to settle for the good,
and miss the best.
The danger is always to cut corners
and make short term decisions
thinking it will have not long term consequences.

I used to go pray in the
Massachusetts State House
at seven in the morning.

Sometimes I would just walk the halls and
stop and pray in front of different offices.
One morning I was standing in the doorway
of the President of the State Senate's office.
I was looking at the stained glass on the doors,
not praying,
when a lady with a box of donuts,
two cups of coffee in her hands
and a big case slung over her arm came up the hall.

"Will you open the door for me and give me hand?"

Before I new it,
I was in the office of the head of the legislature.
This woman was her aide.

"What are you doing?" she asked.
"I'm praying."
She recoiled.
I explained I was praying for good government in Massachusetts,
not for any political party.

For perspective,
the Massachusetts legislature has had
one party rule for decades,
and usually
when someone gets into these high ranking
positions in the statehouse
they leave office
in handcuffs.

I had a nice conversation with the woman
with the donuts,
although she was disturbed that I was
praying in the statehouse.
Since this encounter,
the party in power
has banned all prayer on the premises.

I walked out of that encounter
with an important lesson.
No one sets out
to become a crooked politician.
You set out to be a force for good,
and become one over time.
You start out a hobbit,
grab the ring of power,
and become Gollum.

At some point,
you sacrifice your principles
and you settle for less
in order to further what you think
is your just cause.
Then you owe someone a favor,
and so you have to do it again,
and the next time your handshake deal
made you indebted to some other player.
And eventually,
you are the problem
you initially set out to solve.

As I was told in my ordination process,
"You need to become a priest.
Just do whatever they tell you right now
and go along,
and once you get ordained
you can do whatever you want."

The only problem with that is
anything I said after I bowed to evil,
would ring hollow.
There is no authority
for the sellout.

John speaks of this in his first letter,
where,
in the original it says that any spirit that "dissolves Jesus"
is the spirit of Anti-Christ.
This is much closer to real life
where very few openly deny Jesus at first.
Instead, it happens drip by drip"
"Let's try this strategy
instead of praying about it."
"Let's do Christian sounding things
without making people uncomfortable."
"Let's not ruffle too many feathers."
"Let's not offend the big donors."
Just like the corrupt politician
who started out with good intentions,
Churches that started out in revival
can end up openly serving Satan.

After I started the series on witchcraft in the church,
I started to get messages from artists and creative people
who are being targeted.
I have been a target for a long time.
If you refuse to bow,
you are going to feel the resistance.

The temptation
is always to bow.
But it does not start
with the Golden Idol.
It starts with
you have to eat the ham sandwich.
Daniel was first told
that if he would just stop keeping kosher,
then he would have more influence
in the court.
Instead,
he found a wise way to not sell out.
He asked if he could just eat vegetables.
He stood in the small things.

If you want to live an excellent life,
you have to make the decision in the small things.

After a lot of little decisions to not bow,
the Golden Idol and the Lion's Den
were not that hard.
The choice was made in the easy steps.
That is where the path of excellence begins.

I am fortunate that I had several excellent
priests and pastors who taught me to celebrate
the liturgy.
One of them
Father Andrew Mepham
made love to the linens
when he folded them after the mass.
Every movement was a prayer,
every fold was an act of worship.
His example had a huge impact on my life.
His favorite offertory sentence is the one
I use during the daily eucharist,
and it's a prayer for him in thanksgiving.

At Asbury one time a student was sloppy,
and the professor called him on it.
The guy said, "Big deal, it's just some little thing."

The professor, Dr. Ellsworth Kalas, replied,
"Life is made of little things."

I have spoken at many prophetic art events.
One of the reasons prophetic art is fading away
is that the quality over all is very poor.
I began teaching people to learn to draw
and learn basic design principles years ago.
This could have been an art movement.
Instead it became a religious fad.

And saddest of all,
a lot of these immature artists
sold out and tried to make a buck of it.
Sellout.

So as a disciple of Jesus Christ
you have to make a decision
will I walk in excellence?
Will I grow and increase?
Because if you stop growing you will shrink.
This is about making the decision to become all that you are created to be.

Excellence is not about perfection
0r not failing.
Fear of failure is the greatest path to compromise.
People settle because they avoid
trying
in order to avoid failure.

One of the greatest failures in my lifetime
is Sears, Roebuck, and Company.
They had all the infrastructure,
systems,
and experience
to deliver goods to the whole world.
In the late nineteen nineties,
their board decided that people
didn't want to order from catalogs anymore.
They shut down their catalog
and their mail-order business
and focused on brick and mortar
stores.
They eventually went bankrupt.

The year after they shut down their catalog business,
Amazon.com was formed.

You have to keep growing.
And growing and excellence follows
from listening to God and developing that daily yes.

So what does it look like to pursue excellence in your craft
and to keep growing?
What does it look like to not sell out or settle?

As I said,
it is not about perfection.
It is about growing.
And it is also about being honest
about what you are producing.

If you are a visual artist,
You need to learn to draw.
You need to know basic design principles.
You need to understand color,
and you need to know the limits of what
your chosen medium will allow.
I wish I could get everyone to take Myron Barnstones
drawing and design course.
You need to develop a painterly style
like the system taught by Alex Tsavaras.
It will change your life.

If you are a writer,
you need to master grammar and spelling.
You need to develop your voice,
you need to understand style
(which means you need a style manual
like the MLA handbook, or the Chicago Manual of Style)
and you need to do it every day.
You need to not lean on online tools,
but develop real skills yourself.
And you need to let others read your work and tell you the truth.

If you are a musician
you need to learn your instrument,
practice,
and learn music theory, music history,
and composition.
And you need to not depend on online tools.

I could go on with every craft,
but you get the idea.
A lot of Christians get excited
about what God is giving them
and they start promoting and selling
before they have a saleable product.

Yeltsin has asked me about painting
for his college courses,
and I told him
don't worry about the subject matter,
paint a good painting.

Like I said,
excellence is not about perfection.
When I teach people about discipleship
and prayer
some people try it for a week or so,
and then they miss a prayer meeting,
a daily reading or something,
and they decide
that since they didn't get it perfect
they won't try any more.

No.
keep going,
even when you do it less than perfect.
You can steer the car when it is moving.
You can't steer it when it stops.
And when the car stops moving,
it eventually starts rolling backward.
This is the case in the spiritual life
and in your professional life.

One of the best concepts to learn is
KAIZEN.
"Kaizen is the [Japanese] practice of
continuously improving through small,
practical changes that accumulate
into meaningful long-term results."

Every day
you make a small change for the better.
You may start out drawing people who look like
deformed aliens.
Maybe every day
you take five minutes a day
and you learn to draw
basic proportions until you master them.
Maybe you have trouble getting still
to listen to God,
so you add five minutes of silence every day.

When you start choosing
small progress
every day,
you begin to experience the practice
of eternally becoming.

One day at a time,
one more change at a time,
one little success at a time.
And you don't have to settle.
It begins with saying no to the ham sandwich
and eventually you see God shut the mouth of the lion.

And the cool thing about Kaizen
is it gives you the freedom to make little mistakes
and not great big ones.
You continually improve.

We live in an age of every day mediocrity.
And mediocrity becomes evil.
And evil becomes banal,
and then everything becomes corrupted.
When something gets corrupted
there is only one direction
to full rot.
And full rot is only good for compost.

So today,
make a decision.
I will pursue excellence.
I will not be a secular, mediocre artist
or creative person who happens to be a Christian.
I will express
and reflect
the fullness of becoming.
I will get better every day.
I will make a little difference.
I will not settle for the spirit of the age.
I will not bow down
to the idol
you have made.

Come under the roof

Belonging House is a movement of artists and creative people, now reaching thirty-eight nations, learning to listen to God together. We are not trying to survive the storm. We are the storm.

People like us do things like this.

Fear not God can be trusted.

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