Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Re:create Day four

Day Four was great!

Breakfast.

Morning worship led by Keith and Kristyn Getty. They write and sing modern hymns of such depth and beauty that my mind was reeling with the ideas the lyrics inspired, my ears were revelling in the sounds from his incredible piano and her beautiful voice, my eyes were screwed shut to prevent the tears from leaking out and my spirit was lost in wonder, awe and praise. If we had finished there, the day would have been the best one yet. But more was to come.

Then into our session on Branding led by Rick Dempsey, VP for Disney. Aaaaaagh - the enemy - run, run, they've stolen our cultural heritage. How can we forgive them for the desecration of Winnie the Pooh????
Well, quite easily if what Rick Dempsey says is true. There seems to have been a cultural revolution in the Disney boardroom. Apparently Disney is all about integrity now, a good example of which is how they stayed faithful to the original CS Lewis Narnia novels when making the Chronicles of Narnia movie and its (in production) sequels. Dempsey told us that Disney has re-discovered it's original values, specifically;
1. No bad language
2. No sexual content
3. No gratuitous violence
Well, that's encouraging. It seems that things are on the up at the House of Mouse. Rick Dempsey also encouraged us to concentrate on the core values of Christianity, and in the same way that Disney has, we must re-emphasise them to ensure that the church continues to do a good job of representing the love of Jesus to the world when the temptation is to jump on to whatever fashionable bandwagon is passing by at the moment and head off into a huge new adventure that ends up in a dead-end street.
Anyway, I liked Rick. He pulled my name out of the hat to win a car. :-)

Leeland - AMAZING. Speechless. Don't know how to begin to describe the depth of faith, character, talent, love, power of the Spirit, in this eighteen year old prodigy. He and his father and brother led us in a transcendent time of worship, rediscovering a passionate love and adoration of Jesus, and an inability to sing high A's and B's. He has no problem with them though, and has a cracking falsetto too.
Anyway, standing right in front of the speaker stack, God spoke to me again of not forgetting my first love - the love of Him and expressing that through public and private adoration aka worship.

Then the whole family gave us a talk, led by Leeland's mum, Cindy, on how to nuture an artist in your family. It was great! Funny, poignant, an amazing journey of faith. The highlight quote was this... "You can't take your stuff with you to heave, you can't take your house, your car, but you can take your children."

We then sat down with Randy and discussed the conference, good stuff, potential improvements (next year will be amazing. I'm booking my spot now!) and Randy shared his dreams and plans for the future. He is building a place to encourage and equip extremely gifted artists to discover, develop and discipline their calling. It is called Kalein and it is going to be incredible.

To be continued...

1 comment:

Finchley said...

hi mate - sounds like you've had an inspiring time!

love to the family

Ian

p.s. please vote (and get your friends to vote) for me here: www.musicfinity.com/finchleymusic