A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on The Stainless Steel Soapbox about fighting the tyranny of the urgent. In it, I stated that I needed to make several decisions to combat it and change the way I’ve been doing things. This has proven to be more difficult than I anticipated. One major decision has come in stages without me realizing where it was leading.
I need to take things off my plate. The truth is, I’ve got far too many areas to work in and none of them are getting the attention they deserve. Because of that, no progress has been made on anything. All excuses aside, I’m just overloaded, dividing my energy into too many directions. It’s overwhelming to take up all that’s in front of me. With limited time and energy, I’m not getting anything done and what little I’ve accomplished has not been up to the standards of work I expect of myself.
Through prayer and counsel, I’ve had to look at my priorities and where each demand on my time and energy fit into them. There were winners and losers. The bottom line, the winner must be the one that the Lord has ordained as my calling and the great task He assigned, Freedom Church. The urgency of income has kept me from doing anything significant with Freedom Church. It’s the reason I dropped to part time at my day job but has commanded the least of my time and energy. I’ve come to see this as a major act of disobedience the I need to repent of before the Lord will bless us again.
The big loser is Deep Mystery. The time I’ve spent on the studio has been driven by the urgency of building an income. In truth, none of those efforts has resulted in any real income. The business plan has always been a mess. I’ve never been able to settle on what services to offer, who the customers should be, or how much to charge for most of what I could offer. The only part of the studio I get excited about are internal projects like web videos, audio books for friends, and other personal projects. Even to help the church, I just can’t get excited about anything that I would get hired to do.
That’s not to say that the studio is going away. It will continue to exist as the home for the projects I want to work on, mostly of my own creation. I will still take on select work from friends and aquantences but I’m not going to advertise. I’m going to take a little time and alter the website to reflect the changes. Deep Mystery Studio will become what it should have been all along, a place to build great media to preach the Gospel, build up the Body of Christ, and provide alternatives to the existing media. However, that time isn’t right now.
I was lead to make changes to build Freedom Church but far too many decisions the last couple of months have not been built on a foundation of prayer but desperation for money. There’s been a lot of really bad decisions that I believe have lead to the Lord’s hand of blessing to be removed from our finances. We spent the last few years able to pay the bills and have money left over. We started this year in the black but as bad decisions, health problems, and a shot of disobedience that we didn’t even know we were committing compounded, we’re in the red now.
The time has come to cast off the crap and focus on what I set out to do. If we’re going to experience God’s provision, then we need to do what He told us to do. I need to do what He told me to do. That is Freedom Church.
Look for more posts on the FC Facebook page, more videos, and blog posts on what’s needed to launch. In the short term, due to some problems with setting up an official FC bank account (thanks to a government program called “Operation Choke Point”), I’m setting up a temporary working name to take advantage of existing accounts. Until the incorporation for the church is complete, Deep Mystery Ministries will be the working name for the purposes of fundraising. That way, no one needs to write a check to a person but to Deep Mystery. It may even continue past that as a part of the church as we grow, if the Lord leads.
There will be more soon. Check here and on the Freedom Church blog.
Mike's Miscellaneous Thoughts 