February 05th, 2013

All this week in San Antonio the SAICFF film academy is being held.  I am not there personally, but I have been keeping an eye out on some of the live blogging coming out of the festival.  There have been some great nuggets of wisdom, but for me the nugget that has stood out to me so far has been Steven Kendricks comments about pursuing excellence.  You can follow the conference blog live at http://www.visionforum.com/news/blogs/doug/default.aspx

Pursue a Vision Worthy of God

Stephen Kendrick shared ways to pursue excellence as Christian filmmakers.

• “Pursue a vision worthy of God. Nobody gets excited about mediocrity.
  
  
• “Focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses.
  
  
• “Be willing to work hard by the grace of God. Paul says, ‘To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.’ (Colossians 1:29)
  
  
• “Surround yourself with people who are better than you.
  
  
• “Be driven by love. Follow the Golden Rule. John Maxwell said, ‘Excellence becomes a lifestyle only when we practice the Golden Rule without giving it a thought.’ Our quality will go up.
  
  
• “Pursue God’s higher purpose. Two masons on the project were asked what they were doing as they built St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. One said, “I’m laying bricks. Another said ‘I am building a cathedral for God.’
  
  

“Why don’t people pursue excellence? Mediocrity means partial achievement, walking half way up a mountain. Mediocrity does not represent the Lord well. We can be prayerless in our pursuits when we are relying on our strength alone, rather than on Christ. We can be mediocre in our standards and refuse to give God our best.The Holy Spirit in us is driving us toward excellence as we represent an excellent God. 2 Chronicles 16:9 declares, ‘For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him.’

“We have the church and the world doesn’t. We have prayer and the world doesn’t. We have the Word of God and the world doesn’t.

“Father, our music is worse. Our movies are terrible. Father, that’s not who You are. And that’s not what you have called us to be. Lord you can do exceedingly above all that we could hope for. Give us incredible story lines. Give us wisdom of the technology. Give us sets where Your presence resides. You can do more with 5 loaves and 2 fish than anything the world can do. Help us to fall out of love with this world so that we may accomplish the good, pleasing and acceptable will of God. We pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.”