Teacher or Preacher? A pet peeve of mine

  I attend an independent Baptist church, and  I know a lot of preachers.  Some are good preachers, some are not so good, some are goofy, some are grave. I’m telling you, I know a lot of preachers, and I’ve noticed  over the last few years a rather odd prejudice among some  of the preachers I know. That prejudice is against ‘teaching’.

  Now the problem with addressing this issue is I have to use specific examples so that everybody understands what I’m talking about, and I don’t want to name names.  So I have to be specific, and non-specific all at once. Let me try it this way.

  Surely all of us have seen a movie or TV show that announced at the onset that it was ‘Based on actual events’.  I have also seen where a program or movie claimed it was ‘Inspired by actual events’.  My understanding of the difference between the two is that to be based on actual events means that you   tried to stick the original event, but may have added some things or removed some scenes for narrative effect.  ‘Inspired’ by actual events means I got the idea from something that happened, but felt no need to stick to the facts.  For example, a movie  based on actual events would have  the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor, but focus on some  ridiculous ‘love story’, simply using the historical event as a backdrop. An ‘inspired’ movie would have Martians bombing Cincinnati and maybe a few ninjas thrown in.  I have rarely seen a movie that couldn’t have been made better by the inclusion of ninjas.

  Now back to the preaching.  Some preachers base their material off of the Bible, and some preachers have material that is merely inspired by the Bible.   I really don’t have any issue with either approach except when a person who prefers one approach is critical of a person who leans towards the other approach.   What does this have to do with ‘teaching’?  Keep reading, you’ll see.

  I’ll give you an example.  Let’s say I was going to preach on alcohol. I could take the time to show you what the Bible says about the subject. I could cover all of the relevant passages, giving their context, and not only explain the Bible position on it, but also address the most common complaints against the Bible position.  That can be done with passion, with eloquence, and under the power of the Holy Spirit. In fact, as far as I can tell, that’s pretty much the job description of a preacher.  That would require from me some studying, some laboring in word and doctrine. It would also require some spiritual discernment to keep the message free from my own opinion , interpretation or spin and God’s power to make it all bearable for the listener. That would be a message that was ‘based’ on the Bible.

  Or I could quote half a verse and then put on a series of theatrics designed to stir up the crowd that already agrees with me and shout down anyone that disagrees with me. That would be a message ‘inspired ‘ by the Bible.  Keep in mind that my half a verse may be correct, and in the midst of all my showmanship I may actually be taking the Bible position on the subject, but I would be remiss in not presenting to my audience the ‘whole counsel of God’ on the matter. Does everybody do this from time to time? Absolutely.  Do the constraints of time sometime force us to take shortcuts in our explanations? Sure. But do preachers that I know that are friends of mine use theatrics as a substitute for preparation? You can bet your sweet bippy on it.

  Here’s the real irony of it all. The ‘inspired’ crowd will then run to the Bible to prove that the ‘based’ crowd isn’t really preaching, they are teaching. Some will say that a proclivity towards ‘teaching’ ( as they define it) is a sign of apostasy.  And after all EVERYBODY knows that there exists this huge chasm of difference between the two. Or is there?

Well, for starters…

•      The word ‘teach’ occurs 107 times in the Bible

•      The word ‘teaching’  occurs  25 times

•      The word ‘taught’ occurs 79 times

•      The word ‘preach’ occurs 47 times

•      The word ‘preached’ occurs 59 times

•      The word ‘preaching’ occurs 27 times

  I encourage you to look into this, because due to the enormity of the topic we would be hard pressed to cover it all without  it being both exhaustive and exhausting, but we will hit the high points to get the discussion started.

   In Exodus 4, God  tells Moses he will teach him what  he must  say to Pharaoh.  Moses is entrusted with teaching the children of Israel the statues of God in Exodus 18 and 24 as well as Leviticus 10 and 14, and Deuteronomy 1 and  5. The children of Israel are commanded to teach future generations in Deut 4, 6, 11, and 24.  God teaches people in Psalm 25, 32, 34, 51, and 132 as well as Isaiah 28 and Jer 32. Jesus Christ teaches in Matthew 4, 9, 11and 21, as well as in Mark 4, 6, 8, and 11. His teaching is also mentioned in Acts 1 .Jesus taught daily according to Matt 26.  The Holy Spirit has a teaching ministry according to Luke 12 and John 14.  Believers are commanded to teach all nations in Matt 28. The apostles taught in Acts 4, 5.  Paul   claimed to be a teacher in 1 Corinthians 4.  He commanded Timothy to teach in 1 Timothy 4 and 6.  One of the qualifications for bishop is an aptness to teach according to 1 Tim 3 and 2 Tim 2.  Women are entrusted with teaching other women in Titus 2 .

  Teaching in and of itself, cannot be bad. The issue appears to be what is taught. Teaching does not appear, in and of itself, to be an indicator of apostasy. In fact, quite the opposite seems to be true in light of Hosea 4:6 .  But for some reason the ‘inspired’ crowd runs to 2 Timothy 4:3 to make their case that  , having defined  a systematic explanation of  the bible position as ‘teaching’,  teaching  is an indicator of  some sort of apostasy.  This may work for  church members who  never look down at their lap to see what the book  they are hearing quoted actually says, but hopefully anyone that has made it this  far in this posting won’t mind if we  just  quote the whole passage, for  contexts’ sake.

I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom;  Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove , rebuke , exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.  For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;  And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. 2 Tim 4:1-4

  Notice a couple of things.  I am to reprove, rebuke, and exhort, but I am supposed to do all 3 with longsuffering and doctrine.  Not theatrics, not clever stories, but rather doctrine. This falls under the heading of ‘preach the word’.  Moving on we see that people some people will not endure sound doctrine, but rather embrace false doctrine. The issue isn’t that people are being taught, the issue is what they are being taught.  As ministers of the gospel we are told to not only be apt to teach, but to instruct those that oppose themselves. To do less and waste precious time  with   showmanship and silly nonsense that  we  picked up from  our favorite preachers ( Gal 5:20) is bad enough, but to take the position that by doing it  wrong we’re actually doing it  right and replacing diligent prayerful study with passion or zeal is almost  a criminal   misuse of our calling.  I think preachers will give an account at the judgment seat of Christ as to how they neglected the command to study and prepare.

"This story shall the good man teach his son.."

Then Jerubbaal, who is Gideon, and all the people that were with him, rose up early , and pitched beside the well of Harod: so that the host of the Midianites were on the north side of them, by the hill of Moreh, in the valley. And the LORD said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying , Mine own hand hath saved me.  Now therefore go to, proclaim in the ears of the people, saying , Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early from mount Gilead. And there returned of the people twenty and two thousand; and there remained ten thousand. Judges 7:1-3

  I don't know if you have ever thought about this, but for the rest of their lives, 22,000 men had to tell their sons when other people talked about the battle against the Midianites that they went home with  the women and children. Why? Because they were afraid.
 It's OK to be afraid. In fact, only a fool is never afraid.  Fear can make you cautious,  make you walk circumspectly, make you think and rethink what you're about to  do or say, but if it paralyzes you, imprisons you, and drives you from the battle and causes you to disobey the words of God, then fear becomes a sin.   
  Instead the Bible  gives clear commands to the child of God on how to act regardless of your feelings or ability.  We are told in Psalms 31:24 to "be of good courage".  We are told in 2 Tim 1:7 that God has "not given us the spirit of fear."  In 2 Sam 2:12,  we are encouraged to "play the man for our people"; to continue on in the face of  the fear that would paralyze us, and drive us from the field of battle. We are told to confront those things that would cause us to  abandon our  responsibilities and   carry on for the cause of Christ, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of  our  abilities or lack thereof. 
  Three separate times in the book of Joshua, on the cusp on great battles in which his mettle would be tested, God commands Joshua to be "strong, and of a good courage.  I don't think it's a stretch to say that Joshua was probably  quite reasonably afraid.  A lack on his part on his part would  cost men their lives unnecessarily.  He  was  probably afraid of the battle ahead, and specifically  whether or not he had what it takes.  The truth is, he didn't have what it takes, none of us do. 
  In 2 Cor 2 , the Bible says that we are a savour of life unto those  that live, and a savour of  death unto those that perish. it then poses the question "who is sufficient for these things?" My reply is simple; I am not, and neither are you.  The things we accomplish for God  are, by their very nature outside of our abilities and  beyond our strength.  Nobody has the courage to do consistently what God has commanded us to do. But knowing that, and acknowledging that, is the secret to courage. After all, the Bible  tells us in Ps 27:14 to "Wait upon the Lord, and be of good courage" even as  Proverbs 3  admonishes us to "lean not unto  thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy path."  Waiting upon the Lord will give us the strength , and the courage to carry on despite our incompetence.
  I will give you an example.  I  have een involved in  publick ministry for a few years now ( almost 18) and it is my joy  to be able to  take  'newbies' outon the street. A few years back, a young man who was a survivor of my Sunday School class went with us up to Savannah to preach during the St. Patricks Day parade.  It was his first time out, and  when it was his turn to preach, he locked up. This is not  an unheard o fevent, in fact, it's  pretty common. So one of us  jumped in and filled in  for him in order to give him a moment to gather himself. Soon it was his turn again, with the same result.  We made the rounds again, and for the  third time , he  found himself paralyzed with fear at  preachign to the  hostiel audience.  It was almost tiem to  break for lunch, so I  told him not to worry about it, that it happens soemtimes and that  I was certain he woudl  get it next time.   I saw resolve flare up in his eyes and he told me "No, I've got to do this." He closed his eyes, reared back and  said , as loud as he could "THE BIBLE SAYS..." and he was off and running.  It was one of the greatest examples of true courage I had ever seen, an example of carrying on  in the face of  great fear.

  One of my favorite pieces of  Mr. Shakespeares writings comes out of Henry V.  After laying  claim to the French throne, Henry  goes to battle. In 1549, at the battle of Argencourt, Henry's  exhausted troops were met with fresh French reinforcements.  According to  Mr. Shakespeare, this is a how Henry imparted  courage to his men:

If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.”
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

  It  has been my honour  for the last  several years to  labour with some truly brave men.  I am  a pygmy of the faith compared to them. Someday  when we are are old and toothless we will have great stories to tell of how God supplied the courage for us to serve him, and how that only  started when we realized how helpless  and incapable we were without him.

The Dollars and Sense of Facebook

Those of us that  are trying to make our mark on the world, however small and in whatever arena, owe it to ourselves to understand the  best ways to make that mark in this new digital age.  If our goals are to impart information or persuade or discuss ideas, we have to know how to get those ideas in front of the  biggest collection of eyeballs.  That is crucial, because if all we do  is talk to each other, as entertaining as that may be, it doesn't  expand the greater cause.  so in the interest of helping  the little  guys out there like myself, I'm going to try to be a  bit transparent and tell you what has and has not worked for  me.
  I talked in an earlier post about  when I wrote and self-published my book.The  real problem with self-publishing is that the onus for all promotion falls on your shoulders.  As much as I  lament the gatekeepers, one thing they are good at is  letting you know what it is that they are promoting.   I'm not.  As a result, we had no idea how to get the word out. 
    I started out by emailing  people I knew to let them know the book was available. That got us a smidgen of traction.  I wrote to very clever people and asked them to review the book, although my approaches were probably quite amateurish. I gave books away ,another advantage to the digital age. Some people while admitting that they were too busy to review the book, offered some great advice and  did spread the word a bit.   Some people reviewed the book and said very nice things to people in their sphere of influence.  That gave us a bit more traction.  Some people  said absolutely nothing, but people are busy, so that's ok.
  My wife has a Facebook account that  is linked to her hairbow business and  another business venture of ours, so we put the word out in that area, letting all of her  list of contacts know about the book.  That didn't really didn't  get  us anywhere. I  think  the issue  was an issue of demographics. Hairbow customers , who are mostly moms, probably weren't my  target audience.
  We started a FB page dedicated to the book, and invited people we knew to join the page.  That went really pretty much nowhere.  I had  done a couple of radio shows  during this time and had seen a modicum of sales success from that, so I decided to go ahead and pay for an ad with Facebook.
  Now  if you're not familiar with how this works, it's pretty simple. FB allows you to  do a little ad that will run on the sidebar of people's pages.  The more money you spend, the more  people will see the ad. In addition to that, you can   target your audience to people that are already interested in things you re advertising.  For example, I targeted people that had liked Ron Paul pages, as well as  Lew Rockwell stuff, Mises Institute stuff, etc.  I  had $500 budgeted and for that, FB claimed I  could reach   several hundred thousand people. So far , so good, right?
  This has been a learning experience for me, so it might as well be a learning experience for you.  As you can see from this screen shot, I  had spent a  little over 50 bucks at this point, and 30,000 people had seen my ad, some of them more than once. From that, I got 120 'likes'. During that time period I sold less books than at any time. The simple fact is that  a 'like' on  FB cannot be traced to sales, at least not as far as I can tell.  Each of those likes cost me  44 cents a piece. That's the bad news.

  The good news is this; the way I used the page wasn't so much to sell books because after all, if you want to get rich selling books, the liberty movement might not be for you. The idea is to use a platform like this  the same way Dr. Paul used the platform of his  Congressional office; to  educate and inform. So  instead of 'hey  buy my book' I started posting  relevant  liberty related news items from  LRC and other places. This prompted discussions among people who were  watching the page, and that led them to pass the page along to their friends and relatives. It's is slowly growing in a very organic way. Now, has it been worth it? It may be  too early to tell. I've met some interesting people through this endeavor that have given me information I wish I had access to while researching my  work, but  better late than never, right?

  Ok, so here's what I've learned.

1) tell everybody you know

2)ask them to tell everybody they know

3) recruit clever people. be nice, and not a clown.

4) social media is not the gold mine they tell you it is. if anyone could make things go viral on purpose, everybody would.

5)social media is not  a lost cause though, you just have to know  WHY you're doing it

6) it aint over till the fat lady sings.

  So that's  what I've learned. I hope it's a help to somebody. If anybody has  figured out this Gordian knot of marketing, i'd be  gald to hear all about it.

Baptist Bucks, or a Study in Fiat Currency

 NOTE: My  dear friend Douglas Pelsang made the connection that makes this  post possible. He's  brilliant as usual.


A  couple of years back, our church had  a promotional contest within the  congregation.. The church would be issuing these little   pieces of play money called 'Baptist Bucks' over the length of the contest.   The  bucks were festooned with  pictures of the pastor's family in place of dead presidents, and  would be doled out for perforrming various activities during the course of the promotion. For example, you  got  1 BB for coming to church, 5  for bringing a visitor, etc.  At the end of the promotional period an auction of donated items would be held  and you could  purchase these donated items with your funny money.  All in all it was a very successful promotion and we all wound up with  just fistfuls of Baptist Bucks and  a large variety of  items to spend them on.  A good time was had by all.
  Now here's the interesting part, which I honestly  didn't catch at first. This money had a lot in common with   fiat currency. It wasn't backed  by anything.  They literally made as many as  they could print and they were  centrally issued by a man in our church with a  briefcase full of 'cash'.   we  handcuffed the briefcase to his wrist, but we were just being silly.    There was no way for the printer to anticipate how much he needed to print because her was no way to  gauge the  demand for the currency. Also there was no market mechanism to determine how many Bucks you would receive for an activity, those prices were set by a  central decision.  You could not negotiate that your visitor was worth  6 BB's, that just wasn't how it worked.  At least at first. Since  it wasn't real money, and it was all in good fun, you could finagle the system a bit and get more than you were supposed to, especially towards the end of the  contest when the  banker was trying to get all these bills into circulation lest they go to waste. We were awash in  Baptist Bucks by the time the auction came around.
  Then the auction time came.  The prices started out low, and more or less modeled what the  auctioned item would be worth in  Federal Reserve notes, but as the evening  wore on,  the prices  skyrocketed. People had  fistfuls of cash that had cost them almost nothing to accumulate and everybody  knew that after tonight, the bills would be  of no use as a currency. therefore it behooved the individual holders of the bills to dump them as  quick as they could. A bicycle that had been purchased for $200 went  for  4 times that amount in Baptist Bucks. it became  impossible to gauge  what you should   pay for anything. all you knew is  that everybody else was throwing money around, so if you want the item, you'd better throw it around too.  As the  list of  available items got  shorter and shorter, people were  bidding just for the sake of  bidding.   I think we  'bought' some  hideous paper fan thing for $200 in  Baptist Bucks, and  my son bought this  atrocious   robotic dinosaur thing that didn't even work for  well over a hundred. All that mattered was that you  get this money out of your hands before the end of the auction;i.e before the collapse.
  When the smoke cleared we had all  had a good time. But we also  had purchased a bunch of stuff we didn't need, and some of us still had   unused currency in our hands. I still have a  bill or two somewhere.
  I think the parallels are obvious, but there was one major difference between our promotional activity and the  activities currently   engaged in by the Fed; nobody went hungry, nobody lost their house, nobody' gas  tripled in  price.   Thjere were no riots in the streets, no  empty store shelves. When it was all said and done, we had a good laugh at how silly we had been and went to our homes, content that something like that could never happen to the  US dollar.

  Or could it?

How To Ruin A Perfectly Good Name

This sermon was preached at Camden Baptist Church in St. Marys GA

http://youtu.be/B7wvk2Jz4rI

Walt Disney, Individual

  In one corner of our house, my  wife and some other  very special  people set up a little   station for me to  pursue my various  art projects.  On one wall of that little corner hangs a poster of Walt Disney.  In the picture, he’s a young man, with an intense gaze, and in the picture he’s casting a shadow. The shadow is Mickey Mouse.  Now while I am not  really a fan of the corporation that bears his name, Walt Disney is to me an icon of animation, and an icon of individualism. 

  Now before you come down too hard on me, yes I know he was  a bizarre individual, and yes I know his studio produced its fair share  of statist propaganda, some of which is particularly hideous (Donald Duck's admonition for me to pay my taxes springs to mind), but think about this for a minute.  When I say ‘Walt Disney’  you know exactly who I’m talking about.   His life was a  life of ideas, of stories, and he   changed the world to be able to tell those stories.Almost every major advance in animation   in the early 20^th century came about from the   vision of one man; Walt Disney.  Disney would  decide to tell a  story,  decide how the story needed to be told, and then  wind up creating the technology to  tell it.   The modern  theme park industry  exists , for the most part because of the vision and strength of will of one man; Walt Disney.  His was the  example of  a Great Mind, who can  see what it wants and then builds a bridge to get there. On such men the world is built.

  Great minds  bring together  other brilliant people to help accomplish their vision, but these brilliant people  , generally speaking, wouldn’t have accomplished their greatness without somebody somewhere saying  “Hey, what happens if we try it this way?” Great minds create worlds that the rest of us get to be a part of. Without Walt Disney, there is no Disneyland.  He didn’t lay the bricks, he didn’t pave the streets, he  didn’t   mechanically assemble the rides, but without his idea of what he wanted to build, the bricks would never get laid, the roads would never be paved, and the rides would be just an assemblage of parts looking for a purpose.  In a  ‘you didn’t build that’world that disdains the accomplishment of great minds, and places the  credit on the  road pavers, and brick layers, I would ask this; how come those  people, as talented as they may be, didn’t assemble on their own and  build a park in the central  Florida swamp?

  There is a story that may or may not be true that  during the opening ceremony of one of the theme parks,  a Disney executive remarked to Disney's widow, “Wish  Walt could have seen this” to which she replied “He did.”  At the end of the day, the   idea, the dream, the vision, whatever you  choose to call it, is way more important than the nuts and  bolts necessary to build it.  The world is full of nuts and bolts, what it lacks is great minds capable of seeing what those nuts and bolts could be.  The world is full of brilliant people  yearning for a chance to be part of something bigger than themselves, something   more than the sum of its parts. A great mind will provide them that opportunity.

  Great minds help other people  accomplish  great things in their wake, as Mr Disney did with Annette Funicello. Without  Disney,  the legitmately talented Ms Funicello is just another  little girl  dancing a ballet recital. With Disney’s accomplishment, she had a framework in which to develop her talents and capitalize on them.  His vision made her life better.  Without Walt Disney, there are animation techniques and approaches that I can utilize that would not exist. His  vision  makes it easier for me to accomplish mine.

 To see what happens when the great mind passes, and their shadow and drive and energy begin to fade,  go into a Disney store.  What you’ll see is a celebration of the past accomplishments that borders on cannibalization, or merchandising  based off the work of some other great mind that  Disney Corp. purchased  just for that soulless purpose (ala Pixar or Marvel or Lucasfilms).

  I may be reading too much into this poster, but in it Walt looks young, determined, and hungry. He looks like a man full of ideas, ready to cast a large shadow. If that was  his goal, he certainly got it done.  Walt Disney is an Atlas in  my mind, and  a good example of what a man, an individual can accomplish if they stay true to their vision, even if that vision starts with a  whistling  4 fingered rodent.

The Gatekeepers are Gone

  Other people have written about this, and probably done a better job, but here goes. Do you have any idea how fundamentally the creative game has changed  in the last few years? How different things are for artists, writers, filmmakers?  Notice I didn't say necessarily better, just different.
   Just a few years back, there were a series of gatekeepers in the  realm of ideas. You could  write the best book ever, film the best movie ever, or have   just the best idea ever, and   that fact, the sheer greatness of your idea wasn't enough because of the gatekeepers. The gatekeepers, as in   the   book publishers, and the  movie distribution people, were functioning  off of a  business  model in which it was best to play it safe. Nobody wanted to  sink a bunch of money into an unknown, and it took a bunch of money to get  a piece of work in front of an audience, Because of the cost involved, unless you were a tried and true money-maker, it was almost impossible to break in.  You write a book, you have to convince somebody else of the greatness of your book, and if you couldn't  convince the  corporate gatekeeper that your idea is worth the risk, then the people who would have appreciated the greatness of your idea would never even know you existed.  Because of the ridiculous hoops that their business model put you through, there is no telling  how much the  creative world was deprived of really neat stuff.
  The internet  changed all that, in that  it allowed  an end-around around the gatekeepers.  A creative type could build their own audience without needing anybody else's permission. That is huge. You, kind reader, don't need anybody's permission to  chase your creative dream.  Think about his for a second. You are sitting wherever you're sitting, reading the musings of a virtual nobody.  I am sitting in a small town in  south Georgia communicating with people  in a surprisingly intimate fashion, and  I didn't need anybodys permission to do it.  It would have been technologically impossible for us to share this connection even just a few years ago.
  When I decided to write my book SWINDLED, it wasn't my first  book, but it was my first  published book.  Imagine if I had  been tasked with selling my idea to a publishing house. My pitch would  have been something like "Yeah, he didn't  get elected, but he's  way cooler for having lost!" Aren't you glad I don't have to do pitches? I certainly am.  Instead I  simply wrote the book, self-published it, and  before I knew it, I had begun to tap into an audience that I wasn't even sure was there, and Ive done better than I   hoped I would by far.
  I know a guy (doesn't everybody, but this guys name is Danny DiLeo, google him) that had a day job as a hairdresser, and in his off time, he MADE A MOVIE!!! That was IMPOSSIBLE a few years ago. He would have had to beg and grovel and  surrender his creativity to get something that even resembled his dream past the gatekeepers. No more.
  By way of contrasting  example, I have been working off and on for several years on various animated  ideas.  I remember setting things up for a pitch I was going to do for Cartoon Network. The paperwork  they sent me said that if I went and did my pitch and they didn't  buy my idea, they reserved the right to create 'derivative works' from it, and I had to agree to that for the gatekeeper to even grace me with his attention.  That's crazy, and frankly I dont have enough good  ideas to  be able to give them away like that. Nickelodeon required me to hire a lawyer before I could pitch, and  my pitch request had to be on legal letterhead before they would even schedule anything with me.  See what I mean? Gatekeepers.
  Now this freedom to build your own audince does mean that there is a bunch of absolute drivel out there. But since I believe in freedom, I think that's ok. I love looking at new stuff, and the explosion of   great  starting writers and artists that I've  seen in the last few years has been very encouraging.
  I have a habit of having more ideas than I have time or the attention span to implement, so the fact that I don't have to mortgage the house to find out if an idea is going to work is  a big  plus for me. A  year or so back my wife and I  got the idea of printing Victorian-themed stationary. That idea was a big old flop, but better to have tried and failed ( and  spent a couple hundred bucks) than never to have tried at all.
 So what's your excuse?  You do know the economy is collapsing around our ears, right? You do know you're not getting any younger, right? All those great ideas you have, the music youve written, the book you keep meaning on finishing ,they are your  way out. How long are you going to ride that cubicle when you have such a cool brain inside your head?  The gates are wide open, friend, We producers and creative types owe it to ourselves to develop ourselves to the highest  potential that we can. To do less would  be almost a crime.  Take it from a  nobody.