Ahh… the new blogger who cops out…

Yes… That’s me… Got really excited for about two weeks, then just got lazy… Nothing like the lack of discipline that comes when going gets a little tough. In fact, it’s like that in just about every aspect of my life – never been one for the even keel – balance has always been a bit whacked out…

 So here it is - a Tuesday night in Brisbane, Australia. It should be getting cooler by now, but summer decided that autumn could get lost, and has started poaching it’s territory. A bit steamy sitting next to my gigantic computer that’s been rendering straight for the last 72 hours.

Which brings me to the inevitable cop out – why I haven’t been blogging. My job is wierd. I work for my church – Kenmore Baptist Church, looking after the web (kinda – not the best part of my job ), doing the odd print design job, and spending inordinate amounts of time making films. I like to think they’re films, as opposed to movies… But anyway…

In September, the Pastor i work for said he’d finished the scripts – and he wanted to shoot the next film series outside – Mt Barney would be nice. And it was – what a beautiful region. We stayed at a very small vineyard for two weeks, working our butts right off – Pat has lost about 20 kilos since then – i’ve only managed 10… But we came home with about 80 hours of footage, with the idea to make 9 short films, about 15 minutes long each.

Sounds good – but being a little ambitious, i insisted on shooting HD – not full HD – just 1440×1080. Not so bad, but still pushing it on my AMD dual-dualcore 2.19gHz machine with 4gb RAM.

That being said, i’m currently authoring the second disc of the series, and 2.5TB of video later, i feel like i’ve passed a watermelon… There’s a lot to be said for finding a team to work around you!

That being said, i have had the good fortune to be part of a brilliant team – Pat Hegarty, writing the material, and delivering it on screen, as well as doing all the fine checks on the billions of drafts, Ben Shaw who scored and played just about every instrument on all nine tracks, Tim Ashton who wrote a couple of songs and recorded all the drum tracks, and of course Eric Whitley who is the sound engineer genius!

 Now i’ve given my oscar speech that will never go to air (I can hear the orchestra playing me off as I type), the films themselves are life changing. Not just cause I made ‘em. In fact, not even cause i made ‘em. The content itself is brilliant.

The series is based around Peter, who started out as Simon, some fisherman who lived about 2000 or so years ago. So he meets this guy Jesus, and everything changes. It follows Peter’s walk through doing what he can for Jesus, then realising it’s all about dying to himself, which leads him to the realisation that it’s not about doing, it’s about being. That then delivers him to a place where Jesus calls him “friend”, a place of belonging.

In the previous series of films Pat and I did, it went through the concept of a “Kairos” moment, a God-time moment, when an incident or occurrence gives you the option of growing, or just staying the same. When you decide to take the leap and grow through (and hopefully out) of whatever happened, then you go through this Kairos time. It is basically made up of those four steps i mentioned earlier, but when you’ve been spat out the other side of the “circular moment” (there’s a whole diagram thing that i couldn’t be bothered drawing), then it’s that feeling that Peter had sitting on the beach after the cruifixition, when Jesus turns up and cooks breakfast.

It’’s knowing that no matter what i did, he still loves me, forgives me, and wants to be my friend. I may have dissappointed him so much, left him at a crucial moment, denied him when all he wanted was a simple acknowledgement, and yet, he still wants me, loves me, and gives me breakfast!

Awesome.

So there you have it – about 4 months in one post – more lessons than i could write down in twice that, and a simple feeling that i’m loved, accepted, cherished, and his friend.

Hope i’m still yours after being away so long. All three of you who read this. Yes. That means you!

P.S. Just started my home group doing an Old Testament survey. Might use this forum to post discussions/notes/handouts, etc. Sorry if you’re not in the group & you feel left out, but you’re more than welcome to use the material!

Cheers…

J

~ by leutton on March 11, 2008.