Overnight Success

The entertainment field is highly competitive and very volatile.  Even more so, when your focus is ministry.  When you sing or write for God, the audience narrows, the pond gets smaller and the competing fish are plentiful.  In nearly three decades of promoting countless Christian music projects, books, events, films and the like, I have only seen one -- one instance-- when it was possible to label someone's success "overnight."  Most authors, speakers, bands and singers slog it out, day after day, year after year, sometimes decade after decade and then "suddenly" find success.  But even when it arrives, it comes in waves -- in seasons -- it crests, ebbs and flows.  Success -- on any high level-- is fleeting at best. It is a marathon, not a sprint.

So why on earth would anyone try to have a career in gospel music? Or write a Christian book? Or speak on Christian topics?  Most missionaries will tell you that you don't go to the jungle unless you are called to do so.  God has placed on each of us a calling. As the Apostle Paul describes, we can't all be hands; some of us are feet.  Some of us are eyes; some are ear lobes.  The body has many parts, he explains.  But none of us are the Head.

Of the people I have worked with over the years, very few survive long-term. But the ones that do last beyond a decade or so all share the same motivation. They are not looking to be famous. They are not looking to be stars. They are not shooting for stratospheric heights. They simply keep doing what they feel they are called by God to do. Whether in feast or in famine, they trudge on. Paul said it best in Philippians 4: "I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I’ve found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am." (MSG)

When people call me and tell me about their new project or, more specifically, the calling they believe they have on their lives -- I have learned over the years not to judge.  You cannot imagine the ideas people come up with to spread the Gospel.  But who am I to assess what someone's calling is?  I can only decide if it is something I can help promote. But far be it from me to determine someone's calling.  That is a God thing.  Not a publicist thing. 

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