STORY Chicago 2012 – Phil Vischer

 
Phil Vischer
Voice actor, puppeteer, writer and animator known for creating the computer-animated video series VeggieTales.

Notes

• I want to talk to you about “the thing.” The thing that we’re supposed to be doing with our lives.
• College kids have a passion to find the “one big thing” they can do to change the world.
• When I was in college, I had this vision of what I wanted to do with my life. What I really felt like God wanted me to do was to the next Walt Disney.
• This one thing that I wanted to do for God absolutely exploding.
• The vision for me being the Christian Walt Disney was coming to pass.
• Everything was going well for Phil’s company. Went from 3 people in 1993, to 150 people in 1998, to 210 people in 2001.
• Everything that I wanted to have happen was coming to pass. Yet, I was miserable.
• I was under so much stress that I was getting very, very sick. Shingles, paracarditis, etc.
• I felt like I was supposed to offset the negativity of the media. I felt like I could have done something to offset the effects of the Columbine shooting.
• I went to see a Christian therapist because I was so miserable.
• I was planning projects that weren’t very well thought out and ambitiously concocted.
• Everything that I had built was going to get packed up and sold off to pay the creditors. We had gone bankrupt and the dream I had was gone.
• People kept asking me, “Why didn’t you walk away from God?”
• Where I grew up and the way I grew up, if you did really hard work for God, he would show up and bless it.
• And yet, everything is falling apart everywhere around me.
• After everything was gone and vanished, I spent about three months asking God, “where did things go wrong?”
• He began to show me that I was miserable. God let everything fall apart so I could spend time with you.
• Fruit of the Spirit doesn’t come out of you because your’e trying really hard.
• Where I had gone wrong was that I was pursuing religion and not relationship.
• Religion is when you try and work hard enough to get God to like you.
• I realized what I had missed in growing up in church is that God doesn’t call us to religion, but to relationship.
• The work we do for God comes out of our walk with him.
• There are many things God has for you to do, not just one big thing.
• Where does Christianity happen? Is it in my big ideas, or when I’m helping the person who’s standing across from me?
• When my dad left, I realized that I wasn’t worth the hard work of relationship. I simply wasn’t worth hanging around for. I wasn’t worth the hard work.
• You have to unpack your desires.
• I realized I had exchanged walking with God for working for God.
• Once you say, “God, here’s what I’m going to do for you,” you’ve completely turned that relationship upside down.
• My new company, Jellyfish Labs, has meaning. A jellyfish cannot chart its own course. It’s dependent on the currents to move. That’s the type of company we want to be.
• We’re trying to do a company where we’re doing no long-range planning.
• Children’s bibles turn Christianity into a cartoon.
• We want to create bibles that reflect the realism and reality of the Bible.
• Want to touch on everything in an age-appropriate way.
• I make a plan as the project demands, but otherwise I’m leaving it up to God.
• I’m asking God, “what do you want me to do today?”
• God does not call us to outcomes, he calls us to obedience.
• The invitation to a life with Christ is an invitation to a life filled with super powers.
• Saving depressive dads from suicide was not on my 20-year plan.
• The reason why I wanted to be Walt Disney was because I didn’t know who Phil was.
• I’m letting go of all my plans and letting you tell me who Phil is.
• You have big ideas. Don’t strive to do big things, strive to love.
• Be the creature that God made you to be. Be the creative that God made you to be.

Interview with Ben Arment

• I found myself realizing how much emotion I had invested in the outcome, and that was not healthy to me
• The point isn’t, “How big?” The point is, “Is this something that God wants me to do?”
• Case-in-point: Did God call you to sing songs or did God call you to write hit songs?
• Don’t give up, keep at it. But leave it all in God’s hands.

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