There’s a great post at Communicate Jesus that helps people to think about creative people who are Christians and whether or not they should provide their work to the church for free.

Paul bankrolled a bunch of very important creative enterprises. One was Christian television. I know that he backed Clifford Warne and his puppets and Bible stories and sent him to America so Clifford knew how to write and produce children’s television … One of the reasons he was so effective was that he paid the Christian creatives around him.

This is something I’ve put a little bit of thought into — I think it’s really a matter of scale. If a believer is contributing their talents to a side project without greatly detracting from their ability to make a living, that’s okay as “free work” goes. On the other hand, when the scale of the work is big enough to require the person forgo opportunities to make a living, I think it behooves the church to pay for the work.

It’s kinda like this: if we have a plumber in our congregation and he installs a new faucet for us and doesn’t want to bill us, I probably won’t quibble. On the other hand, if the plumber has to take a week to entirely re-plumb our facility, forgoing other jobs, I think we pay him for his work in 99.9% of the cases. Same goes for a designer or… pretty much anyone else.

What do you think?

I never have a hard time breaking good habits. I can make those disappear with a day or two of simply not trying.

The bad, time wasting ones creep in just as easily, but eradicating them can be much tougher. I’m not going to even endeavour to help you discern which habits are perhaps not the best, but I will tell you some things that seem to be helping me to beat the one I’m fighting.  My current target personally is distraction.

1. Change your environment. If you know that sitting in your recliner is an environment in which you will either slack off or fall asleep, don’t sit there while you’re trying to do something serious and be surprised when you slack off or fall asleep.

2. Don’t succumb to distractions. Chances are that Wikipedia page will be just as interesting in an hour as it would be right now.

3. Play music that will help, not distract. For me, this means music I’m familiar with. You can bet 40 Acres by Caedmon’s Call and The Morning by Andrew Osenga will be in heavy rotation while I’m trying to be productive.

4. Allow yourself a break after 45 minutes. There’s a reason your high school periods were about that long. Walk it off. Drink some coffee. Stand up. Move. Then come back and hit it again.

These are some ways that are currently working for me. Hope they’re helpful.

I was reminded yesterday, after gathering as the church, of an important truth. A brother told me that the reason his wife is so good at what she does is simple: she is passionate about it. She was passionate about it before she started doing it as a job. A great reminder as far as both doing a good job at what I find myself doing and also about the direction I should be oriented toward.