gears – Making More of Today

meshing-our-gears As the stage designer for an 1100 seat church I get to share in a lot of large-scale creative fun. It is great to be able to sweep my hand across our stage and say, “I see a big swoop of color there!” Of course that is followed by me getting the ladder out and working on the swoop, but it is still fun designing a stage!

Our church, Forest City Community Church, is one of the new upbeat and encouraging churches, and it features a fantastic rock band, drama team and lighting crew. It is a place where creative people are valued and key to how the place runs.

Our next series is called “Connected”, and it’s about how all of us live a better life when we are connected into community.

For this series we decided on a stylized gear theme, to give a modern industrial “working together” feel. My carpentry handyman, Ken, and I cut 10 gears in 3 sizes out of inch-thick styrofoam, which cuts smoothly with a really sharp X-Acto knife (as opposed to the bumpy white blobs you get with a dull knife). There is a lot less vacuuming when you use a sharp knife with styrofoam.

One thing I learned about gears is that to work together each gear needs to have matching teeth size and spacing.

Fortunately, people don’t need to have matching teeth, or teeth at all for that matter, to be able to work together and be together.

If you and I make a bit more effort to interact kindly with others in our lives we are going to find things work more smoothly. I am not giving you the gears!


Doing the final trim on the gear teeth. Our gears were 3 inches wide with 4 inches between them. Behind is the mainframe computer I used to figure out how many teeth fit on the three sizes.	Ken is a terrific craftsman, and in a previous series created two beautiful cherrywood swings.

Here is the design I mocked up in Photoshop. The grey panels are 4×8 foot coroplast panels, which we get at Home Depot. They let light come through and allow overlapping, which creates a cool look.	Here’s me with the final stage design. We came pretty close to matching the design, though as usual the drapery has gone a bit wrinkled. Fabric likes to hang loosely, and when we try to force it into straight lines it fights us — kind of like when we try to make people follow rigid rules. (Slipped that one in).

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We all know what it is like to be part of our society: lots of things on the go, and ever-more things to buy.

Threaded through most of the things we do are the people in our lives — our family, friends, work mates, service people and those driving by us.

As a former computer programmer I know how busy life can be — full of details and endless tasks. I actually lost a few years of my life to work, before I had this simple but important revelation:

People are more important than things and tasks.

While I still take joy in completing a project, I now cherish the time I get to spend on a project. The moments together have become more satisfying and important than the ultimate result.

Sharing time with others can be as long as a big project or as short as the moment at the check-out counter. Each of these people have a heart, dreams and a story that you are part of, however small.

Not every shared moment in our lives is happy, but each moment we share with others can be good.

Kindness is contagious, and working together is something we can each improve.

Let’s work together and be together.

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Tag Archives: gears

Meshing our gears and working together