We all have favorite Christmas movies, and it’s hard for me to pick just one, but it would probably be A Charlie Brown Christmas. The jazz tracks are immaculate, but more so, there are a few key messages in the movie for production leaders that I can’t help but identify with: processing inadequacy, managing volunteers, and remembering the point. Let’s break those down.
Processing Inadequacy
Charlie Brown was surprised when his friends asked him to direct the Christmas show, and then struggled for the rest of the movie with feeling unprepared and unsuited to the task.
You’re not inadequate—you’re learning.
Most of us are self-taught, and the production discipline lends itself to a trial-and-error style of learning. The truth is that you can’t fully realize the depth of your capabilities until you fail, and fail a lot. You know what you want to see in your head, but it always seems out of reach, and you can’t get the final product to really look or sound the way you had dreamed it up.
Ira Glass, the legendary host and producer of This American Life, summed up how to get through those feelings and why they occur. I’ll give you the unabridged quote:
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners; I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
You're not inadequate; you’re just learning, and you will always be learning. More importantly, if you let him, the Lord will hold your hand the whole time and help guide you along. He likes working alongside you just like any good father enjoys working and creating something with their children.
A production win is anything that doesn’t distract from the Gospel.
And that’s how you turn inadequacy into joy, the joy of learning.
Managing Volunteers
The lesson we can learn about volunteers from Charlie Brown is that you’re only as good as your team, and that’s ok. Charlie Brown wasn’t on Broadway, and neither are you. You’re at church, and that context matters. It matters because the point of any church-centered production isn’t to really “nail it,” or blow minds with some wild display of creative prowess. The point is to help people hear the Gospel and connect with God.
Your team will hear the Gospel right alongside the people in the pews, and your team will connect with God by serving alongside Him. Obviously, you have to have some standards of excellence, but if people aren’t distracted by a camera shot, a light cue, or the audio in the room, you’ve done your job. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It needs to be “good,” and that means “good” for your particular context, which might be a small team of inexperienced but eager volunteers.
Let Linus remind you: this is all about Jesus.
Do the best with the team you have and leave the rest to the Holy Spirit to sort out.
Remembering the Point
Linus gives a monologue towards the end of the movie that is now an icon of the Christmas season, his moment in the spotlight where he reminds Charlie Brown about why anyone is celebrating in the first place.
Jesus Christ, our Savior, was born to us in the city of David, then wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger. God had intervened in human history, finding a most curious way to do so. He became one of us, lived as one of us, and then died as one of us. He came up from the dead, and his resurrected body serves as a promise for our own renewal one day, when he returns to rule and reign.
And that’s what this season is all about—remembering his first coming and anticipating his return.
After we learn from Charlie Brown, we then look to the Apostle John who ended his vision with a simple prayer: Come, Lord Jesus. That’s the prayer of this season, a prayer of anticipation, waiting eagerly and patiently for Jesus to set everything right again.
Yes, Come Lord Jesus.
