Aslan's Journey

This article was written to our Facebook page August 27, 2013. It is reprinted here as it was originally posted. Much has changed since then. It doesn't seem like it has been that long already that Aslan came to live with us in our ministry. We post this without any modifications because we want those who read it to understand what we were thinking and experiencing in that moment in time and not where we have progressed to. This was a huge step for our ministry and it laid the groundwork, especially in mental preparation, to be able to handle the even bigger acquisitions and challenges that have come since this time.

AN ASLAN SIZE SACRIFICE 

A little while back, I was perusing my usual Narnia contacts to see if anything new had come up for sale and one of my contacts of which I’ve never purchased anything from had a new item…

The reason I’ve never purchased anything is not that they don’t have good stuff. It’s that they are priced at rich collector’s prices. Most all of my pieces that I’ve acquired for our exhibit have come from the “underground” as I call it. They’ve come from warehouses and auctions and people that have no real interest in the collector’s value of an item. Once an item reaches the “surface” and becomes a part of the collector’s market, prices go through the roof. (One of my pieces I acquired for $750 in the underground market, a similar one was selling for $2330 in the collector’s market.)

I wish that this new piece I’ve found had come up in the underground instead of the open collector’s market, but regardless of this fact, I am simply stunned that the piece has even come up for sale.

In the Narnia book of most desirable and most impactful props one could possibly own for an exhibit and ministry like what we are attempting, THIS piece would be considered the Holy Grail of all Narnia. It just doesn’t get any better than this. The piece I’m referring to is the Stand-in Aslan Lion used on the Stone Table during the sacrificial scene of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Everyone that has ever read the book, seen the movie, or just heard about the story, knows about this scene. Also every person of faith that knows the story, knows the symbolism to Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross that Aslan and the Stone Table represent. It has been referenced and told to literally thousands. It is THE moment in all the books and THE singularly most significant teachable moment out of all the stories.

In our collection, we already have the muzzle rope used on this very Aslan and it has proven to be one of the best pieces in the collection for getting people’s attention so you can talk with them. What impact could we have if we actually had Aslan himself?! The possibilities and opportunities blow my mind. If people wouldn’t come before to see what we have, they certainly would to see this one piece. Museums often have a lot of stuff to see, but there are usually one or two very significant pieces that everyone comes to see. The Smithsonian has the Star Spangled Banner, The Wright Brothers plane and the Hope Diamond, and we believe the Living Like Lucy Exhibit and Ministry is the proper resting place for Aslan.

However, Aslan comes at a huge price: $8,000. To our ministry, such an addition is priceless and we know that if this ministry succeeds it will more than pay for itself in probably less than two years. The ministry itself has only generated $300 in donations to this point (we haven’t actually promoted any financial needs yet), so the ministry itself couldn’t possibly afford to bring Aslan home to where he belongs, but there is money available to buy Aslan. The money would come from Pastor Josh’s small savings account. Such a withdrawal would significantly impact him as this account is all that he owns financially and this purchase would take a very significant amount of what is in it. Most all of what Pastor Josh has made in his employed career has been poured right back into ministry endeavors so he doesn’t have much to his name. And right now is a particularly difficult time to let go of the funds as he is trying to pay off a lot of ministry expenses from the summer and also cope with a significantly increased monthly housing and cost of living jump. Simply stated without going into a lot of extra details, Pastor needs to increase his monthly revenue by around a thousand dollars if he is going to “stay in the game” for the foreseeable future. This need isn’t likely to come from the church so he is really needing this ministry idea (and a few others) to take off.

However, to Pastor, this issue really isn’t about the money, it’s about what does God really want him to do? If he knew for certain that God wanted this item to be a part of this fledgling ministry, he would be ordering it up right now. If he knew that it wasn’t supposed to be, he’d stop writing right now.

I feel that I long ago gave over my life to the work of God. I know that I’ve also given over my home, my stuff, and my dreams. I know that all these are fully His. But one area that I seem to find myself often holding in reserve is the area of my money. I think between my father who taught me very well to be careful and shrewd with what money you get and the fact I rarely could afford what I really wanted as a kid, I’ve taken a very “safe” approach towards my money. I don’t like to throw it around or do “unwise” things with it. I often save it for a long time to get what I really want and will frequently cut various variable expenses to get what I’m really after…so when God comes wanting me to give money to something, sometimes I find it easy (if it makes good sense), but other times its really hard for me (when it seems unwise or not as good a use of it as something else could be)…

I am reminded of a time early in my ministry when I was in between jobs and I was living at my parents’ home. I was bored and didn’t have anything to do so my father and I went to a puppet festival. All I remember is that it was at this festival that I felt like God wanted me to buy a puppet tripod stage there. It was over $700 and I didn’t have a job and I also wasn’t doing anything with puppets at that time. It made NO sense at all, but I felt like if I left without that stage, I would be making a huge mistake. So I bought it, not knowing if I’d have enough money left at the end of the month to pay for it. At month’s end, after paying for the stage, I had exactly .10 left to my name. God met my needs and I felt like I obeyed Him in that purchase. Little did I know that less than a year later that stage would begin a very used journey of ministry that now has gone on over ten years and it has been used in literally hundreds of ministry projects and I can’t imagine having succeeded on so many of the projects they were used for if I hadn’t had them…

Now, I feel like I’m at that fork in the road again, some ten years later with much bigger stakes to play for. God has opened so many doors so far on this ministry and prepared the way for us, that it is very hard for me to find such a move to be an unwise one. Having been also taught so much up to this point in my ministry life, I feel as if God is speaking to me and saying, “Is your faith still so small? Do you not trust Me when I open doors for you?” In a way, I kind of feel like the widow in the Bible who was challenged by Elisha to give him her last meal on earth. I am truly impressed by this woman! She gave this perfect stranger who claimed to be a man of God her’s and her son’s last meal- they knew they were going to die after that! That is insane faith to me. To what lengths do I need to push myself to be able to truly walk in the faith of God in this ministry? Surely there are going to be bigger steps of faith I will have to make down the road than this…

It would probably help the decision out significantly if I knew for sure our little ministry was going to make it…At this time we still have not had the time to present our ministry to the C.S.Lewis Estate for permission to use their name and story in our presentation. We could still get shut down…

I can definitely say I’m not one who lives “on the edge” or likes to take huge risks. I’m not a lucky person and I think I’ve lost at every situation I’ve ever been in where the idea of luck played a role. I think this is probably another reason I’m so hesitant sometimes in matters of faith. I struggle with seeing them as “faith” moves and not “high risk” and needing some good luck to succeed.

This company that currently holds Aslan, offers an interest free payment plan over six months and we could certainly do something like this and see if God monthly fills in our need to make that payment, we could also put the whole deal out there for our few supporters and see if God speaks to any of them to make a significant contribution towards bringing Aslan home, Pastor Josh could also simply start saving money towards his purchase and hope that no one else buys him before he can save up that much money(at least a year), we could also dismiss the idea of getting him altogether, or we could simply buy him outright with Pastor Josh’s savings account funds. I could also wait until I know I have the permission of the CS Lewis Estate for the ministry before pursuing Aslan further, but that could be a long time and it would also lessen significantly the idea of a story in which we ourselves operated with big faith and sacrifice like our ministry challenges our audience to do…

I finally came to a point where I had to dispense with the rationalizing and debating in my mind from a common sense or even a faith based justification and had to ask myself, if I got Aslan besides the obvious, what story would he tell?

Beth Gukenburger says in her book, “What makes a better story? When things get hard (and they do and they will), I remind myself there are more chapters to come- and the best stories have conflict.” The story of Lucy and Aslan at its very core, is a story about faith and sacrifice. The faith of a little girl to believe in what didn’t make a bit of sense and the sacrifice of a Lion out of love for a sinful human. I have said all along, that our story (Pastor Josh’s and Bailey’s and anyone else that joins us in the future) has to be a story that mimics the Narnia story. Our message will have no validity if we are unwilling to live out the very message we are teaching. If we are teaching about having a faith in what doesn’t make sense, what are we doing in our own lives and in the ministry’s that are showing we believe this? Are we making faith moves or are we making earthly moves? Are we showing a willingness to sacrifice for the salvation of others by giving everything we have?

Lucy feels that she will be called a lunatic again and a talker of nonsense if she decides to put so much money down on a stuffed lion from an old movie set. But then again, she’d be living like Lucy if she did would she not?

 We covet your support, prayers, and especially your insight and feedback on this huge decision we need to make.

ASLAN'S JOURNEY (Part 2)

The process of getting Aslan began when Pastor Josh commissioned the best negotiator he knew, Lucy’s Mum, to call up the company that was in possession of Aslan. If she could talk a garage sale seller down on a breadmaker to just $1, she was the right person for the job in trying to get us a better price on Aslan. The sellers originally wanted $8,000 for him plus shipping. Over a three day stretch of exchanging phone messages and emails, as our ministry’s “secretary” and negotiator for “her boss,” she was able to bring down the price to $6,400 for Aslan. That’s pretty good! When it came to shipping, the company originally quoted a price of $1,800 but we knew that was very inflated and probably was a compensation move for us getting a lower price than what they had wanted on Aslan. We knew it really would take less than a third of that amount to ship Aslan due to many other shipments made in a similar fashion from a similar location. Negotiations commenced again on shipping costs and Lucy’s Mum was eventually able to get it down to only $600 with a total bill of an even $7,000 all in. Lucy’s Mum was able to save us over $2,800 with her negotiation skills. First she saves the children from the bombing raids in London and then she rescues Aslan- now that’s one great Mum! Lucy thinks she should get a special invitation to go through the wardrobe into Aslan’s Country.

Once Aslan was negotiated for and purchased, he still had to get here. It took another two weeks to custom box and crate Aslan for his journey. When he arrived he was in an eighteen wheeler and he needed the truck’s gate lift to be lowered out of the truck. We put him on flatbed dollies and rolled him into the church gymnasium as the box was so large it would only fit through double-wide doorways. For the next week, Aslan sat unopened in the corner of the gym (this was tough for Pastor Josh).

We waited until the next Sunday after church and we dressed up our Lucy and Susan actors and let them help us open the crate. Myself and Sam, who was our former Peter and also Edmund, but didn’t dress up, helped take care of the wooden crate part and the girls got to open the cardboard box and deal with the huge mountain of packing peanuts in the box. When we were finally able to remove Aslan from the box, it took three people to move him around as he was 230lbs and rather limp. We laid him on a preset black floor covering and then did our first actor interaction with him as you can now see in a video, having Susan and Lucy enter the scene as if they were approaching the Stone Table and re-enacting that scene. We then took some still photos of this experience. A total of 80 photographs were shot. For Lucy this was very different and a lot more difficult as she had never had to act in a role that was emotionally sad and difficult.

After this process, which took a solid hour, Aslan was taken by cart to another room in the church where he laid on the floor covered up until a special box was able to be constructed for him three months later. We then had to return to the gym and spend about an hour trying to clean up the huge box and crate mess that was made when we opened Aslan. Never have we seen so many packing peanuts anywhere! We hope in the near future that we will be able to get Aslan operational again and have full use of his animatronics. This would allow him to breath, move his lower jaw, move his neck, and blink his eyes. The company that sold him to us was not aware that he was animatronic (but we did!) and they did not have the controller that went with him. We will attempt to contact Howard Berger and the KNBefx Group out in California (the company that built him) and see if they will be of any help in this endeavor. If not, we have a local high school that we have been told is very skilled in this kind of work and we may give them a chance to work on Aslan.

But for now, Aslan just rests, as most lions prefer to do, in his new home near to Lucy and Susan and far away from any Stone Tables. Soon again we suspect he will be on the move and making appearances for children everywhere.