Me, Myself, and Bob: A True Story About Dreams, God, and Talking Vegetables

by Phil Vischer

Technically, the cucumber came first.

(with the exception of Rook, because, as far as I can tell, it’s the card game Jesus’s disciples played while waiting for the Holy Spirit to descend on Pentecost).

God gave us all the freedom to choose, and with that gift comes the freedom to choose poorly.

Fortunately, he was a missionary kid and, as such, had a pain threshold at least twice that of the average American teen.

the images and ideas our kids and young adults want are very seldom the images and ideas our kids and young adults need.

Evidently, though, I didn’t give off whatever party vibe I was supposed to give off, because I was never invited back. Tricky stuff, parties.

those who can most afford to risk everything on a new business idea are also those with the least experience and the least preparedness for just such an outing.

If it were a typical Christian show, I figured, they’d be Tommy Tomato and Kooky Cucumber. But the last thing in the world I wanted to make was a typical Christian show.

…so true!

here was Walt’s company, thirty years after his death, still parading around in Walt’s hopelessly romanticized modernist clothes—telling kids their dreams will come true if only they’ll “wish upon a star.”

For the first few years, I tried several different management techniques in fits and starts, but ultimately I began turning the day-to-day leadership over to others, with wildly varying results.

My president, CFO, marketing VP, and licensing VP began meeting weekly without me. When our new VP of human resources joined the company in the fall of 1999, he was invited to join the weekly “no Phil” meetings.

Yikes!

What emerged was a picture of a treacherous period in any business’s growth when a company finds itself “too big to be small yet too small to be big.” The researchers dubbed it “No Man’s Land.”

Many small companies fail to survive “No Man’s Land” because they either never find the management talent they need to make the leap from “small” to “big,” or even worse, they bring in the wrong management.

By now I realized I had made a huge mistake: I was running the company blind.

backed down from my own convictions,

The real question to ask in any failure, of course, isn’t “Who should we blame?” but rather “What did we learn?”

One of the keys to learning, modeled so effectively by a certain tomato whose voice sounds a great deal like mine, is to always, after a meaningful experience, pause and ask yourself, “What did I learn today?”

Thing I Learned #1: Never lose sight of the numbers.

ignoring my ministry’s financial health, even for a brief period, was like ignoring my own health.

nothing kills creativity and ministry faster than viewing everything as a numbers decision.

Roy didn’t work for Walt, and Walt didn’t work for Roy, but they clearly understood their roles.

If God has given you ideas for ministry, look for your Roy.

If, on the other hand, God has made you a Roy, look for your Walt. Look for someone with creative gifting and calling.

Love. Mutual submission. It all sounds very Christian, and, amazingly, seems to be the key to successful, long-term organizations. Amazing ideas come to life when people with complementary gifting devote themselves selflessly to each other, not for their own success, but for the success of the idea.

Thing I Learned #2: Ignore the voice that says, “You deserve it.”

It seemed David had to learn this the hard way with Bathsheba.

I will avoid any product that tries to influence my purchase decision by telling me I deserve it.

Tell me, how easy is it to serve someone you consider less deserving than yourself? Nearly impossible.

Thing I Learned #3: If you successfully identify a need and create a product that meets it in a unique way, you are the expert.

Thing I Learned #4: Know yourself.

beware of early success. Seeing my first idea turn to gold convinced me that all my ideas would turn to gold, which was not the case. Early success can be a very dangerous thing.

Thing I Learned #5: Bigger is no longer better.

Real impact today comes from building great relationships, not huge organizations. More overhead equals less flexibility to pursue unexpected opportunities.

Smaller—and smarter—is better.

Thing I Learned #6: If I had it to do all over again, I would let my business model...

People give up extra money to do all sorts of things they love.

Thing I Learned #7: Build a team that rows in the same direction.

My vagueness about Big Idea’s true mission and values led to a profoundly confused, dysfunctional workplace.

I was mortified to realize that my failure to get to know him before—or after—offering him the most important job in the company had greatly contributed to the organizational mess my ministry had become.

my personal theology may have been shaped as much by these bumper sticker sentiments as by the Bible itself.

If anyone tells you the Bible is “dry,” they aren’t reading it.

“If God gives you a dream, and the dream comes to life and God shows up in it, and then the dream dies, it may be that God wants to see what is more important to you—the dream or him.”

C. S. Lewis said, “He who has God plus many things has nothing more than he who has God alone.”

“If God gives you a dream, and the dream comes to life and God shows up in it, and then the dream dies, it may be that God wants to see what is more important to you—the dream or him. And once he’s seen that, you may get your dream back. Or you may not, and you may live the rest of your life without it. But that will be okay, because you’ll have God.”

what God learned about Abraham that day was that he would let go of everything before he would let go of God.

anything I am unwilling to let go of is an idol, and I am in sin.

The Savior I was following seemed, in hindsight, equal parts Jesus, Ben Franklin, and Henry Ford.

Suddenly I felt as if I were Luke Skywalker, running through the swamps of Dagobah with a seventy-year-old Baptist church planter on my shoulders. I had found my Yoda.

“We have no business telling God what we want to accomplish for him or dreaming up what we want to do for him.” And “The people of God are not to be a people of vision; they are to be a people of revelation.”

I didn’t seem to be alone in my delusion. Megachurches, megaministries, mega-Christian celebrities—we all seemed to be drinking the same cocktail. We were all casting our visions, emblazoning our BHAGs on banners, lapel pins and PowerPoint presentations.

The problem with the saying “God can’t steer a parked car” is that, while it’s cute, it isn’t biblical.

He has a point!