.

We Need Your Help.

To put it simply, it takes time and energy to create great stories and brief teachings that access the heart. With 1.5 million+ listening in, overtaking debut views for new Oprah and Rosie shows, we want to do this right.

Dan currently does this for free, to serve the listeners via non-profit radio world.

For that reason, we would like you invite you to channel some of your giving to be a monthly partner to help us continue to meet this vital need for encouragement in a disillusioned, disoriented postmodern society.

5 QUICK STEPS

Dan receives support for his radio program through a local church. This keeps the heart to serve at the center of what he does.

1. Click on this link to the Vineyard Church of Franklin giving page (read the next steps first).

2. Type “RADIO MINISTRY” in the form field above the gift, which you will see after you click the link. NOT Dan Wilt.

3. Choose ”One Time Gift” or “Automatic Recurring Gift,” choose MONTHLY, type in the amount (and frequency), and click “Give Secure Via Paypal.”

4. Once on the Paypal page, you can click “No Paypal account? Pay using your credit or debit card.”

5. Fill in the information, and the recurring payment is now set up.

I.e. “Automatic Recurring Gift” is an option you can see there, and you can select “Monthly.”

For checks (one-time or recurring), note only “Radio Ministry” on the check and send to:

c/o Radio Ministry
The Vineyard Church, Franklin
308 Jordan Road
Franklin, TN 37067
615.595.9355

We welcome your prayers, support and encouragement.

Some of the growing number of radio stations carrying Dan’s Stories.

You can find a local radio station in your area that carries our stories here on the Stations page.

If you favorite station doesn’t carry it, you can contact them to ask them to carry the show. They can find out how at KeepTheFaith.com.

If you’d just like to hear some of Dan’s radio spots, and his radio interviews about the worshiping life, click here to listen.

The Three Words To Live By clothing and gift line can be found here.

I have the privilege of recording a fresh set of stories today for radio and web listeners, and my heart is heavy with the call to worship in a perilous and tumultuous world.

Romans 12:9-21 follows the great worship passage of Romans 12:1-2, and opens a tool shed of “how-to’s” for daily responsive living.

After a pointed call to love, serve, and elevate others, it ends with these words:

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:21 NIV)

Go today, and overcome evil – in all it’s dehumanizing and subtle forms – with good. Love and serve your friends; love and serve your enemies. Let God fight your battle, as you attend to mimicking his life.

Rise today to your worship vocation.

If it helps, close your eyes, and receive it from a Dad. If your own father is amazing, and could speak these words to you, then hear them from him. If your own father can’t see beyond their own story into yours, and you have pain over that, receive this as a word from another Dad to you. If your own Dad is gone, hear these words and take heart.

If you are a Dad, and these words capture what you would like to say to your children, please forward this on to them.

1. Draw Diagrams With Druids

Patrick met people and their worldviews where they were, and led them to consider a new possibility. The story is told of how Patrick, on a sandy beach, dialogued with 3 Druid priests about their worldview.

With a stick, Patrick drew a circle in the sand, and put a cross through it’s middle. From here, he suggested that there might be an entirely fresh narrative lens through which reality could be seen – the Gospel.

He walked to the sure, from right where they were.

2. Scribe Symbols With The Sun

Patrick used the symbol of the sun and embedded the cross within it, to create some level of familiarity for his sun-worshipping listeners. He built bridges with familiar symbols.

Patrick was not afraid of culture, nor did he see it only as an enemy to be faced. He saw culture pointing (sometimes dimly) to God’s great Story, studied culture like a textbook, and leveraged it to proclaim human freedom in Christ.

He pointed his shoe toward what they knew.

3. Pen Prayers With Poetry

Patrick’s most famous prayer is the Lorica, otherwise known as “St. Patrick’s Breastplate.”

His “Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me” rhythms and repetitions have captured the imaginations and faith of millions across the centuries.

He embodied faith in art, and in doing so, still disciples Christians today with truthful words and inspires them with Trinitarian confidence.

He led with his art to access the heart.

Today is my birthday. Today, I was born.

Well, not literally today. What I mean is, today is my birthday; way back a while ago – many moons ago – I was born.

As I write, my body is now finishing it’s 46th year of life.

Breathing, walking, beating, thinking, moving, eating, drinking, trusting, fearing, loving, parenting, laughing, singing, wondering, seeing, hearing, touching, talking life.

My First Breath.

I am reflecting on this same day, all those years ago, when I first took a breath of earth’s air.

Air. What a strange concept. I lived in my mother’s womb for nine months, fed by an umbilical cord connecting me to her resources, and immersed in liquid. A fish with a straw. That’s what I was. Only the straw wasn’t in my mouth; it was in my belly. How crazy is that. A fish, with a straw, in it’s belly, connected to it’s mommy. What a strange idea.

No, I was much more than a fish with a straw in its belly.

I was Creation. Carbon plus Hydrogen plus Oxygen plus myriad other elements. But not only that.

The elements were joined by something unseen, but no less real.

The breath of life. The life of God. The God of the cosmos. The cosmos of God.

An entire universe in a little, soft package. A universe with design. With consciousness. With meaning.

A human being. Silver soul mingled with crimson and carbon. Spirit and blood, water and flesh. Eyes opening, perceiving. Lips pursing and kissing. Ears hearing and waiting. Hands opening and fingers stretching.

All the little stretches, all the little struggles said – “I am alive.”

The Story In Which I Find Myself.

I’m reminded on this, my birthday, of a favorite passage in the book of Psalms from the Bible.

Psalm 139:13-18

¹³ For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

¹⁷ How precious to me are your thoughts,^[a] God!
How vast is the sum of them!

¹⁸ Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.

I Was Made By God.

¹³ For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I am not ordinary. I am extraordinary. I was fashioned and designed by more than random evolution. I was made with intention and thought. Effort met love met art met majesty.

Those I love need to know me. Those I don’t love yet need to know me. It’s important for them to touch me, hear me, grow with me, cry with me, laugh with me. My design is not their design. We share a universe outside of us, but we perceive it differently because of the unique universe within each one of us.

I Am A Beautiful Gift.

¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

Stand in awe (apparently) in light of who I am. Relax; that’s not my ego talking. That’s the verse above talking. I am “fearfully” made. Wonderfully, in fact – like a supernova or a circus imaginarium. No, wait. Not like them. I have the breath of life. That’s quite, quite different I think. Stand in awe. Be in shock. Step back, take it in. Yes, I am a sign and a wonder. You’ll have to speak louder for me to hear you over the sound of my awesomeness. Now, you may awake from your fainting spell.

Actually, I know my place in the story. I’m not the big point, but I am a little one. One of the points, in Story that surrounds us all. As we meet, your story (and mine) will change. I choose for your story to be better because you’ve met me. I am a beautiful gift; I want you to be excited when you touch that gift.

I Am Known.

¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Loneliness comes from a deep, foreboding sense that no one truly “knows” you. There is isolation. There is distance. There is a lack of recognition by another.

I will never be lonely. I am known. If I was on a desert island, or thrust into the farthest vacuum of space, I would still be known.

I will never be lonely.

My Life Has Meaning And Purpose.

¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

Days were ordained for me. Purposed for me. Intended for me to live within them. This agenda, this schedule, was known. Known of. Known about. Known in a way that means my presence within these moments, minutes, hours, days, years, lifetime is not random. Accidental. Oops.

No. My life has meaning and purpose. I was meant to be here. I was meant to smile at you. I was meant to breath, and my heart to beat.

Welcome to the world we share – a life full of meaning from start to finish.
I Remain In The Thoughts Of God.

¹⁷ How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!

^18a Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand….

Here’s the beautiful part. I was not born, then left to live on my own. I am in the thoughts of God. Today, I wake up to You who have been thinking of me every moment of my life. Today, in fact, I am in your thoughts. So many thoughts.

What did you think the moment I made my first real decision? What did you think when I first thought of You, out loud and on the air? What did you think when I gave my heart to You? What did You think? What do You think of my life today? This moment? What do You think?

Today Is My Birthday; I Am With You.

^18b…When I awake, I am still with you.

Today is my birthday, and I am with You. Nothing will ever, ever change that. As I remember my birth today, I will remember that I am awake, alive, in Your hands.

Your Story is my story, our story, and to live it large is my greatest dream.

Today is my birthday. Thank you for bringing me to life.

A new day has dawned, and in these moments I find the Source of Life did not leave my heart through the night.

If a cadence can be discerned in our days, it is this.

That each moment is a window into our past and future; that each breath and beat of the heart is an indicator that we are not alone.

We are so much less than alone.

We are truly surrounded.

Surrounded by God. Surrounded by love. Surrounded by strong ones, seen and unseen, who watch and guard.

Surrounded.

It is a newsletter I highly recommend you join for daily formation ideas.

However, the last newsletter begged an issue on which I have strong feelings, and therefore I include the post and my response here.

Upside-down Kingdom

Written by admin January 26th, 2009 in on the way

By Gordon Cosby

We moderate and polish the world’s thinking, and name it Christian. The church embodies the upside-down kingdom. Whatever the world admires is probably not good, according to kingdom values. The church is always anti-empire.

What the church does is provide a place where pain can be touched and where the vision for a new world can be lifted up and held before people.

Source: quoted by Peter Renner in “Good Is a Timely Word”

DAN’S RESPONSE

I’m always grateful for the insights in the Inward/Outward newsletter, but in this case, I must raise a voice of disagreement.

The Church is not always “anti-empire.” If in this case we are defining the empire as the self-sufficient culture (as it seems in Gordon’s words above), I would offer a contrasting thought.

When it is assumed the Church should be “anti-empire,” and we believe or unquestioningly affirm these words, in my estimation we have chosen the wrong enemy.

I would suggest that this idea is a carry-over from historic Christan ideas that toxify (to greater or lesser degrees) and possibly nullify our capacity to enact a joyful missional spirituality in the world.

To say the culture does not value forgiveness, generosity, justice, beauty and even unconditional love – and the Church does, in contrast – is simply not true in my experience.

It is indeed the distortions of culture (we are “indisputably bent” as Shaeffer once said) that blind us from the centrality of these values, it is indeed the culture’s stories that disorient us from the Story that is their source. We are unquestionably blinded by the empire to the values that make humanity humane.

However, we can see these values popping out all about us in “unbelieving” culture; one can’t quite keep the ImageBearer from shining through, especially in times of trouble or distress.

In the artistic community, we often see these themes bursting through from the unbelieving culture, and I suggest that the condemning of “empire” is rooted in a misunderstanding of how God sees the Church moving in human culture.

We are part of human culture, indeed part of the empire, just as we also are a part of a transcendent community that is a King-led, Kingdom community across time.

But to say that we are always to be “anti-empire,” is an old condemnation (again, in my humble perspective) of “all cultural values,” that pushes us to be more set apart in thinking, style and form than I think God requires of us. The paradigm of sacred/secular rears its head once again, and throws us back into unhelpful worldviews that are less than biblical at almost every turn.

Culture is not the enemy. It is a textbook to be studied, and endorsed or challenged at every turn. I agree that we are part of the New Creation voice, and that our minds must be renewed. I also agree that the world is a very dark place, and we are called to be people of light within it.

I just believe that statements such as “the church is always anti-empire” are not only false, but harmful over decades, centuries and millenia.

Empire is not the issue. We are not anti-empire.

Culture is not the issue. We are not anti-culture.

The unawakened heart is the issue.

We are “anti-anything-that-wars-against-the-law-of-Love.”

Acts of worship (I’m specifically speaking now of worship through sacramental expression) are most fully about reclaiming memory.

When we remember, we connect, we pray, we offer, we delight, we repent, we appreciate, we hope, we help.

We all suffer from an amnesia, or loss of memory, that keeps us distant from our original Relational Center, and that ultimately destroys our right-relatedness to the rest of creation – both animate and inanimate. The term “anamnesis” is a term that speaks of an intense experience of memory that virtually places us as an actor within the story once again. We long for such an experience as this when it comes to our origin story. As Madeleine L’ Engel said, “I can’t wait until I remember how to walk on water.” Worship hearkens back to that state of affairs, and moves us in a circular destiny toward our original meaning.

When we worship, we remember who we are, our context in this vast universe, and our responsibilities born of our stewardship vocation before God. When we worship, we delight in the correct center of universal reality – an eternal Person.

To create these liminal spaces, these threshold venues of connection again to our gifted past as we connect to the One who tethers us to that past, is the role of the one who purposes to lead others into worship.

We are MemoryBearers, ThresholdCrafters, EdenReminders – when we lead worship.