First Person with Wayne Shepherd

First Person: Ron DiCianni - extended conversation

This segment picks up the conversation with Ron DiCianni where we left off at the end of the radio show. Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company: FEBC National Processing Center Far East Broadcasting Company P.O. Box 6020 Albert Lea, MN 56007 Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

Duration:: 6m
Broadcast on:: 20 Jan 2011
Audio Format:: other

This segment picks up the conversation with Ron DiCianni where we left off at the end of the radio show.

Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company:
FEBC National Processing Center
Far East Broadcasting Company
P.O. Box 6020
Albert Lea, MN 56007

Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

I'm grateful to have these extra moments with you via the internet here and I'm glad that our friends came over from radio to join us. Nine years ago, you and I were scheduled to do a live interview on radio. My dad passed away that weekend. It was my 50th birthday weekend and of course I had canceled the interview, but you gave us a print of Safely Home, which hangs in our family room today and I've just always been so grateful to you for doing that and it just prompts me to ask you how do people get in touch with you and how do they get these works of art that God has gifted you to create? How do they get to the middle of their home? Well, first let me say thank you for understanding that my son and I in tapestry productions, we try to give away as much as we can. This is not about getting, it's about giving. God worries about our provision and he promised to do that, he's Jehovah Jaira. Where we see a need, we try to meet that need and if the person can't pay, the person can't pay. We hope we get enough of the people who do pay to keep us given to the people who can't. Sure, that's not a very good business plan, but it's ministry, isn't it? Yeah, I don't think Jesus is going to ask about my business plan when I get to heaven, but he will ask about the ministry plan. But one of the things that we try to do is back up the paintings that I do with the most excellent reproduction process available today. Matter of fact, I've told you this privately that my son left law school in order to come and help me and the technology that he's brought into our company fire exceeds anything that's on the market today. So the same commitment to excellence that you bring to the gift that you've been given to to paint, you apply to the reproduction and the whole presentation. It doesn't stop with the paint on the canvas. No, everything is hand done. We do grant those everything from the printing to we have a consummate framer. We get our raw wood to make the stretchers. Everything is literally done by hand. Everything walks out of the door and gets shipped if it even has a remote chance of not being up to 100 percent. And so we have stores calling us and saying, how in the world do you sell it to us for this price, yours is the best we've ever seen. And we have to then humbly say, we're not in this for the money. We're in this for the ministry. If you want us to charge you more, we gladly will, but we're trying to make this affordable to everybody who wants to impact their family. And all I know is that if there's ever been a day that we have to guard our heart and remind ourselves of what are we looking at every day, what are we, what's turning our crank, what are we watching, what are we fueling ourselves with that today it better be something that reminds us that we are the children of God, that we better live like today's our last and get ready for the fact that one of these days the sky is going to part and Jesus is going to come back. I just been thinking sitting here that you are rightly dividing the word of truth through art. I hope so. I hope so. My mandate is not to win awards, although I'm humbled to say that when I, back in the day when I was working in the world, I wanted awards. I didn't get any. If anyone's honest, they, we all, we all like them. Of course. I can't turn them away fast enough now. The Resurrection mural that a lot of people will know was just named one of, by the Art Renewal Center, which is a huge organization in the forefront of art bringing classical art back into our society, named it one of the 100 best pieces of art in the world. Wow. Now, God kept me humble because when they wrote to me and said, "We want you to know this was picked," they said, "Millions are going to see it on our site. We're going to do a book that millions are going to see with it in it as well." So I wrote them back and I said, "Well, thank you for the honor. Can I get a book?" And they said, "If you buy one." So I thought, "Thank you, Lord. I needed that humility at the moment. So I'm still working my way up for the funds to buy the book, but literally it is time. And I think we're seeing this more, not only in the political stream, but in the artistic stream, that there is getting a wider chasm between the church and the world every day. Soon, if you've got one foot in each camp, you're not going to be able to spread your feet wide enough, you're going to fall. So our mandate is to go into all the world and preach the gospel visually and pray that we will not reduce the message down for sales. And your world you truly do only use words when necessary? Absolutely. And if I would ask anything of anybody, it would be, "Please pray for us." It's not as easy a climb up the hill as people might think. And we need prayer, we need supporters, but mostly we need godly people. Like David Livingston once said, when he was told that many mission-minded people wanted to come to him, he wrote back and he said, "Well, why aren't they coming?" They said, "Well, because there's no roads." And he said, "Well, if they need roads to get to me, they're not the people I'm looking for." And I say the same thing. If you don't have the backbone to support the arts, you're not the person I'm looking for. Tapestryproductions.com, resurrectionmiral.com. You've got it. I trust our listeners will check both of those out. Well, I pray so. Ron, thanks for your time. We will pray for you. Wayne, bless your heart. You've always been a friend, and I owe you. I owe you big.