Bringing the Text to Life
Rifters Acts 16:16-34
Walt Disney was a rifter. So were Paul and Silas. They saw a rip in the fabric of the rules we live by - and then grabbed it and exploited it.
Many people are gifted. But only a few are rift-gifted.
Walt Disney was one of them. In fact, Walt was a three-time rifter, one of the few people who have successfully managed to find a rift in the continuum of life, to bet everything on it, and to make a profit by doing so.
So just what is a rift? A rift is a big tear in the fabric of the rules that we live by. It's a fundamental change in the game, one that creates a bunch of new losers - and a handful of new winners.
Walt Disney saw three major rifts, dove into them and changed our culture forever.
First, he noticed early on that movies would transform the world of entertainment. Realizing that there would soon be a huge demand for family entertainment, he pioneered the development of the animated movie, perfecting the form in 1937 with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. At the same time, he grasped that a cartoon could work as a feature-length film - rather than merely a "short" that you saw in the theater before the feature.
The second ...