Sketching out a practical theology of play
What we can learn from Scripture about a theology of play, how LEGO’s Serious Play can solve problems at work, and why the opposite of play is not work but depression.
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[00:00:05] JR: Hey, friend. Welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast. I'm Jordan Raynor. How does the gospel influence the work of mere Christians? Those of us who aren't pastors or religious professionals, but who work as coroners, game wardens, and meteorologists? That's the question we explore every week.
Today, I'm posing it to Tim Croll. He was a contestant on season two of LEGO Masters on Fox, and had spent 20-plus years as a consultant helping businesses play and work better. Tim and I had a great discussion about what we can learn from God's word about a theology of play. We talked about how LEGO's Serious Play methodology can help you and your team solve problems at work, and we talked about why the opposite of play is not work, but depression. Trust me, you're going to love this conversation with my friend, Tim Croll.
[EPISODE]
[0:01:04] JR: Tim Croll, welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast, my friend.
[0:01:07] TC: Man, I'm so excited about this. We get to come on here and we get to talk about play. So, let's get going. Let's go.
[0:01:14] JR: I know this is going to be a blast. So, I've got a Tim Croll story I love. I was walking around this LEGO event with my kids in Tampa and we like make eye contact. You were like, “You're Jordan Raynor.” I'm like, “Wait, you're Tim Croll who's emailed me from LEGO Masters.” You were a contestant on LEGO Masters, this reality show on Fox. What's your favorite story from that experience? What's the story you've told more than any other?
[0:01:41] TC: From LEGO Masters?
[0:01:42] JR: Yes.
[0:01:43] TC: So, it's kind of an interesting thing. When we talk about it, I kind of have like two different paths. I have the experience and the relationship that I was able to recreate with my son. I mean, he had just stepped out of high school and this was like him stepping into a manhood kind of a situation. So, there's a lot of really cool stories in around that. But there's also this other aspect of how it has impacted other fathers. We were the father-son duo and so looking at that there's two different parts of that. First of all, the one story that I can say my son is the opposite personality of who I am. He's very introverted, laid back, and it's a good thing because I'm more extroverted. Something triggers me, I'm going to go, boom. I'm going to hit it, right?
So, there were several situations where somebody would ask a question, something wasn't quite right, and my son would look over and say, “Dad, Dad, calm down, calm down, calm down.” But it was such a healthy way to kind of look at our relationship and I'm really grateful for those times because I got to see him really become a stronger man and be more determined, and kind of clarify his purpose and clarify the direction that he wants to go. Now, he's in his 20s, so there’s still some confusion and that's okay, but he has more of a purpose and more of a direction.
[0:02:56] JR: It's good. I love that so much. I hope I get to do something like this with my kids. I don't know if it's LEGO Masters. Knowing Ellison, my eldest, there'll be some baking competition with Aarti Sequeira or something like that.
Hey, I am curious. So, LEGO is a huge part of your life. It's a huge part of your work. Has that always been true? Is LEGO a lifelong obsession for you? How did you get into LEGO?
[0:03:19] TC: No. Actually, it was never fully integrated as it is fully integrated today. It was a big, big difference. Now, as we were growing up. We didn't have the money for LEGO. It wasn't really that big of a deal. I mean I'm a Gen Xer, so we had Lincoln Logs and some of those other things. We didn't really get into LEGO. It wasn't until my wife and I got married and then my boys started really getting into it. They were 8, 9, 10, and we started buying for Christmas and whatnot. Our goal though, Melissa and I, we always had a purpose to make sure that we were involved in our kids' lives. We were doing things.
So, Christmas, you get a LEGO set. Well, now you're going to work with your kids. So, it's kind of like, you're getting to put it together and more so than they are. So, that's the kind of relationship that we created and crafted. At about 10, my son kicked me out and said, “Hey, I want to do this on my own.” And I'm like, “Oh, okay.” Zach at 13, that's when he started doing what's called MOC. So, I'm going to use a lot of acronyms, I'll explain them as we go, but MOCs are my own creation and LEGO has tons of acronyms.
So, he started creating MOCs, built this huge bridge, massive bridge, it was about four foot long. I'm like, “This kid’s got some talent.” I'm really shocked to just coming out of his brain. It's like Da Vinci or something. He's just using LEGOS. It was really cool. Again, going back to our purpose with Melissa and I, we always want to make sure we are involved with our kids.
I actually come down to the basement where he's building and we start building. And it was those kinds of things that allowed us to be able to figure out that Lego actually has some powerful techniques to be able to – I'm getting to your question, so let me kind of swing this back around here. LEGO was the third mute party that allowed us to have deep conversations. When I realized how powerful that third party was, the activity, that's when I started integrating it into teaching, into training, into all of these other pieces that I have. I've got a Master's Degree in Leadership and I've got all this education and I went to college for youth ministry, all these things. And all of a sudden, I discover through working with my son how powerful the LEGO is. Now, it's like, dude, why am I not integrating this? Why am I not putting this in the educational part? Why am I not creating these workshops and these trainings to be able to help adults as well as kids understand how to apply strategy and theory to their lives?
[0:05:33] JR: That's good. I really like that. I've heard this referred to as a third thing, right? Conversation can take on a richer level of depth when you're throwing a football with your kid, when you're doing LEGOs with your kid. Actually, you probably know this. The founder of LEGO, Ole Kirk Christiansen, this is one of the reasons why he loved the brick, is he watched how it was an excuse for him to build relationships with, at that time, it was his grandchildren, right? Because he stumbled onto the plastic bricks later in life.
Hey, so Tim, you were super kind to endorse my new book, Five Mere Christians, this collection of binge-worthy biographies of men and women I want most on this podcast, but can't because they're dead, including a Ole Kirk Christiansen, the founder of LEGO. He's one of the five. You are actually one of the very few people who already knew a lot of this story. Most people don't know the story of LEGO's founder. This guy –
[0:06:27]TC: Phenomenal story.
[0:06:30] JR: It's an unbelievable story. It is a made-for-TV story. This guy was a modern-day Job who lost everything multiple times. What's also interesting about this guy's story is he deeply believed in the value of play along before most people did. I'm curious to get your perspective on this. Do you think there was a connection? Because we don't have a lot of his words, right? But based on what you see in his life, do you think there was a connection between his love of play and his love of the Lord, his seriousness about play, and his seriousness about his faith? Is there a connection there?
[0:07:06] TC: I think, absolutely. It's hard to sit down here and emphatically prove something. Like this is what you're saying. You can't sit down here and say, “Oh, here's all of the facts.” Again, going back to your book Called to Create, sometimes as modern-day Christians, we have to have this black and white. We have to have all of these facts listed out. We have to be like, okay, if you're not this person or in this position, then you're not actually in ministry, which is such a false narrative.
When we look at his life, the way that he lived, the action that he did and attempting to do right, I fully believe that there was definitely a connection between his faith, his love for Jesus and his Savior, as well as how do we actually now apply it?
[0:07:48] JR: I'm working on a new project right now and thinking a lot about a theology of play. I do love how much time Jesus spends with kids. Of course, they were playing. That's what kids do. That is the work of childhood display. I also think, I think we see this theme throughout the Godhead, all throughout Scripture, right? God does not work just to solve problems. I've written about this in The Sacredness of Secular Work a little bit, right? He appears to do some things just for the fun of it.
There's this quote for this theologian I think about a lot, this guy named Gustavo Gutierrez, who says, “Utility is not the primary reason for God's action.” In Job 38:25-26, God says he sends, “Torrents of rain to water a land where no one lives.” Why? Apparently, just for the fun of it. You create the platypus. Why? Just for the fun of it. And if God does some things for the pure joy and play of doing them, then we as His image bearers can too, right Tim?
[0:08:51] TC: I think you're so accurate in that. I mean, I have this mental picture of it was going to sound very non-theological, but I have this mental picture of this older gentleman sitting up in heaven and seeing something really funny and just doubling over with laughter because of something that just went. I mean, shoot, if we look at it, so follow my line of thought here, if we look at it and the way that we actually look at our kids and sometimes our kids say the funniest things in the world, and we just sit there and then we just like crack up and we have a good time and we laugh.
I mean truly, if we look at the fact that God is our father and he's the one that we look at, why wouldn't he have that same kind of reaction when we do something or we tell a funny joke, and he's just up there giggling away at something? That whole idea or concept that just lives in my head rent free and I think it's something that we miss as humans because we get too serious. We get way too fundamental and we forget about this fun side of what has been created.
[0:09:45] JR: Hey, so, play is intrinsically good, but I am learning from you and from others that play is also essential if we want to do our most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. That play does actually make us more productive, and I'll admit that I'm a slow learner here, but I am learning this slowly, but surely. Can you tell our listeners what you've learned about how play can make us better at the work God has created us to do?
[0:10:11] TC: Oh my, this is a deep question. How much time do we got?
[0:10:14] JR: Yes, you can take your time.
[0:10:16] TC: So, when I do a LEGO workshop, the incredible aspect of it is I focus on what is the – basically, I'll do a discovery recall with whomever it is and I'm contracting what to be able to do that.
[0:10:28] JR: Yes, let's back up for a second. This is good. This is good. Tell us a little bit about these workshops that you put on. Take us inside of one of them.
[0:10:35] TC: Okay. So, let me just give you the example of what I have done in the past so that way kind of can relate. But the goal of this is to solve the challenge or the problem that's basically keeping you up at night. Everybody's a little bit different. While there's a lot of fundamental principles and things that are going to always stay the same, the application is going to be different per company, per individual, per challenge, whatever. So, that's the first thing.
We had a situation where I was working with another company here locally, Treetops. One of the challenges that they had was communication, being able to effectively communicate not only within their staff in their sales department, but with the reservation’s teams, the customer service, and then they were making some changes. So, a person that reserved a year ago may not get the exact same thing that they're getting this year. There's a lot of challenges and a little bit of conflict that was starting to come up. So, what we focused on was effective communication.
Well, there's a thousand talks out there. The education for communication is all over the place. But practically speaking, how do you apply theory strategy into an everyday situation? And that's where the Serious Play comes in. So, I come in and I'll do a session between three to four hours, the first 30 to 40 minutes. Sometimes it's about an hour depending on questions. We'll go over those principles. What is effective communication? What does it mean? What are the barriers to effective communication? How do you overcome it? What's a feedback loop? There's things like that that are basic taught principles.
Now we say, okay, now we're going to stop. We're going to divide up. I actually typically do about a team of three, sometimes team of four, but usually a team of three, and I give them a challenge. I basically take a set. I break that whole set apart and then there's some secret sauce that I'm not going to give you everything to, but it basically is you have the instructions. One person's a leader, they have the instructions but the other people don't. Your job is to verbally tell the other person what to build without pointing, without building, without doing. You can only use your words to be able to do that.
If you can imagine now, you have this picture in your mind and you're the only one looking at that, whatever it is, and you're trying to tell somebody else and trying to describe what they have no idea. That's communication, is getting what's in your head into somebody else's head. That's effective communication. So, we go through those challenges.
What I do is I'll actually stop them about every 20 minutes, 30 minutes and say, “Okay, what are the problems? What are the challenges? How do we overcome? What can we do different? What's going good? What's going bad?” That facilitates the discussion around effective communication. Then, for example, sometimes people are not the greatest communicators and they start to realize that. So, they're telling somebody something and the people looking at them like, “I have no idea what you're talking about.” That opens up what we call the feedback loop of how do you tactfully tell somebody they're messing up and we'd have no idea what you're saying and you need to try better, try different, use some other words, you got to do something different because we just don't understand and that's the feedback loop and we've had that situation happen multiple times.
That's just one of probably 20 or 30 examples that I can give you and whether it's leadership, whether it's conflict resolution, whether it's team building, whether it's personal development, personalities. I mean, there's all kinds of application when it comes to the actual Serious Play and how that integrates into our lives. So, to answer your question kind of coming full circle on that is how does a play affect us? One is if we do not have the ability to understand and practice soft skills, that hinders the hard skills, the talents that God gave us. It hinders that because we're not able to actually do that effectively with more people.
So, Serious Play really develops for the most part. There are some hard skills. But for the most part, Serious Play develops all of those soft skills that as frankly, and unfortunately, most organizations, they skip over the soft skills, they skip over the emotional intelligence or the EQ. And that's where Serious Play comes in to be able to make it a more cohesive, functioning team. When I say that there's statistics and data, I mean, it's like a mile long. If you start doing research on how efficiency and emotional intelligence and all of the soft skills play into more productivity, more profit, more cohesion, less turnovers as far as employees. There's so much data that I could go on for hours just on that one part.
[0:14:51] JR: Yes. It reminds me of this quote from Dr. Stuart Brown that I read in his book, Play. Dr. Stuart Brown, the founder of what is it, the National Institute for Play?
[0:14:59] TC: Yes. I believe so.
[0:15:00] JR: Yes, I think I'm getting that right. He says, “In the long run, work does not work without play.” I love that. It's taken me a long time to believe that. I'm a hard data-driven guy and play feel soft. But I do believe it in addition to its intrinsic value.
All right, you mentioned this term Serious Play that's trademarked by LEGO. You gave us a great case study of Serious Play a minute ago. Define it for us, though. Give us a concrete definition of what you mean by that term, Serious Play.
[0:15:32] TC: The simplest way for me to define Serious Play is taking activity to apply to your daily lives. So, we all have knowledge. We all have learned facts. We've gone to school or we've got it through some other method of training, teaching, and we have all these facts. What we lack is the ability to apply what we know. That's the wisdom side of things. So, Serious Play gives us the practice without all the pressures of business or making mistakes. We can practice what we've learned. And again, a lot of it has to do with just basics working together, talking with other people. How do we actually function as a society? And that's where the activity is important to apply what we've learned.
[0:16:19] JR: Yes. Here's what I love. What I'm hearing you say, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that play does not have to only exist outside of work. There's play in the work, right? Like I felt guilty for a really long time about not having a hobby. To this day, I have no hobby, something outside of work that is exclusively play. But I realized that number one, almost none of my heroes had hobbies. Very, very, very few of my heroes had hobbies. And two, a lot of my work by God's grace alone is play, right? Dr. Brown, who I mentioned before, says one of the trademarks of play is that you lose track of time while you're engaged in the activity. That's how I feel writing. Writing is play for me.
So, here's my question for you. Can there be some aspects of our current work that are play?
[0:17:09] TC: Oh, well, I would even contend that some aspects of your current work are your hobby.
[0:17:13] JR: That's right.
[0:17:15] TC: You're talking about writing and you say, “I actually don't have any hobbies,” but yet you get involved in writing and that technically is a hobby, and some people just do it for fun, but some people have made it their business. For me, the play aspect of it is kind of my hobby. I enjoy just all kinds of different play-type things. That list is pretty long. So, my hobby of play kind of branches into a whole lot of different pieces. I think that there is definitely something there in regards to how play can be effective as well as it can also be your hobby.
[0:17:50] JR: Is there a sense for you that when you do play, when you spend time at things that are in that “get to” column and not that “have to” column, that you can experience God's love in a different way because it's a rebellious act of declaring that you have worth and value, irrespective of productivity. Does that make any sense, Tim?
[0:18:16] TC: Makes perfect sense and it actually goes right back to your book, Called to Create. I know you've gotten a lot of people that have said this exact same thing, but there's such a freeing aspect when you read that. The way that you introduce the book and the aspect and I know your listeners all know this because I'm sure they've read it. But the way that God introduced himself as a creator, I was like, “Yes, that is exactly how I feel.”
I couldn't put it into better words because there was this pressure to perform and I grew up very strict Baptist. So, there's this pressure to perform not only in your life and your lifestyle but also in business, and then according to success you go to college, you get a job, and that's what you do to be successful. I didn't fit that mold at all. So, that pressure to be able to fit in or to do stuff created a chameleon-like effect in my own personal life especially all the way up through my 20s and 30s, and I felt like I was always performing. It wasn't until you realized that God created us individuals and that individuality is how He loves you and how He reacts and interacts with what you do.
When you can embrace that and understand that you don't have to be something in order for Him to love you, it changes the way that you do business, the way that you do life. It changes everything about you as your performance. There's no longer that pressure like you just said about, “I have to produce in order to be loved.” I talk to so many men too, we battle with this because we feel like we have to have a title in order to be something. We associate our identity with that title rather than the fact that we have been created and crafted with skills and talents and God's put those in us and we are perfect the way that we are.
[0:20:00] JR: Yes, that's good. Yes, I think play is an act of rebellion. I think Sabbath is an act of rebellion to this end, right? Because I've heard some people define play as simply that get-to, have-to framework, right? Play is something you would say you get to do, work is something you would say you would have to do, although I would, of course, argue that those lines get really, really blurry, really fast, but Sabbath is that.
[0:20:20] TC: Can I pause you on that?
[0:20:22] JR: Yes, please.
[0:20:23] TC: This is a passion for me, and the reason why is because it's very, very personal. That get-to, have-to, I call it drainers and drivers. That was from Tony Grebmeier. I've heard another person call it boosters and zappers. I don't care how you define it, but this is a life lesson that I had to learn. When I was going through a bunch of stuff, and this is about six, seven years ago, and that whole pressure to perform, there's an activity that I now do with a lot of people. There's a list of all the things that I have to do versus all the things that I get to do. And my list of have to do was 10 times longer than my list of get to do.
What that effected was me breaking down. When I talk about building personal development, there's four areas. This comes from Luke chapter 2, 52. “Jesus grew in both wisdom and stature in favor with God and man.” So, there's four specific areas that we grow personally. Those are buckets. When I have to do and only have to do, and I don't do get to, my energy gets drained physically, spiritually, mentally, and socially in every aspect of that. That leads very quickly to emotional breakdown, physical breakdown. That's when you have all kinds of heart problems,
challenges. There's all kinds of things that go on there.
I had to learn after I broke down and started beating the crap out of a garage door one day because I couldn't think, I had to learn how to take those things that were in my have-to and either do delegate or delete and make my get-to list longer. So, for the past five to seven years, I have been solely focused on what do I get to do, instead of what I have to do and make that have-to – it's never going to go away. You're always going to have some things that you have to do, but I need to make that short compared to the list of the things that I get to. That then, full circle comes back into the reason why I'm using Serious Play mythology, is because I get to go teach people and I get to play. Now, it's all, it's fun for business.
So, I know this is a little bit of a rabbit hole, but I think it's a really important thing.
[0:22:18] JR: It's a Holy Spirit-dug rabbit hole. You don't know this at all. Yes, I'll share this, whatever. I’ll be real, be vulnerable. This It's been a very challenging six months for me, probably the most challenging in my life, emotionally. I got to be careful here because I recognize that most people on earth spend most of their careers doing work that is 95% in that have-to column. And I am blessed and privileged. It is a gift from God that I have anything in to get-to column. So, I want to preface this with that. That's it.
I've entered into a season of my career because of the success of the books, and this podcast, and speaking, and my communities, that I have more in that have-to column than I have ever had before. Even before when I was running this larger tech startup day to day, Threshold 360, I feel like I have more in that have-to column than ever before. It sounds really selfish. I'm just being real raw. I had this conversation with my wife last night on the couch. It feels unbelievably selfish for me to say, “Okay, great. Let's just get that have-to stuff off the plate and let's focus more on get-to.” Convince me, otherwise.
[0:23:39] TC: I have had multiple men talk to me specifically about this topic and I feel like that's why I'm so passionate about it and my experience. So, let me back up and give you my story a little bit on that, and then we can kind of untangle some of these parts.
[0:23:53] JR: This is great. Yes. This is super helpful.
[0:23:56] TC: I have lots and lots of things, I'm going to start the story basically, right about the time that I started working with a company called SunFrog, massive, massive amount of success. In fact, when I first started working with the guy that owned the company, he sat there and said, “I don't think this is going to go anywhere, but let's go ahead and try.” I got paid about $800 a month, plus I got a percentage of whatever we sold. Thought, well, we'll give it a shot. We'll see what happens here.
We ended up taking SunFrog, which was an online t-shirt company from about, I'll say about $5,000 a month in gross revenue to $15 million a month in gross revenue within a matter of two years. Massive amounts of success. Most people, especially in business, if you have that much success that quickly, wheels fall off the bus and you got to put it back on while it's moving. This is what you got to do.
[0:24:38] JR: You got to build a plane while it's flying.
[0:24:40] TC: Oh, my goodness, it's so intense. So, the have-to gets really, really long. Then I worked with another company that was on ecomm. What happens in ecomm is our busiest time is our fourth quarter. What else happens in fourth quarter? Well, all of your holidays, all of your family obligations, all of these things. So, the final year that I was in all of this, I had all of the business stress of owning and operating and doing all the ecomm comp stuff and trying to make bank in the fourth quarter. And then I had to go and spend time with my parents and Melissa's parents and all of these other obligations that we had. We got to my parents and in that one weekend there was a backup, the sewer came in, the basement was flooded, we were up until three or four in the morning, extremely exhausting physically.
I've already been drained because of all of the other stuff. Then we drove back from Pennsylvania back to Michigan, and that's when the garage door fell. I'm sitting there in the driveway with my family in the van and I get out and I try to pick the garage door up. I couldn't do it and I don't know what broke in my brain but it literally broke. I could not problem solve and all I could do was attempt – my brain was saying I have to go through this door. So, I do it like the WWE and I'm like flying people's elbow and all this. I'm trying to beat my way through a steel door, steel-reinforced door, it's not going to happen. All that time that's going on, this little warning bell is going off in the back of my head saying, “Hey, is this what you want your wife to see? Is this what you want your kids to see? Is this the person that you really want to be?”
Just things started triggering and falling into place, and that's when I met Tony Grebmeier who really helped me as far as a mentor. Things started looking at, and I had to go back and apologize to my kids and to my wife. You don't have to respect my actions in that moment. You still have to honor me as a dad and as a husband, but you don't have to respect those actions. I was wrong, and I apologize for those. But if I didn't have that wakeup call and that close of that mental breakdown, I wouldn't know something else was wrong because then we continue and we push harder, especially those that are driven. We push harder and harder and harder. The next thing you know, when you are, and I don't care if you're doing a job that you love or whatever, there's always these things that you have to do and it could be as simple as answering emails.
If you allow yourself to get to the point of complete empty, you will not be worthwhile to your company, you will not be worthwhile to your family, to your kids. And that is what scares the crap out of me. So, when I look at that part of things and I say, “Well, I feel guilty because I have to take care of myself, or I feel guilty because I'm delegating something that I have to do, or I feel guilty because I'm just eliminating something.” Then I think of what is my priority? What has God called me to be? He's first called me to be the husband and the father. He hasn't called me to the business aspect. I get to do that kind of stuff, but He called me to be a husband and a father first. If I'm not taking care of myself in order to be the best possible husband, the best possible dad, then I have failed my responsibility and that's where I feel this guilt that we feel about taking care of our bodies and taking care of our mental and social and spiritual well-being, we can't show up. We can't show up and perform and be effective.
This whole training thing, what I challenge people to do is take 30 days and every day on your list, you write, one side you got your have-to’s, and one side you got your get-to’s, and every day, just write down what you did and see your list. If your list on the have-to’s is longer than the get-to’s, you're going to start to break somewhere. Something is going to break. It could be a mental thing, it could be physical, emotional. That's why we have people that implode and I can go on about multiple stories of people I've watched implode and break, and they no longer have either effective businesses, effective ministries, their families break apart. I can go down those, you don't want that. So, take care of it now.
[0:28:18] JR: Yes, and I think we as Christ followers have got to think differently about this idea of self-care, of which play I would put as a subset of this idea of self-care. We value self-care as a means of self -sacrifice, right? If we are not taking care of ourselves, we can't serve our brothers and sisters well. There's this quote, and I just processed my notes from Dr. Stuart Brown's book, Play. It's why these quotes are so fresh in my mind, he says in there, “The opposite of play is not work. The opposite of play is depression.” My dang, I've never thought about that way, but I'm seeing the early signs of that in my life.
Lord willing, I pray that God allows me to do this work for another 40 years. Before we go, I do have to ask you this. When you look at Ole Kirk Christensen's life, you and I share a love of this guy, this founder LEGO. Beyond his heart for play, what else do you see of how the gospel clearly shaped his life and work? What else do you see, the young man, that can only be explained by his faith in Jesus Christ?
[0:29:26] TC: His family. I think that's the biggest telltale sign is when you look at how he acted and responded with his family. The other little-known fact, which I'm sure comes out in your book and this may be a little bit of a teaser. I think it comes out. I remember reading it there. Maybe it was the interview that you did. I can't remember where I read it now. But anyway, the whole aspect of what he did during World War II. I mean, I didn't know that. That was actually something new to me. But for somebody to do that and take on that response.
[0:29:53] JR: So, our listeners don't know.
[0:29:54] TC: I know.
[0:29:55] JR: That's why I was kind of teasing. Tell them what you remember. I give away everything.
[0:29:58] TC: Oh, okay. Okay. I was like kind of teasing just so they could go read it.
[0:30:02] JR: No, give it to them.
[0:30:04] TC: Now, that's actually one of the most interesting things is the fact that he actually smuggled arms and ammunition across into Nazi-controlled territories through his boxes of toys. So, he would put them on. He didn't tell anybody. So, that way, if there was nobody – he didn't tell anybody. And multiple times he talks about, I don't remember, like I can't remember if it was in the book part of it or in the podcast part that he did, but multiple times the Nazis would come into his shop and it was like, “Uh-oh.” And then they would just kind of turn a blind eye. There's things like that that just would, they didn't see it and how do you not see it?
[0:30:38] JR: Oh, they – so there's this story we tell in the book. These Nazi soldiers invade Denmark, it's the middle of World War II, LEGO has just taken off and they try to commandeer the workshop and Ole's son, Godtfred is there, and acts dumb, acts like he doesn't know German. The soldiers are like, “Okay, whatever, we're just going to leave.” Well, that didn't work when they showed up to Ole's home. And they commandeered his home, like we're moving in.
Literally, these Nazi soldiers moved into the first floor of Ole's home in Billund, and he would smuggle grenades in these Lego boxes under these guys' noses to allied forces.
Here's what I love about it. Yes, this guy embraced playful and useless “things”, and I believe glorified God in doing that, right? He understood that he had value in his play and not just his productivity, but he also understood that we Christers are called the serious work to see evil in the world to call evil what it is and to actively fight against the darkness of this world with the light that we have in Jesus Christ. And he's such a great example of that. I love this guy. He's a legend.
[0:31:54] TC: I would say one other thing that you can see very clearly is even in the darkest of times in his life, when he was at the edge of breaking, which frankly, anybody that's over 30 probably has at some point felt that, the tears in the shower that you don't want to tell anybody about which some of us has been there and the absolute breaking of your soul, he was at that point multiple times. Business is gone.
I felt the pain just by reading some of the things that he's gone through because I can relate so well with those and the absolute, “Hey, we have a really, really high point. Everything's and great.” The next thing, you're at the bottom. What is this? It's like, you said earlier, real life, kind of a story of Job. It's true. You can feel the pain in his life.
[0:32:41] JR: Yes. And yet, he blessed the name of the Lord.
[0:32:44] TC: Yes, exactly. Exactly.
[0:32:45] JR: There's this quote, I just pulled up in the book, where he's talking to his lawyer who comes up to his house. And Ole says, “To be honest, I've given up. I owe debts everywhere, my wife is dead, and I'm left with four children who depend on me. What am I supposed to do? I might as well pack it in right now.” It was later that night or the next day that he holds himself away in a closet and gets on his hands and knees and cries out to the Lord and laments and prays for relief. It was there in that closet, if I'm remembering the story correctly, that God gives him a vision for this giant factory. He didn't have a vision for the LEGO brick at the time, right? But it was what would eventually become LEGO. He's like, “That was a gift.” He's like, “I knew God was with me. I knew I would do the thing. And I just got up and did the work the next day. It wasn't easy.” But it was easier knowing that God was with him and had his back.
Hey, Tim, four questions we wrap up every episode of the show. Number one, all right, Tim, look ahead to the New Earth. Isaiah 65 says we're all going to long enjoy the work of our hands. What job would you love for God to give you on the New Earth?
[0:34:02] TC: I want the random one.
[0:34:03] JR: Okay, great.
[0:34:04] TC: So, here's what I mean, because everybody, I was listening to your pod, and all these guys are like, “I want this job or I want that job. No ever” – I want to be able to skip around and do a bunch of them. I get bored with repetition. I don't want to be in one, but I want to do everything. I want to be in every different position at different times. I don't want to be just in one. I'm like, give me this question. I'm like, “No.”
[0:34:23] JR: So, I'm the same way. The more I meditate on the reality of the New Earth, it makes me so much more focused on the thing I'm doing right now, because I believe I'll have billions of years to try hundreds of different crafts that I'm currently putting on ice. I love that answer. I love that. You want the rotation. That's good.
[0:34:46] TC: Yes. Put me in the – I'll be the fill-in man.
[0:34:47] JR: Put you in the rotation. Hey, if we opened up your Amazon order history, which books would we see you buying over and over again to give away to friends?
[0:34:55] TC: So, I have to actually answer this question with the question and then I'll explain why. So, the reason why I do that is because a lot of times people ask me for a book recommendation and I'm like, “You got to give me a category. What are you looking? What are you learning?”
[0:35:06] JR: All right. So, here's the beauty of this question. This is why I ask it this way. I used to ask which books do you recommend, and that's an impossible question because what you just said, it's so contextual and personalized. So, I'm just interested on the whole, like if you literally opened up your Amazon order history and just counted how many times you bought a book, which one just happens to show up the most?
[0:35:27] TC: Mentor Leader by Tony Dungy.
[0:35:30] JR: Oh, I love Tony.
[0:35:32] TC: That's the one that shows up the most. I have –
[0:35:33] JR: There you go.
[0:35:34] TC: I don't get celebrities, but I want to meet Tony. I've never met him.
[0:35:38] JR: Tony's amazing.
[0:35:38] TC: He's one of my heroes. He's one of the guys that I look up to and see all the stuff that he's done. But The Mentor Leader book, I feel is the most powerful leadership book and he talks about how he led the Colts to so many championships and how he did it. It just was a phenomenal, phenomenal book. I've got others that I recommend but like for that specific question a number of times. That's probably the number one.
[0:36:01] JR: That's good. I love that. Tony's still hanging out around here in Tampa, saw him a few weeks ago. He's the best. He's the best. Hey, who would you want to hear on this podcast talking about how the gospel influences their work?
[0:36:13] TC: I actually prepped this question. There was a lady that I heard her name is Sara
Miller. It's S-A-R-A and Miller. And she has an incredible story about running a nonprofit. It's called A House on Beekman. I don't know if you'd be able to get her or not, but she left college and her story, I won't give all the story away, but basically she left a very lucrative career and a very promising future in order to be able to end poverty in South Bronx. It just is a very practical aspect of I want to be and serve and act like Jesus to the people in South Bronx. Overcoming much gangs. I mean, you name it, South Bronx is not a nice place, but she was able to find a way to be able to administer those people.
[0:36:56] JR: All right. I just looked her up. We have tons of mutual connections, so we'll reach out to Sara. That's great. All right, Tim, you're talking to this global audience of mere Christians who are doing a bunch of different things vocationally. What they share is a deep desire to do their work for the glory of God and the good of others. What's one thing you want to say or reiterate to them before we sign off?
[0:37:16] TC: Don't be so serious.
[0:37:19] JR: Says the Serious Play guy.
[0:37:22] TC: I know, I know, I know. But I often think back the original Joker and he says, “Why are you so serious?” Some of those guys are just, the challenge is we become adults and we think we have to put away all of the playful things all of the things of laughter and all of these, we lose that and that's what gives us life. That's what gives us the ability to keep going and see hope is all of the fun things that we have in our lives, the laughter, the enjoyment of relationships. We get so focused on success or what the world defines as success and position and money, and we've put that away. Bring that back out. Laugh every day. Find a reason to laugh every day.
[0:38:02] JR: Yes. I would add onto that. Play with God, because He is our ultimate source of joy. Listen, I have lots of friends who are not believers, who are spending most of this life, they're playing through life, and they're not doing it with the Lord, and that is empty, right? But if the joy of the Lord is truly your strength and you're playing with that strength as your foundation, it can be a beautiful thing.
Tim, I want to commend you, man, for the great work you do, for the glory of God and the good of others, man, for reminding us of what play looks like practically, reminding us that play is productive for our goals and our souls, and for just giving us a lot to chew on. This was a really meaningful conversation for me personally, and I'm sure a lot of our listeners would agree with that.
Guys, if you want to connect with Tim and learn more about the work that he does with these LEGO Serious Play workshops, you can find him at timcroll.com and on LinkedIn at Tim Croll. Tim, thanks for your time, man.
[0:39:06] TC: Thanks for letting me be here.
[OUTRO]
[0:39:08] JR: Man, I'm really looking forward to the day where I can watch Tim Croll and Ole Kirk Christiansen bond over LEGO in front of a bonfire on the New Earth. Hey, I didn't know Ole Kirk Christiansen's story until a few years ago when I picked up this book just purely out of the fascination with the LEGO business and I start reading about LEGO'S founder and I was entranced. I had no idea how dramatic this guy's story was. As we alluded to in today’s episode, Christiansen watched the LEGO factory go up in flames not once, not twice, but three times. He spent years on the brink of bankruptcy and in just the span of a few days, he suffered the unimaginable loss of both a child and a wife. Yet, he consistently joined God like servant Job and saying the, “Lord gave, the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” He glorified God by persevering through unimaginable trials in his life and in his work.
I'm so freaking excited to share his story with you in my new book, Five Mere Christians. And for one reader, I'm excited to also send you to the original LEGOLAND in Denmark. That's right, I'm giving away a trip for you and a friend to go visit the homes and places of Ole Kirk Christiansen and C.S. Lewis, whose stories I share in Five Mere Christians. You can learn more and enter to win the sweepstakes at fivemerechristians.com. Thank you guys so much for listening. I'll see you next week.
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