About the Artisan and his Family

Around the 2005 timeframe, my wife Dyan and I were leading a church fellowship group at our home.  Don Walker, a retired School District Superintendent, dairy farmer and good friend and I were co-leading a home budgeting/finance class at our church and we were also leading a similar home group teaching series as part of our home group study.  We were studying a passage in the New Testament where Jesus was using a parable to talk about three stewards given a different quantity of "talents" and how they each invested and multiplied the talents they were given.  Don suggested that everyone in our small group be given $10 and we were challenged on how we could use the $10 (or “talents”) to multiply its value for the benefit of the overall church.  The original $10 and any additional proceeds would then be donated to the church’s benevolent fund.  And so the challenge was on.......

According to Don, he had a friend that had a wooden cross idea that Don chose as his “talent challenge”.  Don and his wife, Ella, had a wonderful woodshop on their farm and Don loved to work with wood as one of his many hobbies. So, Don focused on his wooden cross design using scrap wood and materials he had around his shop, and he made about 4 or 5 crosses in a matter of about three weeks and had them ready to sell at our 2005 Annual Church Arts and Craft Sale.  Don sold his crosses for $40 in a matter of minutes.  Dyan and I were fortunately one of the first four people to purchase one of the four crosses and Don spent the rest of that morning taking orders from dozens of people who also fell in love with the crosses.  I think the thing that most people loved about the crosses was the fact that they were elegant and yet simple, unique and still recognizable, and most of all, handmade.  The story about the “talent challenge” in coming up with the idea was very appealing to many of the church folks.  Knowing they were contributing to our group’s challenge of multiplying the talents four-fold helped in motivating the quick interest.  The low cost and knowledge that they were buying a unique hand-crafted piece of artwork was also very motivating.

Dyan and I easily saw how interested many of our friends and churchgoers were of the unique cross design and we felt that many more people could be blessed by having one in their home or given as gifts.  Seeing the high demand for many more crosses and the fact that each one took a long time to make, I volunteered to help Don make more crosses in his shop to help backfill his backlog order requests taken that one Sunday morning.  While helping him on the next Saturday, I was able to see and help him with his labor-intensive process and asked if he considered offloading the cutting and finishing of the wooden pieces to a larger scale woodshop or possibly out of the country.  He said he contacted a manufacturer in China and said it was too expensive and he would not be able to recover his out-of-pocket costs.

Seeing the amount of effort and energy Don was putting into each cross, I asked if he would be OK if I took his concept and used my engineering skills to try make more crosses at a higher rate to help him with his backlog.  He and Ella said the crosses were taking up too much of their time and they never knew the interest would grow to be so large in such a short time.  In addition, they never intended to continue making the crosses on a permanent basis and they were not planning to make any more after that time.  As a result, they were happy to let me make the crosses on my own and they both thought it would be a great way for me to continue to bless people based on a simple lesson we put together a couple of months before to illustrate a biblical teaching moment for our small home group.  After getting their blessing to proceed on my own, I re-designed the cross pieces from scratch on the computer, made a few tweaks and scaled up the size just a bit.  I contracted with a local CNC company to cut out the plexiglass backing pieces per my nesting design file and purchased all the materials to make 1000 crosses.  I applied for a business license and started making crosses in my free time while working full time/overtime at Boeing as a Senior Flight Deck Crew Ops and Design Engineer.  At that time, I made approximately 40 crosses, selling about half of the crosses at a couple of Arts and Craft Shows and giving the rest away as gifts and thank-you items to friends and family.  I designed a webpage and was ready to launch a scaled-up market for the crosses, but I chose not to do so at that time since I was concerned that I would not be able to keep up with a webpage launch demand while working full time at Boeing.

Our two sons, Christian (14) and Joshua (12) have more recently stated they would like to help me in making crosses again now that I am retired.  They too would like to bless families with the unique artwork while providing an opportunity to make them some personal income at the same time.  They already started their own lawn care business in our neighborhood two years ago, but both are looking for a wintertime source of supplemental income during the off-season.  I look forward to working with my young sons making tangible and long-lasting symbols of their faith that they can pass on to other customers, while at the same time, establishing good work habits and ethics.  If the boys are able to help make crosses and sell them down the road with me, they each have their own story to tell as to what the cross means to them personally and I am very proud they are willing to join me on this future adventure together.

My ultimate goal in making the crosses was not to make a lot of money or replace my income, but rather be able to bless people with the same kind of blessings we received when we bought the first cross from my friend, Don.  The symbol of the wooden cross tells its own story with its own power that many people can relate to or look to as a reminder of what ultimate sacrifice was made on all our behaves.  Making the crosses by hand and with various woods also helped me better relate to what it may have been like to be my carpenter hero two thousand years ago.  Each cross takes me about 15 hours to handcraft and my goal in pricing and selling the crosses is to keep the pricing reasonable so lots of people can afford a cross or two for themselves or as gifts to loved ones.  Adding customized options of various wood types and finishes allows customers to match interior wall paint, cabinet woods types, and surrounding furniture/trim colors.  Recently adding laser engraving now also allows customers to add their favorite verse, passage, quote, or loved one's name, for example, in order to complete a customized and one-of-a-kind design.

 I enjoy working with my hands and making tangible artwork that others may appreciate and create thought-provoking discussions in homes, offices, or wherever the crosses may be displayed.  My hope is that the person that sees the cross will be reminded of His grace, mercy and hope for the future in an artistic, simple and yet profound way.

Blessing to you and your family, Mike