Why Your Art Should Engineer Moments, Not Just Entertain
Most performers think their job is to entertain. Write the right set list, hit your marks, make people clap. Eric Maitlen, founder of Two Eight Ministries, learned something different: the moment matters more than the art itself.
This post is inspired by our latest episode of The Create Your Art Podcast with Eric. Watch the full conversation here.
Eric didn’t start out building a global nonprofit. He started with a half-size pawn shop guitar, a battle-of-the-bands name nobody liked, and an RV. Twenty years later, Two Eight Ministries runs recovery festivals across Indiana, produces documentaries, and has taken music into countries where sharing his faith could get him in trouble. None of it happened because Eric chased being the best musician in the room. It happened because he learned to build moments.
If you’re a coach, consultant, or business leader creating any kind of content, product, or experience, this idea applies directly to you. Here’s what Eric’s story teaches about building something that actually moves people, not just something that looks impressive.
Entertainment Gets Attention. Moments Get Movement
Early in the episode, Eric draws a clear line: most performers think their job is entertainment. Put on the show, hit the notes, get the applause. But somewhere along the way, Eric realized his real work was constructing shared experiences, moments where people felt safe enough to take a hard step forward.
“If you do it right,” he says, “you can create moments that lead to movement for someone.”
That single distinction reframes what art, or business, or a podcast, is actually for. Entertainment asks: did they enjoy it? A moment asks: did they move? For Two Eight Ministries, that meant using festivals to help someone finally decide to walk into treatment, or helping a family who lost someone to overdose realize this was their moment to get help too.
You don’t need a stage or a festival to apply this. You need to know the difference between putting on a good show and building something that changes what someone does next.
Four Things Eric Does Differently
He builds moments with an end in mind, not just a good performance. Before Eric builds anything, he asks where he wants to take people. For a recovery festival, the end is someone realizing recovery is possible. For a Friday night cover set, the end might just be helping stressed people feel seen and let loose for three hours. Either way, the moment is engineered backward from the outcome, not improvised forward from a setlist.
He builds what he’s good at, not what impresses. Eric’s mentor, Jim Peters, used to tell him, “It doesn’t have to be the best, it just has to be yours.” Eric leans into dry, awkward humor because that’s genuinely him, and into heavy, tender moments because he cares about people who are suffering. He doesn’t try to build somebody else’s moment. He builds the one he’s actually capable of building well.
He treats his art like it has real power, and real responsibility. Near the end of the conversation, Eric puts it bluntly: “Know that your art has power. You need to treat it like a firearm. You should have a license to carry that firearm.” That’s not a metaphor about caution for its own sake. It’s a reminder that content, music, and message all move people somewhere, whether or not you intended it to.
He lets go of the outcome once the moment is built. When Two Eight built their first big film experience, they expected it would inspire people in active addiction to seek treatment. Instead, they got a line of people at their booth who just wanted to tell someone who they’d lost. “That was not what we expected,” Eric says. He hadn’t planned for grief counselors to be there. But he stayed flexible enough to serve the moment that actually showed up, not the one he’d scripted.
How to Build Moments Instead of Just Performances
You can apply this same framework whether your “stage” is a podcast, a client meeting, a product launch, or a meal you’re cooking for guests.
- Name the end before you build anything. Before you write the content, plan the event, or prep the pitch, decide specifically where you want the other person to be by the end. Not “impressed.” Something more concrete: informed, encouraged, ready to take a next step.
- Build around what’s actually yours. Don’t copy a competitor’s format or a mentor’s voice. Identify the two or three things that come naturally to you, whether that’s humor, directness, storytelling, or technical depth, and build the moment around those.
- Start smaller than you think you need to. Eric’s first show for Two Eight had exactly seven to ten songs, all in the key of D, because that’s what the band could actually play well. He didn’t wait for a bigger budget or better players. He built the best version of what he had.
- Practice the specific moment, not just the general skill. Eric ran test concerts at small venues, even a juvenile detention center, before taking a show on the road. Find your own low-stakes version of a dry run before the moment that matters.
- Stay ready to serve the moment that shows up, not the one you scripted. When Two Eight’s documentary drew grieving families instead of people ready for treatment, they adjusted, adding grief counselors to future events. Build in room to respond to what actually happens.
Two Mistakes That Quietly Undercut Great Moments
Mistaking a script for connection. Eric talks about how easy it is to “go tell someone about Jesus with no love for them at all,” running through a message with no real curiosity about the person receiving it. The same trap catches any coach or consultant who leads with a pitch instead of a question. People feel it “a mile away,” as Eric puts it, when there’s no real interest in them behind the message.
Confusing exploitive wins for real ones. Eric learned from Indianapolis’s Redemptive Entrepreneurs Guild that there are three ways to do business: exploitive (I win, you lose), ethical (win-win), and redemptive (I’m willing to lose so someone else can win). It’s tempting to measure success by what you gained from an interaction. The moments that actually move people usually cost the moment-builder something first.
Build the Moment That’s Actually Yours
Eric Maitlen didn’t wait until he was a great musician to start building moments that mattered. He started with two chords, a capo, and a show that only worked in one key. What made it work wasn’t skill. It was that he built around an honest read of who he was serving and what he wanted for them, then stayed present enough to adjust when reality didn’t match the plan.
Whatever your art is, whether it’s music, a business, a podcast, or a meal for friends, the same question applies: where do you want to take the person on the other end of it? Start there, build what’s actually yours, and let go of controlling exactly how it lands.
Watch the full conversation with Eric Maitlen on The Create Your Art Podcast to hear more about Two Eight Ministries, the documentary they’re finishing about the underground church in India, and how a battle-of-the-bands name became a two-decade mission.
Create your art.
Full Transcript
Darren: Welcome to the Create Your Art Podcast, where we are awakening the artist within all of us, whether you would call yourself one or not. Each episode we sit down with someone who is an artist in their field, and we hope that their story just might be the thing that gives you the courage to create yours. Today we’re sitting down with the one and only Mr. Eric Maitlen. Eric, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today.
Eric: Thanks for having me, man. This is great.
Darren: Well, Eric, you are the founder of Two Eight Ministries, as we said, a global organization taking the world by storm. Started out of an RV, which we will get to in a minute. I can’t wait to hear more about Two Eight and the things that you’re doing. But the first thing I want to start off to open our conversation today is this idea that most performers, people that are in arts and music and film and all of that, most performers think that their job is to entertain. Right? So to put this thing on to be entertainment. But actually, it’s to engineer moments. And I’ve heard you talk about this a little bit. Could you explain a little bit of how a moment in your art and the things that you’re creating is more important than even maybe the art itself?
Eric: Yeah, that’s something I’m very passionate about. I realized a while ago, as a worship leader, or whether I was playing in the bar band, or trying to share my faith with music in a country where you’re not supposed to be doing that, that it was less about building the right set list and more about constructing these moments that would allow us to have a shared experience together as people, because at the end of the day we want connection more than anything. And if you do it right, I believe you can create moments that lead to movement for someone. So what we’ve done the last five years especially was creating those moments for addiction recovery, where if you can use a festival, for example, and create the right, well-crafted moment, it might help someone make that hard decision to step into treatment for the first time. Or for a family member who’s experienced the loss of a loved one to an overdose, they might realize this is my moment to actually start getting the help that I need. It might mean you’re a college student at a conference, and if we do our job right as artists, we might help create a moment that gives them the courage to step into a life following Jesus for the first time. It’s important.
Darren: Yeah, well, and I love that. I don’t think I’ve ever put language to some of the things that we’ve done. You and I have worked together on some things before, but even from the sense of music or film or putting on events in some way, there’s a moment we’re trying to get people to. I think we naturally do that. I grew up in the church world. I think you were in college when you kind of got into that whole thing, but we’ve both been in it for a long time. So we kind of know we’re trying to get people to these moments, but ultimately you’ve taken this to the next level, to go, hey, there’s some real things that we can tackle. Like the opioid, I cannot say that, opioid epidemic. That is hard to say, isn’t it?
Eric: Yeah, the opioid epidemic. I’m glad you can say it. That’s a tongue twister.
Darren: Well now I don’t want to get it in your head, because now you’ll be struggling too. Is there a time that that really kind of hit for you, to go, man, these gifts, these abilities, these talents that I have, I can actually move people in this way? Was there a moment that kind of stands out as something you go, man, let’s do that?
Eric: Yeah, I think as an artist it’s probably the same for you too. I remember hearing one guy say, when asked how do you write a song, how do you start that process. It’s like, easy, I go to a show. We get inspiration from others. So I noticed it was being done for me sometimes by some of the greats, and I thought, wow, how about if we took that same atmosphere? Because you can’t go to like a Garth Brooks concert or Coldplay. I got to see Muse recently, and it blew my mind. And they created some moments, but they didn’t really have any agenda to help you make a hard decision in your life or something like that. It was just great moments for the sake of art, and letting us know how amazing music is. But if you think of the power of music, and especially if you use some of the audio-visual elements we so often see it accompanied with, it can be used for good. It’s like, hey, let’s stop for a minute and think about the significance of what we’re singing about or what we’re talking about here tonight. What would it look like, as a group of people who are here in this shared experience right now, if we all just took one step towards a better future for everybody here, and everybody who’s not here, because their voices aren’t heard very often?
Darren: What I love about that, Eric, is I have this held belief that we’re all artists in our own way. The Create Your Art thing is kind of that mantra, of going, hey, it doesn’t matter, you don’t have to be a musician or a filmmaker or an artist in the pure sense of the word to make these moments. And I think why I wanted to have this conversation with you today is because I want to help others see that they can create moments inside of whatever the art is that they do, whether it’s from an entrepreneurial standpoint, they’re building a business and they can take people on a journey. And it can be not just for the money-making aspect of it, but for the good of the people they’re working with and serving. There’s something beautiful there, and I love how you’ve positioned this as, we’re creating moments for good, these moments to move people to action. That’s really cool, man. We’ll talk a little more about that probably throughout this whole conversation today, but I want to go back a little bit. So you started Two Eight, what, back in 2005, was it?
Eric: Yeah, and it’s like the worst name ever. We needed a name for a battle of the bands. It was 2005, and I had just come back from spending a year in India. That whole nation is pretty tough to be a Christian in, there were actually anti-conversion laws and stuff in India. So I’d spent a year there and had seen unreached people groups in the mission field firsthand. I really wanted to help inspire my generation to take missions seriously. What does it look like to follow Jesus and actually be a part of the Great Commission? So we wanted to start a band that would help mobilize people to missions. We wanted a missions band name. My mentor at the time, Jim Peters, said, well, just call yourselves Two Eight, from Psalm 2:8, a missions verse. Sounds good. And we just stuck with it. There have been so many seasons over the last 20 years where I’ve thought, I wish I had a cool name that explains what we do. But when you’re working with state-funded tours funded by the governor’s office or the Division of Mental Health and Addiction, and they’re all secular agencies that look sideways at us faith-based groups, like, you guys are just trying to shove Jesus down people’s throats, don’t bring that around something as difficult as mental health and addiction recovery. These are hard issues, you guys want to Bible-thump at people. So coming into that space, I kind of wish I had a better name.
Darren: Well, speaking of that, how do you balance that? Because there is a reality of, okay, we’re a faith-based organization that wants to get people to Jesus, because we believe that changes their lives ultimately. But there’s also this reality that we’ve got to work with government agencies, non-faith-based organizations that might, like you said, look at you a little sideways. But you also have to step into actually making the difference and helping those on an addiction recovery path get the help they need. How do you balance that? What does that even look like?
Eric: Well, I do know this about you, because I know you’re somebody who’s a constant learner. And you know this part of my story: I take it pretty seriously to look for those who are making the biggest Kingdom impacts in the world. To the extent that I would go over with Masterson and actually try to follow an underground movement that is heavily persecuted and is leading millions to Christ in one of the hardest places in the world. I want to learn from those people. One of the things I learned from them especially, and it was a timely lesson, is that the Gospel Jesus brought is a holistic Gospel. If all you do is Bible-thump, or try to say, let me just tell you the truth, you’re not sharing the whole Gospel. I noticed this group of people, they didn’t pull back on sharing the Gospel at all, but they shared a holistic Gospel. It was often through serving and loving and meeting the needs of communities. That’s how they’re coming into communities. They don’t come in blasting people and dividing people into sheep and goats. They come in as a blessing, the blessing to the nations we’re called to be, and they’re sharing the Gospel right away by doing that. Then as people are ready to decide if they want to follow Jesus and be a Christ follower, they start walking them into that. I had to get my head around that, because I was taught a different model. Maybe you were too, at least since college, that you’ve got to really make sure you’re preaching the Gospel, and that’s a high value, and if you’re just trying to do the service-based stuff, then you’re not bold at all. But you can’t have one without the other, because how are you really sharing the Gospel without the other side?
Darren: Yeah, holistic. Because there are even faith organizations that would look at people doing awesome work, like Charity: Water or somebody helping with real issues, and go, well, you’re missing the faith element of it. And I like how you’re saying it’s a holistic Gospel approach where it’s both and. That’s how you can actually make impact. How well are we really showing that we love humanity if we’re only going to help people who are willing to believe what we believe, sign the little connect card? We have to just love them because we love them, it doesn’t matter if they’re doing it right, or if they’re lost or found.
Eric: We’re just going to love them, because we’re called to love people. As a Jesus follower, that’s in the top commands of what Jesus taught us: love the Lord your God with all you’ve got, and then love your neighbor. So you’re actually just disobeying Jesus if you don’t do the holistic approach.
Darren: We’re both getting tongue-tied on these big words, you sound so smart on this podcast.
Eric: Yeah, man, this is the IQ test, to see if we can say those words. I love this, and we’re kind of off our notes here, but a lot of people are going to push back on the whole Jesus thing anyway, and then you’ve got the evangelical world, and it’s like, we don’t see people loving like Jesus, they’re just coming in and doing church services and trying to get them to sign the connect cards and do the thing.
Darren: And you’re going, man, we’ve got to love people well. But I think a lot of people might look at that skeptically, and go, you’re just trying to bait and switch here. You help me here, but then, oh, you’re going to get me later. Doesn’t that feel gross when people do that to you, in any way, whether it’s business, anything? The bait and switch, no good. Transactional. So what would you say to somebody who looks at your organization and what you’re doing in that way, and says, well, I don’t like when it happens to me, that’s not my intent, how do you sit with that?
Eric: I think the people who support our work know that, especially from my part, I tend to lean a little too hard sometimes on wanting to make sure we get the spoken part in there too. I think that can be to my detriment. There are some people I surround myself with. The name of this film we’re making about India, even in other movements we’re following, is the Proximity Effect. This idea that who you surround yourself with is going to have so much to do with what kind of tree you are, and the trees that you surround yourself with. Think of the award-winning apple: it didn’t come from a single apple tree, it comes from the trees surrounding it producing the right environment. You’re not going to be a one-off from the trees that surround it. So there’s a lot of people I make sure to surround myself with, who help call me on my weaknesses and shortcomings and the things that are just not loving. When I think of Nathan, who I started My Yellow Rickshaw with, he knew I wanted to come in and share my faith with people right away in the bars when we were starting that band. He said, Eric, you’re not allowed to talk about Jesus until you know three of the servers’ first and last names. It was an interesting test, because it got to the heart of, how much do you even care about these people? You want to just come in and throw Jesus at them. Nathan hadn’t been in vocational ministry for however many years up to that point, but he was able to really get to the heart of it. It was a very wise thing to say to me, because it showed how much I even knew or cared about those people.
Darren: Man, that’s a truth right there that I think we need to sit with, those that you surround yourself with, how vital that is. So many times, even in events and trying to create moments, you probably have this feeling of, we’ve got to get to that moment, we’ve got to push to this thing, and you can miss the people in the moments, even in the good things you’re trying to do with the events. I would go so far, Darren, to say… is this a Christian podcast?
Darren: Not necessarily. The last few have been very Gospel-heavy, so go for it, man.
Eric: I would say a criticism I would have of some of the philosophy or the model I was taught by the evangelical model, and this is one I can say because I am of that camp as well to most extent, is that we have kind of created this value around, as long as you do the thing you’re supposed to do, it’s almost at all cost. I think it’s to a detriment when we don’t look at what the heart of it even is. I could go tell someone about Jesus with no love for them at all, and do it in a way where they’re going to know I don’t really value them. It’s almost like a one-sided script I’ve got to get through, and I need to just wait for me to finish this scene of this play I’m doing for myself, because I need to go tell my pastor or my disciple that I did this. With no love in my heart for you, no desire to know you as a human being, to connect with you as a human being, and you’re going to know it a mile away. I think one of the things that marked Jesus’s ministry was this incredible curiosity and inspiration that just oozed out of him, and people would wonder why he was doing it. We all know it was love that drove what Jesus did. Love to protect those who were marginalized, love to give a voice to those who were voiceless, love to bring correction to the institution that had made it about numbers and metrics that were not what the Father intended. He created a family, man. We should be looking at building gardens and sandboxes where everybody wins, not competing against other churches to get more of whatever our metrics are. You can get those with no love, and pat yourself on the back, and then you have confused Christians wondering why there’s no fruit of the Spirit in their life. So I’m just like, man, let’s build gardens. Let’s do the garden thing like Jesus did.
Darren: Man, I love that. I sit here thinking about taking that outside the church world, and putting it into any place somebody’s trying to create something that makes an impact, and going, where is the love first? I think of when somebody makes a meal, and you eat it, and you go, there’s just not any love in it. That moment of, oh yeah, totally, maybe it was your food that made me say that last, but you know what I’m saying, that idea of when the chef goes, I am putting everything I possibly can into this because I want you to experience this food in a way that elevates everything about you. The wine, the food, all the stuff that goes together to make this moment. That’s where I get chills on the artistry of that. And then you take that, and the business entrepreneur who goes, I’m going to serve and love the customers I have in a way that is deeper and beyond just a transaction. Whenever we’ve experienced business that way, we go, thank you for selling me that thing, I actually will thank the salesman for the thing that changed my life. And then when we move into your sphere of art and film and music, and we do that with love, that’s the moment you’re talking about, that can move people. It’s true, man, when you remove love from it, even outside the church world, it falls flat.
Eric: Absolutely, man. There’s a table I’ve been sitting at here in Indianapolis for probably six or seven years now, the Redemptive Entrepreneurs Guild. I didn’t know I’d be welcome at this table, because I never saw myself as an entrepreneur, but a lot of artists need to realize they’re entrepreneurs. If you’re going out and starting a music business, whether it’s just you and a guitar and a Bose tower playing at Chili’s on Tuesdays, you’re starting a business. These guys taught me so much about how to be a better human being and Christian in any sphere of work, by sitting at their table, because they taught that there are three different ways to do business. We’re used to the outer one, the biggest one we see all the time: exploitive. That means I win, you lose. I got the gig at Chili’s and you didn’t. A lot of business is done that way. The next is what they call ethical: it’s like, man, that was really nice, I feel like this client or service provider actually cares about us, we care about them, and you look for win-win, how can I win and you win together. When you find it, it’s so refreshing. But the third that these guys were after is what they call the redemptive entrepreneur. These are the kind of business owners who are transforming communities faster than churches in America. They say, how do I need to lose so that others win? Do I need to start hiring people coming out of incarceration, so we can stop cyclical patterns? How can I hire differently, how can I cap my salary so others make more and I help provide for more families? Where do I need to lose so those who need a win get a win? That challenged me more than most pastors have challenged me in the last five years, to sit at a table and watch people willing to give up real stakes so others win. I found that incredibly compelling and convicting. I take that into music and creating art too, because it can be very exploitive in the music business. We all know it, someone else got the gig over us and it hurts, you go home thinking maybe I’m just not good enough. We need the approval of people so bad in music, it’s almost hilarious. But when you see it ethical, it’s like, I’ve really felt Indianapolis’s music community has been a win-win in so many ways. And then you get to see the redemptive side. I think of Jason and Bill Hayes from Flying Toasters, those guys literally let our nonprofit store our stuff at their pole barn, and helped train us to go on the road to do these festivals better, because we had a lot of volunteers setting up our LED walls and PAs. They took time they didn’t have to, to help somebody else, because they knew families around the state needed these resources and these festivals to connect them. And in the early days, when we couldn’t even get My Yellow Rickshaw off the ground here in the city, other artists helped us get gigs. That meant so much. So yeah, it’s in our line of work too. The three ways of doing business, it’s a challenge to yourself: how can I do that with the things I’m building?
Darren: I know I’ve been challenged. A couple episodes ago we had my dad on, who created a nonprofit where the business generated the income. He’s a redemptive entrepreneur. Now all that cash flow goes out to missions work. And we had my brother on, who’s taking the mantle of that and pushing it out. For me, I spent years going, oh, I want to do that, oh, I want to do that. And one day I woke up and thought, you have to start where you’re at. You have to start small, with the hundred dollars here, the two hundred there. What can I actually give? Like, opening the pole barn to store something. What do I have access to?
Eric: That’s the way you start. There’s probably somebody out there who might be challenged by what you just said: what can you do today, what can you start with today, what’s in your hands today? Is there a win where you might choose to lose so somebody else could win? At some point we all know what it feels like to have somebody help us out, when you’re trying to get a start, and you’ve done the hard work, you know you can do the job, you just need a shot. We’re doing that right now with our disability community. It’s one of the most… we don’t need to go in the weeds on that, but those are some of my friends who nobody’s given a shot yet. Until somebody makes sure they’re at the level of, one of our team members is a graphic artist, he got the degree and everything, but he hasn’t had a shot to grow and be competitive. We have to put people around them to get competitive, and somebody’s going to have to give up time to make that happen. That community inspires me so much, some of them are like, I did the work, I got the degree, I’m just a little different so people won’t hire me. We’re trying to figure out how to help with job placement.
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Darren: I want to bring us back to Two Eight and what you’re doing, because some people might not understand exactly. There’s a lot of amazing things you’re doing, and you don’t have to go into all of them, but give us the overview, the elevator pitch, of Two Eight and what you guys are doing today.
Eric: Sure. Yeah, Two Eight Ministries, our goal has always been, we say music with a mission. We got our start in music, but we create these moments we believe can be watershed moments, whether for a recovery community or a faith community, to take the next step. We come alongside churches, nonprofits, missions agencies, recovery communities, and help them reach their community with what they’re doing. You could say, in the church world, we’d be like an evangelistic arm, we’re going to come in and help be the airstrike to reach more people. Especially in the context of recovery, we have some of the most amazing leaders who, in the wake of their use, hurt dozens of lives, but in the wake of their recovery have helped thousands. It’s incredible. We want to help connect families to these efforts, so they can get the help they need. My family was affected by heroin and meth, and almost lost a loved one. I knew what it was like to pray every day for someone not to die, someone you care about, and was so grateful when we found the help we needed. Part of the work we do is recovery festivals, so families, especially in a small town like where I’m from, don’t have to have their head down when they ask for help, because if you have someone struggling with addiction in your family, it’s like you become criminalized. Don’t invite them to church, don’t invite them back to the bridge club. We use festivals to say, hey, come out, we’re just going to celebrate the comeback story. We amplify hope. That’s one of our main bumper-sticker lines, we exist to amplify hope where it’s needed the most and not often found by a lot of families. We’ll have all these recovery resources at these events, so families can find their next step. We also started stepping further into media, this is newer for us, but we say music, media, and events is really where we live, to amplify the hope of Jesus and help people find their step in healing and wholeness. In the media space, we make documentaries featuring stories we need to be hearing about. There are people living the most compelling lives, reaching the last, the least, and the lost, and discipling them into people who can go even further to reach the last, the least, and the lost, but they’re not found on platforms or in pulpits, they don’t have online streaming services. We want to elevate these stories so we can find them. We also help produce Hindi church online sermons, which go to over 130 countries and seven million people every weekend. We used our studio to help someone who had to flee the country to keep his family safe, so we help record his sermons so they can go back into Hindi-speaking countries. We help however we can. Amplify hope.
Darren: Oh, that’s good. Amplify hope. And what I hear in all of this is storytelling is the way you’re doing that. Your events, you wrap them in storytelling. Let’s highlight these recovery stories so hope can be found. Let’s find these stories of people doing amazing things that maybe haven’t been known yet. Let’s tell their story and amplify hope through that.
Eric: Yeah, and the parts we’ve added over the years as we’ve evolved: amplify hope would be the first pillar. The second is we want to multiply impact. That’s where the storytelling comes in. If you’re at a festival, sometimes there’s only three to five hundred people there, or less, it’s a recovery festival, not everybody wants to go to that. But if we can capture those stories and let them go farther by getting them onto social media, that’s a way we can multiply the impact. And the third pillar we’re really stepping into, because it’s a call we’ve discerned for a long time, is to mobilize disciple makers. We feel like this is an area we need to strengthen, as we look at the church in the West especially. We’ve kind of settled for gathering on Sunday, but we haven’t done a great job helping the church scatter and multiply the impact of what Jesus wants to do in the earth. So that third pillar is the one we’re starting to really camp out in now, mobilizing more disciple makers.
Darren: How does music play into all that?
Eric: We’ll take you along for the ride if you want.
Darren: Well, I love it. A lot of us see, I have this one thing I want to do, I’m a songwriter, an artist, a painter, a businessman, and you can just stay there. But what I’ve seen Two Eight do over the years is grow and expand and go, here’s the mission, how are we going to expand hope a little more over here, how are we going to push these things? And now it begins to grow and move, and that’s beautiful. You don’t just stay in the music lane because it’s all you know, it’s, let’s take the logical next step. We’re telling these stories here, why don’t we do this, why don’t we do this? And now you see how it grows and expands. People might look at Two Eight now and go, holy cow, how did you even do that? They might come and say, I want to build something like this, what do I do? And you’re going, well, you just take the logical next step. So I love to ask questions like this, because it’s called the Create Your Art Podcast, and I say we’re all artists, and all artists are a little scared and fearful and insecure. So take me back to the beginning of Two Eight, when you’re going, man, I’m going to do this thing. What are some of those voices? Did you feel ready? What were the voices in the back of your head telling you? What was that journey like?
Eric: Dude, I mean, you probably started playing guitar when you were knowing you, like four or something. How old were you when you started playing music?
Darren: For me it was thirteen, I think, when I started.
Eric: Most professional musicians I’ve met started playing music as a child or a teenager. I didn’t even pick up a guitar until I was almost twenty. I was at IU, I literally bought a half-sized guitar at a pawn shop in Bloomington, because I thought it was funny. I watched all these friends of mine who were freshmen, sophomores in college buying these Taylors for fifteen hundred bucks, and I thought, you’re never going to stick with it. And most of them didn’t. So I thought, I’m going to spend fifty bucks and get a half-sized guitar at this pawn shop, because it’s funny, I’m only five foot six if you can’t notice the height difference here between the two of us. I started with two chords, went home, my big brother taught me a few chords, he’d gone to USC for a couple of years, and we’d see each other and he’d teach me a few more. That’s all it was. Are you kidding me, if you’d try to tell me, even in college, that I’d go on to become what I call a musicianary, I’d say there’s no way. I sang in high school and middle school with worship, because I had a crush on a girl who was in there. I could sing a little bit, but it was never on my radar to become a full-time musician of any kind. So you want to talk about fear, imposter syndrome, I’m the last one who should be doing this. But it’s interesting, four chords and the truth, we always say that goes a long way. I found there, I was terrible at sports growing up, grew up in a small town of like six thousand people, there wasn’t a music scene, it was sports or nothing. I was never good at sports, but I still competed the best I could. I get to college, I get that guitar, and it was so easy for some reason. I realized, oh, we’re not all wired the same. Music made so much sense to me. I started learning guitar, piano, and drums at the same time, took my vocals a little more seriously, started playing cover songs in a cover band in the frat. Then when I became a Christ follower, I started leading worship, and man, my heart was just, I was like, this is what I’m made for, I love music. It’s one of those things where music and me, it’s like an old friend I’ve been around the block with, and I just have such an appreciation for music. There have been seasons, I’m sure for you too, where music was my master and not my gift, and those aren’t very fun. There were seasons where I was just singing for my supper, and my voice would be so blown out by Sunday night, because I would do Thursday events, Friday a three-hour show with Rickshaw, Saturday a rehearsal in the morning and then a three-hour show with Rickshaw, Sunday up to four services at the old building for Mercy Road, and my voice was shot by that night. I wouldn’t talk to anybody Monday and almost part of Tuesday. Then you do it again. My fingers would hurt with calluses, my voice hurt from singing that much, and I was not loving music so much then. So there’s a balance, you don’t want to have to serve music, but when it’s your gift, man, I love music, and what it does for us as people. It helped me quit drinking until I was blackout drunk in college. It helped me get over breakups. Music’s been there, like Jesus, a long time. I always lean toward the Stephen Wilson Jr. song, “I’m a Song.” Have you heard it? Stephen Wilson Jr. is one of the most prolific songwriters, poetic lyricists I’ve heard. He wrote this song called “I’m a Song,” and it’s all from the song’s perspective, about the things it walks you through: I was there for you at your first breakup, and all that. It just made me think of that when you said that.
Darren: You should check it out. So it sounds like you have this passion, this thing that came easy to you. I think that speaks to our art a little bit, it’s like, oh, I get this, I understand it, I can flow within it. And now you’re like, I think I want to do this. Imposter syndrome speaking in the back of your head, how did you press through and keep going into eventually Two Eight and all the other things, My Yellow Rickshaw?
Eric: This podcast, to talk about this, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten into the weeds on this stuff before. I’m going to say, do what you can with what you have. When I discovered a capo, bro, it changed my whole world. Now I can play in all these keys without even learning more keys, and I had to use a capo for a long time. When we built our first show for Two Eight, it was not with professional players, it was mostly a volunteer band, and some of us raised funds to do this. Jillian and I were not formally trained in music. I’d say this is the case for me, because with My Yellow Rickshaw, I played over five hundred shows with that band and still sit in with them, but I stepped back from my main slot when the opioid thing blew up, and I wanted to start transitioning out further to help with all that. I played a long time with My Yellow Rickshaw. These bands, all… I could be in a space where I could be successful, so find out how to make yourself successful. One of the first shows we built for Two Eight, we picked seven to ten songs we could play. If you asked us to play anything outside of those, we probably couldn’t. Nobody was getting their requests in, no requests, we can only play these ten songs. But if you can practice and get those ten songs down, and build a show with moments in it, you can be the best at that show. That’s the advice I’d give somebody: you don’t have to be the best player in town, just build a great show that has some great moments in it, that takes people on a ride, and be the best at that show. I think any seasoned musician would say almost the same. On the second tour we did, around 2007, I remember it was the first time I built a video-driven concert experience, and I built it in something like iMovie or Logic. I didn’t have a click track or anything like that, so it was just, I used Stylus for these loops back in the early 2000s, Stylus is like what you’d hear on CSI, they had all these loops. I built it so we could play along with these tracks, the videos were synced up with it. The entire seven-song concert that was an hour long was all in the key of D, because I could only do it that way, everything flowed together. If somebody said, hey, play this song, we couldn’t, we’re on the track right now. I built it in Logic before we hit the road a month ago. We played that show off a DVD player that went to a projector. However you can figure it out, create your show, be the best at your show, but make sure that it’s moving, make sure it’s got moments in it. We had teenagers called into missions from that show, and it was all in the key of D. We spent so much time preparing and practicing and crafting it, and I would always do test concerts before a tour, take it to a little juvie center that would let us go in and play for those guys, they can’t go anywhere, it’s a captive audience. But we’d do whatever we could to practice that show. Then we’d hit the road, and the more you play it, the better you get. If you’re not falling asleep playing your show yet, you’re probably not very good at it.
Darren: I think there’s a lesson there too, about the idea of, no matter what your art is, be a little bit obsessive about it. If you’re building a business, be a little obsessive about it, really go, I want to be the best at this thing. I don’t know what I don’t know yet, but I’m going to do what I know how to do to the best of my ability. Here’s what I’ve got, can I give it all I’ve got with this?
Eric: Yeah, I’ve heard the term failing forward, right, you just trip on yourself and move forward, okay, key of D is all we’ve got, let’s go, and then next one, well, we can change one song, and you just keep moving, you keep going. I will say this too, Darren: I knew when I came in that I was starting with my back against it, I was starting in a place where I was going to have to catch up the whole time. Every season of my life I’ve had mentors, music mentors too, calling me to the next level. I try to be in a band where I’m the worst player, so I can always keep growing. I remember going back and listening to old records, thinking, the guy was that good in his twenties, unbelievable. I will never let anyone watching this hear anything I ever sang in my early twenties, it was absolutely terrible. I’m almost to a place now where I’m not embarrassed by my voice on a board feed, but I have worked so hard to get there, and I will keep working, because I love music, I want to keep getting better, I want to keep growing. Back then I had what I had, but I had people who were challenging me. Even though I’d only been playing about four years at the time, I had a whole show in the key of D, and these shows and these moments and our testimonies went to India, China, Russia, El Salvador, places we would have no business going, because at some level there’s also the Jesus factor, that if He’s for you and He’s called you to something, He’ll make a way and establish you. Does that mean we were filling up stadiums? No, but we already wanted to go where people weren’t going, so we were okay with smaller crowds and the places people wouldn’t go. We were trained by some great “musicianaries” who had been in forty-two countries and had done it for thirty years before us, and they were the ones who would smuggle Bibles through the Iron Curtain, take their speakers apart and fill them with Ukrainian and Russian New Testaments and smuggle them through. They were our mentors, and they taught us how to do this. Be around teachers, keep growing, but don’t be surprised if God puts you on platforms you’d never expect, if you just give it all you’ve got. Put it all out there.
Darren: I’ve always appreciated that about you, Eric, that you go, we’re just going to do it, we’re going to move forward with it. There are so many times in my own life I can point to moments where I don’t do something because of fear, because of imposter syndrome, because I’ve talked myself out of it. You’ve always inspired me in that. If you would say, I’m going to build a show that helps with the opioid epidemic, that’s still hard to say, and put video with this thing and this band, and go to a small town, I would think, whoa, no way, I don’t even know what to do. But you just go, hey, we’re going to do it, and then you start doing it, and you build it, and all the songs are in the key of D, and all of a sudden, change happens. It’s just an inspiration, that story of, hey man, we’re just going to go do it, we’re going to figure it out as we go. That’s something I need to take into my whole life.
Eric: I forget, you played one of the first times we did that video experience, our “story of time” show.
Darren: That’s right, yeah, I played guitar, I was part of those early days you were pioneering.
Eric: I forgot that. That was inspired by that old show I built out of the RV in the key of D in 2007, when I realized we didn’t have our bass player anymore, because he had to go get a real job. We had to track the bass in there, and Jillian was mixing sound from stage and all this stuff. But we figured out how to do something back then. Then when the time came that we needed a higher level of it, and asked our friends for help, we were able to do it with professional videographers, my buddy’s now up to eighteen regional Emmys, he helped film some of that. We had pros we could ask for help by that point, and professional musicians like you all to help us put together a great live accompaniment. That film experience is what led to us building the right inroads and partnerships with our state agencies, and some of the federal funding that started the Summer of Recovery tour. Get out there and do what you’re inspired to do, and you never know who it’s going to be for. I have to admit, when we built that film experience, we hoped it would create a moment that led someone in active addiction to seek recovery, that they’d think, it’s time to get my life figured out and find my comeback story, I want to go sign up for recovery. We built that in 2017 and ’18, a friend of ours was a huge part of that, and Eric Hartwig helped with that too, a lot of people helped behind the scenes. We hoped that would be the outcome. Instead, what happened when we ran that show live is we’d have a line of people show up at our booth who wanted to just tell us who died. I wasn’t ready for that. That’s when we realized, okay, this was built for someone else, because it gave them permission to tell their story. We found that nobody brings a casserole dish to your porch if you lose somebody to a heroin overdose, you don’t get the same treatment as somebody who loses a kid to cancer. These people who felt unseen and criminalized, ostracized, and marginalized, they finally felt like this was a room where they could be safe to say, this happened to me, it’s not just happened to your family, and to break that stigma together. So not what we expected, but either way, we were honored to be a part of what God was doing and bringing healing to the state. We realized moving forward we needed to have grief counselors with us when we ran that show.
Darren: Man, I think that’s huge, that you don’t, there’s something inside of you that says, I’ve got to do X, Y, Z, and you almost have to let go of the outcome a little bit, and just go, I’m going to do what I feel is inside of me to do, and I think it’s going to make this impact, but I’m also letting go of how it’s going to play out in the world once it gets there.
Eric: And what you realize is, oh, this is for somebody completely different.
Darren: For somebody else, yep, you didn’t see this, but it was so profound and so impactful.
Eric: You never know where your art’s going to take you.
Darren: That’s so good. Stick to it. Talk to me a little bit about how to create moments. How does someone put, all right, I’m doing something, I want to build something, but how do I make a moment out of this? How do you guys do that?
Eric: Yeah, that’s good. Jim Peters, who’s passed, one of the things he used to teach us in the early days: get a mentor, have an artist community, because I’ll say, first of all, the best moments I’ve ever created were with others. And when you have others to think about, begin with the end in mind. If you’re a musician, that’s going to be the starting place, at least for us. If I’m building moments for our cover band with Nathan, one of the goals was, we realized the people coming into this place, it’s Friday night, a lot of them have jobs they don’t love, they’re looking forward to the weekend, they’ve got a lot of stress at home, they’ve got all the things everybody has, they’re trying to just get through the next week. So if that’s the people we’re going to be serving, let’s help them celebrate and have an awesome shared experience where they felt like they were seen, they felt like they were engaged, their voice matters too, so we made it interactive. Where are some access points in a three-hour show to let others come in and make the night about them? How can we build a show that can pivot with the crowd that’s there that night, so they can walk away thinking, I really needed that escape, and I remember how fun it is to be alive, to hear music I love. Cover bands are fun, you can just shut up and play the hits, play what people love, make people laugh. But I’d also say, build a moment that you can build. Think about who you are. Jim used to say, it doesn’t have to be the best, it just has to be yours. He would say that about whether it’s the band you’re building or the moment you’re building, it doesn’t have to be the best, it just has to be yours. So don’t try to build somebody else’s moment, build the moment you’re good at. I have dry, awkward humor as a love language for me, so there’s going to be some dry, awkward, funny moments. There are also times I build heavy moments, from the other parts of me that have a passion for people to hold space for someone who’s suffering. So there’s a wide array of moments I’ll build, but typically you’re going to get some humor, you’re going to get some permission to be hurting, but you’re going to get on-ramps to be in a shared experience with me. Those are the moments I build, but begin with the end in mind. If you’re building a moment for a recovery festival, we have an end in mind: we want the people there who didn’t know there was help to see that recovery is possible, to hear it from peers with lived experience on the platform, from musicians, we’re going to put musicians in that place who can tell them the narrative that recovery is possible. I am living proof that it’s possible, so if you’ve lost hope that your loved one can have a comeback story, I am your hope, I am your example that it is possible. Then let’s flood them with solutions, by having all these resources around and introducing them to that. So that means we’re going to create a moment where those things can happen, and that doesn’t happen by accident. Just think about the end in mind, where do you want to steer people. I don’t care if it’s a business meeting, or if you’re preparing a meal for guests, we say we create music with a mission, but you can make a meal with a mission, you can make a podcast with a mission. I love how, when we started, before we started filming, you told me where we’re going. That’s what I think a good artist should do, know that your art has power. You need to treat it like a firearm, you need to be responsible with your art. Don’t just make art to puke creativity all over people and show them how impressive you are. You should have a license to carry that firearm, because with great power comes great responsibility, Spider-Man. Be responsible with your art, and lead people to something worth leading them to, I’d say.
Darren: Man, that is… yes, I can’t say anything else other than that, yes, I agree with that one hundred percent. Just to stop, and to go where we’re headed, beginning with the end in mind, and putting the audience or the person who’s going to be interacting with this as the forethought of what you’re doing. Doing those simple things can create powerful moments for people. I love that you said it could be in a boardroom, and it could be at a meal, and putting that mission behind it to create some beautiful things. Live on mission, right?
Eric: Live on mission.
Darren: Man, Eric, that is so good. Well, as we wrap here, tell us what Two Eight is working on right now, and how people can connect with you in that world.
Eric: Yeah, thanks, man. Going back to the three pillars we focus on: one is to amplify hope, we continue to do recovery events and outreaches to help strengthen recovery in Indiana. When it comes to multiplying impact, we’ve spent a lot of time trying to find stories we think, especially the faith community, needed to hear, and the recovery community needed to hear. That multiplying-impact media side of what we do, it sounds crazy, but you talk about things that terrify you, the one that terrified me the most was trying to make our first full-length documentary. Justin Masterson, a retired Major League Baseball pitcher and All-Star, he and I are the least likely people in the world to go do this, but we went to India three years ago and followed one of the fastest-growing underground disciple-making movements in church history, one I couldn’t believe was even happening, because when I heard the numbers, I thought, that can’t be happening, because I’d lived close to there for a while, and we would have seen a spike in the periodicals I look at, for the experts, we would have seen a spike in the change from unreached people groups, and I didn’t see it in the operational world. I didn’t think it was real. We met the founder around COVID, and we were able to go over with a small volunteer film team in 2023 and film this in five different cities and a lot of rural areas. It was crazy, the kind of stories we heard. It’s one thing to hear somebody say, oh, I talked to a missionary who met a guy in this remote village in Africa, and this crazy thing happened. It’s another thing to sit in a room when someone says, I prayed for the little girl to come back from the dead, and she did, and seventy Hindus saw this and were baptized in the Ganges River, and became church planters. That kind of story is book-of-Acts-level crazy miracle. We found, in almost every single interview, that when we asked why they left the Hindu faith at great cost, because when you leave that faith, to be Indian is to be Hindu, to be Hindu is to be Indian, there are a lot of stakes to leaving that to follow Jesus, you don’t need to leave Hinduism to follow Jesus or to believe in Jesus, Jesus can be another god on your shelf with Ganesh and the others, and Shiva, but for some reason they were leaving the Hindu faith, their caste standing, their family tradition, to follow Jesus at great stakes, and they’re going to jail for it. So something’s going on, why are you doing this? It came down to healings, deliverances, basically paranormal events, if you want to call it that. Almost every single one was a miracle story. That’s hard for us in the West to hear and make sense of. So this is a story worth telling. As if those miracles aren’t crazy enough, we didn’t know how to finish it, we had some friends here stateside help us put it together, but we didn’t have somebody to help us really finish the edit. We started praying for some production support, and one of the main editors for the show “Reacher” is editing this. I didn’t even know him months ago, it’s just how crazy this story gets, God brought our paths together. He still works on projects in LA, but he’s working from maybe ten minutes from here in Indiana, he’s a Ball State grad. So just call out to God, ask for help, and He answers. When you think of multiplying impact, we’re taking our media arm and pushing it as far as we can right now, because we need to reach more people than we can just at events. The last one is to really focus on what it looks like to multiply disciple makers. We’re trying to raise up more disciple makers from some of our marginalized communities that haven’t maybe been tapped for that yet. There’s a lot of voices we haven’t heard yet, from our disability community, from some of our addiction recovery community. Between the media side and the mobilizing arm, there’s a lot of discipleship training we’re focusing on. We’re launching something called Listening to Jesus, a twenty-year-old training that was doing a lot in Africa, and nobody’s really been using it here in the States. A mentor of mine, who’s a stockbroker, created it. It uses the teachings of Christ, believing He can speak to you through His Word today, what He’s allowing in your life, and how you can actively step into obedience at home, at work, in ministry, to obey what He taught, because Jesus said, if you love me, you obey my commandments. Most Christians are never taught an obedience-based discipleship, we’re kind of focused on knowledge, if I understand the Bible I’m doing it right. But Jesus taught us, no, they’ll know you’re my disciples by when they see this love, when they see what you’re doing, when you obey my commandments. So getting back to an obedience-based discipleship, because that’s what we saw in India, and some of these other large faith movements happening around the world, we’re learning from them and bringing that to the States, and trying to roll it out where we can.
Eric: So there you go, that’s seven minutes of dumping on that.
Darren: No, that’s great. So if somebody’s listening and thinks, man, I’d love to get involved, I’d love to help, I’d love to whatever, what’s the best way they can do that?
Eric: Yeah, you can go to TwoEightMinistries.com. Honestly, we do need help, just fundraising. We’ve been so busy doing these recovery tours for the last seven years now, some of them were helped by a state grant, which helps, and that grant was for four years, so we’re not being paid by the state for any of that now, so we’re actively fundraising to be able to continue that work. We’re always looking for volunteers, if somebody’s willing to learn how to set up an LED wall or a PA and help put these moments together that can move people into their next step of faith and healing, whatever it is God has for them, we’re still doing that work. We could use support, we could use prayer. Thank you for the chance to plug that.
Darren: Oh, one hundred percent. And I love the truth you shared with us today. If there’s a takeaway I have that I’d really encourage people to hear, it’s that you’ve got to live on mission in some way, shape, or form, and you just have to get out there and start making it happen. You’ve got to take the logical next step that’s in front of you. It’s not always easy, it’s not always clear, it might not always end where you think it’s going to end, but there’s something, I love that this broker created this thing, and it’s changing people’s lives because of it. There’s something inside all of us that can impact the world in amazing ways. All we have to do is take the logical next step. That’s what I’m hearing today. Man, I appreciate you, thank you so much for coming and doing this today.
Eric: Thanks for the opportunity, man, I just love it.
Darren: And before we go, I just want you to remember that you are an artist, and the world needs your art. So go out and create it, and we’ll see you here next time on the Create Your Art Podcast.