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Saturday Book Recommendation

I just finished The Search to Belong, by Joseph R. Myers, and it quickly moved towards the top the list of books I want our leadership team to read.

Myers develops this idea of 4 spaces where people grow and relate.  Public space, social space, personal space, and intimate space.  

One of the key points I learned related to our church.  While Sundays work pretty well at this point for social space, and kinship groups provide a great place for personal space, we need to do a better job at providing social space.  As a staff, we are already working on how to fit these types of events into our calendar.

Our clam bake this past week (despite the rain), demontrated the importance of these type of gatherings.  When our church was smaller, it was easy for Liz & I to invite any new families over to the house for dinner.  At our current size, we’ve found that for most people, that is an uncomfortable jump.  Moving from a place where a person can have some anonymity to sitting at the dinner table in my house it too much of a leap…it would be for me.  

The Search to Belong dealt with a bunch of other items around the issue of these 4 spaces, and I know for me it really helped how I look at all of my relationships.  

2 Deep

I have to admit, if you need to take a bus to NYC, the Cornell Shuttle is the way to go.  Free internet, free drinks…only issue is that while I don’t usually get car sick, being stuck in one of the chairs that is facing backwards is making me a bit queasy.

I was hoping to use the trip down to put the finishing touches on Sunday’s message, but I think I’ll 

wait until I am facing the right way on the way home tonight!  So instead, I’ve been using my time to catch up on some of my reading…blogs that is.  And I read one from Dave Ferguson that I though really went along with the message series, Influence, that we are currently going through.  He called it 2Deep.  Here is the part that really stuck out to me:

“2 DEEP” means that every, staff person, coach, leader or volunteer should be developing a bench that is at least 2 deep. Call it ‘apprenticing’ or whatever. Each person should be investing in developing another person to expand their ministry. The lid to the church’s growth is not buildings, sites, strategy, creativity, or even vision….it’s leaders….because leaders give you all of the above.”

As we talked about on Sunday, our desire is to seem an ever insreasing stream of new leaders being raised up here at the Vineyard.  But that only happens as we are all commited to pouring ourselves into the lives of others.  So who are you thinking about?

 

 

Got it!

So after 4 plus month of attending planning meetings, preparing proposals, and doing other assorted building related things, we finally got our approval to have our church in the former Bishop’s Hardware location.  We still have a couple of other things to do (hopefully the building permit will be ready within a week), but this was the big step.

Thanks to everyone who has prayed.  I especially want to thank Tim Yaeger, Bill Williams & Theo Agler who have done a great job getting us this far!

…to be continued!

Learning Who I Am

This past Sunday at the Vineyard, we kicked off a new message series called Influence::How I’m Wired to Make a Difference in the World.  One of the next steps we encouraged people to take at the end of the message was to spend some time wrestling with the question, “What is my purpose in life?”  

Obviously, that is a pretty big question, so I thought it might be helpful to start with a few smaller questions that perhaps will help move you in that direction.

In the E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber encourages his readers to ask the following questions:

• What do I value most?

• What kind of life do I want?

• What do I want my life to look like?  Feel like?

Or think about it from a different point of view.  It is the end of your life.  Your closest friends and family members have gathered together, to mourn your passing, but also to celebrate your life…What do you want them to say?  What stories do you hope they tell?  What are the major themes that everyone hits on?  Are you hoping for something more than, “he was a nice guy,” or “she was a fun person.”  If so, then start with that end in mind & think about what things you’d need to do to get there.

And if that seems a bit too big to start with, think about where you’d like to be in 5 years.

And one last piece of advice…don’t get frustrated if you can’t nail it down right away…often the process is just as important as the destination.

 

Hurricane Ike

Shortly after after Hurrican Katrina, the Vineyard began a new ministry called Mercy Response.  If you are interested in helping out financially, or by volunteering, you can go to their web site & learn about current needs.

Has it really been a week?

Wow, just realize that normally I have a Saturday book recommendation…I actually finished up a good book, but not sure it is one every one would enjoy…Reformed and Always Reforming, by Roger Olsen.  He takes a really good look at standard “conservative evangelical” theology and calls us to something beyond that.  I loved it.

Since I have actually been not blogging for the past week…I thought I give a bit of an update on the past week.

On Monday afternoon I met with 2 people from the planning board to talk about the parking situation at our future home…I think we are all set at this point.  We should have the final approval on the 30th.  I also went out for a lunch meeting that was not scheduled until next week….not a great start.

On Tuesday we completed our second round of Discovering Maturity - Vineyard 201.  8 people went though the class.  (6 more went through it on Saturday!)

On Wednesday I went up to Syracuse for our area pastors’ meeting. John Elmer & I led a discussion with some the guys in our area around the issue of stewardship.  Getting together with those guys (& women) is always a great time!

The highlight of my week however was Friday…usually Saturday is my day off…however, since we had a class week, so Liz & I had a rare day off together Friday.  We had breakfast together, packed a lunch & went to Buttermilk Falls State Park (we’ve lived in Ithaca 14 years & this is the first time we’ve hiked that trail.)  We hiked up next to the gorge, had a picnic at Upper Buttermilk & then walked back down.   It was probably one of the best Sabbath days I’ve ever had.  We have both been working on getting this part of our life (taking a Sabbath) in a good place…& Friday was a great step in the right direction.

Saturday Book Recommendation

At the Leadership Summit this summer, there were a number of great speakers, and since most of them had books out, we decided to read some of them together as a staff this year.  The first on the list was a great book on leadership by Harvard Professor, Bill George, True North.

George interviews 125 of the top leaders in our country getting to the key issue which is about being an authentic leader.

Each chapter has some extremely practical & helpful exercises in the back.

Horizon’s Kinship Video

Here is the video we showed this past Sunday in church.  Thanks to Tyler Baier for doing a great job with it!

(once you’ve seen it, you can head over here, & sign up for one of our fall groups)

Just a hamstring

Nothing broken or dilocated!

Just a hamstring strain.

Update

So hannah is in getting x-rays. The guess is dislocated hip or muscle strain.

Normally they’d give her crutches and send her home. But with her wrist she can’t use crutches. More to come.

Building update

So we met with the planning board on Monday. Looks like everything is set for Sundays. Now they want to make sure we have adequate parking when we meet at other times.

Hopefully, everything will be set on the 30th.

Broken?

So, Hannah just got the cast off her broken arm yesterday…now we sit in the emergency room to see if she has broken her leg.

Saturday Book Recommendation

I tend not to use the phrase “Christian,” all that much…it is not a phrase I use to describe myself, or our church.  For many people who are not connected with God, the word “Christian” stiir up some pretty vivid images, as well as some pretty strong emotions…sadly, most of them are not positive.

unchristian, by David Kinnaman & Gabe Lyons, looks at how young people view Christians.  (in case you’re wondering, it isn’t pretty).  In reading this book around the same time I was reading The Fall of the Evangelical Nation, it gave a good view of where things currently are for the church, and how that is playing itself out in the larger culture.

While the picture presented here may be not be one we want to see, I think we honestly look at where things are, and rest in the fact that God still loves the church, and if we commit ourselves, not to Christianity, but to following Jesus, I think we can see things change!

I think there might be a lesson here…

I don’t like cats.  I especially don’t like cats who use my carpet rather than their litter box.

However, I don’t like carpet either.  One of the most exciting thing when we bought our current house were the hardwood floors.  They had been covered up for years with (ugh) shag carpet, so as we have started pulling up the rugs, we’ve been amazed at how beautiful the floors are.

Until this weekend.  Other than the back stairs, we had one carpet left in the house.  And one of our two cats (there is a famly debate over who is actually the guilty party), decided that it had better use this last carpet before they were all gone.

So, we ripped up the wet spot, so we could try & treat the wood (too late), and left the rest to take out later.  We pulled the corner up, and once again saw nice floor boards…after about 3 feet of carpet was pulled up, we saw more nice floor boards, only they didn’t match…It looked like there had been a problem previously, and they just did a really bad patch up job…I was bummed, Liz and Brenna were sad & my two future interior designers were horrified.

So last night I start pulling up the rest of the carpet, all the while trying to figure out how we are going to cover all of the bad spots up…What we quickly learned was that our first judgement was way off.  The floor had not been patched up…there is actually a design in the floor…and it was unanimously decided that this is the nicest floor in the whole house.

So we see a part of the picture, & we think things are terrible…see the whole thing & realize, wow, were we ever wrong.  Like I said, I think there may be a lesson in there.

Saturday Book Recomendation

There are about 4 books I’m supposed to read in the next week.  However, they had to wait until I could finish The Fall of the Evangelical Nation, by Christine Wicker.  Wicker grew up in the church, but left an number of years ago.  She has been a religion reporter for a number of years.

While the tendency of some who consider themselves followers of Jesus might be to denounce the book.  (if you look at some of the comments on Amazon.com, you see that is exactly what a bunch of them have done.)  Now while you or I many not agree with everything Wicker writes, I think she does a good job of being fair, and objective, while at the same time, pointing out some of the issues facing the church.

Probably not a book you’ll do with your devotions, but still a fascinating read.

The Final Piece…

So today we got a letter we needed so that we can go before the village board and get permission to move into the building & start working!

At this point the plan is that we’ll go before the village board on Septmeber 8th!

As things fall into place, one of the things we’ll be hoping to find is people who can help out with things like framing walls, hanging doors, putting up drywall…etc.  If there are some skills you have that you’d be willing to put to use for this project, please contact Bill Williams!

postcards

This week about 21,000 homes in Tompkins County will be receiving post cards inviting them to one of our two services this weekend. One of my favorite postcard stories came back in 2004…although I didn’t find it funny at the time.  One person got one of our cards in the mail and called wanting to know how we got his information.  I told him we didn’t have his information, the cards were sent to everyone in the area.  That is when he told us that he was thinking about coming and burning down our building.

Thankfully we were meeting in the movie theatre up at the mall at that point, which was made of cement blocks so it wouldn’t have burnt all that easily.

Here’s hoping this card is better received!

Saturday Book Recommendation

Over the past several months I’ve found some great books.  I’m going to start using this space to recommend some of them.  If you click on the image, or here, you’ll be taken to the Ithaca Vineyard’s Amazon store where you can read a quick description of the book & purchase if you’d like.

David Linhart

I’m still decompressing a bit after a pretty full week…so I thought I’d write down some brief thoughts as they come to mind…

One of the highlights of the past week was without question meeting David Linhart.  David is someone I’ve wanted to meet for a while. David is friends with someone from our church who has been telling me for years what a great musician/person this guy is. It wasn’t an exaggeration!

David is on staff at the Vineyard in Greater Boston & also writes music.  Plus he is a Cornell grad who loves Ithaca!  Josh & I & our families got to hang out with him & his wife for dinner one night, also got to hear him play for worship at the conference…He even performed a couple of songs he has written.

You can hear David’s music here.

quote of the week

After spending a couple of days at the center city summit in Boston, I wrapped up the week in NYC at the coaching network I am a part of.  The coaching network is always a great experience & brings to mind a ton of things we can implement to help our church up in Ithaca…

However, today, my big take away was my favorite quote so far this week:

“If one person tells you you are a horse, it is a lie.
If 15 people tell you you are a horse it is a conspiracy.
If 300 people tell you you are a horse, you should buy a saddle.”

Just a thought.