bob.wilson.blog

Free Christmas Gift Wrapping

For the past 10 years the Ithaca Vineyard has headed up the the mall and wrapped people’s Christmas gifts for free!  This year, due to some changes at the mall, we’ll be heading down to K-Mart for 3 days!

We will be wrapping gifts this year at the following times:

• Thursday, December 18 from 6:00 to 9:00 pm
• Friday, December 19 from 6:00 to 9:00 pm
• Saturday, December 20 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm

The Free Christmas Gift Wrapping is simply a way for us as a church to demostrate God’s love to our community in a practical way.

If you are interested in getting involved, you can simply show up during any of those times, or you will also be able to sign up on Sundays starting this week.

Getting Closer!

So as of last night, we have the final plans for the HVAC system for the new building!  They will get plugged into our plans this week, stamped by the architect and submitted to the building department on Monday.  If all that goes well, we should have the building permit by the end of the week! Please keep praying.

The other main piece that we need to be working on is an asbestos abatement plan.  Now, for most of the building, we don’t have to worry about it.  The places where we do need to deal with it are 1) where the new bathrooms are being installed, and 2) in a couple of places the floor has some bumps in it.  we may need to remove some tiles to afltten that out.

Thanks for praying!  We’ll keep you up to date as things progress this week.

Asbestos

I mentioned yesterday that we just got an asbestos report back…and sure enough, the floor contains asbestos.  While this will likely delay things a little bit, it seems like things are still moving forward.  More building info soon.

Have a great Thanksgiving!!

random stuff

The day started out well…

Liz & I had to take Hannah to a hand specialist in Syracuse.  She injured her wrist in July and it has still been bothering her.  Since then we have been told,

1. Her wrist is broken.
2. Her wrist is healed.
3. Her wrist is still broken.
4. Her wrist was never actually broken, and we have no idea why it still hurts.

It was between points 2 & 3 that we were told even though her cast just came off yesterday, it is okay for her to be on crutches for her pulled hamstring (yeah, Hannah has had a bit of a rough fall).

Well, the specialist today informed us, it was indeed broken…it has healed, however, there appears to be ligament damage.  So she has another month of physical therapy, & if it still bothers her, they’ll explore other options.

So on the way home from Syracuse, we hear one of the brakes grind…Liz calls the mechanic, who says he should be able to get it in tomorrow.  After a while it seems that the noise is gone.  That was when the “check engine” light came on.

Over the past week we have had all kinds of weird little things spring up like that & then either take care of themselves, or else get resolved rather easily…so here’s hoping that this goes well.

And then we finally got the asbestos report back on our building today…more on that when I find out what it all means.

Here’s hoping your day is going great!

Sunday Reflections

Yesterday was a pretty good day.  Both services seemed to go well. amd we got to meet a bunch of new people.  Our first attempt (in several years) at a choir seemed to really well & it looks like this is something we’ll try to keep working in.  After church we took Brenna to her hockey game (quite late), then dropped the girls off @ James & Anna’s so that we could go out & celebrate our 18th Anniversary.

I did have one conversation that stuck in my mind throughout the day however.  During the message we talked about trying to help people who are distant from God have an experience with God.  That if we focus on giving them “The Truth,” we tend rather to turn people off to us, the gospel, & Jesus.  But if we can help them encounter Jesus, they will most likely want more.

We did have an out of town visitor come up quite confused with this idea. “Are you saying we don’t share the truth? And instead we rely on our experience?  Isn’t it the bible that helps people to turn to God?  Not our experince?”  So I asked, “The bible says that it is God’s kindness that leads to repentence.  Wouldn’t that perhaps involve an experince with God?”

As we mentioned, one of the big issues with us saying “we have the truth,” is the arrogance that is contained in that statement.  This morning I was reading through several different blogs & came across one from Dave Schmelzer dealing a bit with the issue of truth and I thought it might be helpful.

Wait, don’t we already have a Pastor of Connections?

Yesterday we posted a note that we are looking for a Pastor of Connections.  Our hope is to bring someone on staff, full-time in the spring.  Now as some of you know, we currently have a part-time pastor of connections, James Cherian.  James has been around since the start of the church, and has done basically every job here that there is…(yes, he even was a Vineyard Kids teacher for a while!)

Well, at the start of the year, James is shifting from Pastor of Connections to strictly a teaching pastor.  So, don’t worry, he’ll still be around…he’ll still be involved in leadership at the church, he has decided that he will be shifting from his day to day duties at the Vineyard to focus on raising Helena!

So, yes, we do have a Pastor of Connections already…and the next one has some pretty big shoes to fill!

Vineyard Christmas Offering

This year we are trying something brand new at the Vineyard.  The Vineyard Christmas Offering.

Our goal is to raise $12,000 by the end of the year, over and above our regular giving so that we can give to three different needs. We know that this is a time of year when people are looking for charities to give money to, and we want to help give some of that money to organizations that will help expand the Kingdom of God!

There are three places we are going to give the money that we raise.

• We are going to give 50% or $6000, to Love146, which is an organization that works to help children who are endangered by, or in danger of child sex trafficking.

• The next 30%, or $3600 will go to Loaves & Fishes, which is a local charity that feeds the poor & homeless in the Ithaca area.

• The rest would go to our church’s benevolence fund so that we can be able to be generous with various needs that exist in our community.

• If we go over & above $12000, half of everything that comes in, will be split up among these three areas, the other ½ will go towards missions.

We are asking everyone connected with the Vineyard to pray about what it is that God would have us give towards this offering.

As we mentioned in a message a few weeks ago, while we recognize that people are stressed about the economy, we belive that as the church, we should be full of hope, not fear…and while everyone around us holds on tight to what they because they are afraid, those that follow Jesus can, & should be generous!

If you would like to give online, you can do that here through Google Checkout.

Pastor of Connections

We are planning to hire a full-time Pastor of Connections here at the Vineyard next spring.   If you are interested in the postion, or would like a copy of the job description, please send an email to bob@ithacavineyard.com.

Is it November already?

So over the past month I have been dealing with some guilt.  It has officially been over a month since I last wrote something here.  September & October were both a bit crazy…I ended up not reading very much, not blogging at all, and simply getting buried with stuff.

The past couple of weeks have started getting a bit better, and every once in a while I would think, “you haven’t blogged in a while.”  You know when someone does something for you, or gives you a gift, and you forget to say thanks…and eventually you remember, but it is now late enough where a thank you would be kind of awkward, so you try and figure out how best to say thanks…but enough time passes, where you end up doing nothing, because it would simply be embarrassing to do anything at this point…well that was what this blog was doing to me.

The longer I waited to write, the more interesting I thought the blog would need to be.  So rather than write something, I eventually just removed the link from our web site!  How’s that for creative thinking! (it is back up:-)  So I just figured, my blogging days were over.  I mean who even reads this thing?  (mom?)

And then Sunday I get an email from my friend Trish in Cambridge telling me that her & her husband were looking at a book I had recommended on the site.  Which meant that someone has actually seen the extent of my extreme laziness when it comes to this thing.

Well, thankfully Trish talked me off of the ledge, and I am giving it another shot (and as you can tell, I even gave up on the notion that my first post back had to be really good!)

So I thought I’d take just a minute & update you on some of what has been going on:

Family Stuff:
- One of my daughters was attacked by another student 2 weeks ago.  She did not suffer any injuries, but will be getting an order of protection. (She did get a cell phone, from her over protective dad, out of the deal, so in her mind there was a bright side.)

- Another daughter has just found out that she is going to miss the whole hockey season with a hamstring injury.  But, she’ll be back next year better than ever!

- On a positive note, Liz & I will celebrate our 18th anniversary this month!

Church stuff:

- The Building…still waiting on our building permit…see, somethings are just like they were last time I wrote!

- We are hoping to hire a new pastor next spring.  I’ll post more about that tomorrow.

There, the first one is out of the way!

catching up

I’m back.  I hope you don’t think my lack of posting over the past week has anything to do with all of the late games the Red Sox have been playing lately.  Well, that is a big part of it, I was just hoping you weren’t thinking that!

So a lot catch up on…here goes:

Building Stuff:

While we are still waiting for the building permit, we are planning a couple of work days this week.  On Wednesday, we are meeting at 6:30 pm and tearing off all of the peg board from the walls. On Thursday, anyone with some experience framing walls is invited to show up & get idea of the project that is in front of us.  We are also hoping to raise some additional funds to help with the project.  We have raised about $40,000 so far, but we are hoping to raise another $20,000 over the next 3 months, which would put us in a really great position.  If you would like to make an offering towards this project, you can do that here.

Influence:

We have heard so much encouraging feedback from people about our current message series Influence:How I’m Wired to make a Difference in the world.  Thanks!

A bit of bad news, we did find out that the recording from this past week’s message was lost/damaged or something.  For those of you who were able to hear it, and wanted to explore the topic further, I wanted to recommend a book you might enjoy…Since I’ve written about it previously, I figured the easiest thing to do was simply link to it: Not the Religious Type.

More soon…

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.