bob.wilson.blog
This past weekend I got to reconnect with one of the Cornell students who helped plant the Ithaca Vineyard way back in 1999. 
Dennis Liu began attending the Cornell Vineyard in the Fall 1998 semester, and immediately began attending the Syracuse Vineyard with us.
When we started the Ithaca Vineyard in February of 1999 Dennis was part of the worship team, and involved in a number of various ways at the church. In the summer of 1999, Dennis attended the Vineyard’s national conference with James & me, and while he was there he met the pastor of a Chinese Vineyard church in the LA area.
After graduating Cornell a year later, Dennis moved to LA to attend seminary at Fuller and begin an internship at the Vineyard of Harvest. He soon became the youth pastor of the church and currently serves as the pastor of the English speaking congregation.
While Liz, James and I have been able to connect with Dennis at a few Vineyard events over the past few years, this weekend was the first time I had gotten to spend some extended time with Dennis since he moved out to LA.
On Friday I flew out and attended the annual Summer Retreat for the Vineyard of Harvest’s English congregation. Dennis had invited me out to speak at the retreat last fall and I had a great time hanging out with them.
While I was talking to Dennis, I found out that another of the students who began attending the Vineyard shortly after we began the church, Paul Kim, was also currently serving as a pastor in LA.
One of the tough things about being part of a church in Ithaca is how many people are only passing through. But it was pretty exciting to see that even from an early stage we have people leaving and getting involved in full-time ministry.
Quick Building Update (6/23/09)
Dry wall is going up fast! Thursday & Saturday are our next work days!
But I wanted to update you all on how the building fund raising campaign. This past week we received another $988, and with the current matching funds we have that takes our total up to $20,000 of the $30,000 that we are still attempting to raise in order to get our certificate of occupancy.
We still have $1162 left in our matching challenge, but the challenge ends on June 30th!
Also, we still haven’t made any headway with obtaining flooring for the space, so please keep that situation in your prayers!
Thanks!
The Week Ahead
Exciting week ahead before going on vacation for a couple weeks starting Monday…quick list in case you are interested:
Monday:
A couple meeting to look over how some of our ministries are structured. We’ll be working on some job descriptions & stuff like that. Later tonight we’ll take the girls out to shop for some summer clothes. They have all grown like crazy this past year.
Tuesday:
Weekly staff meeting to review this past week and plan for next Sunday. Another meeting to help structure ministries at the church. Tuesday night we’ll head over to the building to do some more dry walling.
Wednesday:
Rumor has is that today is the day the cooling units are being installed on the top of our building. We’ve heard that if it is really windy they need to use helicopters to install them…that would be pretty cool. We’ll also be starting a review of our web presence. Get some ideas about what is working & what isn’t. Of course, Wednesday night is week 2 of SEEK! We had a great turn out last week. This is the last official day for school in Ithaca too. (although Hannah ended last Friday, & Erin on Tuesday). Brenna has a half-day today & then we take her to her first overnight camp.
Thursday:
Although our current building situation has me working out of my bedroom…today will be my last official day in the office until mid-July. So I’ll be trying to catch up & get ahead on some last minute stuff.
Friday:
On Friday I fly out of Ithaca early and head to LA. One of the students who helped us plant the church back in 1999 is on staff at a church out there and has asked me to speak at their annual retreat. So I’ll be heading out on Friday & taking the red-eye home on Sunday night. Would have loved to hang out in California a bit, but want to be back with the family so we can get our vacation started on Monday.
Please be praying for us as we travel, and that God would give us a restful & enjoyable vacation!
Did I Mention the iPod Touch?
If you were at the Vineyard this past Sunday, you may have heard Bill Williams make this announcement. Starting this past Monday, we are passing out tickets to people who work up at the new building (one ticket per hour). Then when the building is finished & we move in, we are going to have a drawing with a bunch of prizes. The grand prize will be an iPhone or an iPod. Show up at a work night for more info!
Time to Dry Wall!
Although it took us 7 months to get a building permit, the framing inspection and the electrical inspection both went amazingly well, and at this point we are ready to start putting up some dry wall. Our 
hope is to have a bunch of people show up tonight & on Saturday so that we can get a big chunk of it done. This job does not require a lot of skill (which is why I get to participate), although if you are a skilled mudder, there will be many people there who are willing to be your new best friend?
If you need directions to the new building, click on the map to your left.
Hope to see you tonight (6 to 8), or Saturday (10 a to 4 pm).
Building Update: 6/15/09
Just got back from working up at the building…small crew tonight, but we got all of the electrical stuff ready for our inspection tomorrow @ 8:30 am. If we pass, we will be able to start sheetrocking both sides of all the walls. So please be praying for this.
I also wanted to give a quick update on the finances. This week $175 came in for the building. Since that is being matched dollar for dollar, we are now up to just over $18000! We are still shooting for $30000 in the next couple of months.
There is still $2150 on the two matching gifts that were made, so, if you’d like to make an offering toward the building fund, you can do that here: http://ithacavineyard.org/giving
Finally, I had mentioned that we were hoping to get some good news on some flooring. Although we were offered a break on the pricing, it was not as large as we were hoping, so please keep praying about the flooring at the new place.
We’ll be twittering when we get the results of the electrical inspection.
Thanks for all your prayers.
Building Update
As we mentioned on Sunday, things are moving along pretty well at the building site. We are hoping to 
begin drywalling in the next week or so, and if we can get a good crowd up there, we can know that part off pretty quickly.
There will be a work day this Thursday from 6 to 8 and another on Saturday from 10 am to 4 pm.
A couple of prayer requests:
Please be praying for the framing inspection and the electrical inspection. It is important that those go well so that we can move forward.
Please pray about the flooring. we have 14,000 square feet to cover. At one point we thought we could simply buff the floor…and things would be ugly but functional. However, there is so much damage & broken tile that is not an option. We are exploring a few options, and would ask you to pray that we are able to fine quality flooring that is affordable.
Speaking of affordable, here is the current update on the building finances. As of this past Sunday, we had raised just over $16,000. We also announced during the 1st 
service that a family who used to attend the Vineyard had made a $1500 matching gift. Meaning that anything that came in for the rest of the month, they would match up to $1500. By the end of that service, people had given an additional $835, which upped our total to $17,670.
Prior to the second service, we receive another matching gift, this time for $2000! And in the 2nd service, another $200 dollars came in which doubled, takes our total to just over $18,000. The next $2500 given will take our total to $23,000, only $7,000 short of our goal!
Over the past weeks we have had a number of people stopping by to see what is going on, and asking about the church. One of the village officials actually told us, “if you pull this off, you are going to have a lot of street cred!” (a new slogan perhaps?: the ithaca vineyard, a church with street cred!)
Even if you can’t stop by to work, we’d love for you to stop by & see what is happening. It is pretty exciting!
On Being Cool
I am not cool. If you doubt that assessment, feel free to ask my kids or anyone who knew me in high school, you will get a unanimous response, “He has never been cool.” Over the past few weeks some of the big name, “cool pastors,” have come out and talked about how pastoring is not about being cool. Now, to a large extent, I’m glad that this conversation is taking place. Although I am a bit uncomfortable with the harsh tone it seems to be taking.
There are times, when our family travels to a certain city, and we go to the church that is getting all of the coverage in the Christian media. Too often we leave with the sense that the whole goal of the service was to be “cool.”On a recent mini-vacation to a major city, we went to a multi-site church to see what it was like.
We had heard a lot about this church and went with high expectations. Let me clarify, my kids are pretty honest when it comes to their opinion on what they experience visiting different churches. A couple years ago we went to a church in NYC and one of my daughters told me afterward, “Dad, he is a much better speaker than you.” And it wasn’t even the main teaching pastor!
During this recent trip, the response to the service was not positive at all. There was an overwhelming sense we all felt that the whole thing was about being cool & hip. Now to be fair, the main pastor was not speaking that day (seems to be a theme for us). There was a professional athlete speaking instead, about whom Hannah said, “I used to really like him until I heard him use all of that Christianese.”
Anyway, on the one hand, I’m glad the conversation about cool is beginning to take place in the larger church, and I think it needs to happen. However, I am a bit concerned with how the conversation has started off. One of the guys focus was on how we use language, and he did a video blog, while driving in traffic and at times took both hands off of the wheel to make a point. It looked pretty cool. One of our staff pastors, James Cherian, who also saw this video, pointed out something that I missed. The title of this video blog was a clear shot at one of the other “cool” pastors out there.
Now, this guy was concerned about pastors cursing to be cool. He himself doesn’t talk like this from the stage. But a few years ago, he had a tank on his stage on a Sunday morning…that would be pretty cool! But I wonder, with recent results showing that evangelicals are more likely to be in favor of torture as a means of getting information than those who do not regularly go to church, would he re-think that decision?
Although I am not cool, given who I am, there are likely things I have done, or tried, because I thought they would be cool. Again, while I’m glad the conversation has started, I hope we can move beyond pointing fingers at what everyone else is doing, and begin to admit, and deal with our own issues.
Just a thought.
Books
Those of you who know me well know that I love books. I love reading them and I love giving them away to people. But a couple years ago I realized that I was only reading about 20 to 25 a year, so I set a goal at the start of 2008 to read 52 book over the course of the year. I had to 
read 5 while on vacation the last week of the year, but I made it. I am on pace to reach that goal again in 2009, although I was hoping to double it this year.
This morning I came across one of the blogs on my “occasionally look at” list and found a really helpful guide on how to read/learn more as well as why it matters.
If you are interested you an find it here.
A quick thought on why to read more than you do. As a leader, we always want to be growing, and learning. When we get a book, we are getting the organized thoughts of someone on a specific topic…we are getting years of thinking and preparation from this person, for about $12. That and a few hours time seems like a pretty good investment.
So what are you reading? Just for fun, I thought I’d list my current reading list.
Finished last week:
Three Questions for a Frantic Family - Patrick Lencioni
The Hole in Our Gospel -Richard Stearns
Meatball Sundae - Seth Godin
What I’m Working on Now:
Lead Like Jesus - Ken Blanchard & Phil Hodges
Heroic Leadership (second time around) - Chris Lowney
12,057,698
No that isn’t the new amount of money we need to raise for the building!
One of the guys I’ve discovered, and thoroughly enjoyed on Twitter is Michael Hyatt. He is the CEO of Thomas Nelson, & every day he has helpful stuff on his site. Well, one of the sites he mentions on his resource page was Twitter Grader. They basically look at your Twitter profile, run some diagnotics and give you a grade…I got a 90! But the site I was really excited about was Website Grader.
They not only look up a bunch of info, and give you a grade on your site (we scored an 82!) But they even give you practical steps you can do to improve your site, and make it more effective.
One of the things they do is check your Alexa ranking (Alexa is an online service that measures traffic for millions of sites on the Internet in a similar way to Nielsen television show ratings. ) Our website has an Alexa rank of 12,057,698 which is in the top 43.06 % of all websites. Now on the one hand, you might think, “12 million? That’s pretty low”…until you read the part where it mentions that we are in the top 43% of all websites…a medium sized church, in a small city, that most people can’t pronounce properly, & yet we are in the top 43% of all website traffic! That’s pretty cool!
So, I wanted to give a quick mention to the company who designed our site, Ancient Wisdom Pro. They were great to work with and we’ll definitely use them for our next redesign. I also wanted to say thanks to Ivan Daykov. Probably 2 or 3 times per week I’ll see something on another site, or in an article & I’ll send Ivan an email asking how we can do that, and he consistently finds an inexpensive way to keep improving our site.
Okay, this is starting to sound like an Oscar speech. That was a great way to start off my day though! Here is our report if you are interested.
Building Update
If you haven’t been up to the new building in a few weeks, you’ll likely
be pretty amazed to see how things have progressed lately. The duct work that is already installed is impressive in it’s own right.
Currently, the landlord’s contractors are installing the plumbing for the bathrooms & kitchen as well as the HVAC system. They are also updating the sprinkler system, and working on several other projects at the same time.
At the same time, our guys, led by John Shippe are installing the electric throughout the building, while Bill Williams is directing the final bit of framing (as well as the whole project).
So, on that front things are going well, and all signs point to us being in mid-summer sometime.
Finances
Over the past 6 to 8 week we have been raising money to get us to the point where we can have everything we need done in order to get a certificate of occupancy. Our goal was to raise $30,000 by the end of June. As of today, we are right around $15,000.
When we raise the remaining $15, 000, we will have enough to complete everything required to get the certificate of occupancy (of course after being involved in this project over the past year and watching how things go, I will clarify that statement by saying, “as long as no more unforeseen obstacles arise.”)
One major item that we still do not have the finances for is the carpet. At the very least we want to carpet the kids’ area & the sanctuary. And while carpeting is not cheap in general, to find something that has low VOC’s (volatile organic compounds) is even less cheap.
So if you are looking for something specific to pray for, there you go.
What’s Next?
Our hope is to have the framing & electrical inspection done next week. Once that is done, we will start installing drywall. Since our wall are all pretty straight forward, we’ll want to have a few skilled people and a bunch of people to help out.
We are also about to install tile in the bathrooms, so that is another way to get involved.
Finally, we are trying to put together a team of people who would be interested in helping out with some design suggestions. If an of those things interest you, let me or Bill know.
I Don’t Have Time to Write This
It amazes me how quickly my “free” time fills up. This week was supposed to have lots of time for me to catch up on a few projects and even get a head start on a few others…but free time has a habit of evaporating…Did you know Monday was a holiday? I had a great day with Liz & the kids taking a day trip to Oswego, but there is 20% of my catch up time gone. Of course, after two months of waiting, the bank is finally ready to close on our mortgage refinancing…knock a big chunk out of Thursday morning. Tonight, one kid is in a choir concert the other is in the Ithaca Fest Parade (no, she is not in the chainsaw marching band). Now, it is all good stuff that I want to be in on, but my “catch up week,” has been a bit crazier than anticipated.
So this morning, I get home from the meeting at the bank and just stared at all of the open windows on my computer screen…each one seemingly representing a major project that, “MUST BE DONE NOW!” So I, mustering all of the time management skills I have, quickly prioritized all of my projects, got rid of things I don’t need to do and then got to it…Well actually, I stared at the screen for about 5 minutes until a phone call snapped me out of it.
After the call, I got to work knoking off my projects. I moved into the other room, printed some stuff for Sunday, spent an hour or so doing email, and getting ready for a church council meeting, and then was just about to get into my next project when it hit me…there are things that I enjoy doing, or just really want to do, but when I find myself in “overwhelmed/crazy mode”, they get pushed to the side. Things like riding my bike, reading, or the one that really gets pushed back the most, writing.
Now, while I’m excited about each of the projects I am working on, they tend to take a lot of my energy, so that once they are done, so am I. When I bike, read, write, etc., I get this great burst of energy. But somehow I convince myself that these things simply aren’t as important as all these piles of stuff over here.
But I’m making a commitment to myself to make sure I spend a portion of my work day doing some of this stuff that I really enjoy doing. And if you don’t see another blog post tomorrow, you’ll know that I’ve started to slip back into my status quo mode, so feel free to send me an email and tell me to snap out of it.
Required for Leadership
I’ve been doing some reading and study for an upcoming leadership class. And I’ve noticed one thing that has come up over an over again that is required to be a leader…might not seem all that profound, but here it is…you actually need to care about something. There needs to be something that you are passionate about. If you don’t care about something deeply, it is difficult to lead others in that direction. To many look at leadership as a title…we too often see how badly that goes.
So, what are you passionate about?
A Summer of SEEK
I wanted to give a bit of information on an announcement we made during our worship services this past Sunday concerning our summer kinship schedule. Although we normally have our summer kinships 
(our small group system) run from mid-June to late August, we decided to do something different this summer. And for those who are wondering, this is a one time thing. When things start back up in the fall, we will be back to having our regular kinship schedule.
Let me answer a couple of questions I’m assuming people have.
First what is SEEK? SEEK is a class similar to Alpha that was designed for those who are exploring faith a place to come and discuss in matters of faith in a friendly, low-risk environment. It also provides those new to faith a good solid foundation upon which to build. SEEK was developed by our friends up at the Vineyard in Cambridge, MA.
Second Question. So if SEEK is geared toward people exploring or new to faith, why are we having the whole church go through it? After leading SEEK over the past 2 semesters, I kept coming back to this idea that this was something everyone in our church could benefit from. Our family has been doing this faith thing for a while now, yet it has had a great impact on the 3 of us who have gone through it.
Over the next few weeks we’ll have more information, and sign-ups will start on May 31st. In the meantime, if you’d like a bit more information, you can find that here.
Being Remark-able
The talk above is from one of my favorite authors, Seth Godin (a fellow Western New Yorker too) talks at TED about being remarkable. This idea that you are doing something that isn’t just “cool,” or “neat,” but is worthy of people making remarks about. While many of his examples are business, it made me think about some of the more common types of evangelism used in the church…(things I’ve done myself in the past) from passing out tracts to stopping people on the street to talk.
What would it mean for the church to be “remarkable?” Let’s face it, not a description too many people use for it. Yet the fact is, the message that we share, “the Kingdom of God is here!” is remarkable. The God we serve, remarkable is putting it mildly!
But for too many we have made this message unremarkable…and not only that, something that people tend to treat simply like another piece of spam in their inbox. So is that their fault or ours?
Did You Know?
At the Vineyard’s National Leadership Conference last week, the theme was, heroic leadership in a time of change. One of the speakers used the video below to illustrate just how quickly things are changing. Definitely worth a view.
Renew Galveston Festival
Yesterday afternoon from about 11:30 am to 6:00 pm, over 1000 people from the Vineyard leadership conference headed into a neighborhood in Galveston and participated in the Renew Galveston Festival. The festival provided food for the poor who were impacted by hurricane Ike, as well as free hair cuts, and fun events for kids. While at the event we were able to serve over 2,800 people from the Galveston area!
Although I registered for the food distribution team, I ended up on the prayer team. And even though we were able to pray for over 900 people at the event, my group only got to pray with one woman. There were a lot of prayers! I’ll come back to her in a minute.
What really struck each of us on the team is the extent to which Galveston is still recovering from the two storms that hit it. We still think about New Orleans, but for most of us Galveston doesn’t register…yet the extent of the visible damage that is still there is incredible. If you are going out to eat, you need to call first to make sure they are still open.
Which leads me back to praying, and gratitude, which we talked about this past Sunday. Let me ask you a question…what is the biggest issue you are concerned about right now? The woman we prayed for yesterday, she gave us a request…& it was a big one. We asked, anything else? She gave another. When we asked is there anything else, she responded, “I’d like my husband to be set free from his addiction to drugs.” That was the third thing she thought of. She had two far more pressing issues in her life, that pushed something this huge to number 3.
This morning at the conference, Wes Stafford, from Compassion International, spoke about his passion for the billions of children living in poverty in our world.
Now, I in no means want to downplay the difficult situations of pain that any of us may be dealing with. But it has reinforced this idea of gratitude for me. There are not too many people in the world that I would want to trade problems with. I have a lot to be thankful for.
How about you?
Cherith Fee Nordling
The speaker this morning was Cherith Fee Nordling. (Cherith is the daughter of Gordon Fee). She did a great job calling us to give our lives wholly to God. Below are a few of the quotes that really stuck out to me:
____________
Q; What impact does the coming kingdom have on the children of the resurrection?
A: It will kill you. You have to die.
We need to stop side-stepping death because that is where new creation shows up.
There will be no Americans in the new creation.
Resurrection is about getting your life back…not about going to heaven.
Be perfect…be an image-bearer of the Father.
Jesus is the only one who has lived a truly human life, without screwing it up.
I want the kingdom, but I don’t want it to touch my retirement fund, or any other place i don’t want it to touch me.
We want to be friends with benefits…but it terrifies us to think that we have to die to be your servant.
What would God do if he was allowed to stop looking like us, and allowed to be himself?
The church is busy about the job of resuscitation God want to raise the dead.
He is what happens when Easter meets Genesis.
He is the new creation First Edition.
God Loves a good crisis.
My Critic’s Hat
Like most people I know, I own one. I am trying to wear it less however.
When we got to the conference, we registered and got our materials, and one thing we got was a welcome letter telling us what to expect. The last paragraph of the letter contained this sentence, “So relax, enjoy the fresh Gulf seafood, take off your critics hat and open yourself up to the Spirit. If you do, I am certain you will go away from ths place saying, ‘it was good to spend this time together with family.’”
Since we talked about gratitude and thankfulness this past Sunday @ the Ithaca Vineyard, that really hit me. Just how for most of us, our natural tendency is to look for what’s wrong…what should have been done better…what was forgotten. And when we’re there, we tend to miss out on a ton of good stuff. We forget to be grateful for what we are experiencing, rather than what we’re not.
While I love feedback…criticism can really suck the life out of everything.
So, I’m leaving off my critic’s hat this week…And when it ends up back on my head, I’m going to see if I can start taking it off more regularly.
Vineyard’s 2009 National Leadership Conference
Greetings from Galveston! This morning, almost the entire staff from the Ithaca Vineyard (we miss you James) flew from Ithaca to Texas to be part of the Vineyard’s biennial Leadership Conference.
Over the next few days, beginning tonight with Bert Waggoner, we’ll be hearing from leaders from in and out of the Vineyard, participating in an outreach to parts of Galveston that have been ravaged by storms over the past few years, and getting to reconnect with old friends from around the country.
One of the main focuses of the National Conference is to bring leaders of the Vineyard together to worship, celebrate what God is doing in our tribe, and share vision for where God is leading us as a movement. I’ve been coming since 1999, and it’s one of those events I always look forward to.
Except for Elizabeth, who came with me in 2001, this is the first time for the rest of the team (Moses Ong, Kathy Murray, Steve & Trish Ryan). While we are down here, most of us will be twittering much of what we hear, see, and experience while we are here. If you’re interested in keeping up-to-date with what’s going on down here, we invite you to follow us on Twitter. If you’d like to follow any of the 6 of us, simply click on our name above, and you’ll be sent right to our personal Twitter page where you can sign up to follow, and even join in on the conversation!
If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can easily set one up on at twitter.com and check the updates of those you decide to follow there. If you use an rss reader, you can set up an rss feed. And for those of you who rarely leave Facebook, once you have set up a twitter account, you can link it to Facebook and follow the conversation from there!
In addition, Trish and I will also be updating our blogs while we are down here, so we hope that this’ll be a great way for us to keep connected!
Also, we’d love it if you’d be praying for us while we’re out here. Please pray that God would really knit us together as a team, that we would each be refreshed and encouraged, and we’d each receive all that He has for us! Thanks.
