bob.wilson.blog

My Computer History

I grew up in a house with no computer.  Well actually I got a Tandy when I was a teenager, but had no idea what to do with it, since I had not “computer geek friends,” and oh yeah, my school didn’t even have any computers.

Not only did my school have no computers, my guidance counselor (who really provided neither guidance, or counsel…discuss) encouraged me to go to college as a computer science major.  So I did.  I went to SUNY Oswego in the fall of 1984 as a CS major & guess what…freshman CS majors did not get to actually touch computers…we used punch cards.  If you have no idea what punch cards are…be thankful.

After a week in a Cobalt class at Oswego, I realized I was the only person who had no computer background & switched it to Basic.  After a week in Basic, I found a sophomore CS major who kind of  liked me and had her write all my projects.  I got a good grade, but by the end of my first semester, I was no longer a CS major.  And after one year I was no longer at Oswego.

Flash forward to 1994, & I finally get my first computer…a Mac TV (just like the picture above).  It was pretty cool looking, and you could hook your cable tv up to it & take pictures of shows, but it was tremendously slow.

In 1999, (yes, I worked on a Mac Tv, with a 32 MHz processor, 5 MB of RAM, a 160 MB hard drive for 5 years), when we first started the Vineyard, we were given $5,000 dollars to get started.  we bought a large capacity coffee maker (you need priorities), a lapel mic, since I hate holding mics, and a refurbished Apple Powerbook.  That computer bit the dust when Hannah came in to the office & knocked the coffee off my desk.  I had a choice to let the cup of coffee hit her, or knock it towards my laptop.

When we were looking at getting a new computer, the two other key leaders both said I needed to get a PC since they couldn’t read my files.  I did.  A Dell, running windows with Office 2000.  They were using Office 1998.  They couldn’t read my files.

Over the next 3 years we went through a number of desktop & laptop PCs…which was a pretty frustrating experience & one day, I decided, from now on, our church was switching back to Mac.  James & I each got G4 laptops, & haven’t looked back.  They were great machines.

About 4 years ago, right around the time Apple was switching to Intel processors, we were putting everything away after one of our Sunday services, someone (we never learned who) knocked my laptop on the floor & broke the screen.  Which meant I needed a new one & decided to try one of the new Intel MacBook Pros.  While I love working on this laptop, I wish  could have waited until Apple worked out some of the bugs.  I received it with a damaged DVD drive.  The hard drive failed in 2007 (& since I was good about backing up at that point, I lost nearly all of my 2007 messages & other documents).  I have had the motherboard replaced & the screen as well since it also had a malfunction. (on the positive, all of those repairs were covered by the extended warranted.)  Not to mention the new battery we’ve had to replace every year.

If you follow me on Twitter, you heard me whining last week about the back ups on my Time Capsule not working.  Well, turns out the Time Capsule was working fine…one of the processors on my laptop (which was replaced with the motherboard two years ago) decided to quit.

So, it appears that we are at that point again, and I’ll be updating my computer.  While I definitely be sticking with a Mac…I’m hoping that this next one will be a bit more like my G4 than my current  machine.  We’ll see.

So, what’s the worst computer you’ve ever had…And in my mind, having to use punch card counts as a horrible computer experience.

Birthday Week @ the Vineyard

Our family is celebrating 2 birthdays this week.  And not only do both birthdays fall in the same week, the births actually occured the same year.

Now, I’m still not really sure how this happened…my wife says I was suffering from a bit of tunnel vision & simply not listening to reason, it’s all kind of blurry to me.

So here’s the deal.  As we neared the end of 1998, we knew that we would be planting the Ithaca Vineyard, at some point in early 1999.  Since we were going to hold afternoon services until we grew a bit, we decided to wait until a week after the Super Bowl, because as awesome as the Vineyard’s first service was going to be, we weren’t up for trying to compete with that.  Since the game was held the last Sunday in January at that point, we set February 7th as the date of our first service.

Did I mention that Liz was expecting daughter number 3 at this point? (actually, for the first 5 days of her life, that was what we called her since we couldn’t think of a name.)  So, anyways, daughter #3, or Brenna as we call her now, was born on February 4, 1999.  Three days later, the Ithaca Vineyard held it’s first regular Sunday service.

Now that we are a few years removed from the insanity of that week, the question I often wonder is, what would I have done if Liz went into labor  on February 7th rather than the 4th?  (Before people start writing nasty comments below, obviously I would have gone with Liz (actually, Brenna was a home birth, so I would have stayed with Liz), but I’m trying to imagine that phone call with James…(hey, I’m not going to be able to make it for our first service…maybe you can come up with something.)

Liz and Brenna actually came to church that day…& oh yeah, it was a blizzard.  Liz & I are working at trying to keep our lives a bit more sane than we used to…but as you can see, we have a ways to go.

Although we won’t be having an “official” Vineyard birthday celebration this weekend, we will be getting together to watch a certain football game…& who knows, maybe someone’s dish to pass will be cake.  If you’re in town, I hope you’ll join us!

So, what is your craziest birthday story?

Photo Credit: Birthday Candles

Parental Guidance Suggested

I had hoped to have a post up yesterday dealing with another question we occasionally get asked here at the Vineyard.  However, my laptop had other ideas.  Not only did it crash & make me lose everything on the hard drive, when I went to back up from the Time Capsule, the file was corrupted.  Supposedly it can be fixed, but it isn’t yet.  Thankfully, we also have a Time Capsule @ home & although the most recent back up is a month old, things are looking a bit better than they were yesterday afternoon!  We’ll know for sure in 12 hours or so.

Anyway…I wanted to write and give everyone a heads up about the new message series we are kicking off ths Sunday, Great Sexpectations.  And you don’t need a lot of imagination to guess what the topic of the messages will be.  (so we’re moving from 4 weeks of what the Bible says about money, to 4 weeks of what the Bible says abou sex…I’m not sure where you go from there!)

I wanted to write this post for the sake of parents with young teens/tweens.  The topics we’ll discuss would probably carry a PG-13 rating if they were in the the theater.  While we have no intention of being provocative for shock value, we believe that sexuality is really at the core of who we are as humans and to avoid these subjects in church is to do a disservice to all of us.

If you’re like Liz & me, when you get into some of these conversations with your kids, they are simply exposed to a lot more than we ever were as kids…and I grew up with HBO piped into my house.  And the fact is, if your kids watch any tv or movies, or have friends at school, there will probably not be anything we’ll talk about that they haven’t already heard.

However, our goal will be to come at this from a biblical perspective, which will add a healthy piece to the conversation.  And if you’re wondering, we’re encouraging each of our kids (15, 13 & 11) to be in the service, & I”m a pretty protective dad!

If you simply don’t want your kids to be sitting through this, we understand that as well.  So what we’ll do over the next 4 Sundays is allow kids older than the normal range to sit in with the Vineyard Kids class.  If you’d like to do this, please simply stop by the sign in table in the lobby when you come in on Sunday.

Please be praying for this series, let’s believe God to bring a lot of healing & freedom to people’s lives!

Rich or Poor

The following is the first guest post we’ve had here…and who better to do it than James Cherian!

Teaching on Sundays really isn’t one of my favorite things.  Even though I only do it once in a while, I usually start getting nervous about it three weeks in advance.

By the Thursday before I teach, I have usually done three things:

1) Prayed “Please help me, God” without ceasing.
2) Written my resignation email to Bob (I have yet to actually hit the ’send’ button).
3) Curled up on the floor and cried.

Needless to say, preparing a message for Sunday is very stressful for me.  I don’t know why.  It has gotten better lately, and I feel much more comfortable speaking up there than I used to.

Most of the time, after I preach I usually think of all the things I could have done better.  Whether it was explaining things a bit more clearer, emphasizing God’s grace more, or simply just being less boring.

Those things I am usually able to work on getting better the next time around.

However, this past Sunday I said something that I wanted to clarify right away, and not just work on it for next time. I wasn’t sure if it was that big of a deal at first, but the more I thought and prayed about it this week, the more it became obvious that the point needed to be clarified.

After we read through 1 Timothy 6:17-19, which is Paul’s encouragement to Timothy to teach the rich people in his church to be generous, I said something like, “If you’re thinking you’re not rich, so this passage doesn’t apply to you, think again- because about 90% of the rest of the world would view each of us sitting here as rich- so this passage is for each of us sitting here.”

I still agree with that statement, and especially how as followers of Jesus, we are all to grow in generosity- but I feel I did a disservice to those who really do struggle financially.  Whether it’s not being able to find a job, or not being able to put food on the table even if you have a job, to paying enormous medical bills and all the concerns that go with having a low income, being poor, or even uninsured in our country- by no means did I want to invalidate that.

On the contrary Psalm 113 says this:

7 He raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap;

8 he seats them with princes,
with the princes of his people.

9 He settles the childless woman in her home
as a happy mother of children.
Praise the LORD.

We see God’s heart here for those who are poor, those who are needy, those who are in distress- we see a God who provides, delivers, and comforts.  It’s not just the 90% of the rest of the world that can pray this- it’s all of us who are in need, whether it be financially and materially, or simply in the acknowledgement that we have nothing aside from God’s grace.

Not too many people may know this, but aside from the different projects we do to serve those in need in our community (i.e. sharing coats, back to school supplies, etc), 2% of all general tithes and offerings that come in each Sunday we put in our Benevolence Fund.  This fund is used to help those in our church and outside the church as different needs arise- whether it’s purchasing groceries, paying rent or bills, or with any financial need we can help with.

It’s one way we hope to partner with God in being a blessing to everyone.

I hope that clarified things a bit more, and at the least gave you some insight into how we as a church try to meet the needs of both those who currently attend the Vineyard and those in the Ithaca community.

What do you think about all this?

What’s In a Name?

So, here’s a question.  bob.wilson.blog is, let’s face it is a pretty lame. Having a name like Bob Wilson means you can almost never get your user name on things like Twitter (which is why there are 2 underscores in my twitter name) or Facebook (although I almost had bobwilson, but made a stupid mistake).  And bobwilson.com…so person is out there holding onto it and likely wants more money than I could ever come up with.  It’s be cool to have a name like James Cherian.

Sorry, I rambled for a minute…Anyways…while we are in the process of upgrading the overall theme of the website, we are also wanting to come up with a name that doesn’t stink.

If you could post some ideas in the comment section below, that would be a great help…If I end up using it, I’ll take you to lunch @ my favorite Thai place down on the commons.

(note to those who read this on Facebook…please comment directly on the blog, & not on Facebook, I only check Facebook a couple times a week.  But, if you do post a suggestion on Facebook & I use it, then I’ll get you a piece of pizza instead of lunch @ Taste of Thai).

So what are your ideas?

Photo Credit: Green Question Mark

Flipped

Last I mentioned that I wanted to do a series of posts dealing with various questions we often get asked around the Vineyard.  Some of the questions we get asked, the answers are more functional, and other answers are directly tied to the vision of our church (even things like why we serve really good coffee for example).

Sometimes however there are other answers… for example sometimes the reason is because, we think it’s fun.  For example we often get asked, “Why do we occasionally ‘flip’ our Sunday morning worship service?”

[if you put two & two together you'll probably have an idea why we are dealing with this question this week!]

First off, for those of you who aren’t part of the Vineyard, let me explain what a flipped service is.  Actually, for most churches, our normal service would be considered flipped.  A typical week at the Ithaca Vineyard, starts with a worship song, a scripture reading, a brief welcome & a coffee break. Following the break, we have a message, followed by about 25 minutes of worship.

We actually started structuring our services this way, about 8 years ago.  We had a couple that had moved to Ithaca from a Vineyard in Illinois, where they had structured their services this way.  They suggested it, and pretty much everyone loved it!

For me, one of the key benefits was a major reduction in the amount of distractions during worship.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but people tend to come to church late.  A lot.  For us, the last time we checked, it was over 30% of people who arrived after the service started, for whatever reason.

But what we noticed was that when we started the service with worship, every time someone came in late, and attempted to find a place to seat, a large portion of people would turn to see who was just arriving.  And of course sometimes people would exchange pleasantries…that’s all great, except what we’ve done is made the time of worship in our service the most distracting time of the morning.  ”We want you to focus on God, but we’ll ensure that there are a bunch of things going on around you to fight for your focus.”

Getting everybody to church on time seemed like a battle that was impossible to win.  But moving worship to the end of the service, when everyone who’s coming is already here, we’ve removed those distractions. At the same time, by having worship at the end,  we’ve also made it a time to respond to God based on He was saying to you in the message.  So for our money, enough positives that we’ve stuck with this style for years.

Alright, that’s our regular service…a “flipped” service is set up like this; worship, a scripture reading, a welcome, and then a coffee break.  After the coffee break, we have a message, and close with one final song.

Now, you might be wondering, based on what I just wrote, why would we make that switch back…even occasionally.

The big reason, is simply to change things up a bit.  Yeah, I’ve got no scripture reference to refer you to, we just like to mix things up a bit.   And part of that reason is, sadly, church people can be the most, “but this is the way we’ve always done it,” people out there.

There is this tendency for us to love formulas & models (in the church and even in our private spiritual lives…).  It’s part of the same thinking that had us, when we were in our last location we move the room around frequently.  While our tendency is to fall in love with models, methods & formulas, this whole church “thing” is about God, not about some specific type of model that we like.

At the same time,we’ve found that every time we flip the service, or even flip the room around, there is a bit of extra energy in the place…and that is always fun! So, even though we haven’t done it too often in the past few month, we are getting back to flipping a service every 6 weeks or so.

One final thought, I recognize there is one group of people who hate the flipped service.  Those of you who get there right around the time service starts, & think you’ve only 5 minutes to wait until you can get your coffee & a bagel, only to realize as the second song begins that, gulp, you have to wait about 25 more minutes before you can get that cup of coffee.  The only thing I can think of to help you would be to let you know that the coffee is out and ready about 10 minutes before the service actually starts. So if you can figure out when we are flipping the service, you could come a few minutes early those weeks, get your coffee & “ride out” the time until the break.

Of course, if you can’t figure out which week we’re flipping, you may have to come up with another plan!

Photo Credit: Tricking. Side Flip

Week of Prayer & Fasting @ the Vineyard

If you’ve been at the Vineyard over the past couple of Sundays, then you’ve probably heard that we are taking this next week as a week of prayer & fasting.  While we’re sure some of you have had some experience with prayer & fasting in the past, we recognize that for many people this may be the first time, they’ve actually had an opportunity to be part of something like this.  So, I thought I’d take a few minutes, explain why were doing this, & then give a bit more information on what fasting involves.

So, why a week of prayer & fasting?

Prayer & fasting is a time when we focus on God, and give him our full attention. Doing it as a church, means that many of us are coming to God with a unified focus and request!  Specifically, our focus over these next 7 days is that Jesus will be glorified in our city and that God would do great things in our city and in our church.

Now, we believe that when we pray stuff like this, we are simply praying God’s will. For example, I’m fully convinced that our Heavenly Father wants to see Jesus glorified.  So when a group of people, humble themselves, & seek God on stuff that He desires…great stuff will happen.

Over the next few days, we’ll list some specific focuses to pray about on the Vineyard’s Facebook & Twitter accounts.  Obviously, you can go beyond these (please do!), but these will simply be there as a guide to give you some direction.

A great place to start, when thinking/studying the topic of fasting is Isaiah 58.  This passage really gets at the goal of fasting, why we do it, and where God fits in.

What is Fasting?

Depends on if you want the long answer or the short answer.  When I was first learning about fasting, I was taught that it was going with out food (and perhaps beverages) for a specific period of time (usually at least one day).  Sometimes it would be longer, other times, it might be skipping one meal.

Now, it is pretty common to hear people talk about fasting from “Facebook, the internet, tv, etc.”  But regardless of how it is done, the goal is to give something up, so that we can instead focus ourselves on seeking God.

If you’d like some biblical examples of fasting, here’s a quick list that might be helpful: :  Moses (Exodus 34:28), David (2 Samuel 12:16-17), Nehemiah (Nehemiah 1); Esther (Esther 4:15-16), Anna (Luke 2:37), Jesus (Matthew 4:1-2), the early church (Acts 13:1-3), Paul (Acts 14:23).

Is Fasting Some Legalistic Type of Thing?

Sadly, like anything, people can, and have taken means of relating to God that He has given to us, and twisted them until they become rules with no life.  We clearly don’t want to go there.  At the same time, Jesus makes it clear in the gospel of Matthew that those who follow him will fast:

¹⁶ “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. ¹⁷ But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, ¹⁸ so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Matthew 6:16-18

In other words, fasting is simply a normal part of what it means to follow Jesus.  It is a way that helps us to focus on God, grow as disciples, and take part in what God is doing in the world.

I hope you’ll consider join in with us this week as we fast and pray.  And we’d love to hear how it goes for you.

PS – if you have any questions about fasting, drop a comment here on the blog.

Move Along…Nothing to See Here

Now, the chances are you are looking at this site & everything looks perfectly normal.  However, there is the possibility that you’ve stopped by and things look, well, a bit chaotic.

I am in the process of changing the theme on my blog.  While Ivan Daykov did a great job of creating the blog theme we’ve been using, and making it match the rest of the Ithaca Vineyard’s web site, it is time move on.

The new theme has a number of additional features that should make the site much more user friendly.  In addition, we will hopefully have a number of other blog related news in the next few week.

The problem is, I need to activate the new theme to work on it…& as you can tell if you’ve sen it…it isn’t ready yet.

So, if you showed up here and wondered why everything looks, well, really bad…we’re working on it!

While we’re in the process of updating, any things you’d like to make sure we add?

Don’t Forget Your Coat On Sunday

Don’t worry, the heat is working fine!

This Sunday when we talk about generosity, we are asking everyone to please a good winter coat that you would be willing to donate to those in our community who could use them.  We are asking for nothing stained, ripped, or otherwise in less than really good shape!

Hope to see you on Sunday!

Why Don’t We Have a Men’s/Women’s Group (part 2.)

Yesterday we started answering the question, “Why Don’t We Have a Men’s/Women’s Group,” here @ the Vineyard, by talking about the vision of our church.  The conclusion of that post is below (if you didn’t ready yesterday’s post, everything will make much more sense if you start there!):

______

Our philosophy of discipleship is again, Connect with God through Sunday morning worship; Connect with others through weekly small groups, and Contribute your time, talent, & treasure.

For the average person, and the people we are trying to help connect with Jesus, there are only so many hours in a week. (okay not just for the average person).  And each time you add another item or event to a person’s calendar, they have to make a choice…”What do I want to be a part of?  With the limited time that I have available, where am I going to invest my time?”  Let’s face it, most of us have been in churches, where they have a bunch of programs, and much of the discussions involves trying to come up with creative ways to get people to show up for all of these meetings.

The first church I was on staff with has a Sunday night service, and common theme in the Sunday night sermons, were “people need to be more committed and come to church on Sunday nights.”

The problem was, they were committed.  But 3 or 4 other church commitments during the week as well as jobs and families…and there was only so much they could do.

A couple of years ago I went to the Willow Creek leadership Summit & heard Craig Groeschel speak & he said something that made so much sense, and fits with what we’re talking about here:

If you want to reach people that other churches are not reaching, you need to do what other churches are not doing.  And, if you are going to do what other churches are not doing, you can’t do everything that other churches are doing.

While we understand that some people have really benefited from men’s/women’s groups, and we’re glad that there are churches out there that are doing those types of ministries well, for us to focus on what we believe God has called us to do, we simply can’t do everything that other churches are doing.

Think about it this way…If you’ve been around the Vineyard any length of time, you know that we put a very high priority on kinship groups. (in fact, if you haven’t signed up for our winter/spring semester yet, you can do that here!).  And since we believe that these groups are one of the 3 key things that we want people at the Vineyard  involved in, we do not offer ongoing events that compete with our kinships.

We want you to have quantity time with you family.  We want you to get to know and bless your neighbors & the people you work with. And we want you to be part of a kinship group…and so, we’ve made a conscious choice that we are not going to fill the calendar with “stuff.”

Take a guy who is working 40-50, or more hours a week.  He has kids in middle school and high school, and wants to actually spend time with his wife.  Say he is coming to church on Sunday, & kinship on Wednesday.  And since this guy has a limited amount of time in his week, once you add men’s group on Saturday morning, you are now asking him to make a choice…kinship or men’s group.  And when we do that, we’ve violated the core philosophy of how disciples grow at the Vineyard.

(If you’re still a bit skeptical, I’d encourage you to get a copy of Simple Church, by Thom Rainer.  He says it much better than I could & backs it all up with research!)

So here’s our church’s thinking on men’s groups & women’s groups.  First off, contrary to what you might think, we are not opposed to them.  In fact, there are some options that we think would fit in well with how the Ithaca Vineyard currently works.  For example:

1) We’d love to see a men’s kinship (or a couple men’s kinships).  And likewise, we’d love to see one or more women’s kinships. In fact, if leading a kinship group like this sounds like something you’d like to do in the future, why not talk to your kinship leader about how you could go about becoming a kinship leader.

2) In addition, since we generally have 4-6 weeks off between our kinship semesters, that could be a great time to plan an event or two.  And maybe down the road, we are able to use those semester breaks as a time to regularly hold those types of events.

So, if you’ve got a passion for this type of ministry…AND, you’ve got a passion for the Vineyard, & the people who are here, start getting those creative juices flowing.  How would that fit into what it is that God has called us to do here in Ithaca?