bob.wilson.blog

Vacation!

This has been a crazy fall.  Good…mostly…but definitely crazy.  One kid had a broken wrist, with ligament damage, and a pulled hamstring. Another was attacked by a classmate…And as we get ready to go on vacation, the third kid is on crutches.  (she is also the one who was in the emergency room over Thanksgiving for class in her foot.)  And that is simply a small glimpse of how our fall has gone…

Needless to say we are looking forward to these next two weeks.  Likely, I won’t be blogging during this time, but if something really cool happens who’s to say.

A couple things to be praying about…that asbestos abatement is staring over the Christmas break & we should have the building permit once that is all done!  I know that all sounds familiar, hence the prayer request.

Also, we have a pretty exciting announcement to make when we get back too!  We’ll do that on January 11!

Have a great Christmas & New Years!

a couple thoughts as vacation gets here

Monday is the official start of our family vacation!  We are driving to Florida to spend a week with my aunt & uncle.  So in order to get ready to go, I’ve been trying to get a lot of last minute things done…so here are some quick updates, and various random thoughts as I get ready to head out:

1) my van is fixed!  & the hood & doors are the same color as they were originally!

2) while I was out running errand this afternoon, I ended up behind the same truck that last week cut in front of me…weird.  his vehicle is not fixed.

3) We have a demo permit!  And the asbestos abatement on the building starts in 11 days!

4) If they can make it to Ithaca despite the snow, we’ll be interviewing a candidate for our open pastoral position!

5) I still have a lot to do in the next 48 hours!

6) For example, christmas gift wrapping starts @ 6:00 pm tonight.  Maybe I’ll see you there.

That, is really fast.

So I’m driving home for lunch & get about 3 blocks from my house, when a guy in a truck decides to turn left in front of me.  He did it very last minute & I didn’t have enough time to stop and I hit his truck.

As you can see from the picture, while there wasn’t extensive damage, a missing headlight basically renders a car undriveable.

But the best part of the whole day is what the other driver (who got a ticket for failing you yield the right of way) told the police officer.

“He was driving so fast that I didn’t see him coming.” Thankfully the officer picked up on it right a way and laughed…”He was driving so fast that you didn’t see him?”

Guess what I get to spend my time on over the next couple of days!

Who Actually Uses the Yellow Pages?

For the past 6 years a nameless phone book company (ver*cough*izon*cough*) has listed the Vineyard Church of Ithaca in their directory under churches.  This year they did not.  And I am very happy about that!

In the first place, come on, who actually uses the Yellow Pages to look for a church?  Google, sure…a ton of people find us through the internet.  But the phone book…I don’t know the last time someone came & said they found us by letting their fingers do the walking.  Now to be fair, there may be a good reason that Ver…I mean that phone book company…has not lead anyone to our church in the past 6 years…BECAUSE THEY HAVE LISTED THE WRONG ADDRESS FOR 6 YEARS!!!

Each year our conversation has gone something like this:

“Would you please fix our address?”

“Sure!”

3 months later when the phone book came out…

“Why didn’t you fix our address?”

“I am not authorized to…or you didn’t fill out the correct form…”

Or my favorite was last year, when we actually bought an ad thinking that might inspire them to fix it: “You know, we don’t even have to list you, we are doing you a favor.”

Ummm…not when you list the wrong address you’re not.

So this year they wanted us to put another ad in…and this time they crossed their fingers and hoped to die that they fixed our address…So wouldn’t we please consider paying them again.

So today, the phonebook was left on my doorstep, I opened it up & searched for the Vineyard Church of Ithaca to see where they have us meeting…Well, according to them…we are no longer meeting…but at least we are no longer meeting in the wrong place!

The Plans Are In!

The final plans for the new building were handed in today…and the asbestos abatement plan should be ready any day!  Hopefully the project will be moving forward soon!

Shooting Stars

This is hockey weekend for the Wilsons. The annual Ithaca shooting stars tourament is being held at both the Rink and Cass Park. With Hannah out with injuries and Erin no longer playing, Brenna is the only one on the ice. Liz has been involved with scheduling volunteers, decorations and such and we both get to be here early tomorrow to work a couple of games.

So far Brenna’s team has lost one game 3-0, and game 2 starts in 20 minutes.

bob is…tired of facebook.

I changed my facebook status.  It had not been updated in 8 days.  I am actually feeling a bit like a crotchety old man about the whole thing.

No, I don’t want to play scrabble or texas hold ‘em or whatever other games there are…and it has nothing to do with the fact that I’m not good in spelling or math.  The thing is, I am actually quite capable of wasting time on my own (I was on the Wii for how long last night? ouch)

Then there is the guilt…not about wasting time…I deal with that regardless of whether or not I have a facebook account.  I mean when someone from high school for example sends me a friend invitation…I mean, we didn’t really hang out in high school… or say you meet someone at a conference once & by the time you get home, they have invited you to be a friend.  (although i have done that once…but this guy was really cool.)

So here is where the guilt comes in…the stress of choosing between confirm, and ignore.  I mean, i’m sure they don’t get a message, saying Bob has ignored you…but they’re going to figure it out…they must, because they invite you several times. While I’m sure their lives are very exciting, I really don’t want to see pictures of their dog, or get an update about what they ate for lunch.  Like I said, I am skilled at wasting time…but I would at least like to enjoy myself while I do it.

But, I actually stress about the decision to click “ignore” every time I do it.

So the good stuff of facebook…I’ve connected with some old friends…and, I think that’s about it.

The bad…time wasting, guilt inducing…oh, yeah, it’s making my grouchy too.

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 flatten 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!