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Plus finally having a place to put our awesome oak tables and chairs is a great plus.

Now, while the cafe has been a great place for people to hang out and connect after church, we have a lot of other things we’d like to see happening here as well.

Now, the area in the picture above still needs a bit of work.  The main issue is that we are looking for a large bar to put up here, and once we have that, the rest of this area will take shape.  We actually have some money set aside to work on this section of the building, and we’ve been looking around for a bar that we could purchase and bring in over here.  We thought we finally had one a couple weeks ago, but turns out it was actually cemented into the floor.

Also, it looks like we will be getting out new coffee maker next weeks thanks to a generous donation recently!  This new one will have water running directly into it. Currently we have to pour the water in, & wait for it to heat up, which means it take the cafe team a lot longer to make coffee.  With this new machine we’ll always have plenty of coffee!

Now, those of you who know me know that if it was all about me, we could stop right there!  However, there are a few other things we are looking to do in the building as well.

Family Room
Our big goal for the cafe is to begin using it as a family room during our Sunday worship.  As a church with a lot of young kids, we recognize that often it is difficult for parents to relax and fully participate in the service.  The kids are having a tough time sitting still, or maybe they’re crying.  We want to have the cafe set up so that parents who wish to can sit out there, let the kids play, talk, cry, whatever, and still be able to see & hear everything that is going on.

In order to do this, it means having a tv screen, or a projector & screen in the cafe as well as some type of sound system.  It will also mean we’ll need to get some type of video camera & other equipment so that we can run the video feed to the cafe.

Having had little kids at one point, I remember Liz or I having to take them in and out of the service, and end up missing much of everything that went on.  We think this will be a great service to families with young kids!

Tomorrow Morning: The rest of the space.

Related posts:

1. The next phase of our building program
2. Take Two

So today and tomorrow, I wanted to share some of the specific things we are hoping to accomplish in the building over the next 6 months.

*Quick Note: There are many parts of the building that look great…the purpose of the pictures I’ve included here is to show the areas where we still have work to do.

“Wow?”
Look at the picture above…Imagine being a kid and mom & dad are bringing you to church for the first time.  You likely don’t know any of the kids…You don’t know what to expect.  You get to the check in table, and are then led to a room, where the door is opened, you see this.  Doesn’t that just scream, “FUN!” Okay, not likely.

One of the great things we have going for our church is an amazing bunch of teachers, workers and leaders in the Vineyard Kids’ ministry.  I think this group is really some of the heroes of our church!

All that to say, the number one goal for this next phase in the building project is getting our kid’s ministry transformed into a place where the facilities are such that as soon as a kid walks in their eyes light up!  We believe that if the kids are excited to be there, not only will that help the kids be able to get more out of the class, but it will lower mom & dad’s apprehension about leaving the kids in a strange place, which means they will be far more free to participate in the worship service.

So, we want to get some kid appropriate furniture, as well as other stuff that will make the kids area the place to be (I’ve heard there might even be a wii…of course that means it might be harder to actually get the dads into the worship area)…There likely will be more kid-friendly colors.

Kid’s Check-in

The other upgrade we want to make in the kids area is the check-in.  We are planning to upgrade the check-in system, as well as the check-in area, with the goal of making it more efficient, but even more importantly, making it as safe as possible.  While we currently have strict requirements for anyone working with our children (every person who works with Vineyard Kids, as well as ever leader at the Vineyard submits to a criminal background check) we are upgrading to a system that will allow us to increase the level of safety even more!

Next Up…the Cafe…

Related posts:

1. The next phase of our building program
2. Sabbatical

So although my Twitter account and blog have been pretty slow as of late, they will be totally dark for the next 4 weeks.

I look forward to reconnecting with you all in Mid-May!

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If you are new to this topic, this article will give you a good picture of why this matters.

Our speaker for this event on April 10th will be Steven Hamilton.  Steven is a member of the pastoral and leadership team at the Central Maryland Vineyard, a member of the Justice Response national leadership team with VineyardUSA and a founding member of the Maryland Human Trafficking Task Force.  Formerly with the Department of Homeland Security, he has been involved in fighting against human trafficking through outreach, education and advocacy for the past nine years.

[the seminar will take place from 9am to 3pm on the 10th.  lunch will be on your own]

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All that to say that this short little 2-day trip to Santo Domingo has kind of snuck up on me.  Earlier this week I set Liz an email about an open house for us to look at and she asked how this would work with our trip on Sunday.  I had no idea what she was talking about.

Anyways, tomorrow afternoon, Liz & I are flying down to the DR after church to meet up with a bunch of US & DR Vineyard pastors. The main goal is for everyone to get to meet each other, and to come up with some plans/goals for the next 5 years.

In 2001 a few Vineyard pastors from NY went down for a week, to meet some people and begin praying about planting churches in the DR.  In the past 9 years, we have made some great connections and are excited about where God leads things from here.

Please be praying for our trip, that God would do some amazing things over the next 3 days.

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After yesterday’s post, people were asking where they could see the video we showed this past Sunday…well, here it is!  Enjoy.

The Vineyard – The Story We Find Ourselves In from Vineyard Church of Ithaca on Vimeo.

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So last week during the second intermission of the girls game, Brenna got to be the Cornell Little Bear.  Which meant she got to skate on the ice & “ham it up” for a few minutes.  As you can see, she had a great time!

Brenna the Cornell Little Bear on Vimeo.

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In the next week or two we’ll be sharing some of what we’re working on here.  So in the mean time, we might be a bit less active here than normal.

We appreciate your prayers in the meantime!

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At the same time we have next steps because, unless you are planning on dying in the next day or so, there are next steps for each of us to take in your walk with God.  If all scripture is God-breathed & suitable for rebuke, teaching, etc., then it should be the rare occasion where we come to a passage in the bible and don’t see a potential next step that we should take.

This Sunday we’ll be in week 2 of our Great Sexpectations series, and we’ll talk about some next steps on a path that none of us want to be traveling on.  But getting off of that path, if we are on it, will involve a choice…keep walking in the direction I’m walking (taking next steps in the wrong direction), or turn around, and start taking steps in another direction.

So how about you?  Based on where you are right now in your walk with Jesus, what is your next step?  What is that item that seems to keep coming up for you…That thought that keeps “popping” into your head.  What is it for you that you could say, “this is the next step for me.”

If you know what that next step is, what do you need to do to get started?  Is there a book you need to read, a conversation you need to have, a discipline you need to practice?  And what’s stopping you from starting today?

If you’re not sure what that next step is, why not take sometime this weekend and pray about it…think about it.  Maybe ask your spouse or a close friend. Do that, & you’ll probably have someone right off the bat who’ll be praying for you as you take the next step on your journey.

Some of them, might be a bit too personal to post here, but I’d love to hear what your next step is.

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Sadly, you can’t get too far into a series like this, without recognizing the impact pornography has on people.  I saw this poster a couple of weeks ago & wanted to share it here:

Source: Online Education

If pornography is a struggle for you, first, please don’t think you’re alone.   Second, talk to someone and begin dealing with this.  Keeping it to yourself is the best way to ensure you keep struggling.  You are not going to be able to do it alone.

If you’re looking for some practical steps to take, I’d encourage you to spend some time over @ xxxchurch.com today.

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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.

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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!

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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?

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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

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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

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______

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?

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There are certain questions that those of us in leadership here @ the Vineyard get asked a lot.  So I thought that we’d take some time over the next few weeks and answer some of those questions.

I figured we’d start with one we’ve heard since we first had men or women coming to the Ithaca Vineyard: “Why Don’t We Have a Men’s/Women’s Group?”  To get at that question, I need to step back a bit…to what we were thinking when we first planted this church back in 1999.

The vision of the Ithaca Vineyard was that it would be a place for people who loved God, or were at interested in Jesus, but had not found a church where they fit.  In a lot of ways, that had been my story. Although I grew up in the church…or in and out of the church, I never really felt like I fit all that well.  There was a “church culture” that I simply couldn’t connect to (and still can’t).

In fact when I sensed that God was leading me to full-time ministry, the one thing I told my wife and anyone who would listen was that the one thing I never wanted to do was pastor a church.  (I learned later you are not supposed to say that kind of stuff.)

For the next ten years after I graduated from college, I worked as a campus pastor at SUNY Fredonia, Albany University, and Cornell University.  (And started the groups @ Albany & Cornell)

Now, even though I was part of a denomination at that time (not Vineyard), the longer I was a part of it, I had a harder and hard time taking the students in our campus ministry to the local church.  For those who grew up in this denomination, it was an easy fit…but for people who were really connecting with Jesus for the first time, church was major culture shock.

While Liz & I were at Cornell, we eventually got permission to start having Sunday afternoon chapel services on campus so that we could more effectively reach those students who once again, loved Jesus, but simply did not “fit” in the culture of the local church.

Shortly after starting the chapel services, we got involved with the Vineyard up in Syracuse, and 18 months later, through a series of events found ourselves, and many of these same students planting a Vineyard here in Ithaca.

When we first started going up to the Syracuse Vineyard, Liz & I were at a point where we were actually thinking about leaving full-time ministry.  Our inability to really connect with the local church, and be part of that culture was difficult.  Now, please don’t misunderstand…we met a lot of great people who were more than great to us…but they really didn’t get us.

One of the local pastors that we were working with had a great line when I told him we were going to be leaving to go work with the Vineyard.  He said, “this denomination is kind of like the Royal Family, and the campus ministry is more like Princess Diana.”  I’m not sure I like being called a princess, but I agreed with his point…there was a culture clash.  Again, both parties loved God…they just weren’t a good fit.

In February 1999, the Vineyard church of Ithaca held its first worship service in a blizzard.  We had a coffee break in the middle, and afterwards, we took everyone (36 people) to Pizza Hut.

Although we didn’t have everything figured out at that point (& we still don’t), we knew from the start that there were 3 things we wanted to do, and do well.
1) Sunday Worship Service
2) Kinship Groups
3) Outreach- (specifically servant evangelism)

For each of these three focuses, the goal was helping people connect with Jesus.

So, tying this all in with the vision of our church…again, our desire to be a place where people who are interested in Jesus, but haven’t been able to connect with a local church, can come in find a place where that can happen.

So our Sunday mornings are geared in such a way that mature followers of Jesus can worship learn & grow…it is also a place where someone with no faith background can come in and feel that this is a safe place to learn about faith.

I wrote a post a little over a month ago talking about how we view discipleship here @ the Vineyard. We believe, and we’ve seen over the past 11 years that if a person is regularly attending Sunday morning worship (joining in, taking next steps, etc.), if they are in a small group, and if they are contributing their time, talents & treasure, they are in a great place to grow as a disciple of Jesus.

And beyond Sunday morning, outreach is still a key part of who we are and what we do. Many of the outreach events we do are structured in such a way that even people new in their faith (or even still figuring out their faith) feel like they can join in and be a part…rather than thinking that they don’t know enough yet, but once they’ve been in a class for a few years they’ll be ready.

For example, on Christmas Eve, we had an dinner for people in our community who don’t have family close by.  We had many Vineyard people helping, from those who are leaders in the church, to those who are still  figuring out this whole Jesus thing!  That was exciting!  And just as exciting was the fact that for at least 8 people who came to the dinner, that was the first time they remember being in a church!

Some of you might be saying, “I’m 900 words into this post & you haven’t even mentioned men’s groups or women’s groups.”  I wanted to go into all of this first, so that you see how this ties into the vision of our church.

Tomorrow we’ll have part 2 of this post up.

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The following email is from Jan Strout in Lewiston Maine.  Jan’s husband Phil is the Regional overseer of the Eastern Region Vineyards.  He is also the pastor of the Vineyard in Lewiston & is one of the pastors down in the DR.
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Jan Strout (Lewiston, Maine)  wrote with an update on Phil Strout, Allen Austin,  John Elmer and Teodoro:

“Tuesday, we were able to speak with the team in the Dominican Republic. Phil, Allen John and Teodoro were able to go across the border into Haiti.

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Allen sent the following message:

“We just connected with a church in Jimani that is housing people coming out of surgery in the hospital here. They are having dressings cleaned, minor surgeries and then being taken from here when stable, probably back to Haiti. There are American doctors here who just came over and checked in with hospital and were sent here, very overwhelming… the need is great.”

Please continue to pray as we need to think and plan in terms of “marathon”. (3 months, 6months,9 months, 3 years, 5 years.) Pray for wisdom.

Thank you for continuing to lift them up in your prayers.

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Today is “resource day” in our 5 part series on Money.

The first resource is a link to Randy Alcorn’s website.  Specifically to the section of his web site where he has all kinds of free resources concerning a biblical perspective on money.  There are audio files, videos, pdfs, powerpoints, etc.  There is sure to be something you’d find interesting.

The second resource is a TED video I watched recently with my daughter Erin, and we both got a lot out of it.  Now, the guy speaking is coming from an academic perspective.  So don’t go in expecting a theology lesson on money. (there, you’ve been warned, so don’t come back & complain that he talks about evolution:-)

But his research is looking at what brings happiness, and it isn’t more money & more stuff.

Anyway, I enjoyed it, so hopefully you will too.

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