bob.wilson.blog

Saturday Book Recommendation

I tend not to use the phrase “Christian,” all that much…it is not a phrase I use to describe myself, or our church.  For many people who are not connected with God, the word “Christian” stiir up some pretty vivid images, as well as some pretty strong emotions…sadly, most of them are not positive.

unchristian, by David Kinnaman & Gabe Lyons, looks at how young people view Christians.  (in case you’re wondering, it isn’t pretty).  In reading this book around the same time I was reading The Fall of the Evangelical Nation, it gave a good view of where things currently are for the church, and how that is playing itself out in the larger culture.

While the picture presented here may be not be one we want to see, I think we honestly look at where things are, and rest in the fact that God still loves the church, and if we commit ourselves, not to Christianity, but to following Jesus, I think we can see things change!

I think there might be a lesson here…

I don’t like cats.  I especially don’t like cats who use my carpet rather than their litter box.

However, I don’t like carpet either.  One of the most exciting thing when we bought our current house were the hardwood floors.  They had been covered up for years with (ugh) shag carpet, so as we have started pulling up the rugs, we’ve been amazed at how beautiful the floors are.

Until this weekend.  Other than the back stairs, we had one carpet left in the house.  And one of our two cats (there is a famly debate over who is actually the guilty party), decided that it had better use this last carpet before they were all gone.

So, we ripped up the wet spot, so we could try & treat the wood (too late), and left the rest to take out later.  We pulled the corner up, and once again saw nice floor boards…after about 3 feet of carpet was pulled up, we saw more nice floor boards, only they didn’t match…It looked like there had been a problem previously, and they just did a really bad patch up job…I was bummed, Liz and Brenna were sad & my two future interior designers were horrified.

So last night I start pulling up the rest of the carpet, all the while trying to figure out how we are going to cover all of the bad spots up…What we quickly learned was that our first judgement was way off.  The floor had not been patched up…there is actually a design in the floor…and it was unanimously decided that this is the nicest floor in the whole house.

So we see a part of the picture, & we think things are terrible…see the whole thing & realize, wow, were we ever wrong.  Like I said, I think there may be a lesson in there.

Saturday Book Recomendation

There are about 4 books I’m supposed to read in the next week.  However, they had to wait until I could finish The Fall of the Evangelical Nation, by Christine Wicker.  Wicker grew up in the church, but left an number of years ago.  She has been a religion reporter for a number of years.

While the tendency of some who consider themselves followers of Jesus might be to denounce the book.  (if you look at some of the comments on Amazon.com, you see that is exactly what a bunch of them have done.)  Now while you or I many not agree with everything Wicker writes, I think she does a good job of being fair, and objective, while at the same time, pointing out some of the issues facing the church.

Probably not a book you’ll do with your devotions, but still a fascinating read.

The Final Piece…

So today we got a letter we needed so that we can go before the village board and get permission to move into the building & start working!

At this point the plan is that we’ll go before the village board on Septmeber 8th!

As things fall into place, one of the things we’ll be hoping to find is people who can help out with things like framing walls, hanging doors, putting up drywall…etc.  If there are some skills you have that you’d be willing to put to use for this project, please contact Bill Williams!

postcards

This week about 21,000 homes in Tompkins County will be receiving post cards inviting them to one of our two services this weekend. One of my favorite postcard stories came back in 2004…although I didn’t find it funny at the time.  One person got one of our cards in the mail and called wanting to know how we got his information.  I told him we didn’t have his information, the cards were sent to everyone in the area.  That is when he told us that he was thinking about coming and burning down our building.

Thankfully we were meeting in the movie theatre up at the mall at that point, which was made of cement blocks so it wouldn’t have burnt all that easily.

Here’s hoping this card is better received!

Saturday Book Recommendation

Over the past several months I’ve found some great books.  I’m going to start using this space to recommend some of them.  If you click on the image, or here, you’ll be taken to the Ithaca Vineyard’s Amazon store where you can read a quick description of the book & purchase if you’d like.

David Linhart

I’m still decompressing a bit after a pretty full week…so I thought I’d write down some brief thoughts as they come to mind…

One of the highlights of the past week was without question meeting David Linhart.  David is someone I’ve wanted to meet for a while. David is friends with someone from our church who has been telling me for years what a great musician/person this guy is. It wasn’t an exaggeration!

David is on staff at the Vineyard in Greater Boston & also writes music.  Plus he is a Cornell grad who loves Ithaca!  Josh & I & our families got to hang out with him & his wife for dinner one night, also got to hear him play for worship at the conference…He even performed a couple of songs he has written.

You can hear David’s music here.

quote of the week

After spending a couple of days at the center city summit in Boston, I wrapped up the week in NYC at the coaching network I am a part of.  The coaching network is always a great experience & brings to mind a ton of things we can implement to help our church up in Ithaca…

However, today, my big take away was my favorite quote so far this week:

“If one person tells you you are a horse, it is a lie.
If 15 people tell you you are a horse it is a conspiracy.
If 300 people tell you you are a horse, you should buy a saddle.”

Just a thought.

center city summit

When Liz & I were doing campus ministry in the 1990’s, we started to notice some things that nobody else seemed to be talking about.  Standard methods of talking to students about Jesus, & faith, were becoming less and less helpful.  All they seemed to do was cause people to put up their defenses.

As we talked to others about what we were seeing, it seemed the common response was people simply looking at us like we were speaking a foreign language.  When we started planting the Vineyard in Ithaca, we started to hear some of the other guys who were planting vineyards around the same time talking about the same type of experiences.  (Thankfully many of them were much further along in the thought process than we were.)

This past week I got to come up to Cambridge, MA for the inaugural Center City Summit & hang out with with some of the people who’ve been leading the way in this new way of talking about Jesus with the secular culture we find ourselves swimming in.  It was an encouraging couple of days and I’m excited about where the conversation goes from here…& I’m looking forward to talking about this more back in Ithaca.

a normal week…

**note: forgot to hit the publish button last week:)

Last week was crazy…but it was a good kind of crazy.   On Thursday & Friday I got to go up to the Willowcreek Leadership Summit (it is already on my calendar for next year).  On Saturday, we took the church leadership team out for a trip with Cornell Outdoor Education.  While the team building stuff they do is great, the opportunity to hang out with this group is one of the things I enjoy most!  On Sunday we had a great service, with a bunch of first time guests (one who said, this is the most diverse church I’ve ever been to)…followed up by our annual church business meeting (with no first time guests…imagine that:-). Then on Sunday night we got to spend a few more hours with the leadership team & their spouses….

Next week, we’ll have a newcomers dinner on Sunday after church…We’ve had a number of new people getting connected at the Vineyard and this’ll be a great chance to get to meet them & share some about the Vineyard & invite them to get involved.  (if you’re new to the Vineyard, you can register here.)

Right after the lunch, we’ll drive to Cambridge, MA for the Center City Summit on Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday.   I’ll post some thoughts during the conference.  Liz & the kid’s will hang out in Boston while I’m at the summit.  After the summit, we’ll head to Long Island, so that I can head to the coaching network I am a part of on Friday.

So I am really enjoying my relatively slow week!