First off I want to say a special thanks to Jay Salbert.  Jay is a student up at Ithaca College and did all of the interviewing, video taping, editing, etc., to prepare the video we saw on Sunday!  And of course he pulled double duty on Sunday by filming the baptism & coming in early to make coffee!

I also wanted to thank each of you who shared your stories on Sunday.  (Jason & Erin Smith, Kevin Cornell, Dan & Lindsay Stevens, Jacob Kuehn and Stacey Oh).  As I’ve written previously, 2009 was a bit of a rough year in the life of our church, and as a leadership team it hearing your stories, were an amazing encouragement to us.  We would hear what God was doing in your lives and usually follow it up by saying, “that’s why we’re doing this!”  Thanks for sharing with the whole church, I know you had a great impact!

Next, a quick thanks to Moses Ong & Johnathan Skuce.  Both of them helped in the aftermath of our “slight flooding issue.”  (another reason I’m glad we bough the carpet squares). Johnathan also made sure the main area was all back in shape after the flood. Moses also ran home to grab towels for those who forgot to bring them for the baptism.

There were so many of you who came in early to serve and your efforts made this an amazing day.  Thank you for being a part of it!

I’d love to hear your person highlight from Sunday.

Related posts:

1. This Sunday @ the Vineyard
2. A Great Way to Kill Your Church
3. Don’t Forget Your Coat On Sunday

I got thinking about last night because of a situation involving a certain home improvement store in Ithaca.  As you might have heard we are selling our house.  The sad thing about selling a house is that is when you actually start doing all of the projects you should have done over the past couple years but never got around to.

Well, one of the projects we have to do to get the ready to move is replace our kitchen floor, since it is pretty beat up. So, Liz calls a couple of places, we go back and forth over whether we should install it or pay to have it installed.  She gets a quote on the floor from this one store, finds out that for the square footage we are looking at installation would only be around $350 to $400, so we decide, let’s have them do it.  So they come over, give us an estimate, & say they can install it on Thursday.  We just need to stop in on Wednesday to pay ahead of time.

Liz stops in.  The first thing she learns is that even though the estimate says moving large furniture is included, our island is not considered large furniture.  Extra $50.  Normally we’d do it, but my back has been a bit shaky lately so we decide, okay, it’s only $50.

Oh, and there is some prep work to get the floor ready, and that will be an extra $200.  Now, even though there is a note on the estimate that there may be an addition charge for prep work, you’d think that for a charge that almost doubles the cost, they might actually mention that in the estimate.  So a $350 estimate became a $700 + job in a matter of minutes.

Needless to say we will not be using them to install our floor.

So, what does that have to do with having our own building?  Both in getting the building built & in running it now, there are some companies & contractors that are a joy to work with.  The guys at Builders Best for example, who helped us with the doors were great every step of the way, (they actually have a guy with the title of door expert).

Then there are others that make you wonder, “how do these people stay in business.”  Just this past Sunday, after all of the snow we got last week, neither of our two lots were plowed by 8:30 am, and people start showing up to serve @ 8 am.  The main lot is the landlord’s responsibility, and his guy told him he’d be in on Saturday to get everything ready.  He wasn’t.

We are responsible for the overflow lot across the street, and we had another guy contracted to plow it (notice I said had).  Moses talked to him earlier in the week and he agreed to have the lot plowed by 8:00 am on Sunday.  He showed up after 9.

The guys who installed our super high tech heating & cooling system.  They made several errors in setting up the system, and when we have called to tell them that the sanctuary was over 80 degrees two weeks in a row, they refused to drive up from Binghamton to look at the system even though it is under warranty.  We finally got them to come up then found that the heat sensor in the sanctuary was wired upside down.  Moses’ office was in the 50’s…then send him a list of all types of experiments to try over a week or so…we finally get them here & the fan in his blower isn’t working.

Since then there have been for other major errors (including no heat in the offices) and each time they tell us that it is our problem, and when they finally come up, each time they discover that it was a maintenance error.  Even though we moved into the building in October, the system wasn’t working properly until January.  Now, even though every error has been theirs, and our one year warranty is still in effect, they are actually trying to bill us for their service calls.

Let’s not even go into the fact that the roofers have still not fixed the leak in the roof.

We’ve all had that experience.  You deal with a service person, they tell you what the problem is, fix it and charge you what they said they would, and it works. And you leave that experience thinking, I really like that person & they know what their doing.  And you deal with others that…well kind of make you feel like you’d want to write a blog post and rant about them:-)

Sadly, bad experiences like this, seem to happen more and more.

So my question is this, what do people experience when they encounter you at work.  Now, I doubt any of us gets it right 100% of the time, but is our general attitude one that says, “you are simply an inconvenience that I need to deal with as quickly  and with as little effort as possible,” or we deal with each person we encounter as though they and the situation they are dealing with matters?

Because, the thing is, they can tell….I mean, you can tell when it happens to you, right?  Clearly the bible tells us that we should work as if we were working for God.  At the same time, the whole, “loving your neighbor as yourself thing,” seems like it would cover how we treat people while working.

Clearly, we all know that you can’t make everybody happy.  There are people that no matter what you do, won’t be satisfied.  But day in and day out, are we honest, and loving, and fully present when we are dealing with people?  Are we people that others walk away from shaking their heads hoping they don’t have to deal with us again anytime soon, or are we the one that stands out in a crowd because we actually treated them like they matter, and actually served them to the best of our ability?

No related posts.

Well, it is only Tuesday, but I’m already excited about this Sunday @ the Vineyard.  In fact, I’ve been looking forward to this week for a few months now.

As you might have heard, we have a few things going on this week.  We have a baptism scheduled as part of the service, and we are also going to get to hear some stories of what God is doing in people’s lives here at the Vineyard.  And we’ll end with a short celebration afterward (rumor is that it involved cake).

A couple of things to keep in mind:

1. Only one service @ 10 am.
2. Since there is only one service parking & seating are both going to be a bit tight.  So getting here early would be a good idea (& if you can carpool, that would be great.)
3. If the parking lot & the overflow both fill up, you can park in the Triphammer Mall. (Do not park on Cinema Drive, or they will tow your car.)

It is going to be a great morning! I hope you’ll be able to join us.

Related posts:

1. Birthday Week @ the Vineyard
2. Sunday Recap
3. Getting Connected @ the Vineyard

Things have a tendency of changing.  Liz and I are a bit different in quite a few ways.  She likes stability and consistency.  I thrive on change.   But of course, after just finishing a grueling 18 month building project at the church, I was looking forward to some stability and consistency as well.  “Not gonna happen.”

In 1970, my parents moved from our apartment in Dunkirk, NY to Brocton, NY.  (they still live there).  In 1984, I left Brocton to move to Oswego for College.  Since then my moving pattern has looked like this:

1985 – Back to Brocton to attend college near home.
1987 – Moved to Fredonia for senior year of college.
1988 – Back to Brocton to live while I did an internship with my campus fellowship.
1989 – Moved to Colonie, NY to start a campus fellowship @ SUNY Albany.
Spring 1990 – Back to Brocton for the summer, to be near Liz while she finished college.
Summer 1990 – Back to Colonie (new apartment).
1992 – Moved to apartment in Albany closer to campus.
1994 – Moved to downtown Ithaca to start a campus fellowship at Cornell
1996 – Bought our first house up on South Hill
Summer 2002 – Sold house.  Moved in with friends while we looked for a new house.
Fall 2002 – Moved to our current home.

So, that is 12 moves in 26 years.  And as my daughter Hannah pointed out, it took a 6 year stretch on South Hill & a 7 year stay here, so that I average over 2 years  in any one place over the past 26 years.

And Liz & I have been married since 1990, so, she’s been part of everything since then.

So, all of that to say, we are about to make another move. And although we are not leaving the area, we are moving out of Ithaca in order to move out of the school district.  As many of you know, one of our daughters was attacked 2 times at her school last year (one of those events involved us going to court and getting an order of protection against a girl with a history of violence and other criminal activity).  Unfortunately we have learned that girls who bully on their own at the middle school tend to form gangs at the high school.  We decided that we simply couldn’t send our daughter into that situation and hope that everything went okay.

With all of that in mind, Liz & I have decided to move to another school district until our 3 kids are out of school.  Thankfully, there are a number of good districts in the area, and one of them, Trumansburg, is where our kids’ close friends go to school.

This all came up pretty fast, but in praying about this, and talking to friends, we are excited about the move, and believe that this not only the direction that God is leading us, it is the best thing for our family at this point.

So, we started looking at houses yesterday, and plan to have ours listed in the next 2 weeks (of course, if anyone would like to buy it before then, that’d be great too!)

We would appreciate your prayers as we go through this process.

Related posts:

1. Move Along…Nothing to See Here
2. 2 Things I’ve Learned on My Vacation

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.

Related posts:

1. Merry Christmas!
2. Birthday Week @ the Vineyard
3. Mighty God

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!

No related posts.

Although it was said in various ways, the key point that was hammered into my head 11 years ago was, “that if you are looking for a great way to kill your church, try to make everybody happy.”  Over and over they said, once you plant your church, people will come in and try and get you to buy onto their agenda.  And once you give up your vision for someone else’s its all over.

In my innocence I figured they were probably overstating the point.  It is funny how many church planters hear stories from those who went before them and think, “that will never happen to me.” I’m pretty sure that everything I said would never happen to us, has happened to us.

On our first ever Sunday service back in February 1999, two families who were not part of our planting team showed up…(considering there was a blizzard outside, that was pretty exciting!)  They kept coming back for a few weeks in a row, and then one of the families invited us over for dinner.  We ate and after dinner while the kids played,  they handed me an article and stated that this was a description of the type of church they were looking to join.  As you can probably guess, the direction they were going, was not what we were called to do.  At the same time…we really wanted these people to stay…In my head couldn’t afford to loose anybody at that stage.

So over the next couple of days, we prayed, I talked to my church planting coach, and in the end I had to tell this, that while I really hoped that they would be a part of the Ithaca Vineyard, what they were looking for was not the direction we were going in.

As you might have guessed, they came up to me one Sunday and said “Just wanted you to know, that we’ve decided we’re going to another church.”  (Oh, & they told me right before I was about to speak…I’m sure you can guess how much fun that was…did I mention that it was also the day before I was going into the hospital for major surgery?)

While it got a bit easier with time, we have had to have that conversation a lot over the years.  (All of those conferences we went to before we planted this church have paid off!)

We just passed our our 11th anniversary as a church, and thankfully have a few more than two families!  Last fall Liz and I were in the mall and ran into that couple from way back when. (actually, we ran into one of them). We asked how they were doing how the kids were & where they were going to church.  Turns out, since they left us, they’ve been to a couple of churches that ended up with an implosion of one degree or another.  And at this point they haven’t been going to church anywhere for quite a while.

That was a heart-breaking conversation, because they really were good people, but in the midst of that I was really struck with this idea that you can try to do what everyone else thinks you should be doing, or what you believe God wants you to do.  It isn’t always easy, & it definitely won’t make you popular, but if God has given you something to do, then just do that, and you’ll be amazed at the people he brings alongside you who have that same vision!

Photo Credit: Gravestone

Related posts:

1. Getting Connected @ the Vineyard

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.

No related posts.

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.

No related posts.

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.

Related posts:

1. Must…have….coffee…

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

Related posts:

1. Party Like It’s 1999!
2. December @ the Vineyard (part 1.)
3. This Sunday @ the Vineyard

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!

Related posts:

1. Money (2 of 5): Why We Offer Several Ways to Give

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?

No related posts.

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

Related posts:

1. Updates to bob.wilson.blog
2. Must…have….coffee…
3. Our New Severe Weather Policy

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

Related posts:

1. Getting Connected @ the Vineyard
2. Money (1 of 5): Why We Talk About It

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.

Related posts:

1. Discipleship @ the Vineyard
2. Birthday Week @ the Vineyard
3. December @ the Vineyard Part 2

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?

Related posts:

1. Updates to bob.wilson.blog
2. On the Move Again!

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!

Related posts:

1. Saturday Afternoon’s Free Christmas Gift Wrapping
2. Updates to bob.wilson.blog

______

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?

Related posts:

1. Getting Connected @ the Vineyard
2. Discipleship @ the Vineyard

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.

Related posts:

1. Discipleship @ the Vineyard
2. Getting Connected @ the Vineyard
3. Vineyard Kids Update