Now, while Ireland, like the USA, did have children crossing signs, as well as deer, cow, etc.  But they also had “elderly people” crossing signs…and when you put one in front of a church, it sends a message.

While we were in Europe, I thinking about what it means to be spiritually & emotionally healthy. What does it look like to care for your soul?  And I got thinking about various conferences we’ve attended over the past few years, where a major theme has been, taking care of your soul.  Which is great.

But often at these conferences, there have been conflicting messages.  One night we’ll hear about the importance of caring for your soul, and the next will be someone encouraging us to “take the hill,” “sacrifice it all for Jesus.”

After a recent “take the hill” message, one of our leaders came up to me and said, “I thought we were supposed to be taking care of our souls.”

Now, on the one hand these are not conflicting messages.  We should be developing a close intimate relationship with Jesus, and willingly follow wherever he leads, taking whatever hill he has for us to take.

But the thing is, we will only do what we know how to do.  Think about this way.  I teach a seminar on the importance of eating well…exercising.  I show you all kinds of statistics about how detrimental to your life bad nutrition and a lack of exercise are.  You likely sit there agreeing with everything, in fact, I’m only confirming what you already know.

Here’s the problem.  Unless we’ve given you some very specific skills and practices that you can begin implementing once you get home, what will happen?  You will go right back into the patterns & practices that you already know.  Life is busy, and most of us believe we simply don’t have the time to figure out how to make major changes in our lives.  And even with the greatest of intentions, it isn’t too long before life gets crazy and we are back to doing what we’ve always done.

I know from my experience that I’d hear people talking about soul care, and think “yeah, I need to do that”, but I’d get back to Ithaca, and there was a church to run, and messages to preach, and some new project that just got dropped on my desk…  And like most pastors I know, I’ve been far more skilled at taking the next hill than I have been at caring for my soul.

[Just to clarify, when I'm talking about caring for your soul, I'm not talking specifically about spending time with Jesus although that is part of it.  For me, to use Paul's metaphor, my job was to pour myself out like a drink offering...If there is anything left at the end of the day, then I must have done something wrong.  And while I still love that verse written by Paul, I'm being drawn more & more to something Jesus said about having life...life to the full.]

So that was my story…go to a conference, hear about the importance of soul care, hear about taking the mountain, yet getting back to Ithaca and deciding I can care from my soul after the next mountain (of course there is always another mountain).

Well, after about 20 years of living life like that, Liz and I both felt the wheels come off a bit last year.   And while we both have a clear sense that the enemy trid to use this to hurt us, God, in the midst of it has been teaching us a lot about living life.

So why am I writing all of this?  Well, as Liz and I have gone through this process over the past year, one of the most amazing things that happened to us was being able to attend the Pastor’s Sabbath Retreat this past spring.  And while once again it was about 2 weeks of  ”You really need to care for your soul!  You can’t keep living like this.” There was a major focus on actually learning some of the skills and practices to make the changes necessary.

One of the teachers at that retreat was Dave Nixon from Cincinnati.  Dave is a pastor, spiritual director, and a guy who would really fit in a place like Ithaca!  So, we have invited Dave out on September 10-12 talk about finding a sane way to live life.  (More info on the conference here.)  We’ll be holding a two day conference on Friday & Saturday & then Dave will be teaching at both of our Sunday Services on September 12.

I think for most of us, we hear Jesus talk about having abundant life, but life is already rolling along at a pretty fast clip and major changes take a lot of work…expecially the good ones.  I hope you’ll consider coming to this event, and see what God does.

I really hope you’ll be able to make it out!

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First off, let me say that the trip was amazing.  While I think my kids were all glad to get back & spend some time with people they are not actually related to, the trip was really good for us.  One of the questions we get asked is, “did it seem to go by quickly?”  And on the one hand it did…you spend months preparing for a trip & then it’s over.  But at the same time, there are certain parts of the trip that seem like they happened months ago.

(And yes, we took pictures…and while we will not force anyone to go through a slide show with us, between the 5 of us, we surpassed 6000 photos.)

One of the things that helped make the trip great was that we had a great team of people here keeping things going.  Bill Williams & James Cherian stepped in and managed the day to day running of the church…Erin Smith & Darin LeBlanc started as interns working in the office one week before I left & had to figure out a lot of stuff while we were gone.  They all did a great job & I have really no catching up to do!!

I also wanted to say a quick thanks to everyone who spoke on Sundays while I was gone…Jeff Printy from them Vineyard in Irondequiot, and then Bill, James, Mike Heisler & Steve Clark from here at the Ithaca Vineyard!

There are some really big things coming up in the next few weeks (specifically the Sacred Rythyms Conference & the Clam Bake), but we’ll start putting in a plug or two for them starting tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone who was praying for us while we were gone!  Look forward to seeing you this Sunday.

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Okay, when our trip to Europe started, I didn’t expect to have any cause to write about iPhone Apps.  However, after the adventure our family had this past week, I needed to mention my new favorite iPhone app, LED Light for iPhone 4.

While the extra hour of sun at the end of the day is great, one thing you do not see a lot of here is stars…it is usually too cloudy.  Which means when it gets dark, it really gets dark. That’s when I remembered, my LED Light for iPhone 4 app.  If you’re wondering what this is…on the new iPhone 4, the camera now includes an LED flash.  Well this app allows you to keep the flash on so you can use it as a flash light.  Even with the light, all 5 of us fell at least once on the trip down the hill…the light wasn’t “that” bright.  But it did allow us to navigate some pretty tricky areas, and arrive at the bottom of the hill, all in one piece.

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We are just starting the second week of our time in Europe and have been having a great time!  The first few days we were a bit crazy, with some time spent in Iceland (@ the Blue Lagoon), England, Wales, and finally Ireland.  And just like the movie, we’ve spent time in planes, trains, and automobiles (plus we added a boat - The Ulysses).

We’ve been in Ireland since last Thursday, mostly hanging out around Liz’s dad’s farm, Ballybay & Monaghan.  Later this week we’re headed to the Giants Causeway.

I’ve started putting some pictures up on Flickr & in my .Mac gallery, so feel free to head over there if you’d like a bit of an update.  We will be a bit limited on the amount we can put up until we have more regular access to the interwebs.

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The other day, Erin Smith said, “Remember when you used to write a blog?”  Ouch.  Then she said, “It’s okay, I’m probably the only one who reads it!”  But anyways, that’s not true, because I’m pretty sure my mom checks in every few month or so.

So, in getting ready for our sabbatic…both in planning the trip (although we still don’t know where we are staying in London on Tuesday & Wednesday), and in getting things ready at the church I haven’t had time to do much blogging.

I am planning to do a bit of writing while we are on our trip.  Some days might be various things I’m thinking about…other days might just be a few random pictures from a day of sight seeing.  Just so you know, I will have the comment section turned off while I’m gone…otherwise I’m likely to dive back into work & incite the ire of my 4 travelling companions!

So we are just about to wrap things up here, head back to Ithaca, and pack for our trip.  We’d love your prayers for our trip…that this would be a great time for all 5 of us, and the God would do some great things in & through us while we are there!

See you in September!

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• Two of our interns, Darin LeBlanc, & Erin Smith will be starting next week.  I’m really excited about working with both of them!

• I’ve been thinking lately how poisonous gossip is.  And in churches it often gets couch in nice religious language.  I’ll come and ask you for prayer about a situation I have with this really nasty person I’m dealing with…you hear one side of the story & automatically assume, “wow, that is a nasty person.”   Which is why the writer of Proverbs tells us this:

“The first speech in a court case is always convincing—until the cross-examination starts! “(Proverbs 18:17, The Message)

• Speaking of communication, one of the great things we got from the Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Conference in May was learning new ways of communicating.  We’ve been going over a lot of it with our leadership and it has been really well received. We’re really excited about the difference it will make here as we implement these changes.  We’ll spend some time on it with the whole church once I’m back in the fall.

• I know most of you are not Red Sox fans, but what is going on with all of the injuries…it is crazy…and yet they are still with in arms reach of first place.

• While our hope is to get the Vineyard Bookstore built up a bit more than it was when we were portable, we have finally gotten a scaled down version up & running for this Sunday.  Starting next Sunday, we’ll have a few more titles building on the Emotionally Healthy Series.

• Our house still has not sold. And has now been on the market over 100 days.  We definitely work at keeping our lives interesting!

• We just put our annual Clam Bake on the calendar today…September 19, 2010…Mark your calendars!

• Finally, don’t forget, only one service this Sunday @ 10 am…Have a great weekend!

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And when the pre-season write-up came out in the paper, my coach announced that “Bob Wilson would be our starting center.”  Of course with in a week or two, I sprained my ankle, went on to sprain it 6 more times and ended up with bone chips, torn ligaments, and an ankle my orthopedist said looked like the ankle of a 75 year old man who had abused his legs his whole life.

So in other words, my coach was right, I would not be a starter on that team.  And sadly, that isn’t the most inspirational of messages either!

All that to say this; as I looked back on that year of moving from, you’ll never start to winning the starting center position (& yes, I am only 6’1″) the number one thing that I did that year was running stairs.  If you’re not familiar with running stairs, it is exactly what it sounds like…running up stairs, and running down stairs (although without the parent telling you to stop running on the stair:-)

By running stairs a lot, I went from someone who got pretty tired after running just a brief amount to someone who could run a lot.  I wasn’t only starting games in the preseason, the coach was rarely sending in a substitute, because I wasn’t really getting tired.  I also added a few inches to my vertical leap.  (although I still had no hope of ever dunking a basketball-for those of you who followed college basketball in the early 80′s you might remember the Houston Cougars team being called Phi Slamma Jamma…we called our team, Phi-Toucha-Neta).

For those of you here at the Vineyard we talk about stairs a lot…in fact every Sunday message ends with, Next Steps.  All that is based around this idea that no matter where you are in your walk with God, everyone of us has a next step.

Last weekend during our leadership team retreat, we got talking about steps.  In fact I think one of the ideas that excited our leaders the most was imagining what would happen if each person in our church took a next step in there involvement with the Vineyard over the next year.

Think about this:

• What if each person, that comes regularly on Sunday, and then goes home joined a service team, or a kinship?
• What if each person serving once in a while began serving 1 hour a week?
• What if each person who has been part of a service team for a year or two, began taking on some leadership responsibility?
• What if each person who has been attending a kinship for the past year or more began hosting, leading worship, serving as a kinship coordinator, or perhaps even a kinship leader?
• What if each person who has never given began giving regularly?
• What if each person who gave regularly began tithing?
• What if each person who has never invited someone to church, invited someone?

Imagine if each person who was part of the Ithaca Vineyard, in the next 3 months picked one of those steps and committed to it?  Do you think it would have an impact?  I know our leadership team sure thinks it would!

What would your next step be?

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Does the idea of helping to prepare 100,000 meals to feed children in places like Haiti (and elsewhere) at a cost of under $.20 (yes, 20 cents) a meal without leaving Ithaca appeal to you?  Participate and contribute to the food “packing event” for Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) on September 10 & 11.  Consider volunteering for a 2 hour shift, packing dry food.  This event is open to everyone ages 8 and up, and will be held at -Trinity Lutheran Church in Ithaca.

If you are interested, please sign up at the Feed My Starving Children display in the Vineyard Café or send an email to the Ithaca Vineyard.  If you would like to make a financial gift towards this outreach, you can place a check in the Sunday offering and simply write FMSC on the memo line (or on the offering envelope).

The video below helps provide a good background on what FMSC does & what a “food packing event” actually is.

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Well, this past Friday I was up at Casawasco for our leadership team retreat, and didn’t get a chance to write it up.  On Sunday, we drove to my parents house after church to pick up the kids, & then got back to Ithaca, yesterday afternoon. And as I’m in the office working through this pile on my desk, it is hitting me how close we are to taking off & being gone for 7 weeks.  And every so often something flashes in my head to remind me of another project I need to work on before we take off.  So, although it isn’t Friday, I hope you don’t mind if I take a few minutes & empty out all the stuff in my brain.  Here we go…

• Probably the biggest thing we are getting ready for, is the transition that will take place while I am gone.  Moses Ong, who has served as our Director of Operations for the past 2+ years will be moving to the mid-west.  He’ll be doing an internship at a camp for one year, and then heading back to graduate school.  Moses oversaw a lot of stuff here at the Vineyard (building, finances, web site, etc) and he will definitely be missed.

• With Moses leaving we are bringing 3 interns on staff.  During the months of July & August, the interns will be filling in for a lot of what Moses now does, as well as taking on some of my responsibilities.  Please be praying for each of the interns as the start, and jump right in with both feet!

• As you might remember me mentioning, we are heading to Europe (mostly Ireland, but with stops in Iceland (just the airport), London, Paris, & Cardiff).  The week before our trip is the Vineyard’s Eastern region’s conference in the Poconos.  This year I’m leading a workshop on church systems, so I’m trying to pull all of that together as well.  Since we’re talking about systems, I think I’ll even bring some “Rule of Life,” ideas in.  Personally, I’ve found the whole Rule of Life concept really helpful.

• Since I’m going to miss much of the summer, which is generally when we make all of our plans for the fall, I’m also trying to get a lot of that done over these next 2 weeks as well.  From securing all of our kinship leaders to determining specific messages we’ll be working through.

• One of the events this fall I’m excited about is a 4-week series we’ll be doing in September which we are calling Margins. On week 2 of the conference, (Sept 10-12), David Nixon is the director of  Sustainable Faith and founding pastor of Vineyard Central, in Norwood OH.  David will be coming out for a two day conference (Friday Night & Saturday), and then speaking on Sunday Morning as well.  We are still working out a lot of the details, but David was one of the Spiritual Directors working at the Pastor’s Sabbath Retreat when Liz & I went in April, and we are both excited about having him out here. I first heard David speak during a Vineyard Leadership Institute class, and it was by far my favorite class.  I’ve talked to a few other Vineyard pastors who also loved that class, so we are planning to open up the conference to churches throughout the region.  Should be a great weekend.

• At this point I’m not sure how it all gets done before I leave on my sabbatical…there is a part of my that is tempted to say, I’ll catch up on Sabbath while I’m in Ireland…but I’m not going to do that.  In fact, early in the month, I scheduled our pastor staff, “day with God,” for tomorrow, and we’ve made a commitment, that no matter how crazy things get, this is an appointment we are going to keep.

• And if all of that weren’t crazy enough…we still don’t have our housing for the fall taken care of.  There is someone interested in our house…but interested and made a purchase offer, sadly are not the same thing.  We had considered renting out our place, but that seems to be a bit more complicated than we had anticipated (and we wouldn’t even be able to start the process until we get back from Ireland.  We are hoping to have the kids in Trumansburg for the start of the school year…and while not impossible, if it doesn’t happen in the next few weeks, it is hard to see it happening.  Prayers would be greatly appreciated.

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Today is graduation day for the Wilsons.  Brenna just graduated  5th grade from Fall Creek Elementary School, and tonight Erin graduates from Boynton Middle School.

Over the 4 years Brenna has been @ Fall Creek, she has performed a number of songs.  Over the past couple months she’s taken it up a notch and has started writing songs!  The video above is the song she performed this morning for the last day of school (and yes, she wrote it all by herself!)

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It’s hard to believe how much work it is to get ready for some time off.  Elizabeth & I spent most of last night finding rental cars online, looking for hotels or houses to rent for the week or so we’ll be in the southern part of Ireland, and then we fall into bed about 2 hours later than we should have.  I’m pretty sure that one we hit about 9:30 pm, our ability to make good decisions began dropping exponentially.

Our plan once we are there is to have a little more than half of the trip be downtime, & the rest be traveling round & seeing the sights.  Over the past couple weeks we’ve decided to make one small change.  The last week of our trip we are leaving Ireland and hitting 3 countries in 6 days.  We’ll get to London on August 17, take the train to Paris the next morning, stay there for 2 nights and take the train back to London.  The next day we’ll drive to Cardiff.  At first for no other reason that to say that we’ve been to Wales.  However, last week we learned that the Dr. Who Museum is in Cardiff, and that just became the highlight of Erin’s trip.

But of course there has been a ton of stuff going on around the Ithaca Vineyard as well…

• First off, we’ve got some big news concerning the new Ithaca Vineyard Internship.  We have 3 people who are signed up and set to get started! Our new interns are, Darin LeBlanc, Erin Smith & Kevin Cornell.  Each of them will be participating in VLI, working part time in the church office and helping out on Sundays.  I’ll post a bit more of a bio for each soon.  We still have a possibility of one or two more spots opening up, and a couple more people who are considering this.  Make sure you congratulate each of these guys (guys used in the broad, generic way, not the gender based way) when you see them.  This is a big next step in their walk with God!

• Kinships.  Another big announcement we have to make is that we will not be having kinship groups meeting this summer.  Our current practice is to have each of our kinship group leaders lead for  2 semesters, and take one off each year.  This past year, nearly all of our current leaders led in the fall & the spring and we simply didn’t have enough new leaders for the summer.  We tried to come up with some various alternatives, but in the end decided that we simply couldn’t pull it off at this point.  With the move into the new building, a lot of our leaders have been putting in a lot of time, and we think a couple months of down tine will be a benefit for a lot of us.  (We’ll plan a few more after church

• Kinships Continued.  Our kinship groups will be starting up again in the fall.  And one of our plans is to invite a number of you who have been part of a kinship for a while to consider stepping up to lead one.  In September, we are going to hold a 4-week training for people interested in becoming kinship leaders, or even checking out if that’s something they’d like to try.  If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, email me or James Cherian and we’ll get you more information.

• Speaking of next fall, next weekend (Thursday to Saturday) the church staff and leadership team will be going out for a 3 day retreat to pray & plan for next year.  Please keep this in your prayers, that God would do great stuff while we are there.

• Speaking of our leaders, I just want to say that we have a great group of men and women that I enjoy working with a lot…For those of you who might not know who our leadership team is, let me mention briefly who they are & what they lead:  Wendy Williams (Vineyard Kids), Mike Heisler (Connections), Siouxsie Grady (Production Team), Brett Blanchard (Tech. Team), Steve & Laraine Clark (Prayer Team), &  Bill Williams (Servant Evangelism/Building/Church Council).  And of course James Cherian, (Pastor of Spiritual Formation) & Elizabeth Wilson (Worship Arts Pastor).  Maybe this week take a minute to let them know how much you appreciate all they do (don’t tell them I suggested it).  They put in a lot of time, effort & prayer to lead here well.  (Maybe even better than saying thanks this weekend, perhaps you could volunteer to join their team!)

• Couple quick interwebs items.  When facebook first let you pick a user name, I sat by the computer and actually got on the page so that I could pick bobwilson as my user name…Do you know how hard it is to get your name as a user name when you have a name as common as mine? ugh.  Well, I was so close, but made a mistake & didn’t get it.  Well, it took me several months but I finally picked a user name, which is basically the web address for my blog bobwilson.me.  (I’ve tried to get bobwilson.com) Not very exciting, but, if you’re ever checking out my facebook page, the address is facebook.com/bobwilson.me

• Second internet thing. I’ve been trying out a couple of productivity web sites this week & think I found one I really like called timebridge.com.  I’m using the free version., which has some pretty powerful tools.  The one I like best at this point is the ability to send someone a request to meet, and offer them various options of when your available to let them pick the one that works best for them.  I can even give people access to my calendar (www.meetwith.me/bobwilson), and they can look at when I’m free or busy when they need to request a time to meet. And it works with Evernote & my iphone, so that was a major plus!

• Don’t forget, this Sunday we’ll be talking about Growing into an Emotionally Healthy Adult…

• And for July 4th, only one service @ 10 am.

Have a great weekend!

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You probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the number one place people choose to serve is at the religious organization that they are part of (35%), a distant second was educational organizations (26%).

One of the things about working with a church, is that you are a volunteer organization.  There is simply no way we could do what God has called us to do without the amazing group of people who give of their time and effort week in and week out, simply because they love what is going on here!

So first off let me say thank you to each of you who serve so faithfully here @ the Ithaca Vineyard…It is so appreciated!

Let me share a quick story…I won’t mention any names so I don’t embarrass him.  A week ago a conversation was overheard and one guy said to another, “I didn’t know if I was scheduled this week, so I just came in early anyways.”  And while that was one person, there are so many here who share that heart, & I love being part of a place like this!

Let me just say one other thing about serving…specifically to those of you who maybe haven’t found a place that works for you yet, or maybe you’ve been doing something for a while & are looking for a change.  While there are some obvious opportunities that everyone sees every Sunday, that are many areas, requiring diverse interests, skill, and personalities, where there are opportunities.  If you’d like to sit down with me, or one of the leaders here at the Vineyard & figure out where you can use the gifts & passions God has given you to serve, let me know.

Thanks again to all of you who serve here @ the Ithaca Vineyard!!

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• One of the coolest things from today was having a young woman at church from my home town.  Most people don’t even don’t even know where Brocton is, so meeting another BCS grad was a nice surprise.

• However, I’m sure that isn’t why most of you who are here showed up on my blog tonight…James mentioned this morning that we’d be posting here tonight how we did with the pledges for the building fund.   So as you remember our goal was to raise $60,000 in pledges over the next 6 months.  And, well, we didn’t make it.  In fact, we didn’t really even get all that close. We started the day with $5,550 in pledges and today received another $7,777.  Now, on the one hand we still are not even 25% of the way towards our goal.  On the other hand, 7777 is a pretty cool number!

So where do we go from here?  Well, obviously we’ll be using the pledges that do come in to start working on some of the more immediate needs (starting with the kids area).  Of course we’ll we are still open for pledges to come in after today towards the building.  In fact, it seems like the weather kept some people away this morning, so over the next week or so, there may be some other pledges coming in over the next few days.  We’ll keep you up to date.

Have a great week!

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Anyways, back to the builidng.

Now, in the picture above, the floor looks bad.  If you’ve been in the building, you know that it looks ever worse!  So one of the things we want to take care of is getting the floor in the main sanctuary looking good!

Siouxsie Grady, who is in the process of setting up the church’s production team is working to figure out the stage lighting.

The other major area we are working on upgrading in the sanctuary is the sound/projection systems.  First off, we want to build a booth so that we can get the equipment up & out of the way.  That will also raise the sound person & the projector person up so they can see the worship team while everyone is standing for worship.  Often there are issue during worship, simply because they can’t see what is going on.

We are also looking to upgrade the screens up front, and do some major upgrading to the sound system…if you’ve been there recently, I’m sure you’ve noticed some of the issues!

Last Couple of Things:
So the foyer actually looks pretty good!  It is big, bright, and only has a couple framing issues left.

But one thing we would love to do, right about in the middle of this picture to your left is place an information center which would be staffed by people from our Connections team, and full of information so that when people come to the Vineyard for the first time, they can tell right away, where to go to get the information they need.

Reception Area:
Although not as big an issue as the ones we’ve discussed so far, we would also like to complete the reception area (near the bathrooms/kids area).  Although this area would mostly be used during the week, for many delivery people and others who come to the church, this is their first impression.  Okay, so maybe I’m convincing myself that it is a big deal.

We’ve come along way since we first started working on this place…and while we have a bit more to go, we believe that if we can reach our goal of raising $60,000 over eh next 6 months, we’ll be well on our way to getting everything completed.

Thanks!

(Just a reminder, we’ll be collecting pledge cards this Sunday at both services & posting how we did right here!  If you won’t be around this Sunday, you can send us an email if you would like to make a pledge.  Or if you’d like to give online towards this project, you can do that here!)

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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

But I thought we’d take a few minutes over the next few days to share a bit about why we are doing this, as well as what we are hoping to see happen.  So first the why question…”why are we raising $60,000?”

To answer that, let me go back a couple of years to when we first found this former hardware store (actually, two years ago this month). Now, for those of you who part of the Vineyard back then, when  you first came in to see this place, you probably wondered what we were thinking…It was not what you would call an impressive space…there was pegboard covering all of the walls  there were big, ugly, loud, heaters hanging from the ceiling; there were things living in the walls.  In fact as we were tearing out the walls in order to insulate and put up new walls, we encountered a number of things that were formerly living in the walls…(ugh).

One of the most fun nights here was when James was cleaning out one of the walls, found some strangely shaped thing and was picking in up in his bare hands trying to figure out what it was…only to discover it was a dead bird.  (Of course, the night I drove a nail into the palm of my hand, and felt the sensation in my elbow was not quite so fun.)

And the building wasn’t our only challenge…
Lansing has a zoning ordinance that says a place of assembly cannot meet in a high traffic commercial area. So we had to get the zoning changed…that required going all the way to the state government.  There were parking issues.  But everything fell into place…usually a bit slower than we would have liked.

Once we got the zoning issue addressed, our lease began, and we started paying rent.   The problem was, that we didn’t even have a building permit (long story).  And it would be another 7 months before we got one.  Paying rent on a building you can’t actually use does tend to eat into your budget.

But once we got in, we started making great progress…of course when you are trying to do a project of this magnitude, with people who not only are not skilled labor, but also have full-time jobs…things moved along, but there were obviously some challenges along the way.

Then of course, last fall, we found out that our time at the school was coming to a close a bit sooner than we had anticipated, so we spent an insane couple of weeks getting the place into move in shape.  And we all owe a huge debt of gratitude to Bill Williams for leading this whole project and seeing it through to where we are now..

As we got to last October, it was clear we’d have to move in before the building was fully ready.  And over the past 8 months we’ve been able to enjoy our new space, (we don’t have to move chairs anymore on Sunday:-)  But now it seems like its time to get the building finished off.  We wanted to give people some time to catch their breath a bit, since we recognize the effort so many put in to get us to this point.  At this point however, we want to take the next step and finish off the building.

Tomorrow I’ll write up some of the things we are planning on getting done with this project…I’ll just mention one really quick here.  The picture above doesn’t look all that impressive, but over the past 8 months our Vineyard Kids have had to use adult size tables & chairs.  Over the past few months some money was given to purchase some tables & chairs for the kids, and today the first batch of chairs came in!  One of the major areas we want to address it to get the Vineyard Kids area where it should be…we really want this space to be a “wow!” experience for parents & kids.  Stuff that is actually built for kids, is a great place to start!

More tomorrow!

Related posts:

1. Building Project – What are we doing (part 3)
2. Take Two

The internship, which will be a 2-year program, will focus on helping everyone who goes through it grow in areas of Knowing, Being & Doing.  Let me do a quick run down on each.

Knowing.  Part of the internship will involve enrolling as a student in VLI (Vineyard Leadership Institute).  Although VLI is normally a commitment of at least 20 hours per week, they have just begun an internship track which allows the student to extend the program from 2 years to 4 and reduce the weekly commitment to about 7 hours.

Being. A second key component of the Vineyard internship will be helping the student to develop their ongoing relationship with God, specifically we will focus on developing contemplative spiritual practices as a regular part of their life.

Doing. Finally, all interns will receive hands on training is several aspect of church ministry.  This will include 13 hours of working at the church office during the week, in addition to serving at the Sunday morning worship services.

As long as the interns are meeting all requirements of the internship program, the Ithaca Vineyard will cover their VLI tuition, and provide a monthly stipend.

Obviously, there’s a lot more to it than this, but hopefully this gives you a good idea of what we are going to be doing.

So when does this start?  Officially the internship begins September 1. And since I’m heading out for the 2nd half of my sabbatical in mid-July, we have set a July 1 deadline to apply.  I know this is late notice, but not much we can do about that at this point. While September 1 is the official start date, there will be opportunity for some interns to begin working in the office, and begin receiving he monthly stipend beginning July 1.

If you are interested, or if you know someone you think might be, send me an email and I’ll get you a copy of the internship overview so that you’ll have a more complete idea about what we’re doing.

Related posts:

1. Friday Data Dump
2. Clearing Out My Head.
3. Emptying out my head

I was raised Roman Catholic until I was 12, and the church my mom started taking me to after that was very anti-Catholic (to be fair, they were basically anti-everything).  And they would refer to some of the rituals, and prayers that were practiced in the Catholic church as “vain repetition”.  The prayers were just empty words.  But I always thought what if when we prayed them we meant them…and we actually prayed them to God?  Isn’t that what the book of Psalms is?

When you think about it, we sing songs all the time that someone else wrote and somehow they help us connect with God.  Why would prayer be so different than worship?

So, here’s the prayer:

St Patrick Breast Plate

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,

Through the belief in the threeness,

Through confession of the oneness

Of the Creator of Creation.

I arise today

Through the strength of Christ’s birth with his baptism,

Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,

Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,

Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.

I arise today

Through the strength of the love of Cherubim,

In obedience of angels,

In the service of archangels,

In hope of resurrection to meet with reward,

In prayers of patriarchs,

In predictions of prophets,

In preaching of apostles,

In faith of confessors,

In innocence of holy virgins,

In deeds of righteous men.

I arise today

Through the strength of heaven:

Light of sun,

Radiance of moon,

Splendor of fire,

Speed of lightning,

Swiftness of wind,

Depth of sea,

Stability of earth,

Firmness of rock.

I arise today

Through God’s strength to pilot me:

God’s might to uphold me,

God’s wisdom to guide me,

God’s eye to look before me,

God’s ear to hear me,

God’s word to speak for me,

God’s hand to guard me,

God’s way to lie before me,

God’s shield to protect me,

God’s host to save me

From snares of devils,

From temptations of vices,

From everyone who shall wish me ill,

Afar and anear,

Alone and in multitude.

I summon today all these powers between me and those evils,

Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul,

Against incantations of false prophets,

Against black laws of pagandom

Against false laws of heretics,

Against craft of idolatry,

Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,

Against every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul.

Christ to shield me today

Against poison, against burning,

Against drowning, against wounding,

So that there may come to me abundance of reward.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,

Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ on my right, Christ on my left,

Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,

Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,

Christ in every eye that sees me,

Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,

Through belief in the threeness,

Through confession of the oneness,

Of the Creator of Creation.

No related posts.