Random Thoughts gather while wondering where Elizabeth & I (& Méabh) should go while our 3 teenagers will all be out on the town to night. (actually, one of them doesn’t actually become a teenager until midnight…but close enough!)

Books:
It is hitting me more and more that shipping my library over to Ireland is not likely to be on the list of essentials in getting us over there. About every couple of weeks I go through & cull a few more from my shelves. If only Amazon would let you trade in your books for a free Kindle edition.  Oh well.

I Can’t Wait for the Super Bowl to be Over:
As much as I’m hoping that the Giants lose this Sunday (yes, I’m still upset about the 1991 Super Bowl, which in my mind ranks right up there with Buckner in 86), I’ll be glad when all the New England media stops talking about the Patriots and starts focusing on the fact that pitchers & catcher report this month.

New to the Vineyard?:
This Sunday we’ll be having a newcomers’ lunch for anyone who has begun attending the Ithaca Vineyard over the past several months. It’ll be a great time to meet some of the Vineyard leaders as well as some other Vineyard newcomers. Should be lots of good food too!

Speaking of Sunday:
We’ll be starting a new message series this week called “Let Go.” AND we are back to 2 services…@ 9:15 am & 11 am.

e-Newsletter:
One of the big things Liz & I are working on new is gathering people who are willing to pray for us as we transition from Ithaca to Dublin, and as we get established there. If you’re interested, we’d love for you to sign up @ www.dublinchurchplant.com/enews

Well, looks like it is about time for me to catch my bus, & I can already feel my brain shutting down for the night! Have a great weekend.

Related posts:

1. Friday Data Dump
2. Friday Data Dump
3. Meanwhile…back in Ithaca

I am an introvert. One of the things that means is I do not like the telephone. Caller ID, with the ability to screen calls was the greatest invention since the wheel (not that I’ve ever screened your call).

More than answering the phone, I don’t like making phone calls. Much of that goes to my personal issues however. I’m always thinking the person on the other end is doing something important, and end up getting interrupted by me, and things, “ugh, him.” [like I said, I have issues]. That’ why I love email…you have a question for a person, you send it to them, and at a time that works well for them, they respond. Simple…clean…nobody gets hurt. (well, unless you accidentally send that email to a person who was not supposed to see it.)

Well, now that I am in full support raising mode so that our family can move to Ireland this summer, I am starting to spend a lot of time on phone. (actually, I spend a lot of time stressing about making phone calls…trying to keep the butterflies down, then I make the call….when it goes to the answering machine part of me feels relieved, part of me thinks, “are they screening my calls?”:-)

So why might I start liking the phone? Actually that is probably stretching it a bit. But as we’ve been into this process, I’ve gotten to talk to a handful of people who were part of the Ithaca Vineyard & have since moved on to other places. Some of them left 5 years ago or so & haven’t really been back to Ithaca since. (if you know anything about geography, Ithaca is a destination…it is not actually on the way to anywhere…”centrally isolated” as we say around here.)

But once my initial fear of making the call is over, and I’m actually talking to my old friends, it feels like we just spoke last month, not 6 years ago. On the one hand I think that says a lot about the amazing people God has brought in to our lives in our time in Ithaca…but I also believe it has a lot to do with who God knits your heart with people when you are united & working for His Kingdom.

It has been a real blessing in a place I was not expecting.

No related posts.

“I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.” Woody Allen as Alvy Singer in Annie Hall

In the early 90s, Elizabeth and I went on a missions trip to the Philippines along with a number of other college/university ministry people from around New York State. At that point, we had been living in Albany, NY for a couple years, and were leading a campus ministry at the University at Albany. I had received my “License to Preach” from the denomination I was a part of at that point about 2 years prior and had decided to wait a couple more before pursuing Ordination.

[Side note: I received my license to preach in 1989, the same year James Bond movie License to Kill came out. So while I was excited about my license, I had to recognize the licensee James Bond had seemed much cooler.]

Anyways…while we were in the Philippines, one of the campus pastors we spoke to said that the way it works there was that if you wanted to be ordained, another ordained pastor needed to sponsor you. My initial thought was, “if I lived here I would never get ordained.” In the US all i needed to do was take some classes…take an Ordination exam (got a 99%:-) and then go through an interview with 12 or 13 men in black suits firing questions at you. That was way back in 1994.

I was thinking of that recently because I’ve been reading a book one of the pastors over in Ireland suggested, Missionary Methods by Roland Allen. It’s an old book but it has some great thought on how missions (and churches in general) are done now, compared to the missionary methods of the Apostle Paul.

At one point, Allen is talking about deciding who should be admitted to the church. He points out (on page 131) that one of the key elements to Paul’s success was that he let the church decide who should be admitted to membership. Since the church was a brotherhood, it and all who were part of it suffered if an improper person was admitted. But since the current members of the church knew the person most intimately, they were the best to judge. And while mistakes would be made, they were mistakes that the church made at their own peril, and needed to deal with eventually.

He goes on to lament that in his day (& ours) this responsibility has been placed with the missionary (or church leaders). And then says this:

“Many a man (woman) has been baptized who would not have been admitted if the whole body of the church had realized that the responsibility for his admission rested with them, and had had the opportunity to express their opinion in their own way.

And he concludes the thought by adding:

“I should like to see it accepted as a general principle that converts should be presented by members of the Church to the Church, and accepted by the Church and baptized on the authority of the whole Church acting as the Church.”

That has had me thinking a lot the past week or so. Would membership be more or less appealing to people? Would it be something we’d take more seriously or less?

As part of the Church, what are your thoughts on that?

{by the way, the ithaca vineyard’s next membership class is being held on March 4, 2012…sign up on Sunday @ the Vineyard}

No related posts.

our first informational meeting will be Sunday, January 29 @ noon. reserve a spot below.

About two years ago, I had a very strong sense that our leadership here at the Vineyard needed to be praying about what the Father was calling our church to in the area of missions & church planting. I had just come back from a meeting of churches in a missions partnership our church was involved in, and felt that He had something else He wanted us to be investing our time and resources in. The rest of the church council agreed.

The following summer, my family spent 5 weeks in Ireland, and when I returned, I asked them to get behind the idea of our church using its resources to help plant churches in Ireland (Northern & the Republic). In fact last January, as we were sharing the vision of our church for 2011, one of the things we talk about was having our church get involved in missions in Ireland. Sending finances…taking trips etc. [link...start at 40:20].

At that point, although our family had wrestled with the idea of moving to Ireland to church plant, that idea had been shelved. Elizabeth and I thought if that were to happen, it would be years down the road, once our kids (at least the older 3 had graduated). Well, if you’ve been following this blog, you know how that worked out.

And as Elizabeth & I discussed this church plant with our church council, one of the things we were all on the same page with was the idea that, Liz & I were not leaving the Ithaca Vineyard, to go do this new thing…instead, we see this church plant as being sent out by the Ithaca Vineyard. In fact send out people to plant churches has been one of our priorities since we started our church (Just wasn’t expecting we’d be sending out us:-)

With the pastoral search going full steam ahead, I wanted to wait until that got further along before talking about how we saw the Ithaca Vineyard being involved with the church we’re planting in Dublin. However, with the Pastoral Search Team working very well together, and our time in Ithaca rapidly coming to an end, now seemed like the time for me to change my focus.

On Sunday, January 29th, shortly after our worship service (from about noon to 1:30 pm), we are going to host our first Dublin Church Plant General Interest Meeting. During this time, we’ll share what the next two years will look like for our family, and answer any questions people have about the transition. We’ll also talk about how the Ithaca Vineyard will be able to be involved, from keeping people informed about how to be praying for us and the church, to organizing missions trips to Ireland, and other projects as well.

If you would like to be part of this process moving forward, or simply have questions you’ve been wanting to ask, we’d love to have you join us on the 29th. Please drop me a note & I’ll make sure to save you a space.

Related posts:

1. Dublin Church Plant Stuff
2. Why Start a Church in Dublin?
3. Dublin Update

This morning it hit me…6 months from today, Liz, Méabh & I step on a plane (Méabh will actually be carried on most likely), and get off the plane  the next day in Dublin. The girls will have another month in the states to go to camp, see friends/family, etc, before heading over to join us.

And although we still have a lot to do between now & then (surgeries, support raising, getting rid of/selling our stuff), the pages of the calendar seem to be flipping at an ever increasing speed.

Over the the next few months more and more of what is written here, will focus on what life is like for us in the midst of this transition.  Thanks in advance for your thoughts & prayers.

No related posts.

I’ve been thinking about being comfortable lately. One of that issues that we deal with when we are in the midst of a transition is discomfort. When we move from a place where we understand how things work, and what our role is, we’d consider ourselves comfortable with our surroundings. When our situation changes, we experience a level of discomfort. (Obviously, the bigger the transition, the bigger the discomfort).

Churches often talk about being comfortable too. Or at least decreasing the level of discomfort, especially for people who are new to the church. The best way I’ve ever heard it said is Bill Hybels’ statement that the church should be a “safe place to hear a dangerous message.”

In other words, our goal is not to provide a comfortable place for people. In fact, part of what we do is challenge people to change their lives. To take up their cross and follow Christ. Transformation is not a comfortable process.

At the same time, we don’t want to put hurdles in people’s way. If you go to a church a few times & no one has spoken to you, you have not been made to feel comfortable, and the likelihood is, you won’t be there to hear the gospel of the Kingdom.

Recently I heard a conversation where two people where talking about comfort when it comes to Sunday mornings. The one person stated that he was sensitive to the issue, but thought at times it goes to far. The second person pointed out that Jesus was always making people uncomfortable, and began expounding on some stories of His interactions with the Pharisees.

I interjected that while that was characteristic of His interacts with the Pharisees, when it came to the hurting and broken, He did not go out of his way to make them uncomfortable. However, over the next few hours, story after story came into my mind of how He made hurting people uncomfortable. (yelling “who touched me?” to the woman with the flow of blood and making her identify herself rather than letting her sneak into the background. Calling another woman and her child dogs. You get the idea.)

But as I thought about each of the examples that came to mind, what I realized was that when even Jesus made a hurting person uncomfortable, it was for a purpose. It was for their benefit. It was always redemptive.

Too often when we make broken and hurting people uncomfortable, it has nothing to do with the other person. It has to do with our preferences (“I want this kind of music on Sundays because this is how I best relate to God.”); with our laziness, (“I come on Sunday to receive.” “I have too many other things going on to get involved.”); or with a general lack of concern for those who are distant from Jesus.

Just something I’ve been thinking about.

No related posts.

Thanks to Becky TenEyck for the photo shoot.

One of the things we’ve been asked more than once since we began telling people we’re moving to Ireland is, “how are you going to support yourselves?” As you might have guessed, it was one of the first conversations Liz & I had with each other as we began thinking and praying about this move.

While our hope is that we will plant a church which will eventually become self supporting, clearly that will not happen when we get off the plane in Dublin next July. So in the meantime, we are connecting with friends, family and churches to ask them to consider making a monthly financial commitment to support our family until we get the church in Ireland off the ground.

In working with the leaders in the Vineyard over in Ireland (Republic & North), they have suggested that we take the first 18-24 months there to be part of the Dublin Vineyard , get acclimated to the culture, and build relationships before beginning to plant. With that in mind, we are asking those who support us to make a 3-5 year commitment to this.We really believe that getting acclimated to the culture during our first 18 months there is crucial if we are going to plant a healthy church.

The next item we had to figure out was how much we’d need to raise. As we looked at the cost of renting a place for a family of 6, and figured out other stuff we’d need to actually live there, the numbers did begin to add up quickly as you’d guess. At this point we are in the process of trying to raise $9,000/month to support our family, and cover ministry expenses (such as inviting people we meet over for dinner) as we move there.  I wanted to share a few things that went into coming up with that amount:

1) Converting Dollars to Euros:

Although the Euro has been making the news a lot lately, and is not quite as strong as it has been, as of today it still costs $1.30 to buy  €1. So on a day like today, $9,000 becomes €6,923. In general, there is some fluctuation in the exchange rate. In the past year it has been as low as $1.29 and as high as $1.48 (which means that $9,000 fluctuates between €6,976 and €6,081).  The majority of the time it seems to be between $1.35 & $1.45, but even that leads to a fluctuation of $460 per month. So part of what we’ll be doing is on months when the Euro is lower, putting some aside to cover for when it is higher.

On of the things we noticed while we were there was that everything seems similar in price. Lunch costs 10-12. Dinner 18-26. It’s once you realize you are working with Euros not dollars that 10 becomes €13.50 to €14, and 18 becomes €24 to €25.

2) Living in a Major European City

One of the responses we first received when we told people we were going to be moving to Dublin was, “It’s too expensive. You should live in the country!” And while this person was right that living almost anywhere else in Ireland is less expensive than living in Dublin, we believe God is calling us to be where people are…specifically Dublin. Although it was in the top 20 during the height of the Celtic Tiger, Dublin remains one of the top 50 most expensive cities in the world to live in.

And while the price of property is falling since the economic crash of the past few years has hit over the past few years, homes and apartments are still much more expensive (and much smaller) than they are in Ithaca.

3) Taxes.

Here’s something I’ve learned.  If you are a US citizen, and you live and work in another country…say Ireland. You pay taxes to the US government, and the Irish government. And due to the current economic crisis, Ireland has increased current taxes, and is in the process of beginning new taxes.

4) Gas…excuse me…Petrol is about $7-8/gallon (& rising)

When we were over there, one of our kids saw the price for Petrol (approx) €1.35 and asked why gas is much cheaper there…once we explained litres to gallons & Euros to Dollars…gas went from cheap to double what we pay here. Needless to say, we’ll spend a lot of time on public transport, biking (very bike friendly city) & walking.

5) Finding Jobs

Elizabeth, Hannah & I all plan on finding jobs once we get there (although most of Hannah’s money will be going towards tuition.) As you might have picked up earlier in this post however, the economy in Ireland is quite bad at this point and understandably, there is often a bias towards employing Irish people first. In addition, I will need to resolve my residency issues first before I can work.

6) Assorted Family Stuff

And of course part of the cost is that we are a family of 6. We are a family that has people with medical issues, so private insurance is really a necessity for us. In addition, Liz and I recognize that moving our kids at their current ages is a difficult transition, and so we are trying to find a place where they can each have their own room. We have also put in the budget bringing them back to the US once per year so that they can see family & friends.  Then of course there is school for each of them, and strangely enough, they all like to eat.

One of the parts of our lives that has paid long-term dividends was that when we were first married, we were working as campus pastors (that means we made not much money:-). We both worked jobs on the side to supplement our income, but we learned to stretch our budget. In fact the first year of our church plant, we had 3 kids under 6 and lived on $11,000 for the whole year…(have I mentioned that I still hate lentils & ramen?)  That means we are able to go into this with no debt, and an ability to live pretty frugally.

I hope that helps you understand a bit more of what we are working on. If you have any other questions about Dublin, or how we’ll be supporting ourselves & this new ministry, we’d love to hear from you.

No related posts.

When we first started the Ithaca Vineyard, I went to a number of church planter training and heard over and over again about how many people you would need to talk to if you were going to plant a church.

My conversation with God, went something like this…”If you really want me to plant a church in Ithaca, you are going to have to figure something out, because there is no way I can talk to that many people I don’t know.” I’ve been called shy, introverted, but the fact is, talking to lots of people drains my energy very quickly.

At that point in time (1999) there were not too many decent web sites in Ithaca for churches (lots of flashing lights, marching ants, and other stuff that still makes me shudder when I think about the early years of the interwebs.) So, we created a web site, and for the next several years of our church, more than half of our people who came to our church came because they found us online.

Well, I have gotten a bit better over the past 12 years about talking to people (my twitch is hardly noticeable anymore:-), however, I still like playing around with website stuff. I haven’t done too much here on this site lately because I’m setting up a site to let people know about what we are planning in Dublin.

You can find it at dublinchurchplant.com (as you can see, naming websites is not a strength of mine: bob.wilson.blog & dublin church plant).

I’d love it if you’d take a look around, and let me know what you think.

PS – we also have a dublin church plant enewsletter…you can see the most recent edition here, and subscribe to it here!

Related posts:

1. Why Start a Church in Dublin?
2. Dublin Update

This morning Liz & I were going to have a weekly planning meeting at 10 am. We got started a bit late, and when I got into my calendar @ 10:11 am, the first thing I noticed was that I had an orthodontist’s appointment at 10 am. (And I live 20 minutes away).

It is shaping up to be one of those weeks.

Since we are heading into that time of the year, I thought I let you know what I’m working on this week, and maybe some it will serve as a reminder for you.

Today
Well, after our planning meeting, we came to the office & had a staff meeting and worked on some plans for our Christmas Eve dinner & Christmas Eve service (remember, no service on Christmas Day).

Tuesday
Tomorrow is going to be a bit of a long day. I have to drive to the Syracuse Vineyard to borrow their portable baptismal.  (There is going to be a baptism during our second service this Sunday…please let me know if you have not been baptized yet & would like to this week.) I need to be there to pick it up early so that I can meet with my Spiritual Director @ 11 am.

In the afternoon I have a call with one of the guys from Vineyard Missions. Although we are not officially missionaries (Ireland is already part of an Association of Vineyard Churches), but he has been serving as a coach as our family prepares to move cross-culturally.

Then I have a bunch of other phone calls to make (and for those of you who know me, you know how much I love the phone!)

Wednesday
On Wednesday Liz & I have a Skype call with one of the Vineyard leaders from Ireland. Following that a meeting with our interns to discuss a book we are reading together (Fierce Conversations). This is my second time through. If you have not read this book, and ever need to have conversations with other people, you should put it at the top of your list.

After that, we’ll have our kinship, a meeting to work on planning out the Christmas Eve service. Then a bunch more phone calls.

Thursday & Friday
At this point, Thursday & Friday are mostly open (other than I should probably come up with a message for Sunday). Oh yeah, & we should set up the baptismal so the water can warm up for Sunday!

If you’d like more info on any of the events I’ve mentioned here,  please let me know…December is going to be an exciting month!

As for me…I think it’s time to grab 20 minutes or so of silence & solitude.

Related posts:

1. Why Start a Church in Dublin?
2. If I could start over…I would have saved more
3. If I Could Start Over, I Would Have Skipped Sunday More Often

The following is from James Cherian. James was part of the original planting team of the Ithaca Vineyard, and has been on staff in various roles since then. He is currently a member of the Pastoral Search Team (PST).

———–
Usually, when I think of meetings and committees and group projects, I think of a million other things I’d rather be doing.
Being on the Pastoral Search Team has been a different story- It’s actually fun and exciting.
I look forward to doing the work in preparation for our meetings, and enjoy the time we have together.

The things I most dread about these types of meetings (long, pointless debates, passive aggressive personalities, lowest common denominator decisions) have been met with a refreshing, thoughtful, engaging, and meaningful process in discerning who it is that God wants as the next lead pastor of the Ithaca Vineyard and to see this transition happen in a healthy way for all those involved.

The people God placed on this team play no small part in this being so. I am grateful for that.

A few months ago, when we met with John Elmer (our Area Pastoral Care Leader) to discuss our search process, I jotted down: “If this whole thing is successful, know that it was all because of God.” Though, we’re still a long way off before we can say this process was ‘successful’, it’s been very exciting to see how God has been at work through this.

It would be hard to write down every detail of this process, but I thought it would be helpful to give the church a better idea of the journey we’ve been on.

The very basic job posting we started off with states:
“The Vineyard Church of Ithaca is currently seeking a lead pastor
starting in June 2012. Ithaca is a college town (Cornell University,
Ithaca College, Tompkins Cortland Community College) in Central NY.
The Ithaca Vineyard was planted in 1999, and during the semester
averages about 200 people during Sunday attendance.  This is a
full-time position.

The successful candidate will have strong teaching/communication
skills; a passion for reaching out to a secular community; a
commitment to Vineyard Values and Kingdom Theology, as well as
Spiritual Formation and Emotionally Healthy Spirituality.  This
position will also provide the opportunity to serve as a Chaplain at
Cornell University.”

The Pastoral Search Team then began to process what this job looks like through the filter of our Vision and Values.

It never hurts to repeat them, so straight from the website:<

Vision

The Vineyard Church of Ithaca Exists to:

Demonstrate God’s love, mercy, and compassion to those in the Greater Ithaca area who are distant from Jesus and His church,draw people into relationship with Him and us, minister healing into their lives, and equip them for ministry, giving them the best opportunity to become fully developing followers of Jesus Christ,

Values

We value the kingdom of God:

We believe the kingdom of God, which is the future reign of God breaking into the present through the life and ministry of Jesus, is the overarching and integrating theme of the Bible. We are committed to proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God and to bearing witness to the “already and not yet” of the kingdom in our words and deeds—through healing (physical, emotional, and social), doing justice, and setting free those held captive by evil.

We value embracing the sacred in every aspect of life:

We believe that our whole life is set apart for Christ and His purposes.  We view life in an integrated, holistic manner, rejecting the idea that there are “sacred & secular” aspects of life. We welcome God’s presence, seeking to be attentive to what “the Father is doing,” and supporting His work with our whole lives. We value an approach to God’s presence that is respectful both of God and others. We eschew hype and other efforts to manipulate either God’s presence or the response of others to his presence.  We are committed to being open to the leading of the Holy Spirit and responding in a way that is naturally supernatural whether we are at church, home, work, school, or wherever.

We value living life together:

We do not want to be just a collection of individuals or a large crowd. God is looking for us to be a community of people who have joined his mission in the world – because following Jesus happens in the context of relationships, not in isolation. We aim to build up the church, and each other through maintaining mutual respect, open communication, determined cooperation, and believing and speaking the best about each other.

We value ministry based on the compassion of Jesus

We believe that mercy is fundamental to all that God does in salvation. We therefore aim to extend compassion to one another, and to each person God brings into our lives. We believe that the church does not exist for itself, but rather to actively demonstrate God’s mercy to all. We are committed to being generous in every aspect of our lives, to “give away our best,” whether people or resources, in order to expand God’s Kingdom.

We value being culturally relevant in our mission:

We believe that the church exists for the sake of those who are distant from God. We are called to bring the gospel of the kingdom to Ithaca, and beyond, faithfully translating the message of Jesus in language and forms that are relevant to diverse tribes and cultures. We seek to develop an atmosphere where people can feel relaxed and at home. Therefore, we want every expression of ours – whether speech, music, architecture, or manner – to be non-hyped, natural, reality based and in touch with the current culture of our community.

After much discussion, we came up with some important characteristics and qualities we’d be looking for in light of our Vision and Values.

Distilling that list, we found 3 things that would be the primary responsibility of the lead pastor.

They are (not to the exclusion of other characteristics and qualities):
-Setting and maintaining direction and vision of the church.
-Main teaching pastor (majority of Sunday’s).
-Equipping and developing leaders.

Again all these things are from the lens of our Vision and Values- things that distinctly make us who we are.

We took time to pray through and engage thoughtfully with each other, and really ingest all these core things we were looking at.

As a person who’s been at the church for a while, these statements are more than just words- they are central to who we are as an expression of Christ’s body.

It’s part of our job as pastors to instill this in others.  So it was a good learning experience to work thru these together in a small group of people, and hear how they saw and processed these core ideas; and to get feedback on how well we were communicating the Vision and Values, what was working, what wasn’t, etc.  Through all this, I believe we’re really coming to a place where we’re more and more understanding who God called us to be and become as a church.

Equipped with this cooperative understanding, we drafted questions to try and discern which candidate could be the right person to lead as pastor.

Of course, we are doing the ‘typical’ things of a search team: weigh strengths/weaknesses of each candidate, weigh strengths/weaknesses of our church, listen to their messages, check references, research resume’s, etc.

As Bob mentioned, we’re in the midst of the interview process now, and it’s really exciting meeting these candidates and talking about who they are and who we are.

At the end of the day, no instrument or method we come up with is going to be perfect.  We rely on God, ask for his wisdom and strength, and to the best of his enabling in us, make a decision- realizing that ultimately this is Christ’s church, His body.

Related posts:

1. Pastoral Search for the Ithaca Vineyard
2. Pastoral Search Update
3. Our Pastoral Search Process

Last night our Pastoral Search Team (PST)  began the interviewing process to find the next lead pastor of the Vineyard Church of Ithaca. Our first round of interviews we are actually conducting via Skype. All 10 members of our  PST are able to be in the room with people who are not in Ithaca, and rather than just hearing a voice, we are able to have face-to-face conversations.

When we first began this process back in August, we gave an outline of what this process would look like.  After that meeting, we took some of the feedback and made some changes, and once the PST began meeting, they decided to make a few other small changes.

Since we are pretty far along in this process, I thought it would be a good time to revisit it, just to show where we are at. As you read this, please keep in mind that as a strict list of rules we are required to follow, but rather as a map to help us get to our ultimate destination of finding a person of solid godly character to lead the Ithaca Vineyard into the next stage of it’s life!

Here it is:

• We will assemble a Pastoral Search Team [PST] 

1. This team will be made up of 10 individuals
1. The 4 current members of the Church Council will serve on the PST.
2. The other 6 members of the PST will be made up of current members of the Vineyard Church of Ithaca.
2. We will be contacting people this week and asking if they will be able to give the time necessary to be part of this team.
3. The PST will begin meeting the second Monday in September, and meet at least every other Monday throughout the fall.
4. (note: let me just say again how much I’ve enjoyed working with this group of people. Although it has been a strange emotional process for me, meeting with them has been a great experience.)

• Fast and Pray. 

1. Every member of the PST and of the church as a whole, will be asked to devote a significant part of their time each week to pray. Individually, the PST will fast. The church as a whole will regularly call times of fasting and prayer.  (note: Although we have encouraged and asked for a lot of prayer, we have not called for a church wide fast yet.  We will after Thanksgiving.)

• We will immediately begin a nation-wide search for a qualified candidate. 

• Starting the last Sunday of October

1. On the last Sunday of each month, we will have a meeting where anyone in the church is welcome to come and express their thoughts and concerns, and ask questions of the PST.

• In late – October, the PST will review all resumes that have been received and pare the list down and decide which candidates we will interview.

[please keep in mind that the timeline is tentative, and the process may take longer than anticipated]

1. References will not be checked until after the first round of interviews
• Each member of the PST will take a week to read resumes, listen to recorded messages of candidates, and pray. At that point the PST will pare the list down to 2 to 4 candidates.

• In November, the PST will conduct SKYPE interviews with the candidates remaining on the list. [note: This is where we currently are in the process]

The entire PST will be in attendance for each interview, but only 2-3 people (Chekesha, Bill, & Bob) will actually interview the candidate.

• Following the Skype interviews, the non-council members of the PST will recommend one candidate to come in for a personal interview. Four out of the six members must agree on the candidate.

• The church council will consider the PST’s recommendation, and if 100% of the council agrees, that candidate will be invited in for a personal interview.

• The personal interview will be conducted at the Vineyard Church of Ithaca, by the entire PST.

• A regional leader in the Vineyard (most likely our RO, John Elmer, or APCL Rick Colquohoun) will also conduct an interview with the candidate, and make his recommendation to the PST.

• Following the interview, the the non-council members of the PST will decide whether they wish to invite this person in for a candidate weekend.  Four out of the six members must agree on the candidate.

• The church council will consider the PST’s recommendation, and if 100% of the council agrees, that candidate will be invited for a candidate weekend [potentially in February, once the Cornell & IC students have returned].

• The candidate weekend:

1. The weekend will consist of the following components:
1. Friday night fellowship with PST and spouses.
2. Saturday Town Hall Forum or Open House to meet the pastor.
3. Individual group meetings with key lay leaders in various ministries.
4. The candidate will speak at our Sunday Morning Services.
5. After the service, the PST will reconvene to decide if they still believe this is the right person.
6. If the answer is yes, a meeting will be held and current members of the Ithaca Vineyard will be asked to ratify the decision.
7. The ratification will be verified by 2 members of the church council. (It will only be announced whether or not a simple majority was achieved or not. The actual percentage will not be announced.)
8. Two members of the PST person will make the presentation of the vote and count to the pastor and spouse.

Related posts:

1. Pastoral Search for the Ithaca Vineyard
2. Pastoral Search Update
3. Guest Post – Pastoral Search

Earlier this week I wrote a brief update on the Ithaca Vineyard’s search for a new lead pastor, and another on how things were progressing with our move to Ireland. I thought I’d end the week with an update of the various other things we’ve got going on…or at least as much as I can remember.

The Haunt:
One of the new things we’ve started up recently is a Sunday night worship service @ the Haunt. Our plan was to start it in October, work out the bugs and then begin inviting people to come, advertise, starting in November. Then last week happened. If you follow football, you might know that the Buffalo Bills are having a very good season. And while the vast majority of their games are on at 1 pm on Sundays, they occasionally, such as last week play at 4 pm. On the one hand, It is great to have a crowd there…on the other hand…well, let’s just say it wasn’t ideal.

So we are going to give ourselves a few more weeks to work out some of the bugs, but in the meantime we’d love to have you join us (Sundays @ 6:30 pm).

Reading…
When we first moved to Trumansburg, one of the things I disliked most was having to ride the bus occasionally to work. After doing it for a while, I actually prefer it.  I don’t have to deal with people cutting me off…or how am I going to get past that line of cars doing 15 miles below the speed limit on Rt. 96. It has been a great way unwind on the way home. An added benefit is that since it takes about an hour each way on the bus (about 25 minutes if you drive), I’m getting a lot of reading done!

This past month I finished 2 books: On the Verge, by Alan Hirsch & Dave Ferguson and The Enneagram:A Christian Perspective, by Richard Rohr.)  I’ve also been working through Third Culture Kids, by David Pollock & Ruth Van Reken, and Mystically Wired, by Ken Wilson (which I’m rereading for the current message series). [all links for books are affiliate links]

The Enneagram book I read for the school of Spiritual Direction that I’m enrolled in.  I haven’t had any previous experience with the topic, and while I found the ideas interesting, the book did bog down a bit for me in the end.  Still not sure which type I am…although I’ve narrowed it down to a couple. Feel free to let me know what you think I might be if you’ve worked with the Enneagram.

On the Verge…I loved…especially the material written by  Hirsch.  It is definitely going to be a book we’ll be using a lot as we as we move to Ireland and begin laying groundwork for the church we’ll be planting in Dublin.

Third Culture Kids, is one recommended to Liz & me by the person who is coaching me to help us make the transition to a new culture/new country as smooth as possible. (I never realized the Vineyard had coaches who did stuff like this, but …Wow! it has been such a great help to make sure we are thinking about the things we should be thinking about & dealing with the stuff we should be dealing with. The book, at least for me has been pretty emotional…both in learning about the impact this will have on our kids…and on us. And even thinking about the transition, and how relationships change.

Spiritual Direction…
On Sunday, once the service is over, I’ll get dropped off in Rochester, and then I’ll drive to Cincinnati, with my friend Jeff for our second Spiritual Direction Module. Part of this process has been going through spiritual direction, providing it for a couple people who are willing to let you “learn on them:-)” a bunch of reading and these training modules.

If you told me 5 years ago I would be learning, or even going through spiritual direction, you would have seen a very blank look on my face. But I’ve found it to be a real positive.

Other Stuff…
We are having a baptism during the second service on December 4, with a celebration afterwards.

We will be introducing 5 new members of the Ithaca Vineyard this month!

If you have some interest in working on websites, we’d love to have you help out with ithacavineyard.org  Send us an email & let us know.

We no longer have leaks in the roof of our church building! And it only took 3 years!

I think that’s about it from here. Don’t forget to turn your clocks back an hour on Sunday.

No related posts.

Yesterday I gave an update on the current pastoral search at the Ithaca Vineyard. Today I thought I’d write about how everything with Project:Move to Dublin is going. This part of our lives fells pretty big at this point has several aspects to it, so I figured the easiest thing to do was address each (or at least each that I’m remembering) individually.

Schooling:

At this point we are not really any further ahead than we were a few weeks ago.  We did get some very helpful information from one of Liz’s relatives in Ireland, but at this point, Erin and Brenna are still not enrolled in school for next year. We are just getting to the time of year where Hannah will be applying to university. The schooling of our daughters has been one of the biggest pressures we’ve been feeling throughout this process, and we’d love your continued prayers.

Support Raising:

Obviously, even before we can move to Dublin and get the kids in school, we need to raise finances. While I was hoping to be a bit further along in this process, things are still moving well.

• We have set up a website, dublinchurchplant.com, and while it still has some work to do, it is taking shape.
• We have set up an online giving system trough egiving.com which will allow donors to give via their saving or checking account, or with a debit/credit card.
• We are close to having an informational brochure ready to go to the printer. [One thing that was reinforced to me through this process is that I am not a graphic designer.] The brochure has been the biggest slow down through the whole process, so we finally hired a professional.

It looks like, by the end of this month, we’ll begin to start contacting friends, family & churches to talk about supporting us financially. Keep in mind that we’ll be working on this from now up until we leave next summer & most likely even while we are in Ireland (I can only make so many phone calls in a week…and with being an introvert, that is probably less than most:-). So, if you don’t hear from us soon, you will! And of course, feel free to call or email us if you’d like to talk about supporting our family and this church plant financially.

Building a Team:

One of the things we have been praying for over the past several months is for 10-12 people who would be willing to move with us to Dublin and be part of this plant. Clearly if we were planting in an area that was in driving distance from Ithaca, there would likely be more candidates! However, we have heard from a couple conversations with some people who are interested in packing up & moving to Ireland. One of these people is an EU citizen, so the move would be a relatively smooth one. The others we have spoken with would have larger hurdles to get over.

We would also love to see some of the Cornell & IC students who are part of the Ithaca Vineyard, but graduating this year consider looking for work in Dublin.

Please be praying for the Father to put this move on people’s hearts so that those He wants to be there would sense this leading. And, pray that those who would like to come with us, would be able to maneuver through the residency, and financial stuff they would need to work through.

Gratitude:

While there is clearly a lot we are needing to work on to get from here to there, there are a number of things that we are really thankful for.

1. As I mentioned earlier, Liz has family over there and they have been an amazing help and encouragement to us as we’ve tried to figure out a lot of the logistical stuff.
2. The Dublin Vineyard…Sean & Debbie Byrne, the pastors of the Dublin Vineyard (the only established Vineyard church in the whole country) have been so welcoming, and hospitable to us.  We are excited to be able to be part of their church when we first land.  There is also another family there who just moved there from the US a couple years ago, and having people who have been through the process and are willing to give of their time to help us walk through it is great!
3. That there is already an established AVC (Association of Vineyard Churches) there. And just like everyone we’ve meet through this process, they have been supportive, helpful and encouraging.

While the idea of moving to another country is a bit intimidating, we are so thankful for the support system the Father has put in place.

Related posts:

1. Why Start a Church in Dublin?
2. Dublin Church Plant Stuff

I thought I’d take some time over the next week and update on some of the stuff I’ve been working on lately. When we first headed into our final year in Ithaca, we knew there were some pretty big things we’d be working on. And while I think many of them are going well, they have taken a pretty big chunk of time and energy.

So over the next few days, I wanted to comment on some of the bigger things we are working on, and keep you up-to-date on how they are going.

Pastoral Search:
One of the key transitions we want to ensure goes well is finding a new a new lead pastor. In September, we began accepting resumes, and over the past few weeks we have been reviewing them as well as listening to recordings of messages they have given. This month we will be scheduling interviews via Skype with the candidates, and if all goes well, we’ll plan on bringing one of them in in December for an in-person interview. I think the process has gone very well so far, and want to ask you to keep praying for this process and for the Pastoral Search Team (PST).

Speaking of the PST, this has been a great group to work with and we have had a number of great discussions. I have a role that is a bit unique. Often when a pastor leaves a church they go through the search after he is gone. When I was a campus pastor I would often fill in for churches who were in that transition.  Since many of those searches can go on for a while, I would often visit shortly after the pastor had left and then again after he had been gone for a number of months. Often many people had left the church during that time, and ofter there was a sense of “will anyone ever want to come here?” Which of course often led to some pretty unhealthy decisions.

With that as a backdrop, it has been a great process to go through with them. But it has been a bit of  a surreal experience.

• On  the one hand, you are all working together on a very important decision, but once the decision is implemented and the new person is in place, I leave. (& maybe it’s just me, but this year has already been flying by.) Since I’ve given over a quarter of my life so far to this church, I am very invested in it going forward as well as it possibly can, but my involvement with the Ithaca Vineyard will be very different.
• There are some interesting shifts that have happened. For example, as the founding and lead pastor of a church you get pretty comfortable saying this is the direction I believe we need to go. However, now it is more important for those who are part of this process, to make many of these decisions. What I think becomes less and less important over time, and the leaders who will still be here need to take on much of that role…
• And then there are those conversations where we discus the characteristics we want to see in the next pastor. Of course those discussions involve the relative strengths & weaknesses of the current lead pastor:-) To me one of the biggest signs of the health of this team has been their comfort in talking about that in front of me…never in a way that was overly negative…but simply taking an honest look at how things work that we can make the best decision.

And then of course there is the fact that one day last week two different people called me a “lame duck” pastor…one was another Vineyard pastor…but not the same Vineyard pastor who saw me last week and asked, “So when are you leaving?”

• So, please please praying for this process.
• Pray for all of the members of the PST, that God would give them each wisdom and peace (and any other good stuff you’d like to throw in).
• Pray for each of the candidates who have applied that whether they end up here in Ithaca or not, that God would bless them as they walk through this, and prepare a great place of ministry for them.

Related posts:

1. Our Pastoral Search Process
2. Guest Post – Pastoral Search
3. Pastoral Search for the Ithaca Vineyard

No, I’m not talking about that move…although that one is getting closer.

I think this blog is becoming a bit too confusing…part of the time I’m talking about Ithaca, part of the time I’m talking about Ireland. (& then part of the time, who knows what I’m talking about)

So within the next 2-3 weeks, we’ll be setting up a separate site that will be totally devoted to things about the move to Ireland.  (well, unless there is some other random thing that pops into my head that day). And all of my blogging concerning the Ithaca Vineyard will be done through the church’s webite. Hopefully that will help keep things a bit less confusing.

In the meantime, this site will likely sit quietly for a while (I mean I can barely keep one blog going, let alone 3).

It’ll take us a while to get things moved over and we’ll definitely let you know when it happens.

Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Dublin Church Plant Stuff
2. Why Ireland? (part 2)

I have lived in New York state my whole life.  I grew up in Chautauqua County, spent a year in Oswego, back to Chautauqua (Brocton & Fredonia), on to Albany, & finally in Ithaca. And besides the snow & the cold, I like living here.

Now when we began wrestling with the idea that God was calling us to move to Ireland… the idea of leaving Ithaca was hard…and moving to another country seems a bit insurmountable at times…But I mean, come on, we’re moving to Dublin, Ireland. Not only is it an incredible city, it rarely even snows!

So I figure if I’m excited about moving to Dublin, there are probably other people (perhaps even some in Vineyard churches) who might be as well…and if so, I’d love to talk to you about what we are doing and see how you could be part of our church plant in Dublin.

And while the economy over there isn’t great at this time, there are a number of US companies with European headquarters in Dublin (Google, Facebook, Microsoft…sadly, Apple is in Cork). So, say you were a Cornell, or Ithaca College senior and looking to do something interesting next year…I’d love to invite you to join us in planting a church in one of the world’s major cities.

Related posts:

1. Why Ireland? (part 2)
2. Why Ireland? (part 1)

(This post is the fifth in a series I’ve been working on  over the past few weeks talking about things I would have done differently if I could start our church plant over again.)

Now, I know some people are thinking, “Skip Sunday? But isn’t that the only day you work?  Thanks.

Clearly I’ve not been at every Sunday service…I have taken vacations consistently since we started the church…but beyond that, I’ve generally been here whether or not I’ve been speaking. And every pastor worth their salt knows that there are certain weeks it is okay for you to miss (4th of July weekend, Memorial Day weekend, the first Sunday in January, the Sunday after Thanksgiving); and there are certain weeks, you not only have to be there, you as the lead person, MUST be the speaker (Easter, most Sundays in the fall, generally any Sunday where you’re going to have a lot of people, or especially a lot of new people.)

Over the years there have been various family events that our family has missed because our families didn’t understand these rules and would schedule big event on Sundays where Liz & I HAD to be at the Vineyard. Because what if new people came and we weren’t there? (that sounds even worse writing it down that it sounded in my head for the past several years.)

At you might guess, that was a lot of weight to carry around, and it got pretty exhausting after a while.  And it wasn’t even a weight that I was supposed to be carrying.

This past weekend our family left Ithaca and drove to Connecticut for the Columbus day weekend. We actually woke up on Friday, having no idea where we were going (if my new passport arrived in the mail we were going to Montreal. It didn’t.) We left on Friday, slept in Saturday & Sunday…and basically went through all 3 days with no agenda, no plans, and nothing we had to do. And it was great! We hung out on the beach, walked around Mystic, and didn’t accomplish anything other than spending time with each other.

And while we were there, I missed two morning services in Ithaca…I missed our second service at the Haunt on Sunday night (don’t I know how important it is that I’m there when we are trying to get something like this off the ground?) And everything is still standing. The Ithaca Vineyard lost nothing, & my family gained something really important. Good trade.

Related posts:

1. If I Could Start Over…
2. Great Way to Start a Week…
3. If I could start over…I’d trust my gut more

It is hard for me to believe that it has been over 2 months since that Sunday morning when I announced that my family was going to be moving to Dublin next summer. (2 months and it still feels weird to write that sentence.)

One of the first things that we did was start gathering a group of Ithaca Vineyard members to form a Pastoral Search Team (PST). One of the things that we wanted to be careful of as we did this was ensuring that those who were making the commitment to be on the team, actually had the time to do this well. We wanted to make sure especially that none of our kinship group leaders were also on the the PST, even though they all would have done a great job, because we recognize that the job they have is already time intensive.

At this point our team has been filled out fully, and I wanted to introduce them all to you…there are 10 members on the PST. Four church council members, and 6 other church members. In selecting people to be part of this team we wanted a group that represented the overall church well, and in hearing back from many of you, I think there is a consensus that we have a great group of people on this team.  Here they are:

Council Members:
James Cherian, Steve Clark, Bill Williams, & me

Non-Council Members:
Wale Adio, Ariel Beverly, Ivan Daykov, Judy Malys, Dan Stevens & Chekesha Watson.

If you ever have any questions, want an update, or are wondering how to pray more effectively, please ask any of them.  We have currently met 3 times, we have had great discussions, and I’m even more excited than before about the group we’ve gathered here.

Monthly Feedback:
One of the things we are trying to do as much as possible is keep everyone interested as informed as we can about how the process is going. Bill Williams gave an update this past Sunday, but the thing with that is, not everyone is there every week.

An idea the PST came up with to do this more effectively is to utilize the fact that we do a monthly combined service on the last Sunday of each month.  So, starting on October 30, we’ll have breakfast together @ 9:15….a 10 am service…and then after the service, the PST will be available in the cafe to give updates and answer any questions that we can.

I think this will be a great help. Of course we’ll continue to use other means to keep you up-to-date as well.

Speaking of updates:
While we are still accepting applications, we are currently reviewing resumes, and watching/listening to teaching/speaking of the candidates we currently have. I’m pretty excited about the group we have so far, and each week it becomes more and more clear that God is in this process!

Pray & Fast:
Thanks to everyone who has been praying and fasting for this process. If you haven’t been, and the Vineyard is your church, I hope you’ll join us in seeking God’s face for this important time in the life of the Ithaca Vineyard.

Related posts:

1. Our Pastoral Search Process
2. Pastoral Search Update
3. Guest Post – Pastoral Search

Although I occasionally mention the Red Sox in my blog, I don’t think I’ve ever written a full post about the Sox. But over the past few days there have been a few things that jumped out at me & thought there were a few things to learn…

Things are not always what they appear…
For most of the season the Red Sox were an amazing machine.  I was driving home from my parents home in September, listening to the Sox beating up on the Blue Jays 14-0. The post game talk (Toronto station) was how horrible the Jays were, but also how unstoppable the Sox had become.

Yesterday we learned from the manager that he held a team meeting shortly after that game, because he saw some problems that concerned him.

I’ll use churches as an example, but it applies for many areas of life…we look at the numbers…the finances, the attendance, is there a ‘buzz?” and then decide whether things are good or bad. And not that you are not right sometimes…just sometimes we get distracted by unimportant stuff, and miss what is going on at a deeper level. Be careful before you judge to quickly.

take a deep breath…
One thing I was hoping would not happen after all this was Francona getting fired. While I love to yell at the TV set while he’s managing & think I could do better. But every move he pulls that goes wrong, I remind myself, we have 2 world series titles in the past 7 years because of him. Edwin Friedman in his book, A Failure of Nerve talks about the problem of reactivity (or lizard  brain as Seth Godin calls it in Linchpin). This idea that something has gone wrong and someone has to pay.  We don’t care who…just somebody. We do the same thing every two years in November as we decide to “throw the bums out,” and then wonder why nothing in Washington ever gets done.

The Red Sox Players (at least some of them quit). And while perhaps Francona decided he didn’t need the stress of working in Boston anymore…if he was fired for the past 30 days of this season…that seems like a pretty reactive, and pretty short-sighted (stupid) decision.

God does not want the Red Sox in the playoffs..
Although not nearly as big as the Yankees, the Red Sox have a huge payroll.  The player on the team that gets more of that money than anyone eles is  Adrian Gonzalez. And he has been amazing to watch this year.

But what we’ve just learned is that we don’t need to pay him…we can go out and get a group of  minor leaguers, save our money and they are just as likely to go the playoffs as anyone else…In fact, it was Gonzalez, who clued us in to this. Here are his two quotes after the Red Sox epic failure:

“I’m a firm believer that God has a plan and it wasn’t in his plan for us to move forward,”

“God didn’t have it in the cards for us… For me, I’m a firm believer in God and God has a plan and it wasn’t in God’s plan for us to be in the playoffs.”

My head hurts. It wasn’t because we played horrible…it was God not wanting us in the playoffs.

Why to Christians do stuff like that? Do we think is sounds profound, spiritual & deep rather that trite, silly and just a lame way to excuse my actions.

“I’m sorry boss, I didn’t get the project done you wanted me to have finished…guess God didn’t want it to get finished.”

My 17 year old daughter Hannah is going to be part of the worship team a the haunt. She plays electric guitar. After the first practice, 2 people told me that Hannah was the most prepared musician there that night. When I asked her about it, she said,”I know if you are the youngest person you have to work twice as hard to prove yourself.”

I think there is a lesson in there.

That is the end of my venting for today…

Go Tigers!

No related posts.

Often I write a data dump on Fridays, but the last couple weeks have left me a bit short of time when Friday rolls around. However, there are still a bunch of things rolling around in my head, so I thought it’d be best to get some of them out.

(the image above is one from our hike through the Finger Lakes National Forest this weekend. If you are on Google+ you can see other images from our hike…including a bunch of Méabh…there.)

Pastoral Search Team
First thing I wanted to mention is a quick update on the current make up of our church’s pastoral search team (PST). We had our second meeting last night, and I am very excited about the group of people God has gathered to be part of this team.

Although our original plan was to have 4 council members, as well as 6 church members serve on the PST, we currently have 5 church members. The people presently on the PST are, Judy Malys, Chekesha Watson, Wale Adio, Ariel Beverly, Ivan Daykov, Steve Clark, Bill Williams, James Cherian & me. If you have any questions, or comments about this process, please feel free to talk to any of the team members, and they’ll bring your thoughts to the full team.

Please continue to pray for this process. I have a sense God has something pretty amazing in store for us.

The Haunt
This Sunday @ 6:30 pm marks our first Sunday service @ the Haunt.   On Sunday we asked a few things from any people from the Ithaca Vineyard who plan on attending service at the Haunt.  If you are coming,

1. plan on serving.  (if you’re not sure what that would look like, contact me, or stop by the info table on sunday)
2. plan on buying food. The Haunt is a business and we want to be a blessing to them…and having them think it’s a good thing for us to be there would be great!
3. tip generously. Having the workers glad to see us would be great.  (if you’re not sure what a generous tip is, ask a waiter or waitress you know.)
4. pray. Pray for the people we meet.  Pray for the Haunt. Pray that this would be something God uses to glorify himself.

Red Sox
Never mind. Maybe I won’t miss baseball after all when we’re in Ireland.

Guess that’s it…
Thought there was more in there, but I guess that was it…or maybe it’s the fact that Méabh just work up & is being very distracting.

Related posts:

1. Meanwhile…back in Ithaca