Marc’s Musings

Came across this quote while reading a Wired article on Pong.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
–H. L. Mencken

It’s weird to think that Pong was created the year I was born!

I just found this option from Amazon. Yeah, it’s a bit brash to share my wish list like this but…oh well!

Last Sunday, we had an brave soul give the sermon at the Vineyard Church of Waterville. I make it a point to not be in the pulpit every Sunday. It’s healthier for the group if others are being raised up.

Before Janice spoke, I gave everyone a primer on how to be a good listener. I even helped them loosen up their smiling muscles and the muscles that help the head move up and down in agreement. You can hear the warm up routine on the VCW podcast.

Today, I read a post by Seth Godin that reminds me of my warm up exercise. Go and read his post Always On (everybody markets). He points out that we’re always sending a message. “And more often than not, you get what you put in.”

Ben Arment has a great post inspired by the book Starbucked.

I’m intrigued by how conditioned people can be to coffee that’s so old it needs to be injected with something called “coffee aroma.” It gets that way in church too. So when the real thing comes along, where the Spirit is a living and equal part of the Trinity we worship, it’s a culture shock.

I’m content to continue being shocking!

Some of the folks in our church are so cool. They decided rather than asking “What did you get this Christmas?” they wanted to ask What did you give this Christmas?.

Isn’t that great?

So for the last few weeks they’ve been having Knit and Movie nights where they knit scarves, hats, and blankets for our local homeless shelter.

So they’ve decided to have themes for each week of Advent. So on:

• 12/2 bring Baby Products: diapers, wipes, baby powder
• 12/9 bring Hygiene Products: soaps, deodorants, shampoos
• 12/16 bring Detergents: laundry, fabric softener, and the like
• 12/23 bring Paper Products: paper towels and all things paper.

The homeless shelter never knows who’ll be there and these are things they always need.

So, if you call the Vineyard Church of Waterville home, please come this Sunday with baby things!

And even if you don’t call VCW home, you can bring it anyway!

Here’s a video from Friday morning’s hot chocolate outreach.

Watch ’til the end for some great words of wisdom.

6 people. 300 cups of hot chocolate. About 1 hour. Truly, no church is too small!

Half this bounce is 90% mental. –Tigger

So true to life, isn’t it?

Steve Sjogren has a great post on the power of God’s pleasure.

This is exactly what we experienced this morning. We had so much fun we just kept hanging out, long after the crowds had rushed into Walmart.

This is the answer to the lie of the gosple of sin management I spoke of in my review of the Golden Compass.

Experiencing God’s pleasure will push all of our boundaries. PTL!

I love reading Mark Batterson’s blog. Today I read an incredible post “Seven Expectations.”

I’m really thinking through how we build a healthy staff culture. As we add more personalities and more layers, we have to work harder to keep the unity. I’ll post some thoughts over the next few weeks. But here are seven expectations that I have for our staff. And I think lead pastors need to set the example across the board.

1) I expect loyalty. I’ve got your back and you’ve got my back.

2) I expect you to be growing spiritually. This is my primary concern. It is so easy for those of us in full-time ministry to seek God for others instead of seeking God for ourselves. We’ve got to do ministry out of the overflow of what God is doing in our lives!

3) I expect a positive attitude. Attitude really is everything. And I’ve learned that how much you enjoy ministry depends on who you’re doing ministry with. Let me just say it like it is: negativity sucks. Literally. It sucks the life out of a staff.

4) I expect staff to verbalize rather than internalize. I want a staff culture where people can have tough conversations about tough topics. Life is too short to hold a grudge. My philosophy of conflict is John 1:14. Jesus was full of grace and full of truth. Truth means I’m going to be honest no matter what. Grace means I’m going to love you no matter what.

5) I expect staff to have fun. We all have bad days. We all have long days. But if ministry isn’t enjoyable you need to get out of the game! The top quality I look for in prospective staff, besides a thriving relationship with Christ, is a sense of humor!

6) I expect you to make mistakes. We have a core value: everything is an experiment. Part of experimenting is failing and learning. I have no problem with mistakes. I just don’t want staff to make the same mistake over and over again!

7) I expect excellence! I think a dose of divine discontent is healthy! We need to keep getting better and better at what we do. It is that commitment to excellence that allow staff to morph in greater responsibilities at NCC.

These are applicable to the life and leadership of the Vineyard Church of Waterville too!

Just getting back from our third annual hot chocolate servant evangelism give away!

We get to Wal-mart around 4 a.m. and pass out 300 free hot chocolates in less than 1 hour.

Today, Izzie said, “This proves no church can say they’re too small to do servant evangelism!” Our church of less than 30 people has now officially reached 2311 people since January 1 with individual, practical demonstrations of God’s love.

The first year we did this, people were weirded out by us. Suspicious. Sort of, “Yeah, it’s ‘free.’ Right. What’s the catch?”

The second year, we were told, “We look forward to your hot chocolate every year!” We’d become a tradition in just one year!

This year, Paul noticed how nice people were. They were really open to receiving a free hot drink and kept asking who we were.

I just love being able to start people’s Christmas season with kindness before starting it with consumerism!

Pam brought her video camera this year so hopefully we’ll get to post a video of Janice, Izzie, Paul, Caren and me having a blast. It was icy in the parking lot so we pantomimed a faux-Icecapades.

Haven’t you heard of “Vineyard on Ice”?