Marc’s Musings

It’s working! I passed these out to during Sunday’s sermon as a reminder that followers of Jesus are on a rescue mission. Our everyday life is lived as Kingdom of God people behind Enemy lines.

Today I was deep in the midst of some work when my eyes glanced at this on my desk. Immediately I found myself dialing down, more in tune with what God might be doing in the here-and-now at Inland.

I’m humbled by how easily a dollar store purchase can lead me deeper into relationship with God. Pretty cool!

Here’s a cheery thought from a somewhat scary article on WebMD:

The average desk area in an office has 400 timesmore bacteria on it than the average toilet seat, which means your workplace is a fine place for cold and flu germs to congregate. People sneeze, talk, eat and breathe all over their desks and their neighbor’s desk all day long, and cleaning at work is usually the last thing on someone’s mind. When Jim from the next cube over lets out a whopping sneeze, the flu has just flown the coop, making a nice nest on your computer keyboard. The good news, after two days of being sanitized with disinfectant wipes, most desks have about a 99.9% reduction in bacteria and virus levels, including those that cause the cold and flu. By practicing good cleaning habits in your work space you are less apt to come down with the cold or flu.

Just read a blog post from Winn Griffin on Bulimic Spirituality.

It’s a bit graphic…but it makes sense. His description reminded me of my sermon last Sunday. In it, I explaine Wimber’s idea that most of us think we live in three kingdoms: dark, light, and normal. Sometimes we do bad things, then we make up by doing good things, but we always come back to normal life.

The Bible only teaches two: Kingdom of Darkness or Kingdom of Light. One or the other.

What do you think? Read Winn’s post and add your comments here.

What fun we’re having with the “What did you GIVE this Christmas?”!

This week we’re collecting detergents: laundry, fabric softener, and the like.

Like last week, when you’re picking up stuff for your laundry, why not pick up an extra for the shelter?

Steve Sjogren has a great blog post on why to have security guards hired for your church. He’s been saying this for a while but in light of the events in CO yesterday it makes even more sense.

Interestingly, the Vineyard Church of Waterville is a “lock your doors” church. You never know who’ll show up. And a couple years back, someone was prowling around our parking lot.

I liked a note I saw in the bulletin of the Vineyard Church in Rockville Centre, NY. It said something to the affect of “Keep your bags close. We’re not in heaven yet.”

But even with that, I’d not really thought we’d need to have armed guards at our worship spaces. Makes you realize how incredibly sheltered we are here in the USA.

I got into work today to be greeted by an email from a co-worker. “Marc, you’re getting slammed on the radio this morning”!

Apparently the folks at Mix 107.9 saw the Wikipedia article on Waterville, ME. In it, the most exciting economic development initiative in town, The Hathaway Creative Center, is called a scam.

My coworker heard them say I’d made that comment, that I was the pastor of the Vineyard Church, and that I worked at Inland.

Here’s the background. A couple months ago, one of Inland’s new physicians told me that they came here despite the Waterville article on Wikipedia. When I went to it, it was awful. It was like an extended online reader’s comment at the bottom of a Morning Sentinel article. The writer ranted about how awful this place was, how economically depressed our downtown is, and how inept Waterville was at getting anything positive started.

Obviously I took issue with that. Waterville is a great place to live and has some great things happening in it. Worse, the article didn’t follow the Wikipedia guidelines of being a reference work with lots of references. There were none.

So I added some references to good stories in the Morning Sentinel and added some positive things happening: Waterville Main Street, the Waterville Public Library, Soup to Nuts Coffee House, and KVConnect. (You can compare what I found on the site to the changes I made: right here.)

After that, someone went in and added a ton of information: demographics, pictures, lots of stuff. Apparently they also added that the Hathaway Center was a scam.

I didn’t see that when I went in on December 4 to update the transportation. (Only the airport was listed so I added I-95 and the intermodal transfer station we have.)

But I got blamed with the negative information in the article. Ironic isn’t it? And not only blamed but blamed on air.

What a way to start the morning! *sigh*

I’m concerned for lots of reasons:

• My friends and colleagues–the leaders in the community–are working really hard to make this a great place, now I appear to be slamming their work.
• There are enough pastors negative about life in general. I’m an optimist but I’m being painted with the brush of the others.
• Inland’s name was included. One of our core commitments is to the economic development of our communities. This makes it look like one of their most in-the-community people doesn’t buy it.

What’s shocking is that a minor edit I made on Wikipedia can be misconstrued by a local radio station. I guess I still haven’t come to grips with the ramifications of the interconnectedness of Web 2.0.

[12/13 Things are MUCH better. No one I spoke with listened to this station any way. The station apologized Tuesday. And I got to go on for an Inland related thing on Thursday a.m. I was on air with them for about 45 minutes. It's really turned out to be a good thing!]

Go to Seth Godin’s blog to see this picture of ham on sale for…Hanukah.

Sheesh.

ChristianAudio.com is offering St. John of the Cross’ “Dark Night of the Soul” for free this month.

If you haven’t read this, you NEED to. Or hear it in this case.

Find out more at the ChristianAudio.com free downloads page.

[Warning: A rant of political nature is about to commence]

This morning as I heard a BBC’s World Service report on the insult to Islam of naming a teddy bear Muhammed, I had a shocking thought: This could be us.

Think about it. Change the name to “Jesus” and you’d have all the people passing on the latest urban legend about the FCC taking “God” off of TV writing letters to the editor. You’d have the social fundamentalists squawking on the Fox News talk shows. You could easily have the picketing and demonstrations like those reported by CNN.

Don’t believe it? Have you read an email against the Golden Compass lately?

I’m got quite scared when I thought about people like that being elected as president. Fortunately none of the Republican presidential candidates seem to be social fundamentalists. But we currently have a president (who I voted for both times) that has sanctioned domestic spying against us and our neighbors without Congressional approval and who passes legislation only after elaborate signing statements that explain why the rules don’t apply to his administration. How much further would it take to have state mandated prayer in schools? Or some other state mandated religious observance?

You may be concerned this pastor is sounding like an atheist. I’m not. I’m a committed and passionate follower of Jesus. But I don’t believe in “following Jesus” the way I see espoused by political pundits like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and James Dobson.

Personally, I praise God I live in a secular state. Is it messy? Yes. Do things happen in the US that I’d rather not see or have my kids exposed to? Certainly.

But I’m free to choose what to believe and free to learn how to work out my relationship with God. I know Robertson, Falwell, Dobson, and others have helped countless millions in their faith with God. Good! May I be so used some day.

But when we start demanding all of society censor things to fit our worldview, we get into an awfully addicting power trip. One that throughout history more often than not ends up in protests like those in Sudan.

This cultural warfare has more in common with the Taliban than with Jesus.

Maybe I’ll go get a teddy bear and name it Jesus just to remind me this the next time I’m tempted to think a bill or a vote or an election is “essential” to “protecting” my faith as a Christian.

[The rant is now over. ]

Seth Godin has a great post on brands and caricatures.

He points out that to have an effective caricature you need to have “exceptional features” you can accentuate. These become your brand.

He goes on to say:

As Nixon discovered, when the caricature becomes negative, it’s almost impossible to escape (glad I’m not Bob Nardelli or a shareholder at Topps hamburgers). Worse than avoiding the negative, though, is the tendency for most organizations to resist creating a brand that can be caricatured. It doesn’t feel safe or responsible or prudent. Coloring inside the lines and pleasing most of your customers most of the time almost guarantees you’ll be bland.

It’s a lot cheaper and faster and more effective to have a big nose.

What about your church? Could it be caricatured? And could you handle it if it were?

I think the Vineyard Church of Waterville could be caricatured. Check out this 5 minute VCW 3rd Birthday video and see if you agree.