Marc’s Musings

Em: Sorrow may last for the night…

Sof: Sorrow may last for the night…

Em: …but joy comes in the morning

Sof: …but joy comes in the morning

Anna: Who’s Joy?

Congratulations to Dan and Wendy Dow who suggested the winning name for my latest brew, a nut brown ale.

I’m making up labels for this brew!

I’d give you a couple as a prize, but you’ll have to come to Maine. I think mailing bottles of beer must break some sort of federal law.

Thanks to everyone. This was a fun contest. And I feel I know some of you even better than I did before…especially the names suggested via email and Facebook!

I’ve been thinking about my reading materials lately:

• Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War
• The Jewish War: Revised Edition (The Penguin Classics)
• The Magic of Thinking Big
• The Books of the Bible (TNIV)
• Judaism of the Second Temple Period: Qumran and Apocalypticism
• Journey to Gorakhpur.

These all fascinate me.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m a bit unbalanced.

At least I’m consistent, as you can see at my Goodreads.com profile.

As a fundraiser in my day job, I’m always interested in unexpected references to giving.

Today, I was reading a wonderful article on worship from John Wimber. After recounting his wife Carol’s experience in the early days of the Vineyard, he goes on to teach about five phases of worship. I was amazed to see the fifth, in some ways deepest phase, was this:

GENEROSITY

The fifth phase of worship is the giving of substance. The church knows so little about giving, yet the Bible exhorts us to give to God. It is pathetic to see people preparing for ministry who don’t know how to give. That is like an athlete entering a race, yet he doesn’t know how to run. If we haven’t learned to give money, we haven’t learned anything. Ministry is a life of giving. We give our whole lives; God should have ownership of everything. Remember, whatever we give God control of He can multiply and bless, not so we can amass goods, but so we can be more involved in His enterprise.

Whatever I need to give, God inevitably first calls me to give it when I don’t have any of it - whether it is money, love, hospitality, or information. Whatever God wants to give through us He first has to do to us. We are the first partaker of the fruit. But we are not to eat the seed, we are to sow it, to give it away.

The underlying premise is that whatever we are is multiplied, for good or for bad. Whatever we have on our tree is what we are going to get in our orchard.

As we experience these phases of worship, we experience intimacy with God, the highest and most fulfilling calling men and women may know.

I recommend reading the entire article. You can find it at the Vineyard Boise’s site.

Cale just walked in. Or “sleep-walked” in.

He mumbled something. And Em asked, “Cale, are you awake?”

As he was mumbling, “Yeah, I’m kinda awake,” he stretched his hands. When they came down, they smacked Em’s computer screen. It really hurt him, tears, etc.

And all we could do was laugh and laugh and laugh.

We just bought an SVGA cable.

Now we can watch Amazon Unbox and Netflix Instant View movies from our laptops through our HDTV

Yep. I’m feeling really cool right now.

Chris Busch has a fun look at how leadership has changed over the last 10-15 years.

My favorite of the list is:

• The world is now being shaped increasingly by people in their 30’s and 40’s. Get used to it and join in. It’s fun.

Read the whole list at Chris’ Blog.

Thanks to Church Leader Insights for pointing me to this Barna Research posting relating to various groups, particularly the “unattached.”

1 in 4 adults fit the “unattached” label. These are what I’d call the “unchurched.” Interestingly, about 60% of them consider themselves Christians, many “born again” Chrisitians. But they revel in their independence and see little need for regular attendence in a community of faith.

Barna lists these characteristics:

Compared to regular churchgoers, the Unattached are:

• more likely to feel stressed out
• less likely to be concerned about the moral condition of the nation
• much less likely to believe that they are making a positive difference in the world
• less optimistic about the future
• far less likely to believe that the Bible is totally accurate in its principles
• substantially more likely to believe that Satan and the Holy Spirit are symbolic figures, but are not real
• more likely to believe that Jesus Christ sinned while He was on earth
• much more likely to believe that the holy literature of the major faiths all teach the same principles even though they use different stories
• less likely to believe that a person can be under demonic influence
• more likely to describe their sociopolitical views as “mostly liberal” than “mostly conservative”

This is the group I think the Vineyard Church of Waterville is here to reach. But these are the least likely to actually come to a church service! Ironic, don’tcha think?

I will tell you, we’re a worshipping community that is passionate about Jesus but not hung up on things like politics or the moral condition of our nation.

Rather than nit-picking about the other points, we’re definitely committed to giving people an opportunity to experience God’s hope and his promise of “a future” for us.

One of the greatest parts of this type of church plant is that we can’t really take credit for any growth or success! It’s all from God!

Read the entire Barna article here.

Peter persisted, “You’re not going to wash my feet—ever!”

Jesus said, “If I don’t wash you, you can’t be part of what I’m doing.”

–John 13:8

Watching the Gospel of John today in preparation for the men’s small group, I heard this exchange. And welled up in tears.

Do I let Jesus wash my feet? Minister to me?

Or am I too busy “serving Him”?

We passed out dozens more Peeps tonight.

“We ‘peeped’ the neighborhood.”

It was a blast. Our kids were so excited to help. People were blessed.

But it almost didn’t happen. I almost cancelled it.

You see, I really didn’t feel like going to the church. I really didn’t feel like making the effort to reach out to our neighbors. I really didn’t even want to walk up to the first door.

I almost cancelled it. And I probably would’ve been thanked.

I’m so glad I didn’t.

Not caring about people is so much easier than reaching out. But showing God’s love in practical ways is so much more rewarding!