Marc’s Musings

Well, I may never get Carl Kasell to record a message on my answering machine by winning at “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me.”

But thanks to Facebook, I’m now Carl’s friend.

Marc and Carl Kasell are now friends. 10:23pm

Me and 3578 of his close confidants.

I’m getting ready to bottle my third brew.

#1 was Bombadil, a nice java stout. Tom Bombadil was a great magical character in Lord of the Rings that didn’t really need to be there but certainly makes the books richer.

#2 was Advent Ale, an sort of spiced ale. Advent is a significant time of the year for me.

#3 is a nut brown ale. But I’m really not wanting to just call it “nut brown ale.” B-o-r-i-n-g.

So would you help? There may be something in it for the winning contribution!

“Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be broken.”

Last year, VCW families went up and down streets passing out Peeps.

This year, Easter’s early. So our Peeps outreach was done in the snow!

We were able to give out 120 trays of Peeps to area businesses and a college. It’s so much fun doing nice things for people! People were so excited to get them!

You learn new things as you do servant evangelism. For instance, today I learned that a “Mud Duck” was a Peep in hot chocolate. And a “Drunken Duck” is a Peep in spiked hot chocolate.

Apparently, Duck’s are fond of peppermint liqueur.

Our new friend, Don Brewster, pointed us to videos of Jesus done by Vintage21.

They’re a funny look at how Jesus seems to come across when filtered through the Church.

Here’s one. Stick with it to the end. It’s a riot.

Well, no one showed tonight.

And Netflix sent me my first movie.

So rather than the Gospel of John, I watched “Live Free or Die Hard.”

I just love watching Bruce Willis get shot at and blown up, don’t you?

Tonight at 7 p.m., the Vineyard Church of Waterville men (and any other men that show up!) will be watching The Gospel of John.

It’s three hours so we’ll watch the first half today and the rest next week. (We all have jobs to wake up for!)

This is a movie that uses the Gospel of John as a script. Word for word.

I find we Protestants often dwell in individual verses and passages out of context. So it’ll be great taking in the whole gospel in a couple sittings.

A terrific way to prepare for Easter!

Sofie grabbed one of my ties, draped it around her neck, and said “We look the same, Daddy!”

You should’ve seen her smile.

In Sofie speak, she calls my bow-ties, “bie-tows.”

Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.
–Edmond Burke

Listening to Marcus Buckingham speak at a Willow Creek conference.

He’s so good.

He says every culture ever studied has been documented as having a fear of the unknown. And every leader’s job is pulling people to a better future…which is unknown.

The antidote to the unknown, according to Buckingham, is clarity.

Particularly, clarity with these three questions:

1. Who do we serve?
2. How do we keep score?
3. What specific action do we take now?

Great questions!

One’s we’ve asked ourselves constantly at the Vineyard Church of Waterville.

Here are the answers as I understand them at this time:

1. We serve those without a church.
   Irregardless of where someone is on their spiritual journey, if they’re without a church home, we’re here to serve them.

   This gets tricky. It’s easy to find people with a church home…at least on Sundays. But the group we serve is quite decentralized.

   So we do lots of things: servant evangelism, random acts of kindness, pool parties, supporting a local worship station (people without a church home still need feeding, radio is often all they get), partnering with Chamber events.

2. We keep score by number of people served.
   There are lots of ways to keep score. We could count kinship numbers or Sunday morning attendance. We could judge success on how many first-time, second-time, and third-time visitors we have. We could keep score based on Sunday offerings and average amount given per person.

   All good stats. And stats we track. Here are our weekly averages for our Sunday worship services in 2008:

   2008 Weekly Averages
   Total attendance: 21.1
   adults: 12.8
   teens: 1.4
   children: 7.2
   first-time visitors: 3.6
   average offering: $340.39
   total first time visitors in 2008: 25
   average offering/person: $16.13

   If we kept track on these numbers, we’d have reason to beat ourselves up. Giving should be around $25/person, not $16. And we’d have reason to feel good: 3.6 first time visitors each week. That’s 17% of a Sunday attendance. (Sure, the “.6″ person is hard to accomodate.)

   But we keep score by numbers served. Check out our 2008 score card:

   Jan: 215
   Feb: 224
   Mar: 100
   Total 539 served

   539 people served! That’s more than 25 people for each person that shows up on Sunday. Including the kids under 10!! 25 people served for each of them too!

   Some of these have been through formal VCW events and projects, some have been done individually and reported back to me. All are done because we believe our community has heard that God loves them but few have seen Christians actually be loving. And we’re out to change that.

   Our goal? 3000 touched in 2008. We’re right on track, especially with the 406 boxes of Peeps we’re passing out this week. (Check out our Easter invitation at our website.)

3. Our next specific action is the Peeps Outreach this Saturday at 10:45 at the VCW building.
   We are constantly instigating ways to get us out of our comfort zones. The goal is that we’ll get so used to serving the people around us, that we’ll do it even when it’s not a “official” VCW event. The point is about Jesus, not VCW.

Buckingham points out that it’s not if the answers are “right” or “wrong.” The point is are the answers clear?

I think ours are.

If VCW is your home, do you agree? From your experience of us, do we serve those without a church home? Do we keep score with numbers served? Do we keep having a specific action?

I loved today’s QOTD on Google:

I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
- Thomas Jefferson