Marc’s Musings

[Cross posted on Fundraisingcoach.com.]

A week ago tomorrow, I got my first copies of Ask Without Fear!. Caleb even made me a sign!

What a whirlwind of a week!

My kids helped me pack up the 70 or so boxes:

And we finally got them done:

Here’s a link to the rest of the photos.

I’ve been experimenting with press releases.

PRWeb didn’t like my original recession proof fundraising press release. Apparently it wasn’t self-promotional enough. I hadn’t wanted a self-promotional release!

Well, the PRWeb approved press release is live and available at:
http://news.google.com/news?sourceid=navclient&hl=en&ned=&q=recession+proof+fundraising

It was #1 when I last checked!

Listening to NPR this a.m., I heard an amazing statistic: 68% of Catholics in America feel they can live a God honoring faith without attending Mass.

This makes my earlier post on not focusing on attracting people to an but penetrating the community even more understandable.

It’s exciting to live at a time when more and more of Jesus followers are once again living their faith in their daily lives. I’m so glad “being a Christian” is getting divorced from merely “going to church.”

But we must not forget Hebrew 10:25:

…not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching…

We were never meant to live this out on our own. The big danger in our 21st century approach is that we’ll reduce faith to the “me and Jesus” mentality of the late 20th century. Oh, we’ll do it in a more sophisticated, sacramental sort of way. But it’ll still be an anemic shadow of the real, vibrancy of faith incarnated in a community of followers of Jesus.

That’s why at the Vineyard Church of Waterville we’ll always keep serving our community in ways the are relevant. And while we’ll always have at least one weekly worship gathering.

Isn’t it an exciting time to be a follower of Jesus?!

Now I’ve got to get to that worship gathering!

Last week we were blessed to have Darrell & Pippy lead worship, accompanied by their son Ian.

I’ve been told leading worship in a church plant is quite different from leading a worship team for hundreds of people on a Sunday.

Whatever the case, the McGuire’s were incredible and God’s presence was thick.

Ian even responded really well to my sermon. Smart kid.

Last week, I had a Star Wars marathon with my padawans. [Em was away on a retreat! ]

So we watched all six. Yep, all six.

This was the first time I’ve ever done it, so I wanted to do it right. Can you believe no one in Central Maine sells bathrobes in April?! Unbelievable. Not even the thrift stores.

So thanks to a suggestion from @chadnorman on Twitter, I decided to get fabric at Walmart. A head slit in each made for a fun Jedi costume.

Yep. It was a “cool daddy” weekend.

Quick, can you name the character we were impersonating below?

I dedicate this song to my friend Rich Gouette.

The song is The Hotel Dunkin Donuts starts:

On a dark crowded strip mall, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of Coconut Kreme, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a pink and orange light
My gut grew hungry, and my mouth watered, I had to stop for a bite
There she stood at the counter, I heard the drive-thru bell
And I was thinking to myself, this could be Krispy Kreme or this could be Hell
Then she picked up a powdered, and she showed me the way
There were voices from the back room, I thought I heard them say

Welcome to the Hotel Dunkin’ Donuts
Such a lovely place, such a lovely glaze
Plenty of room at the Hotel Dunkin’ Donuts
Any time of year, you can eat ‘em here

For the rest of the verses, and a mild feeling of sugary panic, go to Chad Norman’s blog.

Kudos to flowerdust for finding this great photo and inspiring some hilarious comments.

I’d hate to have cameras recording every second of my life but still, this is a hoot.

I’ve turned off comments here so that you can add them to the winners on her blog at: flowerdust.net.

Back when I did an interview with Sandra Sims, she came up with a list of resources I’d mentioned in our conversation.

Pretty amazing. I didn’t realize I’d mentioned all those books. (You can see the list at the bottom of this page.)

Last week, listening to Fred Gleeck, I got the idea of creating a listing of resources I use and constantly refer to. The result of that experiment is MarcSentMe.com.

Check it out. I’d love to know what you think.

Most of the links are affiliate links, do you think it would be nice to offer a “non affiliate” link option? Or am I just being too cautious?

Got an interesting email asking us about our church today. Seems blogworthy so I offer it here:

Hi, I visited your website and was interested in learning more about your church.

Do you teach directly from the bible and encourage people to bring their bibles to church.?

Is your church an extension of the toronto vineyard or part of that organization?
i.e. the “toronto blessing” in the early 1990s?

do you have altar calls each week and offer to pray over people to receive the holy spirit? and consider the holy spirit to be active in your church.

does your church believe in the rapture and that we are in the end times as evidenced by the the re-establishment of israel as a nation?

thanks for your time and god bless.

Here’s my answer:

Hi Aaron,

Thanks for the interest!

Your’s is the first such line of questioning like this I’ve received! I hope the answers come across well in email!

In addition, I’d strongly encourage you to listen to the sermons. We’ve got sermons for the last few years right on the church site. That will give you the best flavor. You’ll see it’s pretty hard to pigeon-hole us.

1. Yes. And we even offer Bibles for people to take with them.

2. No. The Toronto Blessing was a blessing to many, myself included. But the Vineyard (our denomination) determined that although it was a God-thing, it wasn’t “Vineyard.” We’re not about “bless me” conferences. We’re about reaching the lost, healing the sick, and serving the poor. That Toronto church ended up leaving our denomination over a decade ago.

3. Yep. The Holy Spirit is very active in our church. And I’m quite intentional about inviting people to join the journey of following Jesus. But this is where we get “hard to pigeon-hole.” Active Holy Spirit presence in the Vineyard isn’t hyped up and emotional. It’s often laid back. He’s always working, we get to participate.

4. We’re all over the map with end-times. Personally, I believe we’re in the end-times…and have been since the resurrection 2,000 years ago. Pre-trib, Post-trib, millenial, like the 12 disciples of Jesus, we’re all over the map with our views.

But we’re far more interested in being overwhelmed by Him and by “doin’ the stuff” (seeing people healed, demons cast out, prophetic words given, people drawn to intimacy with God, etc) than in nit-picking about our end times view. We’re amazed that He was able to pull together tax collectors and people that killed tax collectors…even in his inner circle. He didn’t spend the majority of his 3 years of ministry teaching on “end times” so we don’t either.

Another way we’re hard to pigeon-hole: we are open to anyone visiting BEFORE their life is perfect and cleaned up. Gay, straight, alcholic, non-alcoholic, gossip, busy-body, we’re open to them hanging out with us.

I don’t rant about sin. Sin is real and we need to confess sin as sin and get in line with God. But to focus solely on sin is to focus on the weeds rather than on producing the fruit. The only way we can be so sold on grace and mercy is that we know that sin is very real. Real enough that Jesus had to die.

But no one sin is “worse” than any other. Homosexual lifestyle is no worse than gossiping. Alcoholism is no worse than an addiction to pleasing people. I’m annoyed by churches that focus solely on the “gospel of sin management.” Generally, the sins that are seen as “really bad” are just the ones that “we’re not doing.” I may be a gossip and dishonest, but at least I’m not a _________________ (fill in the blank).

While hanging out with us, people bump into Jesus. Some sooner; some later. The Holy Spirit guides them to changing lifestyles. And we’re here to help. But whenever I try to be the Holy Spirit and convict people of sin, I invariably screw it up.

While I’m at it, we’re pretty pysched to be living in the 21st century and aren’t afraid of our culture. I love history and our present culture is no more or less depraved than ancient Rome (or any number of other cultures). So we experiment with Facebook and the web and podcasting. And seek out ways to interact pro-actively with our community.

Finally, as you can hopefully see from our website, our big focus is on showing God’s love to the community He’s called us too. Most everyone in our region has heard that God loves them. But precious few have seen Christians being loving. We’re out to change that!

I hope that helps give you a feel from where we’re coming from! We’d love to have you check us out.

Blessings!

Marc

Last night, our three year old Sof was being an incredible pest to me at dinner. She wouldn’t stop touching me!

Then I realized she was just trying to be funny! So we started having a poking fight at the table.

Em, seizing on this teachable moment, started comparing Sof’s interaction with me to her being a pest to Cale all day. “See, she just wants your attention. She likes you.”

Swelling with pride at how great we were at parenting–both playing at the table and helping increase filial harmony–I chimed in, “That’s it. She just doesn’t know how to express it appropriately all the time.”

A slightly amused but more indignant Cale blurted out, “By hitting me in my groin?!”

The teachable moment came to a screeching halt.

And he’s got a point. That’s just not right.

I chose not to tell him he even has biblical justification for his point.

Next time I might bring a bag of frozen peas to the table. Just in case.