Marc’s Musings

We have primaries here in Maine tomorrow. We have an incredible privilege in getting a say in how we’re governed.

So vote.

For information on the referendum on tomorrow’s ballot, go to:
http://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/upcoming.html.

There are other great resources at: MPBN.net.

I’m loving using Twitter.com!

It’s so much fun being limited to just 140 characters per blog post. And it’s really neat connecting with people on it.

If you’re on Twitter, feel free to follow me at: http://twitter.com/marcapitman. (You can also go there to see the micro-blogging I do, like my pre-church and during church tweets!)

We’re having a blast at WDW.

Our vacation blog is: http://pdv2008.blogspot.com/.

Photos, commentary, and more!

Yeah, I know we’re supposed to be vacationing. But we’re blogging because we want to try the “blog slurp” feature of Blurb.com to make a book of our vacation.

Okay, so I’m realizing merely joining the Romans8movement group on Facebook didn’t make me memorize the chapter.

It didn’t even help to print out the chapter from Biblegateway.com.

So today I’ll start reading Romans 8. I bet that will be an important step toward memorizing the chapter!

Kivi Miller tagged me on a meme passed on by Jeff Brooks.

I don’t usually play these. In fact, GMail knows to automatically delete forwarded emails.

But something about this intrigues me so here it goes.

Here is what I am supposed to do:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

The nearest book is Katya Andresen’s Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy to Sell Just Causes.

Here are the appropriate three sentences:

And it cost us nothing.

Q: What’s a favorite example of your work in forging unusual partnerships?

A: The Union of Operating Engineers wanted to improve minority recruitument for jobs in the field and to raise the profile of the union and its members in our community.

Delightfully out of context, isn’t it? She goes on to tell of a partnership with them and Head Start.

Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy to Sell Just Causesis one of the best books I’ve read in a while. And I read a lot of books! Katya knows marketing and this book can help all fundraisers do what they do even better.

Like Kivi I think I’ll tag a couple Twitterati.

• Chad Norman
• Lisa Downing

I’ll also tag:

• my wife Emily
• the book’s author Katya.
• and my guest on today’s Ask Without Fear radio show, Gayle Roberts.

IE isn’t “remembering” my Google settings anymore. I’m having to log in each time.

Other programs are remembering my cookies just fine.

Can anyone help me figure out what I should change?

And can anyone tell me if I can get my IE tabs to be on the bottom of the screen?

This morning I was running around the house almost frantically looking for my watch. I knew I’d had it at the gym but it wasn’t on the bathroom counter where it should be.

I checked everywhere: my wrist (in case I’d put it on), the bathroom (I’d put my glasses back on but why didn’t I put on my watch?), the kitchen (even under the bananas!), the living room (twice), jackets I haven’t worn in a while.

Everywhere.

I even pulled up the sleeve of my right wrist to show Emily that it wasn’t there.

I’m now at work. I just started to check today’s date by looking at my watch.

As I saw the date on my watch, I realized I where my watch in my left wrist. Always have. And it’s been there all along.

*sigh*

I love the NPR news quiz Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me!.

I often am not listening to a radio on Saturday’s at 11 a.m. so I’m thrilled to find out all of the shows are available for listening from the web.

As a result, I’m having a hilarious afternoon!

The show’s web address is: http://www.npr.org/programs/waitwait/

While I won’t send back the money I’ll get as part of the “stimulus” package, I strongly dislike tools that are designed to “help” our economy by getting Americans to spend even more money. With these rules, if we use the money to pay down debt or to increase our savings, we’re harming our economy.

*sigh*

So I was amused to see Cal Thomas’ comments on the stiulus package as reported in our local paper:

Thomas, who makes frequent appearances on Fox News, … also called the economic stimulus package, which calls for sending checks to taxpayers, “a joke.”

“People are going to be given money borrowed from the Chinese to go to Wal-Mart and buy products from China,” he said.

Today, Emily and I shared with everyone that we are closing the Vineyard Church of Waterville.

You read it right.

We’d asked our board about just closing down Sundays. Attendence has been declining over the last 18 to 24 months. Offerings have always been below what is needed. As a pastor, I was concerned for the team. There was no “bench” to draw from. We encourage all levels of leadership or oversight to be looking for the person they’ll pass it on to. But there aren’t those people.

Here’s a graph of our weekly attendence, each year in a different color:

You’ll note two things:

• The 2007 trend line is going in the wrong direction. It’s going down. And 2007 was lower than 2005 or 2006.
• The purple line is 2008. It’s lower than any other year.

I also showed them this image of last year’s offerings and this year’s.

The red line is the barebones budget, less in 2008 than in 2007. What this doesn’t show is that our average monthly tithes and offerings were twice this, around $4000, in 2005.

But other things are going well: our budget course is attended by people from our church and guests. People have been healed and demons have been cast out. And servant evangelism is going through the roof:

Clearly, our church is having an impact far beyond our numbers. And we continue to find amazing favor in our community. But something’s not connecting to make this attempt viable.

I’m so glad to be part of a movement. People wiser than us and in authority over us have been recommending we get some rest. We’ve been working at this very hard for the last 3 1/2 years. Now is a good time to take a rest.

In telling this to one of our leaders, I commented, “I don’t feel I need a rest.” She asked me, “Isn’t that the time you should rest? Before you’re totally burnt-out?”

So we’re closing VCW 1.0 on Sunday, May 18. The old sign is already down.

Then we’ll all enter into a period of rest. My family will go to our sending church, the Vineyard Church of Lewiston, a couple times each month. We’ve been encouraged to go up for prayer every time we can. (No matter what the call is for! ) We’ll go to the Vineyard East Regional Conference in July. And we’ll rest and play.

Resting is so foreign to American Christians. But it’s pretty biblical. This is like a Sabbath. It’s stepping back to move forward. Steven Covey calls this “sharpening the saw.”

“Suppose you were to come upon someone in the woods working feverishly to saw down a tree.

‘What are you doing?’ you ask.

‘Can’t you see?’ comes the impatient reply. ‘I’m sawing down this tree.’

‘You look exhausted!’ you exclaim. ‘How long have you been at it?’

‘Over five hours,’ he returns, ‘and I’m beat! This is hard work.’

‘Well, why don’t you take a break for a few minutes and sharpen that saw?’ you inquire. ‘I’m sure it would go a lot faster.’

‘I don’t have time to sharpen the saw,’ the man says emphatically. ‘I’m too busy sawing!’

So many churches are to busy sawing to stop and re-assess.

Interestingly, as I share this with the people I feel called to, they instinctively “get” it. And it makes sense to them. Hopefully this will help us build even more credibility!

At some point toward the end of the summer, we’ll begin to regroup. We’ll be articulating our vision as pastors. We haven’t really ever done that. We’ve always articulated our vision in the context of the reality of having a building. Phil commented that we’ve been planting this church from other people’s vision. So true. Now we’ve been here for a few years and have a heart for the people and the region.

We’ll also do a hard assessment of the first plant. We certainly want to identify what wasn’t working so we don’t bring that into the next plant!

And we’ll begin meeting with our team–who ever is left in Waterville, the board (all in Lewiston), and other people. We’ll be hammering out our strategy for a launch, which we hope will be Easter 2009.

Then we’ll re-engage. We’re planning on starting a good kinship in September. And are expecting to start monthly gatherings in October (6 months before the launch).

Even with the sadness of putting a church down, I’m pretty excited. I know God’s not through with us here in Waterville. And He’s giving us a chance to plant the kind of church we’d want to go to. We’ve always wanted to plant a church

• that is experiential, not just a head-trip
• that attracts artists, not just reads about them
• that inspires community and inter-personal connections, not just talks about them
• that minsters to people knowingly following Jesus and not knowingly.

To hear more, and many of the questions that I think are good to ask, listen to Emily and me talk about it during today’s sermon Closing the Church: Rest, Regroup, Relaunch.

This isn’t a neat and tidy process. We’ll be unpacking it over the remaining three weeks. As in today’s sermon, I’ve asked Adrian Monk to walk us through the stages of grieving. Just click on this image:

Please be praying for us and the people that call VCW their home. And the people that will call our next church plant, Waterville Vineyard 2.0, their home!