Month: July 2008

i have a request for my wisconsin CHRISTian friends who read this blog but are already active in a church – would you consider being “missionaries” to tapestry for 3-6 months? here’s what i mean. it does the kingdom of GOD no good what so ever for me to encourage CHRISTians to move from one believing church to another. in fact, i would describe doing such a thing as basically evil. i have some wonderful friends around Point that are actively involved in some wonderful churches and i do not want them to swap to tapestry. i want them to stay where they are and help those churches in following CHRIST.

with the above said, we need a “critical mass” to begin our worship service on september 14th. it’s pretty intimidating to walk into a room with 6 people in it. it’s especially intimidating if it’s a church service and you don’t have a church background (the very people we are wanting to connect with). so we’re looking for some volunteers who will agree to come to our sunday evening services for 3-6 months to be “seat fillers” and maybe help volunteer in getting things working. i’m asking people to do this while always remaining loyal to their actual churches (every other church in town has morning services). once, we’re up and running i want these volunteers to slowly stop coming to tapestry (a mass exodus would be weird). once again the goal is to expand the kingdom of GOD, not reshape it. these volunteers will be hugely important for birthing tapestry but once we’re born they will need to go home.

we have a couple of friends who have already agreed to be a part of this, but i’m still looking for a few more.

SIDE NOTE – if you’re not already involved in a local church then this doesn’t apply to you. you are more than welcome to come and stay. 🙂

SIDE SIDE NOTE – one of the things i and the launch team have talked about is regularly paying a non-church goer to come and critique our worship services. we want to make sure that we are not saying and doing things in a religiously coded manner. the goal is for everything to be easily understood and grasped by people who have not been raised in a church. we jokingly call these idea “rent an atheist.” we’ll do it every 6 months or so. thanks to some friends at emy j’s we have our first reviewer for the launch service. she will come to the service with critical eyes and then report to the launch team the week after. i’m very excited about this.

here’s the august edition of the monthly tapestry prayer email i send out. if you would like to receive this in your inbox each month just email me and i’ll add your name to the list.

thanks for praying.

i’ve tweaked the rave card front a little (basically adjusted the sky & grass color) and i feel pretty happy with it now. here it is.

you can look at the original one here. i think the difference is pretty clear and obviously i prefer the newest one.

now it’s time for the back. here are the two 1st mock ups that i’ve worked on. there differences between the two are just in their wording. just click on them for larger (aka readable) views.

any thoughts?

i’m going to mull this over for a day or two, have through launch team look at them, and then order the cards & signs next week.

i’m now researching the next big tapestry purchase. truthfully i’m about fed up with buying large items for tapestry, i would much rather use our resources doing something good rather than just buying more equipment. yet i guess this is a part of it all right now. anyhow, we will be meeting in a gym so the lit up ugliness factor of the room is pretty high. i want to reduce this ugliness factor by controlling the lighting and thus i am looking into buying portable lighting. the key concerns here are that the lighting needs to be a good value, rugged, portable, and dependable.

i know next to nothing about lighting (i put some up in the parkview student center and it worked but i think that was luck). right now i’m looking at this set up, the mbt weekender dmx. it’s $823 plus $110 in shipping. oh how i hate spending money like that for lights. still i want to hide as much of the gym ugliness as possible and lighting seems to be the best way to do it.

so blog readers who know a thing or two about lighting (phillip & chester)  lend me your brains. is this a good buy? too much lighting? too little? we’re not going to be doing much with lighting (other than hiding gym ugliness). on and off is a must, dimming would be nice but it’s not essential.  i don’t want to spend any more than this and i would love to spend less. any suggestions?

i’m in the process of having to produce signage for the inside and outside of washington elementary when we are in the building. right now it looks like group imaging is going to offer the best deal for portable and easy to put up signs (but i’m very open to other companies if someone knows a better one).

anyhow here are the two 3’x7’ signs that i will probably be ordering for inside the building. these come with an easily collapsible stand.

any thoughts?

here’s what i’m looking at for the portable sign for outside. it’s 3’x9’ with grommets. woohoo!

this is just some tapestry admin stuff. these are photos of washington elementary school, the facility we will rent for services on sunday evening. i’m just putting the pictures up so the launch team can dream a little concerning what we can do with it.