Month: February 2009

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our daily guests

our daily guests

this is probably not a big deal for most of you but it brings a smile to my boys and my faces each day.

one of the cool things concerning where we live is that while we are in a suburban area our backyard is connected to 20 to 30 acres of pine forest. there is a great deal of wildlife in those woods. we regularly see white tail deer a 100’ or so away from our house but they never seem to get any closer. that is until they found the corn that i put out for our squirrels (of which we have a large number of very fat, clumsy, and curious ones). now they have started coming into our backyard every afternoon around 4 p.m. it’s always easy to tell when they are there because montana, our oldest basset hound, goes crazy. in fact, noah has started calling her “deer alarm” instead of montana because you can pretty much instantly tell when the deer arrive based on the tone of montana’s barking.

i have always loved watching deer. i was never much of a hunter (fishing is so much better because you can release the fish) but i have at least been deer hunting a few times in my life. when i would be in a tree stand and see deer i would always have a very hard time pulling the trigger because they are just so beautiful. in fact, i was only ever able to pull the trigger once.

tomorrow is darwin day (the 200th birthday of charles darwin). for some people, on both sides of the fence, this is a huge thing. for some darwinism proves that there is no GOD, while for others evolution is a messed up theory that no true believer in CHRIST could ever accept. i believe both sides are wrong. for truth in advertising purposes i will let everyone know that i hold to an age/day view of creation. i don’t know the exact processes through which life came about on earth. yet when i see elegance and beauty in nature i’m not usually very concerned about about the exact procedure through which life came about. instead, when i see things in nature that make my “heart smile” (a saying stolen from a few of pam and i’s friends) i am more concerned about the “why” of life. why is life here? why are their moments of joy that seem to shout of something larger? why does beauty ring true? “how” questions are fine but i tend to think that the “why” questions are often the most important.

when i watch the deer that come and visit our backyard (a.k.a steal our squirrel corn) i am simply reminded that there is a great GOD of beauty and truth WHO loves HIS creation and wants to be in a loving relationship with all parts of it. however GOD created all that is HE did it for us to know, love, and enjoy HIM. I hope you do.

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employer identification number – complete

i’m posting this for any other church planters who realize they don’t know how to do this stuff. i spent the day trying to get an ein so that tapestry can start the process of getting a checking account. about half this morning was spent going through the online process for acquiring a number. the problem with this was that it requires a physical address. tapestry doesn’t have a physical address – part of the reason for this is because we don’t want the burden and focus removing aspects of a building. the online version requires a physical address. know that we’re not the first church to ever do this i knew there had to be a way so i searched all over the website. i found nothing.

so the second line of attack was to try my bank. i love the workers at our bank (associated bank). they are always very helpful. a fellow kiwanis is the manager of our local bank and i thought she might could help. she said she new exactly what to do because they did the all the time for local small businesses. we hit the same problem. after an hour and a half of trying we all decided to try again later.

the third line of attack was to call the ein phone number. i prefer to do things online whenever possible. i usually find that calling a government bureaucracy just ends up with me being lead through the same website info by someone who doesn’t care. i was wrong with the ein phone line. the representative i spoke with was nice and extremely helpful. 13 minutes and 53 seconds after the i initiated the phone call tapestry had its ein/tax id number.

who would have thought that i would be singing the praises of the irs?

wonder of wonders!

anyhow if you are planting a church, especially one without a physical address, just call the irs phone line for ein’s (1-800-829-4933) and skip the website.

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church planting "don't knows"

i love what i am doing. i love getting to be a part of GOD planting tapestry and doing some cool things with and through it. i especially love the way we started and where we are headed as a church.

  • we started around a series of tables – tables at emy j’s coffee shop and the terrell family dinner table are where all the initial connections of tapestry where made and strengthened. tables, and the conversations that they engender, are significant to us.
  • we are moving more and more toward our worship gatherings more accurately reflecting in a large group setting what happened and continues to happens at these tables.

what i don’t love is some of the organizational details that i am now having to work through. these are not things within tapestry but rather the workings of the governmental and business bureaucratic mess of creating a legal entity. i’ve found a few helpful written guides but i don’t really have anyone to walk me through these things. that’s actually why i am keeping a list of the things i wish i had known in planting tapestry. on of our goals in tapestry is to plant another church in 5 years. as a group we believe that GOD wants to grow us and keep us small at the same time. the way this will be done is by constantly planting other churches when we hit certain levels. so that’s the plan. when we hit around 150 we try to plant a new church (not another site).

anyhow, here are a few of bureaucratic things that i am trying to discover how to do:

  • obtain a tax id/ein number for tapestry – not even sure if these things are the same or if we need both or not or if we have to be incorporated or not to have one. all i know is that i have to have one to get a checking account for tapestry and it would be nice to have a checking account for tapestry so i’m not having to pay for everything out of our own account and then wait for a month or two to be reimbursed. COMPLETED 2/9/2009
  • open a business checking account with multiple signers – which requires the tax id number
  • obtain non-profit status – i think this actually happens with the completion of one of the other things on this list. all i know is that if people want credit for their gifts to tapestry this is a good thing to have.
  • start the process of incorporating
  • get all the insurance we need – this i actually think i will have a leg up on because of my previous insurance experience. of course, i can’t really start until the above stuff happens and thankfully we are covered by our sponsoring church.

there are other things that also have to be done but i won’t bore you with the details. if any of you are experts in the nature of doing this in wisconsin you are more than welcome to email me. i’m open to all sorts of help and if you don’t turn out to be very helpful i’ll still thank you and pretend like you are. 😉

all of this is really pretty sad because my undergraduate degree is in general business management. i’m sure that at one time in my life i could have told you what was necessary for all these things. that’s just not true now. also, since we are planting tapestry thought relational means i try to let conversations last as long as they possibly can and still be good. this means everything takes a lot of time. not a bad thing, in fact it is a good thing. of course, it often means that by the time i leave a business office i have already forgotten the information that i was hoping to learn, but i can tell you about the person i was talking with.

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the week in tweets – 2009-02-07

  • http://twitpic.com/1a9jt – Superbowl cooking has begun #
  • Who knew the Boss was so limber? #
  • I’m very thankful for a wife that proofs my work. Go Pam! #
  • The paper is mailed, my wife is great, and i now have 5 hours to prep for speaking at IV tonight while also watching Noah’s ball bball game. #
  • working on Amos, drinking coffee, and trying to figure out when I will remove the beanie from my head. #
  • @bsheets – the answer is “yes.” I’ll be flying to Louisiana for a wedding days before it and then driving from louisiana to austin. in reply to bsheets #
  • drinking coffee at Emy J’s, reading about the book of Amos, and listening to Ira Glass talk about stories. http://tinyurl.com/5ln7oh #
  • @joshuajones – good fences make good neighbors – so the question is “did your uncle give lance armstrong a good fence?” it’s important. 🙂 in reply to joshuajones #
  • http://twitpic.com/1bxr0 – My mom thinks the roads must be awful. #
  • It is always best not to mistake glue for hand lotion. Unfortunately I now know this from personal experience. #
  • @ZPdrummer – sure….this will last two weeks and then you’ll be off again. 😉 in reply to ZPdrummer #
  • I’m beginning to think that “Lost” may have “jumped the shark.” #
  • It is always best not to mistake glue for hand lotion. Unfortunately I now know this from personal experience. #
  • the dogs have now been washed – Montana no longer smells like corn chips. #
  • thinks it’s pretty bad when loud jazz in the earbuds can’t drown out the cries of the ticked off baby across the coffee shop. Time to leave. #
  • Dave Gibbons – Cross cultures relate more to your pain better than they do you success. #
  • It’s a little weird sitting upstairs in the living room while Adam and he’s girlfriend sit downstairs in the den watching a movie!?!?!?!? #
  • @Joshross – as far as adam is concerned me going down there is the something embarassing in reply to Joshross #
  • Anyone around Point have access to hair clippers, a baber’s cape, and/or a portable barber’s chair? I need them for Tapestry next Sunday. #
  • Noah just announced that when he gets older he wants to change his name to “Tom Selleck.” #

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curling smack

this is great. it’s a curling blog and about 3/4s of the way down this post they make the following statement concerning the video of me curling that i posted for arnold:

Come on Robert, your pal Arnold expects more than this …

that’s right my second year skills were trashed on by people that i don’t even know. i’ll admit that it was a rough night (we were killed – 12 to 2) but i wasn’t expecting to be randomly slammed by strangers. the curling world used to be so much nicer.

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one only time?

full-vue

my dad bought me the above spartus full-vue at a garage sell a couple of years ago. it has just been sitting in the “man cave” as decoration until today. i decided i was going to go out and take a view toy camera shots. the polar plunge was today and that is just the kind of event that calls for toy camera photos. since my lubitel is broken at the moment i used the full-vue and my holga. in a couple of weeks we’ll see how the photos turned out.

of course, this could be the only time the full-vue ever gets used because the crank for the film spindle broke while i was reeling the film through its last frame. makes me have mixed feelings about whether i want the photos to be any good or not. on one side of the coin i won’t feel like i really lost anything if the pictures are crap. on the other side it would be nice to know that i did get a couple of good shots from the thing before it died.

SIDE NOTE – as i said above the 2008 stevens point polar plunge was today. the boys and i decided at the last minute to go out and watch some of it. since the place where it is held is dang difficult for the terrell family to find (in other words, we got lost last year and this year) we got there right at the end of it. i’m contemplating trying this again next year. anyhow, here are two of the 3 photos i was actually able to take from the really crummy location we had.

DSC_0004 copy DSC_0001 copy

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gmail stickers

gmail stickers

i missed this before but apparently you can get free gmail stickers of you send a sase to gmail. stickers are good. here’s the link.

SIDE NOTE – i am constantly amazed that the "pregnant man," thomas beatie, keeps on being on t.v. and other media. i just don’t get it. beatie is pregnant because of a functioning uterus and two X chromosones. no amount of surgery or legal recognition as a man can change that. i don’t have anything against beatie, i just don’t get the fascination with something that i don’t think is in anyway a medical oddity.

SIDE SIDE NOTE – anyone around point have access to hair clippers, a baber’s cape (the thing that covers the front of your body when you are getting your hair cut), and/or a portable barber’s chair? i need them for next sunday’s tapestry worship gathering. if you have any of these items it would be helpful.

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this is for arnold

awhile back arnold commented that he wanted to see video of me curling. turns out it was a little harder than i had imagined to get. there aren’t many places on the curling courts that will support a camera off the ice and aren’t blocked by a human body during the match. the above is the best i’ve been able to get out of about 4 tries. this is also going on during the match so i’m a little busy doing other things. so here it is arnold, it’s a boring shot, but it’s the best i have for you at the moment.