Month: April 2012

Posted on

growing small

 

i’m pretty sure that i have guest preached at this church before. i have definitely driven 45 minutes before to preach at a church that had 8 people at it and has had around 8 people for years. while i am most assuredly a small church guy that doesn’t mean that i believe churches should stay small by never adding anyone. in fact, i believe the exact opposite.

tapestry is small. most sunday nights there are 45-50 threads at washington elementary school. we also plan on staying small but emphasize growing. we are very intentional about staying small and growing at the same time.

we are doing this by knowing that as we grow we also plan on splitting to form new churches. it is a concept that i bring up often with the leadership team and the church. our magic number is 150ish in average attendance. tapestry stole this concept from the hutterites, an anabaptist community, and from my brief experience with a group of churches in philadelphia called the circle of hope . i am a big radical reformation guy so the hutterites are a particular draw for me. anyhow hutterite communities look to split when they hit 150ish. the insulated wear company gore-tex also practices this mindset. the idea is that people can only truly know and connect with 150ish people (no matter what facebook says) and therefore groups work best at around that number. the anthropologist robin dunbar talked about this in the principle that is commonly known as “dunbar’s number.”

so 150ish is our split number (btw, i love saying split with people who have been raised in church because it draws a very different image for them – they usually prefer the word divide but i really like saying split). that number leaves us plenty of room to grow right now. we started 3 years ago with an average of 8. we’ve slowly grown by focusing on people who weren’t connected with a local church. we will continue to grow by focusing on people who are not connected with a local church BUT the goal is not to stop when we get close to 150ish. nope. the goal is to grow while staying small (i guess you could say “growing small”). we’ll just split and form a new church that reaches a different group of people. we’ll be “sister” churches that still do many things together while also reaching people who might never connect with tapestry at washington. then the fun will really begin because we will hopefully do an even better job of “growing small” when there are two tapestries. i hope years from now there are dozens of us intentionally “growing small” churches in the area.

again the goal is to grow and stay small. not just stay small.

SIDE NOTE – the graphic comes from asbo JESUS. i love that blog.

Posted on

eric’s music

eric glaze usually leads music at tapestry on sunday nights. he has started posting a video every now and then on youtube of some of his own song writing. the one above is the first of three i know are coming up over the next few weeks. i told him i’d definitely buy an album of this stuff. i hope he decides to make one.

i thought i would share it with you ladies and gents and encourage you to “like” his facebook page so that you will know when he posts more songs.

i love that we have talented people as “threads.”

Posted on

the cyst has been removed

on the way to the vet

after almost 1 1/2 years of pam and the boys saying over and over that we should remove the cyst on montana’s back i finally gave it and had it removed today. don’t worry folks i take good care of my dogs. it is just that the cyst is just an encapsulated oil gland that was causing no harm to her. it isn’t pretty and people who saw the cyst for the first time usually thought that it was some sort of cancerous tumor but it really wasn’t harmful to her so i felt no real need for us to put her through surgery to remove it. after all it is merely a cosmetic issue.

so i let it sit on her back for a long time. it got a little worse every day. it began to reach a point where our vet said it really needed to go. so i gave in and montana had surgery today. turns out it had become infected so it was really time for it to go. she pulled through fine and is back to her gorgeous self only with a really tough looking scar now.

here are before and after photos. montana will have the staples in her incision for 21 days. then everything should be back to normal.

basset girl before surgery basset girl after surgery

of course, pamela wanted to see the cyst so i asked the vet if he could save it for her. she’ll be thrilled when she gets home. i, on the other hand, want to throw up.

the cyst

Posted on

project point

point map handout

tonight at tapestry i talked from mark 8:1-10 concerning JESUS feeding 4,000 men (plus who knows how many women and children). the major focus of the message was that JESUS wants to do HIS work through those who claim to be HIS followers. it is called incarnational ministry (i.e. GOD working through HIS people to do HIS work). as a part of the message i passed out maps of point with the request that everyone there mark down every act of service they do this week because of CHRIST. this next sunday we will have a large map of point in the room for threads to mark down their acts of service on for us to see everything that has happened this week because of JESUS in our lives.

if you weren’t at tapestry tonight please consider printing out the map above and joining us in purposefully doing as many acts of service as possible this week. please mark your acts of service down on the map and come next sunday prepared to put them on the big map. it should be cool to see what happens.

Posted on

the pray for point churches experiment

one of the things i came away from Q with was a desire to start praying for a different point area church each week. this wasn’t actually a part of Q but something that hit me from one of the presenter’s “throwaway comments.” so here’s the list of all the point area churches in the yellow pages and when i will be praying for them. all you threads are welcome to join me in doing this. i’m thinking of sending the prayed for church a card or a note each week and i am considering placing the card on the back table at tapestry each week so that any thread who wants to can also sign it.

4/15/2012
4/22/2012
4/29/2012
5/6/2012
5/13/2012
5/20/2012
5/27/2012
6/3/2012
6/10/2012
6/17/2012
6/24/2012
7/1/2012
7/8/2012
7/15/2012
7/22/2012
7/29/2012
8/5/2012
8/12/2012
8/19/2012
8/26/2012
9/2/2012
9/9/2012
9/16/2012
9/23/2012
9/30/2012
10/7/2012
10/14/2012
10/21/2012

good news fellowship church
apostolic bible church
frame memorial presbyterian church
community church
st. bronislava catholic church
st. peter catholic church
seventh day adventist church
st. paul united methodist church
st. stanislaus catholic church
woodlands church
st. joseph parish
berea baptist church
redeemer lutheran church
first english lutheran church
celebration church
greater point baptist
highland church
st. paul lutheran church
evergreen church
divine word lutheran church
good shepherd lutheran church
plover united methodist church
hmong alliance church
grace baptist church
peace united church of christ
first baptist church
church of the intercession
st. stephens catholic church

so why is this an experiment? well because i’m not sure what the result will be? will i be changed? will tapestry be changed? how will these churches respond? i have my thoughts but i am not sure.

SIDE NOTE – if you find yourself wondering about the obviously random order of this church list the answer is that i didn’t want to pray for them alphabetically. therefore i put the list through a random generator to mix up the order. 🙂

Posted on

q debrief

IMG_2380

i made it back home form DC for Q last night. i have about 40 pages of notes in my journal that i need to go through to fully debrief. my thoughts on what i learned and experienced this year will probably make it up on my blog eventually. for now i’ll just post some quick final thoughts concerning my three days in washington.

  • why do this conference the week immediately after resurrection day? i am worn slam out. holy week was pretty busy and then leaving the monday immediately following kicked my butt. i am pooped right now. should make for a fun weekend catching up.
  • big ideas and questions matter. one of the things that i have loved about Q the past four years is that it has consistently made me ask questions like “what do i mean by that?,” “why do i think that,” or “what is …”. i am still challenged by two presentations that i heard four years ago (one on nuclear disarmament and the other on the education reform) that were from two very different ideologies (one quite liberal and the other quite conservative) because they both asked the same question in different ways. the question i heard was “we have thought this way for 50 years without many asking what if it is wrong or if there is a better way … so what if we are wrong or there is a better way?” it has been challenging to me in how i lead tapestry. we’ve done church this way for a very long time. what if it is wrong?  pamela posted her thoughts on “less learning, more thinking” which i think is very similar to my thought concerning big ideas mattering though she does a better job of writing and therefore you should go read her thoughts. you should pretty much read everything she writes.
  • i really want to do something like Q in stevens point. i think it is something that would really connect with our community and i believe we have the resources in point to do it. between the university, our local businesses (sentry, travelguard, and noel, and smaller startups to name a few), our thriving arts community, and our churches i think we can put on a day of wonderful presentations concerning faith and culture that would be thought provoking. i have started asking a few people who’s opinion i really trust to consider this to help me determine if this is a good thing or just something i want to do.
  • i’m not a very good tourist without pam. when we go on trips she does a great deal of planning on what we should see and when we should see it. though i am sure i don’t say it enough i am very thankful for her tourist planning. i wouldn’t see and experience half as much without her. without her on this trip i spent most of my free time in DC sitting somewhere around the washington memorial, eating hotdogs, and people watching. i’m really pretty boring without her. of course, my thoughts here exclude the great devastation of the pre-chicago marathon tourism of ‘09 which i am convinced slowed my marathon time by 2 hours. 🙂
  • i think this was the last Q for me for at least a little while. i need a new conference to help me to think in some different ways. i’m not sure what conference i will do next year so i am open to suggestions. i’ll also add that Q being in los angelos next year made this decision a little easier. Q takes a lot of personality from the host city. this year in washington was VERY different from last year in portland. i have no interest in what i think will be the flavor next year. sorry to my friends who love the area but southern california and i are not great friends.
  • for me miroslav volf’s comment that GOD should always be our end and not merely our means was probably the most powerful statement of the conference. how often do people, do i, employee GOD for our own goals? how often do political parties do this? how often do churches do this? often we functionalize our faith by treating GOD as a butler WHOSE purpose is to help us reach an end that is not HIM. in fact, those ends are often religious ends which makes them even more deadly because they resemble the character of GOD but they are not GOD. when a means becomes an end it becomes a false god no matter how good its original purpose is. thus such religious ends become merely idols that resemble the true GOD. they are the most dangerous false gods because they are more difficult to spot as idols.

where i ate lunch most of the time  miroslav and me

Posted on

q day 2

basic thoughts from day 2

  • “youtube theologian” was my favorite term of the day. it was used in connection with the “i hate religion but love JESUS” video that was so popular in the past year.
  • good theology hits every part of life. miroslav volf talked today about the fear of GOD and its connections with how to live the good life. it was great. made all the more impact sense i am presently reading his work “embrace and exclusion”. good stuff.
  • the church has to get more involved in immigration reform. how we treat the “stranger inn our land” is of huge importance in scripture. if we are followers of CHRIST our attitude and approach to this issue should be determined by scripture.
  • the moral case for free interprise by arthur brooks was very interesting if for no other reason than his statement that “the moral argument will always overwehlm the material argument.”
  • i need to read some abraham kuyper. how have i missed this 19th century theologian.
  • there sure are a great number of “beautiful people” who come to and present at Q. makes me feel out of place.
  • three things i have already come away with are 1) i need to start work on a sabbath retreat for tapestry similar to what i did with youth at parkview in baton rouge, 2) i’m interested in getting together with a group of threads to read the new testament over 8 weeks, and 3) i need to start praying for all the other churches in point more purposefully. i think i am going to pick a different church each week and encourage tapestry to join me in praying for them.

i guess that is it for now.