Author: Robert

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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. šŸ˜‰

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. šŸ™‚ 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. šŸ˜‰ 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 baberā€™s cape, and/or a portable barberā€™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. itā€™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 …

thatā€™s right my second year skills were trashed on by people that i donā€™t even know. iā€™ll admit that it was a rough night (we were killed ā€“ 12 to 2) but i wasnā€™t expecting to be randomly slammed by strangers. the curling world used to be so much nicer.

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a pano of adam’s concert last thursday

Adam's Band Concert

a pano of 4 photos from adam’s concert on february 5, 2009. you can’t see adam’s face (which is pretty typical because he definitely has a nack for hiding it when i am taking photos) but you can see his bassoon. he’s the bassoon on the right. itā€™s best viewed large. be warned it is a large file.

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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 ā€œman caveā€ 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 weā€™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 wonā€™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 ā€“ 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. iā€™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. hereā€™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 donā€™t have anything against beatie, i just donā€™t get the fascination with something that i donā€™t think is in anyway a medical oddity.

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

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tapestry monthly prayer email – february 2009

here’s the tapestry monthly prayer email for february 2009. if you do not regularly get this and would like to please let me know. i love that people pray for us. i am very grateful for those people.

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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 arenā€™t many places on the curling courts that will support a camera off the ice and arenā€™t blocked by a human body during the match. the above is the best iā€™ve been able to get out of about 4 tries. this is also going on during the match so iā€™m a little busy doing other things. so here it is arnold, itā€™s a boring shot, but itā€™s the best i have for you at the moment.

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used printer cartridges

today i found out that staples gives their rewards card holders $3 credit for each used printer cartridge they return (up to 10 a month). i would highly recommend everyone recycling their used printer cartridges. while, i personally recommend using a local paper company for your paper needs i am all for getting free stuff from a big box chain. therefore, i would always appreciate you buying your printer cartridges from a local company and then returning your used printer cartridges to staples while giving them the following rewards card number (or you can give them my home phone number – which i will gladly give you if you don’t already have it). the number is:

5606759016

sometimes milking the system is a good thing. šŸ˜‰

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the packaging is similar

they look similar

i have never been a lotion type of guy. i’m just not interested in regularly put moisturizing lotion on my hands or body. i’ve paid a small price for it but that has never been too big of a deal. i have dealt with a couple of calluses on my hands that have been directly related to my lack of skin moister. still it hasn’t been a major pain for me.

that was until we moved to the cold weather of wisconsin.

the weather up here dries me out and the only comfortable solution has been a regular application of lotion. i have a container that stays in my car and we keep plenty of different types of lotion around the house for putting on whenever we need it. the problem is that today i discovered that not everything that looks like moisturizer actually is moisturizer.

there were two containers of moisturizer by the phone in the kitchen and my hands needed a little. one bottle of lotion was one that i was used to but the other had a cool nozzle on it and i thought "well, i’ll try that." because of the nozzle the lotion came out smoothly, which was great because it was rather thick lotion. i rubbed that stuff in more and more. instead of spreading out and being absorbed all the lotion seemed to do was clump all over my hands. the more i rubbed the worse it got. that’s when i thought o read the bottle. i had been trying to moisturize with seam glue.

it didn’t do a very good job of moisturizing my hands but it did a wonderful job of making my hands sticky and stink for the rest of the day.