Category: tapestry

i’ll explain the above photo in a second – it has nothing to do with what i am about to post.

we regularly have guests at tapestry and i have the privilege of taking many of them out for coffee and conversation. i get to learn about their pasts and presents and find out about what types of experiences they have had with faith and church. today i had the opportunity to grab coffee with one of those guests. while talking with him he stated that he had always felt nervous when he went to a church service but that had not been true for the two times he had come to tapestry. for the first time in his life he was not nervous at a church gathering. that’s a compliment i was proud to receive on behalf of the group.

SIDE NOTE – i was cooking french fries tonight when i ran across this monster of a fry. as you can tell from their looks the basset hounds were rightly impressed.

first, above is the scene from “the mission” that i mentioned tonight at tapestry. it is my hope that 2010 is a year in which we allow JESUS to free us from the garbage we drag around.

secondly, i love the threads. after our gathering tonight i had three pretty important conversations with people. these took about 40 minutes. by the time i walked back in the gym/auditorium/”whatever we call it” every thing was torn down and put up and people were talking and goofing off (anthony was jumping on a mat and making it fall down which sacred me to death). i love knowing that i’m not really needed because it always seems that things are done better when i’m busy.

this is my hope for tapestry in 2011-12. never too early to dream!

drawing from vladstudio.

if you’re coming to tapestry this week i have a request of you. would you mind bringing something to tapestry that has broken, you’ve broken, or has just been in your way over 2009 and (this is the important part) you would like to get rid of. it needs to be something that you would be okay with it being destroyed or given away to someone else. it needs to be something that you don’t mind getting rid of – it’s even better if you really want to get rid of it but you haven’t been able to get rid of on your own.

i hope to see you sunday.

i’m pretty excited about how tapestry is celebrating CHRISTmas. last year we participated in advent conspiracy. we brought it into the worship gatherings and took up an offering for clean water through living water international. it was a great thing so this year everyone agreed to do it again and push it a little further. so for advent conspiracy this year we’ve decided to give the entire church offering through december 31st to provide for clean water (we’ll pay all our expenses through money we already have in the checking account.). the goal is to raise $5,000 to buy a well in central america. this is a big goal for our little church but we’re excited about it. we started last week and as of tonight we $925. woohoo!

SIDE NOTE – tonight one of my friends brought a guest to tapestry. the guest is originally from kenya. i immediately challenged him to a race because i’ve always wanted to say i ran with and beat a kenyan.

and now for yet another reason i love being a part of tapestry.

one of our guy’s life has changed dramatically over the past 18 months (i will call our friend “fred” from now on). he was doing some things that are no longer who he is. a girl that he “hooked up” with over 18 months ago called him to tell him that he was the father of an 8 month old baby boy that he didn’t know about. surprise.

fred’s son lives with the girl back in fred’s hometown in the upper peninsula of michigan. this is around 5 hours away. fred wants to be the best father he can be, supporting his child, spending time with him, and generally fathering. therefore he drives back to his hometown every weekend to take weekend custody of his son and then he drives back to point for school to go to uwsp on monday mornings.

so he sent a message to me asking if tapestry could pray for him. he wasn’t sure how everyone would respond but he really wanted people praying that he would be a good father to his son. i passed it along he got more than he asked for … in a good way.

the next day i received a phone call from someone asking for fred’s address so they could send him a gas card to help with all the travel. this quickly moved from a gas card to a gas card baby shower. fred came over to pam and my house thinking he was coming for supper and was surprised with a male oriented baby shower (brats, root beer, etc). some groups might have responded in judgment but tapestry responded with an awesome night of grace and love. it was a terrific night.

yesterday i received the following message from fred:

I cannot express how much the congregation of Tapestry means to me. As much as I appreciate the many gifts, I appreciate something else much more: friendship/family. People who are already counting pennies giving up money because I needed it, brings tears to my eyes. When I told my parents, my mother was crying and I was fighting the tears at the party. I am proud and thank God for each and everyone from Tapestry. I LOVE YOU ALL!!

tonight after a few weeks of talking about it with tapestry we all decided to celebrate CHRISTmas by redirecting the entire church offering during the advent season. every dime that comes into tapestry while we are discussing advent conspiracy will be spent on providing clean water for people in a central american village. none of the offerings given during november 22nd through december 27th will go for tapestry’s own expenses. i just felt that the most CHRIST honoring thing we could do during the celebration of HIS birth was spend all our offerings on others in need. thankfully tonight the threads of tapestry agreed with me. in fact, this is going to have to be a bit of an extreme offering for us because the funds necessary for a complete well are more than we typically bring in during a month. to be successful we’ll have to give more than we’ve ever given before. it should be quite cool.

it is nice to be connected with a group of people who are more interested in taking up a special offering to provide clean water than they are in taking one for a building or to meet their own desires. it should be an excellent CHRISTmas.

i’m excited because i think tapestry has beaten walmart to starting our CHRISTmas advertising – i’m not completely sure because i don’t know if walmart has started placing out CHRISTmas stuff yet but i don’t think they have. two sundays ago we started talking about advent conspiracy for 2009. i told everyone this week that after two weeks mentioning it i would give it a little rest and then bring it up again in november BUT that did not include my blog (because here i get to talk about what ever i want to). so here’s yet another friendly reminder concerning how we are going to try and celebrate the birth of the SAVIOR.

• give more presents than we did the year before WHILE spending 1/3 less on those gifts – this means making the gifts more relational in their nature (i.e. making them, changing their nature to be something more personal than commercial, etc.)
• spend half of the 1/3 we saved (i.e. 1/6 of what we would have spent on CHRISTmas before advent conspiracy – thanks casey) on some way of celebrating those we love (i.e throwing a party, incredible food, etc).
• spend the remain half of the 1/3 we saved on providing clean water for the world.

i haven’t discussed this with anybody at tapestry yet but i think my personal goal for tapestry is that we provide enough money for a well in central america ($5,000). this would be a huge chunk of change for our little community of faith but i think that if the leadership gets behind it we can do it.

so once again let me repeat WE probably BEAT WALMART TO CHRISTMAS!

one of the things i like the most about tapestry not having a building (besides the obvious one of it constantly reinforcing to everyone that the church is not a building) is the fact that it redefines what some churches call “church work days.”

a lot of churches have these. it’s a day were all the church members are asked to come and work on the church building – cleaning it, improving it, maintaining it, etc. i don’t really have anything against them except for the fact that it is yet another day where resources (time, energy, money) are focus on a building instead of on people. it’s easy not to do this when you don’t have a church building to work on 🙂

instead, when we have a “church work day” it involves helping one of the threads. saturday, august 22nd is such a day. jan r. is moving into her new home. starting at 10 am some of us are going to help her move. i personally hate moving myself but for some strange reason i love moving other people – yes, i know that makes no sense.