Category: tapestry

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a little wall help

walls

the above image is my very simple design for a wall we can write on in tapestry over the next four weeks. the idea is that we will have places to write & draw examples of life defeating death. i want something that has some solidness to it. i had thought about using easels and sheets of paper but that’s not really as solid as i would like and easels and large note pads are pricey. therefore, i am toying around with the idea of taking two hollow core doors ($26.95 each), placing shelf brackets ($1.47 each x 4) on each bottom corner, and then painting them black (for a cost of $32.83 each excluding black paint which is 94¢ a can). i think this will give me a couple of sturdy “walls” for people to write on. an added benefit is that i should be able to continue to paint these things and use them again and again.

of course, i am open to suggestions. anybody have a better idea? i will gladly swap to something better.

SIDE NOTE – the yellowish tint of the scanned image is the paper of my moleskine.

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the new use for the light

indoor gobo

i’ve posted before about the gobo sign that tapestry uses for outside identification when daylight savings time is not in practice. now that daylight savings time is happening we don’t need the gobo outside (because it obviously won’t work in the daylight) so it has been given a new home that i like. it is now working inside the gym. the above photo is what it looked like sunday. i know it’s basically meaningless but it makes me happy.

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oh how i wish

i became facebook friends with a guy who visited tapestry this past week. he seems to be a pretty nice guy. anyhow looking on his wall on monday he made a statement concerning visiting a “radical church” which i am going to assume is tapestry (i have no way of knowing how many churches he may have visited on this past sunday so this could easily be another church). here’s a screen shot of his status line and the comments made under it (the names have been blurred out to protect the innocent).

status-line

so based on my assumption that he is talking about tapestry i want to make two comments.

1st, OH YES we definitely do need to be a church of people wearing “sweet 80’s pants and jean jackets.”  i lived through those days and would probably still be wearing all that stuff if it wasn’t for pam. i’m sure i still have some parachute pants and a member’s only jacket or two at my parents’ house. hmmmmm, good times. of course, we would also have to force people to wear some of those great bill cosby sweaters – lots of bold colors equals lots of fun.

2nd, i truly hope we can become a church worthy being considered “radical.” i think JESUS pushed the limits and the powers responded by hating HIM (and still do). GOD’s freedom, grace, and absurd love seem to cause that type of reaction. i hope tapestry can truly follow CHRIST in that manner. i once heard someone say the following (i can’t remember who to give credit to)

that all the apostles were imprisoned, beaten, chased off, lied about, and killed by the powerful and the religious for how they followed JESUS. when we go through the same things it may indicate we’re actually doing a decent job of following HIM.

i hope we one day merit being considered “radical” (80’s slang or not) in our faith.

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tapestry haircut

the audio quality sucks but this video is the beginning of me cutting off jesse’s hair for the message on amos 2:6-16 at tapestry last night. jesse was a beast for letting me do this. his hair was so thick that my normal cavalier approach to things accidentally inflicted pain on him. i wasn’t able to finish his haircut during the message but i did finish it during the last two songs of the night. my favorite moment is at the end of the video when jesse says that his hair is so thick because he conditions daily.

here’s what it looked like afterward.

the finished haircut

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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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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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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. 😉

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a couple of tapestry things i'm pumped about

there are a couple of things in development that tapestry will get to be involved in that i am really excited about. i thought i would share them with you:

  • RESURRECTION SUNDAY!! – i’m pretty pumped about tapestry’s first easter and i am also thrilled with the way that the leadership team has decided to celebrate it. we’re going to practice a little resurrection. for the next several weeks the tapestry family is looking for things that are dead within our community. the reason for this is that that we are going to be a part of JESUS bringing life back into these things (i.e resurrection). that’s what JESUS does and what we believe HE wants HIS people to do … defeat death with life.
  • gigs/alpha groups – gigs (groups investigating GOD) and alpha groups are two different approaches at doing the same thing – providing a question friendly way of people considering the claims of CHRIST. we are looking into doing these. i am very excited about us beginning these.
  • touched twice united – a very cool ministry model through wellness clinics. what i meant by wellness is medical and beyond. we’ll get to be a part of these in stevens point with several other churches.
  • film and faith – evergreen and intervarsity are going to be doing some seminars on film and faith at uwsp and al (the pastor of evergreen) is nice enough to let us in on this. we have some pretty cool pastors in point.

i don’t know when we will get to start each of these (except for easter) but i am thrilled that we will get to start them. tapestry is fun.