here’s the monthly prayer email i send out to those who are praying on behalf of tapestry. if you do not receive this email and would like to please message me and i will add you to the list.
the final ad
f.a.q.’s
i’m continually updating tapestry’s website. at the moment i am working on making the f.a.q.’s better. i made myself laugh today by the answer to the question “what do i need to wear to tapestry?” here’s the answer
Clothes! You must wear clothes to everything that Tapestry does. We’re pretty strict about that.
What type of clothes you wear are completely up to you. We are all pretty casual in our clothing selections. Yet truthfully, as long as you are wearing clothes, casual or formal, you’ll get along fine.
adam and i have been sitting in the “man cave” thinking of adding some photo examples to get the point further across. the photos would be a punk rocker with the statement “ok” beside him/her. then we would add a person in formal attire and say “ok”. finally we would add a photo of adam or eve with fig leaves and say “pushing the limits”. the mental images made us laugh.
radio ad transcript
for those of you who are interested i’m putting up the initial script for our radio ad that will run on wifc & the valley. here’s the rough draft
[MX: ROCK!!!!]
[SFX: BIG ENGINE REV]
MONSTER TRUCK ANCR: SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! You’re gonna be BORED! BORED! BORED! You’re gonna hear PREACHING and LECTURING! You’re gonna sing the same tired hymns you’ve singing since you were 5 YEARS OLD! You’re going to STRUGGLE to stay AWAKE the entire time! OH YEAH! Church is gonna be AWESOME!
[SFX: BIG explosion]
[END MX AND SFX]
ROBERT: Or, maybe you could try a church that’s a little less, you know, church-y.
[MX: CURRENT POP]
ROBERT: A church like Tapestry Church in Stevens Point. At Tapestry, we believe that faith is about Jesus, not a building or old traditions. You’ll find someone talking with you, instead of at you. Who knows? You may even find that you like coming to church again. Hi, I’m Robert Terrell the pastor of Tapestry. If you’re feeling disconnected from your faith, see if Tapestry Church can re-connect you. Join us for Tapestry’s first service at 6 the evening of Sunday, September 14th at Washington Elementary School in Stevens Point. To learn more about Tapestry Church, visit us online at S-P-tapestry-dot-org.
the idea of the monster truck commercial makes me laugh.
“woven together in CHRIST” wallpaper
i “needed” a new deskptop wallpaper for my computer so i created this today while talking with the copywrite guy for the radio stations (94.7fm, 95.5fm, & 99.9fm) we are going to run tapestry launch ads on (by the way the copywriter was quite cool to talk with). since it costs me nothing to do this i’m placing the wallpaper up on the blog for anyone who wants it. if you need a reminder to pray for tapestry please grab the wallpaper. if you like the color green please grab it. if you’ve always wanted an image that interlocked “woven” and “in”, then grab it. you probably get the picture by now (no pun intended)
SIDE NOTE – talking with the marketing agent and the copywriter for the radio stations i realized something. i have been trying desperately trying to avoid some of the older catch phrases we use within the church culture, but the problem is that i’ve ended up jut using some of the newer catch phrases. by doing this i’ve actually made the message a little harder to understand. “holistic” and “missional” are great words but they were pretty much meaningless in my conversations today. in trying to convey to the marketing manager that our group believes that everyone is at a different part of their journey of faith and that churches should encourage that, i apparently conveyed to her that every religion was a way to GOD and all you had to do was choose your own path. woah! not what i meant to get across at all.
the experience was great. i have to unlearn some of the newer “church” words and simmer everything down to some easy to understand summaries. i wish i could get someone to critic my language and vocabulary once a quarter just to make sure that i am communicating clearly. that is excluding from my accent of course. that’s not leaving anytime soon.
tapestry nicaragua '08
we are back from nicaragua and my stomach is slowly but surely surviving my swap from nicaraguan to american food (major food changes always throw me off – much like my dogs). as always there is way too many amazing things for me to post them all. therefore, i will only post a few.
- the baltadanos are incredible – they are my friends and they are the ones doing all the cool ministry down there. we anglos get to work along side them and it is a privilege to do so.
- tapestry is incredible – i loved working and hanging with our group. they did amazing stuff and came up with some great new ideas. it is so cool planting a church with these guys and girls.
- we got to hook kilumbo up with water – the families that used to live in the dump have been moved 45 minutes away to an area called kilumbo. this is a mixed blessing. the positive side is that the kids no longer live int he dump. the negative side is their parents still have to survive off scavenging from the dump and that is a 45 minute walk away. along with this they didn’t have any running water and were getting sick constantly. you can see a photo of their water cistern here. pam found out about this and then as a group we were able to get them connected to clean water. that’s what the above photo is about. it’s the receipt from having them connected. that receipt will be framed and become a part of tapestry worship. there is something just plain cool about bringing fresh water to people while you are talking about the living water of JESUS.
- things are improving but we still have miles to go – this was my sixth year down there and significant improvements have happened in some areas. yet, there is still so much that can be done. tapestry is committed to kilumbo (which is a part of diriamaba). we are going to see life there improve. i am more and more convinced that with the baltadanos we can be a part of GOD doing something amazing.
- we suck at soccer (a.k.a football) – we always get our butts kicked. i will same that the diriagen game (the local professional team) we saw down there was incredible.
i’ll post more later but i need to leave emy j’s now and head home.
SIDE NOTE – i just finished talking with a local radio station’s ad guy and i think it is going to be possible for tapestry to buy some ad time on that station before we launch. of course, this is not a CHRISTian station because it would not be in our character to advertise to church people. we’ll be the only church advertising on their station (at least for the short time we advertise). we’re talking about doing an ad that is a cross between a monster truck rally and a church opening ad. just imagine “SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY!” it should be fun. 🙂
the report question
i’m presently in the air between chicago and new orleans and since i am very bored of reading turabian (writer’s guide of style) for my class tomorrow, i though i would post something on the blog.
each month i have to complete a report to send to the mwbc to receive my funding. it’s really no big deal because the questions i have to answer aren’t that difficult. truhtfully, i think the whole thing is done just to make sure that i actually am working on planting the church rather than just using church planting as an excuse for a paid year long fishing excursion. the first pastor i ever worked for said that ministry could be the easiest or the hardest job a person is ever involved in and that each person decides which it will be. i would say that this is even more true of planting a church. i could sit around and do nothing all day long until my funding runs out, or i can try to use every opportunity all day long, seven days a week to try and accomplish what i believe GOD has called our family to. hopefully, i done more than just sat around. i think i have. anyway i figure that the report that i complete each month serves two purposes: 1) it hold me accountable to actually be doing stuff, and 2) it shows a history of the birth of the church.
one of the question that i have to answer each month is “in what areas are you struggling right now as a church planter?” the question always intriques me. the main reason i find the question interesting because my struggles are almost always the same … fear.
most of the time i know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my family and i are doing what GOD wants us to do. in fact, i love doing what i get to do everyday. there are moments where i will call pam at the university just so i can tell someone about the small but great things that happen during my day that i am positive are leading to the planting of tapestry. i can see it happening. i’m convinced that GOD is going to do things thorugh the planting of tapestry that bring people to him. i’m convinced thi whole thing is going to come to pass and it will be amazingly cool. i see tangible things happening and real relationships growing that convince me more and more that we were right concerning what GOD wanted.
all of the above is true most of the time. of course, there are other times.
i don’t talk about the other times much. i don’t usually tell them to anybody except for pam because truthfully they scare me. these times always to bring to mind the old parable of human nature being two fighting dogs and the dog that wins is the one that has been fed the most. i don’t want to dog of fear to win, so i don’t focus on it much when it’s one of those times.
you see every now and then i start to freak out concerning what we are doing. the closer we get to september 14th (tapestry’s launch date) the more often i have brief moments of “what if i was wrong?” you see i don’t have a plan b. this is it. we moved up here to plant a church that honors GOD and that’s that. it would be a lot easier if i knew there was something i could fall back on, but i don’t. that’s what causes me to have moments of fear.
i don’t like those moments.
thankfully they don’t last very long.
usually doing these moments i pretty quickly see something that reminds me that GOD is in control and that he honors the work (no matter how pathetic) of those who agree to follow him. i’m real thankful for those things that remind me and i’m even more thankful that the moments of fear are few and far between.
calling volunteers?
i have a request for my wisconsin CHRISTian friends who read this blog but are already active in a church – would you consider being “missionaries” to tapestry for 3-6 months? here’s what i mean. it does the kingdom of GOD no good what so ever for me to encourage CHRISTians to move from one believing church to another. in fact, i would describe doing such a thing as basically evil. i have some wonderful friends around Point that are actively involved in some wonderful churches and i do not want them to swap to tapestry. i want them to stay where they are and help those churches in following CHRIST.
with the above said, we need a “critical mass” to begin our worship service on september 14th. it’s pretty intimidating to walk into a room with 6 people in it. it’s especially intimidating if it’s a church service and you don’t have a church background (the very people we are wanting to connect with). so we’re looking for some volunteers who will agree to come to our sunday evening services for 3-6 months to be “seat fillers” and maybe help volunteer in getting things working. i’m asking people to do this while always remaining loyal to their actual churches (every other church in town has morning services). once, we’re up and running i want these volunteers to slowly stop coming to tapestry (a mass exodus would be weird). once again the goal is to expand the kingdom of GOD, not reshape it. these volunteers will be hugely important for birthing tapestry but once we’re born they will need to go home.
we have a couple of friends who have already agreed to be a part of this, but i’m still looking for a few more.
SIDE NOTE – if you’re not already involved in a local church then this doesn’t apply to you. you are more than welcome to come and stay. 🙂
SIDE SIDE NOTE – one of the things i and the launch team have talked about is regularly paying a non-church goer to come and critique our worship services. we want to make sure that we are not saying and doing things in a religiously coded manner. the goal is for everything to be easily understood and grasped by people who have not been raised in a church. we jokingly call these idea “rent an atheist.” we’ll do it every 6 months or so. thanks to some friends at emy j’s we have our first reviewer for the launch service. she will come to the service with critical eyes and then report to the launch team the week after. i’m very excited about this.
august prayer email
rave card back
i’ve tweaked the rave card front a little (basically adjusted the sky & grass color) and i feel pretty happy with it now. here it is.
you can look at the original one here. i think the difference is pretty clear and obviously i prefer the newest one.
now it’s time for the back. here are the two 1st mock ups that i’ve worked on. there differences between the two are just in their wording. just click on them for larger (aka readable) views.
any thoughts?
i’m going to mull this over for a day or two, have through launch team look at them, and then order the cards & signs next week.