STRENGTHEN THE NETS

October 24, 2022October 24, 2022 / joseph elon lillie / Leave a comment

One of the prophetic words our congregation received during our recent period of pastoral sabbatical was, “STRENGTHEN THE NETS/ MEND THE NETS BEFORE THE TIME OF HARVEST OR THE FISH WILL SLIP THROUGH THE HOLES.”

Jesus said, “follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” Gospel of Matthew 4:19

I am currently taking all the words that the church received from God during the month of August and diagramming them into a sentence that will lead us into the future God would choose for us.

This word about “mending the nets/ strengthening the nets”, really has me thinking, “What do we need to do to strengthen and mend our congregational net?”

The thought has really put our recent preaching into a new light. Our current series Is called, “THE STEPS IS OURS. THE POWER IS GOD’S.”. The campy title is actually tied to a banner we once bought for the front of the church. It was supposed to read….

THE STEP IS OURS. THE POWER IS GOD’S.

An unfortunate typo got us the former banner instead of the latter. But it also got me thinking that for our congregation maybe there is more than one step.

As I prayed back in August God showed me three and then four:

THE STEP OF FAITH

THE STEP OF HOPE

THE STEP OF IDENTITY

THE STEP OF LOVE

Four steps into our future selves. Four steps to strengthen and mend the nets. Four steps to become the fishers of men we are meant to be.

WHICH STEP SPEAKS THE MOST TO YOU?

FOUR HOURS

October 20, 2022October 20, 2022 / joseph elon lillie / Leave a comment

On Sunday after church I had a wonderful opportunity to drive to Hartford Hospital to visit two of our parishioners who had been placed there for treatment

It is strange how health care is changing here in the Northeast. I have never had to go to Hartford before for a pastoral visit, but for some reason there were no beds in MA or NH to be had for what these ladies needed treatment for. One of them actually had to travel 3 and a half hours by ambulance to get there.

But I am a firm believer in the fact that God knows what He is doing and He has the people of our church in the palm of His hand.

The roundtrip drive to Hartford is 4 hours. It was a beautiful trip accentuated by autumn colored roadsides. I wish I had thought to stop and take some picture but these photos are near enough representations to show you the beauty I was driving through.

I seldom have four hours to myself. So the time to drive and talk with God was absolutely welcomed. I talked with Him about adjustments He is bringing to my life schedule. I asked Him about the upcoming pastor’s gathering at the Cape and how I am going to best use those hours. I listened to Him to hear what He would say about my next sermons on the step of love, and I prayed for the needs of several folks in our congregation who are sick like these two ladies.

The visits accomplished their God-given purpose and the time on the road did too. I am so thankful God gave me this extra time.

HOW DO YOU USE TRAVEL TIME?

BY INCHES

September 30, 2022 / joseph elon lillie / Leave a comment

Last weekend was incredible. Brenda, Amanda and I attended week two of our four week training in a leadership track called The Atomic Habits. The training its about changing small things to bring about atomic results.

My biggest take away so far is that behavior is not changed primarily nor permanently by goal setting but by aligning our life systems with our chosen identity. In other words “live like who you want to be.”

The class has been reaffirming so many things I heard over sabbatical about the man I need to be into the future, and about the church we need to be into the future.

One of the verses that has been echoing through my brain these last two months is 2 Corinthians 5:17, which says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:The old has gone, the new is here!”

I have been doing a lot of thinking about what I really look like as a new creation I am:

To live according to Faith, hope and love.

2. I am to live according to joy

3. I am to live according to peace.

4. I am to be mindful of building and advancing the Kingdom of Heaven through my life.

5. I am to be mindful of living according to the way and power of the Spirit.

Photo by u00d6mer Aydu0131n on Pexels.com

The knowledge, that the seeds of all these things have already been planted in me by Christ at my new creation, has really been challenging me. The knowledge that, like all things that grow my entrance into these things will be by inches, had been comforting me.

It all leads me to the question, WHAT ONE LITTLE THING CAN I CHANGE NOW THAT WILL HELP ME TAKE A STEP CLOSER TO WHO I REALLY AM?

THE LINCHPINS AMONG US

September 29, 2022October 5, 2022 / joseph elon lillie / Leave a comment

In my sermon last Sunday, I mentioned “Linchpin people”. God has been speaking to me about these folks in our communities quite a lot in the last week.

These are the people in our community who create the network, the web of relationships, the unity. They are the connectors among us.

In an increasingly broken world,

These folks can be the unifying factor.

We need to pray for these folks. There are not many of them and they run the risk of being distracted by things that frankly are beneath their created purpose. I just have this sense that if these people can get ahold of their “super-power” they just might be able to turn a bit of the tidal wave of destruction that is rushing towards our shores. You know the one I mean.

THE ROAD AHEAD

September 21, 2022 / joseph elon lillie / 2 Comments

One of the purposes of sabbatical was to create for myself and my congregation a season of prayer in which we could discover the road ahead. I went into sabbatical asking God to give me and the rest of our congregation “words” that would direct our future.

As I have come back I have made it a point to meet with everyone of the DLT (Doing Life Together) groups around which are church is grounded. I have literally a whole room full of notes. The walls in our conference room are plastered with large post it sheets.

The staff and I have n’t had time to discern all of the common words that have been spoken but a few are very clear:

Fourteen people in our congregation heard the word “PREPARE”. Usually this word was coupled with the idea that there was trouble coming or something hard we needed to be ready to face. Over the course of the last week I have come to understand that this word needs to manifest in three ways. We must prepare physically, emotionally and spiritually.

“LOVE” was another word prominent in every group I met with. Interestingly the emphasis was never on God loving us. The word “LOVE” as it was spoken to the congregation is a word of action and the action is ours to perform. Further we are being called not just to love people within the church but to love all people in our community, especially those who think and believe very differently than we do.

Our world, even our church world, is struggling with the road ahead. love and preparation are twin struggles which must be engaged and figured out if we are to move forward. My church seems ready to engage ion the struggle.

WELL THAT DIDN’T WORK

September 19, 2022 / joseph elon lillie / 6 Comments

When I came off of sabbatical I thought I had changed my life rhythm enough that I would be able to handle writing once a week. My plan was to do that on Sundays directly after church.

What I didn’t think about was that I had scheduled myself to hit the ground running as soon as I got back from sabbatical and so the old habits of rushing from one thing to another came rushing right back in on day one of my return to work.

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The last two weekends I have double booked myself after church with events that kept me running right through Sunday evenings. By the end of said events I was practically comatose all the way through. Monday, my sort of day off.

So I have to make another plan, because my original plan of writing a whole week of material on Sundays will not work.

Enter the Atomic Habits.

This is a training I am having our church leadership work through over the next few weeks. The premise is that large change starts by making miniscule moves in the direction you want to go. So here I am working on plan B for this new writing journey. I am going to try starting with 5 or 10 minutes a day.

Let’s see if this works.

Is this what you do or do you have another method?

SINCE WE HAVE BEEN HOME AND SABBATICAL

September 5, 2022 / joseph elon lillie / 1 Comment

Dear Friends and Family,

The transition home has been more difficult than I dreamed. It totally shifted my rhythm and left me in a place where writing was not even a possibility.

The place of creativity got shut down for a while and for that short season I really thought I might never write again.

Then sabbatical arrived in August.

Sabbatical is not vacation. It’s an extended season of shifting life rhythms, visioning and asking questions of the future you. I didn’t go anywhere during my sabbatical. I shut myself away in the Vicarage and prayed. It was wonderfully renewing.

So I am back writing about life and ministry. I will probably do one life post a week here at “Notes”. My schedule hasn’t changed all that much but some of my time wasting habits have, so I can make a few minutes each week now for things like this which will have long term benefits. who knows how it will grow?

DEAR FAMILY-TRANSITIONAL ANXIETIES

June 13, 2022June 13, 2022 / joseph elon lillie / Leave a comment

Dear Family, We have successfully moved out of the Annex and back into The Vicarage.

Good bye Annex! You were a wonderful place to rest our heads for the nine weeks we could not be at home! Thank you Webster and Li for opening your home to us!

Thank you Brothers Remodeling for getting is back into our home!

It’s funny. I thought we would just walk back in and settle right into our old routines. I don’t know what made me think that, but it is definitely not a truth.

Mom has gone through transition anxiety in a big way. The house is not the same and she knows it. Lots of confusion. Little sleeping and lots of psychosomatic pains. While she did not need anxiety meds when we left The Vicarage and moved to the Annex, she has definitely needed them on the return from the Annex to The Vicarage. Sometimes she is not even sure where we are.

Then of course we are also not done the project. There are still little things inside that need to be done: a shower nozzle to be installed, a glass surround still on order, window locks that never got put back on after painting and a few outlets that still need to be replaced and turned on.

And then there is the last big job of the moment.

It was a bit noisy on Saturday and will be for the next four days I am afraid. But at least we are back in and working through our transition anxieties. We are home.

DEAR FAMILY- GETTING IN

June 7, 2022June 7, 2022 / joseph elon lillie / Leave a comment

Dear Family, Since completing the class on Appreciative Living at Beals Memorial Library here in Winchendon. I have been fascinated by the concept of “journey living” versus “destination living”. Journey living is the idea that we have a destination in mind but we really live for the journey because we realize that each destination is just a temporary stopping point on a much larger journey.

This week the Vicarage project wrapped up and so we reached a destination of sorts and found ourselves ready to go home.

We packed our bags…literally our bags.

and started cleaning. It was at this point we realized our destination was not a completion but just the beginning of some new journey I think we will call the continual road to home improvement.

As we got back in and got set up…Thanks to Ray and Barry Parker for helping move the necessary furniture into place and The Bag End Beam DLT group for coming in to wash all the woodwork….we realized that there is much more to do. So first we sat and just enjoyed the newness of our home. Then, as I walked through our home I began to realize that much of our old stuff is going to need a new home. It does not fit with the new Vicarage.

I started unpacking our bags…again they are literally bags…. so as I went through it I began deciding that some of what was in those bags should just stay there and go directly to the dumpster. Other bags I began to empty. Those bags will be used for laundry and for filling with other stuff from other rooms that never made it into bags to go to The Annex with us.

The journey ahead promises to be just as long as the journey behind and I believe that the results will be just as fulfilling.

DEAR FAMILY- STILL FINDING THAT RHYTHM

May 31, 2022 / joseph elon lillie / 1 Comment

Dear Family, One thing ministry has taught me over the years is that there is never a perfect rhythm than meets this lifestyle and stays with it.

The song of my life and ministry does not and never has conformed to a standard beat. It keeps changing meter and speed and no two days are alike and no two days in any given week are alike.

Oh, there are standard big rocks which go in my schedule every week: Sunday morning church, Monday Men’s group, Tuesday Morning staff meeting, Wednesday senior staff meeting, but each of those big rocks is effected each week by all the different things that go on around it. Those other things are like the water that moves around and through the rocks.

Some days the big rocks are met by a trickle and the and the stream is happy, peaceful.

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Other days those rocks are all but submerged in a torrent I can hardly keep ahead of. I suppose it is the same for everyone and my particular experience of life is simply in the context of ministry. But I do think that people looking from the outside in consider that somehow my experience as a pastor is different from theirs and that life for me is one long private prayer time.

The truth is I do get at least three hours a day in prayer as a general rule. But I have learned that the only way to do that is to make it a big rock and put it at the head waters of each days river. If I choose otherwise my rhythm become a wild dance that ends in a stumble.

I still stumble a lot. But I am learning more and more how to avoid it and for that I am very appreciative.

Notes From the Vicarage

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