Yesterday the Parks and Rec department of our town held the third annual food truck festival. We bought supper at the festival and then I volunteered to clean up when the event shut down at 9 P.M.
Today all that its left to show that a thousand people gathered in the park yesterday is the event tent, the portages potties, a flat bed that the Battle of the Bands used and the deflated bouncy house all awaiting pick up by the rental companies.
Today Amanda and I went for a couple of hours to help a church family with a move. Tomorrow I will preach the next sermon in our series from the Book Of Revelation.
Yesterday, today and tomorrow. Each day comes to pass. What remains is the relationships we build with each other.
In 2013 I was given an opportunity to be part of a project geared to bring our community together.
Our small committee of very diverse individuals representing several micro communities and various town boards in our town met for months trying to come up with a project that would bring the whole town together.
After several months we came up with an idea. Ingleside!
Ingleside was a 43 acre waterfront property owned by a local private school. We wanted the town to purchase the property somehow and to turn it into a gathering place for all the communities of our community. The dream was that it would come become a uniting place.
It took a few years and A LOT OF MEETINGS to work out the land deal.
Obtaining the land was just the first step. Clearing the land and turning it into a meeting point was the bigger job.
The shifts in ministry in 2018 meant I ended up leaving the committee after the land deal was done. My little part of the dream of Ingleside was done.But others picked up the gauntlet and ran with it.
Trails were blazed
Uniting points were created.
Last year a grant was obtained to build an outdoor amphitheater.
On Saturday I got to volunteer as an usher for the grand opening of the amphitheater!
Sometimes it takes a while, but dreams really can come true!
When I came on as lead Pastor of Cornerstone Church there was a lot to do. My task from God has been to renovate. The people of Cornerstone have been walking through a renovation of the spirit, a renovation of relationship and a renovation of our physical appearance.
WHAT HAS BEEN CONSUMING SO MUCH OF MY ENERGY LATELY HAS BEEN THE PHYSICAL RENOVATION OF THE BUILDING. I told the congregation that I had three initial goals for our physical building. I wanted to deal with the PINK (the dilapidated rug in the sanctuary), the STINK (the plumbing issue in our men’s bathroom that has long escaped diagnosis and makes the church smell bad when there are heavy rains) and the SINK (the parking lot we affectionately call the Cornerstone Himalayas).
We handled the PINK last summer. Our sanctuary went FROM THIS
TO THIS
This year we are dealing with the next two projects, starting withe largest. The SINK.
Our board has been planning for the last couple of months for the special business meeting of the congregation where we would have the vote to move forward with this project.
Now the real work begins: the signing of documents, the planning for ministry during construction, the work of communicating all that is going on to the Cornerstone community.
There is a temptation to just keep plowing ahead.
But I think it is important for all of us who are about to embark on this next great congregational adventure to take a moment and celebrate what we have already accomplished!
I intended o write sometime during the weekend, but it was a big random weekend and the moments for writing did not coalesce as I wished them to.
On Friday I had a load of washed stone brought for the patio and the end of my drive. Yay! No more two foot drop off the end of the gravel!
Also on Friday I decided to go up to see the progress on The Ingleside property, now the Winchendon Community Park. I was a part of the committee that spearheaded the purchase of this land by the town. It is amazing to see what it is becoming.
Saturday morning I started with another tour around the yard to get my bearings of what needs to be done…. a lot of work lies ahead.
Then I met my friends Ray and Deb and Paul and Dawn to help set up for the “Taste of Winchendon Fair”. This is a multicultural fair that is in its third year in Winchendon.
Once set up was done I headed home to do a few chores.
I went back later in the day to help with breakdown. I caught the end of one of the bands that was playing. Big Random is a band that does a lot of charity work for the town. The drummer is a local lawyer who actually helped me a lot with the decisions concerning Grace’s estate work.
I met my daughter an son-in-law and grandchildren at the fair and we hung out for a while talking with other congregational members who were helping out at the various booths. Then Ray and I helped break the fair down. The dessert table had a left over cake so I brought that home as a Mother’s Day treat for mom.
Yesterday was Mother’s Day. The flowers are from my sister Brenda. I got Mom chocolates. We got Wendy’s for lunch and then had naps. Naps are a Sunday necessity after church.
As I said a big random weekend at The Vicarage. Now I wonder if we will have a big random week.
It has been a very busy couple of weeks. This new series we are doing as a church has been taking a lot of prep time and prayer time
I am also finding myself emotionally spent from the preaching and teaching of it. It is really good stuff, but it is also very emotional stuff.
We are also coming up on a very important meeting with the congregation about our parking lot.
And we are in the midst of a relaunch in our town of the council of churches.
Sooo… yeah it’s a lot.
In the midst of it here are two really high points from the last couple of weeks
My daughter Amanda got ordained. Here she is with her mother, Tina, and younger sister, Melanie. She loves the photo ops, can’t you tell? Here is Amanda at her ordination banquet with friend and missionary Rev. Kim Ferguson.
And then of course the bunnies in the back yard are always a welcome distraction.
Between the ordination and the bunnies my heart is full.
OK folks, it is time for me to go pray. Big meeting tonight to plan for a bigger meeting next week.
Commander Andy, our outpost commander, for Royal Rangers boy’s ministry went out for knee surgery last week, and so I am filling in for the rest of the year. My son-in-law James is now the outpost commander. I am his second and a spare set of hands in ministry.
Last week James and I met to set up the next six weeks of classes for the boys. Last night I was assigned the task of the Bible study. I was to teach from Acts 1:8 and Acts 2:1-4
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues[a] as the Spirit enabled them.
One of the benefits of being connected with our fellowship is the opportunity for intentional spiritual direction.
Having a spiritual director or a spiritual presbyter, as they are called among us, is a new thing for our network. I have always had a presbyter, but the job descriptions of these pastors of pastors has been so broad and the regions they cover so vast it was always very hard to have deep connection with them.
My section is Western MA. I pastor the eastern most western church in a region that stretches from my town on the New Hampshire border all the way to the New York border and south to the Connecticut border. My presbyter pastors a church about an hour and a half from me in Wilbraham MA. He oversees 18 churches over a large territory with a variety of needs in very diverse communities.
My spiritual presbyter, Pastor Vinnie, is from Lynnfield MA. He oversees two pastors as a spiritual presbyter. His job has nothing to do with the running of our churches. His job is to help us personally and spiritually as pastors.
He calls me about once a month to check in. Our calls focus on how my spiritual life is going, what my personal struggles are and how I am doing with the work of God. I love talking with him and praying with him. We are building a relationship of trust and conversational confessional discipline. It is good for my heart and it is new to me as a pastor. I have not had this connection with a pastor before and it feels good. It feel healthy. It feels….hopeful.
I just finished reading through my comments from my most recent blogs (it is a habit I used to have that I am trying to reestablish). Sister Brenda commented, “if I don’t keep my sabbath holy who will?“
Sabbath is a part of a holistic life rhythm that leads to a Spirit-led life.
Some time ago God told me that “I needed to start allowing life to flow out of the prayer place rather than letting prayer be informed out of the living place.”
A rhythm of prayer flowing into living and then living flowing back into prayer, prayer being the source of the living rather than allowing living to be the source of prayer is necessary.
I am in the middle of a preaching series entitled, “Jesus Doing Life.” The emphasis of this study is on how Jesus worked through his various roles to build His community, the church. I am focusing on Jesus in His roles as:
AS A HUMAN BEING
AS A PRIEST
AS A PROPHET
AS A SERVANT
AS A TEACHER
AS AN ENCOURAGER
AS A GIVER
AS A LEADER
AS A WORKER OF MIRACLES
AS A HEALER
AS AN APOSTLE
AS A PASTOR
AS AN EVANGELIST
AS THE MESSIAH
It’s the final stretch. Today I am writing the sermon on Jesus as Apostle. Next week we will cover Jesus as Pastor and Evangelist and finally on Easter we will talk about Jesus as Messiah.
Amanda and I had an opportunity to travel to Wilbraham MA this morning for a gathering of pastors from the Western Region of the state.
We are preparing for our All Network Conference. So each region is meeting in the next two weeks to go over some of the ideas that are going to be at the forefront of our conference.
One of the things we were greatly encouraged in was the importance of our mission, not just our individual missions to our specific towns, but also our corporate mission to reach the world with the message off the Gospel.
This morning, at breakfast, I was talking with Mom about Amanda’s upcoming ordination. She will be ordained the Rev. Amanda Lillie in May.
At that point she will hold the most advanced credential in our church. I held my first level of credential for nearly 25 years without advancing and now that I have entered the second level of credential I have to hold that for two years before I can be ordained myself.
My mother asked why it took me so long to move forward and my only real answer was a lack of ambition. Always I have been more about the call than the credential. I have ministered and gone where I felt the Lord wanted me to go and very seldom have I thought about my qualification. Honestly, the level of my credential has seldom factored into the call.
I now pursue ordination in order to walk in obedience before my presbytery. It is an act of submission. Amanda feels the same. The call is the thing. The credential feels like an affirmation of that call in the eyes of men, but the call is the thing I must walk out before God.
Just now that call is getting very exciting as we prepare the church to walk in a deeper manifestation of the love of Jesus than ever before.
Notes From the Vicarage 