MINISTRY

A Calling

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I love what I do and I love the way I am doing it now.

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Getting here has been a life’s journey. I have always felt called to this thing called ministry (well since I was twelve anyway). The calling is necessary. The calling keeps you going when you don’t love what you’re doing or the way you’re doing it.

Honestly, there have been many times I have not loved the ministry. There have been even more times when I did not love the way I was doing ministry. I thought about giving it up more than once. I even tried it a couple of times. The calling did it’s job and called me back.

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I’ve had jobs before. I’ve even had what I would consider careers before. The ministry is not either of those things and I guess it’s both. It is a calling. It has a job component and it consumes more than enough time and energy to qualify as a career. Still, there is more to it more than job, more than a career. Ministry has an element of destiny attached to it, a hope a predestined future.It’s not a fate you can’t escape, but a direction you shouldn’t try to escape.

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I have embraced the call, I have made peace with the call, I have come to love the call.

Ministry is my call, my destiny. What is yours?

EXTRA PAGES, EXTRA PRAYERS IN THE HALF LIGHT

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The sky has been dark with clouds all day. At nine this morning I was turning on the lights in the house against the twilight. The thunder has been sounding in the distance and rain has been washing the flowers and streets throughout the day.

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I was planning on working outside today. Instead I have been getting extra pages written and extra pages read and extra ideas studied and extra prayers prayed. Every day has advantages. They just need to be found, accepted and exploited.

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

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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.

Sometimes It Takes a While

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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!

Destrangling the Vicarage Part 1

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Those who have followed “Notes From The Vicarage” will remember that last year at this time our family was living away from the Vicarage as it got much needed surgery for survival into the future.

We had the pipes torn out and replaced; The shingles torn off, new insulation put up and siding put on; The bathrooms were gutted to the studs and remodeled; The floors downstairs were refinished; Eight windows were replaced; The sills were replaced and the trim painted; And the stone porch which was falling down was removed.

As an afterthought we ended up having to replace all the pipes from the house to the street, and then the town had to come in and replace the pipes from the edge of my property to the center of the street..

As it was all happening I kept reminding myself, it had to get worse before and got better. And it did get better. We love the Vicarage and the work that was done inside.

This year we will be working on the outside.

It turns out tearing down a three-quarter- of- a -century old stone porch and digging up your yard not once but twice is not good for the landscaping.

Parts of the Vicarage are barren moonscape and others are…. well….. Strangled.

So as we get ready for upcoming fencing and masonry work to get done. I am starting to destrangle the Vicarage.

This might not look like much yet, but at least now the mason will be able to get to the disintegrating pillar.

A MOMENT TO CELEBRATE

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I haven’t been able to write much over the last few weeks. Oh, I have had the time. I haven’t had the energy.

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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.

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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.

Sunday was the day.

We presented.

The church voted.

We are getting a new parking lot!!!

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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!

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HUZZAH!

A Big Random Weekend

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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.

Between Bunnies and Ordination

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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.

STUDY IS THE WORD

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Studying is a big part of my job. Weekly I prepare for three services and five videos.

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I am almost always just keeping up with the reading my life requires. I have always liked study and so to have a job that requires me to discipline myself to that work is such a blessing.

Currently I am leading two studies dealing with life’s offenses and a study for young men through the Book of Acts. This morning I sat down in front of the computer and went item by item through all the material for my Sunday sermon, my Monday class and then my Tuesday class. After that I finished off video number five for my on line devotional.

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I try to spend a bit of time each day on each class I have to teach each week. That way the material stays fresh in my mind and has time to deepen. Each exposure to the material drives me further into understanding. Cramming causes me to forget and leave out so much when it comes to the actual teaching.

I don’t usually get to go over the material everyday, but the goal is a good one to shoot for. and it keeps driving me to grow in this discipline of study.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR STUDY RIGHT NOW?