Here is my next ten minute letter. That is right I am trying to add an atomic habit to my life by writing these letters as a part of my daily devotional regimen. Mostly I want to have some record of how this project advances at The Vicarage…for posterity of course.
I never in a million years I would be in charge of building projects as a minister. But here I am doing a major renovation on The Vicarage and major renovations on the church. It amazes me how God has prepared me for this through all the house projects we did as a family when you kids were little. I didn’t really have anything to do with them as far as the real construction. We all know that was your mother, but I at least learned how to work around those projects and I am putting the skills learned then to good use now.
Deconstruction of the bathrooms started yesterday!
Dear Family, Well we at The Vicarage are in another transition. The next phase of our project has begun. We have moved next door to The Vicarage Annex and the construction crews have arrived today to begin the tear out.
Gram has been dealing with a great deal of anxiety with the move and the project. Pray for her. I am really excited to see what the place will look like when everything is done.
I am hoping during this season to become more faithful to updating this blog. My goal is 10 minutes a day of writing. I guess the project has more than one objective. I hope to overhaul the home space and I also hope to gain some new habits in the process.
Let’s see what the changes actually look like in the days ahead.
I am so looking forward to you and your parents moving here to Winchendon. I am hoping you make it for the fall. It’s one of the most beautiful times of the year here in New England.
I do often wonder what you will really find when you get here. I remind your father often that The United States is not the country he lived in six years ago. So much has shifted. So much has changed. It has been even longer since he lived in Winchendon or New England for that matter. I think it is 13 years since he has attended Cornerstone Church. And we have changed.
We are smaller now than when he left.
We are also more relational.
When you come Sevy you will find us a people of the Word.
In this regard I am not even the man your father knew when he lived with me. I crave the prayer space now. I am often afraid people around me find my lifestyle boring. I hope you don’t find me so when you get to know me.
Maybe it won’t matter what is happening in the big wide country so much. Maybe the real beauty here has nothing to do with our seasons or even our culture at large. Maybe the real beauty and what you and your parents will find attractive about this place is the love our community has for itself and the people around us.
First, thank you for taking prayer for me again this week as I stepped away for a few days of vacation! I know you have had a very busy time with all that is going on in your family. I pray for you guys daily as your wife works from Florida to help her Mom after the passing of Paula’s Dad.
I really appreciate the hard work you are doing for our church. Thank you for leading the worship of our church in its new direction. The team led model we are using is so empowering for our congregation. I love the opening up of the prophetic voice we are experiencing. Cornerstone is becoming this beautiful tapestry of gifts and voices being woven together by God’s hand.
This week as I took a bit of time to step away and gain some perspective the Lord has been showing me how I must begin to restructure my schedule. He has been speaking to me about some new practices of life which will involve sacrifices of me in the days ahead.
Someone last week mentioned to me that in order for God’s dreams to come to their fullness there must of necessity be a sort of a death of the dream. I don’t fully understand this yet, but my prayers and meditations this week have been about that. I know there is a letting go coming in order to grasp onto what comes next.
This may all sound rather sullen, but I am coming to see that it is not! It is hopeful because we have waited so long, as a congregation, for the promise to be fulfilled. I am convinced that is about to happen. But it only comes when we let go of what we have known to enter into that which is new!
I look forward to the pathway in front of us as a church.
Well it would seem like 2022 is starting off explosively right from the blocks. The world is changing around us and the Kingdom of God is coming more clearly into focus with each new sunrise.
Here at the Vicarage I am learning the year’s rhythm…figuring out how to accomplish the new thing God has given me to do in life and ministry. That one thing is moving from DLT behavior to DLT character.
I don’t think we really know how to make this shift as a congregation, but I ask confident God is going to show us how. I believe that everything God has put in the calendar is a tool to help me/ us learn just how to do that: Our studies, our opportunities, our trials, even the upcoming Vicarage project and my first ever sabbatical coming in August.
And a big part of me learning to collaborate is me getting out of the way so God can use others to accomplish His purposes. I think one of my passages for the year is Ephesians 4: 11-13 “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
Now that right there is collaboration!
I am so glad that things on your end of the pond are moving as fast as they are here. I love the new car!
I am also glad that lockdown has pulled back far enough for you to launch the first Bridge artist gathering!
It really is amazing how fast the years go. It seems like just yesterday I was watching you play in the backyard of The Vicarage (we didn’t even call it that then) in a pile of leaves. I remember a small dust devil came and whipped the leaves up into a circular whirlwind around you. It’s a picture forever etched into my mind.
There have been lots of dust devils , whirlwinds and outright tornadoes since then and somehow we have walked through all of them and we have come out on solid ground. Watching you grow into the minister you now are has been one of the great privileges of my life.
I loved the sermon yesterday. The unity and flow our staff is experiencing at Cornerstone is so amazing to watch. The picture God is giving us through the Word being preached is just so amazing. I cannot wait to see where He takes us all in the days ahead.
I know almost no one calls you that little one. Most people know you as Abigail.
But that has never stopped our family from coming up with our own names for each other. Most people will probably always call you Abigail. Most people call me Pastor J. Most people call your Aunt Pastor Amanda. But you ‘Lella and Sevy call me “Oz” and you all call your Aunt “Francine” instead of Auntie. So I will call you “Yve”.
I think having secret names for each other is very biblical…..Revelation 2 does say, “Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.”
Who knows maybe “Yve” is your secret name from Jesus….probably not….but I could be being prophetic again. It has been known to happen.
I am so glad that your parents have chosen this point of life for you to move here so that I can see you grow, so that I can be part of your lives from such an early time in your growth.
I am so glad you will know me and Francine and Great Gramma. I am so glad you will grow up knowing Winchendon and the Vicarage and especially Cornerstone Church! There is so much living to do yet and we get to do it together.
My goodness! How time is flying. When I was younger I always heard about how time went faster the older you got. I never believed it, but now I know it is true.
It seems like just yesterday we were picking flowers in the gardens at the Vicarage. But that was months ago now. Today we are getting ready for our second block buster storm of the year. Your dad is getting ready to get stuck any work again, I imagine, and we are all knocking ice out from under the wheels of our cars so they don’t shake when we drive. Those are minor hardships of winter.
I suppose some people think that your old Oz is just a guy who hangs around waiting for Sundays so that I can preach my piece and then sit down on Monday to write my next Schtick. But this season really does move ministers into action.
I was in prayer this morning when one of our congregants called to borrow heaters from the church, for their garage, which was full of water from a burst pipe. Next on my agenda, as the storm approaches I have to get groceries for the Vicarage and for another lady in our congregation who is shut in. Then there are the calls to make to several of our elders whom I have not heard from since our last storm over the weekend.
Y’know ‘Lella this job…it’s busier that any other job I have ever had, but there is so much joy in it…. I can’t imagine doing anything else. I hope when you grow up you can find the joy I have in your life’s calling. I guess that is the message. Don’t just work a job. Live out a calling. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it unto the Lord.
How much have your priorities changed over the past twenty years?
In answering that question I think I have to say the priorities haven’t really changed. The way I go about them has for sure. The main thing is still the main thing. But the way I live out the main thing…that has changed tremendously.
In the “old-timey” days an appropriate farewell as you sent loved ones on their way was “Godspeed” or “Godspeed your journey”. In the ears of a younger J that phrase actually sounded like “May God help you to get things done quickly. May God speed you along and help you get lots done.”
I am guessing that I am not alone in that inaccurate transliteration of the Victorian Good-bye. It actually means “May God prosper you along your way.”
The problem with my interpretation of the phrase is that God doesn’t speed. He’s not fast as some consider fastness and He is not slow as some consider slowness. Speed….for that matter time…. doesn’t really figure into His equations. It’s not that He is not conscious of time. It’s that He is in control of it and so it really doesn’t mean much to Him. What does mean something to Him is purpose. God’s speed is determined by what He needs to accomplish not by how much time He has to do something in.
Twenty years ago I was a young pastor. I had a lot of “ideas”. I was pretty sure that God wanted me to do all of them. It’s not that I actually asked Him about my ideas. It’s just that I was sure my ideas were good ideas and so they must assuredly be God ideas. So I set about serving Him out of my ideas and for good measure I even added in a bunch of ideas other people had (even though they really hadn’t talked to God about their ideas anymore than I had). I loved God so, I got busy. I got distracted. I got lost in the shuffle of good ideas and eventually life hit me with a giant pause button.
Twenty…plus years out from that young whippersnapper I am older and hopefully wiser. I have learned to wait in prayer over my “good ideas” realizing that most of them are not God ideas. I still love God. I am still busy just with fewer things. I have learned or am learning to clear my plate. I am learning to live by a rhythm of prayer, rest and work. I am learning I can’t do everything. And I am learning that God’s speed is about His purpose not about how fast something gets done.
I am learning that, like our project at The Vicarage: The delays in life are just as important as the forward momentum because in them, we delayed individuals learn how to be human beings rather than human doings; Everything is about seasons that bring change and completion; And that if I wait long enough beauty begins to emerge from the mess, not all at once but piece by piece.
I have also learned that sometimes serving God is as much about taking a small dog on a walk through the leaves as it is about building a house. God speed is about God’s plan not mine, about God’s pace changing mine.
If you have been following along, you know that we have been planning a big home renovation project for the Vicarage for the last several months.
The supplies for the shingle project, the gutter project and the painting project all arrived a few weeks ago.
The windows are 4-5 weeks out…I imagine they are stuck on some boat off the Pacific coast right about now along with so many other folks stuff. Supply chain problems…Yay!
Things were supposed to start on Monday, and then Tuesday and then Wednesday…but RAIN! The rain stopped yesterday and so the construction team was finally ready to go for today and of course this was my day of big meetings. Then I got a call from a pastor I went to dinner with on Monday and found out…yep I have been exposed to COVID….No symptoms, but my doctor suggested that because of the closeness of the contact I self quarantine until I can get a test. That cannot happen until Friday afternoon
Here’s the thing God knew in advance that all this would happen. The product delivery….the permit delays….the rain delays…and the COVID exposure. As I look at it these next two to three days are perfect days for me to be forcibly stuck inside to help Mom as the construction crew tears the outside of our house off.
THIS WHOLE THING is God simplifying my choices.
Here’s the question I have to ask myself. Why does God not trust me to simplify things for myself? OUCH!
Notes From the Vicarage 