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 strikes me that it is time to have some new family portraits done. I am scouring my database for a picture of the four Franklins and I am having trouble finding one.
and finding one. of the current James is nigh on impossible. We have to get us some pictures of the whole fam in its currency.
I am so glad that you are here in Winchendon with us now. While it certainly puts you folks farther from your work, seeing your faces in church every week and being able to be together for family events is doing my heart so much good.
I know too Gramma is enjoying having herm great granddaughters around. I know she will probably never admit it but they are one of her few joys remaining.
Honestly I don’t think Gramma would have allowed anyone else to touch her adult coloring pages never mind turn them into a carpet into the kitchen. I am so glad you have chosen this place to live. Thank you for making and old man’s heart so glad.
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.
You two really amaze me! You have accomplished so much in your very brief time as husband and wife. I am so proud of you! I am also so glad that you are looking into the possibility of moving to the U.S.
God had spoken to me in one of my prayer times last year and told me to start preparing the Vicarage. I am not surer exactly why, but I do think your return is one of the reasons for the preparation.
So I have started to prepare.
The project continues in April with new gutters and the stone porch repairs. We are also going to redo the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms.
I bought a new mailbox yesterday. I am trying to do little steps everyday to make the house ready for your coming.
I am getting Gramma ready for the move to the next door neighbor’s house. We are so blessed that the neighbor has agreed to rent to us for the eight weeks we have to be out. By the time you get here it will be a whole new house.
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.
We have not met in person yet, but I hope that is soon remedied. I love seeing your little face on Messenger every time I talk with your parents and I am amazed at how fast you are growing. It is hard to believe you are almost 5 months old now. Time really does go faster the older you get and compared to you I am OLD. Time is moving really fast for me.
Joseph Elon Lillie VI, Joseph Elon Lillie VII (Sevy), and Kristine Barrameda Lillie
You know, I have not written a note on the Vicarage since you were born. For a while I thought I might close this site down as my time became so limited with this new position as lead pastor of Cornerstone. It has taken me a long time to figure out how to carve out even a little time to get back to writing (which is one of my great loves).
Even though I love writing I have found that this last season of life has been so full of wonderful things (your birth is one of those wonderful things) I just couldn’t pull myself away to write even a few words. But then in prayer this idea came to me.
One of the reasons I write is to create a legacy of words which will carry our family into the future. I want you and your cousins, your parents and your aunts and uncles and I guess the whole world to understand how we got here and what I think this whole thing called life is all about.
Sevy, I hope we get to meet in the next few months. I know your parents are working hard to try and get back here to the United States. If all works according to plan you will be staying here at The Vicarage by next fall. By then we should even have fully functioning bathrooms that do not leak every time you turn on the water. That will be nice! So far the project is going exactly to plan.
Notes From the Vicarage 