kenny

while i find myself with a little time I might as well write 2 posts in one night!

We had a spectacular time in Bristol UK for New Years. I realize how precious & important those relationships with people who are basically family truely are.

At one point it was like 2pm & we were still in our pajamas sitting in our friends' front room (with the pullout bed open) just marveling at the so simple, yet amazing thing it is to have such friendships & relationships. One person said that it's not something many experience. As much as I don't want to agree with her, I know that she's right.

word-up... happy 2007..

I realize that I have not said much here about our church community in quite a long time, which is weird because it's really been on my mind & in my heart hardcore through 2006 & even now.

Lots of great stuff happening! About 1 year ago we were still the NYC Vineyard, with our congregation in the Upper West Side, the smaller gathering on Sunday nights in our office space in Midtown & an even small group of people getting together in Staten Island.

Through the providence of God / the craziness of life (one in the same? sometimes?) everything got turned upside down & the rollercoaster began. I have loved every minute of it!

From a practical perspective it was time that the Upper West Side congregation go off & become their own autonomous church community. & then there was 2... until it became apparent that the Staten Island group was not going to cruise through in the state it was in. & then there was 1.

One lonely group (well, not really) of mostly younger people none of whom lived in Midtown Manhattan, but yet we would meet for church on the 10th floor of an office building. When that would pack out with people, most of whom were very much connected to our community.... we knew we had a problem.

So to make this long post (I am making up for lost time, though) a little shorter, we ended up finding the Trash Bar over a year ago. We started meeting there once a month to test it out & if this was a reason for our small group of Jesus people to be. Sure enough it was.

In Oct of 2006 we moved the whole operation into Williamsburg Brooklyn. Meeting every Sunday night at the Trash Bar... & spending time at Mykinos across the street. We now are getting our office/community space all fixed up & have started a morning gathering for people who can't do nights at a school in the hood.

I think most everyone who is involved, all 90+ of us... are super excited about the group of people we get to hang with... about the dreams that the Spirit has let us finally live out (instead of just talking) & about the future.















I hope to have more & better photos in the future of everyone not just the few of us in front sometime soon.

i hate it when i think i'm running late trying to be slick & jump on
the express train (N) for a few stops to then catch an earlier local
train ahead of me, but then the crowded "express" runs slower than the
serene, empty local leaving me:
1. later than i would have been otherwise
2. pissed off that i've been crammed in & watched the local pass the express

good morning!

one of the reasons i love new york city is because there is rich & poor right beside one another. unfortunately, not that the rich take care of the poor, but even just existing next to one another is cool to me.

i was up on 5th Ave last week going to the Apple store there. It is a prestigious neighborhood, right at the bottom of Central Park, with the horse carriages lined up & the Plaza across the street (who is advertising apartments to live there... starting at $2.5 million).

Anyways... the subway stop there ALWAYS sticks like piss. Here you have someone paying $2.5 mil for a square of air & yet the subway station is not even as nice as our meager one here on 77 st in the BK.

Also was over on Broadway in SoHo yesterday getting some Christmas gifts for E & I just noticed the HUGE stores selling really expensive cloths out of extremely expensive real estate..... and the street vendors selling (sometimes better) stuff out on the curb. I love it. Bought more from the street vendors than I did from the stores.

This from digg.com & cnn.com: ?Of the 383 pieces of legislation that were signed into law
during the two-year 109th Congress, more than one-quarter dealt with naming or renaming
federal buildings and structures ? primarily post offices after various Americans.?

http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/blogs/politicalticker/2006/12/109th-congress-success-at-naming.html

Been surfing around & came across some teaching from my friend Steve
Munson from the Vineyard in Long Island called 'Davinci Decoded'.

Steve is a scholarly stud & shares the historical facts of the early
church documents, how the canon was formed, etc in a palatable way.
This certainly is not Davinci Code bashing, it's rather extremely
informed historical fact. I find it facinating for that reason.

I would share these two talks even with folks who don't believe in God...

You can find them here:
http://www.thevineyardchurch.com/_resources/resources.asp?include=sermons.html

I don't know how they expect us to get anything done... but digg.com
has been blocked from our computers at work. Digg is my main source of
news & info (cause it's got the good stuff). I'm just waiting for the
day when they block google. That would just be unhuman AND inhumane.

i'm writing this from the Black MacBook that I bought in the summer. I love the thing. It's made me into a mac person though i'm really wanting to properly setup windows in Parallels so I can enjoy the best of both worlds over the next couple weeks.

I highly recommend these bad boys to anyone interested in getting a new computer. Especially considering the recent upgrade in Parallels that seems to make working between mac & PC seemless.

One of the most balanced responses I've read on the news of Ted
Haggard's recent public downfall was on Mirko's english blog:
http://mirkosander.de/?p=77

Because of the high-profile of this, it can be taken down so many
roads: moral standing, political craziness, feeling sorry for him &
his family, anger towards the hipocracy of religion, & even
base-lining to the point where it can seem to be no hope for the
morality of people.

The thing I like about Mirko's response is that it is very kingdom
based. All of these aforementioned roads are touched on when god's
kingdom & him as king / the "pearl of great price" are the goal.

Specifics ala Mirko:
"What bothers me even more are all the ?pure? Christians who neatly
take out their bows and start shooting arrows at him ?

When I held this seminar on leadership, I realized again how many
leaders failed because they didn?t stay clean. Many are crying for
leadership and later are living like a footballplayer on a minefield.
They don?t realize that Mr.S wants to destroy them and that satanic
groups are even praying and fasting for the marriages of leaders to
fail and for leaders to fall into sin.

If you?re a leader, stay clean - don?t drive on two roads - it?ll
break your neck one day.

I wish we as a church would learn to stand behind our leaders. I
myself know the stress and pressure that is caused by such a job and
it doesn?t help when meanwhile people are shooting in your back."

It's not primarily about morality, the emotional damage a family takes
living in lies, or politics (isn't god actually king??).

This is where the "both/and" mentality, rather than "either/or" that
Steve Robbins talks about is key. The goal of the church is not
personal morality or even unabashed license (sometimes labeled
grace)... but rather being a vessel of the King in his kingdom (& i'm
not talking american politics people).

God bless Ted Haggard... I pray that he will seek the pearl & continue
the next phase of the road ahead.

Paul Strait is a guy I have been meaning to blog about for a while. Some of you know him, but none of us get to see him half as much as we'd like.

Paul is a guy who was apart of the NYC Vineyard many years ago. Long story short he got in touch with the Jesus Freaks (at that time a group of mostly 17 year old teenage punks) in Hamburg & got the relationship rolling with the Turrigianos.

This is a highly unlikely combination because Paul is not a particularly trending guy, he was not that young himself nor was he looking for this kind of role. Actually he was a corporate lawyer in NYC at the time. Shortly after, though unsatisfied with practicing law, he put himself through Columbia medical school & became an ER doctor.... in addition to buying houses (on a credit card, as the myth goes) & fixing them up with his dad in Maine.

This is the amazing part: since then he has been a "missionary" so to speak to the Jesus Freak groups that have sprung up around Europe. He has spent the last 10+ years living somewhere between Maine, Manhattan & Germany... at first working for like 3 weeks straight in the ER in Maine, then going to Germany for 3 weeks... like 6 or 7 times a year. Now he works in Heildelberg like a 24 hour shift & then someone picks him up & they go to visit & encourage Jesus Freak groups during the day. I mean like... doing this 6 or 7 days a week! I also know he's personally put atleast 1 kid through college financially (probably more).

If he reads this, he may be embarassed... but he is an amazing friend & person.

More to come on Paul & why I'm sharing this tomorrow....