The Watsonian (blog)

This last Sun­day, Novem­ber 29th,  I served my last time as Direc­tor of Fam­ily Min­istries for Tapes­try Church.  It was a sad day for our fam­ily, but it was one that was also full of hope.  To put all rumors to rest, there was no prob­lem between the lead­er­ship team and I on the vision, direc­tion or man­age­ment of Tapes­try.  I firmly believe in what Richard, James, Roye and the rest of the steer­ing team are doing with Tapes­try.  And hon­estly, with things feel­ing like they are gain­ing momen­tum, it was very hard to make this decision.

But when you feel God call­ing and lead­ing you in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, it’s hard to ignore.  And Katie and I have known since July, and been in con­ver­sa­tion with the lead­er­ship team at Tapes­try since then also, about our depar­ture from Tapes­try and going on the new  adven­ture that God has laid out before us.

Atten­ders, vol­un­teers and staff of Tapes­try Church,

Thank you! Thank you for the oppor­tu­nity to join with you over the last year and half in our mutual pur­suit of a Risen Sav­ior who cares deeply for us and the peo­ple of Bar­tow County.  Thank you for you kind­ness and genoros­ity not only to the church but to the peo­ple in this com­mu­nity.  Thank you for so many times tak­ing your­self, break­ing your­self open and pour­ing your­self out for our world.  Thank you for your encour­age­ment and coun­sel­ing as I got mar­ried this year.  Thank you for just being you, peo­ple who are still rec­og­niz­ing their unique iden­tity and mis­sion as image bear­ers of the Risen Jesus.  Katie and I love you with all our hearts and know that wher­ever God takes us, Tapes­try Church will be a part of our prayers and thoughts.

Grace & Peace,

Joshua, Katie and Alaina

As for where God is lead­ing us, I will save that for a later post, but prayers will be greatly appreciated.

This last Sat­ur­day, sev­eral of us from @tapestrychurch moved from our meet­ing space at New Covenant Church to our new Sun­day morn­ing envi­ro­ment at Gold’s Gym (is it bad I want to write God’s Gym every­time).  This space will allow us to meet  on Sun­day morn­ings and also pro­vides us a loca­tion in the mid­dle of both wealth and poverty in the Bar­tow County area. 

So here are some details for our vol­un­teers, atten­ders and those just need­ing some info:

what time will we meet? 

10 am. 

how­ever, if you are a fam­ily min­istry vol­un­teer, we need you here by 8:45 to make sure your envi­ro­ments are setup, and this first sun­day, we will need you ear­lier to make sure every­thing is setup correctly.

Where do you need help?

Every­where.  seriously.

Our great­est needs at this time is to have peo­ple from the park­ing lot to the children’s area to greet, direct & care for our guests and atten­ders.  So, we need HOST TEAM mem­bers in the park­ing lot to the lobby to be the first peo­ple that our guests meet as they arrive on Sun­day.  We also need peo­ple who love kids to help in our K-5th grade envi­ro­ment UpStreet & our birth-preK envi­ro­ment Waumba Land as TEACHERS & SECURITY.  Email information@tapestrychurchonline.com if you would like to help or just leave me a com­ment on this post.

How do I get to Gold’s?

Click here & type in your address.  Once you arrive, head to back of the cen­ter & you will see Tapes­try vol­un­teers to direct you where to park and guide you to our entrance.

Where do you meet in Gold’s?

Our main entrance is near Hearth & Har­vest at the end of the West End Com­mons plaza.  We meet on the sec­ond floor of Gold’s Gym.

We ask that you not park directly in front of Hearth & Har­vest as we want to pro­vide them ade­quate space for their Sun­day lunch crowd.

What if I have more questions?

Just leave a com­ment, shoot me an email at josh[at]tapestrychurchonline[dot]com or go to Richard’s blog for more info.

Just wanted to put some infor­ma­tion out there at Richard posted ear­lier…

Many of you have asked how you can help Tapes­try Church with the BIG move.  Basi­cally, what we need most is YOU!

Here are the dates and times of all the events tak­ing place this week as we make our way to Gold’s Gym:

-  Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 23, 7:30 pm — We’ll meet at Gold’s Gym to install wiring, screens, pro­jec­tor mounts, lights, etc.  No spe­cial train­ing required; you’ll be shown exactly what to do.  We may fin­ish on Weds night, but we may also carry over to Thurs­day night.  DOING THIS OURSELVES IS BEING EXCELLENT STEWARDS WITH OUR FINANCES.

- Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 25, 7:00 PM — We’ll meet at New Covenant Church to start get­ting things ready for the BIG move the next day.

- Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 26, 8:00 AM — This is the BIG move as we gather at New Covenant to pack up, load and head to Gold’s to unpack.  ALL HELP IS GREATLY APPRECIATED!

- Sun­day, Sep­tem­ber 27 — IF we don’t com­plete the move on Sat­ur­day, we’ll con­tinue on Sun­day.  Our next ser­vice will be at Gold’s, 10 am on Octo­ber 4th.

Thanks for all of your help with our BIG move to Gold’s Gym.

1.  Head­ing down to Orlando to help out with the first big gath­er­ing of Gen­e­sis Church.  We are going to be hand­ing out free food & drinks to fans & res­i­dents com­ing to the UCF v. San­ford game. 

2.  You can fol­low how things are going at the @genesischurch twit­ter, my twit­ter & my pos­ter­ous for pic­tures, updates & stories.

3.  My #13 Dawgs are kick­ing off this year at #9 Ok State.  Excited about this game & cheer­ing on Joe Cox this year.  Should be a great game with a pow­er­ful defense v. one of the most potent offenses in the country.

4.  Wed­ding is less than 2 months away (43 days to be exact).  Just a few more things to check off the list, but really excited about Paul doing our cer­e­mony.  Know­ing Paul’s heart and Katie and I’s heart for peo­ple in the com­mu­nity and around the world made this a VERY easy decision.

5.  Finally, no ser­vice this Sun­day for @tapestrychurch.  And if you want to part­ner with Tapes­try with the BIG MOVE, email Richard or visit the web­site & fill out the info form.

and, so I lied, there is a no. 6,

6.  Gen­e­sis Church is cur­rently look­ing for part­ners (churches, buis­nesses, indi­vid­u­als, etc.) to come together with us to reach the Orlando area and the world.  There is more infor­ma­tion here or you can con­tact Tim here  (tim[at]genesischurchorlando[dot]com) and let him know you want to help.

Well, grace, peace & be care­ful this weekend!

there will be a few changes being made in the next few months in Tapes­try Stu­dents and more specif­i­cally, InsideOut. 

1.  We will be mov­ing to twice a month in September!

this was in part to an over­whelm­ing request for more oppor­tu­nity for us to gather together.  as of right now, but this is defin­tely sub­ject to change, we will be meet­ing the 2nd and 4th Sat­ur­day nights of each month at 7pm.  how­ever, keep check­ing emails and Tap Student’s twit­ter (@tapstudents) for more info and updates.

2.  We have added more voices to our teach­ing & lead­er­ship teams

When we first started Insid­e­Out in August ’08, I had no clue what it was going to look like.  And now that we are approach­ing our 1 year mark, things have changed.  Facil­ity, peo­ple & times have all been fluid and ever chang­ing.  But the one con­stant was that I (Josh) taught exclu­sively.  This changed in July when Katie spoke to us about the King­dom of God and will con­tinue to morph and change as we ask the ques­tion, ‘who is most liv­ing out this teach­ing in their lives?  who will have the most impact with the inter­sec­tion of the Scrip­ture and their story?’

3.  Dis­ci­ple­ship & ser­vice will become the norm

If you are not gath­er­ing at least every other week with oth­ers that you can do life with and look through Scrip­ture together with, then we need to fig­ure how to get that for you.  We are deter­mined for Tapes­try Stu­dents (aka Insid­e­Out) will be known for being ‘lit­tle Christs’ to our com­mu­nity.  We believe that dis­ci­ple­ship, ser­vice & learn­ing all go hand-in-hand with each other.  Whether serv­ing at the children’s shel­ter, in Waumba Land or UpStreet (our kids min­istry envi­ro­ments) or just going out and mow­ing someone’s lawn, serv­ing will be the norm for us and our students.

I’m sure there will be more updates and changes hap­pen­ing in the next few months, but these are the main ones that I believe will help us con­tinue in our mis­sion to lead stu­dents into a grow­ing rela­tion­ship with Jesus Christ.

200 back­packs bought and filled with sup­plies for needy chil­dren in our school system

200 back­packs given away to these kids

200 lives made just a lit­tle bet­ter by hav­ing a bet­ter start in education

200 pos­si­ble pres­i­dents, pas­tors, CEOs, doc­tors, sen­a­tors, garbage men, bar­bers, lawyers

given just a lit­tle more hope by a lit­tle bit of love, elbow grease and effort on the part of a small group of people

WAY TO GO TAPESTRY! 

you are truly liv­ing out this call to the poor in our city and community!

Don’t really feel like I need to explain this.  It’s actu­ally pretty simple…we are giv­ing away back­packs stuffed with sup­plies to 200 kids here in Bar­tow county.  That’s it.  No strings attached.  Nothing.

But we want to give you a chance to give.  Each back­pack (fully stuffed) is around $12 each.  So if you want to help, you can buy 1, 10, or 200 and we will turn that around and buy some more for kids.

So,  if you live here in Cartersville or in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia, you can give through a few ways:

1.  Mail a check to:

Tapes­try Church/ 650 Hen­der­son Dr PMB 293/ Cartersville, GA 30120  Attn: Back­pack Giveaway

2.  Go to our pay­pal link here and donate by card.

3.  Drop cash or check by:  Cartersville State Farm– CL Smith Insurance/ 12 Dixie Ave/ Cartersville, GA 30120 and ask for me (Josh)

tomor­row, we enter the sea­son of Lent with Ash Wednesday.

Lent is the 40 day litur­gi­cal sea­son of fast­ing and prayer before Easter.

As we enter Lent, we are to remem­ber sac­ri­fice, pain and loss.

This year, Lent will have spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance to many peo­ple.
Those who lost their jobs.
Those who lost fam­ily mem­bers.
Those who lost their homes.
Those still hurt­ing from the hur­ri­canes, fires, crashes, mur­ders, sui­cides and dis­s­a­point­ment.
This is a time for the Church to sit with them, and mourn, and then point them to an event that hap­pens 40 days after tomorrow.

a new life. a new hope. death over­taken. death defeated.  res­ur­rec­tion.

Christ has risen. He has risen indeed.

yep, I went there. 

I just read a syn­op­sis on Rob Bell’s talk at the National Pastor’s Con­fer­ence this year on Out of Ur

He spoke on ‘the mil­lion lit­tle paper cuts’ of crit­i­cism and how we should han­dle them: forgiveness.

“That’s how min­istry is. You may hear nine really good things, but it’s the one crit­i­cal com­ment that will eat away at your soul. We tell our­selves that it’s really noth­ing, that “you just have to laugh about it,” and that those small paper cuts really don’t hurt. But they do. Over time, says Bell, those small wounds build up and we expe­ri­ence “death by paper cuts.” ”

And that’s the can­died poop.  See­ing some­thing that looks great, but the one neg­a­tive aspect hurts and makes us spit it all out.

What will hap­pen if we don’t forgive?

1.  We will lose our prophetic call­ing.  Mean­ing we will be afraid to call things as they are because we have learned the painful real­ity that ‘sheep have teeth.’

2.  We will cat­e­go­rize peo­ple into ‘for us’ and ‘against us.’ 

3.  We will seek revenge.  This could be a joke or sar­casm, or gos­sip, but our nature will seek this out.

then, what do we need to do?

1.  Name it (if we don’t aknowl­edge, we can’t forgive)

2.  Accept it (you are hurt, you have a wound, you aren’t superman)

3.  Absorb it (the hard­est part– its like death, but on the other side, is resurrection…new life with an empow­er­ment to love more like Christ)

every per­son in Bar­tow county should know they are…

a lot of peo­ple I know would say:  red­necks, trash, dirty, unso­phis­ti­cated, sin­ners, ugly, bad, etc.

but I know what God is say­ing about them: loved.

I love my com­mu­nity.  I love the peo­ple that live here.  I was born and raised in Cartersville.  And yet, some­times, I look at a major­ity of the peo­ple who live here as lesser cit­i­zens.  And I am not going to do that any­more. And I want every sin­gle one of them to know from me and from Tapes­try Church: 

YOU ARE LOVED. period.  Just where you are, we love you.  We aren’t com­ing at you with an agenda to get you to turn to our par­tic­u­lar point of view.  We just want to serve you.  That’s it. 

Now fig­ur­ing out how to show that, that’s the next big question…