Will Vaus

I t was wonderful to hear the Magdalen College Choir sing from the top of Magdalen Tower in Oxford two years ago at 6 am on May 1. This is a tradition that has been going on for 500 years. But now you can see it from the choir's perspective in the video above. Enjoy!

After reading through The Purpose Driven Church  over the course of the past few months, and after our Strategic Planning Committee met for several weeks, we developed this Vision Statement for Stowe Community Church. We welcome the comments and questions of people in our church as well as those outside on our new vision.... We have a dream of: Being a church at the center of our community where all people will find a welcome, a place where all people—including the hurting, the depressed, the frustrated, and the confused—will find love, acceptance, help, hope, forgiveness, guidance, and encouragement. Sharing the good news of Jesus with the thousands of people in our community who currently claim no religious affiliation. Developing a positive awareness of our church in our community through advertising, events, participation in community activities, and a vibrant social media presence. Welcoming hundreds of new members into the fellowship of our church family where...

I know I haven't written a blog post in a while, and I haven't written anything about our church's study of The Purpose Driven Church  in even longer. We have continued our study of Rick Warren's book over the past many weeks. We have had two groups studying the book together. One meets on Sunday morning in our church building. The other meets on Monday night in our home. In both groups we have found much that we appreciated from this book, and sometimes we have found points we disagreed with. But the most important thing this book has done for us is to help us re-define our purpose as a church. After meeting for many weeks, our Strategic Planning Committee developed this new purpose statement based upon Acts 2:42-47.... Stowe Community Church develops followers of Christ who celebrate through worship grow through teaching connect through fellowship care through service and share through outreach to our community and world. ...

"The Incredulity of St. Thomas" by Caravaggio In The Apostles’ Creed the Church confesses her faith in Jesus who “on the third day … rose again.” In that same creed we say that we believe in “the resurrection of the body”. But why should we believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus and our own future bodily resurrection? After all, isn’t such belief terribly antiquated in our own scientific age? I imagine that believing in the resurrection of Jesus was just as hard in the first century as it is in the twenty-first. After all, people in the first century knew just as well as we do today that when someone dies and you put their body into the ground, that body doesn’t come out again. It would seem that St. Thomas had at least as many questions about the resurrection of the body as any modern doubter of our own day. So, if we have doubts, we are in good company. And to my mind, former atheist C. S. Lewis offers much helpful explanation about the resurrection of J...

Does not every movement in the Passion write large some common element in the sufferings of our race? First, the prayer of anguish; not granted. Then He turns to His friends. They are asleep--as ours, or we, are so often, or busy, or away, or preoccupied. Then He faces the Church, the very Church that He brought into existence. It condemns Him. This also is characteristic. In every Church, in every institution, there is something which sooner or later works against the very purpose for which it came into existence. But there seems to be another chance. There is the State; in this case, the Roman state. its pretensions are far lower than those of the Jewish church, but for that very reason it may be free from local fanaticisms. It claims to be just on a rough, worldly level. Yes, but only so far as is consistent with political expediency and raison d'état. One becomes a counter in a complicated game. But even now all is not lost. There is still an appeal to the People--the poor a...

Today is Maundy Thursday. The word "Maundy" comes from the Latin "mandate" which means "commandment". On the night before his crucifixion, Jesus gave to his disciples a new commandment to love one another as he had loved them (John 13:34). Furthermore, Jesus demonstrated his love for his disciples, on that same night, by taking off his clothes (taking the form of a servant) and washing his disciples dirty feet. Afterwards, he tells his disciples that he has given them an example to follow. I like what C. S. Lewis says about this in a letter to a Catholic priest, Don Giovanni Calabria who lived in Verona. The letter was written in Latin during Holy Week in 1948. I will give the lead in to the key statement so that you can understand the context. And I will also quote from the English translation.... Everywhere things are troubling and uneasy--wars and rumours of war: perhaps not the final hour but certainly times most evil. Nevertheless, the Apost...

Chapter 8 of The Purpose Driven Life  by Rick Warren deals with applying what we say is our purpose as a church. One thing I really like in this chapter, and have used before in one of the churches I served, is what Warren calls "The Life Development Process". Warren illustrates this process using a baseball diamond. Each base represents a different class that helps people in the church grow in their relationship with Christ. First base is the membership class. Second base is the maturity class. Third base is the ministry class. And home base is the missions class. The way I applied this in a previous church was to use this as the format for adult education on Sunday mornings. When I went to the church in question they had only one adult education class. We expanded to as many as four adult ed classes going at one time on Sunday mornings. The way Rick Warren's baseball diamond helped me was to maintain balance in our adult ed. I found that without the  baseball diamo...

In chapter seven of The Purpose Driven Church, Rick Warren talks about The Five Circles of Commitment. Personally, I think this provides a great way of thinking about ministry in one's church and community. Warren suggests that churches and pastors need to focus first on their community and drawing members of their community into the church. In other words, we need to focus on outreach and I think this is true. It is the one area of ministry mentioned in Acts 2:42-47 that most churches struggle with. In the community surrounding Stowe Community Church (Lamoille County), 81.1% of the residents have no religious affiliation whatsoever. The census calls them the "Nones", not to be confused with Catholic Nuns.  In 2010, that percentage represented 19, 847 people. What might we be doing as a church to draw the Nones one step closer to Jesus and into the community of our church? The next Circle of Commitment after the Community, Rick Warren calls the Crowd.  I have aligne...

In chapter six of The Purpose Driven Church , Rick Warren says, Great leaders have always understood and harnessed the tremendous power of symbols. People often need visual representations of concepts in order to grasp them. Symbols can be powerful communication tools because they elicit strong passions and emotions. I agree. One symbol I am using to communicate the Fivefold Purpose of the Church we find in Acts 2:42-47 is the Cross. Here is what we read in that passage.... They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising ...

Chapter 5 of The Purpose Driven Church  by Rick Warren is, perhaps, the most important chapter in the entire book. In this chapter, Warren provides some guidelines for, in the case of a new church, defining a church's purpose, or in the case of plateaued or declining churches, redefining that purpose. The first step in that process is, I think, the most critical: Study what the Bible says.  At Stowe Community Church we spent one small group session discussing the Scriptures that Warren suggests looking at. Here are the references for those Scriptures:  Matthew 5:13-16;  9:35;  11:28-30; 16:15-19;  18:19-20;  22:36-40;  24:14;  25:34-40;  28:18-20; Mark 10:43-45;  Luke 4:18-19;  4:43-45;  John 4:23; 10:14-18; 13:34-35;  20:21;  Acts 1:8;  2:41-47;  4:32-35;  5:42;  6:1-7;  Romans 12:1-8;  15:1-7;  1 Corinthians 12:12-31;  2 Corinthians 5:17-6:1;  Galatians 5:13-15;...

In chapter four of "The Purpose Driven Church", Rick Warren says, "Your church's foundation will determine both its size and strength. You can never build larger than your foundation can handle." I remember when my wife, Becky, and I had a house built many years ago. We used to go and visit the construction site every day. For a long time, it seemed like very little was happening. However, in fact, the most important thing was happening. The foundation was being laid. That part of the building process took longer than anything else. Once the foundation was laid, it seemed like the construction process went forward very quickly. There were far more obvious and exciting changes happening every day. But the foundation laying process was seemingly tedious and boring. Perhaps the same is true in the life of the church. The process of laying a proper foundation for the life of the church can be a long and tedious process. But I agree with Rick Warren, it is the ...

I am leading a C. S. Lewis Tour this summer to Northern Ireland and England with tour guide, Russ Head. We still have room for others to join us. Here is a link to more information about the trip: C. S. Lewis Tour 2016 . 

Once again, we are approaching the yearly remembrance of the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. If people know anything about MLK, they know about his "I Have a Dream" speech given from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. on August 28, 1963, to a crowd of over 250,000 civil rights supporters. That speech was, in many ways, the focal point of a rallying process for the civil rights movement. People young and old today know bits and pieces of that speech whether they were alive in 1963 or not. If nothing else, that one speech demonstrates the amazing power of good rhetoric, passionately spoken, by a person sold out to a good cause. One thing I like about "The Purpose Driven Church" by Rick Warren is shared in chapter one, "The Saddleback Story". In that chapter, Warren tells us that in his first sermon in his newly planted church in Orange County California in March of 1980, he shared his dreams for the future of the church. It required b...

We have begun reading and discussing "The Purpose Driven Church" by Rick Warren at Stowe Community Church. We are using this book as a catalyst to re-define our purpose as a church, to formulate a new vision, strategy, and goals. The Lord used this book in a previous church I served to jump-start us along the same journey and we were blessed to see that congregation grow from 40 to 200 in attendance on Sunday mornings. So far, the reading and discussion of this book in the context of Stowe has been very stimulating. My hope is to blog about my reading as we make our way through the book, for my benefit, for the benefit of the people of Stowe, and for anyone else who may happen to read this blog. I find that Rick Warren's work is a valuable contribution to what C. S. Lewis called "mere Christianity". For starters, let me simply say I love the image that Warren uses at the beginning of the book. The title of the introductory chapter is: "Surfing Spirit...

Here is a link to my message, on Luke 2:1-7, delivered on Christmas Eve at the 11 pm service at Stowe Community Church....  Big and Small .

If you click on the image above, you will be better able to read the C. S. Lewis quote I shared last night in our 11 o'clock Christmas Eve service at Stowe Community Church. We had over 600 people in total attendance at three services. The 5 o'clock service with children's Christmas pageant and many young families in attendance had standing room only, with many filling the balcony and standing along the walls at the back of the church. Our children and youth did a wonderful job, as did our choir in the 7:30 and 11 o'clock services. I am feeling very blessed to be the new pastor of such a wonderful church, in beautiful Vermont, with a community of creative and welcoming people. Thank you to all who by your prayers for me throughout 2015 helped to make this possible.  Here is a photo of just part of our Christmas Eve crowd last night.... May the Lord bless you and keep you during this Christmas season, throughout 2016, and beyond!

Our new congregation, Stowe Community Church in Stowe, Vermont, hosted their annual community singalong of Handel's "Messiah". It was wonderful to hear the voices of over one hundred people filling this historic space along with a small chamber orchestra and gifted soloists. Many have long been fascinated by the story behind Handel's "Messiah". As many concert goers know, when this oratorio was first performed before the King of England, the monarch stood when the "Hallelujah" chorus was sung, apparently in recognition of a greater king: Jesus. Audiences have been standing ever since, just as ours did in Stowe, Vermont last night. Here is a good summary of the story behind this beloved oratorio that is now so popular around the world at Christmas time....