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I have recently just got back from hanging out with some of my amazing friends at a cafe called Grey Dog in the West Village of Manhattan. Such a sick place, great food, good atmosphere and if you add my fantastic companions to the equation…. life is good!!!

I have been struggling lately on blogging because I have been busy not sleeping… Jay-Z is not kidding…. this city never sleeps…. neither do the people that live in it… and I happen to be one of those people… but it’s all good cus I love this city and I love my life.

I was thinking on the subway back to my apartment… and what I was thinking about was that I love my life so much because of the people that I surround myself with. My friends are unreal and they add to my life. The people that we surround ourselves with are crucial. They either add to us, or take away. Thats the truth… My word to all you people out there is this…. Choose the people who you want around you…. Pick people who will laugh with u in the good times, and pick u up in the bad…. Thats life, it’s not meant to be done alone, so you might as well enjoy the company on this journey…..

there it is…

MV

Helllo everyone!!!!! Well we are just under a couple weeks away from starting our weekly services at Hillsong Church NYC. This is an exciting time in the life of our church and a groundbreaking and momentum-making time for team leaders. In light of all that is going on in Church life and what is going to be happening, I thought I would take this opportunity to write about how we gather volunteers, build teams, grow ministries and make this thing happen. Sooooo over the next few weeks and maybe even months I am going to share how we make a ministry and program happen from just about scratch. I am pretty excited for this and I think it could be a cool thing for people in other ministries to see, especially the ones who feel alone….and trust me….you are not alone….

Anyway, that’s what is going to take place….I hope you are all as thrilled as I am. Right now I have a bunch of people who have signed up to be a part of the kids team, and this week and next, our church as a whole will be calling all the volunteers and helping them get into a team if they aren’t already. Then we will be training people and moving forward. The next few posts will be more in depth… just wanted to share what’s next at Vogelpedia.com.

Stoked to share the journey with you!!!!

MV

I love working with kids. I always consider an honor and a privilege to invest into the younger generations. I believe they are our tomorrow, but at the same time, they are a generation influencing our today. I’ve learned that while working with kids, you need to work with families. You can only do so much with the time you have with the kids on the weekend at church, so it is imperative that you partner up with parents to make the biggest impact possible.

The best part about the last few monthly services we have had at HillsongNYC is that a lot of my time has been spent talking with and getting to know the parents and families of our church. What an awesome thing that is. I am super excited to be working with families and changing the younger generations of our church and more importantly, our city. I know that what happens in church will flow into the streets and change the people around us. If it doesn’t, we need to ask why we are doing what we are doing.

The next few months will be awesome as we lay out the foundation for Hillsong Kids NYC and start to pour everything we have into our families. Families are a huge portion to churches and we need to do everything we can to partner with them and change where we live. The road ahead is bright!!!!

Much Love,

MV

One of the most important lessons I have learned is the art or diligence, if you will, of responding instead of reacting. This concept was drilled into my head by my old boss and mentor. He gave me a revelation on this concept and it has changed the way I will communicate.

In my field I deal with families and a fast pace culture and I do my best to give them my full attention and be fully committed to the conversation we are in. There are sometimes when I am doing a few things, but I make sure they know what we are talking about is important to me. There are occasions where something might have happened or a family is having an off day and they might accidentally take it out on me, but the last thing you want to do is react and upset this person even more. The best thing to do is calmly gather yourself and take a breath before responding to the person. This is not the easiest thing to do because a lot of times you just want to give it back the same way it was given to you, but in the end it does not help anything. This is just one situation, but I see this kind of thing happen everywhere.

I dislike when leaders get out of control and react to people rather than respond. I have been that person plenty of times who has reacted and chewed someone’s head off and let me tell you, I felt horrible about it. As leaders we need to live at a higher level and this is just part of that. So let’s step up our game and learn about our response-ability. It will change the way we lead, and it will change the way people see us.

Till next time

MV

Well…this is a little long overdue…..but I have finally moved to NYC…. I live in an amazing place called Williamsburg and I love it!!!! I live with one of the sickest dudes on the planet and life is good!!!!

I moved up last week and just got back from Maryland today with the rest of my gear. It is finally offical….I am a New Yorker!!!!! MY only prayer is that I do not pick up the accent…. I’m just not tough enough for that….

N E way….much love…more to come

MV

One of my favorite things to do is catch up with great friends, and talk about some of the historical and hilarious moments in our lives. We could go on for hours, into the wee moments of the morning and still be laughing and diving into the past. The difference between me and my friends compared to some other people….is we don’t live there.

There is a group of people in the who live in the era of what some might call “the glory days”. These “days” are usually the times where people were awesome in high school, or college. Whether they were football champs, the best looking, the class clown, whatever it was they WERE superhuman. Now I don’t think there is a problem with reminiscing and remembering back to the day, but the problem comes when you forget reality and try to live in those moments.

As leaders we can get caught in the “glory days”. Maybe in the past you have had some amazing retreats, unreal camps, or even unparalleled worship leaders serving on your teams, and you keep thinking back to those times. Maybe it was recently, or maybe it’s been years, but you keep trying to recreate or find people who bring back those “glory days”.

The Senior Pastor of my church has a catch phrase, but it’s so much more than that. He always says ” the best is yet to come “. We need not just believe, but know that the past is behind us no matter how good or bad it was. We live from glory to glory and strength to strength. The God I know always wants to do something fresh and somethings new. He doesn’t want to go back to where we have been, He wants us to go to the unseen.

As leaders, lets not make that mistake of living in the past and trying to recreate those great memories we’ve had. Lets leave them where they belong….as memories…. There is big stuff waiting for you as soon as you let go of what you’re holding onto, and I promise, just as my Senior Pastor says….”the best is yet to come”

MV

It’s 2:48 in the morning where I am in Baltimore, Maryland. My body is here in my bed, but I feel that I should share with you that there is a miraculous medical situation happening as I type, because, my heart is in NYC…

Recently I have been given the opportunity to lead the Hillsong Kids team in NYC…It’s been just over 6 months since I have moved back from Sydney, where I was part of the Hillsong kids team as a Childrens pastor and I am honored and thrilled to be given this opportunity and I do not take it lightly…

Although we haven’t had a kids program yet, I have been dreaming up a storm about what HillsongkidsNYC will look like…what we will do and how we will reach the families of NYC!!!! I was on the way home from a soccer game a few hours ago (where i must say i played pretty well….its good to know i still have skills after all these year ) and I was just driving down 97 from westminster to eldersburg, which is about a 20 minute drive or less and I started to almost daze off while traveling…it wasn’t a sleepy thing, but it was just my brain was doing it’s own thing and I went with it…I was seeing what was going to come of HillsongKidsNYC and it was amazing…It was a beautiful dreaming time and as this was all going on in my very visual brain, I felt God speak to me about Luke 12:48… I tweeted about this verse a little while ago but it was so real and there was a heaviness in it…but it wasn’t a bad heavy…It was just the reality that what I’m going to carry is huge and important…it was almost like a motivational/ preparing/ speech…

A few weeks ago HilsongNYC had a team night where Carl and Laura Lentz spoke to the heart of the church, the team that said “we want to serve and make this thing happen”, and Carl titled the message “I will carry this”, and I cannot think of a better title. It was a brilliant message and that title, that catch phrase, or that moto, whatever you want to call it, has stuck with me… Luke 12:48 says this… “To whom much is given much is required”…and it goes on from there and says ” to whom much is entrusted, even more will be required”… That is such a huge scripture, and I’m not going to unpack it…I’m just going to say what I felt from this little moment I had in my 2002 Chevy Cavalier…

I felt this personal ownership come on me in a way I have never felt before… It was awesome…I have a new baby…and it’s precious and I don’t want anything to happen to it….I want it to be amazing and healthy…. I want to carry this thing with everything I have…. I want to take personal responsibility for it and own…I know there is much required to whom something is given….and even more is required when you are entrusted with something….

How many times do we get responsibility for something and deal with it in a spirit of mediocrity??? how often do people actually take ownership??? too often we make excuses for things…. Thankfully I was under leadership that didn’t care for excuses…excuses are unacceptable…excuses are the fruit of a lack of ownership… excuses are the byproduct of halfheartedness… Too many times I have been there… and I don’t want to be there or live there….not even visit…. This post has gone on too long now…. so I will finish….

Lets live larger, do greater, and dream bigger!!!!! These are the fruit of personal ownership….so whatever it is you are carrying, do it with everything you got….make this your moto… I Will Carry This….

PS. on the drive home i did drive between the lines…u can still drive safe while dreaming….

MV

One thing I dislike strongly is a lack of purpose… I want to know why I do things, I want to have reasons, not for the sake of knowledge, but when u get the “why behind the what” it will drive you and fire you up when you are doing tasks.

There are sometimes in life, if you are like me, when some of the people that serve with you are your close friends. With these people we sometimes have meetings and we sometimes just hangout. I think it’s good to have a clear distinction between the two, so each party knows what the appointment is for. You might be asking, “where are you going”??? Well… I’m getting there….

My old boss, whom I still refer to as my boss, is also a very close friend of mine. There are few people in this world I respect as much or more as i do this person. I think I worked so well with him because of friendship. I understood the boundaries of friendship and bossship and I helped him make it happen. In saying that, he never once was unprepared for a meeting, he never just talked about nothing when we had something in the books. He was intentional and specific when we had meetings for work.

If this guy who is a friend and boss can handle himself like that, than there is no reason why we can’t be like that when we meet with our volunteers and leaders. There is no need to sit in meetings and just talk or generalize. We need to be specific and intentional with all our meetings and appointments. There’s nothing worse than wasting a volunteers time. So do yourself a favor… Have a meeting with yourself a few minutes before your meetings with people and sort out where you want your meeting to go.

There you have it…don’t be vague, but be intentional…your leaders and volunteers will thank you for it…

MV

Here is the second post in a 7 part series on things leaders should not do…This is one topic that I am passionate about, but thankfully I haven’t had much experience in leadership with people who took me for granted. I have been blessed to have served under some of the finest leaders and people on this planet and I pray that myself, as a leader, would never be accused of taking people who served with me for granted.

One persons world view might say life looks like this, you are either part of the problem or part of the solution. In whatever circumstance you find yourself are you helping or hurting??? I would say that unless you are actively trying to find a solution, you are part of the problem… doing nothing is part of the problem…Apathy is no excuse. In saying that, I believe that there are two attitudes you can have in dealing with leaders. There are the leaders who have an attitude of taking people for granted, and there are leaders with and attitude of appreciation.

I like people…for the most part….we all have those people who get under our skin or we don’t really get on with, but no matter who it is I want to make sure that I appreciate people. People are our most valuable resource and we need to treat them as so. An attitude of appreciation is so much more than saying “thank you” to people, but that helps. It’s more than having a “volunteer appreciation day”, but that could be cool. An attitude of appreciation is day in and day out cherishing the sacrifice people are making to help build the kingdom. When you have that mindset it will ooze out of you. The way you talk to people, the ora you give off, your accessibility…these things show your appreciation.

My goal is to have people serving with me for years and year and years, and I pray that I always value and appreciate people the way I have been valued and appreciated. It’s so much more than words…it’s a lifestyle…Taking people for granted is unattractive and it won’t get you anywhere…except maybe backwards….

MV

Well….a few days ago a wrote a blog that was explaining what i was going to do with this topic….but it seems to be lost in the world of wide webs right now, so…. I’m just going to tell you what this is all about right now real quick. I wanted to write about the things that leaders do that are not beneficial. Leadership is all about people and taking them somewhere. These next few blogs are about the things that hinder taking people somewhere. These are things myself and my friends have found to be unattractive in leadership. Up first is Micromanaging…

Micromanaging by definition is management especially with excessive control or attention to details. From the outset we know this is wrong because of the first word in the definition, management. We aren’t called to be managers. We aren’t called to look after what we have and make sure nothing happens to it. We are called to lead. Managers take what they have and figure out better ways to use what they have, where leaders see what they have and figure out how to expand and go further and bring other along with them. The focus is completely different. Managers thing inside, where leaders think outside.

Leadership is releasing. We need to find people to take an area and lead it, not manage it. It’s all about finding the right people and using them where they best fit. Other people will never do a task as good as you will, but you need people if you’re going to lead. The best thing we can do as leaders is bring people in and help them put on their wings so they can fly. The people who are serving under you right now might not look like much, but clean the dirt off them (metaphorically speaking of course…unless our old roommate ’stinky” is on your team…) and see how they are actually made of Gold.

I think the parable of the talents is a good story about managing. Check that out and tell me what ya think… That’s all for now…. more to come

MV