Vineyard Spotlight: Part 2 with Bob Wilson

Today is the second articless from Bob Wilson, who is the lead pastor at the Vineyard Church of Ithaca in New York. Bob and his wife Liz had moved to Ithaca in 1994 to start a campus ministry at Cornell University, and in 1997 sensed that God was leading them to be a part of the Vineyard. In February of 1999, the Ithaca Vineyard held its first service in the 3rd floor of the Community School of Music and Arts building on State Street. Over the past few years our church has grown rapidly, and while we still have a large contingent of Cornell and Ithaca College students, more and more people from the Ithaca area who were distant from the church have gotten connected here at the Vineyard! In addition to leading the Ithaca Vineyard, Bob has been a University Chaplain at Cornell University since 1994. Bob has been married to Elizabeth for twenty years and they currently have three teenage daughters, and are looking forward to their fourth daughter in early April 2011.  The first article from Bob can be found here.

Late last year, I read an article online about a business owner being fined $1,000,000 by the New York State Department of Labor for “Labor Violations.”  While the article never mentioned words such as slavery or human trafficking, these mostly undocumented Hispanic workers were “repeatedly denied wages and regular days off.”

There were a few items that made this story stand out.  First, although the owner of this business owns a deli in NYC, the largest part of the fine was levied for his business in Ithaca’s Collegetown, about 2 miles from my office.

The second item that made this story amazing was a young woman named Ana Ottoson.  Now, although I have never met Ana, I know that it is people like her who are going to make a difference if we are going to see an end to modern day slavery.  Let me share a bit of Ana’s story.

Ana was a cashier at the Green Café in Ithaca and in her time there began to make friends with many of the “backroom” workers at this restaurant; dishwashers, busboys and others who were working out of sight of the general public. As she talked to them, she learned that they regularly worked 12 hour shifts with no days off, and were not being paid regularly.  Ana began encouraging her friends to stand up for themselves, but fear; fear of their boss, fear of being deported, fear of what would happen if they did kept them from doing anything.

That is when Ana made a decision.  She quit her job, went to a local workers’ rights organization and told her story. I don’t think Ana got a job at the Green Café because she wanted to rescue people.  But what she did do, was see people that everybody else saw past.  She talked to people that everyone else ignored, and as she heard their story, she couldn’t help but act.

There is a part of us, I think, who want to believe that slavery happens over there…in another country…in the big city, hours from where we live.  It doesn’t happen just down the road.  It doesn’t happen in this neighborhood.

What if the people in my church – the people in your church – saw those around them the way Ana did? Not just to acknowledge that they are there, but to hear their stories, and to really see them.  Clearly every place we go, every person we encounter is not somehow tied up in this issue, but some of them are.

However, if we were to do this, it would mean a few different things:  It would mean being fully present with those that God brings into our lives and across our paths…it would mean really loving our neighbor and interacting with them as if they were people created in the image of our Father.  It might even mean making sacrifices for their sake so that they could experience freedom they were created to live in.

This seems like a pretty good strategy for helping to set people free…and if we are followers of Jesus, it seems like this how we are supposed to be living anyway.