Finding Your Piece of the Puzzle at the Valley Vineyard

Creating Community, Connecting with God

There are pieces of the puzzle missing at The Vineyard Church.  Is one of those pieces you?  How do you find where your piece of the puzzle fits?  If you are thinking about making The Vineyard your local church, here’s what you need to know.

Will you join us for the journey?

You were created for community with God.  And you were made to be connected with God’s kingdom community, the Church.  At The Vineyard Church:

• We are a community of sojourners, who stand on the ancient truth of the Bible and travel—together—toward our future in God.
• We are a pilgrim people who have been created for community with God and with each other.
• We are a pioneer people who are called into the mission of creating new communities of the King.
• We are a broken people, a family of beggars who have found free Bread from heaven.  We weren’t looking for it.  Yet, we have been given the Bread of Life who nourishes our souls, who strengthens us in the very core of our being for the journey he calls us to take.

In truth, no matter what we look like on the outside, we are the least, the last, the lost, the lonely and the most unlikely bunch to ever be chosen to become friends of God.  Indeed, as Richard Foster writes in the foreword of Divine Conspiracy (quoting the author, Dallas Willard), we who call the Church our home are,

The flunk-outs and drop-outs and burned-outs.  The broke and the broken.  The drug heads and the divorced.  The brain-damaged and the incurably ill.  The barren and the pregnant too many times or at the wrong time. The over-employed, the underemployed, the unemployed.  The unemployable.  The swindled, the shoved-aside, the replaced.  The lonely, the incompetent, the stupid.

In other words, we are the Church!  And we have been redeemed by God’s mercy and grace.  Together, as the Church, we are the body of the Crucified Christ, an army of servants in the Lamb’s war, the Bride of Christ who awaits her Risen and soon-conquering King.

Now that you know who we are, are you sure you want to join us for the journey?  If so, the road map is easy to follow even if the journey itself is sometimes a challenge.

Following the map to get connected is as easy as A-B-C.

What’s the next step?  Following the map is as easy as A-B-C.  And D!

• Community:  Home Groups—Where Community Happens!  Home Groups are small groups of friends who celebrate at services at The Vineyard Church but who gather together in homes once a week for worship, sharing, study, prayer and fun.  They usually last about two hours and meet in the evenings during the week.  Information and directions to the groups can be found in the bulletin or the web page www.helenavineyard.org/Outreach/
• Discovering Your Place in the Church—A Life Development Training Course.  There are thirteen steps to discovering your place in The Vineyard Church.  Step one:  what is the Church?  Step two:  how do you know you are in the right church?  (Hint:  if the church has gun racks in the lobby, wrong church.)  Steps three through thirteen include such topics as:  what are our values, priorities, ministry assumptions and programs.  Discovering Your Place will walk you through the steps of getting connected and entering into your place of service and leadership here at the Vineyard.