God's Love Shelter is just one of the ministry opportunities at the Valley Vineyard. We prepare and serve a meal, then reach out to those in need at the shelter.

Missions

A Sending Community

Missions starts with God. It’s his idea. It overflows from the heart of love deep within the Triune God who created and sustains the universe. And it is rooted in Jesus’ model of ministry that creates communities of the King among lost peoples. By his design, these communities become sending churches. That’s where The Vineyard Church—and you—come in.

God is a sending God. He yearns to reveal himself to lost people. He loves the world so much that he sent Jesus Christ to “find” lost people like you and me (Luke 15). He gives lost ones spiritual regeneration and adopts us into his household of children (John 3:1-21; Rom. 8:15-25; Eph. 2:19-22). 

As God sent Jesus, so he sends the church community to continue the kingdom ministry that Jesus started. And so, the truism, “The church does not have a mission; the mission has a church!”

What is missions? Continuing the kingdom ministry of Jesus

Does God have a right to rule his creation? Jesus’ mission answers that question. He came full of the Spirit and empowered for a purpose: to proclaim and demonstrate the kingdom—God’s right to rule—and to give his life as a ransom. He was sent to seek lost ones and turn them into a community of sent ones who continue his ministry.

At the outset of his ministry Jesus announced his mission: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lords favor.” (Luke 4:18-21; quoting Isaiah 61:1-2).

In the gospels we find Jesus fulfilling his plan for Spirit-empowered missions. Jesus taught, preached good news to the poor and poor in spirit, proclaimed freedom to prisoners bound in sin and darkness, cast out demons, healed the sick. And he trained disciples to do the same. Jesus proclaimed and demonstrated God’s right to rule creation as he destroyed the works of Satan (1 John. 3:8). He equipped followers and promised that they too would do what he did because everyone who is fully trained is like his teacher (Luke 6:40; Matt. 28:16-20; John 14:12-14).

The Vineyard Church: a sending community under the command, commission, compulsion and control of the Spirit

Jesus commands his followers to follow his example of Spirit-saturated kingdom ministry:

• “Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples!” (Psalm 96:3).