North Brooklyn Vineyard church

This past Sunday, Mike laid out the Tithing Challenge to North Brooklyn Vineyard members who don’t tithe (give 10% of their income) to the local church. The challenge is this: give 10% of your income for 3 months & if at the end of that time you feel like it didn’t work (e.g. you didn’t experience blessings from God & that it wasn’t worth it), we’ll give back everything you’ve given, no questions asked.

Why are we doing this? Because we believe it’s going to help you discover an important thing about God and giving. God says in the book of Malachi that his people can test him on this. That when we’re generous with our offerings to his work he will “open the windows of heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great you won’t have enough room to take it in!” (Malachi 3:8-10). Those of us who do regularly give have experienced it! (Ask around… we think you’d be hardpressed to find someone who does give & doesn’t think it in some way enhances their life).

Signing up below ensures that your offerings over the next 3 months will be kept to the side as part of the challenge. Email finance@northbrooklynvineyard.org at any time with any questions.

I love Eugene Peterson’s writing. Even though we’ve never met he’s become my pastor. He has inspired the following thoughts…

I’m struck by the fact that you can be sincerely religious, know your Bible inside and out, attend church faithfully, and still have a stingy, impoverished soul that struggles to trust God, constantly worries and finds giving unfeasible. A person can believe all the facts about God and still not experience the carefree, generous life Jesus talked about in his Sermon on the Mount. In fact it’s quite common.

However Jesus own life stood in stark contrast to such soul-starvation. His entire life was a joyous act of giving, and this from a person who was considered poor and relied on the charity of others. Nevertheless he was the most generous human being ever. Always giving himself away. How was he able to live this way? More >

I have some exciting NBV family news to report! Eighteen months ago my good friend and National Director, Phil Strout called me and told me about a couple from his church up in Maine. The husband, Grimaldi Martinez, grew up in Williamsburg, and had been serving on the staff of Pathway Vineyard for six years. Both he and his wife Celine sensed God’s call to move their family back to Brooklyn.

This was an answer to prayer. For some time I had been asking God to add more leadership horsepower to our team that had been depleted over the last few years due to attrition slowing down the momentum of our church. So Char and I met with the Martinez’s to see what God was up to. There was an immediate connection between us. I then got the green light from our leadership team to invite them to join our us and to officially bring on Grimaldi as my Assistant Pastor.

This began a process of acclimation and relationship building between the Martinez’s, our leadership team and our congregation that has gone great and confirmed to all that this is God’s will for them and our church. Read more >