People on the move

We’ve just finished-up a sermon series on our Core Values. I hope finding out that we’re more than a bunch of nice people that go to church on the weekends helpful. I hope finding out that we’re actually people on the move, becoming a new kind of human beings, participating in a mission initiated by Jesus to remake the world into a better place to live, encourages and inspires you. It certainly does it for me.

“Fellowship-ing”

This reminds me of something that not many people know about the name, “Vineyard Christian Fellowship”. For the longest time the Vineyard referred to itself as a “movement.” We were an association of churches drawn together by a life-giving culture that was both distinct and intangible. At times we felt and experienced who we were as a movement more than we could define it by some formal statement. We eventually distilled this culture into our five core values.

We were called not merely to reach inward for our own personal healing and comfort, but outward to fulfill the commission of Jesus. We were drawn together because we all shared this common cause – to awaken the world, both saved and unsaved, to the here and now of the Kingdom of God. And as a side effect we experienced real honest-to- goodness community. As we invested ourselves in that cause we developed deep and lasting relationships with one another; many of which neither time nor distance has diminished in almost thirty years now.

Now here’s what most people in the Vineyard don’t realize: Our founder John Wimber, purposely chose to call our churches fellowships (koinonia in Greek) because it refers to something much richer than the word community, most frequently translated “church” in the original language. Fellowship speaks of being unified around a common purpose and mission. You might say that fellowship is a community with a cause; the kind of exciting community the church in the book of Acts exemplified.

You see, the richest, deepest, most lasting relationships come from acommitment to mission or fellowship-ing. Think of veterans that served together in a war or a sports team that wins a hard fought championship. When we join together and work at doing something that makes a difference; something that costs us – when we’re fellowship-ing – people gain a divine sense of purpose and significance in their lives. Connections are made, relationships form, healing happens, big, beautiful things happen, even heroic things.

My prayer

So what’s in a name? Our official name is the North Brooklyn Vineyard Christian Fellowship. My prayer is that with God’s help, as we integrate our core values into our everyday lives more and more, we’ll live up to the significance of that name. I pray we continue to grow into a church that provides community built around this kind of fellowship – built around the cause of Christ.

See you Sunday

Mike T