Anyone is invited to have a free hot dog, $1 PBR (for those over 21) & hang out.

Our goal is to meet more people around, be hospitable & get word out about church at the Trash Bar. So come, hangout. Word is there will be some live music on the street too.

If you’re interested in helping us put this on, please contact Mike Turrigiano (miket@nycvineyard.org).

Mike & Brendon will be talking about our perspective on God, how to suffer well, dealing with disappointment & the wrongdoing of others, how to even celebrate in suffering.

Our hope is that this series will provide pastoral help because all of us meet suffering at different points in life.

Join us Sunday morning and/or evenings as we explore these topics through June!

Jesus seems to talk a lot about and demonstrate a kind of love that changed the way people around him even saw themselves. Might there be something to these ancient ideas that’s life giving even for non religious people in NYC in 2010?

Join us in the 8 weeks leading up to Easter as we take a look at some of these ideas

…I know God loves me because of Jesus (well, why, how?)

…What is it about guilt, shame & worry

…Jesus is compassionate

…Calls the best out of us

…Gives us peace and rest

…Listens even when others don’t

…Looks for those who are  ”lost”

…What the cross & death have to do with this whole thing

…April 4 Easter… Gives us hope for change and a future

We try to make these talks accessible to people who are new to faith, or people with questions but not so convinced about religion or God, so invite people who might be interested!

Why are we doing this? For serveral reasons. The biggest being that we’ve observed that on most Sundays most of us are not ready to dive into worship. So there’s a lot of just sitting and observing, especially for the people that are new  and don’t understand worship. As a result many of you have been showing up later and later in time for the main event – the sermon. In many cases, the best, and most meaningful times of worship have been at the end of the service, after we’ve been encouraged by God’s Word and have been given good reason to sing and express things like gratitude towards the Lord.

We didn’t come to this decision overnight.  For months now we’ve discussed this among our leaders and at our Core meetings and it’s been suggested that putting worship near the end of our service, while we offer prayer ministry made a lot of sense. We also checked with other Vineyard churches that have gone to this type of format and they’ve reported been getting very good results. So we’re making the change.

How will this effect you? It wil take some time getting used to but I think it will bring a better flow to our gatherings as well as make our services more “outsider friendly”.  It will also break the bad habit of lateness. With this new format if you show up late you’ll miss the sermon.  Some of you will have to make some healthy adjustments which won’t be so bad.

We’ll give it a four month trial run and then evaluate how things are going in May.

Learn how to take control of your financial future and launch a personal economic revolution during our upcoming series. Series begins January 17th.

Big thanks go out to Kenny P, Tony Colon from StarlightStudio for the design help & modifying our logo to better suite us , Sikitexture & Morgan Design for the help with our logo all those years ago.

Photos here are a result of Jon Adrie Hoekstra, Jon Wooten, Erica Petrowski, Millay Vann, James Allen Walker.

We have additional features, tweaks & changes coming in the near future but wanted to get this out to you sooner rather than later. Your feedback, as always, is appreciated.