What is the Vineyard? Week 1: Our Story and Our Foundation

Following on from last week, we interviewed our small, small

group leaders like Tabby was just telling us, and we want to

start pushing into now about what it means to be in the

vineyard. Who are we?

Why are we now? Many of us know what it means to

to be in church. The Church of England, for

instance, the Baptist Church. There's many other mainstream

denominations that some of you have been part of.

But why are we here? The Vineyard.

I wonder what you thought first time you came through the doors.

Nice cheery team. Thanks, Jason.

Good job. Doughnuts, tea and coffee.

Does it make it worth getting out of bed for?

But more than that, understanding why we're Vineyard

and what's important about that. No, we're not just any old

church or another church. No, we're not the worst church.

No, we're probably not the best church.

You know, if you come from another church at some point,

you'll probably find that we do things very differently to how

you may have done in the past. And there's a reason behind

that. You know, we're not King's

church. We're not the Methodist, even

though we've got a beautiful building they built.

No, we're not Ealing Pentecostal.

Now we love all of those guys, but we're not them.

We're a Vineyard church now. We love unity across the wider

church. But when you come here, you're

joining a Vineyard church. Now we can't come to a Vineyard

church and say I don't like the way they do that and try to

change it. Now we have a unique DNA for a

reason. And the way we do church goes

back to the very beginning of the Vineyard.

You know, when we've been round church a while, it's easy to

default into some familiar Christianese phrases, isn't it?

Oh, I love Jesus. I go to church, I serve on a

team, I go to small group. But have you ever stopped to

really ask yourself, what is the church?

What is this specific expression of the church that we call the

vineyard? Now some of you sitting here

today, now you know our DNA intimately.

Now you've been around the block, you know, you know the

stories and you carry the history in your bones.

But for others of you in here, that you're just discovering

this family. And like any family, to truly

understand who we are and where we are going, we have to look

back at where we've come from Now.

We need to understand our family history now, our core values,

and the mandate that God has placed upon us as a movement.

Now, when we talk about the Vineyard, we often describe

ourselves as empowered evangelicals.

But what does that mean now? It means we intentionally seek

to live in what we call the radical middle.

Now, historically, the broader church has often experienced

attention. On one side you have the rich,

deep evangelical tradition that holds tightly to the authority

of the Word of God, sound doctrine and the pursuit of

Christ like character. And on the other side, you know

you have the Pentecostal and charismatic traditions that

embrace the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit, prophecy,

divine healing. But in the vineyard, you know,

we don't believe you have to choose.

Now I've found that John Wimber famously observed that you have

all the Word, all the Bible, and no spirit.

You dry up. If you have all the spirit and

no word, you blow up. But with the spirit and the

Word, we grow up now. We seek to blend the absolute

best of both traditions. Now we are people of the Word

and the spirits. You, if you've been around the

last few weeks, you'll have heard this use of phrase.

You know, we are naturally supernatural, meaning we

desperately want the power and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

But we want them without the hype, without the religious

theatre, and without the weirdness.

Now we want to minister simply, authentically, and we're loving

hearts. And we don't think that we are

the whole Stew. As John used to say in God's

great steward of global church, the vineyard is just the turnip.

Now we give a unique flavour to the whole, but we deeply love

and respect the rest of the body of Christ.

But to understand how we got this DNA, we have to travel back

to the 60s and 70s in California.

Now out of the hippie subculture, a massive spiritual

awakening called the Jesus People swept across America.

Young people desperate to experience God after finding no

real satisfaction in drugs and rock'n'roll were powerfully

coming to know Jesus. Now out of this move of God,

Calvary Chapel emerged. And from Calvary Chapel, a soft

spoken, unassuming leader named Ken Goloksson planted the church

in West in Los Angeles in 1974. Now believing that God had

instructed him can name this loose fellowship of churches.

The vineyard drawn from Isaiah 27, where it says in that day a

pleasant vineyard, sing of it. I am the Lord, am its keeper.

Every moment I water it, lest anyone punish it.

I keep it night and day. I have no wrath.

Would that I had thorns and briars to battle, I would March

against them. I would burn them up together,

or let them lay hold of my protection.

Let them make peace with me, let them make peace with me.

And also John 15. I am the true vine, and my

Father is the vine dresser. Every branch of me does not bear

fruit He takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he

prunes that it may be that it may bear more fruit.

At around the same time, God was getting a hold of a man you hear

us talk about a lot, John Wimber.

Now he was not your typical polished pastor.

He was a beer guzzling, chain smoking pop musician from

Keyboards in Las Vegas for the playing.

Sorry, Keyboards in Las Vegas for The Righteous Brothers.

Now his marriage to his wife Carol, it was on the brink of

divorce. In an act of sheer desperation,

they both separately cried out to God that they didn't even

know at the time. God met with them and John

Wimble walked away from his music career and he took a job

in a factory, plunging himself into a Quaker LED Bible study

where he surrendered his life to Jesus.

As John began reading the Bible for the very first time, he

didn't read it through the lenses of religious tradition.

He read it like a job description.

He read about Jesus healing the sick, casting out demons,

raising the dead. Sir John went to the leaders of

his church with that very sincere question, when do we get

to do that? And as many of you have heard

this story from us before, they explained to him that they don't

believe in those things, but they didn't actually do them

anymore. Those miracles, he was told,

were just for the early days of the apostles.

And he was devastated. And he said to them, you don't

understand. I gave up my career for this

when I worked for the devil. I got to do the devil stuff.

If I'm working for Jesus, I want to do what Jesus did.

And God used that hunger. Over time, through diligent

study of Kingdom theology and through dramatical, dramatic

personal experiences like seeing his own son, Sean Megraxy,

healed from hundreds of bee stings.

And after a desperate prayer, prayer, John's paradigm began to

shift. In 1977, John and Carroll

started the church in Yorba Linda.

They worship intimately, and John began training average

everyday people to pray for the sick.

And a turning point came on Mother's Day in 1980, Johnny

John invited a young hippie evangelist named Lonnie Frisbee

to speak at evening service. And after a simple message,

Lonnie looked at the congregation, mostly young

people under 25, meeting in the gymnasium and said the church

has been offending the Holy Spirit for a long time, but he's

getting over it. Come Holy Spirit, and heaven

broke loose. The Spirit of God fell on that

gymnasium. People were weeping, shaking,

speaking in tongues and encountering God's raw power.

And the Vineyard movement as we know it was ignited.

By 1982, John's Church officially joined Ken

Gullickson's network and the Association of Vineyard Churches

was born. But this wasn't just an American

story. The fire couldn't be contained.

In 1981, John Wimber brought a team of teenagers to the UK,

visiting Anglican churches in Chorleywood and York.

Despite the traditions of the Church of England, these young,

untrained teenagers climbed over pews and communion rails to pray

for the sick. Blind eyes were opened.

A girl with polio was healed, the viable sparked and and the

profound impact of these visits influenced leaders like David

Pitches, David Watson, you know, eventually giving birth to

massive UK movements like New Wine, Soul Survivor and the

Alpha Course. Now it is right in the middle of

this stirring environment that God began to move in the lives

of a couple called John and Elena Mumford.

John was a simple classical Church of England curate and was

initially highly sceptical, thinking that he might just

endure and probably correct this charismatic nonsense.

But in 1982, David Watson gave John a piece of advice before a

study trip to the US. Whatever you do, don't come back

from America until you've met Wimba.

Take any advice. John wrote a letter and flew to

Los Angeles to find the Anaheim Vineyard.

He arrived in a suit tie, his rolled umbrella and briefcase,

petrified that he'd stumbled into a cult.

But Wimber warmly welcomed him, noting that they had received

his letter and decided that if this guy turns up, we'll know

it's the Lord. And John Mumford was captivated

by what he saw. He'd never seen ordinary people

ministering in the power of the Holy Spirit, Noor had he

experienced 20 minutes of such beautiful, riveting and intimate

worship. John's wife, Eleanor, met Wimber

a year later when he visited London, and she, too, was

profoundly shaped by his teaching on the Holy Spirit and

his winsome, constant practise of praying for the sick hung

going for more. The month has eventually moved

to California and worked for nearly 2 1/2 years on the staff

of the Anaheim Vineyard, watching and learning directly

from John Wimber. During their time in Anaheim,

they began to sense God called him to plant a Vineyard church

in UK. It wasn't an easy decision.

Now. John initially resisted,

admitting he'd responded to God's call by sticking his

fingers in his ears and going La La, La La la.

I don't know if it rings true for any of us now.

Even John Wimber was hesitant at first, writing to all the others

that he wasn't all sure that it was the Lord's will for the

Mumfords to come to the UK. However, after God specifically

confirmed the call to the Mumfords 33 times through

scriptures, pictures and strangers, they took a massive

leap of faith in 1987. Giving up their housing,

traditional church and status and their main source of income,

John and Ellen moved back to the UK following God's clear

instructions not to defend themselves, not to recruit from

other churches. They planted the first European

Vineyard Church right in the front room in Southwest London.

God honoured that obedience and it laid a foundation of

multiplication that has now grown into this massive family

of churches across the UK and Ireland.

I mean who would of in their wildest dreams because of that

step of obedience thought the we would be here now.

The impact that it's had on minor Lisa's life because of

their obedience and so many stories in this church because

of what God has been doing from Wimba all the way through to the

Mumfords and beyond. But what is a Vineyard church?

I want to explain it with this simple visual tool that we call

the Vineyard person. Now, this isn't a picture of you

or me as individuals, nor is it an exhaustive theological

statement of everything the global church believes.

Rather, it's a simple reminder of our unique family history.

It's a symbol of the values that direct us as we move forward

together, representing what a local vineyard is called to be.

So if you look at the screen, you'll see my amazing drawing

the stick figure. Just be glad I didn't do it by

hand. So let's build this stick man

piece by piece to understand what it means for our church.

The base, the Bible, everything begins with the ground that we

stand on. The base of the Vineyard Person

is the Bible. As evangelicals now, we believe

the Scriptures are inspired by the Holy Spirit.

As Two Timothy reminds us, all Scripture is God breathed and is

useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training of

righteousness. The Bible is our final and

absolute authority, our Plumb line for how we live and

practise our faith. We are rooted here, the mound,

the Kingdom of God. The person stands on the mound

representing the Kingdom of God. The Bible tells the story of

God's Kingdom and understanding his theology is the engine of

the vineyard. Now when Jesus began his

ministry in Matthew 4, He preached the good news of the

Kingdom and He healed every disease.

Now we believe we live in you already and not yet.

The Kingdom of God has broken into our world through Jesus,

bringing healings, delivering deliverance and salvation.

Yet it's not fully consummated that we still experience

sickness and death until Jesus returns.

We live in His tension, boldly praying for miracles while

trusting God's sovereignty when we don't see them.

The legs, worship and compassion.

The two legs that the vineyard person stands upon allow the

church to move forward. Worship.

Luke 10 calls us to love the Lord your God with all your

heart. Worship is our absolute highest

priority. It's not the warm up for the

sermon, it is the main event in the vineyard.

We don't just sing songs about God, we sing songs to God.

Intimacy is our goal, as you may well have just found out.

Compassion that when we truly worship that we encounter the

presence of Jesus. And when you encounter Jesus, he

leaves a deposit of his heart inside of us.

Now, Matthew 9 says that when Jesus saw the crowds, he had

compassion on them. Compassion is not just feeling

sorry for someone, isn't unction, nor a holy compulsion

to express God's mercy and justice to a broken, hurting

world. Worship leads to compassion, the

body, the fourfold mission of the local church, the torso, the

vineyard person represents the functions of our local church

community. We're called to be 4 things to

our town, a hospital. Let's be honest, many of us come

to Jesus and stay in that place of a terrible state.

Those of us who've walked him for years, but we still carry

wounds. We've still not been healed.

Jesus said it is not a healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

The church is a place for the broken to find healing,

forgiveness, and restoration through the power of the Spirit.

With a school, we want to equip you for life.

We aren't here just to lecture you.

We're here to train you. 2 Timothy says the Scriptures

equip us for every good work. Now we want to teach you how to

read your Bible, how to share your faith, how to pray for the

sick, and how to navigate the complexities of life.

We're a community, a house, Ephesians 2 says.

We're being built together into a dwelling place for God by the

spirits. No, we're not a social club.

No, we're a spiritual home. We're bricks being mortared

together through love, relationship and small groups,

creating a place where people truly belong.

We're an army, not a military army of destruction.

It's a spiritual Peace Corps. We're an army that seeks to

educate, build, heal and bring relief.

As Isaiah 61 declares, the Spirit of the Lord has anointed

us to bind up the broken hearted and proclaim liberty to the

captives. We are reclaiming territory that

the enemy has stolen. The arms of the vineyard person,

church planting and church development.

The arms of the figure reach outwards signify our desire to

reach the wider body of Christ and the world.

Church planting the vineyard is a multiplication movement that

we believe the best way to reach new people for Jesus is to keep

planting new churches. We want to identify leaders,

train them, and send them out to start new communities of faith

around the country, around the world.

Church development, you know, we don't exist in a vacuum.

We seek to maintain unity with other churches in our town,

serving them with generosity. We also want to call the a wider

church back to Christ, reminding ourselves that this is his

church, not ours, and championing the ministry of the

Holy Spirit everywhere. The head, Jesus is above it all.

Jesus is the head of the body. Colossians 118 makes it clear.

He organises us, He leads us and he holds us close together.

And lastly, making disciples and equipping the Saints inside the

head is the Great Commission. Making disciples and equipping

the Saints. Matthew 28 commands us to go and

train everyone we meet in this way of life.

Our ultimate goal is not just to gather a crowd on a Sunday.

Our goal is that everyone gets to play.

You don't have to be a professional pastor to do the

work of Jesus. We want to train you to hear

God's voice, to lay hands on the sick, to advance the Kingdom in

your workplace, your school, your home.

But for now, I want to return to one of those legs, worship.

Because everything we do, the hospital, the school, the

compassion, the church planting flows out of our worship and

within the vineyard. We hold tightly to five specific

worship values. Intimacy, accessibility,

integrity, Kingdom expectation, and passion within our worship.

Intimacy as our primary destination.

It's not a musical style, it's the posture of a surrendered

heart. Accessibility means we create

environments where anyone from any background can walk in and

meet with God. Integrity means we desperately

want the songs that we sing on Sunday to match the lives that

we live on Monday. Kingdom expectation means we

genuinely believe that while we are singing, God will break in

to heal, deliver and perform miracles right here in the room.

And passion is your authentic fire in our hearts where we're

celebrating in joy or crying out in deep sorrow.

So what does this all look like for us tomorrow?

What does this look like when we leave this building today?

The worship in its truest form overflows into mission.

Now we breathe in the presence of God when we gather here, but

we must breathe out the love of God when we walk out of those

doors. Now, being a Vineyard person

means our worship doesn't end when the music stops.

It means we take the intimacy we find in the presence of Jesus.

We let it fill us with compassion.

And then we step into our office, we step into college, we

step into our neighbourhood as an outpost of the Kingdom of

God. It means when our colleague is

sick, we don't just say, I'll keep you in my thoughts.

We gently ask, can I pray for you?

And we ask the Holy Spirit to come.

It means when we see injustice, poverty or loneliness in our

city and we don't look the other way, we step into the gap

because we're part of an army bringing in a year of God's

favour. It means we embrace the radical

reality that God's grace has us covered, has uniquely designed

each one of us. Not just me stood up here, not

just Lisa, for all of us to do the stuff of the Kingdom that

we've been preaching on for the last few weeks.

Now. God is eager to be experienced.

The Holy Spirit is moving. The fire that started in the

living room in California that crossed the ocean to the UK is

the exact same fire that God wants to fan into flame in this

room today. So as we draw this to a close

today, I wanted to take a step back from the stick figure, the

history, and the structural categories and ask the ultimate

question. Why does any of this matter?

Why should we care about understanding why we're in a

Vineyard church? Or fundamentally, why we should

we choose to be committed to church at all?

Now our world out there is hurting.

And if we look at the raw reality of our society, the

single greatest epidemic grip in our communities right now is an

overwhelming, crushing loneliness.

People are isolated, drifting and starving for anything real.

And we face a distinct choice. We can shut our doors and we can

say I'm all right, Jack, or we can choose to be part of the

solution. You see, we were never designed

to be Lone Rangers in our faith. We are what the Bible calls the

ecclesia, the gathered ones. The church isn't a spectator

sport we tune into like an episode of Gogglebox then, nor

is a casual social club to check off when it fits our weekly

schedule. It's a spiritual home where the

natural and a spiritual are permanently threaded together.

Now I can't emphasise this enough.

We don't stay at home on a Sunday morning because we don't

feel like coming now. This is way bigger.

How we live our life now has an impact on our eternity.

In One Timothy 6, Paul tells us that when we do good, serve and

live open handed lives together, we are laying up treasure for

ourselves as a firm foundation for the coming age.

So it may take hold of the life that it's truly life now.

Let's call this what it is. The Western idol of extreme

individualism has lied to us. It's told us that our faith is

purely private and a church is an optional extra if the bed is

too warm or the weather's not nice.

The lie is exactly what our society is starving for.

Connection. Now, every single time we push

past our feelings and we choose to anchor ourselves in this

room, we're breaking a cultural stronghold and sowing a seed

that echoes straight into eternity.

What we do in this room on this morning, building the

foundations of the age to come. This is where real life begins.

Now, when we sit together, share food, fix a neighbour's washing

machine, chat over the fence with a cup of tea, It's not just

physical activity. It's deeply, profoundly

spiritual that we need the church.

Because trust grows out of relationships.

Relationships build trust, and trust builds a community that

can hold the weight of a broken town.

The the local church, living as a true spiritual family, is

quite literally the hope of the world.

But within the wider global body of Christ, God has given us a

specific lane to run. In the vineyard is the turnip in

the Stew. We deeply love and respect and

partner with the 50 other churches across Darlington.

But it is vital to know why we are here as Darlington Vineyard,

because our unique family DNA determines our culture and our

strategy. Though we are empowered

evangelicals intentionally pursuing the radical middle, we

refuse to choose between the Word and the Spirit.

We anchor our lives on the absolute authority of the Bible,

but we are actively expect the raw, moving presence of the Holy

Spirit to break in into our all in worship.

We're called to be naturally supernatural, carrying the heavy

high voltage of heaven into the ordinary spaces for High Road

and beyond, without the religious theatre and hype or

weirdness. Now an identity means we

understand our unique calling to be a hospital for the broken, a

training school to equip you a relational home and a mobilised

army to bring relief. So how do we move from just

holding a load of head knowledge to actually living out this

radical life of faith? It comes down to a dynamic

personal choice to move towards the centre, to move towards

Jesus. It means stepping past the

posture of a baby bird waiting on a Sunday to be fed little by

little, and instead stepping up to take responsibility for the

family now. Connected means committed.

And if you're on a shared mission with us now, I want to

challenge you to radically invest in four ways.

Commit to Sundays, make a relational choice to prioritise

gathering corporately and we breathe in the presence of God

together so we can breathe out His love.

On Mondays. Commit to a small group.

Sundays are for the large celebration, but small groups of

the relational mortar sets in. It's where trust is built, mills

are shared, and we're sure that loneliness doesn't stand a

chance in our myths. Commit to serving.

We believe, evident we have, that this mission needs each and

every one of us to be involved. You don't need a pastor title to

do the works of Jesus. The Saints are called through

the work of ministry. Speak to any of our team leads

now, whether it's Hospitality, Kids, Welcome, Media, PA, the

Cafe Hope and Glory where we're so desperate for people to keep

those doors open. Tippy Toes and Grow Baby come

alongside Hand crafting and Tuesdays and Fridays wherever it

is. Step into the adventure of

serving once a month and it's never too early.

Your healing comes when we step into serving.

Commit your finances now. We believe it's a fundamental

and biblical part of our worship to give our money back to God

just to turn the electricity and gas on.

Keep this building open every month cost us over 4000 lbs.

Our average monthly outgoings are around 17,000 lbs.

And again, like serving, we truly believe that if we all

come together, live as Jesus asks us to sacrificially, the

resources are in this church. We're everything that we're

called to now. When we live with radical

generosity and set up regular giving now, we aren't funding

bricks and mortar. We're invest investing in seeing

a broken lives completely transformed.

Now Lisa and I, we can't do this alone, nor do we want to.

No, we want to be a faith filled, big thinking, risk

taking, genuine loving community that puts it all on the line,

trusting in an unstoppable God that He is building his church.

Though. Let's not leave this spiritual

house a mess. Let's refuse to sleep with our

oil in our flasks. Let's keep our Holy Spirit and

tie up. Listen to the nudges.

Let's go out and do the stuff of the Kingdom and our workplaces,

our schools, our neighbourhoods. Though we want to be sharing

stories of lives transformed. Though we want to be taking

those risks of saying, can I pray for you?

You know, I believe in a God who heals.

Do you want to come out for a cup of tea?

Though we want to be sharing those stories as we reach out

into our communities.