This year the Vineyard Movement turns 50 years old. Born out of the Jesus Movement in 1974 it has grown to over 500 churches in the United States and over 2000 congregations across 121 countries. According to last year's reporting, over 10500 people came to faith in Jesus across the USA Vineyards in 2023.
I'm feeling a little nostalgic. I love this tribe. It’s not the biggest or the best, but it has fit me like a glove.
In 1992 we met a couple, Mike and Gail, who were planting something called a Vineyard Church in Rogers, Arkansas. I had never heard of planting a church… I remember asking Mike if he had driven around town… it seemed to me there were plenty. He just pointed out at the street and said something like “Those people still haven’t found one.” I also had never heard of Vineyard, and that automatically made it suspect.
But Mike was a fantastic guitar player and worship leader, and he was playing worship music that was different than anything I had ever heard. I was a musician and occasional worship leader at my church, so I was very attracted to this new music. We soon became close friends and it wasn’t long before Marie and I found ourselves attending the small group launch team meetings where I would often join the worship team.
My first impressions were not necessarily positive. This group was different than any I had been involved with before... MUCH more intimate. The intimacy was very intimidating. And the transparency… people shared their stuff… I mean the stuff I had never heard anyone share in a public setting before. I often left offended by the raw emotions and the honest talk, telling Marie, “That just shouldn’t be allowed at a church meeting.”
I think the thing I struggled with the most was the personal prophetic words. People would come up to someone, sometimes someone they didn’t know at all, and say something like, “I feel like God wants you to know…” and share some insight or word of knowledge where they would minister to someone with knowledge they could not know naturally. I had a framework for that and had seen “Prophets” come to town, but I hadn’t seen it so direct and personal and from ordinary folk.
They would also pray in ways I had not seen before. I’ve heard someone joke that before they came to a Vineyard church they had never seen anyone pray for a person who was present in the room. That is probably true in many churches where they may pray over a prayer list but not so much one on one.
I had been around praying for the sick before. And I had seen a few people get healed. But these guys were praying as if they expected it to happen right then and there. And it WAS happening. There was no hype, no shouting, no theatrics… just the presence of God. I saw more actual healing and life change in those first few months than I had ever seen before.
And when they worshipped… Wow! Heaven would show up in that little room. I could not get enough of the worship. They focused on songs that were being sung TO God, and not primarily songs about Him. There is a place for both, certainly, but this distinction for us at that time was profound. The intimacy that I had struggled with in other areas was what drew me in during the worship. Marie and I were captured.
I could tell story after story about the things I’ve seen and experienced since that small, beautiful beginning. Clearly, I got over my offenses. These days I actually go teach and model most of those very things that bothered me so much back then. There is not any part of our life that has not been impacted by those experiences.
I did not start this article with this in mind, but I am so moved right now as I write. I feel compelled to say to Mike and to Gail, I am grateful for your obedience, that you left your security in another state to move your young family to Arkansas to start a church. I know that in many ways it didn’t turn out the way you had dreamed and envisioned, but your obedience completely and totally redirected our lives, and we are forever grateful.
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