Vineyard Church of Columbus
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Vineyard Church of Columbus is a church in Westerville, Ohio. It is part of the Association of Vineyard Churches that is based in Sugar Land, Texas. It is led by Senior Pastor Rich Nathan. It is a church that can be described as an empowered evangelical (stream of Christianity) church, according to the definition in Rich Nathan and Ken Wilson (pastor)'s book Empowered Evangelicals (book) that was published in the mid-1990s.
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[edit] The Theological Foundation of the Church
An empowered evangelical is someone who embraces the best of the evangelical stream of Christian belief and the best of charismatic/pentacostal stream of Christian belief. Most simply defined as believing that what the Bible has to say is true and that truth is the world's only hope. And that Christians are called to tell others about what the Bible says God is doing in the world, namely transforming it. That work finds its central focus in the person of Jesus and what it is said he accomplished in his death on the cross and through being raised from the dead (known as the resurrection). According to evangelical belief, forming a relationship with Jesus is the doorway into the transformation that God is bringing to the world. This would be the evangelical stream of belief. The empowered stream is that God has made his power available through the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, to bring about transformation of all aspects of life in this world, to a significant degree, often in extra-ordinary ways in addition to ordinary ways. This includes a belief in healing of physical and mental illnesses and miraculous signs. While there are definite disagreements between the two streams of thought, the Vineyard believes there is great unity at the core of two. And that is the place where the Vineyard's philosophy of what exactly is happening in life and how we are called to face it comes from.
[edit] The History of the Church
The Vineyard Church of Columbus dates back as a church to the late-1970s. Three different house churches joined together to form the first church, It was not called a Vineyard at the time however. The church remained independent of any larger group for a number of years. After investigating a number of groups to join with, the leadership of the church decided on the Association of Vineyard Churches, which was led at that point by John Wimber. They became the Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Columbus in 1987, changing their name to what it is known as now in the late 1990s. The church has grown steadily and is one of the largest in the movement today.
[edit] The Service of the Church
The action of the church in the life of the surrounding community is forged by a belief that God is not just forgiving sins and in doing so making available eternal life, but that he is also actively desiring to fix what is broken in the world. The Vineyard terminology is that the Kingdom of God is advancing and transforming the world. According to the theological position that the Vineyard takes, the kingdom of God is God's reign as action and the conformity of a situation to what he desires. Because of this view, the Vineyard Church of Columbus offers a full range of services to the community. It offers classes, prayer, sermons, and Bible study groups for growing into more wholeness in a person's spiritual life. It offers counseling, marriage training, small group communities for growing in one's relational life. It serves the poor and overlooked both in Columbus and worldwide to bring social wholeness. It prays for the sick people asking that God would supernaturally heal them, teaches classes on good health, and offers groups to help people grow in physical wholeness. There are number of other activities and services that the church offers, as well. While the church of course holds beliefs that are not popular with the greater culture and does actively seek to see moral wholeness, as well, it believes that the church is not here to fight and argue with its neighbors but to be the best friend that it possibly can be to them. This view has been important in the development of many social programs, such as food pantries, day care and after school programs, legal clinics, medical, dental, and optometry clinics.
