Building a Church for Others

When German pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was imprisoned in the Flossenburg Concentration Camp during WWII, he wrote a letter to a friend saying: "The church is only the church when it exists for others." Building a church for others has been a repeated theme here at Vineyard Columbus. In fact, our vision statement reads this way: "Our vision as a church is to be a R.E.L.E.V.A.N.T. church that does not exist for itself, but for Christ and for the world."

The common way that this notion of "building a church for others" is expressed is to say that we want to create a missional church. There are lots of adjectives that are used to describe churches today. People talk about the "Emergent" church, or "seeker-sensitive" church, or "Purpose-Driven" churches, or "contemporary" churches, but God's people are rediscovering that the essential calling of a church has less to do with the way a church is organized, or the style of music that a church uses, or even the particular evangelical brand of the church's doctrine.

What really differentiates one church from another is whether the church exists primarily for its own members, or if the church primarily exists for others. This is the major dividing point in the church world today - whether we are going to form people who aim their lives outwardly toward others, or, if instead, church members understand the church through some other lens.

Other Paradigms for Church

1. The church is seen through the lens of consumerism. "The church and the church staff exist to meet my needs."

2. The church is seen through the lens of self-preservation. "The job of children and youth pastors' is to keep our kids safe from the danger of secular culture."

3. The church is seen through the lens of belief systems. "Our church is defined by how we understand the timing of the baptism in the Holy Spirit."

4. The church is seen through the lens of creating an event. "The key to church life is to create the best possible Sunday morning event."

Here is what we believe at Vineyard Columbus about personal growth and church growth. We believe that individuals grow spiritually as we serve other people. Spiritual growth does not primarily occur through the intake of information, although information has a role to play. Thus, we don't measure how good a job we are doing in "discipling" people by counting the number of folks attending our classes. The greatest tool for growing church members to maturity is teaching people to serve other people.

We also believe that the best way to grow Vineyard numerically is to have the community witness our church in action. Watching the church in action is infinitely more valuable than an advertising campaign. We want our city to say, "The Vineyard is the best friend our city has. Your people are everywhere demonstrating their love for us."

The Vineyard is constantly trying to have people experience God's Kingdom. But the reality of my life, and probably the reality of your life is that we experience the Kingdom of God only when we give it away. Only when we stretch ourselves out and pray for someone else, or sacrifice, or drive across town to meet someone's need do we experience God's Kingdom. We need to be where Jesus is to experience God's Kingdom. Where is Jesus? He is with the poor; he is with people who are hurting; he is with single parents and fatherless children. Jesus is in prison and in hospitals, and with strangers to our community. If we want to experience more of God's Kingdom, we must do what Jesus is doing and go where Jesus is going.

One way for all of us to get outside of ourselves is to join the church in a massive outreach to the city of Columbus that we are calling Serve Columbus on SATURDAY, MAY 12, 2007. Serve Columbus will consist of deploying 30 mini-teams all over Columbus to carry out various projects in our community.

Projects will be based upon 3 categories:

• Kindness (random acts of kindness & giveaways)
• Service (raking leaves, planting flowers)
• Mercy Ministry (nursing homes, urban ministry).

Projects will be categorized as:

Lunch will be served afterwards at VCC where all teams can compare stories of how God used their efforts and servants' hearts. We are asking every small group in our church to get involved. This includes women's groups, men's groups, recovery groups, co-ed groups, etc. If you are not in a small group, we invite you to definitely come out and participate Why not contact Kristi Hickman at 614.259.5304 or kristi.hickman@vineyardcolumbus.org and get involved!