The highest priority of God’s people is to worship Him, that is, to give to God the worth that He ought to have in our lives. In the Bible, one meaning of worship is to draw near. Thus in worship we give ourselves to God in love and He comes to us in the fullness of His Spirit. We believe that an intimate relationship with God is the basis of all that we do as Christians.

Worship is an expression of our love for God. It, therefore, should involve our whole person – our intellect, our emotions, our spirit, our will, our body and our money. We believe it should be enthusiastic since our love for God is passionate. And as an expression of love, worship is also self-disclosing. As such, it should be in our own language, expressing our thoughts and our hearts in simplicity and truth.

Ministry at the Vineyard flows from two basic assumptions. First, it is based on the compassion and mercy of God. Jesus was the embodiment of God’s compassion and mercy toward those in need. Thus, through the imitation of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, we seek to minister out of hearts which are filled with Christ’s mercy and compassion.

Second, Jesus Christ as the Messiah came to establish the Kingdom of God – that is, God’s right to rule in the world (Matthew 9:35-10:10). This Kingdom rule and reign of God is extended through the world in, among other things, the following ways:

• Preaching the gospel with the aim of making disciples

• Healing the sick

• Teaching believers to follow Christ

• Feeding the poor

• Counseling those in need of God’s wisdom

• Giving to the work of Christ

• Building up families

• Reaching children

Vineyard exists to care for and to build up people, not programs. Fellowship begins with our relationship with Jesus. But fellowship is more than our individual relationship with Jesus. It also involves our commitment to Christ’s body, the church.

We believe that this commitment to Christ’s body can best be expressed by small groups. We must know one another in order to love one another and to share one another’s burdens. Small groups are the basic structure in the Vineyard for comfort and counsel, service to one another, intimate relationships, healing and prayer. In these groups, we stress such things as honesty, integrity, reality, acceptance and love. Small groups are also a basic structure in the worldwide expansion of the church today.

The New Testament calls Christians to a radical commitment. We believe that we are called to an unconditional surrender of our whole lives to Christ. We do not do this in a legalistic way or to impress or judge one another. Instead, our surrender to God springs from a response of love and thanksgiving to God who loved us and gave Himself for us.

As a church, we stimulate one another to discipleship. As was said previously, a disciple is a person who, in the context of the church, is passionately committed to a life-long process of worshipping Jesus’ person, obeying Jesus’ words, doing Jesus’ deeds, and imitating Jesus’ life.

One simple way of defining a disciple is pupil or learner. It involves binding oneself to another so that the disciple does what the master does. In Christian discipleship our aim is to be bound to Christ and imitate Him. We believe we are to imitate Jesus in all that He did – preaching, healing, praying, delivering the demonized and caring for the poor.

Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). He accomplishes that salvation through the witness of His people accompanied by signs and wonders (Mark 16:20).

There are almost 150 million unchurched people in the United States right now. Depending upon the statistics, between 60 and 80 million of these are people in the post-war generation. That means that an enormous mission field exists for churches like the Vineyard right here in the United States. There are also tens of millions of unreached peoples around the world who we are called to reach (Matthew 28:18-20).

We are called to become a contagious church that reaches out to our friends, neighbors and families. We are called to become a church that reaches out to our region through church planting. We are called to reach out to the world through short-term world mission trips.