The Mission Part 2: The Branches

The Vine will most certainly be an important piece to our passion to proclaim the Gospel and see disciples commit to Jesus.

I will say this right now, however.  We are not interested in just starting another "church".  A Sunday event where people show up, punch their spiritual time card and leave for their weeks.  A place with every conceivable program driven to satisfy all the consumers and the potential "felt needs" they might have.  There are plenty of these kinds of churches in Spokane, and they are fulfilling what God is calling them to do.  I am not knocking them, just saying that we are not interested in that model of "church".

Most of our ministry will take place in The Branches.  Here is our passion for what this vital aspect of our ministry is:

Because of Jesus' love for us, the branches grow from the Vine into our communities through the diversity of gifts God has given His people.

So lets unpack this idea a bit.

Again, first and foremost, it is the great love that Jesus has for us that compels us to love others for His sake and His glory.  Without loving people, we are not ministering or communicating the transforming message of the Gospel.

What we envision with the Branches are community specific, community driven ministries.  "Community" can be a misunderstood term in Christian circles.  At The Vine and the Branches, we view community from 2 angles: the place where you physically live and the place(s) where you live out your life.  With this definition in mind, a Branch grows from the Vine into the area you live, bringing the life-giving Gospel of Jesus to everyone who shares in that community with us.  

The main "Branch" will grow into the communities where our people live.  From there, offshoots will grow into other communities  (where we live out our life); each one tied into the Branch for nourishment, which in turn is connected to the Vine.

The forms that these Branches take on will vary from community to community.  There is no "one size fits all" approach to this.  That is because as ministers of  Jesus, He has uniquely gifted us to serve the people around us and to share with them the Gospel. 

Here is what we mean:

A branch grows from the Vine into the Manito area (a community in Spokane).  God's people in Manito unite together to minister to this unique community.  This could take on many forms based on the passions/gifting of the people there, balanced with the needs of the community around them.  Those are the offshoots.  They are still connected to the Manito branch, which is still connected to the Vine; but the ministry is focused on where they live, and the areas they live out their lives.  

The really cool thing about this is that because we are all connected to the same Vine, each Branch is very much tied into each other, modeling what believe the Body of Christ should be doing.

I will flesh this out more in another post for sure, but hopefully this gives you all some more understanding of what we are trying to do.

God is Good!!

The Method Part 1: The Vine

Our mission at The Vine and the Branches will play out in two arenas.  Our "hub" of ministry will be called the Vine.  Our outreach into the communities of Spokane will be called The Branches.  Both locations are intentional in their focus of introducing people to Jesus and teaching them the nature of discipleship.


The Vine will function as the place where we will gather together for corporate worship.  Here is our Mission Statement for the Vine:

With Jesus’ love as our source, the Vine exists to be a place where people gather together for Worship, Teaching, and Training

In breaking this down, here is what we intend:

First and foremost, Jesus is the reason for all that we do.  The life and vitality of our entire ministry is due to the fact that we are rooted and attached to Him.  If we were to separate ourselves from total dependence on Jesus, we would wither and die just like a branch that is removed from a tree.  Moreover, it is because of Jesus' great love for us that we are compelled to love others and introduce them to Him.

So The Vine will be a place that is drawing its strength, mission, vitality, and passion from Jesus.  He is the whole reason we exist.

Now, when we gather at the Vine as a community of people, it will be for 3 primary reasons.  These will be broken down in more detail in the posts to come, but here are some initial thoughts:

Gather to Worship together 

We all worship something.  It is how our Maker created us.  Even those of us who are still rebels worship, it is just not God.  We want the Vine to be a place where all people can be introduced to the majesty of our King.  A place where all people can experience their Creator and have their minds and hearts touched by the "eternal" that has been placed there by God Himself.  He has truly set eternity on our hearts, and when we worship together, the seeker and the disciple both can and will have their minds and hearts touched by God.

Gather for Teaching

Our primary goal in our teaching/preaching at the Vine is to proclaim the Gospel.  The Gospel is not simply the "Romans Road to Salvation" or the 4 Spiritual Laws. Nor is it purely knowledge.  It is the glorious Good News of God's story enfolding from Creation to Restoration.  It should challenge our thinking, touch our emotions, capture our imaginations, convict us of our sins, and encourage us in our hearts.  We need to see how the Gospel intersects with our daily lives and those around us.

Gather for Training

We also need to be trained in how to follow Jesus.  Our nature as fallen rebels makes the way of Discipleship foreign to our thinking.  Now, in our opinion, Sunday morning sermons are not effective for training people to follow Jesus.  A central ministry of The Vine will be training people to walk with Jesus outside of Sunday.  This will happen in The Branches.  It will also happen in The Vine.  This process will be very dependent on the needs of the people God has given us.  It could be training sessions at The Vine during the week.  It could be one of The Branches hosting something at The Vine.  Very flexible.

In reality, much of our ministry will take place in The Branches....

Our Mission

Mission statements all seem to sound kind of the same. Because in reality, we are all shooting for the same target. Well, usually.

We thought and prayed about how we can summarize what we feel God is leading us to do in one sentence. We wanted to incorporate both our passion for how awesome Jesus is and our dependence on Him with the Vine and Branches terminology. After many re-writes, here is our mission statement:

Fully dependent upon Jesus, the Vine and the Branches exists to proclaim His Gospel, making disciples that will go out and bless the city of Spokane for His glory

Let me break this down briefly.

As stated in the last post, we are all about Jesus and His Gospel. Everything we do is to give Him glory and focus people to the one hope for all humanity. He is the reason we have hope for eternity and joy for living. Therefore, we are fully dependent on Jesus and exist to proclaim His Gospel.

Our mission, our mandate, our job, is to make disciples. Jesus told us as much in His Commission. We believe that the Scriptures teach this is a lifelong process, not one that starts after a certain level of maturity is reached.

If you think about it, for most people who come to know King Jesus, the process of discipleship starts before "conversion". They are friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors who see our transformed lives and something stirs in their hearts to know more. What is so great about this is that we get the opportunity to introduce them to Savior of the world. The true hope for humanity. God's Spirit grips them and the Rebels throw down their weapons and fall down at God's matchless Grace given to us through Jesus.

But discipleship does not end there. We are called as a people to shepherd each other in the new life we have been given. Some need to learn the basics of our faith, as newborns need milk. Some disciples are ready for solid food and growth from just milk. Some are mature and need to step out in faith to disciple others. This is a lifelong process, happening all around us. Our goal is to make disciples.

We also have a strong desire to bless Spokane. A great city, coming into its own identity. But like any city, there is more work to go around than bodies to do it. We are a part of the city, we receive good things from the city, we participate with the city as it grows and changes. As good citizens of an eternal Kingdom, we have the opportunity to bless our city and our neighbors by engaging with them to make Spokane a more beautiful place.

Ultimately, it all goes back to Jesus though. It is for His glory that we do all of this. Not ours. It is His story, not ours. It is His mission, not ours. Everything we do should be a spotlight pointing people to Jesus.

So What Are We About?

Ok, so this post is getting into the meat and potatoes. No more "back-story". These next posts will come in rapid succession.

What is the Vine and the Branches all about?

First and foremost, we are all about Jesus and His Gospel. We truly believe that Jesus is the only hope for the entire creation. We believe that through His work on the cross (his life, death and resurrection), He is in the process of restoring all things back to the perfection we had before sin entered into the world.

He is reconciling broken rebels back to their Father, restoring us to relationship with the Creator of the Universe.

He is creating a new humanity, tearing down the man-made dividing walls our cultures have created and making a new people whose lives are identified in Christ and His Kingdom.

Ultimately, He will also restore the creation back to the balanced perfection it had before sin subjected it to futility.

The Gospel contains all this in glorious depth. It is His power for salvation to all who believe. Everything we do: every sermon we preach, song we sing, program we form, outreach we attempt, and gathering we have, are to proclaim the Gospel in a relevant way to the people God has placed in our lives.

Therefore, The Vine and the Branches is first and foremost all about Jesus.

We draw our name from Jesus Himself in John 15:1-11. Jesus is our source of life. If we attempt to live as a church apart from Jesus, we will bear no eternal fruit, and eventually wither and die. If we stay rooted in the Vine:

we will draw all the nutrients and strength we need for the mission,

we will be fruitful,
we will be secure when trials and hardships come,
we can ask God for miraculous transformation in Spokane and He will answer,
we will glorify God.

There really is not much secret to having a lot of people show up on a Sunday morning and grow a "Church". Get the most dynamic speaker possible who tells people how great they are, have a rocking band, and set up every conceivable program to appeal to the consumers. Use established business models to accommodate the budgets and growth and Bob's your uncle. Mega-church.

Not interested in that.

The next posts will describe how we are taking this Vine and Branches thought and applying it to church ministry.

Faith

There are many aspects to the life of a disciple that are very opposite to our upbringing and nature as fallen rebels. Think about it....

Loving people. Really loving them. Sacrificially. Whether or not they love you back. Or if they are even lovable in the first place (never mind that we all fall into this category!). Even your enemies and those who persecute you.

Serving people. Even when it is inconvenient. When no one will recognize the service. When they take advantage of your generosity. When they won't serve you back.

Both of these are hallmarks of Christian discipleship, yet are so difficult for us aren't they? Never mind the difficulty of overcoming our rebellion and inherent desire to worship ourselves. It is also hardwired into our psyche as Americans since we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Really, the American Dream caters to our idolatry and rebellion, but that is a topic for a sermon series at The Vine and the Branches, LOL.

Faith is another major facet in the life of discipleship. I would like to share with you how faith plays such a major part of my life and how a life of faith will be intertwined in the life, health, and vitality of The Vine and the Branches.

I have never really had difficulty accepting some of the more challenging parts of Christianity. The Virgin Birth and how that actually happened. God created everything out of nothing by simply (?!) speaking it into being. Even the existence of God, angels, Satan, or whatever. I have always been OK with those questions and not having all the perfect answers.

If you think about it, we all live lives of faith all the time, we just don't want to admit it. When you get on the freeway, you have some faith that your car won't blow up and that the other cars won't come into your lane and smash into you. You can't explain your confidence, don't have all the answers at your disposal, or at least answers that make empirical sense. But this does not stop you from believing.

Anyway, one part of faith that is particularly powerful is having faith that God will provide all of our needs according to His riches and glory in Christ Jesus and that if we seek his kingdom and righteousness above everything else, He will provide all of our needs.

I am going out on a limb here and say that one of the reasons we followers of Jesus are so lukewarm, ineffectual, and lifeless in our faith is that as American Christians (and American's in general) we order our lives in such a way that we never have to rely on God for anything. Perhaps developing that thought further will be another sermon series at The Vine and the Branches....

Anyway, I don't know about all of you, but the times I am most alive in my walk with Jesus is when I don't have all the answers. When I have to rely on Jesus and not myself to live. When I take Jesus at His word and believe that if I seek His Kingdom and righteousness, He will provide what I need, what my family needs, exactly when we need it.

When I moved to Eugene from Philadelphia years ago, I had to live this life of faith daily. Moving down there, I did not know anyone other than my uncle who lived about an hour outside of town. I arrived with my dad to begin my life there with no real place to stay, and not knowing anyone. I figured that I was an ex-missionary, so if there was one place that would take care of me it was a church. We looked in the Yellow Pages (remember those things??) and found First Baptist Church of Eugene. I showed up on Sunday morning with a backpack, a guitar, 250$ in my pocket, and an unshakeable faith that God would provide the miracle. By that night, I was staying in a men's Christian house tied into the church to get my feet on the ground. Needing a place to stay for the summer at least, the next day I went to the public boards at the U of Oregon and saw that God had provided a room for rent, written in marker complete with flowers and Hippy-chick writing. 250$, cash up front. That night, I had a place to stay with a great older single mom and her kids, meals everyday included. Then, I needed a job. People told me there were no jobs in Eugene. Yet that day, God happened to lead me to a T-shirt printing company that had just opened the day before and needed a sales guy. Hired on the spot, at the first place I went to, in a place where there were supposedly no jobs. This is just one period in my life of many times where God has consistently provided for all my needs.

A guiding principle in my life of faith is a quote I heard from a pastor years ago in Eugene OR named Steve McKracken. He said that God wants us to do the possible, so that by faith He will do the impossible. Read through all the great stories of men and women in the Bible and throughout history who demonstrated great faith in God and you will see over and over how they participated with Him in the miracles He performed. It is a great way to approach some of the more familiar stories in the scriptures with a fresh light.

So what does this mean for planting The Vine and the Branches?

This whole endeavor is an exercise of faith. We don't have all the answers.

We have ideas and dreams, but will they work out exactly how we think they will?Thankfully, I know that in His graciousness, they probably won't. Or maybe they will. God knows. But we are called to the possible so that by faith He will do the impossible.

Our model for ministry assumes we will have people joining us. At this point, it is the Beumer's and the Bayley's. We have faith that God is calling us to this and that He has been preparing people (already or not yet Christians) from before the foundation of the world to join us. So we plan the possible and by faith, God will perform the impossible and bring His people.

It is not the most ideal time to sell a house and start a new life across the state. That's true. But God is calling us to do this, and He promises to supply all our needs when we seek His Kingdom.

We are raising financial support for this mission so that Amy and I don't have to have the stress of working separate jobs and trying to plant. If you have not heard from me yet, don't worry... ;-). So we do the possible by asking for funding so that in a down economy, God will do the impossible and provide the resources we need.

Where will we meet? In a home or a rent a building? Where will we live? Where on the South Hill of Spokane will the Vine start? Will our house sell in Lynnwood? Don't know.

What I do know is that our God is a provider and that He will take care of us.

By joining the Vine and the Branches, whether in person or through finances and prayer, you are joining us on this adventure.

Join us in this exploration of the dynamic life of discipleship as we place our total faith in Jesus!