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.