Deanna Jasper

Over and over in God’s creation and in Scripture, He gives us pictures of resurrection: spring flowers out of the seeming deadness of winter, beauty from ashes, and of course, Christ’s victory over death. Coming out of this recent season of brokenness, pain, and loss, I have been so blessed by the new thing the Lord is doing in the greater church in our area. He is breathing new life into the branches that found themselves cut off when the Anaheim Vineyard ceased to exist as the church it had been for the past almost 45 years.

Tonight, those scattered branches gathered together again, this time hosted by what you might call our “grandmother” church. The group that became the Anaheim Vineyard came out of the Yorba Linda Friends church in 1977. When they left, they asked for and received the blessing of that church. People talk a lot about the Anaheim Vineyard as the “mother church” of the Vineyard movement, and certainly the three new local Vineyard groups (which I wrote about previously) that have formed out of those who left the church due to the decisions made by Alan Scott (up to and culminating with his decision to disassociate the church from the Vineyard movement) would consider it so. When the news of that metamorphic decision got out, the pastor of Yorba Linda Friends reached out to Bob Fulton (who had been a part of that group that left YL Friends so long ago), affirming that “we are family,” asking how they could help those who had been left reeling by what had happened. Bob asked if we could use their space to gather together when Mike Pilavachi was in town. Mike wanted a chance to meet with our local Vineyard family and bless us.

So tonight, we gathered in the building of the church that once sent out the group that would later become the Anaheim Vineyard to be blessed by a man from the UK who had felt the ripple of the ministry that grew out of that new congregation. Talk about coming full circle, right? As we worshipped together, there were gentle reminders of times past (such as John Wimber’s “Isn’t He,” as well as an acapella rendering of “I Love You Lord,” as Lance Pittluck led us countless times during the twenty years he led our congregation), but it was just being together and the sweet presence of the Lord as we worshipped that overwhelmed my heart with gratitude.

After Mike’s message, he felt called to pray for those under twenty-five, and along with the teens and young adults, we sent up our younger children so people could bless them and pray over them. That was when my emotions got the better of me. All I could think of was how much I hope they will fall in love with Jesus as passionately as I did when I was fourteen and first walked into the Anaheim Vineyard. Capture their hearts, Lord. Pour out Your Spirit on this next generation. I couldn’t stop tears from flowing for the rest of the evening.

I remember sometime back in the 1990s, a visiting pastor was telling a story about his church feeling called to bless another local church, and at our Sunday service that night, John Wimber said he felt like God was telling us to take an offering and give it “to our friends,” which he immediately knew meant Yorba Linda Friends. As a baby Christian, it was one of the first opportunities I had to see that the church is really one large family that extended far beyond those I spent each Sunday with. Tonight, we were so blessed by the generosity of YL Friends in opening their building to us because “we are family.”

Behold, how good and pleasant it is
    when brothers dwell in unity!
. . . For there the Lord has commanded the blessing,
    life forevermore.

(Psalm 133:1,4)

Vineyard Anaheim no longer exists, and many of us felt pretty broken and shaken up by its demise. Yet through its death, many seeds were planted in new soil. Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). I love seeing how the Lord is taking the small seeds of these three new churches and is breathing life into something new. It is springtime in the Vineyard.

My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my beautiful one,
    and come away,
for behold, the winter is past;
    the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth,
    the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
    is heard in our land.

Song of Solomon 2:10-12

The signs have come down, and there is no longer any trace of the Vineyard name on the property my church family called home for three decades. Part of me has been in denial until this point, a small part to be sure, but there nonetheless, hoping against hope that somehow this would all work out and those who call themselves the Anaheim Vineyard family would no longer be homeless.

But it was not to be.

This season has forced so many of us to rethink the meaning of church. We’ve known all along that it is “the people, not the building,” but now that the building has been taken from us, we have no choice but to clarify our definition. What does it mean to be the church?

Looking at the early church in the New Testament, I see a gathering of believers who met regularly and encouraged one another. Acts 2:42 says, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” As I read through Acts and the Epistles, I see individuals out sharing the gospel, but the gathering of the church seems focused more on corporate worship and supporting other believers as they face the ups and downs of life.

That support and encouragement is why so many of us felt like the Vineyard was our home and our family. And when Alan Scott took the helm and decided that “pastoring” the congregation would not be a priority, it’s what so many of us felt was missing in the past few years. Many, like my family, left the congregation a while ago, and have already begun to rebuild relationships and make connections. Others have only left after the recent decision to disassociate from the Vineyard movement and are still in the midst of the grief, anger, and hurt so many of us have wrestled with through these years of transition.

Jesus left Peter with the command, “Feed my sheep” (John 21:17). Paul exhorted the Ephesians to “be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:18-21). He told the Thessalonians, “Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing” (1 Thessalonians 5:11). As a church, we are called to care for one another spiritually, physically, and emotionally. All of this is what it means to be the church. None of this is dependent upon a church building.

While the loss of the building stings, in some ways, it has been a blessing. Those of us who had grown far too comfortable now have to play a more active role in meeting the needs of our church family. While few of us would have chosen this path (the exception being those who felt called to plant the new church before the dissolution of Vineyard Anaheim), God has used these circumstances to bring about many good things. People have stepped up to serve and help lead in new ways. For example, in the Vineyard Yorba Linda group, several worship leaders have been rotating each week who would never have been up in front at Anaheim, but our worship time each week is pure, intimate, and focused on the Lord. That’s just one of the ways has used these painful circumstances to call many of us into things we would not have done were we still comfortably enmeshed in the old Vineyard building.

The result, I am hopeful enough to dare believe, will be a healthier church, thriving in a way we haven’t for the past few decades when we were all together in that beautiful blessing of a building. I pray we will move forward in humility, transparency, love, and respect, knowing all too well how much power we all have to hurt one another when we fall short. This season has shown us how important our fellowship is, how much we love and need our brothers and sisters, and how important it is for us to come together.

Right now this is happening primarily in three groups: the Vineyard Yorba Linda church plant, the backyard gathering at the Kings’, and theVineyard. Each of these gatherings started out of a different place of need. The seeds of the Vineyard Yorba Linda church plant (led by Sam and Brooke Cerny) were there before the Scotts ever came to Vineyard Anaheim, and the group began meeting more than two years ago, though various circumstances have led us to a somewhat different place than we thought we were going. The group at the Kings’ started as a place to watch online church together outside during the pandemic, and again, God had bigger plans and the group grew and became something no one had imagined at the beginning. The last group, theVineyard (led by Bob and Penny Fulton), is the newest, formed out of necessity when the family members still at Vineyard Anaheim suddenly found their heritage stolen and bravely set out to find a place where they could maintain their identity and the relationships they had built over the past 40 years. Each group has its own role to play, but in the end, we are all family, and we are all committed to “being the church”: tending the flock, encouraging one another, gathering to worship and pray, and reaching out to the hurting world around us.

On Easter, all three groups gathered together for a beautiful time of fellowship, worship, teaching, and celebration. It was the first time so many Anaheim refugees had gathered together as one body (I heard estimates of about 250-300 people), and it was a balm for many wounded hearts. I don’t know what the future holds for these three connected branches of the Vineyard Anaheim family tree, but I am excited about how God is moving in our midst, and I look forward to “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead” (Philippians 3:13).

As Carl Tuttle (former worship leader and senior pastor of the Anaheim Vineyard back in the 1990s) commented after seeing a video clip from our worship time, “Who needs a stinking building?”