Straining Forward

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?”