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What kind of people attend?
We are mostly Baby Boomers with a lot of younger folks and some older.
Our average age is 22 years old. 25% of us are on some kind of
disability or social assistance. We have some doctors, and other
professionals, business
people, students, single moms, retirees and a very interesting
group. We are known to be quite friendly and we really try to love
people where they are at. We believe more in attraction and living by
example than promotion and trying to change people by
"preaching" to them. We dress very casually, very few, if any
suits and ties (we are okay with it though). The reason is we believe in
being "real" and removing barriers for people to come. Not
everyone owns spiffy outfits. We want a casual comfortable atmosphere
that can feel a little over whelming at times because of the presence of
God we feel.
Worship
We start out with music. The purpose of the music is to worship God and
our saviour Jesus. Our worship style is a moderate rock sound that we
feel is contemporary
with our culture. We have several bands that rotate each Sunday.
About 1/3 of the congregation stand and you will see a lot of hands and
arms raised from time to time. Also, some people express worship by
raisin flags and banners. We usually worship for about 30 minutes. It is
designed to open us up to the message and each other.
Announcements and Offering
We view the Offering as part of our act of worship. We are giving to
God, through the local church. We try and have only enough announcements
to fill the time it takes to collect the offering. We try and
keep this to a minimum.
Break
The purpose of having a break is to facilitate fellowship among the
people, to have a chance to say hello to the visitors, to allow the
others who can't sit more than 60 minutes, for a smoke or a bio-break.
It also helps to create a casual atmosphere.
Most visitors are the first ones out the door when the service is over.
By having this "break"; we have 9 minutes for a number of
people to welcome them.
During the break we offer coffee, tea, orange juice, water, bagels and
cream cheese. There is a special bonding that happens when people
fellowship with food. In many countries, major deals will only be made
over a meal. When Jesus had his last meal with his disciples, he said
"Do this in remembrance of me". While we still practice the
ordinance of communion in accordance to orthodox practices, we view this
break as a modern day functional communion where we commune together.
Jesus used wine and bread, 2 staples of the day. We use coffee/orange
juice and bagels with cream cheese and feel this captures the spirit of
what Jesus intended to do.
We aim to serve will be of the best quality that we can do
reasonably. For example, we will strive to make the best
"regular" coffee. We will work on water quality and
temperature, freshness, quality of cream etc. to meet these objectives.
We do not use gourmet flavoured coffee to meet this objective but try
and model it after the local coffee shops which is what the
"normal" population drinks.
Message
We preach in a style that is casual. Every message is centered
on the Bible and its application to our lives. We try to bring messages
that are practical, simple and life changing. We officially speak for
about 20 minutes but it can go up to 30 minutes. We like to laugh and
have fun and quite often you will find the audience engaged
and bantering with the speaker. We have 3 main speakers with
George, our senior pastor speaking about half the time. We do have guest
speakers in from time to time. We use to have a female associate
who preached once a month but she moved on. Currently we don't have any
women speakers. Not because we don't believe in it, because we do, it is
just the way it is for now.
Self serve Communion Table
We have a self serve Communion table complete with the
elements, a bible, and instructions of what to do and a suggestion
prayer. Of course, you could always ask one of the mature members or
leaders to assist and administer the elements to you. We do believe in
corporate communion and practice that about once every two months
You don’t join Vineyard; you discover that you are Vineyard. Then
the process is not so taxing, nor distracting from our real calling –
we just need to give time for relationship and bonding to take place, to
confirm common values that have already taken root and then, together,
get on with God’s primary calling. |
