The Vineyard Movement

Vineyard churches root their theology in Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom of God. We embrace an “inaugurated eschatology” where God’s beautiful future is breaking into our present experience.

We deeply value the history of the larger movement we are apart of, the Association of Vineyard Churches. This movement began in 1975 with a loose-knit fellowship of a handful of churches, near Hollywood, California. By the early eighties, the leadership of this emerging movement shifted to John Wimber, whose influence profoundly shaped the theology and practice of Vineyard churches from their earliest days.

John Wimber was an incredible evangelist, leading hundreds of people to Christ within his first decade as a Christian, and leading Bible studies that discipled over 500 people. He became so fruitful as an evangelical pastor that he led the Charles E. Fuller Institute of Evangelism and Church Growth and taught as an adjunct instructor at Fuller Theological Seminary, where his classes set attendance records.

Deeply influenced by George Eldon Ladd’s theological writings on the Kingdom of God, John Wimber was convinced that all the biblical gifts of the Holy Spirit should be active in the church today. As a result, he led the charge for combining evangelism with healing and prophecy, believing these gifts were real and available to us, even now, as they were to the disciples who walked the earth with Jesus.

As Wimber became more convinced of God’s desire to be active in the world through the biblical gifts of the Spirit, he trained his churches to imitate Jesus’ Kingdom ministry, where the sick were healed, the blind received sight, the dead raised, and the prisoners freed. Wimber began to “do the stuff” and witness the miracles he had only read about in the Bible.

Throughout his teaching, Wimber merged the best of evangelical theology with the charismatic church experience, a position he called the Radical Middle, that equally balanced an emphasis on the Word of God revealed in scripture and the practice of the gifts of the Spirit to bring the in-breaking of God’s Kingdom to our world.

As a Vineyard Church, we follow proudly in his footsteps, believing that everyone can participate in Kingdom ministry, here and now, carrying the same authority as Christ. We focus on the truth of scripture AND the active participation of the Spirit in the world around us, to witness the coming of God’s Kingdom. We’re joined in the Vineyard Movement with over 2,500 churches worldwide, including over 600 churches in the US, with 18 regions actively planting churches around the country.