Our Reason to Be

A front view of our Church

The Waldorf Vineyard exists to be a community, purposed to know and share God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and do so within the vision of the Vineyard-USA Community of Churches. This is our corporate and daily mission.

Specifically, our purpose is to:

Deepen our relationship with God. We are convinced that God loves mankind extravagantly and pursues us all of our lives. Through the gift of salvation, we reply to God's pursuit of us with a pursuit of our own; knowing God.
We are introduced to God as a real being by the Holy Spirit. We begin our relationship through salvation; accepting that Jesus Christ is God's own son, coming under the authority, the governance and covering of Jesus Christ.
As with all relationships, we come to know God through spending time with, and communicating with God. We expect that our communication with God is a back and forth exchange with our Creator. This communication takes place through regular prayer, worship and reading / learning the Bible.
Realizing the totality of God is incomprehensible to mere man, we commit to a lifetime spent knowing God. Not satisfied with simply knowing about God, we intend to know God; committed to and building a God-relationship.

Be known to God 1 Corinthians 8:3. God's greatest acts of healing the human heart often come when we risk trusting God to know our inmost being; our deepest selves, our greatest desires, our darkest insecurities.
As spiritual and emotional transparency to God increases, we grow in freedom from fears and anxieties. Obviously God knows us as we are, however, being known to God involves not only information about us, but vulnerability on our part; the exposing of ourselves to God's scrutiny. As God is invited to know us more intimately, we come to more completely receive and trust His love for us.

Make God known to the daily world where we live. The Great Commission Matthew 28:18 – 20 is not an option, neither for the church nor for its' individuals.

We see the sharing of our faith as a natural part of who we are; not simply an event, it is a lifestyle, lived out among acquaintances and those who know us best.
Following the example of Jesus Christ, we work toward having an increased sensitivity to God and His Holy Spirit so that we are quick to engage in the work He is doing John 5:19-20, the premiere work being works of salvation.

knowing God ~ being known ~ making Him known

These key points to our purpose are summarized in the phrase; "knowing God, being known, making Him known." If we are not living these purposes then we are without integrity and therefore, have little to offer the world that is in need of Jesus Christ. Jesus exemplified integrity in ministry by proclaiming the presence of the Kingdom of God and then demonstrating the reality of the Kingdom of God; both the word and works of the Kingdom.
We recognize that a stated purpose, without action, is a wish at best, not an identity or movement. For that reason, we understand that "church" is also a verb and that "fellowship", in its best form, is a diverse community of people who are on a mission, in our case, a mission to know and share God.

back