Tag Archives: 2011 Vineyard National Conference

Theology Thoughts

Form Us, Make Us, Mold Us, Shape Us

My heart fell in love with the song “Form Us” by Casey Corum/Anabeth Morgan back in May at the National Conference as I felt that it carried a prophetic message for our church as well as the Vineyard Movement as a whole:

Form us, make us
Mold us, shape us

To be like you, moved to action
Full of mercy and compassion

We want to love the things You love
We want to hate the things You hate
As Your heart is formed inside us
May we learn to walk in grace
And extern the hand of mercy
To set the captives free
Bringing freedom to the prisoner
Bringing hope the blind can see
Mercy triumphs over judgment
Mercy triumphs over judgment

(Lyrical excerpt – full lyrics can be found on the below video)

May we walk this message out and not merely sing of it….

Vineyard Movement

Reaching the Unreached: VUSA National Leadership Conference 2011

Vineyard USA just released the audio sound tracks of the 2011 National Conference.  I highly recommend that you wonder over there and give the main sessions a listen as they are powerful (yes, this means folks both within and without the Vineyard – God’s word knows no boundaries).

  • Brian Anderson – The Kingdom of God: The mandate for reaching the unreached: A great overview of the Kingdom Theology that drive the Vineyard Movement.
  • Homero Garcia – The Community for Reaching the Unreachable: Powerful message on getting the church healthy so that it can be a light to the people.
  • Dianne Leman – The Power for Reaching the Unreached: This is the session most people have talked about, the one where Dianne lets the “kids out of the car seat” and the power of the Spirit crashed the place.
  • Dave Workman – The Community for Reaching the Unreachable: Thinking outside the norm and creating new nets for a new time and culture.
  • Bert Waggoner – Reaching the Unreached: Keeping Micah 6:8 (act justly, love mercy and walk humble before God) before our eyes as we lead.
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Vineyard Conference Tales: Recycling Woes

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One of the saddest things about the Vineyard National Conference earlier this month was the lack of recycling. Hundreds of plastic water bottles were handed out like candy!

Still sadder was that the one day recycling bins were set up, everyone threw their food trash into them… sigh…

Having brought my trusty metal water bottle with me from Idaho, water was the least of my concerns. Nope, coffee was my bane.

Or, more specifically, the disposable coffee cup used to bring the liquid joy to my mouth.

At first, I started caring around an empty coffee cup and reusing it everything I could…yet that got annoying, and unhygienic…

Then I wondered into the Vineyard Church of North Phoenix’s coffee shop and noticed that they had reusable coffee mugs on sale. Having lost my good mug just before we left on the trip (i.e. Jadon dropped it on the floor and broke it), I decided to pick one up.

Problem solved.

I now could drink all the water and coffee/tea without feeling bad. 😀

Theology Thoughts, Vineyard Movement

Vineyard Conference Tales: Do You Have a Case of the CCDs?

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Orthodox icon of Photina, the Samaritan woman, meeting Jesus by the well. (Courtesy of Wikipedia)

As referenced yesterday, Ken Wilson spoke about cognitive and cultural dissonance at the Vineyard National Conference last week.

Cognitive and cultural dissonance (CCD) can be defined as the anxiety felt when experiencing something that does not fit with your worldview:

  • Cognitive dissonance is that uncomfortable feeling you get when holding to “conflicting ideas simultaneously” – for example, holding on the tension of the here and not yet, or God’s sovereignty and human’s free will.
  • Cultural dissonance is the uncomfortable feeling caused when your cultural environment is changed, challenged, or thrown into disarray. An example would be someone from the United States going overseas have to pay a bathroom attendant for toilet paper. Or, in bring it close to home, a group of Jesus followers having church week after week inside a bar….

Drawing from Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 4 (which, BTW, is the longest recorded conversation Jesus had with ANYONE); Ken Wilson showed how following Jesus would cause us, His followers, to have a bad case of CCDs. In fact, it is only those groups that want a nice and tidy religion that abhors cognitive and cultural dissonance.

Those of use who really want to follow Jesus have better get used to living in the tension of CCD.

The twelve disciples had too – which is why they had problems with Jesus talking to the Samaritan women. This act broke so MANY cultural and social ‘rules’ it was crazy!!  Here are just a few:

  • Religious – Jews and Samaritans worshiped at different places, some may even say different ‘gods’
  • Political – Samaritans where the half-breeds left over from when Babylon destroyed the temple years before…they were NOT to be trusted by any good Jew, let allow a respected Rabbi.
  • Gender – Men did NOT talk to women alone in those days, unless it was to…umm…buy certain services.
  • Moral Status – Come on, she was at the well alone in the heat of the day, it wasn’t like she was the most holy person in town that day…

Continue reading Vineyard Conference Tales: Do You Have a Case of the CCDs? →

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Vineyard Conference Tales: A Prophetic Word Over The Movement

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No one said it out loud …not really…at least not in a prophetic sense. Yet, they referenced the concept over and over and over again – and shoot, they even sang it!

What is it?

“It” is a prophetic word that I think God was showering the conference – and perhaps the entire movement – with. “It” is four simple words packed full of meaning (as God words usually are). The words – well they are as follows:

Mercy triumphs over judgment.

Yep. James 2:13b.

Mercy – God’s mercy – will triumph over:

  • our judgment of our selves (which can be worse then any critic)
  • judgment of others against us
  • judgment thrown at us by the evil one
  • judgment from not obeying God

Mercy will triumph over it all. Sound the alarm – ring the bells – shout for joy – because the King is here and His mercy is afresh.

May we as a movement take this prophetic message from God and run with is – reminding ourselves of it as we go forward in the midst of cognitive and cultural dissonance (sorry, insight reference to Ken Wilson’s conference talk…too much to explain right now).

Mercy triumphs over judgment. Amen.

Vineyard Movement

Vineyard National Conference Tales: Workshops

Most of yesterday was spent in workshops…only the ones that I really wanted to go to got lumped together on Thursday. 🙁

Some quick notes on the two workshops I attended yesterday:

1) Families – a fairly decent workshop about  joining with families in teaching their kids versus trying to tell parents how to do it or simply doing it for the parents.  For example, one church stopped hosting a very successful vacation Bible school program because they noticed that parents simply dropped their kids off and didn’t stay.Instead they started a program teaching and helping parents learn how to read to their young ones.

For me the one thing that came to mind is the possibility of hosting a Love and Logic class in Sweet. This is a class Em and I have been wanting to do ourselves but we could not find a group to do it with – so originally we thought about just buying the books and reading them by ourselves. Now I’m wondering if we – i.e. the PRV family – should not host a community class for all parents…  Granted, I don’t even know if anyone besides us want to do it… well, it is worth praying about.

2) Alt. Church – this was slightly more interesting, if not confusing. The crazy thing was as I was listening to the speakers, I kept thinking about how their alt church sounded a lot like my ‘regular’ church…. so much so that after the workshop I asked the main leader, “If this is alt church, what is ‘regular’ church?”

Continue reading Vineyard National Conference Tales: Workshops →

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Vineyard National Conference Tales: The Power of the Spirit

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I went down to the front to pray for folks…. Couldn’t resist the chance to see God work. 🙂

After praying for two people, Brian Anderson had a word from God to pray for anyone who needed the Spirit’s empowerment to do what He has called them to do. At first I wasn’t going to step forward for this call, but then I was like, “why not? I need as much of God as I can get.”

Yeah…that is what started it.

As I closed my eyes and stood there, I felt the Presence of the Lord descend thicker than it was before. My eyes started twitching…my body began to sway…
It felt like someone or something was pulling me forwarded, then pushing me back, then pulling forward – left, right, left, right – in a big circle… only my feet were staying in one place. Well, most of the time, every once in a while, they would shift to keep my balance.

As this was happening, a series of visions were passing through my mind…visions of a particular meeting in Honduras in 2001 when God’s fuego (fire) dropped on the place…Then a time in Belize when I fell over under the power of God – and stayed there for several hours.

Something came up at that time and started praying for me, praying that I would take Jesus’ yoke as it was light and easy. As this person was praying, I saw a field with Jesus pulling a plow – He offered me a spot on His yoke…so we both starting pulling, plowing this field.

Throughout these visions/memories, my body was being pulled around – only now my knees were bent and I was low to the ground. Still standing – still being pulled in a circle – only lower to the ground. Finally I could stand no longer and I fell to my knees, then to my side…

About this time, a tingling came over my body – everything was tingling…especially my right hand and arm…

Then my head began to twitch – going back and forth – over and over and over again….

Continue reading Vineyard National Conference Tales: The Power of the Spirit →

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Who Is Going To The Vineyard USA National Conference?

Next week is the 2011 Vineyard USA National Conference in Phoenix, Az.  It should be a happening conference concerning that Bert Waggoner, the current director of the Vineyard, is stepping down this year….

Add to that, the fact that this will be Emily and mine first National Conference as Senior Pastors  (A HUGE shout out to the PRV family for seeing the value in sending us both!!) .

So yeah, it should be a interesting and full week. 🙂

Which leads me to the questioned posed on the title, who out there is going to the conference?

If you are going, leave a comment or drop me an email as I would like to connect with you while in Phoenix.

Blessings.