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Vineyard Movement

Reflections on the 2012 Vineyard Northwest Regional Conference

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I’m back and wiping the cobwebs off my keyboard as I have not touched a computer in a week and a half. Scary, I know…but it was also very refreshing as I attended the Vineyard Northwest Regional Conference in Vancouver, Washington, at the end of June before enjoying a week at the Oregon coast with the family (a much needed vacation and soul rest).

Now that I’m back, I would like to take a few days and post some reflections on the conference and the Vineyard Movement as a whole.

The theme of the 2012 Vineyard Northwest Regional Conference was “Convergence: For Such a Time As This” as everything is changing this month. The Northwest Region has effetely been split into two separate regions as of this month with Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South and North Dakota becoming the “Big Sky Region.” The theme of convergence also points to the changes on the national front as Phil Strout takes over as National Director on September 13th.

As one could expect, all of the main sessions (and some of the workshops) were focused on this theme. Below is a quick summary of the five main sessions:

Current Vineyard USA National Director and Acting NW Region Overseer Bert Waggoner kicked off the conference with a look back at the landmarks in our history. Pulling from Joshua 4:1-9 where the Lord tells the Israelites to take twelve stones from out of the Jordan River and create a memorial for the people, Bert listed eleven ‘stones’ that God has given to us as a Vineyard Movement and as a region. While the full list is a tad long to list here, I want to mention the two stones that really touched me:

  • Stone #6: “Do you remember…how freeing it was to grasp the message of the Kingdom?”

Ah…yes…I can remember this day very, very clearly. It was during a small group in 2003 when the hosts invited Kevin Thienes, a Vineyard Boise lay pastor, to come and share with us all about prayer and healing. At some point during that Q&A, my view on the Bible and Jesus began to change and a new way of living came into view. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in miracles or healings as I came from a Charismatic background in which all kinds of stuff used to happen… no, it was the theological underpinnings to the experiences that finally made sense and jived with the Scripture. The rabbit hole was opened at that point and there was no going back.

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