Hey everyone,
In the past two weeks our voicemail system decided it was time to die after about 20 years of faithful service! So we are in the process of replacing our voicemail system. If you are wanting to contact the office, you can do so by calling during our office hours, or you can email us!
Thank you for your patience!
Thank you for all your participation in our series thus far. Many of you have voiced appreciation, apprehension, curiosity, concern and a whole host of other feelings and related thoughts. We deeply appreciate this. These are all signs of engagement. We also deeply appreciate your prayers. They are critical. However, we’re also aware that we haven’t heard everybody. We know that there may be some who are waiting silently in the wings – waiting to see what we’ll say, how we’ll act, waiting for courage…
We know that there may be some who are waiting silently in the wings
There is a small piece of graffiti on the wall in the church sanctuary. It’s on stage left and is obviously from another era. Well before our time in the building. It reads “Don’t go away mad. Just go away.” Can I encourage us all not to do that! Part of our vision statement is to “build a safe community”. Can we try to be that for everyone in these conversations? Can I encourage you, if you’re one of those waiting in the wings, who haven’t voiced your thoughts or feelings to anyone in leadership – when you’re ready, we’re ready. For real. Even if you’re not in the wings, so to speak, if you need to chat with someone in leadership, please know that we’re all ready for that – we welcome it. The pastoral and lay elders are here to hear.
Also, we are keenly aware that we’re being watched. Not in a creepy way, but there haven’t been too many churches in our circles who have attempted to do what we’re doing. There are some and we’ve learned from their mistakes and successes. However, this also means that we want to be careful about the audio we post – especially the audio from our Hot Button evenings. For the first Hot Button evening we posted a recording of the two people doing GYVE together as well as the commentary by the facilitator. However, we did not post any of the discussion afterwards. If you came you’ll know that the discussion was rich. If you missed it, you can request a link to the audio, but we will not be sharing it with anyone outside of WCV.
For the 2nd Hot Button evening on Feb 11, we will not be posting any of the audio. However, if you’re part of WCV, you can certainly request a link to the audio.
Thanks for understanding!
For the last year or so, we have been celebrating communion every Tuesday at drop-in. The hope was that it would be an accessible and intentional way for us to connect our lives with the life of God, and to be filled with his life-giving presence.
After reading the passage on the Lord’s supper from the gospel of Matthew, there’s often a wonderful, holy silence as we prayerfully consider where in our lives we need Jesus’ forgiveness, where we want or need him today, and imagine the beauty of his return. Afterward, often before the invitation to come to the table has been extended, people walk forward to take the sacraments. They frequently describe a sense of the Spirit’s peace and power – one man said that receiving communion felt like “a shot of whiskey to his heart” and told me he felt this for days following.
People are hungry for encounters with the living God. Even more, the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are hungry for encounters with their people.
Our drop-in team has been sensing the Spirit nudging us towards an even more intentional spiritual focus on Tuesdays. To this end, beginning in February, we are going to be screening the ten-part miniseries “The Bible.” It’ll be an accessible (and exciting!) way for us to experience the Word of God, and we believe this will be transformative. During these ten weeks, we are going to forego our usual big lunch in favour of snacks (things that people can enjoy whilst watching each 50-minute episode) and will finish our mornings with discussion, prayer, and communion.
All are welcome to join! And if you’d like to contribute healthy snacks or baked goods for people to enjoy whilst watching the episodes, that’d be brilliant. Please contact the office or talk to Suhail for details.
THE BIBLE: A 10-PART TV SERIES
10:30 am every Tuesday, Feb. 6 – Apr. 10, 2018
Winnipeg Centre Vineyard
Hey parents of kids Grades 1-7!
We’d like to help you understand how the Imaginative Prayer book can power you up in spiritually leading your kid/youth/family.
What we’ve been doing: After a wonderful season in Gifts4God, we are back in our regular rhythms in Kids Church and Youth Sundays. We are really excited about how we’ve been exploring the Imaginative Prayer book with the Grade 1-4 class @ WCV. The Grade 5-7 class are also following along! The first six weeks we’ve had various leaders lead in the Imaginative Prayer in the large group. All four of us who have led in some way so far, have been a part of Spiritual Direction in these last two years. What a delight it is to now be able to lead the kids in this. Jared Boyd, the author of Imaginative Prayer, was our teacher and is our friend! Thanks to Gloria Fligg and all of our small group leaders in Kids church.
The parent or mentor section: It can be easy to go through our week, not giving time or space for God to speak to us, especially with the busyness of our schedules, but the book can save you time by giving you something to build off of. We encourage you as parents to briefly/deeply look at the “parent or mentor” section of the chapter with your kids.
This past week: Small group leaders led the kids in week 8. This coming Sunday, Jan 28th, we are exploring week 9. Dig in and find out how you can follow up and discuss with your child. See Jodi if you do not yet have a copy of Imaginative Prayer.
We’re in sync: If you have kids in elementary and youth (grade 1-7), you will be happy to know we are in sync with them, so we’re using the same chapter on the same week.
Talk to Jodi if you have any questions. As the spiritual influencers in your home, we pray that God would lead you and nudge you as you parent your most precious gifts.
A few quick notes about the Outer Circle:
We’d like to remind you – and invite you – to join the conversations around the Hot Button topics. We know that many of you are having conversations among yourselves. This is great! Please keep having them.
Also, please make sure you participate in our two Hot Button evenings. We’ve intentionally tried to keep the next two months free of any major community events in the evenings (postponed the Outer Circle for example) in order to make it as easy as possible for as many people as possible to participate in these. It would be best if you came to both. One of the primary purposes of these evenings is to model how to do GYVE well. You’ll recall that GYVE is a tool for how to love well in diversity – it’s about listening deeply to someone from another position and uncovering some of the underlying values and stories that formed their values, which has led to their position. It’s a wonderful model, and often amazing things happen as people submit to the Holy Spirit in this process.
Anyone who is interested in being involved in worship at WCV is invited to join us for three successive evenings on February 15th, 22nd, and March 1st, 2018 at the Ansloos’ home from 7-9 pm. We will worship together, share an overview of Vineyard values in worship, and give information about our worship teams & opportunities at church. Youth and those already serving in worship at church are also welcome!
On Sunday I showed a short clip from a CNN report about the unlikely friendship between Daryl Davis and a KKK leader. I also referred to a Tedx talk Daryl Davis gave which provides more of the background to this amazing story. Here it is:
This winter marks the return to our “Fixed on Jesus” series. We’re going to be exploring three Hot Button topics that you think the church should be talking about (thanks for participating in the survey).
The point is to hear each other – to listen deeply – to love well, especially those we may disagree with
The Hot Button topics we’ll be addressing (and we may address more as time goes on… there are many) are:
There are a few other topics that were also high on the list, and some of your suggestions didn’t really fit into a neat and tidy category. We tried our best to accurately categorize the various topics. We are going to tackle them in a very systematic manner.
Each of the topics will have a Sunday morning devoted to sharing the various perspectives of the issue, zoning in on how each perspective is represented or interpreted in scripture. We will then have two Sunday evenings devoted to hearing two people do GYVE together for the first two Hot Button Topics. We encourage you to come to both evenings (Jan 21 & Feb 11) – they will be special and it will be helpful to have a witnessed the model in action before we get to the hottest button (Affirming & Traditional / LGBT2SQ+)!
In between these Sundays, we will be exploring how the church has either nailed or failed dealing with diversity in the past. There are many examples, some quite humorous to our sensibilities. Of course we will also be digging into scripture, as is our habit. All along we will be engaging in ways to “double down on our centre” – we also have a Celebration Service scheduled which will help keep us focussed on Jesus as we tackle some of these “non-essentials.”
Now that we’re in the New Year we’re going to be entering the third part of our series “Fixed on Jesus: how to hold the centre in an age of diversity”. Having rooted ourselves firmly in the centre (part 1), and having explored a model for how to love well, GYVE (part 2), we are now going to practice what we’ve been talking about. In order to do that, we invited your input. As you might imagine, we gathered a whole list of “Hot Button” issues of diversity that you felt the church needs to address. For those of you who participated in this survey, thanks! We had a lot of thoughtful responses! We have done some categorizing and have come up with what we feel will be good issues for us to explore in the next two months. We did exercise some editorial control (for example, “unkempt hipster beards” will not be discussed! – thanks for that – you know who you are even if nobody else does!).
For each of the Hot Button topics we will have one Sunday morning in which we will explore the various perspectives on the subject. These will not be times to take a position as a church – that’s not the point. Rather, the point is to learn.
Then we have scheduled a few Sunday evenings to demonstrate what doing GYVE looks like with each of these Hot Button topics. We will have a few brave people model the process for us. Again, the point isn’t to argue positions. Rather, we are attempting to create a safe place to hear each other, and hear the stories, values and experiences underneath the various perspectives. This is a sacred and holy event.
If you haven’t already gotten a handle on GYVE, we highly encourage you to do so. Also, please continue to pray for the church in this season. It will bring up many emotions. God will meet us – the Holy Spirit has been guiding us and will continue to do so. Still we say, “Lord have mercy!”
