Evanston Vineyard Church Planting Blog

If you have been around our church for awhile, one of the things you have probably noticed is that people are always coming and going. Steve Nicholson and Bill and Cheryll Hanawalt leave to go visit our church plant and missions folks across the country and around the world. We pray over people as they leave to go on short term missions trips or to move for years to another place to help plant the seeds for new churches to grow. Why do we do that? Why not just work on making our church ever larger? Over the next few weeks, I’ll be blogging about the main reasons we have always wanted to be part of planting new churches.

First, we would not plant new churches out of our church if we didn’t see that pattern in the bible. The book of Acts is full of stories about Paul going to a place, establishing a church, and from there the whole surrounding area being evangelized and new churches springing up throughout that province: Jerusalem, Judea (same area), Samaria (next area north), Antioch (farther away), then Philippi, Ephesus, Rome (further, further, further).

In a similar way, from this church came the Urban Vineyard in Humboldt Park/Bucktown area, and from there churches are being planted in Puerto Rico. We helped launch the Vineyard in Oak Park, and they in turn are planting a La Viña on the other side of Oak Park. We planted the Libertyville Vineyard which planted La Viña Mundelein which has planted Crystal Lake Vineyard in 2006. Directly or indirectly we have been the parent or grandparent church for a dozen or more Vineyards throughout Chicagoland, and there is certainly room for more! In 2007, folks from our church, Urban Vineyard and Hyde Park Vineyard are working together to get a new Vineyard started on the Westside near UIC. There is a dream for another plant in ’07 or ‘08 either out in the rapidly expanding new subdivisions beyond Plainfield or in the Arlington Heights area.

We also send planters far afield; our two most recent planters sent out have been the Tompkins to Boulder, Colorado and the Bleakleys to Charlottesville, Virginia. More on them in coming weeks! Again, why do we do this? Why do we give strong leaders away like that? We do it because there is ample evidence in the bible that the way new people get exposed to the story of Jesus in ways that meet them in their own language and culture is through new churches. We want to be part of establishing new outposts of the Kingdom of God in many, many places, plants which become effective church homes for a whole new generation of people who love Jesus.

- Cindy Nicholson