There are many people who are not yet being reached, people who are interested in spirituality, maybe even interested in Jesus, but the church is a barrier.

You hear it all the time these days expressed this way, “I’m very spiritual, but I’m not religious.” What they are trying to say there is that they are interested in spiritual things, but there is an obstacle in their minds about how they perceive church or religion being played out. What is needed, of course, is new churches that answer some of their objections.

It’s funny, but even in areas that we perceive to be “saturated” with churches, or that are in close proximity to a mega-church that seems to scoop up everybody in its path, there are pockets of unreached people, and some of them would respond to Jesus if there were a church that could speak their language. When we began Evanston Vineyard, there was, almost literally, a church on every corner in Evanston, but there were many, many young people like us who could not find a way to be anything but Sunday attenders in them. So we started a church with a few dozen twenty-somethings and one grandmother! It was a 4:00 pm church service, homemade soup and bread-eating, community of the young, the foreigner and the widow.

We send out new plants so that new people-groups in towns and cities all around us and around the world will have something brand new in their neighborhood, something that maybe is tailored a bit to reach them.. Our latest plant, Charlottesville Vineyard in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains in central Virginia (www.cvillevineyard.org), is a new church in a very old town. There is nothing else like a Vineyard there, nothing that is a little on the young side, nothing that has that mix of strong bible teaching, passionate worship, informal community and regular hands-on prayer for the sick and hurting woven right into the everyday life of the church. There are a number of good, godly, wonderful churches in Charlottesville, but the Vineyard will reach a whole new set of people who would never set foot in those other churches except for weddings and funerals. Here’s a story from Jim and Megan Bleakley, the planters:

Jim had the opportunity to pray for a guy in our church who is at the “seeker” stage. He has been looking for a job recently and has not had too much luck with landing decent jobs in the past. Jim, knowing of his job interview the next day, asked if he could pray for him. He agreed and Jim began to pray. Jim prayed for favor, that he would be able to be relaxed during the interview and that the company would offer him a job on the spot before he left.

That night and the next day he felt calm and not as worried as he was the day before. He was wondering if it was because of the prayer and when, during the interview, they offered him a job on the spot he later relayed to Jim that he KNEW it was because of the prayer. It seems that God has made an impression on this guy and we are praying for more encounters like that one where he would not be able to deny God’s mercy and his love for him.

- Cindy Nicholson