Evanston Vineyard Church Planting Blog

Sorry for the big space between blogs here. Ironically, it was mostly because of church planting! The national church planting task force for the Vineyard USA met here March 15 and 16, followed by a conference here staffed by our Midwest region church planting task force, Cause to Live For, Cause to Die For, for risk takers of all ages looking for a vision worth risking one’s life for. Due to the fact that most participants were also sleeping on our nice rug-covered concrete floor, it was also a Cause worth Wracking Up Your Back For, which eliminated a few of us older risk-takers.

At our church planting task force meetings, we tallied it up and figured out that we will have roughly 56 new churches being planted in 2007. Here are some of the places these plants are heading; think you might be interested in going and giving your all so that a new church might be deeply planted?

West Coast:
Solvang, CA
Apple Valley, CA
Pasadena, CA
Santa Barbara, CA
Fresno, CA
San Diego, CA
Yorba Linda, CA
Tumwater, WA
Everett, WA
Redman, WA
Medford, OR

Southwest & Rockies:
Bayville, TX
Sherman, TX
Boerne, TX
Steamboat Springs, CO
Johnstown, CO

Plains States, Midwest and Great Lakes:
Oak Park, IL
Moline, IL
Chicago (west side), IL
Peoria, IL
Waterloo, IA
Indianola, IA
Sioux Falls, SD
Harper County, KS
Milwaukee, WI
Almont, MI (released already)
Breckville, OH
Circleville, OH
Columbus, OH
Monroe, OH

Eastern and Mid-Atlantic:
Wilmington, DE
Ashland, VA
Virginia Beach, VA
Lawrenceburg, VA
Wayne NJ
Jersey City, NJ
Bergen County, NJ
South Paris, ME
Riverhead, NY
Wellesley, MA
Providence, RI
State College, PA

South:
Crystal River, FL
Grant County, KY (released)
Berea, KY (released)
Decatur, GA (released)
Dallas, GA
Lenoir City, TN (released)
Columbia, SC
Chapel Hill, NC

Reason #4 for planting new churches: We need new churches in new ground. We’ve got to keep breaking new ground, particularly if we want to plant churches that plant churches, creating an exponential kind of growth. If Christians with a missional focus bring new people into a relationship with Jesus, but there is no church community for those folks to plug into, it becomes just an experience they had once, a “been there, done that” kind of thing and their hearts become hard. If we are going to bring the Kingdom to the world, we have to come along behind with new church communities, especially if we are going to new groups of people who have never been impacted by the amazing story of what God did through Jesus. They aren’t just going to go settle into the church down the road they may have been driving past for years. They need us to think fresh, on their behalf!

- Cindy Nicholson