Vineyard Church | Weekly Update February 5th, 2025

As part of my regular rhythm, I read through Revelation chapters 2, 3, and 4 often at the beginning of my prayer time. Reading these letters to the churches followed by the picture of worship in heaven has helped me pray through the difference between leading God’s church and attempting to create something that reflects more of me than it does Him.

You might have heard me mention this from time to time, after reading the letters to the several churches in Revelation, what might a letter to the Vineyard in Billings look like? What would Jesus give an “atta church” for, and what might follow “But I have this we need to deal with.” Much of our sermon series planning and small group workflows from this consideration and submission, beginning with asking the Holy Spirit to reveal what He is doing and how we are to partner with that activity.

Lately, I am asking the Holy Spirit more and more what it looks like to be His church because the only thing I know for sure is that what worked in the past doesn’t resonate any longer in terms of connecting people with Jesus. How does the church maintain relevancy in an age that grows more and more secular? I appreciate how kind God is in sending answers.

Everywhere I look lately I feel like I am being engaged on this point, which increases my faith. As an example of how this works, I want to share with you something from the devotional that started my day. Henri Nouwen’s daily mediation for Feb 4 said this:

There is little praise and much criticism in the Church today, and who can live for long in such a climate without slipping into some type of depression? The secular world around us is saying in a loud voice, “We can take care of ourselves. We do not need God, the Church, or a priest. We are in control. And if we are not, then we have to work harder to get in control. The problem is not a lack of faith, but a lack of competence... 

God, the Church, and the minister have been used for centuries to fill the gaps of incompetence, but today the gaps are being filled in other ways, and we no longer need spiritual answers to practical questions.” But there is a completely different story to tell. Beneath all the great accomplishments of our time, there is a deep current of despair.

While efficiency and control are the great aspirations of our society, the loneliness, isolation, lack of friendship and intimacy, broken relationships, boredom, feelings of emptiness and depression, and a deep sense of uselessness fill the hearts of millions of people in our success-oriented world. The leader of the future will be the one who dares to claim his irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation that allows him or her to enter into a deep solidarity with the anguish underlying all the glitter of success and to bring the light of Jesus there. (From: https://henrinouwen.org/meditation/)

Putting all of this together through the lens of the letters to the churches and our current series anchored on the reality that the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost, Nouwen gives us a picture for application. Together, we can claim irrelevancy to the contemporary world as an entry point to partnering with Jesus in His mission of seeking and salvation.


Adam Greenwell
Pastor
Billings Vineyard Chruch www.billingsvineyard.org