Here is a link to our October 28 meeting if you were unable to attend.

Below is blog 1 from our Senior Pastor on why building a team of teachers is critical as we move forward in our vision of building a sustainable future.

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Heartland Vineyard is needed in the Cedar Valley. Our love for the fullness of the Holy Spirit with His gifts and power, our deep appreciation and growing revelation for the grace of God and His lavish love for us as well as our dedication to bringing the broken, poor and lost into God’s Kingdom makes us extremely necessary for the Cedar Valley’s spiritual well-being. Therefore, as I grow older, I want to invest the rest of my life into holding the ladders of leaders and help them climb high so that the vision of HVC is strong and sustainable in the decades to come.

You have most likely noticed that I am not teaching as much as I used to. When HVC began, I carried 95% of the teaching. As the years went by and we began to add staff, others were added to the teaching schedule but I was still teaching roughly 85% of the time.

Two years before moving to our new facility on Titan Trail, it became apparent to me in prayer that God wanted our church to go on into the generations. Therefore, adjustments needed to be made that would create a more sustainable future.  It was incumbent on me, the Senior Leader, to gradually reduce my Sunday teaching and give other teachers and preachers the chance to grow and develop in this important aspect of the ministry.

By reducing my teaching load, we were not only giving others a chance to develop for the sake of our church and future church plants, we were leaving a more “personality driven church model” and developing a team teaching approach where multiple voices were being heard. It is striking that the early church “devoted themselves to the APOSTLES’ teaching” Acts 2:42 .  It wasn’t just Peter or John who carried the load of teaching.  All the Apostles were active in the teaching ministry and it was multiple voices shaping the first church in Jerusalem.

John Wimber, the founding pastor of the Vineyard Movement said,

“I realized at a certain point in ministry I could either get a tent and have a great ministry or empower, equip and release the Body of Christ to do it themselves. I chose the latter as it was the Jesus model.