Our Business Advisory Team met on Sunday. We meet quarterly to discuss the business of our church. It’s a meeting that I look forward to, not so much because I enjoy looking at budgets, profit loss statements and account balances… but because being in a room for several hours with a team that loves our church and city, without fail, always stirs up lots of excitement. When this excitement moves into prayer is when things really start cookin’! I cherish our time together. It is beautiful to see God move as we come to Him for wisdom and leadership.

Eldon Brasch, our incoming Business Advisory Team President, commented on Sunday that he feels like there is a renewed sense of commitment happening in our church. As he described what he is seeing, it made me thankful for all of you, and your unique gifts and talents, and the role we as a church body play here in the Cedar Valley. Together, we are making an impact, and it’s crazy to think that it is only just beginning! We have so much to look forward to!

Over the past five weeks, my dad laid out some of the ideas that he and our leadership team feel will help us in becoming a healthy and sustainable church as we continue moving forward in our purpose and mission.

If you missed any of these blogs by the way, don’t forget to check them out. They are all rich and full of vision.

Week 1: Building a Sustainable Future

Week 2: My New Role

Week 3: A Powerful, Spirit-Filled Team is Emerging

Week 4: Proclamation and Demonstration

Week 5: A Vision Worth Sustaining

For the next several weeks, I’m going to be shifting gears slightly by moving away from health and sustainability topics, and write about things connected to expansion… specifically our vision to potentially add a small addition on to our existing building, and for Life Centers in our city. I’ll also be updating you on where things are at with our Oelwein Campus. You won’t want to miss that blog! Exciting stuff!

Before I jump into those topics though, I want ask if you would pray with us about something. For the past five years, our Transportation Ministry has been reaching our community in a powerful way. Not only do we operate both of our vans on Sunday mornings, but also on Tuesday nights for Celebrate Recovery.

There have been several nights per our Ministry Directors, Jake and Julie Shepard, that people have had to sit on the floors of our buses due to lack of seats. This is a good problem to have! Celebrate Recovery is averaging well over 100 people per week. Some weeks as many as 150 people attend. Many of these folks are being picked up at our local drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers and from the Women’s Center for Change. As we continue to gain favor with these facilities, we expect that we will be providing rides for even more people.

For years, we have been praying about the idea of adding another vehicle to our arsenal, with the heart to connect even more people into the life changing power of Jesus. We have not budgeted for this vehicle simply because we have just not felt like the timing has been right. However, things seem to be shifting.

In addition to more discussions about how to strengthen and grow our Sunday and Tuesday Transportation Ministries, we have also experienced a felt the need for a smaller 15-passenger van to support our other flourishing ministries and their missional efforts outside of the four walls of our building. As we continue to make strides in seeing more Kingdom work happen outside of our four walls, desire and excitement is starting to feel more like need.

To help paint a picture, below is a partial list of things that a 15-passenger van would be used for…

  • Missions trips (3-5 trips per year on average)
  • Youth trips (5-7 trips per year on average)
  • Youth and young adult worship conferences (3 currently scheduled for 2019)
  • Wednesday night youth and kidz@nite outreaches (10-12 outreaches scheduled for 2019)
  • Ministry Trips to future church plant sites for special events (2 currently planned for 2019)
  • Street Ministry (Weekly beginning in January)
  • Leadership trips to conferences (2 currently scheduled for 2019)
  • Trailer towing vehicle (Amphitheater events and to storage area) (10-20 per year)
  • City project serve teams
  • Disaster relief trips
  • Summer Kids Camp

We believe adding a 15-passenger van to our fleet of vehicles will be a valuable investment into the overall ministry of Heartland Vineyard Church. We believe that a tool like this has the potential of getting even more people plugged into community and ministry, that our larger buses are not able to do on their own. Purchasing a smaller van would also set us up so that we wouldn’t have to use personal vehicles and borrow vans from local dealerships, which we have done on multiple occasions over the past several years.

We have been discussing as a leadership team the idea of fundraising for this vehicle in January. Please be praying about how God might be leading you to get involved.

Thanks Church for your prayer and support!

Stay tuned for more next week!

Josh