Monday, February 1, 2010

any move left in our movement’?

So coming to our national conference with that in mind, it was timely to have Caleb Maskell, in a main conference session, a trained church historian (Princeton University) and vineyard church planter, reviewing our own history, and asking if there was ‘any move left in our movement’?
His review was encouragingly and necessarily critical, exploring some of what has given rise to the more painful transitions of the vineyard, and it was hopeful, in that it asked us to consider what would be required for us to be more than a renewal movement of the past, and located that within a traditioned and scriptured possibility.  Caleb also exhorted us to undertake the necessary reflection and work, and thinking theologically, that such a possibility would take.

One thing that seems to be getting clearer after reading a lot of blogs is that The Vineyard Church in the US and internationally is in decline. That questions of theology, practice and doctrine and now been asked...