about us ... beliefs

Who we are | Who We Are Not | Our Values | Our Priorities

Who we are

Christ-Centered

We are first of all Christian believers striving to make Jesus Christ central in our lives. He is Lord of our church, and it is around Him that our vision, values, priorities, practices, and goals revolve.

Diverse, Yet Unified

The Holy Spirit has blessed us with a rich diversity of religious, racial, educational, and socio-economic backgrounds. He has also brought about unity that communicates warmth and acceptance to all who come.

A Caring Family

Our gathering is much like a caring family that values communication, informality, spontaneity, freedom of expression, humor, fun, commitment, and loyalty. Our dress is casual but our hearts are serious before the Lord.

Streamlined for Ministry Service

We believe that every person has value in God’s eyes and one goal of the Vineyard is to enable each person to be all that God wants for each one of us. Ideally, every person among us is someone who can actively minister to the needs of others and become that unique person God has called them to be.

Loosely Structured

At the Vineyard we place a high priority upon openness and flexibility, believing that such a climate is conducive to personal, relational,and spiritual growth. We are loosely structured to allow for change, freshness and innovation. We are a Christ-centered, Spirit-filled evangelical church with a message of good news and hope for a troubled world. Openness, acceptance and warmth allow people from diverse backgrounds to mature in their faith and commitment to Christ.

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Who We Are Not

Perfect, Arrived

Although Jesus commands us to be perfect (complete), none of us at the Vineyard would claim to have arrived. We are in process, maturing only as we yield ourselves to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Typical, Formal

While we bless and appreciate churches who worship within a tightly formulated liturgy and structure, we have chosen to express our praise to God in a rather non-traditional and informal environment. Expressive and spontaneous celebration is valued and cherished here.

The Only TRUE Church

Jesus has given us a vision and a message that is changing lives in our city. However, we are not the only local church who has heard from Him or who is being faithful to His commands. Our desire is not to compete with other churches, but to work together, especially with those who share our vision of advancing the Kingdom of God.

Legalistic, Rule Driven

Through experience many of us have found that a legalistic adherence to rules and laws can result in spiritual bondage and emotional defeat. We trust the Holy Spirit to change people from within, as they yield their bodies, minds and hearts to His direction.

Authoritarian, Coercive

Many cults and pseudo-religious movements have taken from their followers the God-given freedom to choose. Although we make our convictions and beliefs very clear, never do we seek to force them upon people through rigid authoritarianism.

We do not see ourselves as perfect or superior to other faith expressions, even though we offer a fresh, nontraditional approach to worship. We avoid the use of legalistic methods and authoritarian leadership to bring about lasting spiritual growth. And rather than compete with other churches, we desire to labor together in the advancement of the Kingdom of God.

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Our Values

The Pursuit of God

Our highest value is the pursuit of God. We are hungry to know and experience God’s presence, hear His voice and follow hard after Him. Our desire is to see Jesus’ love, mercy and, power shine through all we do.

Kingdom of God

We aim to move in all the signs of the present fulfillment of God’s Kingdom, invoking the Spirit’s powerful presence, ministering healing through the Spirit’s gifts and seeing God heal and work wonders through us.

Spirit-Led

We believe that Jesus is our head and the Holy Spirit our Counselor. We seek to be responsive to the Holy Spirit in life and ministry.

Discipleship

We aim to grow personally in the discipleship of Christ and secondly to make disciples – calling others into those same practices. The New Testament calls Christians to a radical commitment. We believe that we are called to an unconditional surrender of our whole lives to Christ. This surrender does not come in a legalistic way but flows from a response of love and thanksgiving to God who loved us and gave Himself for us.

Relationships

Relationships take root in the soil of intimacy, accountability and commitment. Relationships are an end in themselves and are not to be used, exploited, or manipulated. We believe that all ministry must flow out of relationship with God and His people.

Excellence

We strive to do everything to the glory of God, which requires our best!

Simplicity

We will not use manipulation, deception, or coercion to motivate people to function and participate in church life. We want every expression – whether speech, music, architecture, or manner – to be non-hyped, natural and reality based.

Integrity

It is important to us to speak the truth, deal honestly and live uprightly. We seek to be completely truthful, consistent and open in our relationship with God, others, and ourselves.

Generosity

We are committed to freely giving away all that we have freely received from the Lord! This would include giving away our best people, time, energy, and money!

Servant Leadership

We aim to exercise authority with humility, selflessness, and grace, care for people, and sincerely desire to build up the Body of Christ (the Church). We approach leadership as a team effort with one person, the senior pastor, to function as the coach and operate as the visionary, primary equipper and the keeper of the values.

Children

Children are a gift from God. They are our present blessing and future hope. As such, they deserve the same quality of nurturing and care we give adults.

Singleness

God has called certain people for either a season or a life of singleness. It is our desire to see these individuals grow in the gifts and callings God has on their lives. We desire to help them in their single-hearted devotion to the Lord and view them as co-heirs and equals in relationships, gifting, leadership ability and foundationally as a valuable part of the community to which they belong.

Marriage and Family

We desire to help families grow strong and healthy; enabling them to be nurturing, spiritual family units that are able to love and serve each other.

Culture Current

We use contemporary music to seek to develop an atmosphere in which unchurched people in the greater Omaha area will feel at home. We try to speak in the language of our culture without Christian clichés and dress. We desire to act in ways in which our culture will respond in positive ways to the Gospel without compromise.

Unity

We Aim to maintain unity by honoring all who call on Jesus’ name and by seeking reconciliation with all parts of the Body and by blessing the whole Body of Christ.

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Our Priorities

Worship

Our highest priority is giving God's love back to Him in worship. Through worship we experience vital nurture and life form our heavenly Father. We also express worship by our lifestyle before a watching world. We desire Spirit-led worship in a style that is intimate, dynamic, culture current, and most of all, life changing. Worship is an expression of our love for God. It, therefore, should involve our whole being – our intellect, our emotions, our spirits, our wills, our bodies, and our money. We believe that our worship should be spontaneous and enthusiastic since our life for Him is passionate.

Fellowship

Our next priority flows from our of worship: giving God’s love to each other. The Vineyard exists to care for and to build up people, not programs. Fellowship begins with our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. But fellowship is more than our individual relationship with Jesus. It also involves our commitment to Christ’s body, His church. We believe that this commitment to Christ’s body can best be expressed through kinship and home groups. These kinship experiences give every individual an opportunity to express who they are, what they need and give themselves to one another in love. They also provide a safe place to make mistakes and keep on trying in the context of a loving group of people.

Word of God

The Bible is the written word of God and is the standard for all that we do at the Vineyard. To us, God’s word involves both sound Bible exposition, presented by pastors and teachers with emphasis on doing and experiencing the truth, and His immediate word spoken through the application of God’s word to our lives and the submission to God’s word as our absolute authority that we can become what God desires.

Ministry

We believe that all Christians are called to minister in some manner under the anointing of the Spirit. Furthermore, our premise is that every believer has the same capacity to exercise any spiritual gift at any time according to the will of the Father. Specifically, we are called to preach the Gospel with the aim of making disciples. We are also to bring healing to the whole person (spiritually, physically, emotionally, and socially), care for the poor through the giving of our time, energy, and resources, set free those taken captive by Satan, counsel those in need of God’s wisdom and direction, nurture believers through teaching and exhortation to pursue discipleship in Christ, and train and release others in the ministry of salvation, healing, deliverance and other areas of Kingdom ministry.

Training and Equipping

We believe all Christians should be trained and equipped to "do the works of Christ." Because we want to be an army and not an audience, we will continually train up others after the model of 2 Timothy 2:2 -–to train others who can train others, etc., to carry on the ministry of Jesus, proclaim the Gospel and move the Kingdom of God forward.

Sending

We believe God freely gives and therefore, we should freely give. It is only by giving away that the Kingdom of God is multiplied. With this in mind we desire to continually raise up and send out qualified ministers of the gospel and servants of the King. We will do this by sending people to plant churches, be missionaries cross-culturally, or even to other churches needing help (Vineyard or not) with specific ministry areas. In doing this we will not only build God’s Kingdom but also demonstrate our desire for unity among the body of Christ.

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