No Lockdown For The Gospel | A Story From Alpha USA
When life goes differently than ever before, it gives us the chance to try things weāve never imagined were possible. This Spring was supposed to be a season of finish lines, finals and farewells for my 18-year-old son Luke who was graduating from high school. It turned out to be a season of starting lines, […]
A Letter From Phil | July 2020 (English & EspaƱol)
Dear Vineyard Family, Jan and I have just come back from some down time where we took the chance to unplug and get out of the house for a while. It was a hot couple of days here in Maine, in the upper 90s and the sun was shining, so we drove to the coast. […]
Serving A Food Desert During COVID-19
La ViƱa Saint Paul was established to not only serve the spiritual needs of our communities in Saint Paul, Minnesota, but also the physical needs of our at-risk neighbors. In fact, we started a food shelf prior to opening our church plant! In 2017 our location had the highest poverty and lowest income levels in […]
Being The Church Without A Building
These last months have been a wild ride for all of us! We have had to wrestle with questions we never anticipated we would need to wrestle with. “Should we shut down? When do we open? How do we ābe the churchā without access to our building?” At the Syracuse Vineyard we made the decision […]
EDLD ā Essential Practices of Kingdom People
Friends, I want to share with you, from my heart, about an important idea that I believe is for the Vineyard movement at this time in our history. This entire booklet is about that one, simple idea, and explores what it means for us to engage in āmain and plainā Kingdom living. The idea explored […]
EDLD: An Introduction
We have all been given, by God Himself, the gift of one short hour on the earth. Deep in our bones, we know that people need to experience the overwhelming, transforming love of God. We also know that we have the opportunity to participate with God in bringing His Good News to every last person […]
Being A Reconciling Community: One Church’s Story
When I think about what it means to be a reconciling community, a few things come to mind. There is so much good material available on the topic that I donāt want to just state the obvious, but hopefully can add a little context from our experience in this arena. First, as obvious as it […]
Making The Most Of An UN-Ideal Set Of Circumstances
If you are anything like me, you have been considering, contemplating, conversing and creating scenarios over and over and over again, trying to crack the COVID Era ministry challenge. The thing that has been super clear to me all along is that nothing about this moment feels ideal. In fact, everything feels un-ideal. As our […]
Responding To Racism From An Asian American Perspective
After 42 years on this earth, I have been asked many times in my life, āWhere are you from?ā Itās a very natural and common question that we ask each other as we meet and engage. When I am asked this question, my answer is, āIām from New Jersey.ā My answer is often met with […]
A Note From Phil On Long Obedience (English & EspaƱol)
Dear Vineyard Leaders, Last week, Jan and I celebrated our 45th wedding anniversary. 45 years! We have been married longer than some of you have been alive ā oh my. I have been reflecting on our marriage, and while it took all of five minutes for the pastor to proclaim us husband and wife, we […]
