Changing Church Name
Greetings! I hope you enjoyed the beginning of our “Living Beyond Myself” series last weekend! I think this series is going to be life-changing for many in our church family. I hope you will really prioritize church during the next 3 weekends as we continue our “Living Beyond Myself” series!
The main reason I am writing is to inform you of two changes that are going to be happening here at the Vineyard.
Toward the end of last year, I talked to the leaders in our church and told them we, as a pastoral team, had been praying about potentially changing the name of our church to "Vineyard Church of North Phoenix." I told them we felt having the word "church" in our name was important, and it also tells people more directly what we are ---- we are a church! I asked them at that time to let me know their opinion on this potential name change if they had any thoughts or comments about it. We did get some comments about this from our leaders - - almost all positive.
After further prayer, and consideration of their comments, we as a pastoral staff feel God is leading us to officially change our name to "Vineyard Church of North Phoenix." We will begin the legal paperwork for this name change shortly, but you won’t see signs, letterhead, business cards, etc. change for quite some time as all of this takes time.
I want to assure you, changing our name will in no way have any affect on changing anything about us as a church family. Our mission, vision, values, priorities, and practices will continue to be exactly like they have always been here at Vineyard North Phoenix.
I also want to let you know about another change on the horizon. As you know, the first Sunday night of the month we have been having a young adult service called, "Illuminate." Illuminate has been very well received and is ministering to lots of young adults, both inside and outside of our church.
Again, after much prayer and consideration, we feel like Illuminate is "something the Father is doing" among us (John 5:19). Therefore, we want to follow what we believe is the Father's leading on this, so we are going to begin having Illuminate two times per month, starting in May.
So, beginning in May, Illuminate will be the 1st and 3rd Sunday nights of the month. Remember, Illuminate is open to everyone. If you are not a young adult, and you want to attend Illuminate, we would love to have you. However, if you do attend Illuminate as an older adult, remember it is geared for young adults. So, if there are some aspects of Illuminate that you don't really like (as an older adult), we totally understand that but we are trying to specifically minister to young adults in this service.
You may ask, "Does this mean that eventually Illuminate will be every Sunday night?" That is a great question. The answer, however, is "I don't know." The reason I say that is because it is the truth! If God continues to breathe on this service, and somewhere down the line we feel God is wanting us to do Illuminate every Sunday night, then we will do it. If we feel like God is wanting Illuminate to only be two times per month, then we will keep it that way. We always want to try and follow God's leading on these kinds of things.
Thank you for all you do at Vineyard North Phoenix! You help make our church the church that it is!
See you this weekend!
Love,
Brian
add comment