Friday, August 26, 2005

Turning Point

Turning Point will be the new arm of VCC that focuses on the local community. We are forming it as an entity with some separation from VCC so that the dream we have of delivering services to families in need will not get lost in the internal workings of the faith community. We have noticed that even in the most well intentioned churches (including ours) the pull to serve the church is so powerful that getting much done to deliver justice to those outside the church just gets missed. Our attempt to remedy this is the development of Turning Point; under the faith community but with a separate name, checking account, etc. Eventually, Turning Point, if it makes sense to do so, will become its own charitable non-profit organization.

The working vision statement for Turning Point is that families in Shoreline, North King and South Snohomish Counties have access to social services. The working mission statement is: to deliver social services by partnering with others and with special concern for those who are poor and vulnerable by providing educational, coaching, care and counseling services to families.

The vision/mission statements are very rough, but I think you get the idea. We dream that someday Turning Point will make an impact in hundreds of families that would otherwise not have access to much needed social services and that cycles of poverty, abuse, divorce, broken familial relationships, at-risk youth and many other social ills would be turned around and brought to wholeness. We will do this in partnership with other agencies and organizations for maximum impact. Next- more on Turning Point

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Our Dreams

This will be the first in a series of articles or maybe we could say conversations. Conversation implies two-way communication, so, we are going to write some short articles about our dreams, our life together, and our moving toward such and would like to hear your responses, insights, comments and questions. Each article will be listed on the sidebar of the VCC web site here http://vineyard-cc.org/# as well as on this blog. You can post any comments here. We hope you will find this a helpful way to dialogue about our community.

To begin, let’s start with some background. The last few years, through circumstances and many influences, we have become convinced that we exist to serve our world in the personal, local and global realm. We believe that followers of Jesus embrace the way of Jesus that lives pursuing their relationship with God and serving this world in tandem. To that end we encourage one another to embrace spiritual practices such as prayer, meditation, fasting, reading, gathering together, hospitality, as well as many others…in the future we will devote some articles to “spiritual practices in community”.

We dream about the myriad of ways we as a community create an environment that sees every person’s journey encouraged to serve in the three realms of mission noted above. To begin with we want to talk about our dreams in the local area.

Next - The birth of 'Turning Point'