Vineyard Columbus is a both-and church. As NT Wright said, "God is both the God of justification (he declares us to be right with himself through faith in Jesus Christ) and justice (he is concerned about putting the world to rights." So we have committed ourselves to the dual track of continually inviting people to place their faith in Jesus Christ (personal transformation) and exhorting Christians to improve the lot of human beings in this world, particularly the most marginalized, to whom God shows special concern: widows, orphans, immigrants, the unborn and their mothers (social transformation). And as the cultural waves of change crash over our church, we must continually battle the pull we feel to become an either-or church.
In order to become the kind of people who love and serve our neighbor in the manner of Jesus, we must not only be convinced in our head of this truth, but we must also be moved in our heart with profound love, and our hands must also be empowered to live this out.
To convince the head of this truth, we constantly teach that doing justice is not a liberal political ideal, but is, rather, a biblical imperative. We don't set aside just one sermon each year or even one series, but we are constantly teaching from the pulpit what the Bible teaches about our obligations to evangelize and to do justice.
To move the heart, we tell stories. We have made it a priority to celebrate people who model this both-and faith. We constantly talk about them in our sermons and we share their stories through videos.
To empower the hands, we have made available numerous service opportunities. We opened the Vineyard Community Center (VCC), whose motto is to be "friends with our city – one life at a time." And we are living out this motto by providing free medical services, ESL classes, classes for individuals to get high school diplomas, job placement programs, legal counseling, computer training, a large after-school program, sports programs, recovery groups, and much more. Our desire is to be known throughout Columbus as the best friend the city ever had.
