As I See It…

An open letter to the pastors of the Association of Vineyard Churches

January 26^th 2012.

That’s the deadline for the pastors in the Vineyard across the USA to choose our nominations for our new Regional Overseers. The new Regional setup, under the direction of our new national director, Phil Strout, will increase the number of Regions across the USA in order to make each one geographically smaller. By doing this, the hope is to make it easier for the ROs to manage, as well as foster effective relationship building among pastors. There will actually be a doubling of our regions from 8 to 16. Therefore, due to this increase and because some of our current ROs will be serving in other leadership roles, there will be a need for many new Regional Overseers. In an email sent out to all of us Vineyard pastors this week, here is the job description for our new ROs.

1.       Establish and cast a Regional vision that follows and underscores the vision of the National Director for Vineyard USA.

2.       Care for and coach the APCLs (Area Pastoral Care Leader) in your Region.

3.       Facilitate care for the pastors in your Region through the APCLs.

4.       Communicate with the pastors in your Region on a regular basis.

5.       Help local Vineyard churches in your Region to become strong, healthy churches through resourcing.

So how in the world does one go about picking a name to nominate for RO? Generally, this kind of process usually revolves around picking names you and I are most familiar with. And while I have no problem with selecting from those names I know, I’m guessing that God might have a better way to do this thing besides making it into a popularity contest.

Last year I posted a blog called WHAT I WANT TO SEE IN OUR NEXT VINEYARD NATIONAL DIRECTOR. The blog received hundreds of hits, with 186 views on March 26^th, 2011 alone. Now to many big-name bloggers, those numbers are peanuts, but for my little blog written in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the numbers were amazing. So now that our national director has been chosen, I’d like to resubmit my blog to you, my fellow pastors of the Vineyard, re-working it a bit to now encompass our important decisions facing us as we choose names to nominate for our new Regional Overseers.

WHAT I WANT TO SEE IN OUR NEW VINEYARD REGIONAL OVERSEERS. 

As our Vineyard-USA family journeys through this next season of our life together, we face one of the greatest challenges any organization can wrestle with. The selection of our new Regional Overseers.

Over the next month, Phil Strout, our new national director, we will taking the names we nominate for our Regions and choosing men or women who will faithfully work alongside Phil and his support team, leading our Vineyard-USA family into the next phase of our history. That’s a pretty heady thing to be doing, and I’m sure you will agree with me when I say, we truly need God’s wisdom and grace as we move forward with such big decisions.

As we, pastors in our movement, look forward to these exciting decisions, it’s vitally important to look backwards as well. As it is said, those who fail to learn from our past are doomed to repeat their mistakes. As one who goes back to the early days of Vineyard, I remember, of course, how God choose John Wimber to become our first national leader. After Kenn Gulliksen turned the Vineyard over to John in the early 1980’s, the Wimber family faithfully led our tribe through our formation years. It was John and Carol Wimber who faithfully took the reigns of the Vineyard, embracing the uniqueness of what the Holy Spirit was speaking to the church of America at the time, and formed a reproducible and transferable model of ‘doing church’ for Kingdom purposes. This model was, and still is, a fairly simple model in its original format, and is one that allows so many of us outsiders to become active participants with all Jesus is doing with His Kingdom ministry across the globe.

Now here we are in 2012, we’ve appointed Phil Strout as our next national director of an organization that is approximately 30 years old.

Like most 30 year olds, we have enough experience behind us to know that we can’t do everything nor are we called to be everything to everybody. Like most 30 year olds, we also have a lot of life left in us, and in fact, the next 20 years could very well be the most productive years of our life together. If we can hold tightly to all our fore-fathers and mothers have taught us over the last 30 years, the Vineyard can enter into the race at this moment, leading the way for the church in America, becoming, once-again, a model of Kingdom life and ministry, restoring the fire of God’s presence into a sometimes confused and scattered people.

As I see it, the next set of Regional Overseers in the Vineyard will need to be special men and women of God. These people will have a big job on their shoulders, taking our 600 Vineyard churches and encouraging all of us to stick together, following faithfully the unique path that God has set out for us.

As I’ve been praying about this huge decision that awaits our Vineyard family, I’d like to propose a few thoughts into the mix, speaking on behalf of some of the smaller Vineyard churches in our movement. While I don’t mean this as a criticism, I do sense that over the years, the larger churches in our movement tend to be seen as the successful ones, thus at times; the voices that speak into our movement tend to be those who are coming out of the larger churches in our organization.

At times, when I talk with other pastors of smaller Vineyard churches, I get a sense that smaller churches are seen as less successful, thus leaving our voices out of the mix. This, I think, is not a value unique in the Vineyard, but one of American values that say that ‘bigger is better’ and ‘those who have bigger boxes must know more than those with smaller boxes’. While I’m sure none on our current Vineyard board, ROs, or APCL’s intentionally want to ignore those pastors from smaller churches, it sometimes feels to us that the smaller your church is, the less important your voice is in our movement.

I, for one, would love to see that attitude change under the leadership of our new national director, the board and our new set of Regional Directors. As Phil Strout takes his new position, and as we are restructuring our regions, I’d suggest that we appoint many more pastors from smaller churches into the mix, allowing all voices to be heard in our movement. The truth is that nearly 75% or more of our Vineyard churches are 200 or smaller in congregational size. With that being true, I wonder if we might seriously consider appointing a good number of our new Regional Overseers from some of those smaller churches in our movement?

Which brings me to my final point.

I hope, as we make the decisions upon who to nominate for our Regional Overseers, we keep in mind the story of how David, the shepherd-boy made king, was chosen by God to lead the people of Israel. It would be very easy for us right now to be like Samuel, looking, at first, at the outward appearance of those we might be considering to lead us. As it is with choosing a U.S. President, the qualifications of looks, money, power and position weigh heavily in the decision-making process. Like Samuel, who eventually came to his senses and just didn’t feel that he was finding God’s anointed amongst the big boys, I pray we will humbly wait upon the Lord, and consider that many of our new Regional Overseers might just be out in the fields right now, singing their hearts out to God, oblivious to the candidate’s debate. May the Lord bring men and women into our midst much like David, who are, first and foremost, passionate worshipers of God and men and women after God’s own heart. Shepherds at heart, shepherding the flock we call the Vineyard.

Submitted humbly for His name’s sake.