The Vineyard Church

Early on in my walk with Christ I was perplexed, wondering why we did not have the best in the world of everything: the best music, the smartest people, the richest people, the most powerful people, the most beautiful. In all of these things I was a new babe in Christ and I was determining the “best” in worldly terms. I wanted the church to look good, be powerful, and be astute. I was really dismayed by what I perceived as the church and Christianity falling behind the world until I read 1 Corinthians 1 & 2. Then I read, “For the foolishness of God is wiser than than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.” I also read, "Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.”

It is not that God never uses the well known, the powerful, or the intellectual, but that globally we who are many are weak in the eyes of the world. We are underestimated, counted out, and dismissed. At the beginning of the twentieth century we were told that our God was dead, and that our cause was lost, while secularism, humanism and technology would usher in a new era of peace, reason and freedom from disease and war.

Here at the dawn of the twenty-first century the global church has grown faster than in any other time in history. Secularism is nearly dead, and technology has met new challenges, often times created by technology itself. The declaration of the church as triumphant is more clearly in focus than ever before. We may not be impressive but we are destined for a glory God determined before time began (1 Corinthians 2:7).

Hal Hester