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Worship is our highest priority at Vineyard of Gainesville
Worship might be considered one of the distinctive (almost signature) aspects of what the Vineyard church is all about. However, what we call worship might not be the same as what you might be used to. To many, with a background in more traditional 'main-stream' Christian denominations, the whole Sunday morning service is a 'worship service' and in fact it is! When a body of believers gathers together to lift their hearts and minds to Father God in Heaven, we are worshiping him.
The Vineyard, a community of churches (formerly known as Vineyard Christian Fellowship) is what you might think of as a 'seeker' or 'contemporary' church. We begin most gatherings (Sunday services, small groups, conferences, even many business meetings) with a time of worship through a contemporary style of music. In our early days, the vineyard was a pioneer in using this style of music in a church setting. In fact much of the 'Praise and Worship' music produced in the 80's came out of the Vineyard movement. Today, many 'main-stream' denominational churches have one or more 'contemporary' services to reach a younger 'seeker' generation of people. The style of music serves to bring a sense of comfort and familiarity to each generation seeking to gather in the Lords name.
Vineyard, while holding a high respect for traditional hymns, has adopted 'praise and worship' music as our central music style. In other words, our traditional service -is- a contemporary service. But Worship is not just a music style! We see our musical worship as a vital part of our entire service and something central to who we are. We worship for approximately the first 30-minutes of each Service and use this time to draw ourselves closer to God. This is a time for us to draw closer to him (as He is always within us). This is a time to envelope our hearts and minds into listening and experiencing God's glory and wonder. For many this achieved singing 'How Great thou are' or 'Amazing Grace' to the accompanying organ or piano. For Vineyardites, we find that more up-beat songs with electric and acoustical guitars, drums, and other percussion, played in a musical style (or genre) fitting in comfortably among it's brothers: rock, blues, jazz and even punk, works best to get our hearts on God. In a way, you could say, that our music approach does not try to be anti-secular as much as it tries to find a place of acceptance and familiarity with secular music while maintaining the purpose of lifting our hearts, lyrics and minds to Father God… much like Jesus' finding himself befriending the company of the common man and sinner rather then the religious elite of the day. <Matthew 9:9-13> |
