Our story began when Tim Davidson was pastoring the Fairfield and St. Martin’s Baptist churches, and started to dream about planting a new kind of church.
Tim and his wife, Sheila, and some friends decided to take the plunge and, with the blessing of the Baptist Convention, the first gatherings began in August of 1992 under the name Harvest Christian Fellowship. A couple months later the group began meeting at a school in the South End of Saint John, NB.
On March 31, 1996, Harvest was adopted into the Vineyard Churches Canada family and became Saint John Vineyard.
In October of 2004, Saint John Vineyard bought the old Save Easy grocery store and converted it into our current gathering place. A few months later the Laundromat next to the building was purchased.
And on September 10, 2006, our founding pastor, Tim Davidson, passed on the leadership of our community to Robin Ellingwood and our leadership team.
But our story isn’t just about dates, buildings, name changes, or pastors, it’s about people. It is a story that is made up of many stories, stories of people that are learning what it means to share life together and help one another live and love in the way of Jesus.
The Vineyard
The Vineyard story is about ordinary people who worship and serve an extraordinary God. The Vineyard is simply one thread in the rich tapestry of the historic and global Church of Jesus Christ. But it is a thread of God’s weaving.
From the beginning, Vineyard pastors and leaders have sought to hold in tension the biblical doctrines of the Christian faith with an ardent pursuit of the present day work of the Spirit of God. Maintaining that balance is never easy in the midst of rapid growth and renewal.
John Wimber was a founding leader of the Vineyard. His influence profoundly shaped the theology and practice of Vineyard churches from their earliest days until his death in November 1997. When John was conscripted by God he was, in the words of Christianity Today, a "beer-guzzling, drug-abusing pop musician, who was converted at the age of 29 while chain-smoking his way through a Quaker-led Bible study" (Christianity Today, editorial, Feb. 9 1998).
The Early Years
In John's first decade as a Christian he led hundreds of people to Christ. By 1970 he was leading 11 Bible studies that involved more than 500 people. Under God’s grace, John became so fruitful as an evangelical pastor he was asked to lead the Charles E. Fuller Institute of Evangelism and Church Growth. He also later became an adjunct instructor at Fuller Theological Seminary where his classes set attendance records. In 1977, John reentered pastoral ministry to plant Calvary Chapel of Yorba Linda.
Throughout this time, John’s conservative evangelical paradigm for understanding the ministry of the church began to grow. George Eldon Ladd’s theological writings on the kingdom of God convinced John intellectually that the all the biblical gifts of the Holy Spirit should be active in the church. Encounters with Fuller missiologists Donald McGavaran and C. Peter Wagner and seasoned missionaries and international students gave him credible evidence for combining evangelism with healing and prophecy. As he became more convinced of God's desire to be active in the world through all the biblical gifts of the Spirit, John began to teach and train his church to imitate Jesus’ full-orbed kingdom ministry. He began to ‘do the stuff’ of the Bible that he had formerly only read about.
The Vineyard Is Born
As John and his congregation sought God in intimate worship they experienced empowerment by the Holy Spirit, significant renewal in the gifts and conversion growth. It became clear that the church’s emphasis on the experience of the Holy Spirit was not shared by some leaders in the Calvary Chapel movement. In 1982, John's church left Calvary Chapel and joined a small group of Vineyard churches. Vineyard was a name chosen by Kenn Gulliksen, a prolific church planter affiliated with Calvary Chapel, for a church he planted in Los Angeles in 1974. Pastors and leaders from the handful of Vineyard churches began looking to John for direction. And the Vineyard movement was born.
The first Vineyard in Canada began on the west coast in a suburb of Vancouver called Langley. In the fall of 1984, approximately thirty adults were blessed and released by an independant church to plant a new church in Langley. It was clear to the leadership team of this new church that God had implanted the Vineyard vision in their hearts and that was confirmed in John Wimber's as well. As a result the first Canadian Vineyard emerged in January of 1985. Within a year a second Vineyard was established in the Vancouver area and the movement had begun.
Within a few years more Vineyards began to spring up across the country first in Southern Ontario then Atlantic Canada and then the Prairie provinces. By the time of the release of the Association of Vineyard Churches Canada in the summer of 1995 and the appointment of Gary and Joy Best as National Director of Canada, there had been fifty Vineyards established across the country. At present the Canadian Vineyard Family numbers 61 churches in all.
We believe that there is a particular call upon the Canadian Vineyard to be a model of the mosaic of diversity within unity that Jesus desires to establish in his church. In spite of the challenges of distance and regional diversity, the Vineyard in Canada has been marked by a developing and encouraging unity and teamwork both within and across geographic areas. Though of course many of our churches are relatively new and therefore still in a somewhat early stage of development there is a strong overall commitment to church planting and missions. There is also an eagerness to share resources with one another, strengthening the younger churches.
As is the case with all Vineyards, we are committed to a church planting vision within Canada so that we can play our part in the larger body of Christ in making disciples throughout our country. We also expect to increasingly participate in Christ's mission around the world as we go into many nations with the Good News. We have a big vision but we are encouraged by the fact that the One who has called us is faithful!
