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What we believe & value as Vineyard Church
Vineyard Brussels is one of a collection of churches called the Association of Vineyard Churches. While technically not a denomination, Vineyard churches are connected by relationship and a common value system. The Vineyard began about 40 years ago and currently has about 2,500 churches worldwide. We are known as "empowered evangelicals," striving to combine Evangelical and Pentecostal/Charismatic traditions. The church emphasizes Christ-like character, Scripture, and the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit in all aspects of life, ministry, and service.
“The Vineyard is God’s idea. He called us kingdom people, doing the stuff of proclamation and demonstration. To do only half of what we’ve been called into is not a complete Gospel message and we must do all of what God’s placed upon us.”
— John Wimber
Our beliefs
He is an infinite, unchangeable spirit, perfect in holiness, wisdom, goodness, justice, power and love. From all eternity He exists as the one living and true God in three persons of one substance, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, equal in power and glory.
From his throne, through his Son, his eternal word, God created, upholds and governs all that exists: the heavenly places, the angelic hosts, the universe, the earth, every living thing and mankind. God created all things very good.
In order to bring redemption, God established covenants which revealed his grace to sinful people. In his covenant with Abraham, God bound himself to his people Israel, promising to deliver them from bondage to sin and Satan, and to bless all the nations through them.
Under the temptation of Satan, our original parents fell from grace, bringing sin, sickness and God’s judgement of death to the earth. Through the fall, Satan and his demonic hosts gained access to God’s good creation. Creation now experiences the consequences and effects of Adam’s original sin. Human beings are born in sin, subject to God’s judgement of death and captive to Satan’s kingdom of darkness.
The law’s purpose is to order our fallen race and to make us conscious of our moral responsibility. By the work of God’s Spirit, it convicts us of our sin and God’s righteous judgment against us and brings us to Christ alone for salvation.
God established the monarchy in Israel and made an unconditional covenant with David, promising that his heir would restore God’s kingdom reign over his people as Messiah forever.
Conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, as fully God and fully man in one person, he is humanity as God intended us to be. Jesus was anointed as God’s Messiah and empowered by the Holy Spirit, inaugurating God’s kingdom reign on earth, overpowering the reign of Satan by resisting temptation, preaching the good news of salvation, healing the sick, casting out demons and raising the dead. Gathering his disciples, he reconstituted God’s people as his church to be the instrument of his kingdom. After dying for the sins of the world, Jesus was raised from the dead on the third day, fulfilling the covenant of blessing given to Abraham.
In his sinless, perfect life Jesus met the demands of the law and in his atoning death on the cross he took God’s judgment for sin which we deserve as law-breakers. By his death on the cross he also disarmed the demonic powers.
The covenant with David was fulfilled in Jesus’ birth from David’s house, his Messianic ministry, his glorious resurrection from the dead, his ascent into heaven and his present rule at the right hand of the Father. As God’s Son and David’s heir, he is the eternal Messiah, King, advancing God’s reign throughout every generation and throughout the whole earth today.
baptising believers into the body of Christ and releasing the gifts of the Spirit to them. The Spirit brings the permanent indwelling presence of God to us for spiritual worship, personal sanctification, building up the church, gifting us for ministry, and driving back the kingdom of Satan by the evangelisation of the world through proclaiming the word of Jesus and doing the works of Jesus.
We believe in the filling or empowering of the Holy Spirit, often a conscious experience, for ministry today. We believe in the present ministry of the Spirit and in the exercise of all of the biblical gifts of the Spirit. We practice the laying on of hands for the empowering of the Spirit, for healing, and for recognition and empowering of those whom God has ordained to lead and serve the church.
so that the Bible is without error in the original manuscripts. We receive the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments as our final, absolute authority, the only infallible rule of faith and practice.
All people therefore are under God’s just judgement. Through the preaching of the Good News of Jesus, the Kingdom of God and the work of the Holy Spirit, God regenerates, justifies, adopts and sanctifies through Jesus by the Holy Spirit all who repent of their sins and trust in Jesus Christ as lord and saviour. By this they are released from Satan’s domain and enter into God’s kingdom reign.
All who repent of their sins and confess Jesus as lord and saviour are regenerated by the Holy Spirit and form the living body of Christ, of which he is the head and all are members.
water baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Both are available to all believers.
that it continues to come in the ministry of the Holy Spirit through the church, and that it will be consummated in the glorious, visible and triumphant appearing of Christ – his return to the earth as King. After Christ returns to reign, he will bring about the final defeat of Satan and all of his minions and works, the resurrection of the dead, the final judgement, the eternal blessing of the righteous and eternal conscious punishment of the wicked. Finally, God will be all in all and his kingdom, i.e. his rule and reign, will be fulfilled in the new heavens and the new earth, recreated by his mighty power, in which righteousness dwells and in which he will forever be worshipped.
Our values
We are not simply implementing the best church strategies and trying to accomplish what is humanly possible. Rather, our mission involves praying and finding power from God Himself to accomplish what humans could never accomplish on their own.
The kingdom of God is not a geo-political territory, nor is it the people of God. Rather, the kingdom of God is a dynamic realm.When one enters the kingdom she/he experiences the dynamic reality which exists within the triune God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This means that the experience of the kingdom of God (and thus, the experience of God’s presence) is central to our faith and Christian life.
Jesus is reconciling humans to God, to each other, and to the entire creation, breaking down divisions between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female.Therefore, we are committed to becoming healing communities engaged in the work of reconciliation wherever sin and evil hold sway. We seek to be diverse communities of hope that realize the power of the cross to reconcile what has been separated by sin.
We lean toward the lost, the poor, the outcast, and the outsider with the compassion of Jesus as sinners whose only standing before God is utterly dependent on the mercy of God. This mercy can only be truly received inasmuch as we are willing to give it away.
We believe that ministry in Jesus’ name should be expressed in concrete ways through the local church. The poor are to be served as though serving Jesus Himself. This is one of the distinguishing characteristics of a church expressing the love of Christ in a local community.
The Church exists for the sake of those who are exiled from God. We are called to bring the Gospel of the kingdom to every nook and cranny of creation, faithfully translating the message of Jesus into language and forms that are relevant to diverse peoples and cultures.
To this end, we promote a creative, entrepreneurial, and innovative approach to ministry that is faithful to Jesus and expressive of His heart to reach those who are far away from God. As the Apostle Paul said, we are ready to “become all things” (1 Cor. 9:19-23) to all mankind to see many come to faith in Christ.
