It's Time to SHIFT!

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As we celebrated our 10th birthday as a church family yesterday, Pastor Dustin challenged us to anticipate our future. What are you anticipating God to do in your life, in our church, in our city, in our world?

Anticipation should bring us to prayer for the future.

This Sunday, we will be kicking off a new series, SHIFT, where we will look at the what Jesus has to say about our priorities—specifically our relationships, time, and money. A major focus of this series will be prayer and fasting. If we are anticipating God to move, we should be hitting our knees in prayer for that future! We’re going to rally together as a church family to pray for the next four Wednesday mornings from 6–7a. We will also be challenging our church to fast on these Wednesdays.

We hope you’ll join us in prayer and fasting as we look to SHIFT for our future!

Prayer & Fasting Resources

We have several resources on our website available for you to utilize as you consider joining us in this season of prayer and fasting. Check them out using the links below.

Replicate Response: Fast Purposefully

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Replicate Response: Fast Purposefully

Fasting is one way of us showing God that we value His presence more than anything else in our lives. Personally, fasting is a spiritual discipline that I have always struggled with the most, but I’m honestly not surprised by that, because fasting is the action of giving up something, usually food, and clinging to God when we crave it. Fasting is not natural to us because we love our food and possessions! It goes against the flow of what our culture shows us. Fasting pushes against the cravings of our flesh and the world, and it compels us to press into and lean into God more than anything.

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The Motive of Fasting

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The Motive of Fasting

It is so easy to do the right thing for the wrong reason. This is especially true when it comes to religious action. For many of us, we are pharisees deep down. We know that we should be serving God, but we really want others to see us do things for God. This can especially be true for seasons like Lent. We pray more, fast, or give during Lent so people will make sure they know we are religious. Jesus is adamantly against this. In Matthew 6, Jesus’s focus is not whether people fast or how they fast but why they fast. Jesus tells us we should keep our fasting private. In fact, we should act as though we’re not fasting. We’re fasting not to be seen by others but to be seen by God. We’re fasting to grow closer to the Lord, not to earn religious accolades.

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The Preparation of Fasting

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The Preparation of Fasting

In the beginning of the book of Jonah, God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh, and to call the people to repent from their evil ways. Because of Jonah’s fear of the city, he goes the opposite direction, which resulted in God getting Jonah’s attention. There were great consequences for Jonah’s actions, and Jonah eventually got back on track with the calling that God gave him. The preaching that Jonah delivered to the Ninevites resulted in their preparation through fasting. This time of fasting and preparation pleased God greatly, as the king of Nineveh commanded the people in Jonah 3:7–8, “Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call our mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands.” The Ninevites feared God, and did not want to experience his wrath, so they submitted to Jonah’s warning, and believed in God.

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Detox with Vintage Church

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Detox with Vintage Church

Today Pastor Rob Wilton kicked off our latest series, "Detox." In Detox, we will be spending the next three weeks looking at the book of Daniel as we seek to (1) Detach from the world, (2) Attach to God, and (3) Unleash into the world. 

Detox is a very strategic series for a very strategic time in the life of Vintage Church. Last week, as our  new vJefferson auditorium is being finalized, we went all in at the Vintage Arts Center, our vOrleans location. While we are excited for this new auditorium to be completed, we also recognize that this is an important time in the life of our church. The worst thing we could do is get excited about a new auditorium and forget about the importance of seeking God as we seek to reach more people. So, Detox is an opportunity for us to turn toward God as we anticipate the opening of our new vJefferson auditorium on April 22nd and 24th. 

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Rediscovering Lent

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Rediscovering Lent

I have recently become more aware of a way of living as a Christian that is far older than any ideas of mine on the subject. It is called the liturgical calendar. Basically, as I understand it, the church created a way to celebrate the life of Jesus throughout the year by means of different seasons, fasts, celebrations, and holidays. You probably know that as a part of this we have Christmas and Easter, but what I did not know is that throughout the course of one calendar year, the liturgy covers the entire life of Christ. The surprise for me was that there is a great intentionality behind it all. It wasn’t just the accumulated festivals and religiosity of the ages. Not only is there intentionality, but that intentionality is designed to where if you follow the calendar, you have over the course of one year recognized Jesus’s entire earthly ministry. I could talk more about this, and you can find a blog on it HERE, but what I really want to set the stage for is Lent.

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