The Price of Freedom

There are those of us in the Vineyard movement who seek the edge.  We are finding ourselves in atypical ministries, or planting churches in atypical contexts.  We don't do this in spite of our Vineyard heritage, but precisely because of it.  It is the Holy Spirit that drives us to these places.

We follow the Wild Goose into the wilds of urban blight, the confusion of cross-cultural ministry, the sacrifice of incarnational community with the poor, the massive scope of ecological disaster, the dark nether-world of human trafficking, the ambiguity of post-christendom, and the blue oceans of secular humanity.  We are seeking the creative and entrepreneurial responses to these contexts and injustices that will further the aims of our King beyond the birthplace of our movement.

This is not a critique of what has come before, or even much of what goes on now.  Simply an acknowledgement that we are indeed leaving the house of our fathers.  We do not leave without their name, nor do we leave as a critique or rebuke.  We leave to expand the house.

It is here, however, that many of us begin to feel the pain.  In leaving the birthplace behind, we feel the lack of provision and protection that comes with being there.  I have seen and heard (and even felt in my own heart) the complaint from those of us on the frontiers, "why am I laboring in such obscurity, deprivation, and isolation?"

This however, is the beauty of our movement!  The Vineyard has always chosen to embrace the nimble creativity of freedom over the cumbersome power that comes with supporting structures.  Those of us in the frontier feel this even more, but it is still the Vineyard way.  We must simply accept the cost of being a pioneer.  We chose this.  Indeed God, in His sovereignty, chose it for us and us for it.

We are the signposts pointing towards the future.  This is the price of being the change.

The word of the Lord to us is simple, "stop seeking affirmation from those who have gone before you, and stop seeking it from those who hold power and authority today.  Instead, walk in the confidence you have in the affirmation from your King.  You need no other."