One year on from planting Nene Valley Vineyard, Tom Nicholson reflects on what they have experienced in their first year as a church.
As we come up on a year of being Nene Valley Vineyard, there is loads to praise Jesus about. We have seen a baptism, lives given to Jesus, prodigals returning home and people having incredible encounters with the Holy Spirit during worship.
We were able to share the gospel with over 700 students at our local secondary school this past academic year. God has been so good and so faithful.
One of our favourite stories is our parent and toddler group. Earlier this year one of our worship leaders, Jaz, shared her heart for a parent and toddler group that would engage our local community. At the Vineyard Leaders’ Gathering, we heard Archie Coate’s talk on ‘taking one small step of faith at a time’. So, in May we started ‘Dot to Tot’! We hired the local Methodist church on a Monday morning, asked the church to donate or buy toys, and invited as many parents as we could.
We’re now seeing around 12 mums and their children from outside of our church family weekly and there’s a community of about 20 mums and childminders in total.
We play games, make tea, coffee (for the parents!), snacks for the kids, chat and build relationships. A couple of weeks after we launched, we’d planned a women’s meal at a local restaurant for all the women in our church. Having only met us a couple of times, two of the mums came along and got stuck right into community. We’ve had some great conversations around faith too. Our prayer is that some of the parents will join us for Alpha this autumn!
