Vineyard Columbus' huge Community Center

The Vineyard in Columbus is the definition of a successful mega-church. Throughout the 90's, attendance grew from 200 to 750 to 1,000 to 3,500 people by May of 1998. They now meet in a 3,000 seat sanctuary and had somewhere around 12,000 people pass through this past Easter. They're huge.

Huge churches, the mega-churches, have a bad name here in America, and rightly so. It seems like every few years we're greeted to a new person selling Jesus to huge crowds, building gigantic buildings and televising Sunday services, creating a cult of personality focused around their name and movement. Usually it's some kind of success-based theology about how God wants you to be rich and happy, if you'll only follow our 40 day program or pray like Jabez or try to get your best life now. The Columbus Vineyard is not this kind of church.

According to Uhle, statistics exist showing that mega-churches are the last stop before secularism for most Christians. Disillusioned with local churches, adult Christians are drawn to the massive non-denominations for a variety of reasons, but most leave after a few years and never return to the church.

Standing directly opposed to mega-church stereotypes, the Columbus Vineyard is actually putting it's immense collection of resources to amazingly good use in the form of one gigantic community center. Measuring some 45,000 square feet huge, it provides residence for a number of community out reach programs such as free medical and dental services, GED services, English-as-a-second-language classes, exercise rooms, sports activities, and art, drama, music and dance classes. All offered as cheaply as possible, for the benefit of the community.

This is provided, largely at the cost of the church, in addition with services the church and it's immense building are already providing, which include a number of ministry classes (Vineyard Learning Institute as well as Alpha courses, youth group, etc.), support groups for people dealing with abuse and grief, and recovery groups for people with eating disorders, among many other programs.

An outline for plans for the new facility and reasons for providing it is available on the Columbus Vineyard's website, here. The building was finished and dedicated late last year. The community center's official website is here.

I generally don't like mega-churches for most of the reasons outlined above, but this is really amazing. I want Christians in America to be known for stuff like this more than the boycotts and protests and WWJD bracelets and tracts most people know about right now, and this Columbus Vineyard is doing something very real, very powerful and very tangible to make that happen. Awesome. This is a huge and hugely neglected piece of what the gospel should look like.

Update: Here's an article written by Rich Nathan, the Columbus Vineyard's Pastor, about service.