Vine Evangelical Church (VEC)

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About Vine Evangelical Church (VEC)

Index:

About Us:
What We Believe:
1. Summary
2. Evangelical Alliance Basis of Faith
About You:
1. What is Christianity all about
2. Your questions

About us

VEC is a lively, modern and friendly Christian church, meeting together on Sundays and throughout the week in small groups. We were originally established over 100 years ago, and we are not affiliated with any denomination. We are members of the Evangelical Alliance and belong to Churches Together in Sevenoaks and District (CTSD).

We are a group of people from various backgrounds who want to follow, and become more like, the person of Jesus as the Bible shows Him. We are informal and open in our approach, and aim to offer a genuinely warm welcome to everyone. We hope that all who come into contact with us will meet God. As a result we believe that their own world, and through them the wider world, will be increasingly transformed.

We have excellent relationships with other Christian churches across the area from many denominations, such as: St Nicholas (Church of England), Sevenoaks Community Church, Vine Baptist Church and Bessels Green Baptist Church.

We practise baptism by immersion for those who have come to personal faith in Jesus.
We encourage everyone in the church family who has come to personal faith in Jesus to take bread and wine regularly in remembrance of His death for us.

We want to be true to Jesus as He is portrayed in the Bible, and to follow His example in loving other people however distant they may be geographically, culturally or spiritually. We express this in our strapline, Rooted in Christ, reaching the world.

Groups and Activities

We run a number of different groups and activities on Sundays and throughout the week. Please see the What's on page for a live calendar with up-to-date details.

Facilities

We are blessed with our own premises, which have a variety of areas offering flexibility of use. For example the carpeted hall we use for our worship service on Sundays is transformed into a child contact centre two Sunday afternoons a month and a comfortable and safe play area for Mothers & Others, our mums and toddlers group, every Tuesday. We have modern kitchen facilities. There is wheelchair and scooter access to the main facilities, and a loop system is in place for people with hearing disabilities.

Structure

Following a restructure of VEC in April 2010 the current structure of VEC is as follows:

Strategic Leadership Team (SLT):
Most practical decisions are made by the SLT, which is chaired by the pastor and includes all the trustees, Elders and Deacons.

Elders:
Elders are commissioned by the church family with responsibility for overall spiritual leadership as trustees within the framework of the SLT. They have particular accountability for teaching doctrine and theology.

Deacons:
Deacons, constitute a second layer of spiritual leadership, participating fully as trustees in discussions and decisions made by the SLT, but ultimately under the spiritual authority of the elders. Part of their role is to constitute a check and balance to the elders, to ensure the expressed opinions of the church family are taken into account.

Coordinators:
All VEC’s programmes fall within five main ministry areas, each of which is led by a coordinator who, with the help of activity leaders and teams, oversees the provision to the whole church family of a range of activities in line with VEC’s vision. Coordinators address issues of liaison, communication, problem-solving and training within their area. The five areas are: Worship, Discipleship & Care, Youth & children, Mission & Outreach and Administration. In addition there is a Serving & Gifts coordinator whose role is to ensure that people’s abilities and gifts are identified, developed and deployed, so that everyone is engaged in at least one form of church ministry and every ministry area is properly resourced.

Employees:
The full time role of pastor is, and some other roles may be, financially remunerated. Currently the youth minister, administrator and Discipleship & Care coordinator are employed part time (0.5 FTE, 0.6 FTE and 0.3 FTE respectively).

What we believe

A brief summary

God created us, loves us and wants a relationship with us, but gave us the freedom to rebel. By trying to live independently of God we have cut ourselves off and are heading for eternity without Him. God entered His own creation in the person of Jesus to rescue those who trust Him. By His death Jesus took the penalty for our rebellion on Himself, making it possible for us to be adopted as God’s children, become like Him and share His joy for ever, starting right now. (Please see crosscheck.org.uk or click on a page on the Links page for further information).

A slightly more formal version:

God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) is utterly good, and has the absolute right and power to do whatever He chooses. He created, cares for and will judge the world.
God has chosen to make Himself known through the Bible, and has therefore made sure we can rely on it completely.
All human beings have been made in God’s image, and are therefore of great value. Yet we all seek to run our own lives independently of God – this is what the Bible refers to as ‘sin’ – and are therefore under God’s judgement.
Jesus Christ (God the Son), fully God and fully human – yet without sin – came to give up His life on the cross in our place. He took our sin on Himself to save us from being separated from God for ever.
Jesus was raised bodily from the dead and taken to His Father’s side, where He now reigns and prays to the Father on our behalf as the only Saviour of the world.
We are put right with God only by His own goodness, as we believe the good news of what Jesus Christ has done.
The Holy Spirit enables us to turn from our sin, to believe the good news, to be adopted as God’s children, and to become more like Jesus Christ in our lives.
Every believer forms part of Jesus Christ’s family on earth, and has been commissioned by Him to take the good news all over the world.
Jesus Christ will come back in person at the end of this age to complete God’s purposes, bringing eternal life to believers and eternal separation from God to unbelievers, and recreating the universe.

The Evangelical Alliance Basis of faith:

We subscribe to the Basis of Faith set out by the Evangelical Alliance, of which we are members.

About you

You will be very welcome to come and visit us, wherever you are on your spiritual journey.

What is Christianity all about?

Would you like to see a clear presentation of what Christianity is actually all about? Sometimes people quite reasonably reject what someone has told them is Christianity, but is actually something quite different, and ‘man-made’. Please see crosscheck.org.uk or click on a page on the Linkspage to see a variety of presentations of the true Christian message.

Your questions

Do you have questions about God, Jesus, spirituality, religion, etc, or doubts about how Christian beliefs stack up against the findings of modern science? Give us your question by emailling office@vec.org.uk. You will also find answers to many frequently asked questions as you check out some of the links on the links page.