Grace Vineyard Update 11-13-2020
Hi Grace Vineyard and Friends,
It’s a beautiful day in Oceanside!
Earlier today I sent a video message to everybody for whom we have a cell number. If you’d like to watch it, here it is:
Church Online Only This Sunday
The first thing you need to know is that our Sunday morning service will only be available online this Sunday (November 15) Zoom Meeting ID 153 112 432, Passcode 648814, Facebook Live at facebook.com/gracevcf. The California Department of Health established metrics many months ago for determining how strict the measures for reducing the spread of COVID-19 will be for each county. We passed the numbers that put us in the most restricted category a couple weeks ago which put us in a warning category (giving us one week to reduce our numbers), then continued to maintain the high numbers past the warning period, so tonight at midnight we enter the “Purple” widespread transmission tier. In the Purple tier many indoor activities, including Worship Gatherings, are prohibited until we can reduce the number of daily new infections. If the weather is warm enough, we will probably have some outdoor gatherings on future Sunday mornings. This week I had a conversation with one of our newer members who said she actually preferred meeting on Zoom to meeting in person, as she is having a great time connecting with people on Zoom. That was encouraging! I hope you’ll give it a try this Sunday at 9:30am. For your convenience, we’ve uploaded the lyrics of the worship songs for Sunday right here: Lyrics for 11-15-2020. You might want to print them out so they’re hand for Sunday morning.
Men’s Breakfast Tomorrow (Nov 14)
We are having an in-person men’s breakfast tomorrow at 8am in the back patio of Ty’s Burger House. This week we are very excited to welcome back José Gutierrez as our guest speaker. Many of you will know that pastor José served as Grace Chapel’s associate pastor for a number of years. He is a very gifted pastor, especially in the area of pastoral counseling, and loved greatly by all of us who know him. You won’t want to miss this, men! If you need any info on this or other men’s ministry, please contact Richard “Snake” Ertel at 760-622-4572.
We Are Collecting Blankets
Please bring clean blankets to the church. Due to the pandemic, our doors are usually locked, but somebody is often at the building, so please call 760-754-2974 to arrange a time to drop off your clean blankets. Around Thanksgiving Michael Aplikowsky will be leading us in delivering the blankets to folks in need, especially our neighbors who are living out of doors presently. We will be showing Jesus’ love in a very practical way, and can anticipate that many of our blanket-gifts will turn into “Holy Hello’s”. Contact Michael with any questions at 760-473-9177.
Partners in the Harvest
We are in a special month at Grace Vineyard where we are focusing on our “Partnership in the Harvest” through global missions. This is a REALLY important time of year for me, as I understand the Great Commission to be so important to Jesus and therefore us. Listen to these famous words one more time:
Matthew 28:18-20
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Acts 1:8
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Last week we began our Missions month with a few very special guest speakers via video. First Mark Fields, director of Missions for Vineyard USA spoke to us about the structure of Vineyard Missions, and then Jenny and Josue Hernandez welcomed us into the Vineyard Honduras Missions Partnership. After a lot of prayer and discussion for most of 2020 our Missions Leadership Team (Shannon Frye, Sharon Evans, Steve Rogers, and myself) have decided to join the Vineyard Missions Honduran partnership, and we are excited! We will be able to connect as often as weekly with Vineyard churches in Honduras via Zoom, and go on annual short term trips to serve the people of Honduras. We are so excited about this! If you have a moment, listen to those 2 video messages and see if you don’t get excited too!
We’ve prepared a fresh prayer bulletin so we can be praying for the needs of our missionaries – Mission Prayer Bulletin November 2020.
PLEASE take a moment now or very soon to look at the gracevcf.org/missions page, which we’ve just updated. There you’ll see that we are now in the annual period where we renew our financial commitments to the missionaries that we support. Our goal is that 100% of people who call Grace Vineyard their home will make a financial commitment. That may sound like a lofty goal, but it is actually completely doable – everybody can afford something. So whether you give $1 per month or $100 per month, or more, please make a commitment and let us know so we can let our missionaries know. Please submit your pledges to Grace Vineyard Missions for 2020 by clicking on this link: 2020-2021 Missions Pledge. My motivation for this goal is that Jesus said where your treasure is, there your heart will also be. When I give financially to support missionaries every month, my heart is enlivened for the Great Commission, and I find myself praying for the missionaries I support. And it fills me with Joy! I want you to have this same great experience. I know I’ve said it many times, but I began this practice at age 17 when I got my first job. I had just graduated from High School and I began supporting the Campus Ministry that served my high school. I’ve never stopped supporting missions since then, so after almost 40 years I can testify that supporting missions is something you’ll never regret. Whatever the amount, I’d really encourage every one of you to give something on a monthly basis. We are partners together in the Harvest around the world!
Tech Team Volunteers Needed
You may have noticed a couple new guys in the tech area on Sundays even when we were meeting in the parking lot and the park. Their names are Conner and Chuck Hand. You may recognize them from the California Artist’s Academy. They’re providing the technical expertise necessary for giving our worshipers on Zoom and Facebook live the best experience possible. Their home church is North Coast Church in Vista, but they are graciously helping us out for a while until we can recruit, train, and deploy a volunteer team from Grace Vineyard. If you would be interested in learning how to operate video cameras and run the computers for the online tech, or if you would like to learn how to operate our sound system where we also need new volunteers, we could sure use you! Send us an email at info@gracevcf.org and tell us about your interest, and we’ll get going on some training for you. It’s really fun! I’d do it, but I kinda have another commitment on Sunday mornings. ?
And that’s it for this week’s update. Hope to see you all Sunday Morning on Zoom or Facebook.
With love and blessings,
Ron Ohst
Tithes and Offerings Online
Thank you for your generosity and faithfulness! We could not do what we do without you. We believe God has chosen to meet the material needs of His church through the tithes and offerings of His people. (Tithe means literally 1/10 or 10% of our income). We encourage everybody to be committed to a church family, and if Grace Vineyard is where you are committed, we’ve provided this online tool for you; click on the “donate” button below to get started. (Note: if you’re giving an offering for the building fund or the benevolence fund in addition to your tithe, please mention that in the notes section after you land on our paypal page). THANKS for taking ownership in the life and ministry of Grace Vineyard – it takes all of us!