Vine History
After 125 Years, FPC Introduced A New Modern Style of Worship.
In the fall of 2006, a group of church leaders began discussions about adding a new worship service on Sunday mornings. They quickly progressed from worship styles and times to a bigger-picture idea of what kind of community would best serve the people of FPC and Lakeland.
By observing the emerging church movement around the country and talking to people in the Lakeland area, FPC decided the new service needed to be more community and less institution, more serving and less programs. The end result was Vine.
Vine began weekly worship gatherings on Sunday mornings at 10:30 a.m. on August 26, 2007. It became clear pretty quickly that this was an exciting new worship community where adults, college students, and families can experience Jesus Christ and church in a whole new way, interact with one another in an atmosphere of exploration and acceptance, and work together to extend love, peace and justice to the people of Lakeland and the world.
In the three years’ worth of Sundays since that first day, Vine has changed and grown in its mission. Worship gatherings bring together music, technology, art, and the spoken word into a engaging, hands-on experience like people have never had before at church. A dozen meal groups have gathered. Mission teams have gone to Washington DC and to Haiti. Small groups & discipleship groups have launched. Vine has distributed Thanksgiving dinners, picked tomatoes in local fields for the hungry, offered a worship home for homeless adults, and adopted a local public school where 90% of the students come from low income families. Almost 100 Sunday Servants make Vine happen each week.
For more than 125 years of ministry and missions, FPC of Lakeland has been making and maturing disciples for Jesus Christ and will continue to do so as long as He would have us be His servants.
