Evangelism class visits exciting church plant
The weekend of September 22-23, Dave Tolan, missions mobilizer, took his Evangelism and Church Health class on a field trip to Vintage Church in Greensboro, N.C. area.
Vintage Church is a recent Wesleyan church plant led by SWU Division of Religion graduates Matt Smith, lead pastor; and Lyle Denton, worship arts pastor. They worship in the Randleman Middle School with two very alive services each Sunday morning. The class had a great time observing and experiencing the significant involvement and energy of their tremendous volunteer team and the upbeat and engaging worship experience at their 11 a.m. service. Vintage Church, a four-year-old church plant, had 334 attend worship Sept. 23.
However, all the excitement and success on Sunday morning does not come without a lot of hard work. So, the class arrived on Saturday evening to help with and experience firsthand the significant setup Saturday evening and then the takedown Sunday after the last worship service. After everything had been put away, the staff and students had pizza together in the school cafeteria while Matt Smith and the Vintage leadership team shared with the students about their experience and responded to the students’ questions about church planting.
Students were particularly impressed with Vintage Church’s clear mission: ”to inspire people to live and love like Jesus” and their commitment to unselfishly serve their community. Both of these principles were evident in all they do. When asked about the name“Vintage Church,” Matt Smith explained that “Vintage” means to recapture the best of a past era. Smith added that their desire is to recapture the principles and practices of the early church in Acts. The students were required to write a reflection paper on what they learned and debriefed in class about this exciting learning experience.