History
The History of Coast Vineyard
Coast Vineyard began in the summer of 1988 with a few families meeting in a home near Wind n’ Sea to seek God. A church planting retreat in Old Town in the spring gathered a group of about 45 people committed to becoming Coast Vineyard. Two home groups were then formed, meeting through May and June. We went public with morning and evening worship in July in an office building in Del mar. Early in 1989, the church moved to a warehouse in Sorrento Valley where many people began a relationship with Jesus, many people experienced healing, and many people learned to use the gifts God was giving them.
During that time, we were involved with Vineyard church plants in Oceanside and Rancho Bernardo. Right from the start, Coast has had a heart for the poor. That first summer, the leadership team knew that God was calling us to care for homeless. After looking around the local area, we began to reach out to people who lived outside in the Mission Beach area, and the Branch Ministry was born.
In 1991, Coast experienced a church split. That was a very hard year for us, and it took us about five years to recover. Looking back, we realize that even in our weakest moments, God’s grace has always been on us.
From 1993 to 2002, we met on Draper St. in La Jolla, first in a small chapel and then in La Jolla High School. In 2002, we moved to our current site on top of Mt. Soledad.
Also in 2002, Don Williams turned 65 and retired as pastor of Coast Vineyard. Since then, Jamie and Michelle Wilson have been pastoring Coast. The church has grown steadily in the last five years. God’s love has been transforming us. He is giving us a passion for worship. He is teaching us that we are a family. He is healing us physically and emotionally. He is freeing us from addictions. He is giving us a desire to serve people. He is helping us to forgive people, and he is showing us how much he cares for the poor. As we reach out, we are learning how happy he is when someone trusts him for the very first time.
In the last four years, God has been giving us His heart for the nations. In 2003, we joined the Vineyard Baja partnership. We partner with several Vineyards in the U.S. and several La Vina churches in Baja Norte for the purpose of church planting in the Baja peninsula. In 2004, we joined the Vineyard Thailand Partnership, which has the same purpose. Furthermore, we sent a team of three leaders to live and work in Thailand. Each year, Coast sends teams to work in both Baja and Thailand. Watch the announcements for more information.
A Brief History of the Vineyard Movement
The Vineyard is one of the fastest growing church-planting movements in the world. The Vineyard story is about ordinary people who worship and serve an extraordinary God. The Vineyard is simply one thread in the rich tapestry of the historic and global Church of Jesus Christ. But it is a thread of God’s weaving. From the beginning, Vineyard pastors and leaders have sought to hold in tension the biblical doctrines of the Christian faith with an ardent pursuit of the present day work of the Spirit of God. Maintaining that balance is never easy in the midst of rapid growth and renewal.
John Wimber was a founding leader of the Vineyard. His influence profoundly shaped the theology and practice of Vineyard churches from their earliest days until his death in November 1997. When John was conscripted by God he was, in the words of Christianity Today, a “beer-guzzling, drug-abusing pop musician, who was converted at the age of 29 while chain-smoking his way through a Quaker-led Bible study” (Christianity Today, February 9th,1998). In John’s first decade as a Christian he led hundreds of people to Christ. By 1970 he was leading 11 Bible studies that involved more than 500 people. Under God’s grace, John became so fruitful as an evangelical pastor he was asked to lead the Charles E. Fuller Institute of Evangelism and Church Growth. He also later became an adjunct instructor at Fuller Theological Seminary where his classes set attendance records.
In 1977, John reentered pastoral ministry to plant Calvary Chapel of Yorba. Throughout this time, John’s conservative evangelical paradigm for understanding the ministry of the church began to grow. George Eldon Ladd’s theological writings on the kingdom of God convinced John intellectually that the all the biblical gifts of the Holy Spirit should be active in the church. Encounters with Fuller missiologists Donald McGavaran and C. Peter Wagner and seasoned missionaries and international students gave him credible evidence for combining evangelism with healing and prophecy. As he became more convinced of God’s desire to be active in the world through all the biblical gifts of the Spirit, John began to teach and train his church to imitate Jesus’ full-orbed kingdom ministry. He began to ‘do the stuff’ of the Bible that he had formerly only read about. As John and his congregation sought God in intimate worship they experienced empowerment by the Holy Spirit, significant renewal in the gifts and conversion growth.
It became clear that the church’s emphasis on the experience of the Holy Spirit was not shared by some leaders in the Calvary Chapel movement. In 1982, John’s church left Calvary Chapel and joined a small group of Vineyard churches. Vineyard was a name chosen by Kenn Gulliksen, a prolific church planter affiliated with Calvary Chapel, for a church he planted in Los Angeles in 1974. Pastors and leaders from the handful of Vineyard churches began looking to John for direction. And the Vineyard movement was born.
Twenty years later, there are more than 600 Vineyards in the United States and almost 1000 Vineyards in other countries. Vineyard worship songs have helped thousands of churches experience intimacy with God. Many churches have been equipped to continue Jesus’ ministry of proclaiming the kingdom, healing the sick, casting out demons and training disciples.
