Vineyard Spotlight: Part 2 with John Aureli
Today is Part 2 of 2 of our interview with John Aureli at the Sugar Land Vineyard in Texas. John is the associate pastor of compassion ministries at the Vineyard Church of Sugar Land in Texas. A native of the Boston-area, John and his wife Arleta came to the Houston-area six years ago and have two children, Gabriella and Elias. John is a graduate of Houston Baptist University (MA theological studies) and Eastern University (BS in Management and Health Administration). His experience with non-profits such as Geneva Global and the Salvation Army have been instrumental in creating and assessing ministry activities with the Vineyard Community in Sugar Land. Part 1 can be found here.
The hardest work is where we need more training and development and that is in aftercare. I’m so glad for the organizations that are beginning to see that the best place for someone to be restored is in the church. The church is BEST when it comes to knowing what it means for someone’s life to be redeemed because we all have had the same experience to one degree or another.
I wish we had better ideas for how to fight it, for how to bring immediate relief. It seems like too big and too complicated an issue for those kinds of quick answers. For now we get to work hard to keep children from becoming runaways, immigrants from being taken advantage of, and educating a church community to be aware, prayerful, and hopeful that the God that once intervened on our behalf will also intervene in Houston to stop Human Trafficking once and for all. In the mean time we’re going to try to listen to what he’s doing and join with him every chance we have.