VJN Lab Day at 2024 Better Together Conference

VJN Lab Day at 2024 Better Together: Practicing Beloved Community

Join VJN leaders for a 1-day “laboratory” following our Better Together conference. We’ll digest, put into practice, and debrief what we’ve learned from the conference (April 15-18, http://vineyardusa.org/event/better-together/).

We will help each other to understand our roles as pastors and leaders to foster the beloved community within a world of racial bias, violence, systemic and institutional conflict. Our goal is to equip each person with an implementation and action plan so that we can each go home with concrete next steps for our churches and communities to pursue the way of nonviolence, racial reconciliation and ethnic diversity.

Our schedule will include immersion experiences that will cultivate our public discipleship. Issues include gun violence, sexual exploitation, immigration, and homelessness.

Public Discipleship practices will include the following:

• A Liturgy for Homicide. When violence happens in our communities, Vineyard churches can respond with calls for peace. During our VJN Lab Day, we will do a liturgy for homicide. This is a short interactive service you can replicate in your own community that grieves the slain, involves the families impacted, and offers hope to communities. We will join a family in Columbus as we grieve a homicide from several months ago as a broader church family.
• Faith-Rooted Immigration Advocacy. Rev. Dr. Alexia Salvatierra, one of our Better Together speakers, will equip us by deeply diving into how our churches can drink from our own wells and contribute all of our gifts to the broader movements for justice in our communities.
• In Their Shoes: Prayer Walk and Acts of Service. Sanctuary Night is a sacred space serving vulnerable women who are at risk for sexual exploitation. We will have an opportunity to serve this ministry with prayer and serving at their drop-in center.
• Hope Dealers: Pizza and Prayer with Hope Resource Center. The Hope Resource Center is a recovery hub for our brothers and sisters disproportionately impacted by soaring rates of homelessness, drug overdoses, forced prostitution, violent crime, psychosis and poverty in Franklin County. Hope offers same-day access to comprehensive resources for individuals seeking help. These resources include; detox, drug and mental health treatment programs, sober living, counseling, weekly recovery support groups and an on-site daily free clinic. Hope also provides hot meals, clothing, hygiene and harm reduction tools. All of our services are free of charge and provided without the fear of a warrant or background check.

Where: LIFE Vineyard Church, Columbus OH
When: 9am-6pm
Cost: $25, lunch and dinner provided.

Highlights from our April 2024 Lab Day:

Liturgy for Homicide

During our VJN Lab Day, we gathered to offer and practice a Liturgy for Homicide, in honor of the memory of Donna Dalton and the work of @sanctuary_night.

(an excerpt)

Leader: As we have prayed with our lips and hearts, help us pray with our hands and feet.

All: Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

All. The blood cries out, and so have we. Lord, hear our prayers and send peace to our city. Honor and comfort this neighborhood and this family. Lord, plant in us a heart of peace that is willing to quench violence with organized love that looks like family.

Immigration and Faith-Rooted Organizing

Rev. Dr. Alexia Salvatierra challenging us to interrogate the spirit of the elder brother as we wrestle with how the church can respond to immigration. Whose “son” deserves to be welcomed home with a party?

“Ideas are not enough to change you, when your opinions are deep-rooted in your family’s story and experiences. It’s a relationship of equals that changes how you think.”