“Building a community of disciples of Jesus, with a passion to worship God,
who care for one another and bring God’s love into a broken world”
who care for one another and bring God’s love into a broken world”
Our Story
Vineyard Groningen opened her doors on January 8th, 2012 after the church had moved from Assen. The church originally was started by International expats who, working for Shell, started bible study groups in the ‘80’s. The bible studies grew out into becoming a formal church: the International Christian Church Assen.
At the end of 2008, the leadership team felt that God was moving the church into a new direction. This new direction lead the church in first instance becoming part of the Vineyard movement through the process of an adoption. A year later, 19th Sept 2009, the church was officially installed as Vineyard Assen and remained an international church. Later on in the process, it became clear that the church had to take a second step as part of the new direction: moving the church to Groningen.
Groningen is the largest city in the North of the Netherlands with about 195.000 citizens. As lively university city, Groningen has the youngest average population in the Netherlands. It has a long and turbulent history, which becomes evident from the historic warehouses, courts and buildings. Groningen is also a city with nerve, with the most numerous examples of innovative architecture within its boundaries. All of this gives us, being an international church, a great opportunity to serve this city with the love of Jesus.
Vineyard Movement
The Vineyard Movement is a network of over 1,500 churches worldwide, planted by John Wimber in the late 1970’s. Central to our movement is the Kingdom of God, church planting and renewal and our deep hunger for the presence of the Holy Spirit. The vision of the Vineyard Movement is: “We, the existing Vineyard worldwide, are committed to the multiplication of King of God minded, Christ-centered communities of local churches and Vineyard movements in the all nations of the world.”
As local church in the Netherlands, we belong the family of churches in Vineyard Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxumbourg). The vision of Vineyard Benelux is to plant churches in each larger city in the Benelux. Currently there are 10 Vineyard churches in the Benelux.