Who We Are
Vineyard Church of Ithaca
OUR PURPOSE
Encounter God,
Engage Community,
and Equip God’s People
ENCOUNTER GOD
We are a people eager to encounter God. We believe that God encounters are the greatest thing we can offer our city. We eagerly invite God’s presence in our meetings and community because the Lord is the central focus of all we do. We believe that salvation is found in Jesus alone, and that transformation is a supernatural work. So, we pray for supernatural works and God encounters for all.
ENGAGE
We want to engage the families, students, and neighbors of Ithaca with good news, good works, and good community. We joyfully host our neighbors in an atmosphere that is encouraging, freeing, and restorative. We want to engage the needs of our community with love, compassion, and a helping hand.
EQUIP GOD'S PEOPLE
We equip God’s People in Kingdom living and Kingdom service. We help our community learn to walk with Jesus, care for others, and love one another. We know that each member of Christ’s Kingdom has spiritual gifts and personal skills that can advance the Kingdom. We seek to equip people to be excellent in their own service roles. We honor the variety of gifts that the body of Christ possesses and desire that all have an opportunity to participate in the larger ministry of the church.
OUR DISTINCTIVES
We are a church that:
- Prioritizes prayer together in expectation that we will encounter God more in our community.
- Honors God’s Word and Spirit; He is a communicator; He has spoken in the scriptures and is speaking prophetically today in the church.
- Focuses on Worship, the Word, and Good Works.
Salvation and Discipleship
- Help people encounter Jesus and receive His salvation.
- Help people grow in their vital walk with Jesus.
Kingdom of God
- Is committed to proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God; we believe the kingdom of God, is the overarching and integrating theme of the Bible.
- Guide people in identifying their Kingdom Strengths, and we gladly release them into ministry to build the Kingdom of God
- Encourages believers to grow in the use of spiritual gifts, provides for a safe environment to exercise these gifts, and encourages a mature response to the Holy Spirit.
- Recognizes the battle is not against flesh and blood but is against the spiritual forces of darkness in this present day, and we engage the forces of darkness to set people free and expand the Kingdom.
Community
- Loves that Jesus is for all tribes, language groups, and peoples. So, we eagerly help foreign born people find their way in our city and fellowship.
- Believes that the people of God need to live in community for mutual encouragement, fellowship, and growth – we know that we need one another.
- Always has room to adopt more people into the family of God.
- Loves to support families; marriage and parenting are difficult callings, and our church wants to help families become and/or remain healthy.
- Loves to support single individuals; singleness can be a difficult calling, and we want to support singles in being healthy.
OUR STORY
The Vineyard Church of Ithaca was started in 1999 by a team of people largely made up of Cornell University students, and lead by Bob & Liz Wilson. In February of 1999, we held our first service on the 3rd floor of the Community School of Music and Arts building on State Street. While it took us a couple of years to really get established, the church then grew rapidly. In 2013, we welcomed Pastors Ward & Betty Davis and family to our church. Ward & Betty left with their family in 2021. In 2023, Pastors Nathan & Heather Emmelhainz moved to Ithaca from Georgia with their 11 children. While we still have a large contingent of Cornell and Ithaca College students, more and more people from the Ithaca area, who were distant from the church, have gotten connected here at the Vineyard! As a young, and growing church, our story is still being written…we hope you’ll consider being a part of it!
The following tenets of faith and practice compose the doctrinal beliefs and practices that give this fellowship its distinctive testimony and comprise the life and ministry skills that we shall endeavor to model and impart to our membership:
A. WE BELIEVE
that there is ONE LIVING AND TRUE GOD, eternally existing in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, equal in power and glory; that this triune God created all, and governs all.
B. WE BELIEVE
that the Holy Spirit inspired the human authors of Holy Scripture so that the Bible is without error in the original manuscripts. We receive the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments as our final, absolute authority, the only infallible rule of faith and practice.
C. WE BELIEVE
in GOD THE FATHER, an infinite, personal Spirit, perfect in holiness, wisdom, power, and love; that He concerns Himself mercifully in the affairs of men; that He hears and answers prayer; and that He saves from sin and death all who come to Him through Jesus Christ, and that He invites us to relate to Him, through Jesus as a loving Father.
D. WE BELIEVE
in JESUS CHRIST, God’s only begotten Son, conceived by the Holy Spirit. We believe in His virgin birth, sinless life, miracles, teachings, His substitutionary atoning death, bodily resurrection, ascension into heaven, perpetual intercession for His people, and His personal, visible return to earth. We believe that in His first coming, Jesus inaugurated the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God.
E. WE BELIEVE
in the HOLY SPIRIT, who was poured out on the Church at Pentecost in power, baptizing believers into the Body of Christ and releasing the gifts of the Spirit to them. The Spirit brings the permanent indwelling presence of God to us for spiritual worship, personal sanctification, building up the Church, gifting us for ministry, and driving back the kingdom of Satan by the evangelization of the world through proclaiming the word of Jesus and doing the works of Jesus.
F. WE BELIEVE
that the Holy Spirit indwells every believer in Jesus Christ and that He is our abiding Helper, Teacher, and Guide. We believe in the filling and baptism of the Holy Spirit for ministry today. We believe in the present ministry of the Spirit and in the exercise of all of the biblical gifts of the Spirit. We practice the laying on of hands for the empowering of the Spirit, for healing, and for recognition and empowering of those whom God has ordained to lead and serve the Church.
G. WE BELIEVE
that Satan, originally a great, good angel, rebelled against God, taking a host of angels with him. He was cast out of God’s presence and, as a usurper of God’s rule, established a counter kingdom of darkness and evil on the earth.
H. WE BELIEVE
that God created mankind in His image, male and female, for relationship with Himself and to govern the earth. Under the temptation of Satan, our original parents fell from grace, bringing sin, sickness, and God’s judgment of death to the earth. Through the fall, Satan and his demonic hosts gained access to God’s good creation. Creation now experiences the consequences and effects of Adam’s original sin. Human beings are born sinners, subject to God’s judgment, death and captive to Satan’s kingdom of darkness.
I. WE BELIEVE
that all people are sinners by nature and choice. All people therefore are under God’s just judgment. Through the preaching of the Good News of Jesus and the Kingdom of God and the work of the Holy Spirit, God regenerates, justifies, adopts and sanctifies through Jesus by the Spirit all who repent of their sins and trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
J. WE BELIEVE
that the term “marriage” has only one meaning: the uniting of one man and one woman in a single, exclusive union, as delineated in Scripture (Gen 2:18-25.), and that God intends sexual intimacy to occur only between a man and a woman who are married to each other. (1 Cor 6:18; 7:2-5; Heb 13:4.)
K. WE BELIEVE
in the one, holy, universal Church. All who repent of their sins and confess Jesus as Lord and Savior are regenerated by the Holy Spirit and form the living Body of Christ, of which He is the head and all are members.
L. WE BELIEVE
that Jesus Christ committed two ordinances to the Church: water baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Both are available to all believers.
M. WE BELIEVE
that God’s kingdom has come in the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ, that it continues to come in the ministry of the Spirit through the Church, and that it will be consummated in the glorious, visible and triumphant appearing of Christ in His return to the earth as King. After Christ returns to reign, He will bring about the final defeat of Satan and all of his minions and works, the resurrection of the dead, the final Judgment, the eternal blessing of the righteous, and eternal conscious punishment of the wicked. Finally, God will be all in all, and His kingdom, rule, and reign, will be fulfilled in the new heavens and the new earth, recreated by His mighty power, in which righteousness dwells, and in which He will forever be worshipped.
N. WE BELIEVE
in what is termed the “Apostle’s Creed” as embodying fundamental facts of Christian faith, and endorse the historic orthodox creeds of the church.