In all seriousness I write this latest “Thoughts from the Pastor” post on such an odd subject. I do get asked often, “Why is our website so 2005?” It is sometimes suggested that we need a more modern, blocky format, something simpler, akin to an app, that is easy to navigate on smart phones and less cluttered!

That could be true. But there is a real reason for this decision. And the reason is…

…the same reason our church still grinds fresh coffee and offers it free. Quality coffee, btw, not cheap stuff. It’s the same reason we still use real candles (we have easily burned through a thousand and I’m proud of it). It’s the same reason that we let the candle wax drip everywhere rather than clean it up. It’s the same reason we have no stage for our worship team. It’s the same reason we chose to locate in and renovate a 100-year old school building with creaky floors in a part of town that isn’t growing.

The reason is that we want people to feel something when they come to Vineyard Community Church. We do not want a sanitized, plastic, cookie-cutter spiritual product that leaves no impression on people when they come and go. That is how the world, and the church, has become in these times…information is so easily accessible it is not valued and quickly forgotten. A.I. is so overused even in its infancy that people are forgetting how to create and dream. Reliance on technology is subtly making us soft and impotent, robbing the human race of the strength and mettle that are born on the grindstone of adversity and challenge.

Is this a spiritually-minded concept? It might be, maybe more than all my other posts of late. But I believe it. I’d rather sell peanuts on the side of the road than fake my way through an attempt to find God. Or create an atmosphere that welcomes him…and people hungry for him. Having a clunky website just might make us dig a bit to find good things rather than receive them with little work and therefore appreciate them very little. Maybe it screens people out of making a physical visit to VCC because it’s not catering to today’s entitled customer. Maybe that’s a good thing.

Or maybe it’s all a parable. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of God is to be sought first, and that it’s well worth it! He compares it to a field which a man discovers holds a great treasure. The man sells everything he has to buy the field because of the treasure that lies (maybe buried deep) somewhere in that field. He jumps in full-send and doesn’t look back. What the story doesn’t tell us is that he probably then grabbed his shovel and spent perhaps his whole life digging for that treasure.

That’s Christianity. Maybe a vibe that’s less “Christian product” and more calloused hands, sweaty brow, and earned gratitude is what church is all about. Maybe we’d get more out of it if we worked more for it. Maybe an old website where you have to dig a bit is a parable of this somehow. I think so, and if you’re part of Vineyard Community Church, you do too.

Grab your shovel!