phil strout

Phil Strout, newly installed National Directorship of the Vineyard:

The posture of my heart, and what I think the Vineyard really needs, is a dependency on the Holy Spirit. We may know what we want to say. We may know where we want to go. But if we are not enabled and empowered by the Spirit of God, we cannot do it. So we need to be absolutely Spirit-filled people. We should say all the time, “Come, Holy Spirit.” There should never be a meeting in the Vineyard where it’s not said “Come, Holy Spirit.” There should never be a home group, a church service, a board meeting, a council meeting, a counseling session, a rap session, a staff meeting, where it should not be said, “Come Holy Spirit.” That is the language we are inviting. We know the Spirit is omnipresent, but we are saying, “We need you! We need your fresh infilling, we need your wisdom, we need you! We cannot go on without you.” Even though we’ve done this for 10 years and 20 years and 30 years and 40 years, we must continually say “We need you.”

We long for the presence of God, but not just in a meeting. We want the presence of God when we’re driving down the highway. We want the presence of God when we are going grocery shopping. One of the things we have been taught that is a hallmark of the Vineyard is that we experience and we worship God. We actually experience God. It’s not something theological, it’s not something cognitive, it is something that we actually experience. We do it with our children; we’re going to take our kids out on the playground to God’s greater glory. We’re going to experience God. His presence is everything. We don’t have a message without his presence.

... We want a reputation. Do we want to be an avant-garde group, a cutting-edge something, have the latest and the greatest with everything that we do? I believe this with all my heart: Let us be known for the way we love people. Let us be known for the way we love God. We might not be the sharpest group, we might not be the most spiritual group, we might not have all our ducks in a row, but what we do is, we love.