Rich Nathan (born December 1955) has been the senior Pastor of the Vineyard Church of Columbus since 1987. Nathan was raised in conservative Judaism and converted to Christianity at the age of 18. Prior to pastoring, he was an assistant professor of business law at The Ohio State University for five years. Nathan has served on the National Board of Vineyard: A Community of Churches for more than a decade and is a the Large Church Task Force Coordinator for the Vineyard. He is a popular national and international conference speaker and author of two books. Nathan has been noted as one of the strongest voices in favor of the Third Wave Movement.
Nathan has also been outspoken on the subject of faith and politics, in an interview with the Columbus Dispatch, he was quoted:
Vineyard Church of Columbus (formerly Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Columbus) is a church in Westerville, Ohio. It is part of the Association of Vineyard Churches that is based in Sugar Land, Texas.
The Vineyard Church of Columbus dates back as a church to the late-1970s, under Nathan's leadership. Three different house churches joined together to form the first church, It was not called a Vineyard at the time however. The church remained independent of any larger group for a number of years, considering itself a part of a "Third Wave of the Holy Spirit" in America. After investigating a number of groups to join with, the leadership of the church decided on the Association of Vineyard Churches, which was led at that point by John Wimber. They became the Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Columbus in 1987, changing their name to what it is known as now in the late 1990s. From a few house churches to several hundred people in the early 1990s, it has experience explosive growth. Drawing over 8,500 people at its weekend worship services, it is the largest church in the Vineyard movement today. It is a church that is self described as an "empowered evangelical" church, according to the definition in Rich Nathan and Ken Wilson's book Empowered Evangelicals that was published in the mid-1990s.
Theological foundation of Columbus Vineyard
An "empowered evangelical" is defined by Nathan and Wilson as someone who embraces the best of the Protestant evangelical stream of Christian belief and the best of charismatic/pentecostal stream of Christian belief. Vineyard as a church believes that the Bible is true and infallible, and that truth is the world's only hope. Vineyard affirms that Christians are called to tell others about what the Bible says God is doing in the world, namely transforming it. That work finds its central focus for Vineyard in the person of Jesus and what it is written in the Bible that he accomplished in his death on the cross and through being raised from the dead (known as the resurrection).
Vineyard affirms the Christian belief that repentance and faith in Jesus are the doorway into the transformation that God is bringing to the world. Without implying that evangelicals are "powerless", Nathan wrote that the "empowered" aspect that Vineyard emphasizes is that God has made his power available through the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, as it was for the apostles of the First Century. This includes a belief in supernatural healing of physical and mental illnesses and miraculous signs. While there are definite disagreements between the mainstream evangelical churches and the Vineyard, the Vineyard believes that there is great unity at the core of two.
Impact on Columbus and beyond
The actions of Vineyard in the life of the surrounding community are forged by a belief that God is not just forgiving sins and in doing so making available eternal life, but that he is also actively desiring to fix what is broken in the world. The Vineyard teaches that the Kingdom of God is advancing and transforming the world. According to the theological position that the Vineyard takes, the kingdom of God is God's reign as action and the conformity of a situation to what he desires. Because of this view, the Vineyard Church of Columbus offers a full range of services to the community.
The church offers classes, prayer, sermons, and Bible study groups for growth in spiritual life. It also offers counseling, marriage training, small group communities for growth in relationships. The church is host to a ministry training center known as Vineyard Leadership Institute, Vineyard leadership institute as well as a young adult community called Joshua House. Joshua house Additionally, it serves the poor and overlooked both in Columbus and worldwide to bring social wholeness.
It prays for the sick people asking that God would supernaturally heal them, teaches classes on good health, and offers groups to help people grow in physical wholeness. While the church actively seeks to see moral wholeness in the surrounding culture, it believes that the church is not here to be combative against its neighbors but to be gracious and meek like Christ. This view has been important in the development of many social programs, such as food pantries, day care and after school programs, ESL courses, as well as legal, medical, dental, and optometry clinics. Most of these programs are administered through a community center that Vineyard Columbus opened in 2006.
The original church in Westerville has planted 24 churches in since 1987, Vineyard Church of Columbus including over a dozen in the Columbus area - all included in the Vineyard Movement. Vineyard also supports many Christian missionaries throughout the world.
Vineyard Leadership Institute (VLI) is a two-year, seven quarter course. It was created to integrate hands-on training, ministry experience, spiritual formation, and academic understanding.
Vineyard Leadership Institute was established in 1995 by Rich Nathan the senior pastor of the Vineyard Church of Columbus in Columbus Ohio. In 1996 Steve Robbins, Ph.D. was brought in to take over as Director of Vineyard Leadership Institute.
The host site is in Columbus Ohio where Steve Robbins, Ph.D. and all faculty are filmed. VLI operates on "Distance Sites", small groups of people that go through the courses and material together and are overseen by a site coordinator. VLI has many sites located throughout the United States as well as in the United Kingdom, Brazil, Spain, and Chile.
