Part One: Summer of ’69

As this site gets underway, I’d like to give band members, V21 attendees and confused visitors who misspelled “vintage war ship” in Google several posts dealing with the background of the corporate worship at Vintage21 Church. This will hopefully reveal the movement of God in this church as well as the reason behind our methodology.

Before Vintage21, I had given up on church. After moving to North Carolina in 2000, a good part of my first year was spent looking for a church. Every Saturday for a year, out came the phone book (no computer yet), and Sunday held the promise of a new church home. This lengthy search was not due to snobbery, but my belief that the call of a follower to build the local church is one God should direct. The one I settled on had it’s flaws (as every church does), but it seemed the place God wanted me to help build. Sadly, after a year of trying to get involved- attending several home groups, services each week, multiple events, even the “singles group” (which is a full post in itself)- my patience had run out. The resulting bitterness and confusion resulted in a break, until a friend approached about a new church. The conversation went something like this-

“Hey, there’s a new church starting.
“I’m out.”
“They have some gathering where they meet in a bar and talk theology”
“I’m in.”

At the time, this was unheard of in evangelical circles, and curiosity drew me in. I first attended Vintage21 on January 20, 2002. It was their second meeting as an evening service of a large church hoping to reach out to those wacky postmoderns. No one talked to us, really, and meeting in a suburban middle school created an awkward environment not unlike those dreams where you are back in middle school and your pants keep falling down. No, haven’t had that dream? Be thankful, friend- it’s a doozy (or was that what the kids in the dream called me?). Back to the service- the sermon was fantastic. Pastor Tyler Jones spoke about the negative aspects of religion, and that the mission of Vintage21 was to follow Jesus with sincerity and authenticity in such a way that both Christians and non-Christians were welcomed. A fairly common theme now, perhaps, but in the evangelical church of the nineties this was never spoken of.

The music, on the other hand, was a different story. It felt generic, the sound was bad, the songs were cheesy. At the time worship leading had never entered my mind, so it wasn’t a pride issue. It was simply awkward, and didn’t match up to the message preached. Week after week, the same thing happened- great sermon, cheesy music. The lowest point for me was one Sunday when the service began with the worship band performing “Summer of ’69″ by Bryan Adams. There are worship pastors who include secular songs as part of their service, even performing them. You’ll see in tomorrow’s post that secular songs were a part of worship in the first few years of Vintage21. The problem here was that it made no sense. I longed to stand up and say “Please, someone, anyone tell me why that just happened?!?” It was clear that this concept was witnessed at another church, or heard about, and so they just did it without thinking.

While I longed to invite my friends who were not followers of Christ to hear the sermon, there was no way with the songs and service style. Apart from the sermon, it was like youth group for adults.

To Be Continued:

Tomorrow, Part Two: Rubber, Meet Road