WHAT IF GOD IS REAL?
In many ways, this is the question that orients our community: What if God is real? What if God heals? What if God is at work in our world? What if God is passionate about relating to people? What if God is passionate about me?
ECV is a community where you can explore these questions.
Many of us have experienced an answer to these questions: the activity of God in our lives healing us, transforming us, giving us courage.
Many of us are still seeking.
All of us are pursuing life with a living God. All of us are learning to follow Jesus.
 | “Before I came to ECV I talked to God plenty—I’d sit and smoke and have conversations with him. But I never really understood or knew his heart…” |
CORE VALUES
As we follow Jesus, our orienting values are:
We have encountered an active, living God, whose loving work in our city and in our world is our reason for existing.
We know no better place to pursue God’s passion for reconciliation than the city of New Haven in all of its diversity.
We have experienced the joy of pursuing deep discipleship that changes us from the inside out and results in more health and freedom in our day to day lives.
We seek to be bold in aligning ourselves with God’s work, taking risks for the sake of God's justice, peace, and mercy.
So, wherever you're at, whatever your questions, join us as we follow Jesus together, investing courageously in what God is doing, helping make New Haven a great city for all people.
HISTORY
The Elm City Vineyard Church was born out of a growing community of friends in pursuit of Jesus. This community, then known as 180Colony, met on Thursday nights in a home in New Haven. A homegroup of the New Haven Vineyard (in West Haven), this group drew folks from the Vineyard, from other churches, and folks who weren't involved in church at all. The focus of the group was much like the focus of ECV homegroups: relationship with God and one another through prayer, worship, and Bible study.
By 2007, a group of folks from the 180Colony community began wondering: What is God up to? Every week, more and more great folks were getting connected to the community. Eventually, the answer was: God is planting a church. After several months of further prayer and discernment within the community and with the Vineyard movement locally, regionally, and nationally, the Elm City Vineyard was born in the fall of 2007, under the leadership of Matt & Hannah Croasmun and Caleb & Kathy Maskell.
That fall, the church began meeting in the basement of a church on the downtown Green. We still meet near the Green at First and Summerfield United Methodist Church. The one homegroup became three; these days, there are usually 7-8 homegroups operating in the church.
From the very beginning, we've always valued team leadership and team ministry. This means diverse teams of folks teaching and leading worship on Sundays, a dynamic group of homegroup leaders gathering communities within the church, and a culture in which everyone's contribution is valued. (Head on over to the "People" page to meet a few of these fabulous folks.)
BELIEFS
At ECV, we believe that faith is lived out in relationship with a living, active God, which means it's pretty hard to reduce to words on a page. We do our best to share what we learn along the way in homegroups, in life lived together, and on Sundays. So, if you're looking to get a sense of what we believe, perhaps checking out a few Sunday talks would be a good place to start.
That said, we connect with and affirm the historic statements of faith expressed by the people of God. Creeds like the Nicene Creed connect us with the many people who have experienced life in Jesus throughout the centuries and around the world.
The Nicene Creed
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made; who for us, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father. And he will come again in glory to judge both the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
Finally, the Elm City Vineyard is a member church of the Vineyard USA and we affirm the Vineyard's 5 Core Values.
And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets. And we believe in one holy universal and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. And we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
