Name: Southland Vineyard Church

Denomination/Religion: Evangelical

Location: Pasadena Green Shopping Centre, 20 Fiveash Drive, Pasadena SA

Service time: Sunday 10am

The best thing: Seeing a woman healed of her tendonitis

The worst thing: That a woman thought prayers had healed her tendonitis

Overall rating: ✞ ✞ ✞

If, like me, you were equally as intrigued and confused by the name Southland Vineyard Church, let me clear a few things up for you. This church is not a winery, nor does it only pass messages through word-of-mouth communication. Southland Vineyard, like many other places of worship, is an American import.

John Wimber was the man who bought the Vineyard movement to Australia – a former musician who was in a band with Righteous Brothers members Bobby Hatfield and Bill Medley before they hit the big time. From the first Vineyard church sprung many others, until Rob and Debbie Norman ‘planted’ this particular Vineyard, the first in South Australia.

As we walked into the service hall, a countdown to the beginning of the service was both on a screen in the foyer, and projected onto the wall.

We were interested and excited, but there was unfortunately a lacklustre turn out. The first half an hour of the service was a melange of catchy tunes for Jesus. These hymns of praise were played by a four piece band and included a mash up of Amazing Grace, and a foot-tapping number featuring the line ‘jump into the river’, during which people did a little jump.

Next came the Southland Vineyard news, delivered through a video. The highlights were:

The money raised from the Good Friday service was sent over to missionaries in Kenya (and from the look of the photos, there was nothing those Kenyans needed more than some new bibles)

If you’d like to be baptised, there is an expression of interest form located in the church foyer, and for everyone who was only held back by the thought of being immersed in the chilly water, fear not, for the water will be heated (did they think this was the significant barrier for most people?)

Pastor Rob Normal then called for the congregation to share any message or prophesies which came to them from the Lord. A number of dazzled parishioners then recited biblical sounding directives. My favourite was ‘though the road ahead may be dark, I will light your every step’. Then people started speaking in tongues. These short exotic sounding snippets were then interpreted by other congregation members – a rather egalitarian approach. However, sometimes ten second message spoken in tongues was translated into a five minute message spoken in English, or a two minute message in tongues was interpreted as a single sentence. This didn’t seem very consistent, but hey, I’m not an expert.

Then came the sermon which began with the discussion of the waning of religious devotion. After what sounded like a blaming of mental health issues and economic troubles on the secular, the minister clarified that although there was no causal link between lack of religious devotion and depression, unemployment and poor work ethic, there was correlation. Hmmm.

Then we moved back to bringing people to Christ. The Pastor wanted people to find Jesus, but how to lure them in? Methods employed by the mega churches didn’t seem to be favoured by the service leader; he chastised the newly popular tactics – hyper grace (you don’t need to repent, Jesus has already forgiven you) and seeker sensitivity (making religion more appealing and accessible) – used to woo newbies into religion. Because churches shouldn’t tailor themselves to meet the needs of the consumer, they should simply share the messages of the Bible. I found this line of thinking a little perplexing, because surely as a Christian, you want all people to be saved by God’s grace, so reaching as many people as possible should be the goal. And, let’s face it, the Bible isn’t a marketers dream – it’ll always need some sugar coating.

So, along these lines, we had the sermon: consumerism and servitude. The title PowerPoint slide featured the ‘pin-up girl’ of service, Mother Teresa. A fun fact I learnt: Mother Teresa died on the same day as Princess Diana. Also, a fun fact for you all, my mother’s name is Theresa, so it’s always a bit weird when I hear people talk about what a saint she is. I know guys, she gave birth to me.

The general gist was, instead of being consumers of the Lord, the congregation should serve him. This, ironically, was coming from a place of worship

built in the middle of a shopping complex, whose tag-line is ‘Taking God’s Kingdom to the Market Place’, who mentioned their upcoming conference which will take collections every day, who gave us a first-timer goodie bag.

Leaving that aside, we should all be focusing on serving, not consuming. With this in mind, the Pastor shared a quote from Ephesians in which Paul spoke about the uncomfortable topic of slavery. Paul understood that a slave society was the norm, and encouraged slaves to serve their earthly masters as they would Christ. Because Paul knew, as Pastor Rob highlighted, that slavery was bad (yet unchangeable), but being a consumer was worse (changeable). So just accept the slave/master dynamic and know that if we’re all serving the Lord, we’ll be rewarded later.

The service concluded with healings through prayer. I’ve paraphrased a short piece of dialogue from the service. This might seem exaggerated, but this is truly how it went:

Pastor Rob: I see organs, internal organs…. a liver… a sick liver, I won’t go into why it might be sick… and a kidney, an enlarged kidney Congregation: ………………………. Pastor Rob: And someone has some tendonitis in their shoulder, specifically in their left shoulder blade Lady in red: I have tendonitis is my wrist? Pastor Rob: ….. Close enough (this is not a joke, he actually said this) Pastor Rob: (pointing at a woman in pink) Are you… is there something you need healed? Lady in pink: I have a sore shoulder

This happened a few more times – there were some vision problems, UTIs and other sore bits and bobs which were included in the healing session. It was quite bizarre to witness these things happening, even more bizarre when the lady in red claimed her tendonitis had been healed. Pastor Rob mentioned beforehand that he didn’t want to ‘weird out’ any first timers by performing healings, but we were sufficiently weirded out. We took the opportunity – when people were laying their hands and closing their eyes praying for miracles – to sneak back to the elevator and into the shopping centre car park where we entered.

I was in fine fettle at this particular service, but perhaps if an ailment afflicts me I’ll head down to the Vineyard for some cryptic messages and healing hands, and maybe you might like to too.

– Anna K