In what follows, I argue that it is precisely the Vineyard’s commitment to the kingdom of God as paradigmatic for theology, that is its most important contribution to a wider ecclesiology. Such a “kingdom theology” within the Vineyard, however, remains narrowly limited to the dynamic, redemptive power of God at work in the lives of individual Christians. As a result, the kingdom’s relationship to ecclesiology has tended to refer simply to the community of those individuals who manifest the in-breaking presence of God’s future reign in their particular lives. In its place, I argue that to claim that “The Vineyard is a movement distinctively centered in a renewed understanding of the centrality of the kingdom of God,” is first and foremost to assume the political task of embodying and bearing witness to the coming reign of God in the social life of a community as a visible alternative to the kingdoms of the world.
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