We sat down with Jeff Anderle, senior pastor of Vineyard Chattanooga and a former youth pastor to get his perspective on Camp Vineyard’s importance for a local church, the southeast region, and even the Vineyard as a whole. Here’s the first part of our interview:
CV:Jeff, thanks for taking some time to talk to us. With your background as both a youth minister and senior pastor, what was your vision for Camp Vineyard?
Jeff Anderle: I was in youth ministry for 13 years, I’ve been a senior pastor for 12, so that’s 25 years of working with teens and young adults. Camp Vineyard was started as a way to begin to identify the young, emerging leaders in the southeast region so that we could call them forth to be the future church planters, youth leaders, board members, volunteers, and even the future entrepreneurs who can support these churches. We knew that a Vineyard leader doesn’t just pop into existence when they’re 20 – it starts when they’re young!
CV: So, how does Camp Vineyard instill “uniquely Vineyard” values in young leaders?
JA: We bring in some of the best leaders in our movement, both regionally and from outside our region. For the last few years we’ve had guys like Thor Colberg teaching the kids about empowered ministry, and Tim Holt sharing stories about evangelism. It’s incredible to see what happens when these guys who are mentors to pastors like me get involved in mentoring these teens. This year, we’re bringing in Steve Nicholson, who has made a huge difference in my life throughout the years.
Really, that’s what we do at Camp Vineyard: we get them exposed to all of these leaders that are within the Vineyard movement who have a strong heritage. They’re calling out and deepening the kids’ relationship with Jesus, developing their understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, and instilling in them an identity in the Vineyard that we hope sticks around through adulthood.
CV: Would you say that the Vineyard is in danger of losing a generation?
JA: I remember when we first started the Vineyard Chattanooga back in 2000. Back then, there were some things that we did both regionally and nationally that helped connect kids into the overall Vineyard. Kids were invited to be a part of our regional conferences and events, they were involved in our national conferences. When we planted in Chattanooga, I remember Amy Coffin, daughter of long-time Vineyard pastor Rick Coffin, bringing in tons of kids from Lee University into our brand-new church plant. She was a Vineyard girl, she was going to go to a Vineyard church. There was a time during those first few years where, when Vineyard pastors’ kids moved into the area, they came straight to us.
But something shifted during that time: We began to disregard the place of kids. We stopped inviting them to regional and national gatherings or retreats, we shifted the timing of those events to conflict with the school year. We grew up a generation of kids that may have had a good experience in their local church, but they had no identity outside of that. So when they started going to college, they didn’t really care about the Vineyard movement because they hadn’t been connected to the broader movement. And as I’ve talked to other Vineyard pastors, this is a trend we’ve seen all over the nation.
Really, for the survival of our movement long-term, it’s critical that we’re connecting this younger generation to the Vineyard, giving them a vision of how they can be used by God to do great things, and showing them that great things are happening in the Vineyard!
Stay tuned for part 2 of The Value of Camp, coming on Friday. We’ll ask Jeff about the benefits of Camp for your local youth ministry, your volunteer team, and your kids.