What We Do

The aim of Exeter Vineyard is to make disciples.

Discipleship is the transforming process that God wants to do in every person; no matter their age, personality or experience.

All our activities are to help discipleship happen.

Our Main Activities:

  • On the 1st and 3rd Sunday we gather at St Leonard’s Primary School.

    We start with a breakfast of freshly baked pastries, tea and coffee. This is a chance for us to connect and build relationships. We often use this time to hear encouraging stories from people in the church.

    We then have a time of sung worship, Bible teaching and prayer.

    There are also activities for young people of all ages.

  • Hubs are smaller communities - typically 5-25 people. They meet together over food and we think of Hubs as church around the dinner table.

    Hubs are often multi-generational. They are highly relational and encourage people to contribute, sharing their thoughts and stories.

    Hubs are places where we are known and, when hard times come, where we get looked after and are able to support others.

  • These are smaller groups - perhaps 3 to 5 people - who meet regularly to ask the Discipleship Questions: What is God saying? And, What are you going to do about it?

    Using the model of CABDAQ we are able to invite God to nudge us through the Bible. You can find out more about discipleship groups and the CABDAQ model here.

  • Everyone, regardless of their age, is fully a member of Exeter Vineyard and we really love our young people.

    On Sunday Services we have activities for children (up to the end of Primary School) and youth (secondary school and college).

    Once a month we run Messy Church (more details here), a creative church community for families.

    Shaun and Libby run a Youth Hub for teens in year 10 and above.

    Every month do a Youth social evening.

    Young people are also fully part of Hubs and we know that these cross-generational connections are really important.

  • We have a number of teams that work to help and support others.

    The Crosslines team provide a weekly hot meal for the homeless and vulnerably housed community.

    The Refugee House team work with two other local churches in the Government's refugee resettlement scheme, so far helping three families move from refugee camps to start a new life in Exeter.

    We champion the work of Home For Good, helping to support and encourage people considering or engaged in fostering and adoption.

    Finally, we partner with Exeter Foodbank to support their important local work.

Defining Discipleship

Discipleship has a similar meaning to apprentice, so when we become a disciple of Jesus we enter into the process of learning to live a life like his.

It's more like learning a skill - the skill of living - than it is learning information. Discipleship isn’t something that happens in classrooms or on courses. It is a process we enter into as we live our everyday lives.

In fact, the simplest way to understand discipleship is this: it is the creator of the universe teaching us to become more fully alive; to be shaped into the person God created us to be, someone who reflects the character of God and lives a Jesus-sized life.

Discipleship happens gradually and takes time. It is unique and individual, but there is always something new to learn.

To make a religious sounding word more understandable we define a disciple as someone who:

  • Is developing a deeper loving relationship with God

  • Which then increasingly saturates every area of their whole life

  • Which then overflows more and more into the world around them

We imagine this as a process, each element leads to the next and this loop happens over and over again as we increasingly discover God is more and more involved with us, in our lives and the people and situations we find around us.

To help grasp what could be an abstract concept we also have a way to assess our discipleship - how secure we are.

This is a great way to think about Jesus - when we look at him we see he was incredibly secure in every aspect of his life; never pretending to be something he wasn’t, never trying to cover up, never treating certain people differently, never defensive, never self-justifying, never giving into fear, never manipulating or trying to control people.

Because being a disciple isn’t just about doing things, by thinking about our security we get to think about who we are in the core of our being - what the Bible calls our heart.

We think about how secure we are in five different areas of our life.

There are five areas:

  • That he lavishly loves us. We don’t need to earn it or deserve it. Nothing can separate us from God’s love

  • God is working good into our lives. Even the worst news in our lives can’t compete with God’s good news.

  • Church is a family where we are accepted as we are, no need to pretend or qualify. It is a place of welcome, love and acceptance.

  • There is no area of our life that God isn’t interested in or involved in. There is no secular/sacred divide.

  • We are Kingdom people, whose presence, words and actions should bring God’s Kingdom to the people and situations around us.

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

— Matthew 28:19-20