With the prettier weather we've been having recently, have you started to think about spring planting?

We have a great selection of bedding plants, hanging baskets, tomato plants, herbs and perennials at reasonable prices and we hope you will support Vine Street's Genesis Class Spring Plant Sale by ordering your spring plants from us.

Follow this link to download the pre-order form.

Pre-orders will be taken through Monday, April 5th and you will be able to pick up your plants on Saturday, April 17th at Vine Street. Proceeds will support outreach ministries and property maintenance needs.

If you have any questions or if you are interested in helping with the sale, please contact Joann Reynolds or Carla Lovell.

Over the next couple of weeks, as part of our hunger:360 ministry project, Vine Street members and friends will be mapping the pantry.

We believe this will be eye-opening: get a pencil and a piece of paper, and go to your pantry and/or refrigerator, and write down where in the world your food is coming from.

You can do the same thing with just one meal: how far can you track the ingredients of your lunch?

We will have a couple of maps in the sanctuary, one of the U.S. and one of the world, to help us visualize our connection with people all over the globe through our food.

One question we will have to ask ourselves: What do we make of the fact that food follows demand rather than need?

On Easter Sunday, this year on April 4, we baptize new disciples. Following their confession of faith in Jesus Christ, they are lowered into the deep water to die and rise with Christ, to be washed and renewed, to cross the sea and enter the land of God's promise.

Baptism is nothing less than the whole story of God and the people of God condensed into one moment:

• It is the sea through which God’s people escape to freedom and in which the powers that oppress and enslave them drown
• It is the river God’s people cross to enter the promised land
• It is the flood from which a renewed creation emerges
• It is the call of John in the wilderness and the obedience of Jesus
• It is the water that breaks at the birth of a new humanity
• It is the washing of feet at the end of a long journey and the bath on the eve of the great sabbath
• It is the river of life that runs from the throne of God

We discover the whole story of God and God’s people in the sacrament of baptism – not because water ties it all together so beautifully, but because Jesus does. In his whole life we find God’s purposes revealed and God’s promises fulfilled. Those who answer Christ's call to discipleship and kingdom mission leave their old life behind and live with Christ in newness of life.

In baptism, God acts by embracing us as God’s own, making us part of the body of Christ, and giving us the Holy Spirit; the church acts by obeying the command of Christ and welcoming new disciples as brothers and sisters and equipping them for ministry; and the individual believer acts by responding to God’s call in Christ, renouncing the false gods of this world, and committing to a life as a follower of Jesus Christ.

If you or your child wish to be baptized and become a member in the body of Christ, please talk with Thomas Kleinert or Hope Hodnett.

As part of Vine Street's hunger:360 ministry project, we are happy to announce the opening of an art exhibit in our sanctuary.

The artist, Tallu Scott Schuyler, is a member of Vine Street, and in 2009 she spent several months working in Nicaragua.

muddy hymnal
photographs + stories about food + resurrection
by tallu scott schuyler

a photo essay about farming and faith that tells stories from a regional food security program in Nicaragua that prioritizes sustainable economic development in poor, rural communities across the country

march 6 - april 6, 2010
vine street christian church, nashville tennessee

*opening reception march 6 at 5–7 pm, gallery talk @ 6 pm

Perhaps you think of hunger only as something that happens in far away countries, but there are men, women, and children in our city who know hunger. Not just the kind of hunger anybody knows who has ever skipped a meal; people in our city experience the kind of hunger where you never know where your next meal will come from, and when you will eat it.

There is hunger in Nashville. Food security is a term from the dictionary of bureaucrats. Hunger is a human experience that impacts body, mind, and spirit. There is hunger in Nashville, and there are people who help us see and understand and address it.

Following the 10:45am worship service on Sunday, February 28 (approximately at 12:30pm), Tallu Schuyler will be at Vine Street to talk about food security, food deserts, and hunger. She is the Executive Director of Mobile Loaves and Fishes, a ministry named after a miracle. We will eat a simple, nutritious meal (rice, beans, and cornbread) and we will learn together - statistics, terms, facts, numbers, and the human experiences that so easily get lost behind them. Come and join us for this Sunday afternoon opportunity to eat and learn together!

This lunch & learn is part of our hunger:360 ministry project, and more events and programs are coming up soon. Check the calendar for details, and watch for more information early next week.

Mark your calendar: Sunday, February 28, 6pm, Woodmont Christian Church. To Haiti With Love is a benefit concert for Haiti by Nashville Disciples musicians, singers, and songwriters. Trey Flowers, Children's Minister at Woodmont Christian Church, planned and coordinated this event; he was part of the group of Disciples who were in Haiti when the earthquake brought death and destruction to the island.

This is a benefit concert for Week of Compassion to help fund our disaster relief and development work with our partners in Haiti.

There won't be a charge at the door, but generous donations to Week of Compassion will be encouraged. Gabe Dixon, Andra Moran, Mike Lehman, and others generously contribute their gifts of music and song, and they hope to see you there!

We celebrate Communion just about every time we gather for worship. The breaking of the bread is a practice that shapes us more profoundly than preaching or teaching. For Disciples, the Table marks the center of our worship and our life.

During Lent, beginning on Sunday, February 21, we will share the Lord's Supper in both Sunday morning services (8:30 in the Chapel and 10:45 in the Sanctuary) by intinction. Rather than taking a small wafer and a small, individual cup from a tray, or drinking from a common cup, we partially dip a piece of bread into the chalice (intinction from Latin intingere, to dip in).

The beauty of this form of sharing the bread and the cup is that it involves a journey, a journey that resembles both our journey through Lent toward Easter, and our journey through life to the fullness of God's promises in God's new creation. Nothing says more clearly, "We are on this journey together," than walking together and seeing each other's faces.

Intinction also allows us to tangibly share one loaf of bread, and wine visibly poured from one pitcher during the meal.

We are aware that many of us are concerned about spreading germs when so many hands touch the same loaf of bread. That is why we precut the bread and place it in a basket, so that each person only touches the piece they eat. Please be careful not to dip your fingers into the cup, but only the bread.

Those of us who do not wish or are not able to walk to the front, will be served the bread and cup in the pew.

We'd love to hear from you about your preferred way of celebrating the Lord's Supper, and what it is that you particularly like about it.

Please post your comments below.

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent. This year, it is on February 17. We gather for worship at 6:00pm in the chapel.

We will receive the sign of the cross on our foreheads, drawn with ashes.

We are reminded of our mortality and our need to repent, and that we have been marked as Christ's own forever in baptism.

Our children will again lead us in singing Ashes to Ashes, written by Andra Moran. Read what she wrote about how this beautiful song came to be. Better yet, purchase the CD with the song on it or download it. You get some great music, and all profits from the sale (until June!) go to Week of Compassion.

Following the worship service, the group reading Sara Miles, Take This Bread during Lent will meet for it's initial session in Thomas's study.

One early, cloudy morning when I was forty-six, I walked into a church, ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine. A routine Sunday activity for tens of millions of Americans — except that up until that moment I'd led a thoroughly secular life, at best indifferent to religion, more often appalled by its fundamentalist crusades. This was my first communion. It changed everything.

Eating Jesus, as I did that day to my great astonishment, led me against all my expectations to a faith I'd scorned and work I'd never imagined. The mysterious sacrament turned out to be not a symbolic wafer at all, but actual food — indeed, the bread of life. In that shocking moment of communion, filled with a deep desire to reach for and become part of a body, I realized what I'd been doing with my life all along was what I was meant to do: feed people.

And so I did. I took communion, I passed the bread to others, and then I kept going, compelled to find new ways to share what I'd experienced. I started a food pantry and gave away literally tons of fruit and vegetables and cereal around the same altar where I'd first received the body of Christ.

from the Prologue, Sara Miles, Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion

What do you do for Lent? Same as always? Or skip dessert? Decline chocolate? Non-fat lattes only?

I like going back to the ancient suggestion that I take time to reflect on my need to repent. That I open myself to the possibility of conversion.

I love marking this season that leads up to Easter with a journey through a book, the turning of pages taking the place of steps taken on a pilgrim's path. This year, it's going to be Take This Bread, and I invite you to join me. We read through the book together, and once a week we meet to talk about favorite passages, about questions and discoveries, and to take the bread of life, give thanks for it, break it, and eat it.

Does this sound like something you'd like to do? Get a copy of the book, and meet me on Wednesdays at 7pm, starting on February 17 (with smudges on our foreheads), in my study at the church.

It's no coincidence that this also fits in beautifully with our hunger:360 project. I look forward to our journey through Lent, thomas

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent. This year, it is on February 17. We gather for worship at 6:00pm in the chapel. We will receive the sign of the cross on our foreheads, drawn with ashes. We are reminded of our mortality and our need to repent, and that we have been marked as Christ's own forever in baptism.

Our children will again lead us in singing Ashes to Ashes, written by Andra Moran. Read what she wrote about how this beautiful song came to be. Better yet, purchase the CD with the song on it or download it. You get some great music, and all profits from the sale (until June!) go to Week of Compassion.

Blessings on your journey through Lent.

The Official Board has received and approved a budget proposal for 2010 and a list of nominees for various leadership positions.

A Congregational Meeting has been scheduled for Sunday, February 14, 2010, following the 10:45 am worship service.

The purpose of the meeting is the adoption of the proposed budget and the election of new leaders.

Please read the report by Jim Zamata, Chair of the Official Board, that outlines some of the work we accomplished last year and introduces plans for this year.

A copy of the proposed budget and the list of nominees are attached to his report.

All services on Sunday, January 31 have been cancelled due to the road conditions.

We have prepared a brief service for use in our homes, and you are more than welcome to join us.

Blessings on you and yours.

2009 was a highly unusual year. But while Vine Streeters are subject to the ups and downs of the economy, 2009 shows we don’t let the “downs” negatively impact our commitment to serve our members and our community. 

Read this 2009 Annual Report by our Finance Committee - it's the good news behind all those spreadsheets!