About Us
The story of Vineyard Community Church, West Philly
In the winter of 2003, Brad and Becca Zinn loaded up their new little Honda Civic in Chicago, Illinois and headed east. Not sure exactly where God was leading them to plant a church, they visited several east coast cities (Boston, New York, North Jersey, Washington D.C and Philadelphia, to name a few). Brad had been serving as the college pastor at the Evanston Vineyard and Becca was leading a young adult group and the benevolence ministry at the Joiliet Vineyard, but, after taking a year to get married, they began to sense that it was time to move on to the next thing. They were looking for a community hub, where people from all kinds of ethnic, social, and economic backgrounds lived together, and where, Lord willing, they could plant a multicultural and diverse church. What they found during their trip was that there was a small group of Christians from a suburban Vineyard church, the Blue Route Vineyard, meeting right in the heart of West Philadelphia in just the type of neighborhood they had been looking for. By no coincidence, that group of Christians had been praying and asking God for a new Vineyard church in the city. The rest, as they say, is history.
In the fall of 2003, Brad and Becca moved to West Philadelphia to plant and lead a new, urban Vineyard church. Less than a year later, in September 2004, Vineyard Community Church officially launched our first service. It’s been a wild, exciting, and encouraging time ever since. The best is yet to come!