In the late summer of 2021, a few families and friends gathered together in a living room in Blacksburg, Virginia, feeling led by the Lord to pray and dream about planting a new, Christ-centered, multiethnic, and missional church family in and for Blacksburg, Christiansburg, and the New River Valley. In the fall of 2021, we began meeting to pray and grow as a leadership team. Then, in the spring and summer of 2022 we began gathering a launch team to officially launch on October 9, 2022. Launch Sunday at The Vine Church was a day filled with worship for the Lord and deep joy!

Why plant a church here? Blacksburg, Christiansburg, and Radford are home to 120,000+ people, including over 50,000 college students at Virginia Tech, Radford, and NRCC. And while these towns are places of beauty, creativity, diversity, and growth, they are also communities of profound spiritual need—over 64.5% of Montgomery County identifies as non-religious (city-data.com). Many of those who work, study, and live in this part of the New River Valley struggle with sin, brokenness, discontentment, and a spiritual homesickness for the kind of life that God has come to lavishly offer us through the gospel (or good news) of Jesus. We desire to plant a church that shares the hope of the gospel with those who are lost, struggling, and searching, so that they might discover the joy and fullness of new life in Christ.

We also believe that Blacksburg, Christiansburg, and the NRV (especially given their proximity to universities like Virginia Tech and Radford University) offer a uniquely missional and strategic location to plant a multiplying church. We want to be a church who welcomes, cares for, and shares the gospel with people from many cultures. We want to help meet the real needs of our neighbors. We desire to make disciples of Jesus, invest in and equip them, and then send them out as servant-missionaries to make disciples of all nations, for the glory of God and the gospel renewal of people and places around our world.

We are named The Vine Church because we want our identity and mission to be entirely centered on the person of Jesus, who in John 15 tells us that he is the True Vine and we are the branches. We believe it is only through abiding in Jesus that we find abundant life, forgiveness, fruitfulness, and flourishing. Our vision is to be a church family who grows in Christ together, bears the fruit of the Spirit, and seeks the flourishing of our Valley for the glory of God.