Mick and Lynn Elias planted the Vale of Aylesbury Vineyard Church in September 1997 out of Riverside Vineyard in Teddington, London. Since then the church has grown to around 200 adults and 70 children.

The church is committed to the core values of the Vineyard movement - intimate worship, small groups, the Bible taught as the standard for living, evangelism, ministry to the poor, the use of spiritual gifts, signs and wonders, training and equipping, mission and church planting, and interaction with and love for other churches.

The past twenty-five years have seen the growth of over 1500 Vineyard churches and mission outreaches across 95 countries worldwide. The Vale of Aylesbury Vineyard is one of around 100 churches in the UK, overseen by Vineyard Churches UK.

Our History

Mick was born and grew up in Aylesbury. Lynn moved there with her publishing job on a company relocation from London in 1972. They married in 1977, and became believers in 1984, following the death of their three year-old nephew.

Along with their two daughters, Freya and Marianne, they joined a local Baptist Church where they began moving in spiritual gifts, often seeing people saved and healed. It was during this time that they felt the call to church plant, and after attending several conferences with John Wimber, they began to realise that perhaps the Vineyard was the model for the vision they had for a different kind of church in Aylesbury.

In 1991 they made the decision to worship at Riverside Vineyard in Teddington, where Rick and Lulu Williams were the senior pastors. They joined the leadership and church planting training programmes there, and in September 1997 they were commissioned and sent out to plant a Vineyard church in Aylesbury.

Their vision was for a church where people could together explore the reality of living out their relationship with a loving God in a natural and informal way, while remaining true to themselves and being culturally relevant. They wanted to create a place where anyone could experience the power and the presence of God during the worship, and receive both physical and emotional healing, wherever they were at in their spiritual journey. They had a passion to see people equipped to minister in the power of the Holy Spirit, and to be all-inclusive - a church where people could belong before they believed and before they behaved!

God also told them that he wanted a church that would remember the poor, and would demonstrate his love to people in a practical way.

So what would a church with these things in place look like?

Come along on Sunday and find out!