Ministry and Business

From the church : For the church
VRUK is quite unique in the world of christian record companies in that we are the only record company to be part of and fully accountable to a church movement. Thus while we exist to advance the christian faith through the documentation of worship, we do this primarily within the context of the movement of Vineyard Churches in the UK and in accordance with our charitable aims. Put succinctly our aim is to advance the Kingdom of God.

There are a number of aspects to this:

• Documenting of worship (primarily musical) within the Vineyard chuches in the UK
• Resourcing of worship leaders, with information, tutorials and musical resources.
• Arrangement and resourcing of conferences and workshops.
• Overseas mission trips
  

Support of Vineyard Churches UK
As mentioned above VRUK is part of the movement of vineyard churches in the UK. This means that the management of the company is accountable to a board of directors, made up of senior pastors from UK vineyard churches. This ensures that the direction of VRUK remains aligned with that of the movement.

VRUK is a charitable company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales.

• Charity No. 1087771
• Company No. 4255960

Worship songs

This is the area on which we primarily focus, by the recording and production of CDs to document what God is doing in worship, and by providing tools to help worship leaders.

It has been asked of us: If God has given these songs to the church how can you justify selling them to make a profit, and building a company on them?

This is, of course, a fair question. The simple answer is that any money made from these sales by Vineyard Records UK is re-invested into furthering the kingdom of God (see later). However, perhaps it is important to look at it from a slightly broader perspective! It is vital to ask why God has given these songs to His church. If we assume, as is our theological basis in the Vineyard, that our primary aim and purpose here on earth is to worship God and glorify him, then these songs must be an aspect of that. That is to say God gives us, his church, songs in order that we may verbally express the worship that is in our hearts to Him. This was what we were created for, and songs are one of the tools that God provides for us to do this.

Thus it follows that these worship songs should be made as widely available as possible, allowing the whole of the church access to them.

This is the basis of why Vineyard Records UK exists. The mission statement “from the Church, for the Church” encapsulates what we aim to do - to take songs written in local churches around the country and make them available to the rest of Gods Church.

The only way to do this is to record the songs, which can be done in a number of different ways, ranging from home acoustic recordings, to live recordings to full studio recordings. The key priority in all different types however is to document the song with integrity. The aim of this process is twofold. Firstly, the recording must be pleasant to listen to. It must be well recorded with competent musicians so that people can enjoy listening to it and can engage with it for their own personal worship. Secondly, worship leaders from outside of the church where the song was originally written must be able to listen to the song and think “my church could use this song to worship”.

Obviously, this process involves a good deal of cost as recording songs is an expensive process. Hence, CDs are released, marketed and distributed to provide income, which goes to cover the cost of recording the songs.

As already mentioned it is important to note that any money that we make is directly re-invested into the furthering of the Kingdom of God. This may be in the form of recording projects, overseas mission trips, conferences or support of projects managed by Vineyard Churches UK (the entity that oversees and steers the development of the Vineyard church movement in the UK).

If you would like any more information about this or indeed about anything else please get in touch with us, we’d love to hear from you. Contact details can be found in the “contact us” section.