Our story

Kim and I attended the 2007 Vineyard Leadership Conference in Anaheim, CA.  While there, we felt called to go up for prayer. A pastor that we did not know prayed for us and gave us a prophetic word:

That we were called out together to start a ministry together.  We would minister side by side.

This word was a confirmation in our hearts of what God had been speaking to us. But honestly, we fought against God because we were comfortable ministering where we were, New Life Vineyard in Hamilton, OH, where I was an associate pastor.  It was at the conference that God gave us a vision for Oxford and the Miami Campus. But as soon as we got home, the vision died and we just continued our work at New Life. But in February 2008, I was awakened in the middle of the night by the voice of God saying,

“I’m doing a new thing.” 

I have experienced some powerful and interesting spiritual experiences, but never like this. First I was shocked. Then I said to God,

“I want to be apart of this new thing. What is the new thing? And please confirm the new thing.”

Well it didn’t take Him long to do the latter. The next day during a prayer meeting, a lady came up to me and placed her hand on me and said,

“John, God is doing a new thing and He has called you to be apart of this.” 

I began to weep! I could not believe what I was hearing! After talking to Kim about this, we agreed to pray about this. I still was asking God to confirm this. This was a big deal to start a new church. About 2 weeks later, a new Christian friend came up to me (they knew nothing about a new church plant), and said that he had a dream about me. In the dream, I had left New Life Vineyard and had started a new church. Wow! I was shocked again! But I knew that even though Kim and I did not really want to leave New Life, we had to be obedient to God’s calling and purpose.

We met with a few couples who wanted to be apart of the new church plant to Oxford, and God stayed on the move speaking to us in dreams and visions.  In one particular dream that Mike Gowins had, I was driving a bus with some of the leaders on board. We were supposed to deliver the bus (new ministry) to a specific destination.  When we got close to the destination, we were approached by a man who convinced us to leave the bus with him and he would make sure it got to the destination. We left, but later felt like we were duped and went back to find out that the bus was never delivered.  At the time, we were not sure the meaning of this dream, but later we realized exactly what it meant. In the fall of 2008, the entire church planting team went through a time of questioning whether we should go or not. We agreed to fast and pray for a week about this.  I was convinced that we would probably not do this church plant thing. It was in the midst of this that we realized that we cannot give up or give away this ministry and calling. That if we do give it up, then it would never reach its destination and fulfill its purpose.  Then in a powerful Richter family prayer meeting God again spoke through all four of the Richter children that we are supposed to go to Oxford and plant a church! We knew that we knew that we knew that God wanted us to plant a church in Oxford to reach the world!

- John Richter