Milton Keynes Vineyard was started from The Cherwell Vineyard in Oxford, (now known as Oxford Vineyard) in August 1999 by Matt and Jill Harrison who themselves were based in Oxford for several years.

We started meeting midweek in Matt & Jill’s front room, but gradually more people came along and we soon outgrew this. In order to accomodate this growth our next move was to Bradwell Abbey, where we continued to meet midweek.

In 2001 in addition to our midweek meeting we started a once a month Sunday evening meeting at the David Lloyd leisure club and a once a month Sunday morning Vineyard Cafe at the Snozone bar in Xscape. Towards the end of the year we increased our Sunday evening meetings to twice a month.

By 2002 we had moved again! and instead of our Sunday evening meetings we started to meet twice a month on a Sunday morning at Denbigh School. With this move we were now more easily able to provide a kids work, which proved to be popular.

2003 saw us add another meeting into our programme on a Sunday evening called Xploring Worship, so now by this time we had some kind of meeting running on each Sunday in the month. It was also the year in which we ran our first Alpha Course at the Shenley Brook End Toby Inn.

By this time the church had grown to such an extent that Matt, who had previously worked as a Chartered Tax Adviser in the city centre as well as doing church was employed four days a week. This proved a postive experience for the church with extra time being dedicated resulting in further growth.

During 2004 we moved venues yet again, this time to Leon School, where we continued to hold our morning and evening meetings, with the exception of the Vineyard Cafe which had now relocated to the Slug and Lettuce from Snozone bar at Xscape.

This year also saw the first member of staff apart from Matt being employed to help with the ever increasing administrative burden running the church creates.

2005 saw the birth of Matt & Jill’s second child, which meant the church office now needed to relocate to other premises, initially this was to some temporary offices, but was soon followed by a move to a more permanent venue in 2006.

2006, could be looked back upon as a pivotal moment in the life of Milton Keynes Vineyard. It was during this year that we moved our offices and main meeting venues to Queensway House in Bletchley (behind Scripture Union) and is where we currently still are.