Epic Vineyard Church is a welcoming community of honest folks. Our aim is to learn to love God more, as we love one another.
We believe the good news of Jesus is transformational, not just for individuals, but for the whole world. And because of this we aim to live out our faith in everyday ways – sharing our stuff, praying for one another, being generous with our time, abilities and finances, caring for people experiencing marginalization, and celebrating God’s goodness in lots of diverse ways.
You could say we’ve summarized our values to being centered primarily around worship, community, and mission.
Worship
We believe that the most important thing we can do is love God with all that we are. We deeply value worshipping God freely and expressively both in our gatherings and in our daily lives. Our emphasis in worship gatherings is to use creative arts to facilitate an engaged worship, where every person participates and is enabled to encounter the presence of God.
For us, loving God also includes lifelong learning from Him through the Bible, and by the leading of the Holy Spirit. We prioritize spiritual formation through excellent biblical teaching in our Sunday gatherings, as well as through ministry times in a variety of settings, where we take time to respond to the Holy Spirit. Staying engaged in the scriptures and with the Holy Spirit helps us practice what we are learning from God with our housemates or families, in our workplaces, schools, and neighbourhoods. Our aim is to live our worship every single day!
Community
John Wimber, the founder of the Vineyard Church movement used to say, “Everybody gets to play their part.” This is super important in terms of how we express our life in Jesus together. Every person in our community has a vital role and can hear from God. We are a family, which means we hurt together and celebrate together. There are no superstars here – we deeply value learning from one another. To this end, we give particular value to children in ways that are unusual. We also look for ways to share life meaningfully outside our large gatherings. Being real means we give each other permission to go deeper in our relationships – to help us grow in our maturity as disciples of Jesus. We do our best to be a safe community so everyone can be free to be fully themselves.
We value using our time and energy to embody the love of Jesus with people – those we know and folks we don’t yet know. We practice hospitality in our homes, as well as in our gatherings – in momentary kindness, as well as hosting well-planned parties. As a community living in the way of Jesus, we are compelled to bring mercy and justice to all our relationships and choices. We believe genuine compassion is active, and so we are always looking for ways to be a welcoming community especially for folks who feel marginalized in our city.
Mission
Being missional is important to us. It’s a framework for how we prioritize our following of Jesus. In a nutshell this means living beyond ourselves – seeking ways to bring, in both word and deed, the good news of Jesus and his kingdom. To that end, we are engaged in mission both here in Calgary, in other parts of Canada, and further abroad. While the mission of Jesus exists in every context we do life (with our neighbours, colleagues, friends, etc…), we also invest particularly with our partners in mission we’ve chosen as a church community.
At Epic, everybody gets to play their part.
Whether we are leading worship, providing tech support, preaching, on the kids team, or serving coffee – everybody plays a part and most of our community serve at least once a month in some capacity for our Sunday gatherings. Additionally, there are a myriad of people serving our community outside of Sundays – leading community groups, working on projects as a board, leaning into prayer together, planning for upcoming events, making youth events fun, bringing food to people in need, running our social media accounts, and much more!
We believe our church flourishes when everyone participates! Sharing our gifts, as well as making room to grow in other areas, is key to our development individually and as a community.
We are a healthy mix of folk at every stage of life and becoming more diverse all the time.
Because of our high value for whole community, intergenerational participation we intentionally have a smaller staffing team. While these are very helpful roles to keep us on track with learning and growing we don’t see these roles or gifts as being more important than anyone else in the life of the church.
Joyce Rees
Lead Pastor
Joyce has pastored for nearly thirty years. In addition, she is a sought-after speaker for diverse parts of the Church because she’s an exceptional communicator.
As a member of the lead team at Epic, Joyce’s primary responsibilities are teaching, leadership development, and pastoral care. She also works part time for Vineyard Canada, as the Strategic Development Director.
When she’s not busy being an overachiever, Joyce loves to make stuff – cooking a feast, writing, fibre art, print design, lino-cutting or painting – you name it, she loves to create! A passion for good coffee features prominently in her life, as well as long walks with her dog, her boys, or the love of her life, Calum.
Check out her podcast “Down to Earth” where she and her good friend Jess tackle issues like power & racism, kingdom theology of mission, and much more!
When you meet Calum you quickly realize two things – he has a tremendous sense of humour and he is proud of his Welsh heritage!
A keen believer in Welsh rugby, Calum was born in Wales but grew up just outside London, England. Son of professional drummer Chris Slade (AC/DC, Tom Jones) Calum has developed his inheritance of drumming into an understanding of what it means to be a healthy church. “The drummer sees all!” He has recorded over 300 albums with diverse artists, but he’s perhaps best known for his grooves on albums like “Come, Now Is the Time” (1997) and “Hungry” (1999) with Brian Doerksen and Vineyard Music.
While he is a great technical exponent of the drums, what is really special about Calum is his sensitive soul and strong pastoral gifts and wisdom. As a pastor at Epic, Calum facilitates strong teamwork within our community. He is especially invested in equipping artists, musicians and songwriters, and framing our worship gatherings. A true pastor he is sought out by many in our community for his compassionate care and penetrating heart questions, which have enabled many to grow in their journey with Jesus.
Calum Rees
Lead Pastor
Jennifer brings to the Epic Vineyard team 10+ years of experience in administrative roles, including having worked at 2 other large churches in Calgary. She is passionate about communicating with people in ways that empower, and that bring clarity and positivity. She takes pleasure in organizing messy spaces, databases, and to-do lists.
Not only is she an administrator, Jenn is also an artist. An alumni of Ambrose University’s theatre program, Jenn works as a professional actor. Her acting credits include feature films, commercials, Shakespeare plays, devised creations, scripture monologues, and more.
Jenn has a vivid imagination, a sensitive heart, and a gentle presence. She was drawn to Epic Vineyard because of their shared values of authenticity, humbleness, and the Holy Spirit.
In her free time, Jenn enjoys running, hiking, horses, tea, friends, and her precious border collie, Maggie.
Matthew has been a part of the EPIC community since 2020, officially joining the very first Sunday of COVID lockdowns. He has grown to love the community and sees it as an extension of his family. Birthed out of his own experience and passion, he longs for people to experience personal relationship with Jesus.
First finishing his biological sciences degree he then moved into a nursing degree and has worked as an RN since 2018 (where he first fell in love with his wife, Jasmine Goerzen!). He currently works bi-vocationally as both a Registered nurse and Epic’s Youth Pastor.
For over 10 years he has had the privilege of walking with students as they grow into young adulthood while serving on various youth leadership teams in the city of Calgary. As the Youth Pastor at Epic, Matthew is responsible for fostering spiritual formation and community with our youth. He believes that parents are the primary discipler of their youth and loves to get to know not just youth but their families as well.
Jenn Poppe
Executive Administrator
Matthew Goerzen
Youth Pastor
Eunice has a deep desire to live intentionally, stewarding what God has given her. She is thrilled and honoured to get to sow into the kids’ spiritual journey at Epic!
She has called Epic her home church since 2019; she loves Epic’s intentionality, as well as the church’s joint emphasis on the Word and the Holy Spirit. She has been involved in ministry since her teen years, serving in campus ministry; the Jesus Loves You Society (18 years and counting!); youth and children’s ministry; and artists’ ministry.
Eunice brings a diverse skillset to the team, from the arts and communications to nonprofit volunteer management. Prior to her newest title of “Mom,” she was an active filmmaker. She has also been a photographer for nearly 15 years.
Outside of doing copious amounts of physio exercises with her baby, Eunice enjoys thrifting, drawing, fitness, and outdoor adventuring.
Gregory grew up in a pastoral home, which profoundly influenced his life and his call to ministry. His parents still pastor the Vineyard Los Teques church in Venezuela, which is where Gregory first learned of what it takes to serve a worshiping church community. Now as an associate pastor at Epic, he combines his passion for music, leadership and community service.
Gregory brings more than 6 years of experience in marketing and audiovisual production, having worked in several companies in Chile. Throughout his career, he has honed his skills in communication, design and creative management, backed by several courses in design and sound programs.
He has been married to Teresa for 8 years. In his spare time in addition to music, Gregory enjoys playing sim racing.
Eunice Morales Hau
Epic Kids
Gregory Herrera
Associate Pastor
Jeremy Boldt
Danielle Nyarko
Cam Epp
We’re a Vineyard Church
Epic Vineyard has two partner churches located in India and Vancouver, as well as 3 missionaries we support – one local, and two overseas in Asia.
We share financial support with our partners in mission, but our aim is to share much more than money. For instance, our Palm Sunday service one year featured a panel of four of our partners who shared from their wisdom and experience to help shape our discipleship journey here. All our partners receive our weekly church emails, so they can effectively pray for our community. This is one of the simple ways we “share life” together. We also do our best to visit one another. Rather than being a church parachuting in with stuff and ideas about the “right way” to do things, we are always looking for increased ways to be mutually reciprocating in our sharing. Our hope is that this two-directional sharing strengthens all our communities, as we experience the gifts of God in one another.
JLYS (Jesus Loves You Society)
SUSAN BRANDT
Strathcona Vineyard (Vancouver, BC)
INDIA
JLYS (Jesus Loves You Society)
JLYS is a non-profit family centre, supporting single moms and their kids who struggle financially in Calgary. Many people in our church serve as part of the weekly team at JLYS. Daniel Schuster is the director of JLYS, and he was also one of the founding pastors of Epic. This has been a primary place Epic folks intentionally connect with marginalized people in Calgary, building community and sharing the love of Jesus. Susan Brandt, one of our partners in mission, is part of the staff team at JLYS and it is a joy for us to support her in her vocational work.
Susan Brandt
Susan Brandt has served as a nurse , counselor and pastoral care giver for over 30 years. She is a gifted and respected leader in our city and is well regarded for her teaching in many contexts around the world.
Susan is actively engaged weekly in our city as an outreach worker in a local veterans building, offering PTSD counseling with soldiers home from the war. In another building she serves formerly homeless folks who struggle with memories of residential school, childhood sexual abuse and violence. For many years Susan has served on the sexual assault team doing psycho social assessments. In addition, she facilitates support groups for single moms and has a separate private practice specializing in general counseling and assisting those specifically who want to exit sex trade work and homelessness as part of the staff team team at JLYS.
Her example as a person who has pursued education, taken great entrepreneurial risks to help the poor, and lived a profound life of sacrifice for others makes her a wonderful signpost of God’s kingdom life to many people, near and far.
India
The Himalayan Region Vineyards (HRV) is made up of Vineyard Churches from Nepal as well some in India. We support a church in India but we also recognize publicizing who we support and where they are located could result in persecution for them, so you won’t find much specific info here.
As with most of the HRV churches, the church we support was planted to bring hope to the poorest of the poor and continues to do so today. As a church community they minister to the “plastic pickers” – youth who scrounge the local large landfill finding plastic to be recycled. Many of their community are people who have come down from the mountain towns seeking gainful employment in the “large city” only to find themselves relegated to begging or finding menial jobs akin to slave labor. Our partner church is a beacon of light and hope in a very dark land desperate for the “good news”, and we are thrilled to partner with them.
Strathcona Vineyard (Vancouver, BC)
One of our partner churches is the Strathcona Vineyard Church, a small, vibrant, multi-ethnic, mixed socio-economic congregation in the heart of Vancouver’s downtown-eastside, which is the poorest postal code in Canada. Shared meals are an intentional practice of their community, beginning each of their worship gatherings. The church was planted by Joyce back in 2005.
Dawn Humphreys is the lead pastor at Strathcona Vineyard, and she is also the catalyst for Vineyard Engage in Canada. She is a remarkable follower of Jesus and we love to learn from her whenever we can. Both Dawn Humphreys and Jamie Hellewell (associate pastor at Strathcona) have visited Epic and we have gone to visit them. We hope for even more shared resourcing between our communities in the future! Pray for them as they celebrate 20 years of ministry in 2025!
We pray especially for these two gifted and deeply committed pastors as they serve their unique congregation. Pastoral care needs are very high in their context, so we especially pray for energy and wisdom, and lots of the in-breaking kingdom of God!
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