In the year 1999, God led Pastors Emma and Kemi to Yenagoa to bring the message of restoration to Bayelsans and to begin Shepherd’s Vine Christian Center. They met with a couple Timi and Erebi Otuogha, who were introduced to them by Pastor Charles Omofomah. Thereafter they found a place of worship at Intercontinental Hotel Hall.
Fellowship began on the 12th of Jan 2000 with the “Wind of Restoration,” an outreach program which continued every Sunday, while prayer meetings held every evening at the Otuogha’s Compound.
The initial program was well attended by some invitees and corps members including Brother Harold Ihua, the present pastor of SVCC Nedugo branch who was on drums. After a few months of meeting at the intercontinental Hotel, there was need to move, and so in March 2000 the church moved to the ‘then’ NUJ Press Centre at the Civil Servants Quarters.
The Press Centre at that time was a small three bedroom apartment with the church service holding in the small sitting room while the children met in one of the rooms. Gradually, church overflowed to the frontage of the sitting room with a canopy for the overflow.
God kept increasing His church until the church had to move out to the open space just beside the press centre and from there eventually acquired a piece of land space at Yenizue-gene which is now the present headquarters of Shepherd’s Vine.
After a few years of meeting in the temporary structure beside the press centre, church was un ceremoniously asked by the government to move out of the temporary Structure in April 2004.
The move to our land became inevitable, and was not without some challenges. The first challenge was on land ownership tussle. This ended in our favour, and there after the church structure was started with just a roof that sat on several poles and a partial tarpaulin covering as walls. When the rains came, the tarpaulin could not stand the pressure and as such half the church floor became flooded. But instead of decreasing, church increased.
Today by His grace, Shepherd’s vine Christian Centre has a well structured and organized church setting with branches at Ovom, Nedugo, Azikoro, Igbogene and Obunagha all in Bayelsa State. The church also has Shepherd’s Vine Campus Fellowship in the Niger Delta University (NDU) and the Eagles’ Military Fellowship at the Shell Camp Imiringi.
The church still aims at planting more branches as the lord will instruct, in order to fulfil the mandate of bringing the message of restoration and repositioning to the land and its people.
