Tom Vineyard

Background

About Tom Vineyard

I began my Bible College training the Monday after I graduated from high school in 1985. I took a full load every summer as well as every semester and finished in two and a half years. My last two semesters I had the privilege of focusing on Koine Greek which I still love getting to study and teach today. I met my future wife, Melissa, between our junior and senior years of high school when she attended college summer school. Both of us got an early start, and that naturally drew us together early in our college experience. We married after she completed student teaching in Secondary Education. After 18 months of raising support, we went to language school for a year outside of Paris. We traveled to Germany and England during two of our breaks from school, and I went to the countries of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus during our last break. We began our African journey in the interior of Zaire and were present in Kinshasa when civil war broke out there in January of 1993. Twelve months later we left Brazzaville, Congo when it too experienced civil war in January of 1994. From there we moved to Anyama, Ivory Coast in West Africa where we planted the Fundamental Baptist Church in a predominantly Muslim town. We served there until October of 2005, being present during the coup d'état in December of and for part of the civil war that began in 2002. Two of our four children were born in Ivory Coast. In January of 2005 we were robbed at our home by five armed men. I received a skull fracture that required trauma surgery by the only team of neurologists in all of West Africa. We remained there on the field until the Lord called us home that next fall. By the summer of 2006 it became evident that our church was ready to be autonomous, and so we turned it over to the national pastor who is still there today. In late 2006, the Lord called me to pastor my home church, and I have been pastoring there since January of 2007.