Our Story

Martyn & Linda Smith planted ‘Vineyard Christian Fellowship Manchester’ firstly as a small group in their home then soon moving into public meetings. The church continued to grow under their leadership and met in a variety of university and school buildings through the 1990s.

‘Manchester Vineyard’ became an independent church, still with strong links and friendship towards the Vineyard movement as well as churches across the world.

In January 2008 we changed our name to ‘Vinelife Church Manchester’ – reflecting our heritage in the Vineyard movement as well as the new life that was yet to come!

In September 2008, Martyn & Linda handed leadership of Vinelife over to Phil & Sarah Smith.

We bought the Whitworth pub in February, spent almost a year renovating it to house our church offices and an amazing coffee house, The Anchor, which opened its doors to the local community in January 2013.

In 2015 we became a part of the Jesus Culture family, partnering with our friends in Sacramento, California.

Despite being a year of incredible challenge around the globe, 2020 saw us finally purchase a building that would be a home for all our activities as a church family and place from which to serve the city.

We got the keys to the Ardwick Green Army Reserve Centre on 23rd December 2020, taking a significant step in our Project Home journey! As part of the process, we sadly said goodbye to 508 Moss Lane East which was purchased by another church in the city and will continue to be a space that loves and serves the community.

In 2021 both Phil and Sarah resigned and Santino Hamberis became our Interim Senior Leader, we also started meeting again in person at a new venue in Belle Vue as we continued to work on refurbishing our building in Ardwick.