History of La Iglesia Saint Paul

The church started as a Bible study at Cristy Mares’ bridal shop in 2016 from La Vina de Burnsville. The plan was to form a nucleus of people from the Saint Paul area that carried the vision to start a new church in Saint Paul. The Bello’s from Mundelein, Illinois agreed to visit Saint Paul twice a month to nurture and lead this effort. This outreach ministry became a church.

As part of this church planting plan, we also wanted to start a compassion’s outreach to the Saint Paul area through a local food shelf. The Fruit of the Vine Saint Paul food shelf started serving on October of 2017 at the First Covenant Church building location. Pastors Ulises and Reyna Bello became the site manager’s and leaders of the outreach.

The following is a conversation the Church Plant leaders developed during our early planning meetings:

• We value ethnic diversity and will see every individual as an equally valuable member of the human family, as evidenced in the price of God’s Son for every person and His gathering of a people from every tribe, tongue, and nation to Himself.
• We also value biblical truth as the only foundation for the identity and mission of the body of Christ. So, Scripture will be held in high regard and will be the basis of all that La Iglesia teaches.
• We value developing leaders and will invest time and resources into relationships and opportunities to see people grow in influence.
• We value creative thinking and will give people permission to create, to try, to fail, and to attempt impossible things, using the imagination to dream big dreams for God.
• We value messy ministry and are willing to be involved in the lives of people with real needs and problems, in a spirit of love, on behalf of Jesus who modeled this principle throughout His ministry on earth.
• We value strengthening families and will seek to equip husbands, wives, Moms, Dads, and kids of all ages to relate to each other in love and harmony in a culture that often poses resistance to family strength.
• We value dynamic worship in which people feel the freedom to connect and communicate in praise, and in which people can observe in an understandable way the presence of God within His people.
• We value every-member ministry (“everyone gets to play”) and will seek to empower the entire membership of the church for a ministry to each. Volunteers are the real heroes!
• We value cultural relevance in terms of using new technologies to build bridges between the church and the world around us, and in terms of learning and speaking the heart language of our community.
• We value global thinking in terms of tackling enormous, global issues in Christ’s name as well as church multiplication and will seek to foster a church planting movement that grows far beyond the La Iglesia family.

The church started public gatherings a month later at the First Covenant Church building in November of 2017. The vision of the church was to become a multi-cultural community serving God and his people to build the Kingdom of God.

By December of 2019, the Saint Paul church became an independent Vineyard Association member (#3777).

In September of 2021, the ministry leadership team and board of directors determined to end the association with Vineyard USA. By November, we completed the transition to La Iglesia. We are continuing to write the history of our community and movement.