Joshua House

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Joshua House is a Columbus, Ohio-based young adult "church-within-a-church" sanctioned by the Vineyard Church [1]. It meets weekly in the Vineyard Columbus building on Cooper Road. It draws hundreds of young adults from throughout central Ohio each week.

[edit] Early Incarnation and Growth

Joshua House began meeting in 1994 as a group of young Christians who "...desired to know God in a real way..." [2] The name of the ministry was based on a biblical passage in the Book of Joshua. "Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:15) [3].

As seen in this early webpage [4] dedicated to the growing ministry, one major focus was worship. Michael Gallaugher, then the head worship leader at Joshua House had this to say in an interview.

I guess what I’ve always tried to do in worship is to make it fun and relevant. The live bands were one of the things that attracted me to Vineyard, but the more I got into worship I realized that I didn’t want an outdated sound. One Christmas I was coming back home and I was listening to a Radiohead tape, and I was overwhelmed by how they were able to take a simple relatively slow song and make it very rhythmic. I really felt God inspiring me at that moment, and I thought this is how worship should be. I am fortunate to have a band that caught that vision and several key folks who have spent time and money to make worship more modern and relevant [5].

Joshua House was at the time the above article was published meeting regularly in a small room at what was then known as The Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Columbus, which later changed its name to Vineyard Church of Columbus [6]. However, sustained growth within the organization as well as additions to the Vineyard Columbus Building itself soon made it necessary for Joshua House to move, along with the main services at Vineyard Columbus, into the main room, which was capable of holding 3000 people [7].

[edit] Leadership and current ministries

As of the writing of this article, the head pastor of Joshua House was Eric Pickerill. Eric came onboard Vineyard Staff in 1996 as an intern with Head Pastor Rich Nathan and was appointed the pastor of Joshua House Young Adult ministry in 1998 [8]. Since that time, the ministry has grown from a small group to a group of over 800 people with over 30 small groups [9].