No Small Parts: Hannah
/Jeremy Geelen discusses Hannah’s passion in pursuing the Lord for a son and offers encouragement to us to be as free in our love and pursuit of God as she was.
No Small Parts: Jael
/Jael is a woman found in the book of Judges in the time of Deborah. She was chosen by God to play a very important part in a battle the Israelites were facing and she is a perfect example of God equipping the called instead of calling the equipped.
No Small Parts: The Demoniac
/The Demoniac was a man possessed with many demons and he lived among the tombs alone. Once Jesus delivers him, instead of allowing the man to travel with him, Jesus sent him back to his own family and community to share the gospel. And the effects of this man’s obedience is seen in later parts of scripture where the gospel is advancing. As N.T. Wright put it, this man was the first apostle to the Gentiles!
No Small Parts: The Forgotten Disciples
/Several of Jesus’ own disciples were mentioned just a few times in scripture, yet they were dearly loved by the Lord and the impact they had for the gospel was widespread. These three men were faithful, patient and consistent and were certainly no less important or effective.
No Small Parts: The Midwives
/Today we begin a new sermon series: No Small Parts. This series is about lesser known Bible characters that you may not be familiar with. It’s not a celebration of mediocrity but instead a look at how there are no minor characters in the Kingdom of God. We must be faithful in our sphere of influence to bring the love of Jesus to the people and situations that God has placed in our paths. The midwives of Israel feared God and not Pharaoh so they didn’t follow the Egyptian King’s instruction to kill any baby boys that were born.
40 Days of Prayer and Fasting
/The Vineyard Association as a whole will be engaging in 40 days of prayer and fasting from Memorial Day through 4th of July leading up to the National Conference this summer. In this sermon, Administrative Pastor Leah Pavel shares the heart and motive for this corporate fast and discusses what true fasting that pleases the Lord looks like.
God in a Broken World
/Revival isn’t about recreating the past or trying to be like the early church, but about being the people of God that humble ourselves to pray and seek the Lord for his intervention in our community. A heavenly minded church brings about actual, real earthly good in their walking out of their mission. God has a plan for this world and His people have a central role to play in seeing it come about.
Poured Out For Jesus
/Guest speaker and VCHS member, William Simkiss, takes us through a detailed and fresh look at the story of the woman (or women!) that anointed Jesus’ before his crucifixion and all the rich meaning that can be seen in this story.
Easter Sunday: Death Lost Control
/On Easter, those who follow Jesus found everything they’d lost and more. Death lost control and power, yet those who continue to use and follow the world’s ways are still subject to it. But those who follow the way of the cross gain life and freedom.
Palm Sunday: Jesus Confronts Loss
/Going beyond the typical Palm Sunday story, Pastor Josh looks at the incidents of Jesus cursing the fig tree and driving the merchants out of the temple and how Jesus confronted the loss and disappointment of Israel not living up to their calling.
Lost & Found: The Word of God
/In the intertestamental period, a span of about 400 years, God was silent. There were no prophets speaking to God’s people and nothing being written that would later be canonized into scripture. This time was even prophesied about in the book of Amos. But we would not have had John 1:1, where the Word became flesh, without that period of silence. The Word of God is life to those who need it.
Lost & Found: Lost Land
/Continuing in our Lost & Found series leading up to Easter, Pastor Josh reflects on the nature of exile as seen through the story of the Israelites and examines how we can find ourselves in exile-like situations having lost a home, job, place, time etc, that is important to us.
Lost & Found: Lost Lineage, Lost Authority
/At one point or another through our sin and rebellion, we have rejected God as our Father and King. We have lost our heritage and lineage. Jesus came as our King to establish a Kingdom not of this world. He refused to allow His followers to make Him king by force but instead retreated to be by Himself and spend time with the Father. Jesus regathers the lineage and the people that had been scattered and calls them back to follow Him in discipleship. When our lineage is restored, our authority to minister is also restored.
Lost & Found: Cast From the Garden, Cursed Ground
/In this life, each of us has experienced loss: loss of relationship, innocence, loved ones, time, etc. In this first sermon of our new series “Lost & Found” which will lead up to Easter, we’ll be looking at how what we’ve lost in this life is recovered in the Kingdom of God. This week, Pastor Josh examines the first loss that people experienced when they were exiled from the Garden of Eden after allowing sin to enter in. But when we really sit with the scriptures in Genesis, what we discover is not just how much we lost, but how much God the Father lost.
First Fruits
/The First Fruits Festival celebrated in ancient Israel is a beautiful foreshadowing of the resurrected life of Jesus. Jesus, the first fruit of humankind, is the model of who we are created and destined to be. Like Jesus, we can rely on the Holy Spirit, and see God do amazing things through the gifts and abilities He gives us. Our responsibility is to take up those things the Father is doing in us and be obedient to get started on the work before us and offer the first of our blessings to him with thanks for the rest of the harvest we know He will bring to completion in His time.
Generosity, Giving and Financial Review
/Both as a church and as individuals and families, we need to set our values and priorities in regard to giving and have those be what informs our practices instead of having our giving ebb and flow as a reaction to our current financial situation. It’s important to our discipleship that we have hearts of gratitude, love and justice from which generosity flows instead of giving out of legalism, obligation or guilt. Hearts with a healthy attitude toward finances and giving will be able to be wise and purposeful even in times of abundance and generous even in times of scarcity. This teaching ends with a review of the current financial picture of the church.
Imago Dei
/When the author of Genesis writes that we are made in God’s image, he is referring not to a physical likeless but one of function and purpose. This same idea is found in Romans and we see that the work of God over time conforms us. There are things in our lives that do not conform to the pattern of Jesus and those things must be left behind.
Pursuing the Presence of God: The Fruit
/People who spend time in God’s presence have evidence of that experience manifest in their lives. The fruit of spending time in God’s presence is humility, change, mission, diligence and blessing.
Pursuing the Presence of God: The Depths
/To have the fullness of God that Paul talks about in Ephesians, we cannot remain on the surface. We have to understand what makes us Kingdom people and let those truths soak deep into us, not trivial devotions that change daily.
Pursuing The Presence of God: The Practice
/When we want to *practice* the presence of God, we have to understand that the practice is much more about seeing, hearing and understanding, rather than earning or achieving. Developing these ways of perceiving the Presence of God may seem simple yet prove to be challenging to our normal ways of perceiving the world.