Elm City Vineyard Church Talks

How does culture’s call to follow our dreams connect with Jesus’s call to follow him? As we close out our dreaming series, we’ll look at Jesus’s own longing  - God’s Kingdom coming to earth. Does the narrow path of following Jesus have space for dreaming? - Series Description - What dreams do we have for our life? Are they God’s dreams or our dreams? Both? Sometimes, we protect God from our own dr...

God’s dream is to be home with humanity. That dream involves our own flourishing - for us and for others around us. If we’re learning to live within God’s bigger dream and not chase our own idols, then shouldn’t this dreaming thing be a bit easier? Well, our dreams don’t just get sidetracked because of our waywardness and tendency to perform rather than waiting for God's directing and equipping pr...

Last week, we shared that God’s dream is to be home with humanity. This calls us to see the bigger picture of His dream and surrender our own — sometimes forever, and sometimes for further refining. All of this work is to join a bigger vision not of our own making. This week, we’ll explore how God’s desires co-mingle with our own as we co-create and co-labor with God to bring generational dreams i...

What dreams do we have for our life? Are they God’s dreams or our dreams? Both? Sometimes, we protect God from our own dreams, wondering if we gave into his ways and will if he would squelch our true desires. Other times, we give up on dreams understanding the call to discipleship to mean that dreams are for yesteryear. There is another way. Throughout the scriptures, God hints at what his true dr...

As we end our series, We Have Seen the Lord , it is apparent that these resurrection accounts are more than just seeing Jesus alive with one's own eyes. People see Jesus and experience peace, comfort, and faith . As we turn to John 21, Peter sees Jesus as alive and as one who comes to restore in the face of past mistakes. When we fail, we often expect scolding and not fellowship. We can only imagi...

In this third part of the “We Have Seen the Lord” series, we will consider the striking encounter between Thomas, often labeled “Doubting Thomas,” and Jesus, where Thomas in the end affirms his deep and real faith in Jesus as Lord and God. This week we are all invited to consider what it means to embrace faith in Jesus without the physical scars of the risen Christ before us to see and to touch, b...

When the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” (John 20:19). This Sunday we will discuss having peace—even when everything else around us may be chaos. - Series Description -  In the days after the first Easter, John records several striking encounters with the risen Lord, both with women in his...

On this first Sunday in our new post-Easter series, “We Have Seen the Lord,” we will consider a remarkable encounter at his tomb between the risen Lord and Mary Magdalene, a most unlikely witness in male-dominated first-century Palestine. The words Jesus speaks to Mary in her grief and bewilderment 2000 years ago continue to reverberate for all of us today, and will serve as the title for this wee...

Restoration. Renewal. Resurrection. Easter Sunday is a chance to reflect, celebrate, and trust that Jesus, our God of life, defeated death. This God of hope is not through with us yet. There is more for us. Here’s the Good News! If Jesus was put to death by humanity but came back to love humanity still, that means God’s forgiveness has incredible power — for us and for others. This Sunday, trust t...

“Hosanna in the highest!” Each year, we celebrate Palm Sunday as a way to remember when Jesus triumphantly enters into Jerusalem. Using this story, we’ll take a deeper look at the concept of humility. Together as a community, we may discover where God shows himself to be humble and where He is calling us to “take on humility” in our own lives. Join us at 4:00pm as we celebrate our humble king and...

As we finish out the Conviction and Embrace series, we will consider what it means to practice conviction in community. What kind of people must we seek to become if we are to speak words of conviction wisely and winsomely into one another’s lives? How can we avoid the pitfalls on the one hand of never speaking words of challenge to one another, and on the other hand of doing so in harsh and unred...

What happens when we come to the end of ourselves? What can we do when self-improvement isn’t enough to change a destructive or unhelpful habit? Does Jesus still love us, even when we feel incompetent?  The short answer is yes. The longer answer is we have an available Savior who we can turn to when He knocks on our door, ready to embrace us. Join us this Sunday to imagine what this could look lik...

Among God’s greatest gifts to his people is the gift of the Holy Spirit, our Helper and Advocate, as Jesus refers to him in John’s Gospel. As we continue with our Conviction series this week, we will consider just what a gift it is to have on our side someone who knows us fully, who loves us unconditionally, and who leads us into all truth, including the truth about ourselves through the convictio...

God’s love for us like a father or parent takes many forms, one of which is discipline. When we receive conviction or discipline from God, this is only and always a way our Heavenly Father is loving us. It is God lovingly leading us to what He knows is good, and will lead to goodness for us. Discipline is God drawing us in. Drawing us in to knowing Him better, and drawing us in to a deeper relatio...

In the first talk of our Lenten series, Conviction & Embrace, we will uncover the power light has to reveal sin and darkness. Do we fear that light? Or do we trust that light also comes with the warmth of embrace? Conviction is about exposing — even rebuking—sin. While potentially scary, conviction is not condemnation, where darkness reigns as sin closes in on us. Conviction is a step in a jou...

So many of us live trying to do enough to prove that we are enough. But what if we didn’t need to prove anything? What if our value and worth weren’t things we had to prove, but rather gifts from an unfailing source of unconditional love? Jesus says that’s exactly our situation. Maybe we even believe that. But what if we knew it deep in our souls? What if we could abide there? Rest there? Live out...

Jesus commands unclean spirits to flee. Jesus tells blind eyes to open. Jesus invites healing to come - at all levels. Can we do any of this…or is it just Jesus? Scripture speaks of the Holy Spirit’s empowerment of all believers to “do the stuff” of Jesus, starting with his closest disciples and moving to people who never met Jesus in the flesh in the book of Acts. Still, this can seem fairly inti...

Prayer is mysterious. Jesus demystifies it by encouraging us simply to start praying . If we need something? Ask God for it. If we have a cry for justice, then shout it out. The newest part of this teaching by Jesus seems to be the shock that someone wouldn’t pray for their needs or the needs of others. What’s the difference? Jesus knows God as Father, a loving parent. Of course there’s room to br...

As we begin a four-week series entitled “Building a Life of Prayer,” we will focus on one of the stones in the foundation – listening prayer. By listening prayer, we mean a quiet and settled godward orientation where we hold ourselves open before God, free of striving, settled and attentive, seeking both to encounter and to receive from God, even when we remain silent. For God is alive and does no...

At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus was attacked by an angry mob simply for speaking well of the enemies of his own people, and he later taught that God would bless us when people hated and mistreated us on his account. Elsewhere, the Scriptures guarantee that to be faithful to Jesus and to love those he loves will often put us at odds with others, and often with our own people. This week we w...

As we love our neighbors beyond our comfort zone, this includes neighbors who have recently arrived to our country. Scripture has a long witness of blessing the stranger in our midst and showing them hospitality - the goodness of God in practical ways. In the book of Leviticus it says, “do not mistreat foreigners living in your country, but treat them just as you treat your own citizens. Love fore...

What does it mean to proclaim liberty to the captives? How can we neighbor people that are locked up? When it comes to loving incarcerated people, we have to be intentional to even see folks who are often invisible to us. Yet, in a city like New Haven, many of drive past a correctional center regularly to get to our work, homes, our home groups. Of course, even more people are trying to re-enter s...

In Matthew 22, when asked what the greatest commandment is, Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” What does it look like to actually liv...

In Luke's account of the birth of Christ, an angelic herald proclaims to a group of shepherds "good news of great joy for all people ." ECV exists to call all people to revolutionary lives of action through Spirit-empowered communities that love and obey Jesus Christ in all things. This week, we will consider this " all people " aspect of what it means to follow Jesus, and how it challenges us to...

Joy is a major theme of the Christmas story, and for good reason—Mary rejoices with her cousin Elizabeth as she carries Jesus in her womb, angels announce the birth of Jesus as "good news of great joy" to the shepherds outside Bethlehem, and the Magi rejoice "exceedingly with great joy" as they approach the place of Jesus' birth. And yet even in the joy, there is much sorrow and pain and loss—Sime...