Viva Vineyard Church

What do we do when we know we need to move on, to get going into the next stage of life, new season, new thing but somehow our hearts feel stuck? For many of us, for our families, our communities and even our countries are facing very significant points of transition - personal transitions - loss of a loved one, new job, loss of job, loss of mobility, transition out of lockdown, transitions econom...

"You could be forgiven for thinking that this talk is for the married, previously married or remarried but if you're not in any of those categories stay with me because there are nuggets in Jesus teaching that actually apply to all of us wherever you are in the relational spectrum." The question is this, Are your intimate relationships ones of consumption or covenant? 

Coldplay asks a good question, How in the world I am going to see you as my brother and not my enemy? This question haunts our world. Violence, hatred, rejection, cold shouldering, trolling and cynicism. Does Jesus have any hope to bring to a world in this kind of pain? 

Life can be terrifyingly fragile. Especially if you're in a place where all your comfort and security have been removed and you don't know where your next meal is coming from. But when things get better we can forget that fragility and our need for God.  God knows that about us. So he put in the calendar of his people one week a year where he commanded his people to camp and to party and to r...

40 million people today are trapped in slavery. Does God care? And if he does, is he doing anything about it?  Jo French-Morales shares about her time serving with International Justice Mission in Guatemala and the heart of God for justice for the poor and oppressed. She shared this Franciscan Blessing at the end, which we've included here: “May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers,...

Did Jesus come to start a new religion? Or what? 

Followers of Jesus are to the world what salt is to food. As someone who couldn't eat salt for many years, Sarah knows a little about how important this stuff is and why Jesus thought it'd be a really helpful word picture for Jesus' new followers to understand their identity and purpose.

Jesus’ ministry has launched. He’s preaching his slogan, Repent for the Kingdom of God is here. He’s gathering a community of followers. He’s healing people like crazy. It’s beginning to look like a new Israel is being formed. He’s passed through the waters. He’s gone through the wilderness. He’s gathering a community. Just like God did with Israel under Moses. We can imagine some of the questions...

Today we zone in on Jesus’ message. If Jesus was a brand, what was his tag? What was his slogan that summed it all up? What was Jesus’ “Just do it”, Jesus’ “I’m lovin’ it” Jesus “It’s more fun in the Philippines” Jesus’ “Aussie kids are Weetbix kids” A good slogan captures the essence of a company’s brand. It engages us emotionally. And it also involves a clear call to action. What would you say w...

Early on in Matthew's account of Jesus' life he describes how Jesus is "healing every disease and sickness among the people." Guest speaker Phil Henry asks, Why was Jesus' ministry marked by healing? What might that mean for us today? Does Jesus still heal today? If so, how? 

Jesus is led into the wilderness to be tested. Why? What possible purpose could God have for leading his Son into lockdown?

In Jesus, God is doing a new thing and it's immersive and life changing. Drew Williams is the speaker. 

Tim Watkinson shares about a simple spiritual practice of Centering Prayer that saved his sanity.

Disruption. It's everywhere. How are you responding? Trying to flee it? Quash it? Accept it by faith? At a time of real upheaval we celebrate Christmas in July and find the ancient story of Jesus' birth speaking crystal clear into today. 

We introduce our new series: ReMeeting Jesus. We look at why we all have Next Guru Syndrome and 3 wears to avoid missing Jesus as we read the Gospel of Matthew.

Change is slow.  As we’ve been looking at emotional and spiritual growth over the past 8 weeks or so, the question arises of how do we see lasting impact in our lives?  Or do we just move on unchanged from this series? We all make plans about many things in our lives - plans for our careers, plans for retirement, plans of how we will raise and educate our children, plans to travel, plans...

None of us get through life unscathed. The wheels fall off. What happens then? What do we do with our pain, our loss, our questions, our anger at God? When the wheels fall off, Jesus offers us himself. 

The push for productivity in our culture is pervasive. It shapes how we work, how we prioritise, how we do friendships, how we parent etc. But after his work, God rests. And then to a people freed from slavery he gives the gift of one day a week to stop and not work. That gift is available to us too. But how do we receive it?

Last week the National Anglican Family Violence Research Report was published. Two key findings deserve a great deal of attention. We’re doing this series, Tooling Up to Love because we know we need to grow up. Emotionally immaturity is having an extraordinary cost on our households across this country. Core to our growth in emotionally maturity is what we do with conflict. As Christians, we often...

"The first time I encountered the Wall, I didn't know what it was and I was totally unprepared. My hope in talking to you today is we can learn to value and trust what God is doing in us through the Wall."

The story of Joseph in Genesis 37 to 50 is a great guide on how we can do the work of journeying through the things that negatively impact our discipleship and learning to love well, that we inherited from our families. Go to our blog to access a tip sheet to do your genogram.

This week Matt talks about the importance of self knowledge in our growth into emotional and spiritual maturity. (And no this is not a self help course!) Its truth rooted in the rocking story of David and Goliath and the God who saves. 

"My emotional mess, my failing physical health were his merciful lights flashing brighter and brighter on the dashboard of my life… God was calling me to stop, pay attention, return to him. But I didn’t want a bar of it." Emotional health and spiritual health are inseparable. In our new series Tooling Up to Love, we're following Pete Scezzaro's (Emotionally Healthy Spirituality) lead. We're choosi...

Through his death, resurrection and outpouring of the Spirit, Jesus defeated every obstacle to us living in the love and freedom of God. So what? How do we actually live into that? If life comes down to what we actually desire, how does our desire change so we actually want to love God and serve others? Well, perhaps the answer lies in coffee: instant or real?

In life we can get stuck like a container ship. Look around our global village and there's a lot of potential and a lot of stuck. What power is big enough to free our world from the fear of death and the pain that cripples it? The Easter Story, we'd humbly suggest, is the answer.