Toowoomba Vineyard Church

In the second of two weeks of stories, the wonderful Mandy Grogan shares about her life.

Last week we talked vision, and we finished with something important — what we do on a Sunday doesn't matter if it doesn't lead us to be more Christlike people on Monday to Saturday. So for the next three weeks, we're hearing from members of our community on what it means to live 'life on a mission' for Jesus. This week Glenda Fitzpatrick shares her story, an incredible testimo...

Twice a year we like to pause from our teaching, and take a moment to talk about who we are and where we're going. Each time there's an angle — this time around, we're looking at what the 'Vineyard' in Toowoomba Vineyard Church is all about. Not because the movement is the one that finally got it all right (though we like it, clearly), but because when you learn about your fami...

Goodbyes are hard. Endings are tough. And yet on this side of heaven, they're part of our experience, as much as we don't like to admit that. In our final week looking at the life of Paul the Apostle, we turn to a teary farewell — in Acts 20, where he says goodbye to the Ephesian elders. The passage raises a lot of questions — why didn't he go to Ephesus for this interaction? Why was h...

As the book of Acts continues, Paul and his ministry partner Silas find themselves imprisoned in Phillipi. Rather than despair, they choose the opposite approach — they sing through the night to God, despite their chains. God breaks them out of prison, but rather than escape into the night they stay, and what happens next is amazing. Guest speakers Phil and Kath Henry unpack this familiar story an...

Fast forward fourteen years, and something totally unexpected happens. While everyone else was busy converting the Jews, the Antioch Christians thought it would be a good idea to preach to the Gentiles… and it worked! Hearing reports of this, the Jerusalem church sent Barbabas to try and manage this highly unusual situation. We’ll never totally understand Barnabus’ motivation here, but it’s highly...

If you were reading quickly through Acts, you'd be forgiven for missing the fact that between Paul's conversion experience and the beginning of his public ministry (well, after his daring escape from Damascus), fourteen years passed. What was he doing all that time? We don't know about Paul's 'lost years', but we know enough to realise it was the crucible in which the Paul...

As we continue our journey through the story of scripture this year, we depart from the Gospels and end up in Acts. For the next five weeks we'll be doing a character study on the sixth most influential person in history (according to one commentator in 1978)... (drumroll please)... the Apostle Paul! Paul's life and work is pivotal to the development of the early Church. Yet for all of thi...

After a marathon series rolling verse by verse through the sermon on the mount, we find ourselves in the last few verses of the conclusion. It's almost as if Jesus turns back to his audience one last time and says 'what now?' Jesus presents us with a choice. We are welcome to nod our heads along, agree with his teaching and change nothing. He says that path will destroy us. The other,...

With only two weeks left in our series on the Sermon on the Mount, we open up a passage that has all too often been used to exclude and shame. 'The narrow path'—as well as the accompanying teaching on false prophets—is usually thought of as an 'us vs the world' scenario. Yet when we rightly read it as a part of the Sermon on the Mount, we realise it's less about what happens wh...

There's something intuitively wrong about treating God like a vending machine — insert prayer, out comes what you asked for. And yet in Matthew 7, Jesus famously says 'Ask and it will be given to you.' So how do we bring our needs before God with the right heart?

In the middle of a sermon full of heavy hitting teaching, Jesus drops in some of the most comforting words in all of scripture. The 'do not worry' passage has helped many not to be anxious, but if it's true, why do Christians still experience hardship? If God is going to provide, why do so many in the Kingdom go without?

Another of Jesus' revered teaching is on treasure — 'do not store up for yourself treasures on earth'... It might be a familiar saying, but what does it really mean? If you made a table with one column being 'treasures on earth', and another saying 'treasures in heaven', what things would go in each column? The answer may surprise you.

We live in a world that's obsessed with authenticity. Brands live and die by it. A shred of insincerity can crush a celebrity's career. But ironically, thats in the midst of a culture that's never been more curated. Turns out this isn't a modern problem. As we get into chapter 6 of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus turns to authenticity — in the practice of our faith.

One of the most challenging teachings in the New Testament, or maybe the whole bible, is Jesus' command for us to love our enemies. Not because it's hard to understand, but because it's so easy to theologise away, or just ignore. When we look at the state of the church, and the world today, it's easy to imagine how putting this teaching into practice would change everything. And ye...

OK, so Facebook doesn't have a 'Maybe' button on events anymore (it has 'Interested' which is kind of the same, but not quite). But that little button has worked its way into our culture to the point that we almost have a crisis of commitment. Whether it's showing up to events, saying 'I'll pray for you' and actually following through, or how we show up on socia...

Amongst many other things, the Sermon on the Mount is a strong reminder that Jesus wasn't afraid to throw punches. In today's instalment, we tackle not one, but two difficult passages. Tragically, both have been used to shame and control people in the church. And yet when we take some time to understand Jesus' context and language, we discover his words on lust and divorce are actually...

'You have heard it said, do not murder, but I say to you...'. At this point in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gets stuck into the details. He begins a series of sayings that reinterpret and raise the bar on the Old Testament law with anger — something we can all relate to. Laura unpacks...

In the third instalment of our Sermon on the Mount series, we turn to Jesus' controversial (yet profound) reinterpretation of the Old Testament law. In this opening section, he claims that to enter the Kingdom of Heaven his followers must have 'righteousness that exceeds even that of the Pharisees and Scribes'... in other words, the guys whose whole life purpose was to follow the law t...

Following his epic (or strange?) opening to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus turns his attention to two analogies his audience would've been intimately familiar with — salt and light. What's interesting is what he doesn't say: you will be the salt of the earth, or you could be the light of the world. Two words stand out in this section... you are. So what would these analogies have meant...

We sometimes fall into the trap of treating Christianity just as a set of doctrines to be believed. But if you started reading the New Testament from the beginning, you'd quickly arrive at Jesus' most famous sermon (and possibly the most epic sermon ever), and would really struggle to get that — instead, following Jesus is a way of living that permeates all of who we are. As we begin a new...

After a somewhat unsatisfying 'coming home' narrative last week, we do the better version here — by looking at Jesus. In this Easter Sunday special, Chris walks us through the entire story of the bible through the lens of exile, with a focus on the new home God is making for us... not in some far away place, but here on earth.

We're sort of at the end of our Exile series, so we get to talk about the happy ending... the triumphant return to Jerusalem! Or at least we would be, except it wasn't entirely happy or triumphant, and it certainly wasn't the ending of the story. The Israelites returned to a complex web of generational, political, and social tensions they had to navigate as they rebuilt their city, tem...

Our next instalment of our journey through the exile lands us in Daniel 3. The mighty king Nebuchadnezzar sets up a golden statue and demands everyone bows down to worship it, which everyone does... except for three Hebrews. After a fiery exchange, he tries to burn them alive, but joke's on him — they walk out unscathed. We love to tell this story of defiance, and God's resulting deliveran...

If there's one thing we've learned so far in this Exile series, it's that we can readily identify with the Israelites in Babylon. Yet that raises the question — how do we actually respond to living in a world where we don't belong? There are at least three natural responses. It's only natural to want to resist, withdraw, or assimilate. Yet in Jeremiah 29, God encourages the Isr...