18th October 2015

Count Me In. This Sunday was a half day participatory experience with the Engage Worship team. No talk was recorded.

11th October 2015

1 John 3: 11 – 24. Inner pull-push: my battle with the world within. How do the true children of God experience living in the world? John used the well-known story of Cain and Able to illustrate how brothers and sisters can hate one another and so bring offerings which are unacceptable to God. We began to examine therefore our own attitudes to one another.

Notes will usually be available in the downloads section of the VPBC website

4th October 2015

1 John 3: 1 – 10. John shows the pull and push tension that the world and loving it exerts on followers of Jesus is real. We both feel at home and also in tension in the world. We are “earthlings” who can experience God’s peace in the midst of tension. Jane the speaker suggested that God chooses to let us live in tension and she began to suggest why. Our relationship with the world is that of both love and hate.

Notes will usually be available in the downloads section of the VPBC website

27th September 2015

Romans 12: 13 plus stories and sharing. This is a Harvest all-age service. Loving the world means SHARING.

Notes will usually be available in the downloads section of the VPBC website

20th September 2015                                                                                                                                                                                              Geoff revisits last week’s text of 1 John 1:7-17 with a talk entitled “ overcoming evil “ drawn from the reasons John wrote the letter. The talk looks at how, given the pressures and realities of urban life, we might learn to live more tangled rather than tweeted lives. Where, as communities of believers, we can strengthen and encourage fellowship with one another so we not only do not let evil defeat us but instead conquer evil with good. GTH

Notes will usually be available on the downloads section of the  website  

13th September 2015                                                                         

1 John 1: 7 - 17. This week Jane says that John in his letters puts great emphasis on “living in the light” with one another in the church community and also on “living in the world”. We may experience tensions even with our own family over differences in values and aspirations. We ask how we as Christians should view the world. We see that John even challenged erroneous views of the world that were expressed from within the church itself. Judeo-Christian world views have not seen matter as evil but the doctrines of Docetism saw matter as evil and therefore distorted the understanding of Jesus as fully human and also the Holy One of God. John challenges followers of God through Jesus “not to love the world” (v15). But what is meant by the term “world” in this context. How do we stand in opposition to the world while loving the world?

Notes will usually be available on the downloads section of the  website

 

6th September 2015                                                                                                                            

  1 John 1: 1 – 10. Loving the world: loving one another so that the world knows. Jane builds on the 4 earlier talks on why Jesus added a new commandment. If this command is kept then it not only builds a genuine community of mutual care but also demonstrates to the world what following Jesus means. As such it is a community of challenge to the members and the world. The community is based on a shared desire to do the “will of God” and this must be the means of reconciling differences. JTH

Notes will usually be available on the downloads section of the website