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 family of origin you learn a lot about yourself...

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 he going to Jerusalem if he knew he would be arrested? But more than that, the way Paul says goodbye gives us a masterclass in saying goodbye...

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 and what it means for us.

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 likely at this point that he remembered a young convert from Tarsus. A Pharisee with a commanding grip of Torah, yet with equal aptitude in the popular Greek philosophies. Who better to help manage a church with both Jews and Gentiles involved? Barnabas summoned Paul to Antioch to help form a church with this eclectic group of believers.

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 we know and love was formed.

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 this, many of us don't know about the man behind the theology. Far from being an academic writing from the back room of his summer house, Paul was a missionary, pastor, church planter, and revolutionary. He wrote from the trenches to real people trying to walk in the way of Jesus. This series is about learning to read his theology through the lens of his life (hint: it makes a big difference), as well as being inspired by his example.

Chris kicks us off with a brief look at his backstory.

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, harder option is we can nod along, agree with his teaching, and change how we live.

What will you choose?

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 when you die, and more about how we live now...

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?