Charles Ekong invites us to consider afresh who God is — the awesome creator of the cosmos — a God who, although we are so insignificant in comparison, sees us as his prized possessions, wanting to win our love and for us to spend eternity together. This is where we fit, in his story. But where does God fit in our story? Where is he, in your story, right now? Watch at https://vimeo.com/386297941
Steve Burnhope takes inspiration from Philip Yancey’s best-selling book of the same title to look at God’s amazing grace which, when we really understand it, is ‘scandalous’, ‘outrageous’ and even, ‘dangerous’. He explains why it’s so important for us to ‘take the risk’ of ‘the scandal of grace’ being misunderstood — just as it was in New Testament times — and to avoid diluting it, rationing it, limiting it, or setting pre-conditions for it, however tempting that might be. Watch at https://vimeo...
In our first Services of 2020, Steve Burnhope thinks about New Year resolutions and how throughout the Bible it seems that God is a God who delights in making things new — in his Church, in his world, and in our lives. He looks at the story of the Exodus, with the Israelites standing on the border of the Promised Land, and asks whether that’s a picture of where we ourselves may be at, as we stand on the brink of coming into all that God has for us in 2020. Watch at https://vimeo.com/383148958
‘How Not to Found a New Religion’ — Steve Burnhope takes a light-hearted look at the original Christmas Story and how correcting a few simple ‘errors’ would arguably have made the Christmas Story far more successful … Watch at https://vimeo.com/381061153
Steve Burnhope’s 10-minute talk in this year’s Carol Services, where he talks about the central message of Christmas — that God himself became part of our story so that we could become part of his story. Watch at https://vimeo.com/379597185
In the week leading up to the election, and one week into advent, we think about Jesus as the perfect leader, as King over his Kingdom. We look at how He wants to include us in carrying out His justice and bringing peace to the world. Watch at https://vimeo.com/378110157
Speaking at our most recent Baptisms Sunday, Lyn Burnhope reflects on how the baptismal pool represents a bath, a grave and a womb. Sunday 24 November 2019 Watch at https://vimeo.com/375444423
At our once-a-year Thanksgiving Services, where we take up a special offering to invest in the work of the Kingdom, Steve Burnhope shares some thoughts as to how we should (and shouldn’t) think about financial giving, from Jesus’ famous ‘Sermon on the Mount’ (Matthew chapters 5 through 7).
Vision is being able to see in our imagination what the future can be like. Vision is being able to picture something in our hearts and minds that can happen and will happen if we play our part to make it happen. Vision is the bridge between the ‘now’ and the ‘not yet.’ God has a vision for us, vision for his Church and vision for his world — that he wants to share with us and invites us to join him in. Steve Burnhope offers a ‘checklist’ of six key features of what it means for each of us to be...
In the lead-up to our annual Thanksgiving Services gift day on 17 November, Steve Burnhope shares some statistics of how the Church has grown over the past five years. He explains how, to accommodate our ‘growing family,’ we’ll be devoting this year’s offering to expanding the main Auditorium and creating three new rooms for Vineyard Kids, including a permanent Soft Play room. The talk includes a short video (starting at 17:05 minutes in) picturing what the main new areas will look like. Watch a...
Guest Speaker Peter Tate invites us to think more deeply about what it means to ‘love one another’ in a multi-cultural Church where we welcome and honour different cultures within God's people. He challenges us to think about the difference between what’s ‘theological’ and what’s ‘cultural’ in our assumptions about our faith practices. Watch at https://vimeo.com/369270601
Continuing our Birthday Month, Steve Burnhope talks about some of the things he personally loves about the Vineyard. He starts with some ‘Vineyard theology’ and ‘Vineyard values’ that are shared throughout the movement — wherever one goes in the world — and finishes with some of the things he loves about Aylesbury Vineyard in particular. Watch at vimeo.com/367572533
As we continue our Birthday Month Services, Assistant Pastor and Head of Compassion Ministries, James Tweats, talks about the central importance of helping those who are disadvantaged and in need, both in the heart of God and the heart of the Vineyard movement. He explains the scope and the scale of what Aylesbury Vineyard is currently doing and invites us to ask ourselves how God is calling us personally to become involved, for Jesus and His Kingdom. Watch at: https://vimeo.com/aylesburyvineyar...
Guest speaker Nicola Neal (CEO of Every Life, https://everylife.org.uk/) talks about the unexpected and generous welcome that Jesus offers Zaccheus in Luke 19. She parallels that with the welcome she and her family received when they moved back to the UK from Uganda and encourages us to imitate Jesus by being unexpectedly generous welcomers, just as he was. Watch at https://vimeo.com/364727383
Following on from his recent talk, ‘What Does It Mean to ‘Have Faith’?’ (Sunday 15 September 2019, https://soundcloud.com/aylesburyvineyard/what-does-it-mean-to-have-faith), Steve Burnhope goes on to ask, if ‘faith’ isn’t about having unshakeable mental certainty that something we want is going to happen, then ... what does it mean? How can we be people who pray confidently and expectantly? Watch at https://vimeo.com/363256767
Head of Youth Ministry, Amelia Godden, interviews Vineyard UK&I youth leader Zeke Rink about the Summer 2020 DTI Festival that succeeds Soul Survivor. It includes a video about the event, featuring Mike Pilavachi (leader of Soul Survivor), and Senior Pastors Steve and Lyn Burnhope explaining how Aylesbury Vineyard wants to support DTI with a financial offering, prayer and volunteering. Watch at https://vimeo.com/362315279 The interview includes a film by Vineyard Churches about DTI 2020 whic...
Clearly, ‘faith’ is vital to being a Christian, but what is ‘faith,’ and how do we ‘live by’ faith? Does faith get prayers answered? Does too-little faith stop them being answered? Steve Burnhope runs through the problems with the standard way that many Christians think about faith — as striving for mental certainty, with no doubts allowed — before then explaining what biblical faith does in fact look like. Watch at https://vimeo.com/360135722
Wreaking havoc with the traditional church calendar, Steve Burnhope looks at Pentecost in September as we start this new term. Rather than Acts 2 inaugurating ‘speaking in tongues,’ as generally assumed, its significance is the inclusion of people of every nation, tribe, and language on equal terms ‘in Christ’ in the Kingdom of God, reversing what happened at Babel in Genesis 11, and foreshadowing heaven. He encourages us to be a church that commits to modelling Pentecost, not one that models Ba...
Lyn Burnhope reflects on the significance of the meeting together in the Temple with Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus. As we meet together, all of those same ingredients are with us as we pray and long for His Kingdom to come on earth as it is in Heaven. Sunday 1 September 2019
What does God want? What does he want from us, as people? Steve Burnhope runs through some of the options and then suggests three simple, easy-to-remember themes — repeated throughout the Bible — which sum up God’s perspective on that question. [Editor’s note: Steve was wrong about his new shirt; the style is Cuban, not Hawaiian, but try not to let that put you off …]
Life is a true story. Guest Speaker Andy Kind asks which of the major world-views makes the most sense of what you know to be true about yourself. Watch at https://vimeo.com/353409965
Fear comes in all shapes and sizes, including anxieties and phobias, with broad, deep and wide-ranging effects. As Christians, we should be both medically-informed and spiritually-aware. Steve Burnhope suggests how a biblical perspective can help us in handling fears in our own life, centred on five key biblical truths. Watch at https://vimeo.com/352108375
Assistant Pastor James Tweats invites us on a journey to look at the health of our relationships — with ourselves, with others, and with God — and suggests four ‘Kingdom principles’ that will help us get them (and keep them) on track. Watch at https://vimeo.com/351007858
Jamie Eyre shares about the work of Christians he’s visited in the Middle East and stories from the people they serve. Watch at https://vimeo.com/349743220
Senior Pastor Lyn Burnhope takes on the thorny question of “sin” — an old-fashioned, negative-sounding word that’s often misused and misunderstood. She explores what it is and what it isn’t, how it impacts human life in so many ways, and how we’re called to join in Jesus’ mission against sin in its personal, corporate and global dimensions. Watch at https://vimeo.com/348401106
Guest Speaker Dr. Jason Clark, Senior Pastor of Sutton Vineyard, takes his cue from the famous message “Do You Know Him?” by the late Dr. S. M. Lockridge. He asks whether our life matches an encounter with the incredible God of whom Lockridge speaks in this video (which is shown during the talk, but can also be found separately here: https://youtu.be/ZKsN-AeqJP0). Watch at https://vimeo.com/348208903
As part of our Kids Takeover service, our Head Children’s Ministry, Liz Machell, spoke to our whole church family about being bringers of God’s now-and-not yet Kingdom whilst living in a beautiful but broken world between the times of the Garden of Eden and the New Heavens and New Earth. Watch at https://vimeo.com/345967968
Steve Burnhope completes our short series of talks thinking about the Bible with a simple way of telling the story like a Box Set — Season One: the Old Testament, Season Two: the New Testament and Season Three: the on-going episodes in which we are invited to join the cast! Watch at https://vimeo.com/344079049
In this week’s episode, Steve Burnhope explains some of the “rules of the game” of biblical interpretation (how to make sense of what we’re reading, in the best possible way), which begins by respecting the original authors and audiences and understanding the way they thought and wrote. Starting with ‘how communication works’ (in every era, and culture) helps us see the difference between the ‘timeless truths’ God intended to give us and the ‘time-bound wrapper’ in which they are unavoidably pac...
Steve Burnhope kicks off our latest three-week series of ‘Big Questions’ about Christianity and faith with another look at the Bible as the story of people and the story of God, intertwined. During these talks, he’ll be explaining how we can understand it the way that the original authors and audience would have understood it, and how it all hangs together as one big story from cover to cover. Sunday 9 June 2019
