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Share Offering

Published on 16 January 2012 | Julia Pickerill

VA held a special offering for our Share Fund in December.

Vineyard Amsterdam will use the Share Fund for people in our church community who are facing financial difficulty. This is a concrete way that we can express our mutual concern for one another: that we come together not just on Sunday mornings, but also that we support one another in times of need. Our community responded with obvious enthusiasm - during the Share Fund collection on the 11th, we collected four times as much as during a normal offering, and have also received additional generous gifts into the church bank account. We have already received €2.400... an extravagant sum.

If you have not yet given for this special purpose, and would like to contribute, you can still do that via our account 1594.83.999 t.n.v. Vineyard Amsterdam, noting 'Share'. read more »

Who do you say I am?

Published on 11 November 2011 | Local Church | Eric

Two Sundays ago at Meeting Point, we started a new sermon series called "Who do you say I am?". We'll be talking for the next several weeks about the "I AM" statements of Jesus... and looking at the book of John for insight into how Jesus actually presented himself to the people around him.

As many of you heard at church, the I AM statements of Jesus (ie: "I am the way"....) are rooted in the I AM statements of God in the Old Testament. In other words, when the historic man called Jesus used that language, He was deliberately identifying himself (a young, unknown Jewish man from a small tribe and an unremarkable family) as the God of the universe. And as offensive or crazy as that claim was to many religious people, the words and actions of Jesus started a spiritual movement that has changed the world. read more »

Connect Groups: To help each other remember...

Published on 19 September 2011 | Community | Mark

Why do we talk so much about community at Vineyard Amsterdam? Why do we get together on Sunday mornings? Why should you consider joining a Connect Group? Why do we even want to share our lives with each other? Have you thought about these questions? read more »

Reflections on our retreat

Published on 8 September 2011 | Eric

I had such a wonderful time with you at the retreat that I wanted to write to you and tell you how much I love you and love what is happening in our community. It is really a special thing that we should recognize as a beautiful gift from God, as Eleanor so wonderfully pointed out. One of the most special things for me was seeing how the Holy Spirit was touching many of us in new and surprising ways. One person said to me, “I like what is happening here because we are just giving room for God, but nobody is forcing anything. We are just giving space for God to move, and then everyone can respond in ways they are comfortable to respond.” That was a great encouragement to me. read more »

Practicing silence

Published on 21 July 2011 | Spiritual Disciplines | Julia Pickerill

This past Sunday, Huub continued our sermon series called A New Way of Living by talking about rest, quietness, and the idea of sabbath. As we closed our service with 5 minutes of silence, I reflected on how good it is to follow the Lord into times of quietness, reflection, stillness, and silence. I also reflected on how long just 5 minutes of quiet seems in a room full of people who are working hard at doing nothing! read more »

Celebrating God's Extravagant Grace

Published on 21 July 2011 | Local Church | Julia Pickerill

A common practice in scripture finds the people of God taking time to pause, reflect on God's grace in our lives, and respond with worship to the things He's doing in our midst. Often we read stories in the Old Testiment where God's people build alters of stones to comemerate miracles of God so that they would remind generation after generation of what God had done in the lives of His people. read more »

What is a healthy church?

Published on 19 August 2011 | Local Church | Julia Pickerill

We have a new Connect Group starting this month. We hear encouraging reports from the Alpha Course that is running. Each week more and more people are people are coming to dip their foot in the pool to get a feel of the church. Each week we all look around and ask ourselves, “Who are all these new people?” read more »