bread church

By breadReligion & Spirituality Christianity

bread church episodes

April 03, 2022 Discipline of Worship
Worship! Props! Let’s go!
The practice of Christian worship is rooted in the Old Testament and
knowing this can help inform how we engage in it today. Ben walks us
through the significance of worship with lots of visual aids we thought,
you’ve gotta see this.
51 min
March 27, 2022 Discipline of Confession
It’s not quite the most attractive of the disciplines but it is just as
powerful. Confession is naming where we are and what we’ve done. It is
unguarded truth-telling. Its unguarded because we know who we’re confessing
to. When we know God to be eager and ready to forgive, we can approach him
with anything we may be carrying. In confession, we’re released from the
pressure to pose, to hide in shame, and we receive the forgiveness of
Jesus. His forgiveness is immediate; he takes our sins, hides it, and
forgets about it. The goal of all confession, whether it’s confession to
God or to one another, is healing. This kind of healing-nourishment results
in what Psalm 32 calls, true happiness. The more regular this practice
becomes in our journey, the more confident we are in Jesus’ loving and
transformative power.
30 min
March 20, 2022 Discipline of Celebration
Considered alongside other disciplines like prayer, worship or confession
for example, celebration may seem incongruous. However celebration is
integral to the christian life. After all the gospel begins with
celebration, ends with celebration and has celebration at its heart: Jesus’
kingdom is one built on the foundations of the Old Testament concept of
Jubilee. The gospel literally means good news, and good news must be
celebrated. So how do we become more joyful people? Paul gives us three
steps on the path to celebration - doing away with anxiety, presenting our
requests to god, and fixing our hearts and minds on the beauty of our
world. Despite all the trouble we may have in this world, joy is the
hallmark of those who have placed their lives in the hands of good God who
comes to bring good gifts to his children.
40 min
March 13, 2022 Discipline of Meditation
Ever heard a talk on how to meditate in church before? Us neither. But the
crossover between what the science says about mindful meditation being
brilliant for our brains, stress-levels, focus, memory sleep patterns and
approximately a zillion other things, and the way we - in the spirit-filled
church - prepare our minds, bodies and souls to experience the holy spirit,
seems like a weirdly undiscussed marriage. And Jesus did make it quite
clear that the spirit was the one who was going to show us how to do this
whole christian thing. So let’s talk about it.
43 min
March 06, 2022 Discipline of Prayer
It’s hard to overestimate quite how foundational prayer is to our spiritual
health and connection to god, yet in reality many find prayer very
difficult. But when we see prayer as Jesus did - a means of partnering
with, hearing from and experiencing the intimacy of our Father - prayer is
transformed into a life-giving, exciting, joyful, essential pursuit.
Prayer’s goal becomes not what Jesus can do for us, but Jesus himself.
43 min
February 27, 2022 Introducing the Spiritual Disciplines
Many have grown up with the Christian faith being represented as one long
slog of discipline - Do this, Don’t do that, Try harder, Be better. This is
not what the Spiritual Disciplines are about at all. Rather they are tools
in the spiritual tool kit God gives us. Their job is to place us in a
position to receive more of God’s grace directly from him. It is only ever
grace that changes us. The two most common method for trying to overcome
our old sinful nature are both equally flawed: either we rely solely on
their will power, or we remain passive and hope for the best. By contrast
the Spiritual Disciplines involve our wills - we have to choose to engage
with them, but they rely entirely on God’s grace to change us. They are the
keys to how we mature in our faith, becoming better people, and come closer
to Jesus.
40 min
February 20, 2022 Revelation: City of the Lamb
The final chapters of Revelation depict a glorious vision of heaven. In our
final talk on the series we look specifically at what the people of heaven
are like. There’s a lot of them; they are you and me and everyone else who
responds to Jesus; they are not just future, they are present; and most
importantly they take a like God’s emissaries, his vice-regents, his
high-priests. This means we, as heavenly people, have purpose and calling -
to witness to and extend God’s heaven here on earth. It is what makes sense
of life and brings us fulfillment. The vision we have at bread is that all
of us play our unique part, with our unique gifts, and so get to enjoy all
the glory of heaven, and bring it to a world in need.
40 min
February 13, 2022 Revelation: Restoration of All Things
What is likely to come to mind when we think of Revelation is the question,
“what will the end of the world look like”. It is what most of cultural
interest tends to be around the book. But it’s not quite what the book aims
to answer. Instead, Revelation is about Jesus and what He is doing. The
book unveils Jesus’ restoration of the earth by bringing heaven and thus
transforming everything about our world. It also shows how God will be
permanently present with his people - no temples, no sacred locations - God
face-to-face with us all the time. It isn’t just for the future, it also is
for today, in-part that is. So we can experience intimacy with Jesus and
glimpses of his kingdom restoring relationships, bodies, and more. Looking
ahead at what God is doing means we can have joy today.
34 min
February 06, 2022 Revelation: Empire State of Everything
Alright so we know it’s not a roadmap of end times by now, but what on
earth WAS John of Patmos saying when he wrote this epic and crazy story?
We’ve got to the scene with the dragon and beasts now (yep - coming at you
with 666 chat this morning) and as a side-note it still blows our MIND how
many people were raised with terrifying, entirely wrong teaching on this
stuff. This story is about same thing the rest of the bible is about: God
is good, evil is real and coming for you, but Jesus is on the throne. The
beast was the Roman Empire - no serious scholars disagree on that. Empire,
and all it’s lying, deceiving, masquerading about who we should worship and
how we should live. Conquer, dominate, and tell ourselves God is on OUR
side. Those of us whose politics demand we’re already 100% anti-empire
should make no mistake: the imperial cult is still whispering to us all.
39 min
January 30, 2022 Revelation: Overcoming Evil
Part of what Jesus says to the church throughout the book of Revelation is
this: "Evil is real. It is both inside and outside of God’s church. But let
us overcome it together.” In fact Jesus has already defeated all the forces
of evil once and for all. And he calls his people to join in his victory.
This talk is both about us taking seriously the ways in which we collude
with evil in our own lives, and how we are able to overcome it -
specifically through joining in the worship of heaven and putting out faith
in the victory of the lamb.
38 min