Bridge Community Church Leeds

How close are human beings to eliminating death? Despite significance gains in global life expectancy, and the efforts of billionaires in the USA, death remains an inevitable terminus to the human condition. But there is good news. As Pastor Peter Clothier reminds us, Jesus comes to brings us eternal life - which is so much more than the hope of eternal existence. What’s the difference? Pastor Pet...

The speaker for our Guest Service today is Pastor Steve Kempton. Pastor Steve shares how he wasn’t brought up in a Christian home and, although the home had a Bible, he never read it. Pastor Steve begins by explaining various things that the Bible has to say about itself. It’s a lamp that illuminates our way ahead, bread that nourishes the soul and answers the “first order questions” of life - who...

On the Sunday we welcomed our new senior pastor, Steve Kempton and his family, the message for the day is brought by Pastor Andy Lenton. Sharing from the book of Nehemiah chapter 3:1-14, Pastor Andy takes us through the names of the various people who took responsibility for rebuilding sections of the walls of Jerusalem in the middle of the fifth century BC. Pastor Andy uses the passage to speak t...

How can we make more space for people come and find Jesus? How do we do this in the different contexts of the life of the church and in our own personal lives? Sharing from Mark chapter 2 verses 1-12, Leigh Richmond asks us to think about those “who can’t get through” and how we respond to them in three ways: Notice the person. Make room, and Trust Jesus. It’s challenging to think that we can ours...

What is communion? Why do we do it? And since we practice it on a regular basis, how do we ensure that we don’t start taking it for granted and lose focus on what it’s really all about? Pastor Jacqui Richmond gives us three reasons why we take communion. First, we remember Jesus and what He has done for us. There are times, especially when we are in a “heavy season” where we can lose focus on God....

In the seventh and final part of our series on the book of Ephesians, Pastor Steve Reilly shares inspiring teaching on what Paul has to say about what it means to live a life worthy of our calling in the spiritual battle.  Pastor Steve takes us into the mysterious dimension of God’s good creation that we usually call the “spiritual world.” He points us to passages of Scripture that explain ho...

In the fifth of our series on the book of Ephesians, Pastor Steve Reilly unpacks Paul’s teaching regarding what it means to live a life worthy of our calling in the context of the home. Paul gives teaching to husbands, wives, children and slaves, using the format of the “household code” - a well-known structure in Paul’s day for discussing relationships in households where all of the above were pr...

In the fourth of our series on the book of Ephesians, Pastor Steve Reilly unpacks Paul’s teaching regarding what it means to live a life which reveals God to the world in which we live. Pastor Steve highlights the two foundational truths on which Paul builds - that we are to live a life of love, and to live as children of the light. This is a high calling, and only possible by living in partnershi...

In the fourth of our series on the book of Ephesians, Pastor Steve Reilly takes into the early verses of Ephesians chapter 4. As we have seen from the earlier talks, chapters 1-3 focus on our wealth - all that Christ has given us through His saving grace. The focus in chapters 4-6 shifts to our walk - what a mature Christian life looks like in the practical realities of the day to day. We will see...

Continuing our series on the book of Ephesians, Pastor Steve Reilly leads us from Chapter 2:11 to Paul’s prayer in Chapter 3:14-20. Pastor Steve expounds the passage through the heads of peace, prayer, and praise. The word “peace” appears four times in this week’s passage - focussing not on peace with God, but peace between different groups of people who, outside of Christ, disdained each other. J...

We are all familiar with before and after stories. Programmes like Garden Rescue and Ground Force tell their own stories of transformations. But the greatest ever story of transformation is found in the gospel, and re-told here by Paul in Ephesians. Pastor Steve Reilly reminds us again of the wonder of our salvation - a wonder that’s the heart of our worship and changes for ever how we see ourselv...

Welcome to our seven week series on Paul's letter to the Ephesians. Pastor Steve Rilley begins by reminding us that Ephesians is unlike many of Paul's other letters which were written to address specific challenges and issues. Ephesians is a letter for every church - a letter for us. Chapters 1-3 focus on who were are in Christ and on all He has done for us, interspersed with prayer and praise. Ch...

What does God look for in us as we grow spiritually? Pastor Bawa Leo reminds us of Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 13.11 "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things." Pastor Bawa uses the analogy of our human growth to cause us to reflect on our own stage of spiritual development, and what priorities we n...

What does being a follower of Jesus look like? Pastor Jacqui Redmond explains how the transforming work of the Holy Spirit is expressed through His nine fruit as we walk by the Spirit, keeping in step with Him as we follow Jesus. To help us both remember the nine fruit, and how they can be grown in our experience, Pastor Jacqui speaks about them under three headings. 1.The Holy Spirit transforms u...

From Peter's first letter, Pastor Steve explores what it means for us to be living stones in God's spiritual house. Jesus was the rejected stone who is now the cornerstone and capstone. If we ever feel rejected, abandoned or excluded, we know that we are now chosen, not discarded by Jesus. We are people with a threefold hope. For the past, our sin is wiped out, in the present Jesus is with us, and...

What does the Bible mean when it talks about the faithfulness of God? What does this look like? How is the faithfulness of God experienced? And how do we, in our own day to day experience, grow in our own journey of faithfulness with God? Pastor Jacqui Redmond draws richly on powerful verses of Scripture from the Old and New Testaments to explore the following truths: God is always faithful - even...

In this wide-ranging message Pastor Bawa reminds us of why, and how, we maintain our Jesus focus. Jesus is the supreme and sinless Son of God, and to live our lives as God intended we need to keep Him in steady focus as the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. From Mark's Gospel and chapter 8, Pastor Bawa reflects on how Jesus healed the blind man at Bethsaida - how the man's vision was restored fi...

On this Pentecost Sunday, Mark Yeadon opens the Scriptures to show how creation, new creation, and re-creation each begin around a wedding. The first creation begins with the wedding of Adam and Eve and the re-creation will see Jesus united to his bride (Revelation 21). If anyone is in Christ, says Paul, there is a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). This new creation also begins with a wedding - a...

It’s Ascension Sunday! Pastor Jacqui Richmond shares three essential truths that we learn from Jesus’ ascension along with ways we can apply these in our own walk with Him. Jesus ascended with hands of blessing. As we read in Luke 24, the last visual image the disciples had of Jesus was of His rising with hands extended in blessing. And He continues to bless us today - with His love, power, h...

Why do Christians get baptised? What's the significance of baptism? How does it relate to the gospel of our salvation? In this concise and clear explanation, Pastor Steve Riley explains. When they get baptised, Christians are following both the example and the command of Jesus as part of His world-transforming gospel message. It's significance is an enacted drama of the core message of the Christi...

From Acts 13, Pastor Bawa invites us into a conversation with the church in Antioch to see principles and practices we need to exemplify what it means to be a "Spirit-led ekklesia." The church - the ekklesia of God - is a place of joy, but not an alternative source of entertainment. In the church, joy is expressed through reverence for God and holy living. The church is not a business but an organ...

What do we do when the pace of life seems faster than our ability to run? Where do we find the energy we need when we feel as if we are empowered by fumes? Where is God at work in all this and how do we respond to Him? Drawing on Exodus 16, and example of his own life experience, Leigh Richmond shares how the Lord has His own pace for forming in us the likeness of Christ. He explores how the exper...

In this scripture-rich and deeply personal message, Pastor Jacqui Richmond shows us how we can see evidence of Christ's resurrection life in us.  A resurrection life is more than an improved life - it's a transformed life. It comes from surrendering old ways to God and embracing the new life he offers us. Through baptism we declare we no longer belong to the past but to Jesus. We change in th...

Once we have encountered Jesus on the cross, we can never be the same again. Pastor Bawa describes the character of our life in the risen Jesus, with its immense blessings and also the challenge of living in a world which seeks to impress upon us its own values, at odds with those of Jesus and his kingdom. From Paul's writings we see the blessings of being free from condemnation and living with th...

What must it have been like for the women who went to Jesus's tomb on Easter Day? They had been preparing themselves to say their final "goodbye" to Jesus - enacted through the burial rite of bringing spices and perfume to Jesus's body. What they weren't prepared for was the scene they discovered - no stone in front of the tomb, no body, and no idea what had happened! What were they to do? Angels...