Bridge Community Church Leeds

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...

Pastor Jacqui Richmond takes us into the crowds on Palm Sunday as we walk with Jesus into Jerusalem. We see Jesus fulfil the prophecy of Zechariah Chapter 9, riding on a donkey, symbolising the nature of his kingship demonstrated by humility and service. We hear the praise of the disciples and the crowds - praise that cannot be silenced even though it offended the sensibilities of the Pharisees. I...

Where would we have been in the crowds when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on donkey for the last week of his life? Would we, like many of them, have thrown at his feet the cloaks that were the signs of our identity, importance, and our place in society? What would we have been thinking when we shouted out "Hosanna!"  Pastor Bawa takes us into the crowd on this momentous day to show us the signifi...

What makes God's love so different from other kinds of love? What does Scripture say about this love? What happens when we embrace it? In this episode Vincent, one our BCC members and welcomers, shares his experience of how God's love brought him to faith and shaped his lifestyle choices, how through the community of faith he found his wife, how by God's mercy he survived a stabbing attack, and ho...

What made Good Friday good? The apostles proclaimed a message of good news. So did the angels at Christmas. But how can it be that Jesus being crucified is good news? With illustrations from his life experience as a parent, chaplain to Leeds UTD football club, pastor, and golf-club member, Pastor Steve Riley explains what makes the good news good. It's good because God loves you, Jesus died for yo...

James, an Elder and the BCC Volunteer Co-ordinator shares a word of exhortation for our Volunteer Sunday. Around 80% of BCC's activities are run by volunteers in areas as diverse as the church cafe, welcome, ushering, car park attending, prayer ministry, children's ministry and leadership. James points us to Jesus, our example of service, and the example of believers in the churches in northern Gr...

In this inspiring message Diego, who leads the Spanish-speaking church in BCC, shares his testimony of his journey to faith and the part others played in his story of salvation. He encourages us to see how we can play our part in evangelism, even if we don't see ourselves as evangelists. Our motivation is gratitude - to Jesus who paid such a high price for our freedom, and love for those around us...

Pastor Dave Green shares how his testimony, and his wife Karen's testimony, has been part of people's journey to faith in Christ. His encouragement to us is to be more pro-active rather than passive. We can do more than just wait for people to ask us about Jesus, and take natural opportunities to talk about Him and why we believe. Personal invites to times and places where people can hear the Gosp...

What straightforward, easy to remember outline of our faith can we have to hand to share with our friends, colleagues, and others who we meet and who ask us to explain what we believe? In particular, how do we explain to someone how to start their journey to faith in Jesus? Pastor Steve shares a four point outline we can use. People attending the service were also given an illustrated booklet with...

At the end of Luke's gospel, Jesus tells his disciples that they are his witnesses. At the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, he tells them that they will be his witnesses when the Spirit comes on them? What was the difference between the witnesses that they were and the witnesses they were to become? What does this tell us about how we share our experience of Jesus, and how we need the power...

Pastor Jacqui Redmond leads us together as we pray the Lord's Prayer. We pray: starting in relationship with our Father in heaven; in worship as we recognise who God is and hallow and honour His name; aligning ourselves to His justice and judgement as pray for His kingdom to come; in surrender, as we submit to His will; recognising our dependence as we ask for daily bread - all we need for life, w...

How, as a church, do we prepare ourselves for what God is doing in our land? Pastor Bawa explains the difference between revival (re-awakening life), conversion (new life through being born again) reformation (which follows from revival - recovery of what the church has lost and correcting what has been distorted) and renewal (God's continuous refreshing which sustains what has been restored, thro...

How do we find faith to pray with confidence in troubled times? Pastor Steve shares from Habakkuk. The prophet was writing in a time when Israel had been reduced to two tribes - Judah and Benjamin (collectively known as "Judah" for short). Judah wasn't wholeheartedly following the Lord, and was about to be threatened with invasion and deportation from the great regional power of the day - Babylon....

What is the Quiet Revival? Good news. There is increasing evidence of a growing interests in spirituality in the UK, especially with young adults from what social researchers call Gen z (Zoomers) born 1997 - 2012 . Some call this "A Quiet Revival", and some an "awakening." Whatever we call it, a growing number of young adults are engaging with faith in a way that previous generations did not. Rese...