At BPCC, our mission is ‘to make growing disciples of Jesus Christ through gospel-centred and Spirit empowered worship, community, service and mission’. We therefore created a ‘discipleship pathway’ to help us achieve this disciple-making mission: Connect through Jesus, grow in Jesus, serve like Jesus and go with Jesus. This is a clear process for us to follow as we seek to make fully-formed followers of Christ. One of the mistakes we can make, however, is to make each step absolutely distinct and separate in someone’s discipleship journey. People are complex and won’t necessarily follow one step neatly before entering the next. Someone might encounter God (Connect) and immediately begin to tell others about Jesus in their workplace (Go), but aren’t yet part of a Growth Group (Grow), for example.

“The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison, but apple pie.” – John Piper This week, during the morning service we are talking about ‘Kingdom Spirituality’ or piety. In chapter 6 of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus points us God-ward. He shows us that the practices of giving, prayer and fasting are not about impressing others but about drawing near to our loving and compassionate Father. We go into far more detail in the sermon. However, I thought it would be beneficial to provide an excerpt from Richard Foster’s book, ‘Celebration of Discipline’. In his chapter on fasting, he talks about some of the practical aspects because it is so alien to our culture. If you have health issues, get medical advice before attempting a fast. Here is Richard’s

We are currently in a sermon series during the morning services called ‘Kingdom of Heaven’. We spoke last week about the concept of the kingdom. The ‘kingdom’ represents God’s rule or reign. Where the will of God is done, the kingdom of God is present. Jesus announced its arrival in Matthew 4:17, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”, and brought the kingdom through his life, death and resurrection. The arrival of the kingdom of God was life-changing news! We discovered last week that the arrival of God’s kingdom is good news for everyone. Jesus’ announcement in Matthew 4:17meant that the defeat of God’s enemies was imminent – Satan, sin and death would be conquered. It meant that God’s long-awaited restoration plan had begun (Isaiah 52:7; Ezekiel