10/13/2023 0 Comments Brave church![]() If you would like to receive these daily emails, please sign up below. Throughout these 21 days, we will have daily podcasts to help you study God’s Word and seek Him in prayer. Please pray for God to be glorified in and through His people at BRAVE Church. In the event you are unable to fast for health reasons, you can still pray. Fasting is simply one way to grow in humility before the Lord so that we can hear His voice and allow for Him to work in greater ways. Our entire church is invited to pray and fast together as we seek the face of the Lord for 2023 and beyond. He will reward the efforts that you make to seek Him in private. For more information about BRAVE Church, please visit bravechurch.online. Brave Church is one of the fastest growing churches in the Bay Area of the last decade. We want to help people find community, the support they need and experience the life God created them for through a relationship with Jesus. ![]() Stay in the know by receiving notifications for events and ministries, and listen to sermons easily from your phone or tablet. The vision of our church is to be a place where everyone feels welcome regardless of their starting point. ![]() The key is simply doing what God asks you to do. Stay up to date on BRAVE news and events, listen to sermons, and give online. For those who are more seasoned in the discipline of fasting perhaps you can fast longer. Remember, if this is your first time fasting, you can simply start with skipping one meal and devoting that time to prayer. On Sunday, January 8, BRAVE Church is beginning a 21-day fast that goes through Saturday, January 28. The Revd Richard Greatrex is Rector of the Chew Valley East Benefice, in Somerset.While there is no command in the New Testament that a believer must fast, it is often assumed that a believer will fast. A slimmer, more affordable paperback would have made this an excellent book to give away, or use as the basis of a marriage-preparation course or as a discussion-starter on the pressing topics that it tackles. What a shame that the large-print hardback format favoured by the publishers and the hefty price of £18.99 may well cut against the book’s appeal to the casually curious seeker or reader. Throughout, Bottley explains how her faith has developed to become more inclusive and questioning, and shares her frustrations with a Church that sometimes feels infernally clueless, needlessly exclusive, and increasingly irrelevant. ![]() The chapter on confidence feels, at times, to be the most personally revealing, while those on loneliness and grief are reassuringly compassionate. Through vivid stories, her own collection of celebrity encounters and faux pas, quiet insight, and a gently persistent love of Christ, she challenges preconceptions, strips out “churchy” language, and attempts to show how even the slenderest thread of belief can be beneficial when it comes to dealing with the muck and mess of life.Īlthough some of us in parochial ministry (described here as “old-school vicars”) may squirm a little at Bottley’s lithe discussion of individual success, beginning with her own appearances in the TV series Gogglebox, among other media engagements, there are many aspects of the book, including the “Three Good Things” to think about or do at the end of each chapter, which are practical, thoughtful and encouraging. So, after initially placing herself soundly in the context of her own upbringing, belief, priestly vocation, and media ministry, Bottley gets straight down to addressing topics such as success, love, strength, conflict, confidence, loneliness, and grief. The author’s encounter with someone who asks, “What’s a bishop?” reminds us that the Christian world that Church Times readers inhabit daily is not even a blip on the radar in most people’s lives.Ī little faith can, indeed, go a long way, however. PART testimony, fizzing through a catalogue of mildly self-deprecating anecdotes, part a series of life lessons, this first book from Kate Bottley is unlikely to win over anyone who isn’t already in tune with her effervescent media persona but her energy and chatty, sometimes giggly, and occasionally lightly saucy style allows her to open up conversations, potentially connecting with those who might not normally consider that the Christian faith, or the Church, has anything positive to offer them.
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