This article is a personal story with a few takeaways and lessons learned.
In 2008, the Pastor of the church my family was attending left for another church. In the wake of his departure, the small Sunday School class he had taught found itself without a teacher. I volunteered to teach that class.
My emphasis was literal expository teaching. What does that mean?
FIRST, it means more than just going verse by verse. It’s teaching what IS there. We should not sidestep or dilute what the Bible is really saying to us.
SECOND, it’s unwise to teach what is NOT there. We should not manipulate passages to reinforce personal preferences or popular themes that those passages may not hold.
And THIRD, if the Bible states it plainly, we should TOO. Political correctness is not an ally of truth or any sound doctrine. It is most responsible to declare the Scriptures forthrightly.
In time, that Sunday School class outgrew the ‘half-court gym’ it was in. By this point, it was regularly drawing folks from other churches, too. Good ideas were proposed to continue to grow the class within the church it was part of, but those efforts hit a wall. Instead, the class was shut down.
I was told by many, “It was a good run, Steve, but God has now closed this door. It’s time for you to move on to other things.”
I took a few months to reflect. I decided to reform the class as ‘Solid Bread Community,’ an independent teaching ministry, and I began to hunt for an appropriate space to rent. I found a full-sized Gym at a local high school, and Solid Bread Community re-launched its new Sunday morning routines.
This sort of concept hadn’t been done before, and there were many uncertainties. Would folks align with this? Would any of its previous attendees return? How would we get the word out? How would we address our bills and obligations?
There were tons of questions but few answers. A bunch of folks felt safe by standing on the sidelines and predicting Solid Bread Community’s failure. Some of them even hoped for this.
But that didn’t happen. Solid Bread Community debuted with a good crowd, and through word-of-mouth, it kept growing. We didn’t talk about financial support, but people found the little shoebox at the entrance with the slot cut in the lid. It didn’t take long for me to realize God had directed all of this – exactly the way it had all played out.
Solid Bread Community is still growing. It has now become SEVERAL separate, thriving, and growing communities of believers throughout northern Colorado and southeastern Wyoming. It regularly draws attendees from a wide region, and it now rents several different locations for its meetings in different cities on different days. Solid Bread Community is now the primary fellowship for many of its attendees; folks are getting saved, and they are growing well, and we recently began to incorporate a deep emphasis on celebrating The Lord’s Supper.
Each week, Solid Bread Community meets Sunday morning in Fort Collins, CO; Sunday evening in Windsor, CO; Tuesday evening in Cheyenne, WYO – and soon we will add Thursday evening in Longmont, CO. Lord willing, a new series in evangelism and discipleship will start Wednesday evenings this coming Fall.
Our third annual Bible prophecy conference, “Awake and Aware,” featuring Pete Garcia, Lee Brainard, Gino Geraci, Brandon Holthhaus, and Mondo Gonzales, is scheduled for Friday and Saturday, Sept. 11 and 12, 2026. All things considered, I recently made the decision to focus on Solid Bread Community full-time. I feel this is the direction I believe the Lord is leading me.
Because Bible Prophecy comprises more than one quarter of God’s Word, Solid Bread Community gives this very important content some serious focus. Verse-by-verse studies have also been conducted through most of Proverbs, and all of Jude, Daniel, and Jonah. A new series in 1 and 2 Thessalonians began in Dec. 2025. Past in-depth topical studies have included: ‘A Biblical View of the End Times,’ ‘The Biblical Covenants,’ ‘What is the Church?’ ‘What Happens When We Die?’ ‘Knowing Israel,’ ‘Until He Comes: Understanding the Lord’s Supper,’ and ‘The Rise of Lawlessness.’
At the end here, some additional information is provided about Solid Bread Community, including its teaching resources, videos, current and past series, and so on. Please explore those links and tell others about them.
In closing, let me share a few quick insights and some lessons I’ve learned the harder way:
SOMETIMES GOD NEEDS TO GIVE US A BIG SHOVE. Our human nature is risk-averse. We’d rather stay with ‘known’ downsides than launch ourselves into ‘unknown’ possible upsides. Basically, we like things where we can measure and control them. But God is not that way. Often, His will is that we need to ‘live life on the edge.’ Paul, Elijah, Abraham, etc., all had to do this. That means we need to trust God, we need to depend on Him daily, and we need to set aside our own human ‘wisdom.’ If necessary, God will take us through painful chapters to get us to move where He wants us to go. Sometimes that means giving us a big shove to get us out of something that is not working to something that He knows will.
IT’S BETTER TO ENDURE WITH THE REMNANT THAN RUN WITH THE CROWD. The church today is in rough spiritual shape, and that’s putting it mildly. It has convinced itself that its institutional model, with all its programs, buildings, budgets, committees, youth centers, coffeeshops, art galleries, social gospel, bands, gluten-free communion wafers, and other cultural and administrative routines, is the Biblical model. NOTHING could be further from the truth, and many churches and pastors today have zero clue how ‘lukewarm’ they really are (Rev. 3:16), or that Jesus is trying to get INTO their church (Rev. 3:20).
I am becoming increasingly convinced that the proportion of ‘Christians’ that are truly saved is smaller than we think. The modern church shoulders much of this blame.
DON’T PLACE CHURCHES ON A PEDESTAL THEY SHOULDN’T BE PLACED ON. This point is related to the one just before. Here’s a hard, but essential, truth: you’re risking your own eternal destiny if you’re measuring yourself by the standards of a church that has ‘left its first love’ (Rev. 2:4), or which Jesus says He will ‘spit out of His mouth’ (again, Rev. 3:16). Big buildings and big numbers mean nothing. Look for THE truth. Look for people that are operating within their gifting and aren’t trying to be something they shouldn’t be. Look for those who ARE properly teaching the full counsel of God’s Word and don’t just claim they are. Look for results by God’s standards, and not by man’s.
And don’t be fooled by degrees and such. A 2016 Lifeway Research survey found that the more seminary education a pastor had, the less they believed in the Biblical pre-trib Rapture.
SHIFT YOUR PRIORITIES TO LIVING FOR ETERNITY. If you are truly saved, then God has already filled a space within you that only He can. And because He has done this, He has now wired you for a greater purpose than waking up each day punching a clock, buying a second home, padding your retirement savings, or pursuing another round of golf. Those things are not necessarily bad in and of themselves, but YOU have an opportunity to hear, “Well done good and faithful servant” someday – so LIVE like it! Shift your priorities! Act like you really believe the things you say you do!
I have done a lot and accomplished a lot in my life, but I confessed to my wife the other day that I’ve never been happier than I now am. I’m doing what I know God WANTS me to be doing. It’s gratifying to be in that sweet spot.
If you want to learn more about Solid Bread Community, or you want to listen to our current 90-week teaching series on “A Biblical View of the End Times,” or any of our other series, go to our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@SolidBreadCommunity. Please consider subscribing to that and telling others about it.
If you live in southeastern Wyoming or along the Colorado Front Range, and you want to consider attending Solid Bread Community at any of the times and places we meet, you can find more information at www.solidbreadcommunity.com. Thank you!
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