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WHAT ARE THE HEADLINES?

  • Bread of Hope has been working with a few current and former church leaders, both lay and ordained.
  • Bread of Hope has run training in a City Law Firm and in the Civil Service.
  • Bread of Hope has been making grants to Westbourne Park and Emmanuel – Harrow Road food pantries.
  • Jon has spoken at All Souls, Langham Place and a Chichester pan-church men’s breakfast on grief, as well as at Westminster City Council on resurrection and Easter.

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WHAT DO WE DO?

Bread of Hope is a space to practise what we learn at the Lord’s Table. So Bread of Hope provides physical food by supporting local food pantries (click here). Bread of Hope also provides spiritual food by helping people to:

Breaking Bread

WHERE DO WE DO IT?

Most of our work is done with other organisations. So we go where they are.

But we also host small meetings from 7.00 to 8.30 pm on alternate Mondays (all age) and from 7.45 pm on monthly Saturdays (20s–30s). Please email contact@breadofhope.org.uk if you would like to join us via Zoom. These fortnightly discussions are sometimes interspersed with elements from our @Work courses.

You can also find us on Meetup by clicking here.

We’ll structure our time as follows:

SATURDAY NIGHTS 2023–2024
20s–30s

Breaking Bread

4 November: Gombis: #1: The Drama of Ephesians
2 December: Check-in and prayer

6 January: Gombis: #2: Some Mysterious Actors on the Stage
23 March: Check-in and prayer
27 April: Gombis: #3: Transforming the Imagination
8 June: Check-in and prayer
20 July: Gombis: #4: God’s Victory over the Powers
31 August: Check-in and prayer
21 September: Gombis: #5: Embodying God’s Victory
26 October: Check-in and prayer
23 November: Gombis: #6: Empowering Subversion

MONDAY NIGHTS 2024–2025
20s–70s

FAITH AND PSYCHOANALYTIC THOUGHT

Breaking Bread
Image: Gage Skidmore

Dialoguing the Christian Faith with psychoanalytic thought.

21 October: #1 Hunsinger: Theology and Pastoral Counselling: The Oedipus Complex
4 November: #2 Contemporary Jungians I: Jordan Peterson
18 November: #3 Contemporary Jungians II: Walter Wink
2 December: #4 Becker I: Death Anxiety
16 December: #5 Becker II: Flight from Death I

6 January: #6 Becker III: Flight from Death II
20 January: #7 Klein I: Object Relations Theory
3 February: #8 Klein II: Grief
17 February: #9 Morrison: Shame
3 March: #10 Klein III: Trauma
17 March: #11 O’Donnell: Trauma Theology

2023–2024

We riffed off of David Fitch‘s book Faithful Presence, before diving into a series of texts on gender and sexuality. These included: Brett Provance (on Romans 1); John Perry (on Acts 15); Judith Gundry (on 1 Corinthians 11); Cynthia Long Westfall (on 1 Corinthians 11); Judith Butler; Kathleen Stock; and Louise Perry.

2022–2023

We discussed Emails from Hotel Babylon, and a bespoke series on Sacraments and Secularity, which included: Charles Taylor; Alexander Schmemann; William Cavanaugh; Gisela Kreglinger; and James K.A. Smith.

2021–2022

Our theme was the Powers, diversity (men and women, ethnicity), and breaking breading together. Thinkers and texts included: Richard Beck; Ched Myers; Walter Wink; 1 Corinthians 11; Esau McCaulley; and Nathan Cartagena.

2020–2021

A Walter Brueggemann bonanza of three courses/series: Embracing the Prophets; Breaking Ground’s Conversations with Walter Brueggemann; and Materiality as Resistance.

2020

Hosted the Godspeed course.

Click here to find out more; and please email contact@breadofhope.org.uk if you would like to join us via Zoom.

WHY DO WE DO IT?

We believe that breaking bread together gives us a picture of the Christian life. The bread and the wine:

  • show us that human work is involved in worship; and
  • that we receive worth from God in order to give worth out; and they
  • witness to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

These three things further reflect the three offices of Christ: prophet, priest, and king. The booklet below elaborates.

The offices are qualified by values, which together – royal faith (receiving worth from God); priestly love (adding worth to the world); and prophetic hope (vouching for worth’s resurrection) – give:

  • a model of whole-life discipleship (that permeates our discipleship and “Gospel outline” booklets, which you can see here); and is also
  • a glimpse of the new creation – the feast to come.

Since breaking bread together gives us a model of whole-life discipleship, our mission is to embody what breaking bread is all about, which we do by providing physical and spiritual food. And our vision is the feast to come, to which breaking bread together directs us.

HOW IS THIS REFLECTED IN OUR @WORK COURSES?

Each of these offices – the prophetic, the priestly, and the royal – has at least one corresponding workplace course. These courses can be tabulated as follows:

Course Office Value Benefit – objective Benefit – subjective*
Worship@Work Royal Faith Equality** Flourishing***
Forgiveness@Work Priestly Love Worth Affection
Stress@Work
Witness@Work Prophetic Hope Truth Reflection

* OECD (2013), OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264191655-en, 10, 29—32.
** “Equality” is shorthand for saying that “generosity mitigates inequality”. Whereas Bread of Hope focuses on generosity, others focus on equality; for example: Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone (London: Penguin, 2009).
*** Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Inner Level: How More Equal Societies Reduce Stress, Restore Sanity and Improve Everyone’s Wellbeing (London: Penguin, 2018).

WHAT DO WE BELIEVE?

Bread of Hope subscribes to the historic creeds of the Christian Faith, such as: the Apostles’ Creed; the Nicene Creed; and the Athanasian Creed.

Bread of Hope also believes in:

  • the dignity of all people, made male and female in God’s image to love, be holy and care for creation, yet corrupted by sin, which incurs divine wrath and judgement;*
  • the sufficiency of Jesus’ life and death as a sacrifice for sin;
  • Jesus’ bodily resurrection as the first fruits of the new creation, which includes the resurrection of people ‘from every nation, tribe, people and language’ [Revelation 7:9];
  • the divine inspiration and supreme authority of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, which are the written Word of God – fully trustworthy for faith and conduct.*

* Evangelical Alliance Basis of faith.

WHERE DO WE COME FROM?

Bread of Hope was founded by five guys in 2015:

  • Johnny Douglas (then: Associate Minister, Emmanuel Church, Northwood; now: Vicar of Swanley, St Paul, and Hextable, St Peter);
  • Tim Knight (Public Sector Christian Workplace Group);
  • Mark Davies (then: Christian Workplace Group, BP Canary Wharf);
  • Andy Nunn (formerly, Christian Workplace Group, BarCap); and
  • Jon Horne.

More about our story and rationale can be found here.