How to read the Bible (and why you should) - Alpha Course 06

well good afternoon and welcome to crowd church actually i shouldn't i need to start saying good evening because it is now technically even time yeah that'll be interesting to get your head around that map that'll be a different thing one yeah it's taxing this late at night uh welcome to crowd church my name is matt edmondson next to me is the beautiful and very talented sally butch it's great to be with you on this sunday evening doing church online uh if you are new to us we've actually moved we used to stream at four we've now moved it to six pm uh hence the reason i'm getting slightly confused but you're yeah yeah we will let you off don't worry welcome welcome everybody it's brilliant to have you with us this afternoon we hope you've had a brilliant week and we're so glad that you are joining us for digital church we are crowd church we're a church for people who perhaps don't see the point of church or want to find out a bit more about jesus in a in a really kind of relaxed space where you can ask questions and and just be part of the family really yeah just have some fun you'll usually find there's a little bit of banter throughout the church service uh that's just that's just part of the course when you have sally birch on the line it's just the way it's gonna be every week i think i'm gonna be good i'm not gonna say anything controversial or say anything stupid i'm not gonna this is quickly quickly not going to happen uh so yeah uh right what we've got coming up today sal do you know i do know matt i do we have um we have got the talk which um today is about why and how should we read the bible so that's gonna be a really interesting one and i believe you're doing that matt so that i'm sure will be brilliant and then after that we'll be having a worship song where you can sing along if you want to or just reflect on the words and that's a really good chance then to kind of just process some of the things that have been said during the talk and have a little think about um what your thoughts are and we really want to hear your thoughts want to hear your comments we want to hear your questions um so do get involved and you can get involved in the comments on facebook and youtube or you could get involved via the whatsapp number and and there it is as if by magic yeah brilliant so get involved which is just here and uh of course that's private so if you want to kind of message us separately then feel free to get involved via that number and if you would like any prayer or anything like that we would love to pray for you so do get in touch with us absolutely and also in this little bar here uh we have our website address crowd church and crab.church and you can find out all kinds of information on there uh if you want to stay connected with things like email do it that way so we'd love to connect with you love to hear from you uh and uh yeah like sal said anything you want us to pray for do let us know we do love the whole prayer thing absolutely so absolutely without further ado uh let me let me just say uh we have been working our way through what we have called the alpha series we there's a there's basically a course you may have heard of it called the alpha course you'll have seen on the side of buses in the uk has the big red question mark and it looks at the meaning of faith the meaning of life and it asks these sort of big questions um around life and and sort of digs into them and we've been working our way through that course through those titles and like cell said this week is all about the bible so uh without further ado i'm going to push this button i'm looking for on my control pad we're going to play the video and then sally and i will be back with conversation street uh after the worship time so i'm looking forward to this one so it's going to be a meaty conversation yes definitely yeah let's go for it then matt okay here we go what is the bible what does it say why do people care about it and what does it have to do with you christians claim the bible was authored by god through human hands to share his story and help us understand who he is it's a diverse collection of literature including historical accounts poetry stories and wisdom it contains mind-blowing adventures like men being thrown into a fire-filled furnace yet they weren't burned it speaks of an old man who was lowered into a lion's den only to be supernaturally protected and not eaten it also tells the story of a little girl who had died yet miraculously came back to life the bible is one book that contains 66 smaller books it was written over a period of 1500 years and authored by over 40 different people that range from shepherds to doctors scholars farmers and kings completed 2 000 years ago historians say it's one of the most reliable books on the planet over ten thousand manuscripts have survived the centuries compare that to only 235 known manuscripts of shakespeare's first folio there have been over 5 billion copies printed worldwide making it the most reproduced book in the world the bible is divided into two sections the old testament and the new testament the old testament is well known for its early history of the world and insight into life giving wisdom such as don't murder and love one another other sections are a bit racy such as your breasts are like two fawns twins of a gazelle the first four books in the new testament tell the story of jesus through the perspectives of four of his closest friends the rest of the new testament is stories and letters revealing what jesus's closest followers did after his time on earth god used average people to heal all kinds of diseases and drive out demons many of jesus's followers were killed because they dared to preach his message jesus claimed to be the human manifestation of god's unfailing love for humanity and the secret for true inner peace he gave hope to the hopeless love to the unloved and then gave his life to bring never-ending life to everyone who would believe in him that's where you come in beware reading this book will change you as you read it its message of hope will come alive in you that's what it's designed to do why not give it a shot and see for yourself what it says it just might surprise you love that video so the bible is not a book in itself but rather a collection of books split into two main sections the old testament and the new testament written by over 40 people so if it's written by that many people from so many different walks of life over so many centuries is the bible reliable and why do christians say that the bible is god's word now some paul's cathedral in london was built by sir christopher wren the greatest english architect of his time most people would say he started at the age of 43 in 1675 and for 36 years the the cathedral was built under that one architect it was completed in 1711 when christopher wren was 79 years old so christopher wren built some paul's cathedral but actually he didn't lay a single stone there were stone masons and carpenters and builders and many people were involved over a long period of time but sir christopher wren was the inspiration behind some paul's cathedral so it is with the bible right there are many different writers but there's one architect one inspiration behind it all and that's god himself in fact that's what the bible actually says of itself the apostle paul wrote this to his mentor or his mentor he should i say timothy he said this all scripture is inspired by god yeah that's awesome now the queen of england at her coronation was handed a copy of the bible with these words written in it we present you this book the most valuable thing which this world why why is it the most valuable thing that this world affords well jesus said this in matthew's gospel he said man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes out from the mouth of god in other words jesus says this mercy material material things alone don't satisfy even the best human relationships don't ultimately satisfy there's always this well what you might call a spiritual hunger which can only be satisfied by something spiritual and jesus said that is the words that come out of god's mouth it is the word of god and the primary way in which god communicates with us is through his book god has spoken it it is his revelation that's the bible so why should i read the bible this is a great question isn't it well the bible really is inspired of god right and if it is if jesus thought that god's word was important to sustaining life then that's a pretty good reason right there isn't it that's probably one of the best reasons for reading it now pope francis uh in the first official document that he produced as pope in the um evangelii gaudium forgive my pronunciation translated means the joy of the gospel says this about the bible we do not blindly seek god or wait for him to speak to us first for god has already spoken and there is nothing further that we need to know which has not been revealed to us let us receive the sublime treasure of the revealed word love that so we should read the bible because god speaks to us through the pages of scripture and what does he predominantly speak about in the bible well the answer is jesus jesus in fact said this in john's gospel you search the scriptures or the bible because you think they give you eternal life but the scriptures point to me so the whole point of the bible the whole point of this book is so that you and i can learn about jesus so that we can get to know jesus and become friends of jesus that's the point of the bible it is jesus he is the point of it now we should read it then because in the bible we learn about jesus in those pages now rick warren who wrote the insanely popular book purpose-driven life said reading the bible generates life it produces change it heals hurts it builds character it transforms circumstances it imparts joy it overcomes adversity it defeats temptation it infuses hope it releases power and it cleanses the mind and if i'm honest that is my story as a new christian i started to read the bible and over the last 30 years i have learned about jesus on those pages and i have read and understood more about him and as i have done that it has generated life in me it has changed me healed my hurts and built my character it has infused hope in me and i am captivated by him especially on the pages of this book why should you read the bible you hear god speak you learn about jesus your life is transformed and your hurts are healed that's i mean that's pretty awesome right there isn't it and if i'm honest with you that's just the beginning right now one former prime minister stanley baldwin who dominated the uk government between the two great wars said the bible is a high explosive but it works in strange ways and no living man can tell or know how that book in its journey through the world has startled the individual soul in 10 000 different places into a new life a new world a new belief a new conception a new faith i love that i just love it i am one of those souls reading the bible and its explosive power has had a profound effect almost immeasurable effect on my life the apostle john who wrote one of the gospels put it this way he said these things are written that you may believe that jesus is the christ the son of god and by believing you may have i don't know about you that sounds fantastic so that's all very well and good matt so how do i read the bible right brilliant isn't it do i just start at the beginning like a normal book and go page by page through it all great questions and it depends for me whereabouts you are on your faith journey now if you are just starting out and you've never really read the bible before i would start if i'm honest not at the beginning in the book of genesis but i would start at the start of the new testament with one of the gospels probably mark or john because in there you will learn about jesus and the whole bible is about jesus that's the point of the bible the new testament talks about jesus all of the time and the old testament when you look at it through the lens of jesus basically points to jesus and his coming right so i would start with the gospels now if you head on over to our website you'll notice that we have gone through the gospel of mark in quite a bit of detail and you could follow along with that study read it in the bible follow along uh with the the the crowd the talk that we did on crowd um or you could try the gospel of john i mean john had some real insight into jesus that's definitely worth reading about okay so start with one of the gospels now what bible version should you read because there are different versions of the bible that throw different language and maybe slightly different interpretations to the original language okay so my advice is find one that works for you okay you can use something like the bible app which you can download to your phone it is totally free and it has different versions of the bible and you can try different ones out i would suggest looking for versions like the new international version or the niv as it is called amongst christians because we like to abbreviate everything like most it's an easy to read version and actually it's probably the go-to for many people now one version i particularly read and like is the message now the message is an interpretation rather than a direct translation but it's still great to read especially alongside something like the niv it gives you some great insight into what's going on now uh if you and it doesn't matter if you're starting out or if you're if you've been a christian for a while and you'll read in the bible uh you know it doesn't matter where you are on the faith journey one thing that you are all gonna have to do that all of us have to do is give time to reading the bible okay it doesn't just osmosis doesn't work with the bible i i part of me wishes it did you know where you could just put it down beside your bed at night and just suck all of the knowledge out of it yep that doesn't work so time is something that we have to give and time of course is our most valuable possession we can always get more money but we can never get more time so may i suggest setting aside something that is most precious to you to learn about something that is more precious than gold the bible says of itself god's word is more precious than gold or diamonds or rubies maybe even just 15 minutes a day okay so set aside some time get into a regular habit of reading the bible and i would suggest you might want to do this in a specific place when we read the story of jesus uh if you've been following along with us as we went through mark you'll you'll remember that jesus would often go to a sort of a private place or a solitary place and i i reckon you could probably do that when it comes to reading the bible i go to a particular room that will not mention the name of and i go there expecting that god is going to speak to me it's the one room in the house which is quiet and i don't get disturbed you know where i'm talking about right for you it could be on the bus it could be on a train or maybe a specific coffee shop it doesn't matter find a place that works for you and get into a pattern into a habit of reading the bible okay start getting into it if you really want to get into the bible then try the bible in one year again this is an app that you can download it's from alpha and again it's free and it takes you through the entire bible each and every day so in 365 days you've read the entirety of the bible and if you've never read the whole bible like that i would suggest that you do it we've done it as a family it's brilliant you even get nikki gumbel uh explaining what you're reading and he has one of the most soothing and lovely voices that god has ever placed on this earth let me tell you so it's a great app and it is definitely worth getting and reading through it like that is a great thing to do so it's a big challenge from me to you if you've not done it have at it have a go now if you're wanting to go deeper in your walk with god then you are going to want to move from just kind of reading the bible to maybe studying the bible so how do i do that how do i study the bible well for me there are many many ways to do this but by far my two favorite ways are simply this right number one i like to take a book in the bible like the gospel of mark and work through it slowly verse by verse i like to read those verses and read around it read the context dig into it read commentaries on it understand the background and as i study i like to write notes you know in my book i like to throw my pen around in my book or actually i use an app on my on my ipad i've got that little keyboard thing which just brilliant for me and that's what works for me right i gather documents i start to pull all this together and i start to write down my own ideas what do i think about it and here's the important question you've always got to ask what is god saying to me okay it's the most important question we read about what is god saying to me here okay and as i'm writing stuff down i'm trying to answer that question the second way that i like to study the bible so one way is to read a book uh through you know read one of the books in the bible the second way is to study an actual topic in the bible so let's take for example the topic of money pretty big topic so ask yourself what does the bible say about money then use the search function on your bible app to find every single reference in the bible to the word read those verses read around those verses and get the context understand what's going on understand the background why is writer put this in and then ask yourself what is god saying to me through this write it down learn about it look at what others have said about those ideas and verses too then look for similar words to money i don't know words like wages or income or profit or giving or provision and so on and so forth right and look at some of the maybe the wider topics or the similar topics surrounding it and build up a picture what we never and please hear me on this what we never do is take a single verse and form a theology out of it i know a lot of people have done this including myself over the years but one of the things that we learn as we grow older is actually the bible is pretty good at confirming itself so uh we never just take one verse out of context and put a theology around it that's just not helpful but what we can do is we can start to dig in and get all of this information all of this stuff that the bible has to say and bring it together and we understand jesus and what jesus is doing we under understand the context of god's goodness and god's love and then we go what is god saying here what is he saying to me not a single verse where we're forming a theology we're forming a theology on the entirety of scripture okay so dig into it dig into those topics and if you're wondering what to study in the bible well start with key topics like love faith and hope or you can look at one of my favorites which is identity who am i what does god say about me who does he say that i am these are great questions right what does god say about you and you can also look at things like money and health and marriage and forgiveness or sex and all the big topics that we like to know about but what resonates with you right now okay i would suggest if you're struggling say with anxiety find out what the bible says about it not just what your pastor says about it not just what uh a quick bible study you've read on it says about it not not just what someone's book says about it not what the internet says about it or what somebody on the bbc news said about it dig into it for yourself be responsible and find out what the bible says on it right determine to spend i don't know the next few weeks or months looking at the topic and digging into it all the time answering the key question you need to be answering when studied the bible through this and here's the kicker right here's j here's the genuine kicker in all of this because i get excited when i read the book it's all the stuff that comes out of it what's god saying to me and then if you really want to push yourself ask yourself this what am i gonna do about it don't ever fall into the trap of just being one of those christians that reads the bible but then doesn't do what it says just want to throw that out there you see sometimes the bible is hard to read it's hard to understand it's hard to grasp it can lead to a lot of questions that you have to kind of wrestle with it's i heard a great analogy actually from nikki gumbel who did the bible in one year app he said the bible's a bit like a crossword you kind of have to look for clues and maybe solve other parts of the puzzle if you can't solve this bit and then come back to it later that's that's kind of what it is with the bible sometimes we don't get all the topics sometimes we don't understand things but we can solve this over here and come back to it you see if you go to youtube there are all kinds of videos about contradictions in the bible and then if you dig further there are all kinds of videos contradicting the contradictions in the bible some people love it some people hate it but that's the mystery of it it's the mystery of god revealed on paper to us it's the most popular book ever yet it's one of the most contested books ever and if you live in the west i reckon it's probably had more of an impact on you than you can possibly imagine here's what the apostle paul had to say about it he said all scripture is inspired by god and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives it corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right god uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work now sure there are a lot of questions around it the thing is though you have to get into it you have to read it for yourself you cannot outsource the bible spend just 15 minutes a day get into it and see what a difference it makes in your life the holy scriptures augustine of hippo wrote are our letters from home wow brilliant thanks matt for that um loads of us loads of things in that for us to get talking about so do put your comments put your thoughts down and let us know what you think what would you like us to discuss what would you like us to talk about we want to talk about the things that are important to you and the questions that have been thrown up for you so do put those in the comments before we get into that though we are going to have a worship song and it's called the lion and the lamb and that can be a bit odd if you're not really familiar with some christian words about what the lion and the lamb is but it's basically it's talking about two very different sides of the personality of jesus so we're talking about the lion the powerful ruler that is jesus but also the lamb who made that sacrifice for us by dying on the cross so both of those are parts of the same jesus and this song is all about that so we're going to get into this now feel free to sing along if you know it or just let the words kind of minister to you and wash over you and just have a think about what you thought about matt's talk about the bible and don't forget to put your thoughts and to put your questions into the comments and we'll be back shortly after this he's coming on the clouds kings and kingdoms will bow down every chain will break as broken hearts declare his praise for who can stop the lord almighty our god is the lion the lion of judah he's roaring with power and fighting our battles every knee will bow be for him our god is the lamb the lion that was slain for the sin of the world his blood breaks the chains and every knee will bow before the lion and the lamb and every knee will bow be for him open up the gates make way before the king of kings the god who comes to save is here to set the captives free for who can stop the lord almighty our god is [Applause] oh for him you can stop the lord almighty who can stop the lord oh my team you can stop the lord almighty who can stop the lord almighty you can stop the lord o my team who can stop the lord o mighty who can stop the lord he's roaring with power and fighting our battles every knee will bow be for him the lion that was slain for the sin of the world his blood breaks the chains and every knee will bow before the light and the loud be for him so very good love the track love it thank you guys for doing that for us really good great words as well great and what a good explanation on the line and the lamb too so well thank you because it's one of those things though isn't it one of those things you sort of think what we just sing this stuff and kind of go oh yeah yeah you know it's the line and the lamb but actually it's you know we need to kind of explain what these things mean sorry my camera's going a bit fuzzy i'm not quite sure why i'm trying and do that it will come back it will come back it is funny the stuff that christians do and say uh and with assumed meaning so good good spot mrs burch good spot thank you very much so uh yeah the talk let's talk about the bible because we've got conversation street before we do catch up in about ten minutes time so we're gonna have a little conversation about all things uh so if you've got any questions throw them in uh sharon's put a question in here why are there so many versions of the bible it's probably a good place to start and what sharon is asking here is um if you walk into any bookstore right and you look for a version of the bible you want to go and get a copy of the bible there are different versions of it so in the talk i talked about the niv i talked about the message translation there's you know the traditional king james bible which was used for 100 years there are about 50 english bibles different versions of the english bible alone that's before we think about this 7 000 odd languages you know out there in the world that we may or may not have translated the bible into yeah so that's a lot of versions right that's a lot there's a lot of versions so have you got any thoughts onto why we've got 50 versions of the bible well i think that over time um you know different um translations have become available as we've tried we've become more modern and as we've had more access to different historical artifacts and things i think that's certainly been something that's changed and meant that they've been more um interpretations of the bible um and i think to make it more accessible to people i think each time that the bible has been um translated into a different way for example like the message that is to try and make it accessible to a different group of people so that's definitely part of it would you say yeah i would um the way they translate the bible i think is quite is quite an interesting one right so if you think we've got you know thousands of greek manuscripts and um hebrew manuscripts and you've got and you're then translating that into an english language obviously you know there's different ways you can translate this if anyone has translated french to english you'll know what i'm talking about you can do like a literal word for word translation right you can say right this word in greek means this word in english and so you can translate on a literal basis so some of the bible versions like the king james bible the english standard version the new king james the new american standard they tend to be more literal translations which makes them a little bit tricky to read um yeah it's just a direct what some of the different versions like the niv and the message try and do is they try and say well we know what the literal translation is how do we make this maybe a bit more functional and so and how do we make it easier to read which is why sometimes it's good to read scripture from different translations so you don't just get into one pattern that would be mine yeah yeah definitely it can give you a different uh whole different understanding on a passage but that exactly what you said about when you're learning a language i'd learn a bit of french at school and if you translate something exactly word for word you just don't get the sense of um what someone's necessarily trying to say and when you translate it into perhaps a phrase or an idiom that we use all the time and then into the french version then that makes much more sense that way so it's about getting a sort of broader picture about what is actually meant rather than just getting the kind of literal yeah so that's really important yeah very good point yeah so brilliant yeah and like you say language has evolved as well so the old king james uses the word charity which uh in the 17th century meant something very different to what we mean now so we've trans we've re-translated that to the word love right so lots of examples like that so yes um yeah yeah that would be i think that's why and i i actually like the fact there are different versions because you do get a bit more of a breadth a bit more of an understanding um what is going on so yeah yes definitely yeah i think you're if you're um looking at the bible for the first time though i think you said this matt in your talk but if if it's definitely if it's something that you're approaching for the first time it can seem a bit daunting and it can be hard to understand i likes that you said about you know go straight to one of the gospels which is really helpful but the message version i think is really helpful for that because it is much more a sort of modern speak so that that would definitely kind of help you to understand it a little bit more if it's something that you feel a little bit daunted by if you're doing that for the first time yeah totally the message or the ni the new international version anything like that i think will really help you and to be honest with you now i mentioned this in the talk you can literally go to the app store and i'm doing it now and if you put in the bible app uh in uh the in the app store you it comes up on the phone you i don't know if you can see this it's on my phone there there you go yeah a little bit there we go that's it right there totally free to download yeah that has got all the different versions on it so if you just if you do want to get in the bible honestly i'd recommend just downloading that and then just starting with one of the gospels matthew marley called john when i first started reading the gospels do you know what the first gospel i read was i wondered could it be matt by any chance the gospel of matt other nights known as matthew but no if if you are going to start with the gospel and you want to start with mark then you know you could always use all of the talks that are on um on our crowd church website because we went through the gospel of mark and so you might find that you want to like read a bit and then listen to maybe one of the talks about the bit that you just read and you could find that really helpful to understand um what you're reading yeah a little tip there so one of the questions here sal can you give an example of how reading the bible has challenged or changed you in any area of your life uh oh challenged or changed yes i think there's that's happened a lot through my life um and it's usually taken people who know a little bit more about what they're talking about than me so you know i love it when you you hear a really good speaker um talk about a bit in the bible that you thought you've always understood and you've thought it meant one thing and you've kind of just gone oh yeah that bit and then they talk about it and it's like oh wow that's just you know brought it completely alive to me um specific examples this might be a bit controversial but um i grew up in a kind of a church that didn't not that they didn't value women but certainly women were not um seen as important as men that's certainly how it felt to me as a teenager kind of growing up and you know women weren't allowed to preach and they weren't allowed to be leaders in leadership and things and i really struggled with that i just i felt that that was not okay and not what god wanted but i really i found it difficult to actually you know would prove biblically that oh you know my case especially when other people who are much older and you know seemingly no more or you know they think um and then i remember um being at frontline which is the church in liverpool that we're part of and john harding who is the senior pastor there he did a preach about it and about women and how important women are in the bible and how jesus sees women and how women are equal to me you know just incredible and i was sort of like going yes that that's exactly what i knew that's exactly what i believed but i just needed somebody to kind of show me the proof of it you know in the bible and that that was that was kind of life-changing really because it just underlined and confirmed everything i sort of thought about god that god loves women and sees women as so valuable and important and equal to men yeah um so yeah there you go long answer for that question though it's a good answer it was a good answer i remember when i uh before i became a christian i used to worry a lot and um and i used to you know i used to have certain emotions certain feelings and you'd read in the bible a lot of different things like don't worry and you know you don't have to feel shame and and all these sorts of things and one of the things that the bible has done for me in terms of transformation there's this wonderful verse right in the book of romans paul writes it and he's writing to the roman church and he says this in romans 12. he says be transformed by the renewing of your mind and this word transform right it's like um it was it's the greek word which means metamorphosis you know when a yeah he's always told it's like when a butterfly becomes a caterpillar which for me was really boring uh the best uh analogy was when uh bruce banner becomes the hulk right it's like it goes through this it's a it's a guy thing uh excuse me i'm a massive marvel fan i'm going to pick you up right there on that go for it yeah do you prefer the hulk metaphor over the butterfly one i do well you could have gone with eric and banana man but you know that's a bit of a niche the whole analogy yeah yeah the transformation that occurs comes by renewing your mind and what paul is talking about here is he's saying basically you think one way before you become a christian and what the bible is really good at doing is helping you think a different way about life and situations and circumstances it kind of puts them in a very different light when you read them in the context of your faith and you know how big god is and so life the transformation happens because your your thinking has changed so going back to your example cell the way you thought that transformation happened because the scripture changed how you thought you see what i mean or how you interpreted that scripture or how that scripture maybe was presented to you as probably a pharaoh yeah yes yeah and so uh to answer the question uh can you give an example yes so many because this the bible transforms your thinking you know so you go from as i'm not saying that i don't worry don't don't mishear me i'm just saying but now i'm in a place where i have a lot more peace and a lot more faith because of what i've read in scripture and i don't have to worry about a lot more things yeah i was actually thinking about that about the um the first that the verses that trev said last week when we were talking about um prayer and he talked about um assam actually and that talks about worry and he talked about that being um at night that he would pray that or you know read that and to help with his worry and anxiety i think that was psalm 27 so that's it's those sorts of things isn't it that can bring real comfort yeah massive so massive so matt cox has put in the comments here that the gospel of matt was his first gospel that he read as well yeah there isn't a gospel of sally unfortunately otherwise i'd have definitely read that i wonder what it would say so i wonder what it would say well perhaps i should uh not in a not in a heretic way is to try and rewrite the bible but perhaps i should write a gospel according to sally yeah i'd buy it okay i don't know if i'd live my life bite but i definitely would buy it okay brilliant absolutely brilliant it is 6 45. we are gonna end conversation street there thank you so i think we just need to have one more question though because i think matt has put a question that he would like a very important question so um he's put the main question clearly got loads of questions about the bible but his main question is does black pudding truly belong on a full english and the answer to that is no it's a giant any kind of wayne it's a giant scab it doesn't belong on a full english no that's a giant for anybody outside of the uk let me explain to you whilst you're watching this a full english is a is a phrase we use to describe a particular type of breakfast we call it the full english breakfast and it has sausage and bacon and tomatoes and it's a big fry up more calories than you can count and in there depending on where you eat it it will contain black pudding and black pudding is one of those things you either love it or you absolutely hate it now black pudding in effect is dried blood so um disgusting this is why people either love it or hate it so just to give you a bit of context if you're outside the uk i'm of the camp that black pudding should be just never talked about again because oh we agree i can't believe that's like the first time ever yeah but everyone else in the comments is nicholas put here i see your point sally uh but you're wrong just leave it there just leave it there don't read the rest of her comment that's great thanks nicola i'm glad you see my point that's brilliant matt cox says it does belong on the plate uh nicholas actually corrects does it's pig's blood uh this is what you're eating and sharon is don't know it's just wrong to eat black pudding so uh just want to you know this is this is why you come to church on a sunday this is why this is a very important question questions yeah the really important questions come on matt let's get on with catch up here we go ready got to do the hair shake first literally you do you have to you get it back you just like pop it forward that's how it works hello everyone and welcome to this week's crowd catch up my name's elias and in case you don't know what crowd catch-up is just a little section where we talk about what we've been doing in the week and this is not any normal week this is a special week on catch up today we have a very special celebrity guest josh anderson yeah sorry to hype you up and then disappoint you severely with my appearance i'm not disappointed oh thanks a lot but yes this is a very special catch-up this week it's been almost a year to the day since the very first catch-up video so elias i thought it would be good fun if we took a look at the catch-up videos throughout the past year and we could see okay where we started and where we are a lot all right i mean of course this is before your time oh yeah yeah so it's it's already going to be slightly lacking perhaps that could be it could be said what was room for improvement it's like what's the one thing that crowd ketchum it needs in our life it is a lot obviously yeah so let's take a look at those videos welcome to the very first sunday catcher my name is josh the hair shorter i am the son of the wonderful you may have seen around here it looks slightly like a pineapple every week would collate a few videos from the community but he's the first one he's gonna have another that's true that would otherwise killing cows there's only any cat shot videos since josh why is that i don't know currently in barnsley for the weekend and we are we're going to wentworth castle gardens which is a national oh yeah that was the first one really yeah it doesn't feel like it's the first one i don't own his bike this is quite a common occurrence in canada for a while but what i didn't do is i didn't bring it back as you can tell and so this was my crazy idea uh for holding the paperwork and i used to bring home on my bike there we go nice oh yeah here was zach breaking his deadlift from all right max wow for those of you who haven't closed lift such a stupidly heavy weight report of perspective physics if you've ever tried to pick up me it'd be like picking up two meats but i'm assuming most of you haven't tried to do that well a safe assumption that i can relate this weight to okay and so i was like oh everyone carries a smartphone so let's work out how heavy this is in terms of smartphones i feel myself doing the whole thing including the calculation right okay so what do you really need i kind of follow what you're doing ish but so that's the same as lifting almost 700 iphone 10. wow wow wow what what did you think i mean we didn't we had a more diverse range for sure your intro is different josh yeah you've improved your improved style for sure i'm glad i'm glad that there's been some kind of improvement the hair has also improved slightly pineapples just unkept unkept you see what i was thinking was you know i study physics yeah and something that i've noticed is physics students at university including myself just like to talk about physics really you know i figured it was only fair that i modeled my hair after people like einstein just to give people fair warning that i studied right physics yeah there are conversations with him let's jump to the first catch up with an intro if i can remember where that is i was very proud of this one hello and welcome to this week's sunday ketchup wow okay already yeah so this is the first time we got the music i think i'd spend like the past week working on this track and i was like i'm gonna have it ready for ketchup it's gotta be there i can't remember what inspired me to do a coffee based intro it might have been peter mckinnon if anyone has seen his stuff on youtube oh here we go this took ages to do there we go that's nice though thanks for those of you who don't know me allow me to introduce myself my name is josh edmondson i am initially yeah this week actually so is proving to be slightly more tricky yeah the admin carries one performance for that when you move another thing i've been up to this week is i have been reading it's finished i would say sapiens can actually just catch up finish the book and give it a review yeah yeah not entirely yeah do you think it should be sapiens or sapiens my dad matt edmondson who is the general emcee for frontline seniors oh yeah so this was the composition that i was telling you about it was who practiced this oh matt crew oh no not matt cruz not much crew oh man matt crew you've just been so consistent with your pictures thank you for them by the way i think you might actually be the most consistent person when it comes to sending in something for granted there should be a warfare show there should be is okay sorry about the hard cut there nice segue there yeah yeah very nice segue what i'm gonna do um uh with the ketchup video right we are gonna split it into two halves so i am gonna play the second half of the ketchup video because it is a bit of a review over the last year and i have to be honest i've i've actually enjoyed reliving some of these points reliving some of these memories uh seeing all the different hairstyles yeah there's been a few it's been a few yeah yeah did you um did you see what eliza do the start of ketchup there with his with his hair is that what you do no no uh how are you doing he's done this a few times is this this flick thing so i think uh can you do that self does that work for you with your long hair like this yeah yeah there you go okay yeah you can't do it though you haven't got enough hair to do it no no it's just getting further and further back bless it so you know we take what we can get these days so before we play the rest of ketchup video i'm aware of the time so we just wanted to jump in and say thanks so much for joining us this week it's great you can join us uh on the church livestream hope you enjoyed the conversation about all things bible i thought that was quite yeah uh it's quite a good meaty topic to get into for a sunday evening absolutely yeah definitely really interesting and i just always feel like there's so much more that we could talk about sometimes you think you know we're going to have enough to fill the time but there's always so much more that we can say so it's been really really good and that's why we really want you to put your thoughts and comments into that we're talking about the things that are important to you absolutely yeah so make sure you do that come join us next week uh as we are talking about how does god go into us yeah yeah i thought you should have gone for a second there matt but well done a little think i was like out of the recesses of your mind yeah how does god guide us and um thank you for pointing that out though so appreciate that oh you're welcome you're welcome i just thought you know you're so perfect 99 of the time matt i thought i just you know went out of the way this is not a robot do me a favor can you can you put that in writing sorry as my sarcasm was taken over there that'll be definitely in the gospel according to sally is maximum use of sarcasm yeah so next week your hosts will be james and anna yeah yeah and james and they're gonna be happy yeah very excited to see those two together hosting which will be fun uh i have no doubt so um whatever you're doing uh this week so you're away you're camping right yes i'm camping i'm really really hoping for some good weather while we're away there's 24 of us going camping loads of teenagers i think it's going to be really good fun so there'll definitely be plenty of photos for catch up next week from us you heard it here first folks uh so on that actually that really interesting segment segway we are going to end the service here i am now going to play the rest of the catch-up video which you guys can er enjoy watching just reliving some of the memories over the last year of doing online church which has been absolutely fantastic so thanks josh and elias for doing this video i'm yeah thanks guys when this video finishes the live stream will end just so you know and uh the number again on the screen if you want to get in touch with us via whatsapp or via the website is on there sally's going to point to it now we would love to hear from you you know what we should do a collection of uh no no let's not do that george and elias if you're listening to this i think we should do like uh you know every time sally tries to point to this number here let's not do that you could do a lot of my outtakes couldn't you stupid things that sally says you could definitely have a whole a whole special service just of those things so yeah it only lasts a minute it only lasts a minute you'll be fine thanks man thanks man yeah you're welcome all right have a great week everybody i'm gonna bring ketchup back on yeah give me a few seconds to get it in place and we will see you again next week bye for now see you next week have a great week ninja mask yeah just in case the point hadn't come across yeah seven days between now and the next service and i hadn't quite worked out the outro that i was going to consistently use take it easy yeah that came with time but yeah there we go first time we used the ketchup title slide and theme i think i think the intro is a very good person i like the coffee thing yeah yeah i should probably bring that back at some point yeah like maybe like a like a different one over like month or so you know yeah truly true maybe we could put it to every month rather than every week okay let me prove to you that i did do this cartwheel okay okay yes here we go here we go filmed by the marvelous benvo on the beach as well yeah yeah but he seems to be a good location for this all right it's pretty good pretty good oh and then that was the first time i've done a couple it's pretty good that's pretty good i have not seen your cartwheel slide i don't know what's one job well we have a large stretch of garden if you'd like to attempt one now i don't i don't think the camera picking up really something oh i could move it that's yeah trouble well you know it's worth a try if you want john you might want to take out your little ear bud first potentially okay okay let's let's find we're doing this then so this is the first cartwheel attempt we've had in almost a year i don't know which way to do it just can't wheel towards me look at that yeah yeah yeah i'm content with that yeah all right fine comment down below whose cartwheel you thought was best mineralized and there is a right answer to this by the way there is indeed different rice answers yeah yeah i think we might be thinking of two different things okay well i think we'll call it there on the catch-up videos what did you think overriding thoughts yeah it's definitely come a long way honestly i think it could do with the intro still we carried on with the little coffee things like that bring back coffee intros i reckon so this is it every once in a while once in a while yeah once in a while do you think we should bring back coffee intros also put that down in the comments no i agree with you i think it has come a long way i'm glad that you say that because if you didn't and there had been no change after a year that's all right that's all what do we do now alex can we do the afternoon we do do the show can you remember what the outro is um i think we're gonna tag him on this if you want to send in your own clips you can send to a hashtag crowdcutshop on instagram or you can send to nobron number on the screen yeah except it's down it's always there it's always done yeah i was points out there was one time i think you tried to get me straight up and then she just didn't i think thanks boss on bottom of the screen everyone bottom of the screen being waved up i think zoe's going right so zoe's just been waving at us through the door i think she was trying to say goodbye oh she's going she's going away with your sister actually is she annelise is elias's sister and she and my sister are actually going away for the next few days and you just you just didn't know no not at all i had no clue excellent that's awful a lot as elias was saying earlier there are two ways that you can send them in either the whatsapp number on the bottom of the bottom down the bottom of the screen or the hashtag or i'd catch up on instagram that's all from us this week i hope you enjoyed this special episode yeah and we're hopefully looking to do a little more of this kind of in-person partner thing in the future i've really enjoyed it enjoy it soon enjoy awesome be good well catch you next time bye guys amazing yeah outro fell to pieces but it's all right i think zoe waving the window did not help