Some Lessons Learned the Harder Way :: By Steve Schmutzer

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.

www.solidbreadcommunity.com

Please follow Solid Bread Community’s Facebook.

Subscribe to ‘Solid Bread Community’ on YouTube.

The post Some Lessons Learned the Harder Way :: By Steve Schmutzer appeared first on Rapture Ready.