Alpha - anyone starting the course this Autumn?

[newbeliever]

Hi everyone, I mentioned on another thread about starting a thread for Alpha newbies.

I have signed up to do the course this Autumn, starts Tuesday, 28th September. Was quite surprised when I rang the parish office, there are about 40 people on the course - and it's for 3 hours each week - I was thinking 2 hours max! They start the evening off with dinner and drinks before moving onto the topic for the week. How do your churches run the course?

Thought it would be nice to share our thoughts each week in a safe place - I'm worried about not knowing what to say or just not understanding the topic so would be good to have some fellow MNr's on the journey too.

Anyone else want to join me?

The service sounded lovely nb, so glad you found it helpful, and yes you're right the time will come for you, you will know when it is. :)

Resisting evil....trying to think of a book. The most helpful thing I can think of on this subject at this moment is to remember who is the stronger one. It's easy to get embroiled in worry about the devil, what attack can do etc, but actually we are protected, we are on the stronger side, and compared to God the devil is a puny little wimp with not a heck of a lot of power. In a way it's better not to think on it too much, as it does say in the Screwtape Letters actually, one of the schemes of the devil is to get people thinking and worrying about him too much. Think about God instead. It says in the bible that praise is a weapon, so concentrate on praising God, it does amazing things and helps you resist evil in a deep and powerful way.

Bit of a stream of consciousness there...will have more of a think.

Lovely to hear about the baptism, NB.

Thanks for the prayers. I am home following a bit of a traumatic time in hospital, but God looked after me, so all's good now. Results of the tumour (benign/malignant) in a couple of weeks.

I agree with Madhairday about resisting the devil. I think some people give him too much credit for things. Dont look at what the devil is doing, just look to Jesus. But one thing I try to bear in mind is that, if I feel the devil is after me, he must be concerned about whatever I am doing for God, so it encourages me to keep going. (IYSWIM)

So lovely to see how far you have both come these past few weeks, NB & Oxo. Thank you for sharing.

Well my friends were baptised today - outdoors in November, although the sun did shine. It was very special.

Unfortunately, there was a guest speaker, a preacher from America, who gave the sermon beforehand and I didn't feel it was terribly moving or inspirational. It was a shame as my three kids had all come along for the first time and I was really hoping they would be moved as I was 6 months ago but it was a very different vibe.

Nevermind - the seeds are planted and all I can do now is sit back and watch to see if God choses to act

Hi hope you don't mind me joining this thread...I've atrted going to church with my friend - its a newlife church, very sing-y andclappy and evagenical i guess..Anyway, have been invited to do an Alpha course run by one of the congregation and have been looking it all up. To be frank, I'm a bit concerned by some of the things I've been reading, it sounds like people are more or less forced to belive and the whole 'holy spirit' stuff sounds rather disturbing! Can anyone help me through my doubts?

Hi Coolma, welcome to the thread .

Not sure if I'm the best person to answer your questions as I'm currently still on the Alpha course myself, but can certainly give you a quick overview of how I've found it.

I go to a CofE church, they don't make use of the videos each week (which I know some churches do), the vicar or curate themselves present the topic for the week.

I was apprehensive before I started, but I felt it was something I needed to do as I had reached a crossroads and I wanted answers to some of my questions. I found the first few weeks great for that - I also found that quite a few of the other people in my group asked the burning questions that I had without me having to speak up which was nice some weeks .

Like you, I had concerns about the Holy Spirit day, especially the part relating to speaking tongues etc. I have to say, that so far that has been the highlight of the course. There was absolutely no pressure to take part in the prayer session relating to the HS, however, having come to the realisation a couple of weeks before that I did want to be a Chrisitan, I found it a wonderful experience. I was still buzzing almost a week later.

I'm afraid I don't know anything about Newlife churches - hopefully someone will come to your aid who has been on a Alpha course through that church.

I'm sure the other regulars on this thread will be along soon to offer their help and advice too. Do let us know what you decide to do.

Oxo - I know how you feel. DH came along today (he's missed the last couple because of work)- the whole service + sermon talked about money and how much the church needs us to donate - you should have seen my DHs face when 10% of your income was mentioned. He was .

Glad your DCs accompanied you though - did they not attend a junior church during the service?

The baptism sounds amazing too - was the water heated?

PA, how are you? Hope you are getting plenty of rest and help from your family Will be praying for you that your receive good news with regards to your test results.

You're right, it's been quite a journey over the last couple of months - I've surprised myself as to how far I have come. Thanks for the advice relating to the devil - wise words, I will try to follow them!

Madhair - didn't want you to think I was ignorning you - I must check mumsnet more often - thank you also for your continued support.

NB, yes the water was warm but it didn't stop everyone shaking like mad when they stepped back into the 3 deg November chill!! One of the testimonies was especially moving - so from the heart. It was quite short but to the point. One of them went on for rather a long time and we all lost the plot a bit

Coolma, welcome to the Alpha thread. TBH, I wouldn't start thinking about the Holy Spirit weekend until you are further into the course. It does sound a bit weird and wacky (I still find some things like speaking in tongues rather odd but not frightening) but I've come to think of it as simply a different way of speaking to God. Its not the way I do it but I understand in theory why some say it gives them words when they don't know what to say or pray.

I've found the Alpha course interesting and have learned a lot about myself as well as about Faith in general. There are still things I struggle with and find harm to condemn as 'sins'. Give it a go if you are curious. You could always try the first session then leave it if its not what you are looking for

Sorry NB, meant to add that my two older kids are 13 and 15 and chose to stay for the adult service. My 9 year old wanted to go to the kids' service but couldn't go with his friend who is a little older than him and in a different age catagorie. The other kids and leaders wouldn't be speaking English so he lost confidence and came back to sit with me

Hi guys, sorry I've not posted here for ages :(

I'm still in a 'struggling' phase. The Holy Spirit day was really good and it was nice to meet some new people and to see a different style of leadership on the course. Anyway, at the end they asked if they could pray for each of us and they had ideas of what they thought we needed praying for and checked with us if they were on the right track. For me I'm still stuck at the 'does God exist' phase and so they wanted to pray that over the course of the next week God would show himself to me. It was quite emotional and I ended up crying :(

Anyway, the next day the church that I do my regular Alpha course with were having a guest service and I had been invited along (I think I mentioned earlier on that I'm the only one on my course who doesn't already go to the church). It was interesting but I was still left with all these niggles. Then at the end we all stood up to pray and as I did I got blinded by the sun (freudian slip there as I typed 'son' first) shining through a small window (there was a blind down but a small gap at the bottom). My first thought was 'stupid sun' but as I stood there the story of Paul on the road to Damascus came to mind. So that created more issues. Was I just thinking that because I knew about the prayer the day before etc.

Then on the Tuesday of that week I was reading the daily reading of Nicky Gumbel's book '30 Days' and it was about the Prodigal Son. When I first started doing the Alpha course I didn't tell my parents (who are VERY Christian) because I didn't want them to get all excited and think that I was going to become a Christian again - you know, the prodigal daughter etc! So, is that something? Because of course I would have read that even if I hadn't been prayed for.

So, it's two weeks later now and I'm still not sure. I just can't seem to get over this very basic hurdle :(

Sorry for the long post!

Hi coolmama. My course is run by a Newlife Church as well.

Willowfae Hope you don't mind me butting in. I am mostly just lurking here, but am also a relatively recent 'returner' to church and faith and I wanted to reply to your post. I am sure that 'regulars' here, who are wiser than I am, will be along soon to offer their insights, but - for what it's worth - I wanted to share my experience.

I also feel that since I have been here (temporarily living abroad) and have been attending Church again I've had a series of signs. Not as dramatic as your Damascene moment, just little things that have added up to more than the sum of their parts somehow. None of these things that have happened is particularly striking or unusual in itself, and each and every one of them could have been a coincidence. But for me the key thing has been that I have felt able to 'read' them in a way that has been particularly meaningful to me at that moment in my life generally and, I suppose, in my faith journey. And it strikes me that signs are just that - signposts, like the ones on the motorway that tell you when to get off. The one that says 'Bristol M32' [picked randomly cos I am nowhere near Bristol!] is there all the time, but it becomes meaningful to you at the moment when you're driving along the M4 wondering where to turn off to get to Bristol... So, for me, what has strengthened my faith has been not the appearance of the signs themselves, which were there all the time, but the fact that I have found myself able to - inspired to, if you want - interpret them in a way that has helped me to make some difficult decisions and, in small but important ways, to change my life. Does that make sense?

I have a passage by [??]Hugh of St Victor[??] in mind (am a medievalist by training...) which says this much much better than I can. Will try to find it for you because I fear that I am waffling.

Sorry for crashing the thread...

Here you go:

"For this whole visible universe is as a book, written by the finger of God, that is, created by divine power; and individual creatures are as figures therein, not devised by human will but instituted by divine authority to show forth the wisdom of the invisible things of God. But just as some illiterate man who sees an open book looks at the figures but does not recognise the letters, just so the foolish man who does not perceive the things of God sees outwardly in these visible creatures the appearances but does not inwardly understand the reason. But he who is spiritual and can judge all things, while he considers outwardly the beauty of the work, inwardly conceives how marvellous is the wisdom of the Creator."

It was Hugh of St Victor. And here's another thing... I could find this so quickly because this very morning a colleague (back in the UK) asked if he could have a copy of a handout I'd created ages ago with this quote on it and I spent about half an hour looking for it for him. So there it was at my fingertips when I wanted it for you... Could be a coincidence, of course.

Anyway, this is exactly how I think about what has happened to me recently. Basically, I learned to read a bit better...

Good luck and I hope this makes some sort of sense. I don't really have anyone I can talk to about this sort of thing (DH is the opposite of helpful), so I may be spouting rubbish!

WillowFae - I do sympathise with you. Unheardof makes a lots of sense and I agree with what she says - can I address the question in a slightly different way, though?

Christians talk a lot about faith. When it somes down to whether or not God exists, and whether or not we can prove it, we talk about faith. God's existence cannot be proved (or unproved!) - it is simply a question of putting your faith in the idea that he does, and that he has everything in hand. Non-believers think this is a cop-out. Many will say 'that's all very well for you, but I just don't HAVE faith. I cannot just choose it'. Personally, I don't think that is true, because 'choosing' to have faith is precisely what I have done, and continue to do daily.

I am an adult convert. I never had a Damascus moment at all, but I did get a series of 'signs'. None of them made me irrefutably believe / know with certainty that there is a God, but what they did do was get me to a place where I was prepared to take that 'leap of faith'. I, literally, got to the point of thinking 'Ok, I'm going to work on the assumption that there IS a God, that he DOES love me, and see where that takes me'.

'Working on the assumption' that there is a God is, for me, what faith is. And that simple assumption and acceptance has (over the years) made my life vastly different (and happier) to what it would have been. To live my life and to read the signs around me in the context of God has brought a sense of peace, love and certainty that I would not otherwise have had. This is how He works!

I'm worried that what I have said sounds as though I decided to 'pretend' that there is a God. This isn't the case at all. It's more that I believe that faith is an active, conscious, daily choice. Maybe for some people a belief in God is unquestioningly there, and they had at some point a wonderful 'thunderbolt' moment to 'prove' it to themselves. But for many others, belief in God is a choice. You simply have to choose to make that leap, and wait for Him to catch you! That takes a far greater strength of faith than any Damascus moment :)

I hope that makes some sense.

Willowfae, sorry you are still struggling but the comments given by MrsC and TUO seem to make an awful lot of sense. I went into Alpha believing in God but it took me until probably the HS weekend to really feel that total commitment and give myself to Christ.

Mrs C and Unheard of, you both put across your points of view so well. Do you mind if I print out your comments and use them as a discussion point for my last Alpha meeting tomorrow? I think these insights will also be very useful for the leaders to use on the next Alpha course.

I talked to one of the course leaders yesterday who has run Alpha for the last 5 years, running 3 courses every year. She asked if I would like to come to the next course as a helper, giving a hand with food, making coffee and tea, with rotas for lifts if people don't have a car and so on, but it also means getting to know and praying with the next people on the new Alpha course which will begin in January.

I was a bit surprised to be asked TBH as I am such a new Christian but she said that was precisely one of the reasons why she had asked me!! She said that often, people who have just finished Alpha are the ones who are the most enthusiastic about it.

Oxo, of course I don't mind :) I'm so glad you found my comments helpful - it can be so difficult to try to find a way to express to someone else what is essentially a completely subjective experience, so I'm glad it makes sense to you!

Willowfae, I just wanted to make one further point. Don't feel that by accepting God and finding 'faith' you also have to stop thinking and questioning. That isn't how it works :)

Willowfae, I recognise myself from a couple of years back in what you wrote. Sorry to butt in. Been lurking on this thread from the start and would like to comment, if I may. MrsC, I would say that what you describe is the difference between an adult faith and a child's faith. I've grown up in a Christian setting, studied theology for a year, had a major crisis of faith and jumped ship completely, and have been working my way back for the last 20 years or so, sometimes taking 2 steps forward and 3 steps back, at other times taking number of tiny baby steps forward so that the end result is that I am moving closer to God but not very fast IYSWIM.

My faith is not at all the same as it was before it all crashed, but what faith I have, I know is mine: I haven't just "absorbed" it or accepted it as given. It is hard-won and tested. I agree that faith is something I choose on a daily basis, almost in the same way that I choose to love my husband even when I don't feel like I do (Just to clarify, I am very happily married and would not change that for the world .)

After leaving the church and turning my back on God, it was a great relief when I one day realised that God existed whether I chose to believe in him or not. His existance did not depend on me making him up in my mind. I did not have to "carry" him for him to exist. He just IS. The result if this "insight" was not that I immediately turned back to the church or even God at the time and, as I said, the way back has been filled with setbacks, but what it did do was shift the emphasis a bit from "do I believe that God exists?" to "if he does exist, how do I respond?", which is actually more constructive, especially if, like me, you tend to pick things apart ad infinitum.

I'm constantly struggling with my "rational mind" wanting to dismiss anything and everything as just coincidence, but when I look back over my life, even the times when I did not believe and deliberately acted against how I'd been raised to act, I can see how things have come together for my good and things I have wished for intently (I guess I should say prayed for even if I may not have directed it as such) have come to pass, even if it sometimes has taken 2, 3 or even 7 years to get there. I could say it is all down to coincidence and randomness, but I choose to see it as God's hand in my life. I don't mean that my faith is all a matter of will. Sometimes it may seem that way, but every now and then, more often than one would think, I experience moments of grace when, despite all my doubt and questions, things fit and make sense.

I'm afraid this is very long and I waffled. If it doesn't make sense, please ignore what I've written. Sorry for butting in. I'll go back to lurking now.

Hello Gingercurl . Please don't go back to lurking! Your post is very interesting.

Re the 'coincidences' - I have also experienced so many little things in the last 6 months since I began my relationship with God, call them signs if you want to, which on their own seem insignificant but when I add them all up together, they are of incredible importance and are having life-changing effects.

Hi Oxo!

willowfae I'll just unlurk once more to add that apart from the rational vs. faith argument, a lot of my reservations against God and church through the years as an outsider has been rooted in fear. Mainly fear of getting hurt by the people and structures within the church(as I have been in the past), of somehow being swallowed up whole. THe fear still strikes me occasionally (and going all rational is a very effective way of letting myself back out) but what I am starting to learn, and I'm a S-L-O-W learner, is that God meets me just as I am and wherever I stand in my journey with/toward/away from him. He does not want a deeper or greater declaration of faith than what I muster at any particular moment of time. It's people that put the pressures and expectations on us. Sometimes it is people around us, sometimes we do it to ourselves. As someone said to me once, it's hard to follow Jesus when there are so many followers blocking the view.

What I'm trying to say, in a very muddled way, and I may be completely wrong, is that maybe your reservations are not so much about God as with the paraphernalia that we associate as coming with him as part of the package IYSWIM, including people and their expectations, church, "rules", etc. that have very little to do with God at all.

Also unlurking briefly (though am meant to be working, so will be very brief...!)

Oxo - Of course I don't mind. I'm glad that what I wrote made sense to someone other than me!

MrsC - What you say about choosing to believe makes a huge amount of sense to me too.

Wishing everyone on this thread peace and happiness.

Hello, great to see some more come out of lurk-mode here :) MrsC, TUO and Ginger have said some wise and great things here, can't really add to it but come to offer my ongoing support.

Willowfae I can see this is difficult for you, as you weigh this all up and have niggles. I believe that faith and doubt are two sides of a coin and that faith without doubt is no kind of faith, for then it would be blind. We are made to question, it is wired into us, we are made with intelligence and reason and therefore we doubt. God is not something it is easy just to put faith in and everything be clear suddenly, it doesn't work like that. As the others have said it can be almost a daily decision, and there are times when God will reveal himself to you and you will know his presence in a huge way like nb and oxo are experiencing a little of at the moment, and others when you'll wonder if he is there at all.

I think it's good to have doubts and good to keep listening to the niggles, as well as to keep exploring. The way you describe the HS day and what has happened since does seem to me to show God working in your life and speaking to you, in small but increasing ways. It may be that you won't get to a place where you can say that all the doubts have gone. That step of faith is all the more poignant and powerful if it is taken despite the doubts, or even with them. Again to reiterate what Mrs C said, this is not saying that you have to squash the doubts and pretend; merely that you can take them with you into the faith bit. Does that make any sense??!

Hello coolmama and welcome to the thread. I would be extremely upset if any church did really force people to believe or act in a certain way, this would be totally contrary to the teachings of Jesus. Alpha is meant to be a discussion and an introduction to the Christian faith, and the emphasis is on introduction not indoctrination. I really hope that you find a course which suits you and that you feel comfortable with. As for the Holy spirit stuff, there is some stuff about it all earlier on the thread which may help allay your fears a little, but it really is nothing to be scared of - the Holy Spirit is what makes us aware of God with us, it is something intangible and incredible, but so not horrible.

I hope I haven't waffled too long, as usual

Thanks everyone. Your messages and words do mean a lot.

I think my problem is that I tend to be too academic about the whole thing. I want the reference to back things up so to speak. I also think that I am concerned about being one of those irrational believers. You know, the sort that Dawkins ridicules and accuses of being unintelligent and naive etc.

Perhaps, like Mrs C said, I need to accept that faith and doubt do go hand in hand. At Alpha last week the leader was saying that he had had a couple of images and thought they might apply to some of us. One of them was a bridge shrouded in fog and being in a car and just putting your foot down and driving despite not being able to see the other side. One guy said that he felt like that, but I just thought to myself that I was outside the car waiting for the fog to lift before even getting in! I didn't say that it applied to me, but the more I think about it, the more I think it possibly did. Again, could that be God trying to say something?

I also think that as a child I believed it all without questioning. It was just a part of how we lived and what we all believed. Perhaps that is making it harder now?

Willowfae - I think the expression 'leap' of faith was wrong. It's more a case of feeling your way. In your case, I think what you need is to get down on your hands and knees (metaphoricallye) and slowly, one hand in front of the other, feel your way across that bridge. Small steps are as valid as big leaps!

I also sympathise with your fear of being an irrational, 'stupid' believer, having had a much loved and admired grandfather who never tired of telling people that 'no-one of any intelligence whatsoever could possibly believe all that nonsense'. But I am not stupid. Irrational at times, perhaps but show me an entirely rationally thought-through life, and I'll show you a boring and soul-less one .

The notion of God reaches, I think, into the very deepest part of our being. I can't rationalise it, and I don't want to, but let me put it this way: it is commonly (and objectively) acknowledged that people of faith have longer, happier, more 'fulfilled' lives. I believe that, psychologically, we have a deep need for faith. What possible, rational, reason could there be for deliberately and knowingly leaving that need unfulfilled? Even if my need for faith is a 'weakness', how can I possibly live my life properly if I do not attempt to fix that weakness?

Does that make any sense?