Looking at Sowing 2 on the Engel Scale - the
Alpha Course would be in that category.
Our introductory Alpha meal will bring people along who are often not
yet interested in investigating Jesus but they are interested in an event!
So one year at our Alpha
meal we had Gavin Peacock, the football pundit and ex-professional footballer, to
speak. There were 200 people in the room
- the biggest Alpha meal we had done to date.
A number of people came who weren’t going to come to anything else; they
were just there because of Gavin but they heard him give his testimony and talk
for 20 minutes about Jesus and they heard about the Alpha course. They were not planning to come back so the ‘drop
off’ rate for the following week was quite high but this was a way to begin to
sow something of the gospel. You have
permission at that moment to say something.
We run an Alpha course every
term and also within the category of Sowing
2 we would place our Sunday morning meetings - a place to which people can come
who are still trying to find out about God.
Then there are guest services - we make a big thing about things like
baptisms. All the people that are to be baptised are encouraged to invite
friends and family. We go as far as saying, ‘and we will save you some seats - just
phone the office and tell us how many people are coming and we will make sure
seats are reserved.’ That makes them
think – ‘they’re expecting me to bring people’.
So on average, each person who gets baptised here probably brings about
5-8 guests.
We would also do other
guest services. Baby thanksgivings/dedication
services have become a way of inviting people – we arrange them so that there
are quite a number of families bringing their babies at the same time – there
can be up to 30 guests for one family at these events! We’ve discovered that dedications as part of
your Sunday meeting mean that people will always bring family and friends -
again people come along not because they’re interested in church but because
they’re friends of those taking part.
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