Alpha

Lastnight saw the first night of the Alpha course at church. John Mac and myself have been put together to lead a group and I have to say both of us are extremely happy with the group we have. We have a mix of Christians and Non-Christians which I am loving. I was quite nervous about it yesterday and when I arrived at church I had a real sick feeling in my stomach, but I prayed all day and I really couldn't have been happier with how it went. The format will be the same every week, there is a 20 minute talk at the beginning then we break into our smaller groups to discuss in a bit more depth and people are free to ask whatever they want and we will try to provide the answers...in about the 5th week there is even a wee residential!
The topic lastnight was, quite simply, "Who is Jesus?". Steve McCready lead the talk lastnight and i thought he did a great job, simple, easy to follow and in my opinion, answered the question very well using historical evidence that Jesus was an actual person, who walked on this earth 2000 years ago, not just this mystical figure who lives in the sky and helps people (which is what I thought when I was a child!) He pointed out that this evidence is also documented in non-christian history books. This is the sort of stuff that I would love to have heard when I was a non-christian. It makes it all very real and I think it is so powerful.
I think we got alot of the "big questions" put to us lastnight, eg, Why is there so much suffering?, How can an all-loving God condemn people to hell if they aren't saved? These are questions which both John and I knew would come up. Over the next 10 weeks of the Alpha course we are going to try and give some answers to these questions, but I do know that it's going to be hard and there are some things that neither of us are going to have the answers for. I'm really looking forward to the journey though, and I am really looking forward to learning more myself.
Prayer for the Alpha course would be great also!!

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