The pandemic has underlined the fact that being a Christian disciple is about far more than Sunday church-going. While the crisis has kept us out of our church buildings, it has also challenged us to think more deeply about being church, in and for a suffering world. The call to live an everyday faith 24/7 has never been clearer.
Facilitator Peter Nicholls offers the following description of the way the course will be run and outlines its content:
Be encouraged: if you can click around a website and can send emails, you will be able to use the Moodle virtual learning environment! The big advantage is that you can learn at times and places to suit yourself (but will need between 3 and 4 hours per week to do the course justice, preferably in several short bursts). Before the course proper starts, there’s a week in which to familiarise yourself with the tools, with guide booklet (printed!) in hand and telephone helpline at the ready. The course is actively facilitated by me, Peter Nicholls, and, happily, I’ve been doing this sort of thing for 20 years. In other words, a tutor journeys with you: steering, responding, challenging, assisting.
The course starts by exploring the sweep of God’s history. How did it start? How will it end? How do we laypeople join in that journey and help it along?
We think about how we can facilitate the coming of God’s Kingdom, then you’ll consider the person you are alongside the things that you do, and think about right praying when faced with dilemmas.
Is there a process that will help us to think and act Christianly (yes)? What about values in society, the home and the workplace? Can you use them as levers to make things happen?
Finally, what is ‘social justice’ and what do we mean by the ‘Common Good’?
It’s all about helping you to wrestle with daily life in a world that prioritises money over God. About being salt that stops things going bad, about being light that attracts and illuminates, and about being yeast that has the capacity to change ‘the dough’ that it’s mixed with. This is the agenda of the national C of E initiative “Setting God’s People Free”: to enable the whole people of God to live out the Good News of Jesus confidently in all of life, Sunday to Saturday.
The course runs for six weeks from Monday 19 October, new material is released each Monday. You can access the material at any time of the day or night during the week the material is released to suit you!
For more information, please contact the Revd Canon Susanna Gunner on 07471 357079 or via email
