In the final clip from an interview with Rico Tice, who's part of the Christianity Explored Ministries team, Rico gives some ideas about what to do once you've run a CE course—and explains about the two websites which support the course.
Those two website Rico and Brad mentioned:
Missed the previous clips? See Rico on:
Kevin de Young is Senior Pastor at University Reformed Church in East Lansing, Michigan. He's also a popular and blogger and author. He started running CE at his church a few years ago, and has found it a great tool for reaching internationals.
Kevin says: "If you are looking for an evangelism program to use in your church, I strongly urge you to consider Christianity Explored. We appreciate that the CE videos go through a book of the Bible (Mark) and does not skip over the doctrine of sin.
"It is bearing more fruit than we imagined, especially among internationals."
On his blog he and one of his elders, Bruce Jeffries, explain how they have found the course works.... continue reading
Between today and Saturday September 10th, you can get half-price CE Handbooks either in the US or in the UK. So instead of ÂŁ3 or $4.99, you can get them for just ÂŁ1.50 or $2.50!
To take advantage of this one-off deal, just quote this code when you place your order: “ce-week-deal”.
And if you’re ordering large numbers of handbooks, leader’s guides and DVDs, do ring us either in the States or the UK to see what discount we can offer you.
Rob Prendergast is a pastor at Calvary Chapel South London. He recently took his whole church through the CE course.
How did you come to run CE with your church?
I first came across CE about a year ago, and I was really excited to see it was based on Mark, and basically expository preaching that was evangelistic. It sounded fantastic for us, and we decided to run it and invite our whole membership.
Most people use CE as an outreach course. Why did you invite your membership?
Because we don’t want to take things for granted. As much as we teach through the Bible each Sunday, we don’t just want to assume that everyone gets the gospel. We do membership interviews, about 15 minutes long, but I know that people could say the “right thing” there, or I might not see something.
CE enabled us to build a solid foundation for our membership. It really undergirded people’s faith. We’ve had a lot of growth in the last year or so, and the course was really helpful with filling in any gaps for them. And more mature Christians said they found it really refreshed their faith.
When and how did you run the course?
Running CE for our congregation was a challenge, because it’s normally for smaller groups. But we wanted to do it as a whole church thing. We did it at 10.30, before the main service began, and about 70% of our membership turned up each week.
We decided to leave the meal part out, so we had a short introduction, then we watched the DVD, and then opened it up for questions and discussion. I didn’t know how that bit would go, but people proved really happy to discuss and question what they’d heard from Mark’s Gospel. In fact people got really excited and sometimes we had to just rein them in a bit!
Was it just your membership coming along?
No. We said to our members this would be a good thing to invite friends and family to. And we saw two people become Christians having been invited by family who were already part of our church.
How will you use CE in the future?... continue reading
Brad and Rico talk about how doing CE with your church members can change lives, and how it helps get churches fired up for evangelism.
For more information, see the CE Ministries Website. For materials, head to The Good Book Company in the UK or the US. ). And take a look at CE's evangelistic website.
Tomorrow, Rico and Brad chat about what to do after a CE course.
Missed the previous clips? See Rico on:
Shirley Leggett is 88, and lives in a block of flats for retired people. She ran a Christianity Explored course a couple of years ago in her home.
Who came along to your group?
Everyone there was over 70! We were quite a small group. One wasn’t a churchgoer—the others were, but they had not a clue about who Jesus was. They’d never looked at a Bible before.
How did it go?
I’d said to people that I wouldn’t be offended if they didn’t like it and left. Some of the people watched the first one and enjoyed it, but said that was enough for now. Now that the new DVD is out, I’m going to ask them to come along again!
Most people did enjoy it and kept coming. We had a good old discussion each time. For one or two, who Jesus is really sank in. One old lady came along, and came to faith before she died.
How did you structure each session?
We took it bit by bit, very simply. We used the DVD. That was lovely. They loved Rico. It really was good, and relevant to them. He’s such an approachable person.
We’d then read the Bible passage and talk about it. I didn’t use the handbooks—we would have got lost, it was too much—so I just took a few of the questions from it.
What was the advantage of running the course in your own home, and leading it yourself?
It’s more informal if you do it yourself, with your friends, in your front room. You know each other, the ups and downs of each other’s lives.
And it’s a much easier invite to say: “Come and watch a video and we’ll have a chat”, rather than saying: “I’d like to talk to you come along and talk to me about Christianity”.
What would you say to someone who’s thinking about running CE in a similar way?
I would say if you’ve got a heart for the gospel and you love your friends, give it a go. Watch it yourself, and see if you think you could show it to your friends. And then ask people. Lots of people don’t want to be challenged, so they won’t want to come. But sometimes you can find people who do want to think about things, and then it’s great.
Shirley used the DVD and handbooks for her group. Have a look at CE’s course materials in the US and the UK.
Nev Hayman is 41 and has three children. He plays for a soccer team set up by a friend from church, who play in a local league. Half of the team are Christians, and half aren't. They recently began to run CE with some members of the team.
What's the idea of the team?
The idea was to set up something evangelistic, where guys from the local area could get to know us and see that we may be Christians but we're still normal! So we play each week, and then go to the pub after the game, just forming friendships and getting to know people.
Why did you decide to run CE?
We pray before games and sometimes have chats with the guys about Christianity, but we weren't really getting much further. So we just thought: Let's try to get these guys to a CE course. But instead of inviting them to the church's main evening course, we thought they'd prefer doing it very informally with people they already knew, basically with a bunch of friends. So we thought we'd do one purely for the football guys.
How did it go?
We invited the whole squad, and six said they'd come. The first night only two came, but that was fine. They really enjoyed the first week. One guy who came is in his forties, and he said in the pub the next weekend that he'd never heard about Jesus at all, ever. He said: "No one's ever spoken to me about this before."
We'd started the course just as the season began to finish, in the spring—and after that first one we struggled to find a time these two guys could make to carry on. But we're going to start up again in the autumn, with those two guys, and use the new material. And we'll invite the rest of the squad again! In fact we've got our start-of-season social coming up soon, and I think we'll just get one of the guys who came to talk about what it was like, and reassure the others that it's relaxed and you don't get brainwashed! Do pray for us as we try to start up again next month.
What is good about the CE course for these sport-loving guys?
CE is just a brilliant way to explain the gospel. It does it so simply, and so clearly, but it's always done in a friendly way.
Christianity Explored Ministries' Rico Tice talks about how to make sure the church, not simply the pastor, is involved with running and leading a CE course.
For more information, see the CE Ministries Website. For materials, head to The Good Book Company in the UK or the US. ). And take a look at CE's evangelistic website.
Tomorrow, Rico talks to Brad about how CE can be great for your whole church.
Missed the previous clips? See Rico on what CE is, how it was developed, and what sets it apart from other courses here; and on how he'd love to see the new edition of the course being used by churches.
From this Thursday, we're offering an amazing, not-to-be-missed deal on CE Handbooks. Usually, they cost just £3, or $4.99—but until September 10th, you'll be able to get them for just £1.50/$2.50!
To take advantage of this one-off deal, you'll need to quote a unique code when you order. That code will appear on the blog on Thursday—you can't find it anywhere else!
So if you're thinking of running CE in the next few months, now would be a great time to buy your handbooks. If you're ordering large numbers of handbooks and DVDs, do ring us either in the States or the UK to see what discount we can offer you.
Alexa Burstow lives in south-west London and is married with two young children. She decided, with no previous experience, to run a CE course with a couple of friends in her lounge.
Why did you decide to run a CE course in your house? Why not just take them to the course your church was running?
When you’ve got young children, or busy jobs, it’s really hard to do stuff in the evening. This could be timed to be good for them—we met up at 10am on Wednesday mornings, but a couple of times we just changed the time to fit in with their schedules.
And a course at a church is much more formal. This was more relaxed, in a place they knew, with a person leading it they were already friends with. And it could be timed to be good for them. They just wouldn’t have gone for something with someone they didn’t know.
Who did you invite?
I invited three people. One didn’t come, but two said yes. They were both neighbours I’d got to know—one has a child in the same class at school as my daughter. They’d both been to a couple of events at church like carols.
What was good about the course?
They had a chance to interact and ask questions about whatever they wanted. And I knew that we were looking at Jesus, and about what the gospel is, whereas often when I have chats about my faith with my friends, I find it really hard to actually talk about what the heart of Christianity is. With CE, we got to the core of it very quickly each week.
How much experience did you have of doing this kind of thing beforehand?... continue reading
