It’s been a busy week on The Good Book blog! We’ve featured an interview with Rico Tice of Christianity Explored ministries; heard from people using CE in a range of contexts; and offered an amazing deal on CE course handbooks, to be found only on this blog.
Here’s a full round-up of what we’ve posted, in case you’ve missed any of it.
The Handbooks Deal:
Find the code you need to quote when ordering here.
The Rico Interview:
How you can use CE:
The CE website:
A couple of the “Real Life Stories” from www.christianityexplored.org. See if you agree with US pastor and author John Piper!
The site also features a “Tough Questions” area—here are a couple of the answers featured there:
It’s easy to point to the site on your church’s website: go here to download some designs.
Why not get some cards with the site’s address on to keep in your wallet or pocket, ready to give out to people? Order some now: email admin@thegoodbook.co.uk (UK) or admin@thegoodbook.com (US).
Steve Smith is pastor of Grace Church, a small but growing church family who meet in a school hall in Worcester Park, Surrey. Here, he tells the story of how a couple completely unconnected with church ended up on a CE course.
“A couple in our church downloaded a poster about Christianity Explored from TGBC’s website, and put it up in their block of flats. The poster had the website www.christianityexplored.org on it.
“A little while later I got an email from a couple who were South Africans living in our area. They’d been to church many years before, but were totally unconnected with church now.
“They’d never heard of CE until they saw that poster. They went to the website, decided they needed to do the course, and searched for their local course.
“I’d booked our course on to the website as soon as we got the materials to start running the course. So they found us, their local church, and emailed. They signed up for, and came along to, the CE course.
“He’s become a Christian, and she’s signed up to go through the course a second time. They’re both now regulars at our church.... continue reading
The new Christianity Explored website, launched in April, is a fantastic new resource for Christians trying to share their faith with friends, family and colleagues.
Because it presents the gospel and apologetics clearly, but in a warm and positive way, it’s great for pointing people to, whether they’re:
whether they’ve only just begun to think about Christianity, are asking lots of questions or whether they’re thinking of signing up for a CE course (or have already done so).
The website has a “Course” section which gives details about how CE courses work—but it’s also capable of being used as a standalone evangelistic tool.
It features:
How can you use it to equip and encourage evangelism in your church?... continue reading
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 £3 or $4.99, you can get them for just £1.50 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.